Like many people, I don’t like to send generic greetings. I much prefer to be specific, but one of the challenges and also the delights of working with representatives of so many different faiths and traditions (and even calendars!) is that it is impossible to avoid such generalities. I therefore want to take this opportunity to wish each of you the most joyous of the holidays you are celebrating, to thank you for how much I have learned from your comments over the past year, and to wish you the happiest, healthiest and most peaceful 2011.
With best regards,
Paul Goble
Friday, December 24, 2010
Window on Eurasia: The Assyrians -- Russian Citizens Who Even Now ‘Speak the Language of Christ’
Paul Goble
Staunton, December 24 – The Assyrians, one of Russia’s smallest and least known nationalities, not only have kept their religious and national identity in tact despite the vicissitudes of the past century but also to speak the language of Christ, according to the leaders of that community.
The current issue of “Vera-Eskom,” a newspaper directed at the Christians in the Russian North, provides a remarkable glimpse of this ancient people whose ancestors fled from the persecutions of the Ottomans and helped keep Christianity and its principles alive in Russia during the depradations of the Soviet period (http://www.rusvera.mrezha.ru/625/14.htm).
In the early years of the 20th century, more than 100,000 Assyrians fled from the Ottoman Empire and Persia to Russia. Because of Soviet persecutions and intermarriage, that community has shrunk to only 13,000, Mikhail Sizov of “Vera-Eskom” points out. But its members are among the most socially active Christians in the country.
The occasion for this unusual article was a visit to the editorial offices of the journal by Tamara Gurmizova, an ethnic Assyrian pensioner who came to get a copy of the obituary “Vera-Eskom” published earlier this year when Mikhail Sado, probably the most famous Russian Assyrian passed away.
Sado who died on August 30th at the age of 76 played a remarkable role in Assyrian and Russian Christian life. The son of Assyrians who fled from the Ottoman Empire in 1916 only to be repressed by Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s, Sado left Leningrad at the time of the blockade and settled in Krasnodar kray.
After the war, he graduated from Leningrad State University after presenting a diploma on “Contemporary Assyrian Dialects of the USSR” and taught there. But he achieved a broader fame when in 1964, together with Ogurtsov, Vagin and Averichkin, he formed the All-Russian Social Christian Union for the Liberation of the People (VSKhSON).
That led to his arrest by the KGB and a sentence of 13 years in prison and the camps. (Curiously, the post-Soviet Russian officials have never rehabilitated him.) While incarcerated, he compiled a Russian-Assyrian dictionary, and after his release, he taught classical Hebrew and Aramaic at the St. Petersburg Orthodox Theological Academy.
At the same time, Sado became the founder of the Assyrian national movement, organizing an Assyrian school in the northern capital, Assyrian festivals, and a series of Assyrian associations, while gathering information and publishing handbooks on the Assyrian nation and its fate in Russia.
Tamara Gurmizova, a longtime resident of the Russian north, talked about her relatives, her ancestors, and her nation. She recalled meeting Misha Sado in the Kuban and attending a service at an Assyrian church there where the priest, an ethnic Russian, remarked that he had learned Assyrian with the help of an Assyrian priest from Kyiv.
The priest in question, Gurmizova continued, said that “Christ had spoken this language.” Assyrian, she said she had learned, “consists of Arameic dialects, including Urmiyan. And it is well known that the Aramaic dialect was one of the languages used by Jews during the times of Jesus Christ and the He spoke it.”
The elderly Assyrian also talked about her meeting with the late Patriarch Aleksii II. He blessed her during a visit to the Komi Republic, and she and other Assyrians continue to remember him with fondness because in 1998, Aleksii “blessed the construction in Moscow” of an Assyrian church.
Gurmizova concluded her visit by observing that “it is too bad that so many [Assyrians] did not live to see our churches begin to open again.” And Sizov, for his part, recalled that Sado, at his trial had said “Russia is my Fatherland, my mother,” thus combining his religious and his national identity in a manner that should be the norm in “an Orthodox country.”
Staunton, December 24 – The Assyrians, one of Russia’s smallest and least known nationalities, not only have kept their religious and national identity in tact despite the vicissitudes of the past century but also to speak the language of Christ, according to the leaders of that community.
The current issue of “Vera-Eskom,” a newspaper directed at the Christians in the Russian North, provides a remarkable glimpse of this ancient people whose ancestors fled from the persecutions of the Ottomans and helped keep Christianity and its principles alive in Russia during the depradations of the Soviet period (http://www.rusvera.mrezha.ru/625/14.htm).
In the early years of the 20th century, more than 100,000 Assyrians fled from the Ottoman Empire and Persia to Russia. Because of Soviet persecutions and intermarriage, that community has shrunk to only 13,000, Mikhail Sizov of “Vera-Eskom” points out. But its members are among the most socially active Christians in the country.
The occasion for this unusual article was a visit to the editorial offices of the journal by Tamara Gurmizova, an ethnic Assyrian pensioner who came to get a copy of the obituary “Vera-Eskom” published earlier this year when Mikhail Sado, probably the most famous Russian Assyrian passed away.
Sado who died on August 30th at the age of 76 played a remarkable role in Assyrian and Russian Christian life. The son of Assyrians who fled from the Ottoman Empire in 1916 only to be repressed by Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s, Sado left Leningrad at the time of the blockade and settled in Krasnodar kray.
After the war, he graduated from Leningrad State University after presenting a diploma on “Contemporary Assyrian Dialects of the USSR” and taught there. But he achieved a broader fame when in 1964, together with Ogurtsov, Vagin and Averichkin, he formed the All-Russian Social Christian Union for the Liberation of the People (VSKhSON).
That led to his arrest by the KGB and a sentence of 13 years in prison and the camps. (Curiously, the post-Soviet Russian officials have never rehabilitated him.) While incarcerated, he compiled a Russian-Assyrian dictionary, and after his release, he taught classical Hebrew and Aramaic at the St. Petersburg Orthodox Theological Academy.
At the same time, Sado became the founder of the Assyrian national movement, organizing an Assyrian school in the northern capital, Assyrian festivals, and a series of Assyrian associations, while gathering information and publishing handbooks on the Assyrian nation and its fate in Russia.
Tamara Gurmizova, a longtime resident of the Russian north, talked about her relatives, her ancestors, and her nation. She recalled meeting Misha Sado in the Kuban and attending a service at an Assyrian church there where the priest, an ethnic Russian, remarked that he had learned Assyrian with the help of an Assyrian priest from Kyiv.
The priest in question, Gurmizova continued, said that “Christ had spoken this language.” Assyrian, she said she had learned, “consists of Arameic dialects, including Urmiyan. And it is well known that the Aramaic dialect was one of the languages used by Jews during the times of Jesus Christ and the He spoke it.”
The elderly Assyrian also talked about her meeting with the late Patriarch Aleksii II. He blessed her during a visit to the Komi Republic, and she and other Assyrians continue to remember him with fondness because in 1998, Aleksii “blessed the construction in Moscow” of an Assyrian church.
Gurmizova concluded her visit by observing that “it is too bad that so many [Assyrians] did not live to see our churches begin to open again.” And Sizov, for his part, recalled that Sado, at his trial had said “Russia is my Fatherland, my mother,” thus combining his religious and his national identity in a manner that should be the norm in “an Orthodox country.”
Window on Eurasia: More Russian Regions Send Hajis to Mecca than Ever Before
Paul Goble
Staunton, December 24 – Muslims from 35 regions of the Russian Federation made the haj this year, a reflection of the spread of Islamic communities across that country and the increasing interest of Muslims outside of their traditional homelands to make the pilgrimage to Mecca that all the faithful who are able are required to make at least once in their lifetimes.
Ilyas Umakhanov, the deputy chairman of the Federation Council who heads the Russian government’s Haj Council, said this week that 20,628 Muslims from Russia had participated in the haj, of whom 12,500 were from the traditional leader, Daghestan, 2600 from Chechnya, 1500 from Ingushetia, and 1300 from Tatarstan (www.islamrf.ru/news/russia/rusnews/14587/).
According to Umakhanov, this year’s haj effort in Russia was marked for four “qualitative changes.” First, the number of those making their first haj increased by 20 to 25 percent,” the result of a concerted effort to meet the objections of many Muslims that officials allow some leaders to go again and again
Second, the share of Muslims going by air increased dramatically. In the past, most hajis form Russia went by land, the far cheaper alternative, but this year 11,000 or 55 percent flew, a reflection of both greater financial possibilities and Moscow’s interest in securing greater control, something it can do far more easily with flights than with buses and cars.
Third, at Moscow’s insistence, “the embassies of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkeywere far more attentive to the organization of the pilgrimage” by Russian hajis this year than in the past, not only reducing the price of visas and allowing pilgrims a larger window for their visits but also working closely with the Russian haji tour firms.
And fourth – and this may be the most important change of all – Umakhanov reported that “75 percent of the quotas assigned to the various Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs) [within Russian] were used by representatives of their own region.” That “allowed,” he said, “to attract Muslims to the haj from regions of Russia without a tradition of pilgrimate.”
In the past, the Russian Haj Council assigned quotas within the national quota set by the Saudi authorities to each of the MSDs, but the Muslim leaders of the North Caucasus used slots assigned to others either by sending their own people to those regions so they could be identified as such or by simply trading for them.
Those phenomena were reduced this year, although not eliminated – apparently one haji slot in four continued to be used by Muslims from regions that had already exhausted their quotas, in particular Daghestan, where the authorities had wanted to reduce the number of hajis to 8,000 or even fewer earlier this year.
Looking ahead, Umakhanov suggested there were three major problems that remained to be solved in addition to work with haj tour firms: a better distribution of slots among the regions, improved work with documents that hajis must carry, and efforts to secure more slots for the Russian Federation as a whole.
This year, as every year, the Saudis assigned national quotas based on one tenth of one percent of the number of Muslims in each country. For a decade, the Saudi authorities have based the Russian quota on an assumed number of 20,500,000 Muslims in that country and permitted Russia to send 20,500.
In fact, the Russians have in almost every year sent more. Vladimir Putin sought and received a larger quota of 25,500 by arguing that there was pent up demand for the haj among Russian Muslims who were not able to make the pilgrimage during Soviet times. Moscow made that argument again this year but was rejected.
And in most years over the last decade, the actual number of hajis has been 10,000 to 20,000 more than the quota because Muslims from Russia, typically travelling by land, have simply shown up in Saudi Arabia where the authorities have been loathe to turn them away despite what is a clear violation of the rule.
This year, as Umakhanov acknowledged, Moscow again busted the quota, by 128 officially and probably by more than that unofficially. (One reason that these numbers may be lower this year is the economy.) According to the head of the Russian haj body, “some 4,000 to 5,000” Muslims from Russia wanted to make the haj but could not secure a slot.
Consequently, Umakhanov said, Moscow will again seek an expansion of Russia’s haj quota from the Saudis and also seek to ensure that all those who want to go on the haj but have never done so in the past will be at tehfront of the line. “This work,” he said, “we will carry out.”
Staunton, December 24 – Muslims from 35 regions of the Russian Federation made the haj this year, a reflection of the spread of Islamic communities across that country and the increasing interest of Muslims outside of their traditional homelands to make the pilgrimage to Mecca that all the faithful who are able are required to make at least once in their lifetimes.
Ilyas Umakhanov, the deputy chairman of the Federation Council who heads the Russian government’s Haj Council, said this week that 20,628 Muslims from Russia had participated in the haj, of whom 12,500 were from the traditional leader, Daghestan, 2600 from Chechnya, 1500 from Ingushetia, and 1300 from Tatarstan (www.islamrf.ru/news/russia/rusnews/14587/).
According to Umakhanov, this year’s haj effort in Russia was marked for four “qualitative changes.” First, the number of those making their first haj increased by 20 to 25 percent,” the result of a concerted effort to meet the objections of many Muslims that officials allow some leaders to go again and again
Second, the share of Muslims going by air increased dramatically. In the past, most hajis form Russia went by land, the far cheaper alternative, but this year 11,000 or 55 percent flew, a reflection of both greater financial possibilities and Moscow’s interest in securing greater control, something it can do far more easily with flights than with buses and cars.
Third, at Moscow’s insistence, “the embassies of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkeywere far more attentive to the organization of the pilgrimage” by Russian hajis this year than in the past, not only reducing the price of visas and allowing pilgrims a larger window for their visits but also working closely with the Russian haji tour firms.
And fourth – and this may be the most important change of all – Umakhanov reported that “75 percent of the quotas assigned to the various Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs) [within Russian] were used by representatives of their own region.” That “allowed,” he said, “to attract Muslims to the haj from regions of Russia without a tradition of pilgrimate.”
In the past, the Russian Haj Council assigned quotas within the national quota set by the Saudi authorities to each of the MSDs, but the Muslim leaders of the North Caucasus used slots assigned to others either by sending their own people to those regions so they could be identified as such or by simply trading for them.
Those phenomena were reduced this year, although not eliminated – apparently one haji slot in four continued to be used by Muslims from regions that had already exhausted their quotas, in particular Daghestan, where the authorities had wanted to reduce the number of hajis to 8,000 or even fewer earlier this year.
Looking ahead, Umakhanov suggested there were three major problems that remained to be solved in addition to work with haj tour firms: a better distribution of slots among the regions, improved work with documents that hajis must carry, and efforts to secure more slots for the Russian Federation as a whole.
This year, as every year, the Saudis assigned national quotas based on one tenth of one percent of the number of Muslims in each country. For a decade, the Saudi authorities have based the Russian quota on an assumed number of 20,500,000 Muslims in that country and permitted Russia to send 20,500.
In fact, the Russians have in almost every year sent more. Vladimir Putin sought and received a larger quota of 25,500 by arguing that there was pent up demand for the haj among Russian Muslims who were not able to make the pilgrimage during Soviet times. Moscow made that argument again this year but was rejected.
And in most years over the last decade, the actual number of hajis has been 10,000 to 20,000 more than the quota because Muslims from Russia, typically travelling by land, have simply shown up in Saudi Arabia where the authorities have been loathe to turn them away despite what is a clear violation of the rule.
This year, as Umakhanov acknowledged, Moscow again busted the quota, by 128 officially and probably by more than that unofficially. (One reason that these numbers may be lower this year is the economy.) According to the head of the Russian haj body, “some 4,000 to 5,000” Muslims from Russia wanted to make the haj but could not secure a slot.
Consequently, Umakhanov said, Moscow will again seek an expansion of Russia’s haj quota from the Saudis and also seek to ensure that all those who want to go on the haj but have never done so in the past will be at tehfront of the line. “This work,” he said, “we will carry out.”
Window on Eurasia: Russian Xenophobia Both Less and More than Meets the Eye, Jewish Leader Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, December 24 – Xenophobia in Russia today, a leader of the Federation of Jewish Organizations of Russia (FEOR) says, does not rest on a solid ideological foundation but rather reflects the dissatisfaction of Russians with their lives, a pattern that makes it both less and more dangerous than might otherwise be the case.
In an interview given to a French journal on the occasion of Hanukah that, having been translated into Russian, is now receiving widespread attention, Borukh Gorin, the head of FEOR’s public liaison department, discusses this and a variety of other issues affecting not only the Jewish community but others as well (www.aen.ru/?page=brief&article_id=59284).
Asked by his interlocutor whether “a dialogue of Jewish culture and Russian culture is possible or not,” Gorin says that the two are forced by circumstances to communicate with each other, something that can make a positive contribution or that can have the most negative consequences.
The problems with such exchanges begin “when those who talk about ‘dialogue’ with representatives of other religions” do so on the assumption that “the other has a certain fraction of the truth.” That is called “tolerance” and is assumed to be “a necessary element of a healthy society.”
But Gorin says that he disagrees. “A healthy society,” he argues, “is a society where people with the most varied opinions meet and have the right to remain in categorical disagreement with each other.” Those who want a society “where Jews accept as ‘real’ Christian or Muslim dogmas … [are dreaming] of a utopia.”
As far as the Russian government is concerned, Gorin continues, its policy is “populist.” That is, “the powers that be do what the people expect from them.” Unfortunately, it often happens that “the people want evil things. The majority always wants to steal from the weak and punish the alien.”
One should recognize, the FEOR leader says, that “Russian politicians today are much less inclined to engage in xenophobic rhetoric than they were.” Now, he points out, “xenophobic rhetoric has given way to the rhetoric of [Russia as] as great power,” again something that is a mixed blessing.
While official encouragement for xenophobia has declined, the Russian “powers that be are convincing the population that its interests are less important than the interests of the state. [And] Russia is ever more often standing on imperialist positions,” a view that is “widely supported” among the people and “what is especially sad, among the ruling elites.”
“I consider that this is very bad for the world in general,” Gorin concludes, “and for Russia in particular.”
According to Gorin, the reason that imperial rhetoric is so popular is that “people want a strong and effective state, and here they deceive themselves. For the majority of Russians, ‘national humiliation’ is when Russia is not involved in taking decisions of anywhere in the world.”
But the FEOR leader says that in his view, “’national humiliation’ is when old people search in trash heaps in order to earn three kopecks or when there is no money for children who are ill with leukemia.” “I would be proud of my country even if it did not make decisions about Burkina-Faso,” if in exchange “the elderly didn’t have to stand in line for an hour and a half to see a doctor.”
“Must people be proud, for example, of ‘the great construction projects’ of the past and future which cost millions of human lives?” Gorin asks rhetorically, and he notes that Russian “society says ‘yes,’ but “I say ‘no.’” And he adds for good measure, “no modernization is worth the life of a child.”
“People who are in despair,” as many Russians now are, “search for enemies. And they easily find them in the face of outsiders, the poorly dressed or those who cannot express themselves well in Russian.” Thus, Gorin insists, “Russian xenophobia expresses a general dissatisfaction with life,” rather than any specific ideological program.
Consequently, what one is seeing in Russia today is not “the struggle against any particular people but a struggle against a dog’s life. Indicative of that,” Gorin says, “is that in the majority of Russian neo-Nazi groupings there are many people of various nationalities, not just ethnic Russians.”
One group that is unlikely to be the focus of attack now, Gorin suggests, consists of the Jews. Despite the history of official anti-Semitism, he argues, “today the slogan ‘Beat the Kikes and Save Russia!” isn’t on the agenda. The majority of Russian people in practive have few acquaintances who are Jews.”
Consequently, Russian xenophobic attitudes will focus on “enemies” among immigrants, terrorists, and foreigners rather than the less than one percent of the Russian population because “in reality, it would be difficult to explain to people for what reason the Jews of the entire world want bad things for Russians.”
Asked about the rapprochement between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state, Gorin says that “today it is obvious that the Orthodox Church is broadening its influence in government structures,” a trend that he suggests “represents a danger and in the first instance, for the Orthodox Church itself.”
“For any religious organization,” he continues, “integration with the state is a mortal danger.” And he points to the situation in Israel, where as a result of the state functions rabbis play, “anti-religious attitudes in Israeli society are felt more strongly than in any other Jewish community in the world.”
“The Russian Orthodox Church is not distancing itself from the state because it wants to strengthen its positions. The state in turn is not distancing itself from the Church since it is trying to use as much as possible the ideological potential of the Church.” Under the circumstances, that may not be an entirely bad thing, Gorin says.
“What kind of ideology could we have in Russia today?” he asks. “Faith in Gazprom? In the empire? In xenophobia?” The Russian powers that be have a lot of choices, and settling on “’renewed Orthodoxy’ would not be “the worst” of all of them, despite the obvious risks it would entail for all concerned.
Staunton, December 24 – Xenophobia in Russia today, a leader of the Federation of Jewish Organizations of Russia (FEOR) says, does not rest on a solid ideological foundation but rather reflects the dissatisfaction of Russians with their lives, a pattern that makes it both less and more dangerous than might otherwise be the case.
In an interview given to a French journal on the occasion of Hanukah that, having been translated into Russian, is now receiving widespread attention, Borukh Gorin, the head of FEOR’s public liaison department, discusses this and a variety of other issues affecting not only the Jewish community but others as well (www.aen.ru/?page=brief&article_id=59284).
Asked by his interlocutor whether “a dialogue of Jewish culture and Russian culture is possible or not,” Gorin says that the two are forced by circumstances to communicate with each other, something that can make a positive contribution or that can have the most negative consequences.
The problems with such exchanges begin “when those who talk about ‘dialogue’ with representatives of other religions” do so on the assumption that “the other has a certain fraction of the truth.” That is called “tolerance” and is assumed to be “a necessary element of a healthy society.”
But Gorin says that he disagrees. “A healthy society,” he argues, “is a society where people with the most varied opinions meet and have the right to remain in categorical disagreement with each other.” Those who want a society “where Jews accept as ‘real’ Christian or Muslim dogmas … [are dreaming] of a utopia.”
As far as the Russian government is concerned, Gorin continues, its policy is “populist.” That is, “the powers that be do what the people expect from them.” Unfortunately, it often happens that “the people want evil things. The majority always wants to steal from the weak and punish the alien.”
One should recognize, the FEOR leader says, that “Russian politicians today are much less inclined to engage in xenophobic rhetoric than they were.” Now, he points out, “xenophobic rhetoric has given way to the rhetoric of [Russia as] as great power,” again something that is a mixed blessing.
While official encouragement for xenophobia has declined, the Russian “powers that be are convincing the population that its interests are less important than the interests of the state. [And] Russia is ever more often standing on imperialist positions,” a view that is “widely supported” among the people and “what is especially sad, among the ruling elites.”
“I consider that this is very bad for the world in general,” Gorin concludes, “and for Russia in particular.”
According to Gorin, the reason that imperial rhetoric is so popular is that “people want a strong and effective state, and here they deceive themselves. For the majority of Russians, ‘national humiliation’ is when Russia is not involved in taking decisions of anywhere in the world.”
But the FEOR leader says that in his view, “’national humiliation’ is when old people search in trash heaps in order to earn three kopecks or when there is no money for children who are ill with leukemia.” “I would be proud of my country even if it did not make decisions about Burkina-Faso,” if in exchange “the elderly didn’t have to stand in line for an hour and a half to see a doctor.”
“Must people be proud, for example, of ‘the great construction projects’ of the past and future which cost millions of human lives?” Gorin asks rhetorically, and he notes that Russian “society says ‘yes,’ but “I say ‘no.’” And he adds for good measure, “no modernization is worth the life of a child.”
“People who are in despair,” as many Russians now are, “search for enemies. And they easily find them in the face of outsiders, the poorly dressed or those who cannot express themselves well in Russian.” Thus, Gorin insists, “Russian xenophobia expresses a general dissatisfaction with life,” rather than any specific ideological program.
Consequently, what one is seeing in Russia today is not “the struggle against any particular people but a struggle against a dog’s life. Indicative of that,” Gorin says, “is that in the majority of Russian neo-Nazi groupings there are many people of various nationalities, not just ethnic Russians.”
One group that is unlikely to be the focus of attack now, Gorin suggests, consists of the Jews. Despite the history of official anti-Semitism, he argues, “today the slogan ‘Beat the Kikes and Save Russia!” isn’t on the agenda. The majority of Russian people in practive have few acquaintances who are Jews.”
Consequently, Russian xenophobic attitudes will focus on “enemies” among immigrants, terrorists, and foreigners rather than the less than one percent of the Russian population because “in reality, it would be difficult to explain to people for what reason the Jews of the entire world want bad things for Russians.”
Asked about the rapprochement between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state, Gorin says that “today it is obvious that the Orthodox Church is broadening its influence in government structures,” a trend that he suggests “represents a danger and in the first instance, for the Orthodox Church itself.”
“For any religious organization,” he continues, “integration with the state is a mortal danger.” And he points to the situation in Israel, where as a result of the state functions rabbis play, “anti-religious attitudes in Israeli society are felt more strongly than in any other Jewish community in the world.”
“The Russian Orthodox Church is not distancing itself from the state because it wants to strengthen its positions. The state in turn is not distancing itself from the Church since it is trying to use as much as possible the ideological potential of the Church.” Under the circumstances, that may not be an entirely bad thing, Gorin says.
“What kind of ideology could we have in Russia today?” he asks. “Faith in Gazprom? In the empire? In xenophobia?” The Russian powers that be have a lot of choices, and settling on “’renewed Orthodoxy’ would not be “the worst” of all of them, despite the obvious risks it would entail for all concerned.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
