Paul Goble
Staunton, November 6– A measure of Moscow’s failure in Daghestan is that even children of Daghestani militiamen are now joining the anti-Russian Islamist militants, an indication that further militant operations, at least of the kind Russian forces seem to be preparing for will backfire and reduce rather than increase security in that republic.
As a result, Denis Kolchin, who writes frequently about the military situation in the Caucasus, argues, Moscow needs to come up with a “creative” new strategy, one that he suggests will have to involve some form of negotiations with the forces of the Caucasus Emirate, if it is to have any chance of coming out on top (www.apn.ru/publications/article23307.htm).
And he argues that if the Russian forces simply launch more offensives in that mountainous and ethnically diverse republic, the outcome will not be the restoration of peace and stability but rather an angrier and more alienated local population and a dramatic increase in the number of Daghestanis who will join the Islamist opposition.
“Officially in the North Caucasus, there is no war,” the Moscow analyst continues, but on October 23rd, for the third time this year, Islamist militants in the North Caucasus came close to destroying an entire unit of Russian siloviki, an outcome that was avoided only by good luck. Indeed, it appears Russian forces learned nothing from the earlier attacks.
To try to cope with the growing strength of the Caucasus Emirate in Daghestan, Kolchin says, Moscow recently has expanded the number of its military and internal security troops there – the analyst gives an order of battle -- and organized, on the Chechen model, three battalions composed of representatives of local nationalities.
This expansion in the size of the pro-Moscow forces suggests that at least some among their commanders are thinking about launching a new offensive, a step that Kolchin says would be disastrous. Unlike in 1996 and 1999, when the Daghestani population supported Moscow against the Chechen rebels, however, “today the situation is different.”
Any military operation, “in whatever form it might take,” would not be capable of “increasing the level of sympathy among the current population.” Younger people are already going into the mountains to fight the Russians, including “even children of militiamen.” Indeed, in September, one of the rebels killed proved to be the son of the Derbent criminal police.
Because of this trend, one that Russian commanders on the ground are very much aware of whatever their superiors say, officials are casting about for some new strategy. One of these is “the Daghestanization of the conflict” through the formation of more local military units along the model of what has been done in Chechnya.
But this is hardly likely to be “a panacea,” Chalpin says. Not only is “a partisan war” continuing in that republic, but there are two other factors limiting the chance this shift would bring success. On the one hand, for the Islamist militants, there is no difference between Russian soldiers and Kadyrov forces – “the mujahidin will kill either” without distinction.
And on the other hand, Daghestan’s ethnic diversity dooms such a strategy to failure. While Chechnya is 93 percent ethnic Chechen, Daghestan has “no core nationality.” Instead, its largest group forms only 29 percent of the population. Hence, “the application of Daghestanization (in practice, fratricidal war) is stupid” and “threatens chaos.
“In short,” Chaplin says, “the situation in the republic will only deteriorate.” And that in turn means that “Moscow must think up something new for the Caucasus” in general and Daghestan in particular. Military actions of whatever kind are not going to be capable of “ending the partisan war” being carried out by the Islamist militants.
And such “creativity,” not much in evidence among Russian officials now, “probably” will have to involve “dialogue” with the militants, something that the current Moscow line precludes. But unless such conversations begin – and the parallel with the US battle with the Taliban in Afghanistan suggests itself – the war will only continue and may get worse.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Russia’s Social Fabric is Disintegrating, Narochnitskaya Warns
Paul Goble
Staunton, November 6 – Russians outside the major cities are undergoing a process of lumpenization, of the loss of all social ties, that is as serious as the destruction of the peasantry of the 1930s and threatens the country’s future development, according to Natalya Narotchnitskaya, head of the Moscow-supported Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris.
In an interview in “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” Narochnitskaya painted a picture of Russia in tones that are even darker than those employed by people she routinely denounces as Russophobes in order to warn her readers that “Russia simply will not survive another revolution” (kp.ru/daily/24583.4/752496/).
Narochnitskaya begins by arguing that it is a mistake to think of Russia as a single homogenous space. “Siberia, the Kuban, Moscow and the Caucasus,” she says, “are different epochs, different cultures, and even different civilizations! We are living at one and the same time in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.”
Moreover, she continues, Russians and those who rule over them have to deal simultaneously with “the problems of the palaces and the problems of the huts, with advanced science and high culture, and archaic systems and an appalling lack of culture.” And that is “an enormous task for any power.”
“You cannot apply one and the same economic doctrines across the entire country.” But at the same time, she argues, you cannot ignore what people expect, and over history, Russians have assumed that just such an approach is necessary and that it is the only basis for overcoming national problems.
These divisions, Narochnitskaya continues, have been intensified, even exacerbated by the radical income differentiation thatpost-Soviet development has promoted. And she insists that the division between the richest and the poorest there is “not 20 times” as many say but rather “100 to 150 times,” a ratio that is hardly “divine.”
And that in turn has been compounded by the increasing acceptance of the notion that in economics, it is always the individual who makes progress rather than the state. “That is not the case,” she says, arguing that such ideas are a reflection of the characteristic of the Russian “educated” who think that it is a matter of “good tone” to always criticize the state.
But Narochnitskaya’s sharpest words concern the decay of Russian social life outside the major cities. “In the rural areas,” she says, “what is taking place is not simply the impoverishment but the lumpenization o fhte nation! The destruction of industry however backward it was is the de-industrialization of the country.”
She argues that “there cannot be any modernization if we lose out working habits,” suggesting that “by its social and cultural consequences for the nation, lumpenization is a catastrophe equal to the destruction of the Russian peasantry in the 1930s” by Stalin through collectivization.
Prior to 1917, Russian peasants had been poor but they had “preserved their social connections, psychology and the worldview of a definite stratum which reproduced itself while preserving society as a whole. But a lumpen is someone who has fallen out of his stratum and does not have any attachment to it.”
“This is a very dangerous social phenomenon. Such a worker will not struggle for his rights” because that is not what he is about. Instead, he will, especially as a result of the “unceasing propaganda of hedonism” to which Russians have been subjected assume that he deserves what he does not have and that he can take it even if it does not belong to him.
That danger can be seen if one travels only a short distance from Moscow. If one takes a highway out of the capital for only 100 kilometers and then turns off on a side road, after only about “five kilometers, a medieval world begins.” But it is a medieval world with television whose advertisements suggest that a good life is only a short distance away.
Many people think that the entire West is hedonistic, Narochnitskaya continues, and that this is the way of the future. But “this is the biggest misconception,” she insists. “Don’t forget that the Puritans with their religious relationship to the fulfillment of their debts build America. The relationship to work in the West in general is very serious.”
As she has done in the past, Narochnitskaya also sharply criticizes both the Russian opposition for its own radicalism and running after the West and the image of the West that many Russians have as a place where there are no problems and where miracles are achieved without work.
Such thinking, she suggests, leads Russians to vacillate between an apathetic acceptance that nothing can be done, a cynicism about the ability of anyone to do anything about problems, and a belief that the best way to achieve their goals is all at once by a revolutionary act rather than by reforms.
In conclusions, Narochnitskaya cites Trubetskoy’s observation that “we don’t need reforms, we need everything or nothing” as an example of this attitude and then warns that whatever may have been true in the past, Russia now, as a result of the lumpenization of so much of the population, “simply won’t survive another revolution.”
Staunton, November 6 – Russians outside the major cities are undergoing a process of lumpenization, of the loss of all social ties, that is as serious as the destruction of the peasantry of the 1930s and threatens the country’s future development, according to Natalya Narotchnitskaya, head of the Moscow-supported Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris.
In an interview in “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” Narochnitskaya painted a picture of Russia in tones that are even darker than those employed by people she routinely denounces as Russophobes in order to warn her readers that “Russia simply will not survive another revolution” (kp.ru/daily/24583.4/752496/).
Narochnitskaya begins by arguing that it is a mistake to think of Russia as a single homogenous space. “Siberia, the Kuban, Moscow and the Caucasus,” she says, “are different epochs, different cultures, and even different civilizations! We are living at one and the same time in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.”
Moreover, she continues, Russians and those who rule over them have to deal simultaneously with “the problems of the palaces and the problems of the huts, with advanced science and high culture, and archaic systems and an appalling lack of culture.” And that is “an enormous task for any power.”
“You cannot apply one and the same economic doctrines across the entire country.” But at the same time, she argues, you cannot ignore what people expect, and over history, Russians have assumed that just such an approach is necessary and that it is the only basis for overcoming national problems.
These divisions, Narochnitskaya continues, have been intensified, even exacerbated by the radical income differentiation thatpost-Soviet development has promoted. And she insists that the division between the richest and the poorest there is “not 20 times” as many say but rather “100 to 150 times,” a ratio that is hardly “divine.”
And that in turn has been compounded by the increasing acceptance of the notion that in economics, it is always the individual who makes progress rather than the state. “That is not the case,” she says, arguing that such ideas are a reflection of the characteristic of the Russian “educated” who think that it is a matter of “good tone” to always criticize the state.
But Narochnitskaya’s sharpest words concern the decay of Russian social life outside the major cities. “In the rural areas,” she says, “what is taking place is not simply the impoverishment but the lumpenization o fhte nation! The destruction of industry however backward it was is the de-industrialization of the country.”
She argues that “there cannot be any modernization if we lose out working habits,” suggesting that “by its social and cultural consequences for the nation, lumpenization is a catastrophe equal to the destruction of the Russian peasantry in the 1930s” by Stalin through collectivization.
Prior to 1917, Russian peasants had been poor but they had “preserved their social connections, psychology and the worldview of a definite stratum which reproduced itself while preserving society as a whole. But a lumpen is someone who has fallen out of his stratum and does not have any attachment to it.”
“This is a very dangerous social phenomenon. Such a worker will not struggle for his rights” because that is not what he is about. Instead, he will, especially as a result of the “unceasing propaganda of hedonism” to which Russians have been subjected assume that he deserves what he does not have and that he can take it even if it does not belong to him.
That danger can be seen if one travels only a short distance from Moscow. If one takes a highway out of the capital for only 100 kilometers and then turns off on a side road, after only about “five kilometers, a medieval world begins.” But it is a medieval world with television whose advertisements suggest that a good life is only a short distance away.
Many people think that the entire West is hedonistic, Narochnitskaya continues, and that this is the way of the future. But “this is the biggest misconception,” she insists. “Don’t forget that the Puritans with their religious relationship to the fulfillment of their debts build America. The relationship to work in the West in general is very serious.”
As she has done in the past, Narochnitskaya also sharply criticizes both the Russian opposition for its own radicalism and running after the West and the image of the West that many Russians have as a place where there are no problems and where miracles are achieved without work.
Such thinking, she suggests, leads Russians to vacillate between an apathetic acceptance that nothing can be done, a cynicism about the ability of anyone to do anything about problems, and a belief that the best way to achieve their goals is all at once by a revolutionary act rather than by reforms.
In conclusions, Narochnitskaya cites Trubetskoy’s observation that “we don’t need reforms, we need everything or nothing” as an example of this attitude and then warns that whatever may have been true in the past, Russia now, as a result of the lumpenization of so much of the population, “simply won’t survive another revolution.”
Window on Eurasia: Lenin Lives in Russian Writing Only to Die Again, Moscow Critic Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, November 6 – Russians continue to argue about Stalin and other Communist leaders, but in such debates, Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, has been left largely “somewhere on the side,” a reflection of the often unrecognized fact that he, unlike the others, plays a variety of roles for the current generation, according to a Moscow scholar.
That may be changing, Aleksandr Chantsev argues in the current “Neprikosnovennyy zapas,” given that his works are now being republished and an entire virtual community devoted to his memory has emerged, and consequently, it is time to consider the actual role Lenin continues to play in the lives of Russians (magazines.russ.ru/nz/2010/4/ch16.html.
Unlike those who want Lenin out of the mausoleum and are angry that more than 70 percent of all Lenin monuments in the Russian Federation remain in place 20 years after the end of the Soviet Union (www.pravmir.ru/lenin-navsegda/), Chantsev, a philologist, considers the imagery of Lenin found in literary works as a key to understanding his role in Russian life now.
As far as the Soviet system is concerned, Chantsev begins, “everything is clear – we don’t want it, but they are reviving it.” That sense, he continues, leads to debates about Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Trotsky, but somehow “Lenin turns out to be left somewhere on the side,” historically distant, preserved in amber, “half-condemned but half rehabilitated.”
What is striking, the critic notes, is that Lenin has become an object onto which have many displaced many things which are far from the original meaning of the man and his historical role. “The main thing” turns out to be “images of childhood,” not just because of Bonch-Bruyevich’s stories but also because people now associate Lenin with their early years.
The literary record of the last 20 years suggest that “behind all these ‘Leninist subjects’ stands special relations with the object. The motives are clear: they have a more psychological basis: the denial of communist ideals in the Soviet period, the ridiculing of the former idol in the first years of perestroika and then … one of the symbols of the denial of current Russian reality.
In reality, Chantsev argues, “Lenin here is important not in and of himself; he is much more significant for what he embodies – and it is from this the continuing presence of his image arises. This is intensified still further by the formulaic images of Lenin created in the Soviet period which are used by contemporary authors for [his] desconstruction.”
And that is terribly important, Chantsev suggests because “after 70 years of defenseless existence under the pressure of official idiologisms, Russian writing with the help of these measures is undertaking an attempt at a late vaccination against the virus of Lenin – and it is not for nothing that in texts [about him] there are so many references to illness.”
Consequently, while Lenin still lives in Russian writing and consciousness, his existence is a “strange” one, somewhere “between life and death.” He plays the role of Osiris, of someone who dies in order to be reborn only to die again. And however angry many may be about his re-appearance, such a pattern is intended to ensure that his like will not come again.
“Unlike the image of Stalin … in our days,” Chantsev says, “when at spiritual séances out of the past are called forth terrible heroes of myths … on should not be surprised by such a frequent appearance of Lenin” or fail to understand that his return is required in such forums in order that it not happen in real life.
Lenin must “yet again be reborn in order that, having finally died, he can leave his meta-historical mausoleum and move from the status of ‘the most living of all living’ into the form of an ordinary historical personage.” And because that is the requirement, Chantsev concludes, “in the immediate future, Lenin will appear yet again in many books, films, and songs.”
Staunton, November 6 – Russians continue to argue about Stalin and other Communist leaders, but in such debates, Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, has been left largely “somewhere on the side,” a reflection of the often unrecognized fact that he, unlike the others, plays a variety of roles for the current generation, according to a Moscow scholar.
That may be changing, Aleksandr Chantsev argues in the current “Neprikosnovennyy zapas,” given that his works are now being republished and an entire virtual community devoted to his memory has emerged, and consequently, it is time to consider the actual role Lenin continues to play in the lives of Russians (magazines.russ.ru/nz/2010/4/ch16.html.
Unlike those who want Lenin out of the mausoleum and are angry that more than 70 percent of all Lenin monuments in the Russian Federation remain in place 20 years after the end of the Soviet Union (www.pravmir.ru/lenin-navsegda/), Chantsev, a philologist, considers the imagery of Lenin found in literary works as a key to understanding his role in Russian life now.
As far as the Soviet system is concerned, Chantsev begins, “everything is clear – we don’t want it, but they are reviving it.” That sense, he continues, leads to debates about Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Trotsky, but somehow “Lenin turns out to be left somewhere on the side,” historically distant, preserved in amber, “half-condemned but half rehabilitated.”
What is striking, the critic notes, is that Lenin has become an object onto which have many displaced many things which are far from the original meaning of the man and his historical role. “The main thing” turns out to be “images of childhood,” not just because of Bonch-Bruyevich’s stories but also because people now associate Lenin with their early years.
The literary record of the last 20 years suggest that “behind all these ‘Leninist subjects’ stands special relations with the object. The motives are clear: they have a more psychological basis: the denial of communist ideals in the Soviet period, the ridiculing of the former idol in the first years of perestroika and then … one of the symbols of the denial of current Russian reality.
In reality, Chantsev argues, “Lenin here is important not in and of himself; he is much more significant for what he embodies – and it is from this the continuing presence of his image arises. This is intensified still further by the formulaic images of Lenin created in the Soviet period which are used by contemporary authors for [his] desconstruction.”
And that is terribly important, Chantsev suggests because “after 70 years of defenseless existence under the pressure of official idiologisms, Russian writing with the help of these measures is undertaking an attempt at a late vaccination against the virus of Lenin – and it is not for nothing that in texts [about him] there are so many references to illness.”
Consequently, while Lenin still lives in Russian writing and consciousness, his existence is a “strange” one, somewhere “between life and death.” He plays the role of Osiris, of someone who dies in order to be reborn only to die again. And however angry many may be about his re-appearance, such a pattern is intended to ensure that his like will not come again.
“Unlike the image of Stalin … in our days,” Chantsev says, “when at spiritual séances out of the past are called forth terrible heroes of myths … on should not be surprised by such a frequent appearance of Lenin” or fail to understand that his return is required in such forums in order that it not happen in real life.
Lenin must “yet again be reborn in order that, having finally died, he can leave his meta-historical mausoleum and move from the status of ‘the most living of all living’ into the form of an ordinary historical personage.” And because that is the requirement, Chantsev concludes, “in the immediate future, Lenin will appear yet again in many books, films, and songs.”
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