Paul Goble
Staunton, December 28 – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants to promote patriotism in the Russian Federation “on the Soviet model,” a leading Moscow commentator says, without apparently recognizing that it was precisely that model “which led to the collapse” of the Soviet Union.
In a post on his Ekho Moskvy blog, Moscow observer Matvey Ganapolsky describes Putin’s call yesterday to develop “all-Russian patriotism” in order to “secure national unity in the country” and the absence of ethnic conflicts such as existed, according to the prime minister’s understanding, during the Soviet period (echo.msk.ru/blog/ganapolsky/737385-echo/).
According to the definition provided by Wikipedia, the commentator says, patriotism is “a moral and political principle and social feeling the content of which is love for the fatherland and a readiness to subordinate one’s private interests to its interests.” There are other definitions of course, Ganapolsky observes, but this will do.
Most people love their country because they love aspects of it like nature or culture or history. But Putin sees “the path to patriotism” differently. Specifically, Ganapolsky says, the prime minister sees it “in the Soviet model, in that model which led to the collapse of precisely that country the path of which he is proposing to follow.”
Putin has to know this, Ganapolsky continues, he has to know that “the Union fell apart namely because on the television was one thing and in life was something else.” And finally, after almost 80 years, people had had enough. Does he really think that following the same recipe will have a different result?
As Ganapolsky points out, “Soviet ‘friendship of the peoples’” was a propaganda point, “along the principle of ‘say ‘sugar’ and it will become sweeter.’” That might have been true in a film studio, but having talked about “the positive experience” of Soviet friendship of the peoples, Putin did not outline any way to get people to feel that way in reality.
“What is the problem?” Ganapolsky asks, and he immediately answers: It lies “in Putin’s moral-political principles,” in that he for eleven years has build a country and built it in such a way that people hate each other,” just as they did in Soviet times. But he is calling for people to “love such a state” with him as its head, just as they “loved the USSR but together with Stalin.”
One part of the definition Wikipedia gives is striking, Ganapolsky says. It is that patriotism involves “the willingness to subordinate one’s private interests to its interests.” That might be fine “if the prime minister above all loved his country, including its citizens and even those who did not vote for him.”
Ganapolsky says that in some countries, such as the United States, there is “friendship without any ideology.” It exists when “others respect my personal home,” when the OMON doesn’t feel free to interfere, when “all are equal in the home and when they respect the opinion of others,” and when people aren’t punished because the homeowners disagree.
That is “the simple secret of friendship of the peoples and love for the fatherland” and it doesn’t require, indeed it completely contradicts the experience of the USSR. And everyone needs to understand, including Putin who now clearly does not, that if one tries to force people to be friends, there won’t be any friendship among them.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Russia Emerging from Crisis Even More Dependent on Raw Materials Exports than Before, Duma Budget Committee Member Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, December 28 – Not only is Russia’s economic recovery once again based on rising world prices for oil and other natural resources, but the country is “coming out of the [recent] crisis” even more dependent on such export earnings that it was earlier, according to a member of the Duma budget and taxation committee.
In an article in “Sovetskaya Rossiya,” Oksana Dmitriyeva, a member of the Just Russia Party, points out that neither tax revenue nor general economic growth has come close to keeping up with average price rises for export commodities, a pattern pointing to serious underlying problems (www.sovross.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=587197).
Specifically, she says, raw material export prices have gone up on average 30 percent over the last year while budget income has risen only 17 percent and “general economic growth” in the Russian Federation” has been “only 3.6 percent.” That shows to what degree Russia remains a raw materials exporter rather than a diverse modern economy.
How can we talk about modernization, she asks. This situation highlights the further “degradation” of domestic branches of the economy, something that has been partially hidden by the government’s understanding of “the struggle with the crisis as the distribution of subsidies and guarantees to a limited number of enterprises.”
But these subsidies and guarantees cannot in and of themselves end the crisis or lead to a restructuring of the economy, Dmitriyeva says. Instead what is needed is a combination of “tax, exchange rate, credit and budgetary policies” that the government has not seen fit to engage in, apparently in the belief that the rising tide of oil prices will lift all ships.
Among the major problems is that there has not been any “tax stimulation of innovative branches.” Indeed, even the actual subsidies to these branches that the current Russian government has actually advanced rather than simply talked about equal less than one-tenth of one percent of the budget.
“This is a nano-unit,” Dmitriyeva says, thereby making fun of President Dmitry Medvedev’s discussions of nano-technology, and “from it,” she says, there has been a nano-result.” Meanwhile, however, one branch has received significant tax preference stimulation: oil companies in Eastern Siberia, but not even the processing facilities within that branch.
The Russian government’s “policy of the dear ruble has led to a growth in imports,” she notes. “Between September 2009 and September 2010, there was a 13 percent increase in exports but a 32 percent growth in imports. But there was none of the “import substitution” that one might expect to happen with raw materials earnings.
Instead, there has been a reduction of government expenditures and the maintenance of the stabilization fund, “even though it is clear that [such reductions] in government spending and a reduction in the budget deficit are not reducing inflation. Inflation [in Russia] comes not from government expenditures but from the growth of tariffs.”
“How does this situation threaten us?” she asks. “If the entire world is developing on the trajectory of ‘growth – crisis – growth,’ then [Russia] is developing on the line of ‘stagnation – crisis – stagnation.’” That pattern, she concludes, represents “a threat to national security and [even] the existence of the country.”
Staunton, December 28 – Not only is Russia’s economic recovery once again based on rising world prices for oil and other natural resources, but the country is “coming out of the [recent] crisis” even more dependent on such export earnings that it was earlier, according to a member of the Duma budget and taxation committee.
In an article in “Sovetskaya Rossiya,” Oksana Dmitriyeva, a member of the Just Russia Party, points out that neither tax revenue nor general economic growth has come close to keeping up with average price rises for export commodities, a pattern pointing to serious underlying problems (www.sovross.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=587197).
Specifically, she says, raw material export prices have gone up on average 30 percent over the last year while budget income has risen only 17 percent and “general economic growth” in the Russian Federation” has been “only 3.6 percent.” That shows to what degree Russia remains a raw materials exporter rather than a diverse modern economy.
How can we talk about modernization, she asks. This situation highlights the further “degradation” of domestic branches of the economy, something that has been partially hidden by the government’s understanding of “the struggle with the crisis as the distribution of subsidies and guarantees to a limited number of enterprises.”
But these subsidies and guarantees cannot in and of themselves end the crisis or lead to a restructuring of the economy, Dmitriyeva says. Instead what is needed is a combination of “tax, exchange rate, credit and budgetary policies” that the government has not seen fit to engage in, apparently in the belief that the rising tide of oil prices will lift all ships.
Among the major problems is that there has not been any “tax stimulation of innovative branches.” Indeed, even the actual subsidies to these branches that the current Russian government has actually advanced rather than simply talked about equal less than one-tenth of one percent of the budget.
“This is a nano-unit,” Dmitriyeva says, thereby making fun of President Dmitry Medvedev’s discussions of nano-technology, and “from it,” she says, there has been a nano-result.” Meanwhile, however, one branch has received significant tax preference stimulation: oil companies in Eastern Siberia, but not even the processing facilities within that branch.
The Russian government’s “policy of the dear ruble has led to a growth in imports,” she notes. “Between September 2009 and September 2010, there was a 13 percent increase in exports but a 32 percent growth in imports. But there was none of the “import substitution” that one might expect to happen with raw materials earnings.
Instead, there has been a reduction of government expenditures and the maintenance of the stabilization fund, “even though it is clear that [such reductions] in government spending and a reduction in the budget deficit are not reducing inflation. Inflation [in Russia] comes not from government expenditures but from the growth of tariffs.”
“How does this situation threaten us?” she asks. “If the entire world is developing on the trajectory of ‘growth – crisis – growth,’ then [Russia] is developing on the line of ‘stagnation – crisis – stagnation.’” That pattern, she concludes, represents “a threat to national security and [even] the existence of the country.”
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Criminologist Outlines Sources of Xenophobia and Nationalism in Russia Today
Paul Goble
Staunton, December 28 – Yakov Gilinsky, one of Russia’s most distinguished criminologists has outlined the sources of xenophobia and nationalism behind the ethnic clashes this month in major Russian cities and discusses why the reactions of the powers that be thus far have been not only ineffective but counterproductive.
In a comment on this blog (crimpravo.ru/blog/616.html) that has been reproduced by the Polit.ru portal (www.polit.ru/dossie/2010/12/28/ghilinsky_about_nationalism.html), Gilinsky argues that there are five major “of the mass xenophobia and still limited nationalism (Nazism? Fascism?) in contemporary Russia.
The first of these causes, he suggests, are “the biological preconditions,” the differences in human appearance that have been the basis for humans at all times to make distinctions between “we” and “they,” “our own” and “the outsider.” With the development of civilization, these differences have come to matter less.
Indeed, Gilinsky says, “the more civilized the society, the more tolerant it is to ‘outsiders.” But “not all societies are sufficiently civilized and politically correct…” a formulation that suggests the Moscow criminologist believes that Russian society is among those that is not as far along as many others.
The second set of causes, the criminologist says, includes the specific “historical roots” of Russian nationalism. Russian fascism, he notes, has deep roots going back to tsarist times. And he quotes with approval Walter Lacquer’s observation that “there is not any doubt in in the upcoming years, the extreme right will play an important political role in Russia.”
The third causes are “ideological sources” like the Slavophiles, Karamzin and “many others.” “Of course, they were neither Nazis nor fascists! But the idea of national superiority, of Russian ‘uniqueness,’ of opposition to everything ‘Western,’ and so on could not but be used by their less attractive followers…”
The fourth, Gilinsky, says involve “the economic basis” of xenophobia and nationalism. On the one hand, many Russians currently live in extreme poverty, while on the other, the difference between them and the rich is greater than ever, patterns that have often given rise to xenophobic attitudes elsewhere.
Indeed, Gilinsky writes, “such an enormous divide between the poor majority and the super-rich minority is a basic factor producing crime and deviant behavior. Young people are the most active and the least well-off statum of society and thus an objective reserve of nationalism (neo-Nazism, neo-fascism) in conditions of unprecedented social-economic inequality.”
And fifth are the political preconditions Gilinsky has written about before. “In contemporary Russia,” he says, citing his earlier writings, “fascism fulfills at a minimum three functions.” First, “it serves as ‘a scarecrow’ for the regime in advance of the upcoming elections: either it’s us (VVP [Putin] or a successor) or the fascists.”
Second, people from the Caucasus and Central Asia serve as a perfect “’scapegoat’” for the powers that be who “are not capable of solving a single one of the social problems – poverty, housing, the military, education, medicine, science and so on” and who are please to have someone other than themselves that they can pin the blame on.
And third, Gilinsky continues, “the fascists are a social base, ‘a reserve of the main command’ in the struggle with ‘the orange revolution’” that frightens the current powers that be “to death.” Moreover, the powers that be view “’the fascists (Nazis) as sons of bitches. But thesy are our sons of bitches.’”
Tragically, the Moscow criminologist there, “there is nothing to be done” because any society which “begins with ‘drowning people in an outhouse” and in which ‘everyone hates everyone else’ (as a well-known psychologist put it during a December broadcast on Ekho Moskvy’)” is one where “it is difficult to count on positive moves forward.”
The reaction of the powers that be is highly “instructive,” Gilinsky says. “Let us reduce by half the core course in the senior classes of schools and in place of this day and night education people … in the spirit of patriotism!” That is especially problematic because “nationalist statements” and “patriotic slogans” are closely realited.
Such patriotism, he suggests, almost certainly will recall the well-known observation that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” And it will do little to educate all age groups in the population in “tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and internationalism” needed to make Russian society work. Indeed, it may do just the reverse, with all the tragic consequences thereof.
Staunton, December 28 – Yakov Gilinsky, one of Russia’s most distinguished criminologists has outlined the sources of xenophobia and nationalism behind the ethnic clashes this month in major Russian cities and discusses why the reactions of the powers that be thus far have been not only ineffective but counterproductive.
In a comment on this blog (crimpravo.ru/blog/616.html) that has been reproduced by the Polit.ru portal (www.polit.ru/dossie/2010/12/28/ghilinsky_about_nationalism.html), Gilinsky argues that there are five major “of the mass xenophobia and still limited nationalism (Nazism? Fascism?) in contemporary Russia.
The first of these causes, he suggests, are “the biological preconditions,” the differences in human appearance that have been the basis for humans at all times to make distinctions between “we” and “they,” “our own” and “the outsider.” With the development of civilization, these differences have come to matter less.
Indeed, Gilinsky says, “the more civilized the society, the more tolerant it is to ‘outsiders.” But “not all societies are sufficiently civilized and politically correct…” a formulation that suggests the Moscow criminologist believes that Russian society is among those that is not as far along as many others.
The second set of causes, the criminologist says, includes the specific “historical roots” of Russian nationalism. Russian fascism, he notes, has deep roots going back to tsarist times. And he quotes with approval Walter Lacquer’s observation that “there is not any doubt in in the upcoming years, the extreme right will play an important political role in Russia.”
The third causes are “ideological sources” like the Slavophiles, Karamzin and “many others.” “Of course, they were neither Nazis nor fascists! But the idea of national superiority, of Russian ‘uniqueness,’ of opposition to everything ‘Western,’ and so on could not but be used by their less attractive followers…”
The fourth, Gilinsky, says involve “the economic basis” of xenophobia and nationalism. On the one hand, many Russians currently live in extreme poverty, while on the other, the difference between them and the rich is greater than ever, patterns that have often given rise to xenophobic attitudes elsewhere.
Indeed, Gilinsky writes, “such an enormous divide between the poor majority and the super-rich minority is a basic factor producing crime and deviant behavior. Young people are the most active and the least well-off statum of society and thus an objective reserve of nationalism (neo-Nazism, neo-fascism) in conditions of unprecedented social-economic inequality.”
And fifth are the political preconditions Gilinsky has written about before. “In contemporary Russia,” he says, citing his earlier writings, “fascism fulfills at a minimum three functions.” First, “it serves as ‘a scarecrow’ for the regime in advance of the upcoming elections: either it’s us (VVP [Putin] or a successor) or the fascists.”
Second, people from the Caucasus and Central Asia serve as a perfect “’scapegoat’” for the powers that be who “are not capable of solving a single one of the social problems – poverty, housing, the military, education, medicine, science and so on” and who are please to have someone other than themselves that they can pin the blame on.
And third, Gilinsky continues, “the fascists are a social base, ‘a reserve of the main command’ in the struggle with ‘the orange revolution’” that frightens the current powers that be “to death.” Moreover, the powers that be view “’the fascists (Nazis) as sons of bitches. But thesy are our sons of bitches.’”
Tragically, the Moscow criminologist there, “there is nothing to be done” because any society which “begins with ‘drowning people in an outhouse” and in which ‘everyone hates everyone else’ (as a well-known psychologist put it during a December broadcast on Ekho Moskvy’)” is one where “it is difficult to count on positive moves forward.”
The reaction of the powers that be is highly “instructive,” Gilinsky says. “Let us reduce by half the core course in the senior classes of schools and in place of this day and night education people … in the spirit of patriotism!” That is especially problematic because “nationalist statements” and “patriotic slogans” are closely realited.
Such patriotism, he suggests, almost certainly will recall the well-known observation that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” And it will do little to educate all age groups in the population in “tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and internationalism” needed to make Russian society work. Indeed, it may do just the reverse, with all the tragic consequences thereof.
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