Paul Goble
Vienna, January 3 – The Russian Federation runs the risk of falling apart sometime within the next quarter century if Moscow fails to do away with its non-Russian republics or alternatively tries to do away with those territorial units in an incautiously rapid way, according to a leading Moscow analyst.
In an article on the Snob.ru portal last week, Nikolay Zlobin argues that “without doing away with [its existing] internal national-administrative arrangements, Russia risks falling into pieces in the next few decades” for many of the same reasons that led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 (www.snob.ru/selected/entry/29528).
Zlobin says that he recalls the way in which the national formations within the USSR worked not only because of their impact on the USSR but also because “at a recent session of the State Council of Russia unexpectedly arose the question about the Soviet experience of nationality relations.”
Both Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev weighed in on this issue. Putin said “in the Soviet Union there were no such problems with inter-national relations” because among other reasons there was an ideological construct, “the Soviet people,” a construct “we do not have today” and that Russia should follow the Soviet model and promote “all-Russian patriotism.”
Medvedev for his part argued among other things that “Russia is different” than the Soviet Union and that the experience of the latter thus does not provide a perfect model for the former. Moreover, he said, it is because of these differences that Russia today has both “our additional possibilities and our problems.”
Zlobin offers ten comments on these two very different observations. First, he says, “the USSR can in no way be considered a successful model of the solution of the nationality quesiton.” Nationality issues were less often manifested in the streets because of totalitarian control, but that was not a measure of success or, as 1991 showed, a guarantee of survival.
Second, “pre-revolutionary Russia also was not a successful model of nationality realitions” and that ‘was one of the causes of its collapse.” Third, the history of the USSR does offer some “positive” ideas on national strategy, and that its “language, cultural-educational and scientific-technical policies” help explain why it came apart “comparatively peacefully.”
Fourth, “Russian retains up to ow the national-administrative arrangements of the RSFSR, something that not only does not correspond to the contemporary stage of its development but is,” Zlobin says, “the basis of its possible future collapse as this occurred in tsarist Russia and the USSR.”
Fifth, he continues, “for the resolution of the nationality qusiton is needed a complete rejection of the international national division of Russia,” but he adds that “today this is impossible,” arguing that this goal must be pursued “gradually but consistently” despite the political risks to those who propose it.
Sixth, “any proposals for tightening domestic migration legislation not only bear an anti-market and anti-modernization character but as the experience of the USSR and also a number of other countries show, in the final analysis are ineffective and even harmful for they potentially lead to the exacerbation of ethnic contradictions.”
Seventh, Zlobin adds, “without doing away with [its] internal national-administrative division, Russia has every chance to fall apart in the next quarter of a century when the new generation of [non-ethnic] Russians will become the basis of its demography” and that this collapse “again will take place along the borders of the national formations.”
Eighth, Zlobin warns, “an illiterate and poorly thought through strategy of the perestroika of the internal arrangement of Russia with the goal of doing away with the national-administrative structure will also lead to the collapse of the single state or even to a broad scale civil war.”
Ninth, Zlobin insists, “the preservation of the territorial unity of Russia is the most important task which corresponds to the strategic national interests of all the people show live in it and also to the interests of the world community.” And tenth, Zlobin notes, he would be very glad if his prognostication turns out to be wrong because it would be “a catastrophe.”
Zlobin’s arguments in turn generate at least three serious reactions. First, the situation he describes, one in which Russia is in trouble if it does not change its internal ethnic borders and is also in trouble if it does so incautiously fast means that the nationality issues in that country are going to be at the center rather than the periphery of politics for a long time to come.
Second, many non-Russians have long understood this situation and thus recognize that any move against them presages further moves, an understanding that makes the future far more difficult in the future than it was in the past and reduces the center’s ability to play divide and rule politics.
And third, it is far from clear that all of the non-Russians or even all of the members of the international community believe that “the preservation of the territorial unity of Russia” corresponds to their “strategic national interests.” Mikhail Gorbachev made the same argument 25 years ago, but the USSR fell apart anyway.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Russia’s ‘Traditional’ Muslims No Bulwark against Islamism, Amelina Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 3 – Russia’s “traditional” Muslims in whom Moscow has placed so much faith are no longer if they ever were a bulwark against the spread of Islamism across the country because they are unwilling to challenge the Islamists directly and often share the fundamental values of the radicals, according to a leading Kazan-based analyst.
And consequently, Yana Amelina says, Islamism will continue to spread in the year ahead leading to a further destabilization of the country unless the Russian authorities adopt “decisive and even extraordinary” measures to build up a new Islamic leadership ready and able to do battle with the radicals (journal-neo.com/?q=ru/node/3645).
Islamism is spreading across the Russian Federation and becoming “an ever more important social-political force which presents a serious threat to the future of the Russian Federation,” Amelina begins. And “traditional Islam … is losing the battle for the minds not only of the young but also of the older strata of the population.”
A major reason for this, she suggests, is that the extremists not only have their own immediate resources but are able to count on the activity of what she calls “the international ‘Wahhabi lobby’ which is represented at a sufficiently high federal level” and whose activities pave the way for Islamist expansion.
These lobbyists, Amelina continues, “devote all their efforts to present the fundamentalists (the goal of which is the construction on the territory of Russia – at first ‘on immemorial Muslim lands’ and then on historically Slavic territories as well – of a khalifate based on Islamist ideology) as a equally respectable site of some ‘public dialogue.’”
And consequently, she says, these lobbyists who include both religious leaders and secular experts typically seek to justify or at least minimize the damage from any action by the Islamists, including terrorist attacks like those in the Moscow subway or any of the acts of violence in the Caucasus.
According to the Kazan-based analyst, “Moscow journalists and activists and also their ideological brothers in arms in the localities are calling almost for the integration of the Wahhabis into the official Islamic structures and organs of state power, for giving them equal access to the media and so on.”
Such projects, if realized, she says, “will lead to the destruction of the secular character of Russian statehood.” That is already obvious in Chechnya where the regime is introducing shariat law and in Daghestan where leaders are talking about reversing the 1999 law banning Wahhabis, and it is becoming obvious in the Middle Volga region as well.
In the North Caucasus, she continues, “it is becoming clear that traditional Islam in no way is a panacea in the struggle with radicalism [as many Russian officials and experts believe] and that the difference between the two in the final analysis resides in the sphere of tactics and not of strategy.” Both want an Islamic society; they disagree only on how to get it.
Increasingly, officials and experts in Moscow understand this threat in the North Caucasus, but many of them, Amelina argues, have failed to recognize it in the Middle Volga, a region “which has positioned itself in comparison with the North Caucasus as an example of the peaceful rebirth of traditional Islam in a poly-confessional society.”
Wahhabi attacks in Bashkortostan and especially the events in the Nurlat district of Tatarstan in November should lead to a revision of these assessments, she says. In the latter, one of the militants who was killed turned out to be a Kryashen who had accepted Islam and who was the son of the former prosecutor of Chistopol.
To respond to these developments adequately, Amelina suggests, officials must recognize that because the Islamists “conduct their struggle under religious slogans, the ideological basis of opposing them can only be a different religious ideology,” something the Russian authorities have not yet even tried to do.
Traditional Muslims cannot provide it, she suggests, because they are often unprepared “to acknowledge the true sources of terrorism [and are] unwilling to distinguish themselves decisively from their ‘mistaken brothers,’ the Wahhabis,” failures that are intensifying “the negative tendencies of distrust and antagonism among various parts of Russian society.”
And Amelina warns: “If the powers that be do not take decisive and possibly even extraordinary measures for curbing the Islamists and driving them out of the Russian public-ideological space … in the coming year, all the tendencies listed will only increase and sound an ever louder chord in the common diabolic symphony of destabilization in the country.”
Vienna, January 3 – Russia’s “traditional” Muslims in whom Moscow has placed so much faith are no longer if they ever were a bulwark against the spread of Islamism across the country because they are unwilling to challenge the Islamists directly and often share the fundamental values of the radicals, according to a leading Kazan-based analyst.
And consequently, Yana Amelina says, Islamism will continue to spread in the year ahead leading to a further destabilization of the country unless the Russian authorities adopt “decisive and even extraordinary” measures to build up a new Islamic leadership ready and able to do battle with the radicals (journal-neo.com/?q=ru/node/3645).
Islamism is spreading across the Russian Federation and becoming “an ever more important social-political force which presents a serious threat to the future of the Russian Federation,” Amelina begins. And “traditional Islam … is losing the battle for the minds not only of the young but also of the older strata of the population.”
A major reason for this, she suggests, is that the extremists not only have their own immediate resources but are able to count on the activity of what she calls “the international ‘Wahhabi lobby’ which is represented at a sufficiently high federal level” and whose activities pave the way for Islamist expansion.
These lobbyists, Amelina continues, “devote all their efforts to present the fundamentalists (the goal of which is the construction on the territory of Russia – at first ‘on immemorial Muslim lands’ and then on historically Slavic territories as well – of a khalifate based on Islamist ideology) as a equally respectable site of some ‘public dialogue.’”
And consequently, she says, these lobbyists who include both religious leaders and secular experts typically seek to justify or at least minimize the damage from any action by the Islamists, including terrorist attacks like those in the Moscow subway or any of the acts of violence in the Caucasus.
According to the Kazan-based analyst, “Moscow journalists and activists and also their ideological brothers in arms in the localities are calling almost for the integration of the Wahhabis into the official Islamic structures and organs of state power, for giving them equal access to the media and so on.”
Such projects, if realized, she says, “will lead to the destruction of the secular character of Russian statehood.” That is already obvious in Chechnya where the regime is introducing shariat law and in Daghestan where leaders are talking about reversing the 1999 law banning Wahhabis, and it is becoming obvious in the Middle Volga region as well.
In the North Caucasus, she continues, “it is becoming clear that traditional Islam in no way is a panacea in the struggle with radicalism [as many Russian officials and experts believe] and that the difference between the two in the final analysis resides in the sphere of tactics and not of strategy.” Both want an Islamic society; they disagree only on how to get it.
Increasingly, officials and experts in Moscow understand this threat in the North Caucasus, but many of them, Amelina argues, have failed to recognize it in the Middle Volga, a region “which has positioned itself in comparison with the North Caucasus as an example of the peaceful rebirth of traditional Islam in a poly-confessional society.”
Wahhabi attacks in Bashkortostan and especially the events in the Nurlat district of Tatarstan in November should lead to a revision of these assessments, she says. In the latter, one of the militants who was killed turned out to be a Kryashen who had accepted Islam and who was the son of the former prosecutor of Chistopol.
To respond to these developments adequately, Amelina suggests, officials must recognize that because the Islamists “conduct their struggle under religious slogans, the ideological basis of opposing them can only be a different religious ideology,” something the Russian authorities have not yet even tried to do.
Traditional Muslims cannot provide it, she suggests, because they are often unprepared “to acknowledge the true sources of terrorism [and are] unwilling to distinguish themselves decisively from their ‘mistaken brothers,’ the Wahhabis,” failures that are intensifying “the negative tendencies of distrust and antagonism among various parts of Russian society.”
And Amelina warns: “If the powers that be do not take decisive and possibly even extraordinary measures for curbing the Islamists and driving them out of the Russian public-ideological space … in the coming year, all the tendencies listed will only increase and sound an ever louder chord in the common diabolic symphony of destabilization in the country.”
Window on Eurasia: New Russian Nationalists Very Different from Their Predecessors, Activist Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 3 – Such unity as exists among Russian nationalists, acknowledges one of their number, is the product of a common opposition to the “russophobic” regime of Vladimir Putin, but the current generation of Russian nationalists, a nationalist analyst says, is very different from its more familiar predecessor of late Soviet times.
In an essay on the “Pravy vzglyad” portal, Dimitry Savvin suggests that “the destruction of the Putin regime, a regime neo-bolshevist by its essence, is the task of the next few years” and that “any new political system which will be formed in Russia “will be forced to consider the Russian question” (www.rusimperia.info/catalog/1030.html).
“Today,” he acknowledges, “the Russian National-Liberation Movement, just like the White Movement of 1918-1922 is unified chiefly by a common opponent, the genocidal russophobic regime” rather than on the basis of any common platform. Consequently, it is important to recognize the divisions within it.
According to Savvin, “the avant garde of Russian nationalism today is beyond any doubt the national democrats,” a group, even a generation, that is very different from its predecessors in the Russian movement in the final years of the Soviet period but one that, he argues will yield to a third sometime in the future.
“The first generation of Russian nationalists of the end of the Soviet period and the first years of the Russian Federation had several characteristic aspects, Savvin says. First of all, these people positioned themselves as Orthodox Christians, although their ignorance of religious led some of them to mix it together with the occult.
Second, he suggests, they were strongly affected “esthetically” by the Black Hundreds movement of the late imperial period and by aspects of the Third Reich, often using symbols from one or the other without necessarily sharing the views of either, despite what their opponents assumed.
Third, their ideological efforts were largely “imitative” and “as a result” could not “develop a real methodology of political struggle” under current conditions. Fourth, most of the members of this generation put the maintenance of the empire above the defense of the nation or at least as a necessary basis for that.
And fifth, most of the members of this generation had “a negative attitude on the role of Jews in Russian and world history,” an attitude that was a legacy of the past rather than the product of the existing political situation and thus one that allowed their opponents to denounce them effectively.
It would be wrong, Savvin insists, “to say that the first generation of Russian nationalists of the post-Soviet period did not achieve anything.” In fact, they achieved the most important thing: “the very idea of Russian nationalism survived precisely thanks to these people” for which achievement Russian nationalists now should be grateful.
But by the second half of the 1990s, “it became obvious” that “this version” of Russian nationalism, with its “attempt at copying organized models of 90 and 60 years ago” was clearly a failure. A major reason for this was the decision of the Moscow Patriarchate in which some nationalists had placed their hopes to “support the anti-Russian powers that be.”
Out of that failure emerged “a second generation of Russian nationalists” that now “dominates” the Russian national movement. Its “most clear representatives” are the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) and the “intelligent-elite Russian Social Movement of Konstantin Krylov.”
The basic ideology of this generation is that of “national democracy,” a set of ideas characterized by “religious indifference” or even hostility to the Moscow Patriarchate, efforts to position itself within “the respectable right” of today’s Europe, an “anti-imperial” approach that considers empire as a threat to the nation, and indifference to or even support for Jews.
This combination of ideas, Savvin suggests, is “much more understandable to a larger part of society (this concerns both Russia and also the European Union and the United States) than classical conservatism,” allows for its representatives to be elected and ensures that they will not be denied visas to the US because of anti-Semitism.
Clearly, all this represents “a tactical victory” for the Russian nationalist cause, Savvin says. “Russian national democrats are completely correct when they say that contemporary European democracy with all its shortcomings is much better than Putin’s genocidal regime and national democracy in its turn is much better than what exists in the EU and the US today.”
“With this,” he says, “it would be stupid to argue.” But in the event such Russian nationalists came to power, they would not be able to solve on their own what Savvin says are “the shortcomings of the democratic model of statehood” because those problems are deeper than the national democrats understand.
They consist not just in “’the dictatorship of minorities’ as established in the European Union,” he argues. They are part of the democratic idea itself, part of its “genetic code which first became obvious already in 1789-1793 when out of necessity it would seem free France established the dictatorship of the Jacobin minority.”
Consequently, a Russian national democratic regime would “immediately begin to self-destruct,” either through “a drift toward classical liberalism” or toward “a national-Russian dictatorship.” The second might be better from a Russian nationalist perspective, but it too would likely prove “harmful,” Savvin says.
What is needed, he suggests, in order to escape this “dead end” of “democracy versus dictatorship” can only be “a national monarchy or if you like national monarchism,” an ideology based on the ideas of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Lev Tikhomirov and one that Savvin says needs to be developed for the sake of Russia and Russians.
Today, he concludes, is “the time” of the national democrats, and tomorrow will be their time of triumph. For the time being, they are “the comrades in arms” of all Russian nationalists “in the common struggle” against Putinism. “The time of the Russian national-monarchists,” he insists, will come later, and it is necessary to be prepared for that time.”
Vienna, January 3 – Such unity as exists among Russian nationalists, acknowledges one of their number, is the product of a common opposition to the “russophobic” regime of Vladimir Putin, but the current generation of Russian nationalists, a nationalist analyst says, is very different from its more familiar predecessor of late Soviet times.
In an essay on the “Pravy vzglyad” portal, Dimitry Savvin suggests that “the destruction of the Putin regime, a regime neo-bolshevist by its essence, is the task of the next few years” and that “any new political system which will be formed in Russia “will be forced to consider the Russian question” (www.rusimperia.info/catalog/1030.html).
“Today,” he acknowledges, “the Russian National-Liberation Movement, just like the White Movement of 1918-1922 is unified chiefly by a common opponent, the genocidal russophobic regime” rather than on the basis of any common platform. Consequently, it is important to recognize the divisions within it.
According to Savvin, “the avant garde of Russian nationalism today is beyond any doubt the national democrats,” a group, even a generation, that is very different from its predecessors in the Russian movement in the final years of the Soviet period but one that, he argues will yield to a third sometime in the future.
“The first generation of Russian nationalists of the end of the Soviet period and the first years of the Russian Federation had several characteristic aspects, Savvin says. First of all, these people positioned themselves as Orthodox Christians, although their ignorance of religious led some of them to mix it together with the occult.
Second, he suggests, they were strongly affected “esthetically” by the Black Hundreds movement of the late imperial period and by aspects of the Third Reich, often using symbols from one or the other without necessarily sharing the views of either, despite what their opponents assumed.
Third, their ideological efforts were largely “imitative” and “as a result” could not “develop a real methodology of political struggle” under current conditions. Fourth, most of the members of this generation put the maintenance of the empire above the defense of the nation or at least as a necessary basis for that.
And fifth, most of the members of this generation had “a negative attitude on the role of Jews in Russian and world history,” an attitude that was a legacy of the past rather than the product of the existing political situation and thus one that allowed their opponents to denounce them effectively.
It would be wrong, Savvin insists, “to say that the first generation of Russian nationalists of the post-Soviet period did not achieve anything.” In fact, they achieved the most important thing: “the very idea of Russian nationalism survived precisely thanks to these people” for which achievement Russian nationalists now should be grateful.
But by the second half of the 1990s, “it became obvious” that “this version” of Russian nationalism, with its “attempt at copying organized models of 90 and 60 years ago” was clearly a failure. A major reason for this was the decision of the Moscow Patriarchate in which some nationalists had placed their hopes to “support the anti-Russian powers that be.”
Out of that failure emerged “a second generation of Russian nationalists” that now “dominates” the Russian national movement. Its “most clear representatives” are the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) and the “intelligent-elite Russian Social Movement of Konstantin Krylov.”
The basic ideology of this generation is that of “national democracy,” a set of ideas characterized by “religious indifference” or even hostility to the Moscow Patriarchate, efforts to position itself within “the respectable right” of today’s Europe, an “anti-imperial” approach that considers empire as a threat to the nation, and indifference to or even support for Jews.
This combination of ideas, Savvin suggests, is “much more understandable to a larger part of society (this concerns both Russia and also the European Union and the United States) than classical conservatism,” allows for its representatives to be elected and ensures that they will not be denied visas to the US because of anti-Semitism.
Clearly, all this represents “a tactical victory” for the Russian nationalist cause, Savvin says. “Russian national democrats are completely correct when they say that contemporary European democracy with all its shortcomings is much better than Putin’s genocidal regime and national democracy in its turn is much better than what exists in the EU and the US today.”
“With this,” he says, “it would be stupid to argue.” But in the event such Russian nationalists came to power, they would not be able to solve on their own what Savvin says are “the shortcomings of the democratic model of statehood” because those problems are deeper than the national democrats understand.
They consist not just in “’the dictatorship of minorities’ as established in the European Union,” he argues. They are part of the democratic idea itself, part of its “genetic code which first became obvious already in 1789-1793 when out of necessity it would seem free France established the dictatorship of the Jacobin minority.”
Consequently, a Russian national democratic regime would “immediately begin to self-destruct,” either through “a drift toward classical liberalism” or toward “a national-Russian dictatorship.” The second might be better from a Russian nationalist perspective, but it too would likely prove “harmful,” Savvin says.
What is needed, he suggests, in order to escape this “dead end” of “democracy versus dictatorship” can only be “a national monarchy or if you like national monarchism,” an ideology based on the ideas of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Lev Tikhomirov and one that Savvin says needs to be developed for the sake of Russia and Russians.
Today, he concludes, is “the time” of the national democrats, and tomorrow will be their time of triumph. For the time being, they are “the comrades in arms” of all Russian nationalists “in the common struggle” against Putinism. “The time of the Russian national-monarchists,” he insists, will come later, and it is necessary to be prepared for that time.”
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