Paul Goble
Staunton, December 1 – Tajikistan, which until recently had the most tolerant approach to Islam among the Central Asian countries, has now launched a broad campaign against what Dushanbe sees as a threat to the country’s secular government. But that campaign may have negative consequences for Moscow if Tajik Islamists shift their base of operations into Russia.
One of the consequences of the Tajik civil war of the 1990s, Andrey Melnikov and Vladislav Maltsev write in “NG-Religii,”was an agreement between the powers that be and the Islamic opposition and the willingness of the former to allow the latter to serve in parliament and even in coalition governments (religion.ng.ru/events/2010-12-01/1_tadjikistan.html).
Tajikistan is thus the only country in Central Asia which has a political party with a Muslim program, the Islamic Party of Rebirth of Tajikistan, a reality that many outside that country viewed as “a manifestation of the weakness of the Tajik state,” especially when compared to “the authoritarian regimes” surrounding it.
Now, however, Dushanbe has decided to try to disband that party, with the justice ministry saying that the existence of a mosque in the offices of the Islamic Party is a violation of the country’s religious laws. The party itself plans to appeal to the courts to overturn that rule, but it appears likely that the government will do whatever it takes to close the party.
“The ruling regime considers the opposition not as political competitors but as an opponent who threatens the security of the state,” Mukhiddin Kabiri, the head of the party says, adding that “the relations of the state and religious organization s today in Tajikistan are experiencing not the best times.”
On the one hand, Tajikistan is simply following the trend of other states in the region which increasingly pursue a hard line in dealing with Islamic groups that the powers that be feel threatened by. And on the other, Dushanbe, like the others, is confident that such actions in the wake of September 11, will not draw the kind of criticism from the West that they did earlier.
The influence of Islam and of Islamists in Tajikistan is on the rise, and the force structures of Dushanbe have been arresting members of the prohibited Hizb ut-Tahrir party. But the Tajik government has signaled its intensions by creating a State Committee on Religious Affairs to gain control of the official Muslims and thus to move against everyone else.
Another aspect of this effort is Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmon’s drive to de-Islamicize” public spaces in his country by having his officials denounce the wearing of the hijab as an alien custom and by seeking to have all Tajiks studying at Muslim educational institutions abroad to return home.
The latter effort, Melnikov and Maltsev say, apparently reflects the recollection by officials in Dushanbe that “students of Tehran higher educational institutions [served] as the shock force for the Islamic revolution of 1979 in Iran” and their judgment that the same thing might happen in Tajikistan.
But as several news services have pointed out this week, this program may prove counter-productive. Not only are the students pulled out of institutions where they were often studying more than just Islam but on their arrival in Dushanbe, they are treated almost as criminals and then are left unemployed (www.asiaplus.tj/articles/96/5628.html).
Such treatment, which recalls the experiences of Russian émigrés who chose to return to the USSR after 1945 as shown in the classic film “East/West,” does little to encourage them to be grateful to Dushanbe. In fact, it may drive some of them into precisely the Islamist underground that the Tajik authorities hope to destroy.
But as the “NG-Religii” article suggests, what the Tajik authorities are doing may have a spillover inside the Russian Federation. Roman Silantyev, a specialist on Islam with close ties to the Moscow Patriarchate, says that one result of this campaign may be the flight of Tajik Islamists into Russia.
He said that he had identified numerous cases where immigrants from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan “have become imams of Russian mosques,” until they are deported or detained “because of ties with extremist organizations.” Silantyev added that at least a few of these immigrant Muslims work in some of Russia’s Muslim spiritual directorates (MSD).
One of those where this problem is especially great, Silantyev says, is the MSD for the Asiatic Part of Russia headed by Nugman Ashirov. Unfortunately, he suggests, the civil authorities have not been able to act because “according to existing law, the Justice Ministry of Russia does not control the cadres policy of the MSDs.”
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Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Preparations Begin for New Amalgamation Push in Russia after 2012
Paul Goble
Staunton, December 1 – Officials in some federal districts are preparing the legal basis for a new round of regional amalgamation after the 2012 presidential elections, an indication of both the pressures they are under and their expectations from that vote but also a step that is certain to provoke heightened discussion and tensions in the intervening period.
The Tatarstan State Council has set up a working group to come up with changes in that republic’s constitution that will among other things allow for the amalgamation of Tatarstan with Ulyanovsk and Kirov oblasts sometime after the upcoming Russian presidential elections (ulpressa.ru/news/2010/11/30/article139314/).
That new entity, which some are suggesting will be known as the Kazan Kray, would have approximately six million residents, just over a third of whom would be Tatars. Such a step, commentators in Tatarstan are suggesting, is part of the “soft reformation” of the Stalinist system of administrative-territorial divisions inherited form Soviet times.
Whether further moves in this direction will take place under Vladimir Putin’s push for regional amalgamation as such or under Dmitry Medvedev’s plan to focus on 20 modernizing urban centers remains to be seen, but Moscow clearly wants to end ethnically defined republics, the Tatars believe, viewing them as a source of separatist sentiments.
Meanwhile, the independent news portal Babr.ru reports, officials in the Kremlin are considering the unification of Krasnoyarsk kray with Khakassia, Tyva and Irkutsk oblast as well as joining together Novosibirsk, Kemerovo and Tomsk oblasts and the Altay kray and linking Buryatia with Chita oblast (news.babr.ru/?IDE=89954).
The timing of these reports is interesting. Given that they challenge not only the longstanding principle of ethnic republics inside the Russian Federation, including Tatarstan which has long been the flagship of such federal subjects, such announcements are likely to promote the nationalist and separatist sentiments Moscow clearly fears.
One possibility, of course, is that the opponents of any regional amalgamation, especially those involving non-Russian republics, may have taken the lead in putting this information into the public domain in the hope that opposition to any such steps will force Moscow to disown such plans or to back down altogether.
But even if that happens in any particular case, the appearance of these stories seems certain to provoke fears and anger in other non-Russian regions – and possibly in some ethnically Russian ones as well – that Moscow has decided to resume its campaign against the republics and the regions.
And that in turn is certain to lead to the appearance of more commentaries like one this week which argues that the basic tension in Russia is between the powers that be in Moscow and the leaderships and peoples of the federal subjects, non-Russian and predominantly ethnic Russia alike (www.ura.ru/content/urfo/01-12-2010/articles/1036255865.html).
In extremely harsh terms, Sverdlovsk political scientist Konstantin Kiselev makes two provocative arguments. On the one hand, he suggests, “the worse the regions live, the better things become in Moscow and just the reverse as well.” And on the other, he argues, Moscow and the Muscovites are “the main base” of Vladimir Putin’s power position.
As a result, he suggests, for residents and officials of the Russian capital, “it isn’t profitable to struggle with corruption, criticize the supreme powers that be or be concerned about the development of the country” as a whole. Instead, they look after themselves and act in ways that almost always harm people beyond the ring road.
Tensions between Moscow and everyone else have always existed in the Russian Federation, but the passion behind Kiselev’s argument suggests that it may be intensifying. And that in turn means that many in what Muscovites and many foreigners dismiss as “the provinces” are likely to be especially resistant to amalgamation efforts.
Since 2000, “the centralization of power and the destruction of the institutions of federalism have led to a situation in which crudely speaking ‘all questions are decided in Moscow.’” Clearly, in the view of the supporters of the existing arrangements, “federalism is the basic threat to Moscow,” since its operation would require a re-division of resources.
Muscovites, Kiselev says, “should be grateful to the authoritarian Putin and his command. They should pray to the state corporations and entrepreneurs from the FSB” and they should “clearly recognize that their well-being is directly connected with the well-being of the regime, that is, with the well-being of the federal bureaucrats.”
Tensions between Moscow and everyone else have always existed in the Russian Federation, but the passion behind Kiselev’s argument suggests that it may be intensifying. And that in turn means that many in what Muscovites and many foreigners routinely dismiss as “the provinces” are likely to be especially resistant to the new amalgamation efforts.
Staunton, December 1 – Officials in some federal districts are preparing the legal basis for a new round of regional amalgamation after the 2012 presidential elections, an indication of both the pressures they are under and their expectations from that vote but also a step that is certain to provoke heightened discussion and tensions in the intervening period.
The Tatarstan State Council has set up a working group to come up with changes in that republic’s constitution that will among other things allow for the amalgamation of Tatarstan with Ulyanovsk and Kirov oblasts sometime after the upcoming Russian presidential elections (ulpressa.ru/news/2010/11/30/article139314/).
That new entity, which some are suggesting will be known as the Kazan Kray, would have approximately six million residents, just over a third of whom would be Tatars. Such a step, commentators in Tatarstan are suggesting, is part of the “soft reformation” of the Stalinist system of administrative-territorial divisions inherited form Soviet times.
Whether further moves in this direction will take place under Vladimir Putin’s push for regional amalgamation as such or under Dmitry Medvedev’s plan to focus on 20 modernizing urban centers remains to be seen, but Moscow clearly wants to end ethnically defined republics, the Tatars believe, viewing them as a source of separatist sentiments.
Meanwhile, the independent news portal Babr.ru reports, officials in the Kremlin are considering the unification of Krasnoyarsk kray with Khakassia, Tyva and Irkutsk oblast as well as joining together Novosibirsk, Kemerovo and Tomsk oblasts and the Altay kray and linking Buryatia with Chita oblast (news.babr.ru/?IDE=89954).
The timing of these reports is interesting. Given that they challenge not only the longstanding principle of ethnic republics inside the Russian Federation, including Tatarstan which has long been the flagship of such federal subjects, such announcements are likely to promote the nationalist and separatist sentiments Moscow clearly fears.
One possibility, of course, is that the opponents of any regional amalgamation, especially those involving non-Russian republics, may have taken the lead in putting this information into the public domain in the hope that opposition to any such steps will force Moscow to disown such plans or to back down altogether.
But even if that happens in any particular case, the appearance of these stories seems certain to provoke fears and anger in other non-Russian regions – and possibly in some ethnically Russian ones as well – that Moscow has decided to resume its campaign against the republics and the regions.
And that in turn is certain to lead to the appearance of more commentaries like one this week which argues that the basic tension in Russia is between the powers that be in Moscow and the leaderships and peoples of the federal subjects, non-Russian and predominantly ethnic Russia alike (www.ura.ru/content/urfo/01-12-2010/articles/1036255865.html).
In extremely harsh terms, Sverdlovsk political scientist Konstantin Kiselev makes two provocative arguments. On the one hand, he suggests, “the worse the regions live, the better things become in Moscow and just the reverse as well.” And on the other, he argues, Moscow and the Muscovites are “the main base” of Vladimir Putin’s power position.
As a result, he suggests, for residents and officials of the Russian capital, “it isn’t profitable to struggle with corruption, criticize the supreme powers that be or be concerned about the development of the country” as a whole. Instead, they look after themselves and act in ways that almost always harm people beyond the ring road.
Tensions between Moscow and everyone else have always existed in the Russian Federation, but the passion behind Kiselev’s argument suggests that it may be intensifying. And that in turn means that many in what Muscovites and many foreigners dismiss as “the provinces” are likely to be especially resistant to amalgamation efforts.
Since 2000, “the centralization of power and the destruction of the institutions of federalism have led to a situation in which crudely speaking ‘all questions are decided in Moscow.’” Clearly, in the view of the supporters of the existing arrangements, “federalism is the basic threat to Moscow,” since its operation would require a re-division of resources.
Muscovites, Kiselev says, “should be grateful to the authoritarian Putin and his command. They should pray to the state corporations and entrepreneurs from the FSB” and they should “clearly recognize that their well-being is directly connected with the well-being of the regime, that is, with the well-being of the federal bureaucrats.”
Tensions between Moscow and everyone else have always existed in the Russian Federation, but the passion behind Kiselev’s argument suggests that it may be intensifying. And that in turn means that many in what Muscovites and many foreigners routinely dismiss as “the provinces” are likely to be especially resistant to the new amalgamation efforts.
Window on Eurasia: Russia’s Future Could Easily Be like China’s Past, Modernization Expert Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, December 1 – The Russian Federation is unlikely to be dismembered or partially absorbed by other countries, an expert on modernization says, but it could lose its economic sovereignty in much the same way that 19th century China did, a country that was not colonized but rather subject to unequal treaties in which foreigners had extraterritorial rights.
In a wide-ranging interview posted on the Kasparov.ru portal today, George Derlugyan, a professor of macro-sociology at Northwestern University, told that site’s Olga Gulenok how such developments could happen drawing on the contents of his recent study, “Five Centuries of Modernization of Russia” (www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=4CF619B24E133).
Derlugyan notes that Russia has undergone “three powerful waves of modernization,” but he notes that “under Russia, we understand the state, and not the nation, and under modernization, development intended [by the state] to catch up” with some other country or group of countries that were or are more developed.
“The first modernization wave,” Derlyugan says, “had as its goal to catch up with China and Turkey.” It took place under Ivan the Terrible, who borrowed from the others to end the divisions within Russia. The second occurred under Peter I, who drew on the experience of the Dutch and the Swedes.
“The third wave,” which was carried out by the Bolsheviks, involved the application of German experience, the Northwestern sociologist says. They, he suggests, “studied not Marx but other Germans who build ships, roads and so on.” He adds as an aside that “the greatest mystery” of the Bolsheviks is not that they took power but that they held on.
In these modernizing drives, the Russian state adopted one or both of two strategies, “the pitiless exploitation of the peasants,” something that often led to famine, and “the destruction of the oligarchs,” a group that has been in many cases “as more important resource” for a Russian state wanting to catch up with someone else.
“If the elite has the chance to conduct its own economic and foreign policy,” Derlugyan continues, the state will die.” A classic example of this is what happened in Poland. It was a strong power but then the Polish elite “entered into trading relations with other Western partners on their conditions,” an arrangement that ultimately led to Poland’s disappearance from the map.
The American sociologist agrees with his interviewer that “today, the interests of the Russian oligarchy have entered into contradiction with the survival of Russia.” That does not mean that it will fall into pieces or be colonized: “No one now is interested in the direct annexation of territory.”
But he continues, “we live in such times when countries while preserving the external attributes of statehood cease to be independent.” Bulgaria is an example of this, but so too is China of the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It continued to exist as a country but was not an effective one.
Instead, Derlugyan points out, “the country was split into fighting cliques. In every province was a governor who had his own forces and his own economic interests” and who was more interested in his own profit, even if that meant making deals with foreign interests, than in the defense of China as a country.
Russia could suffer a similar fate and not be “economically sovereign” even though it might retain other attributes of a country.”A large country with such a population,” the specialist on Russian modernization suggests, “will take a long time to die. This is not an instantaneous process.”
Sucha prospect helps to explain why some in Moscow are talking about the need for a new modernization drive. “It appears to me,” Derlugyan continues, that “the current situation in Russia is like the stagnation of the USSR in the 1970s.” At that time, the party apparatus felt the need to do something but it did not know what to do.
It had become clear to many at that time that “the USSR had exhausted its two main resources for modernization. The educated population would not put up with the old methods,” and consequently, the regime could not make use of repression of a Stalinist kind. Consequently, it decided to try liberalization, as risky a step as that turned out to be.
The problem then and now, he suggests is that the regime must control the state apparatus. If that is the case, “everything else is possible.” But “the bureaucrats are not controlled,” and “the leadership of the country does not know” how to bring them under control. “This is the problem.”
In the past, the regime had used terror, Derlugyan says, and he argues that “without some kind of repression” no one will be able to achieve anything, although he suggests that such “repression” may involve the use of the media to expose officials and bring them to justice much as has happened in Illinois.
But at the present time, many are afraid of going that route because of what happened under Gorbachev. Because of his policies, “the Soviet Union fell apart when the leaders of the provinces” and republics “understood that Moscow could no longer punish them or defend them” but rather would leave them on their own as had happened in the bloc states.
That led to a situation in which everyone tried to “save” what he could. “Secretaries of the Central Committee, who controlled their own territory, declared it sovereign. … [And] ministers who headed profitable branches, as for example the petroleum industry of the USSR, declared it their property.”
“The irony,” Derlugyan says, “is that the communist elite preserved itselve thanks to liberal values such as the sovereignty of the nation” and the inviolability of property!
A similar process could occur again, he argues, “if the powers that be weaken.” After all, the heads of party organizations in the republics and regions were “very loyal to Soviet power,” until of course they ceased to be. Such changes are “completely probable” under the right conditions.
Asked to sum up his views about Russia today, Derlugyan suggests that “Russia now is a large semi-peripheral power,” one “on a level with Latin America and with all the pathologies” characteristic of such a status. “But Russia retains the ambitions of a great country, and there is great hope that it will again become one.”
Staunton, December 1 – The Russian Federation is unlikely to be dismembered or partially absorbed by other countries, an expert on modernization says, but it could lose its economic sovereignty in much the same way that 19th century China did, a country that was not colonized but rather subject to unequal treaties in which foreigners had extraterritorial rights.
In a wide-ranging interview posted on the Kasparov.ru portal today, George Derlugyan, a professor of macro-sociology at Northwestern University, told that site’s Olga Gulenok how such developments could happen drawing on the contents of his recent study, “Five Centuries of Modernization of Russia” (www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=4CF619B24E133).
Derlugyan notes that Russia has undergone “three powerful waves of modernization,” but he notes that “under Russia, we understand the state, and not the nation, and under modernization, development intended [by the state] to catch up” with some other country or group of countries that were or are more developed.
“The first modernization wave,” Derlyugan says, “had as its goal to catch up with China and Turkey.” It took place under Ivan the Terrible, who borrowed from the others to end the divisions within Russia. The second occurred under Peter I, who drew on the experience of the Dutch and the Swedes.
“The third wave,” which was carried out by the Bolsheviks, involved the application of German experience, the Northwestern sociologist says. They, he suggests, “studied not Marx but other Germans who build ships, roads and so on.” He adds as an aside that “the greatest mystery” of the Bolsheviks is not that they took power but that they held on.
In these modernizing drives, the Russian state adopted one or both of two strategies, “the pitiless exploitation of the peasants,” something that often led to famine, and “the destruction of the oligarchs,” a group that has been in many cases “as more important resource” for a Russian state wanting to catch up with someone else.
“If the elite has the chance to conduct its own economic and foreign policy,” Derlugyan continues, the state will die.” A classic example of this is what happened in Poland. It was a strong power but then the Polish elite “entered into trading relations with other Western partners on their conditions,” an arrangement that ultimately led to Poland’s disappearance from the map.
The American sociologist agrees with his interviewer that “today, the interests of the Russian oligarchy have entered into contradiction with the survival of Russia.” That does not mean that it will fall into pieces or be colonized: “No one now is interested in the direct annexation of territory.”
But he continues, “we live in such times when countries while preserving the external attributes of statehood cease to be independent.” Bulgaria is an example of this, but so too is China of the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It continued to exist as a country but was not an effective one.
Instead, Derlugyan points out, “the country was split into fighting cliques. In every province was a governor who had his own forces and his own economic interests” and who was more interested in his own profit, even if that meant making deals with foreign interests, than in the defense of China as a country.
Russia could suffer a similar fate and not be “economically sovereign” even though it might retain other attributes of a country.”A large country with such a population,” the specialist on Russian modernization suggests, “will take a long time to die. This is not an instantaneous process.”
Sucha prospect helps to explain why some in Moscow are talking about the need for a new modernization drive. “It appears to me,” Derlugyan continues, that “the current situation in Russia is like the stagnation of the USSR in the 1970s.” At that time, the party apparatus felt the need to do something but it did not know what to do.
It had become clear to many at that time that “the USSR had exhausted its two main resources for modernization. The educated population would not put up with the old methods,” and consequently, the regime could not make use of repression of a Stalinist kind. Consequently, it decided to try liberalization, as risky a step as that turned out to be.
The problem then and now, he suggests is that the regime must control the state apparatus. If that is the case, “everything else is possible.” But “the bureaucrats are not controlled,” and “the leadership of the country does not know” how to bring them under control. “This is the problem.”
In the past, the regime had used terror, Derlugyan says, and he argues that “without some kind of repression” no one will be able to achieve anything, although he suggests that such “repression” may involve the use of the media to expose officials and bring them to justice much as has happened in Illinois.
But at the present time, many are afraid of going that route because of what happened under Gorbachev. Because of his policies, “the Soviet Union fell apart when the leaders of the provinces” and republics “understood that Moscow could no longer punish them or defend them” but rather would leave them on their own as had happened in the bloc states.
That led to a situation in which everyone tried to “save” what he could. “Secretaries of the Central Committee, who controlled their own territory, declared it sovereign. … [And] ministers who headed profitable branches, as for example the petroleum industry of the USSR, declared it their property.”
“The irony,” Derlugyan says, “is that the communist elite preserved itselve thanks to liberal values such as the sovereignty of the nation” and the inviolability of property!
A similar process could occur again, he argues, “if the powers that be weaken.” After all, the heads of party organizations in the republics and regions were “very loyal to Soviet power,” until of course they ceased to be. Such changes are “completely probable” under the right conditions.
Asked to sum up his views about Russia today, Derlugyan suggests that “Russia now is a large semi-peripheral power,” one “on a level with Latin America and with all the pathologies” characteristic of such a status. “But Russia retains the ambitions of a great country, and there is great hope that it will again become one.”
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