Paul Goble
Staunton, November 23 – Moscow’s plan to calm the North Caucasus by investing heavily in that unstable region and moving some of its population to predominantly ethnic Russian regions will not only generate xenophobia among Russians but equally seriously generate demands by other non-Russians for equal treatment, some Russian experts say.
The ways such migration would affect ethnic Russians has attracted a great deal of attention already, but the possibility that this program for the North Caucasus will generate demands for resources and special treatment by other non-Russian groups has received much less (via-midgard.info/news/in_russia/6790-velikoe-pereselenie-narodov-kavkaza-vozmozhno-oni.html).
But the latter impact of the development program for the North Caucasus Federal District may ultimately prove at least as important. On the one hand, Moscow has indicated that Russia is prepared to spend enormous sums to the North Caucasus and give special privileges to North Caucasians to calm the region. Other non-Russians, some experts say, will want the same.
On the other hand, non-Russians elsewhere may learn a lesson just the reverse of the one Moscow wants to send. In the past, those non-Russian republics which cooperated with the center were treated better than those in revolt, but now, under the terms of this new program, that will be reversed, with bad behavior rewarded as it were and good behavior ignored.
The Russian government has approved a program developed by Aleksandr Khloponin, the Presidential Plenipotentiary for the North Caucasus Federal District that calls for the movement of unemployed people there to jobs elsewhere in Russia and for the rapid economic development of the region itself.
To encourage the movement of people, officials say, Moscow is setting up a special agency for labor migration to protect the rights of those who choose to go and providing them with a variety of benefits, including government-subsidized long-term mortgage money, that are not going to be available to anyone else, Russian or non-Russian.
In this way, the experts note, “the powers that be hope to reduce inter-ethnic and social tension in the North Caucasus and to ‘increase the number of those who consider themselves to be member of the ‘[non-ethnic] Russian nation.” Many doubt that this program will succeed in doing that, and they warn of other problems.
Other non-Russian minorities, whose members see the privileges and protections that the North Caucasians are getting, are going to want the same things. And the experts say, they are certain to try to force Moscow’s hand by acting in ways that will provoke more xenophobia, more inter-ethnic conflicts and more open protests.
Moscow has already approved financing for various projects in the North Caucasus in the amount of 242 billion rubles (eight billion US dollars) in 2013 alone, and experts say that they expect the Russian powers that be to invest an addition 160 billion rubles (two billion US dollars) there by that date.
But Moscow’s concessions to the North Caucasians are not limited to money alone. The Russian authorities are creating and expanding special “territorial development zones,” where taxes will be excused for some years and special financing will be arranged and where oil exporters will not have to pay the export tariff at least for a time.
By taking these steps, officials in Moscow clearly “hope that the North Caucasus will soon become an attractive region for those living there and will increase the number of those who identify as members of ‘the [non-ethnic] Russian nation.’” Achieving either will be difficult if not impossible, all the more so because other groups are going to want equal treatment.
Negative reaction to the idea of moving large numbers of North Caucasians to predominantly ethnic Russian regions has been so intense that Moscow has been forced to back down, with Khloponin insisting that media reports on that regard had “distorted the strategy” to the point that it can’t be recognized. He insisted any movement would be voluntary.
And it is entirely likely that over the next year or so, Moscow will back away on the funding as well because of increasing criticism by Russians who believe that sending money to the North Caucasus is throwing good money after bad and also by other non-Russians who will want more funds for themselves instead of seeing money go to those who have behaved badly.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Invoking Sakharov, Yabloko Leader Backs Tbilisi’s Call for Boycotting Sochi Games
Paul Goble
Staunton, November 23 – Most Russian commentary on Georgian calls for a boycott of the 2014 Sochi Olympics has been hostile, but Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the Yabloko Party board in St. Petersburg, not only backs Tbilisi’s appeal but invokes the memory of Academician Andrey Sakharov in support of that step.
In a blog post today, Vishnevsky says that one can only be pleased that 65 percent of those who took part in an Ekho Moskvy poll (www.echo.msk.ru/polls/728217-echo/) believe that “Georgia has the right to call on the international community to boycott the Olympics in Sochi in 2014 (echo.msk.ru/blog/boris_vis/728484-echo/).
While Vishnevsky implicitly recognizes that this poll was not based on a representative sample of the Russian population, he argues that “the international community will be correct if it responds positively. And the International Olympic Committee will be correct if it changes the venue of the Olympiad.”
“Putin lovers” and “state-thinking people” won’t agree, but the international community needs to come to its senses and recognize the inappropriateness of a winter Olympics in the tropics and the sad fact that the holding of such games in today’s Russia is “a crude violation of the Olympic Charter.”
According to that document, Vishnevsky points out, “one of the tasks of the IOC is to “oppose any political misuse of sport and sportsmen.” But that is just what Putin and his regime have done, “privatizing” sports in such a way that any victory is used to show “superiority over the West” and any defeat to demonstrate the existence of “an anti-Russian conspiracy.”
Another responsibility of the IOC, according to the Olympic Charter, is to demonstrate a concern about the protection of the environment. As Igor Chestin, the head of the World Wildlife Foundation in Russia, has pointed out, Moscow has “violated all the norms of environmental protection law.”
In order to give Putin a public relations triumph, ecologists have demonstrated and regularly reported to the world, it is “destroyed unique natural objects” and behaved in such a way that there will be more destruction and catastrophes both “before the Games or after them” (www.bellona.ru/articles_ru/articles_2010/Chestin-interv).
(Although Vishnevsky does not mention it, IOC rules also require that those who organize an Olympiad respect for the culture and communities of the people living at or near the site. Not only has Moscow trampled over the people of Sochi, but it has ignored the objections of Circassians who point to the genocide of their people which took place there 150 years ago.)
As the Yabloko leader puts it, Moscow has “spit” on all this: “Sochi-2014,” in the minds of the powers that be there must be “the largest public relations project of Putin,” regardless of the ways in which it violates the Olympic Charter, desecrates the environment and history, and costs more than any previous games.
Indeed, Vishnevsky continues, one of the reasons that Putin has focused on the Sochi Olympics so much is precisely the cost of holding them. The amounts are so great that they give “an opportunity for a virtually unlimited ‘leakage’ of budgetary funds” into his hands and those of his supporters. Those who are paying – the Russian people – won’t even get to attend.
What should be done? Would it be better for Russia and the world “if the Olympiad of 2014 were to occur in another place?” Perhaps. But no one can count on that happening, the Yabloko leader continues, given how important Sochi has become for Putin and how unwilling many world leaders are to offend him -- even when he is at his most outrageous.
But if the Sochi games cannot be moved or cancelled, then a boycott of these games make sense, Vishnevsky suggests. And he recalls that in 1980, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Academician Andrey Sakharov “called for a boycott of the Moscow Olympics” as well as for the sanctions against the Soviet Union “for violating human rights.”
Such rights have been violated in Sochi as well as elsewhere in the Russian Federation by Putin and his team already for a long time. And “as far as an invasion is concerned,” Vishnevsky concludes, “has not Russia by force invaded and de facto (although not de jure) annexed a third of Georgian territory?”
Staunton, November 23 – Most Russian commentary on Georgian calls for a boycott of the 2014 Sochi Olympics has been hostile, but Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the Yabloko Party board in St. Petersburg, not only backs Tbilisi’s appeal but invokes the memory of Academician Andrey Sakharov in support of that step.
In a blog post today, Vishnevsky says that one can only be pleased that 65 percent of those who took part in an Ekho Moskvy poll (www.echo.msk.ru/polls/728217-echo/) believe that “Georgia has the right to call on the international community to boycott the Olympics in Sochi in 2014 (echo.msk.ru/blog/boris_vis/728484-echo/).
While Vishnevsky implicitly recognizes that this poll was not based on a representative sample of the Russian population, he argues that “the international community will be correct if it responds positively. And the International Olympic Committee will be correct if it changes the venue of the Olympiad.”
“Putin lovers” and “state-thinking people” won’t agree, but the international community needs to come to its senses and recognize the inappropriateness of a winter Olympics in the tropics and the sad fact that the holding of such games in today’s Russia is “a crude violation of the Olympic Charter.”
According to that document, Vishnevsky points out, “one of the tasks of the IOC is to “oppose any political misuse of sport and sportsmen.” But that is just what Putin and his regime have done, “privatizing” sports in such a way that any victory is used to show “superiority over the West” and any defeat to demonstrate the existence of “an anti-Russian conspiracy.”
Another responsibility of the IOC, according to the Olympic Charter, is to demonstrate a concern about the protection of the environment. As Igor Chestin, the head of the World Wildlife Foundation in Russia, has pointed out, Moscow has “violated all the norms of environmental protection law.”
In order to give Putin a public relations triumph, ecologists have demonstrated and regularly reported to the world, it is “destroyed unique natural objects” and behaved in such a way that there will be more destruction and catastrophes both “before the Games or after them” (www.bellona.ru/articles_ru/articles_2010/Chestin-interv).
(Although Vishnevsky does not mention it, IOC rules also require that those who organize an Olympiad respect for the culture and communities of the people living at or near the site. Not only has Moscow trampled over the people of Sochi, but it has ignored the objections of Circassians who point to the genocide of their people which took place there 150 years ago.)
As the Yabloko leader puts it, Moscow has “spit” on all this: “Sochi-2014,” in the minds of the powers that be there must be “the largest public relations project of Putin,” regardless of the ways in which it violates the Olympic Charter, desecrates the environment and history, and costs more than any previous games.
Indeed, Vishnevsky continues, one of the reasons that Putin has focused on the Sochi Olympics so much is precisely the cost of holding them. The amounts are so great that they give “an opportunity for a virtually unlimited ‘leakage’ of budgetary funds” into his hands and those of his supporters. Those who are paying – the Russian people – won’t even get to attend.
What should be done? Would it be better for Russia and the world “if the Olympiad of 2014 were to occur in another place?” Perhaps. But no one can count on that happening, the Yabloko leader continues, given how important Sochi has become for Putin and how unwilling many world leaders are to offend him -- even when he is at his most outrageous.
But if the Sochi games cannot be moved or cancelled, then a boycott of these games make sense, Vishnevsky suggests. And he recalls that in 1980, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Academician Andrey Sakharov “called for a boycott of the Moscow Olympics” as well as for the sanctions against the Soviet Union “for violating human rights.”
Such rights have been violated in Sochi as well as elsewhere in the Russian Federation by Putin and his team already for a long time. And “as far as an invasion is concerned,” Vishnevsky concludes, “has not Russia by force invaded and de facto (although not de jure) annexed a third of Georgian territory?”
Window on Eurasia: Official Use of Russian Nationalist Groups to Maintain Order Worries Many
Paul Goble
Staunton, November 23 – A significant part of the voluntary popular ‘druzhinniki’ that regional officials in Russia are recruiting to supplement the professional militia consist of Cossacks or members of nationalist groups, a pattern that is raising concerns among many Russians about whether such people will act on their impulses or be used by the powers that be.
Among the places where such units have been introduced is Tyumen, Olesya Lobanova reports in today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta.” And there, she notes, “society is concerned how [these units] will look after the legal order in the oblast center” and whether they will “defend citizens regardless of their nationality” (www.ng.ru/regions/2010-11-23/5_tyumen.html).
In order to take part in the druzhinniki, Lobanova reports, young nationalists join Cossack voluntary formations, a move that is made easier by the fact that on their own, “many Cossacks, without being much concerned about concealing it, support nationalist attitudes among the local population.”
Aleksey Chubka, a “White Pride” Russian nationalist who leads a group of some 30 people, said that “in order to take part in patrols, it was [only] necessary to fulfill a minimum condition – to show up at the staff of the Cossacks and listen to the basic instructions.” In short, officials did not try to exclude those who might be inclined to racism or violence.
The druzhinniki patrols currently take place in the center of the city at night, Lobanova continued. “A patrol of seven people – two Cossacks and five nationalists – help the militia to struggle against violators of the legal order,” but that statistic alone – far more open nationalists than traditionalist Cossacks – is by itself cause for concern.
The nationalists, who see such actions as “a manifestation of civic activity,” range from members of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) to “more radical groups” like Resistance and White Pride, some of whose members have advocated the use of violence against immigrants and other minorities.
“What seriously agitates Tyumen residents,” the journalist reports, is that “the druzhinnik are given the chance ‘to get involved in real actions, albeit all entirely within the law.” But the way in which such people may interpret the law is an open question given their hostility to “immigrants and the homeless.”
Andrey Kutuzov, a participant of the local Council of Initiative Groups and citizens, says that the use of such people is an insult to “all other movements as well as to simply apolitical citizens” because it implies that the powers that be are on the side of the nationalists and are prepared to support their actions rather than to rein them in.
When officials play with nationalists in this way in the name of maintaining order, Kutuzov says, “it is very well known how [that] ends: with pogroms, ethnic purges and a heightened degree of hatred in society.”
Tyumen political scientist Andrey Semenov clearly agrees but sees what is happening in broader terms. He connects what officials there are doing with “the failure of social policy in several areas.” First of all, he suggests, there has been a failure in the security area: “citizens do not trust the militia and therefore are taking on themselves these functions.”
Second, he continues, there have been failures in education: “young people are not being taught fundamental things: the Constitution, the culture of peaceful co-existence, and respect for others. And third, there have been shortcomings in media work: propaganda “cannot replace enlightenment in any way.”
Semenov said that while “the protection of public order on a voluntary basis is a noble thing,” if the druzhinniki “persecute ‘non-Russians,’ they themselves will become criminals.” And because of that danger to society and to the state itself, everyone should be paying more careful attention to this trend.
Lobanova focuses on developments in only one city, but the phenomenon she describes, the use of nationalists in these volunteer militias, is increasingly widespread. Indeed, another article in “Nezavisimaya” today notes that the Kuban governor has “called upon Cossack atamans to help the militia” (www.ng.ru/regions/2010-11-23/5_kuban.html).
Staunton, November 23 – A significant part of the voluntary popular ‘druzhinniki’ that regional officials in Russia are recruiting to supplement the professional militia consist of Cossacks or members of nationalist groups, a pattern that is raising concerns among many Russians about whether such people will act on their impulses or be used by the powers that be.
Among the places where such units have been introduced is Tyumen, Olesya Lobanova reports in today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta.” And there, she notes, “society is concerned how [these units] will look after the legal order in the oblast center” and whether they will “defend citizens regardless of their nationality” (www.ng.ru/regions/2010-11-23/5_tyumen.html).
In order to take part in the druzhinniki, Lobanova reports, young nationalists join Cossack voluntary formations, a move that is made easier by the fact that on their own, “many Cossacks, without being much concerned about concealing it, support nationalist attitudes among the local population.”
Aleksey Chubka, a “White Pride” Russian nationalist who leads a group of some 30 people, said that “in order to take part in patrols, it was [only] necessary to fulfill a minimum condition – to show up at the staff of the Cossacks and listen to the basic instructions.” In short, officials did not try to exclude those who might be inclined to racism or violence.
The druzhinniki patrols currently take place in the center of the city at night, Lobanova continued. “A patrol of seven people – two Cossacks and five nationalists – help the militia to struggle against violators of the legal order,” but that statistic alone – far more open nationalists than traditionalist Cossacks – is by itself cause for concern.
The nationalists, who see such actions as “a manifestation of civic activity,” range from members of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) to “more radical groups” like Resistance and White Pride, some of whose members have advocated the use of violence against immigrants and other minorities.
“What seriously agitates Tyumen residents,” the journalist reports, is that “the druzhinnik are given the chance ‘to get involved in real actions, albeit all entirely within the law.” But the way in which such people may interpret the law is an open question given their hostility to “immigrants and the homeless.”
Andrey Kutuzov, a participant of the local Council of Initiative Groups and citizens, says that the use of such people is an insult to “all other movements as well as to simply apolitical citizens” because it implies that the powers that be are on the side of the nationalists and are prepared to support their actions rather than to rein them in.
When officials play with nationalists in this way in the name of maintaining order, Kutuzov says, “it is very well known how [that] ends: with pogroms, ethnic purges and a heightened degree of hatred in society.”
Tyumen political scientist Andrey Semenov clearly agrees but sees what is happening in broader terms. He connects what officials there are doing with “the failure of social policy in several areas.” First of all, he suggests, there has been a failure in the security area: “citizens do not trust the militia and therefore are taking on themselves these functions.”
Second, he continues, there have been failures in education: “young people are not being taught fundamental things: the Constitution, the culture of peaceful co-existence, and respect for others. And third, there have been shortcomings in media work: propaganda “cannot replace enlightenment in any way.”
Semenov said that while “the protection of public order on a voluntary basis is a noble thing,” if the druzhinniki “persecute ‘non-Russians,’ they themselves will become criminals.” And because of that danger to society and to the state itself, everyone should be paying more careful attention to this trend.
Lobanova focuses on developments in only one city, but the phenomenon she describes, the use of nationalists in these volunteer militias, is increasingly widespread. Indeed, another article in “Nezavisimaya” today notes that the Kuban governor has “called upon Cossack atamans to help the militia” (www.ng.ru/regions/2010-11-23/5_kuban.html).
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