Paul Goble
Vienna, January 5 – The “velvet clan revolution” that Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has carried out since coming to office has slowed but not stopped the de-modernization of a country that many call an island of stability in Central Asia, according to a Turkmen analyst.
But precisely because Berdymukhamedov’s moves have not reduced the importance of tribes and clans in the functioning of that society, Merdan Mamedaliyev says in a new report, anyone seeking to trace political struggles in this most opaque of that region’s countries must focus precisely on them (www.easttime.ru/analitic/1/4/903.html).
The continuity in Turkmenistan’s domestic policy in the wake of Berdymukhamedov’s rise to the presidency stands in sharp contrast to “all the well-known centrifugal processes of Central Asian reality,” Mamedaliyev suggests, a pattern that has led many experts to call that country “an island of stability.”
The basis for this continuity is the state’s control of “gas dollars” in what is an underdeveloped society lacking civic institutions and other factors which make possible the activization of domestic political struggle.” Taken together all this “gives the ruling regime unlimited possibilities.”
At the same time, Mamedaliyev continues, the lack of such an opposition in Turkmenistan means that the powers that be do not feel the need to strengthen “the repressive apparatus.” For them, “the preservation of the status quo is quite enough and gives them the chance for maneuver.”
The Turkmen opposition in exile clearly “does not have any real chances to return” to politics in Turkmenistan, the analyst says, and “about the existence of an internal opposition” it is almost impossible to judge because Ashgabat effectively blocks any such information from getting out.
But, and this is the crux of his argument, Mamedaliyev says that “one can judge about the existence of [such an] internal opposition with the same certainty with which astronomers make assertions about the existence on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, beneath a many kilometer thick layer of ice.”
“’There must be water!’ the specialists say. And in just the same way, [Mamedaliyev] says, ‘there must be an opposition” in Turkmenistan! And he devotes the remainder of his article to a review of the places where such an opposition may exist or emerge and the individuals and groups who may form it.
According to ethnographers, there are in Turkmenistan some 30 tribes “unifying more than 5,000 extended family groups.” Indeed, this feature is so pronounced that many historians refer to the Turkmens as “a nation of tribes” – although other analysts say that the differences among them are so great that one could discuss some of them as “self-standing small peoples.” And “decades” of intense Soviet efforts, involving the inculcation of internationalism, “the mixing of peoples, and the assimilation of cultural priorities” did not lead to an elimination of inter-tribal borders” in Turkmenistan. Indeed, the Soviet pattern of rotating representatives of different clans in high posts allowed this “archaic system” to adapt to “the industrial era.”
In Soviet times, between 1951 and 1985, “representatives of the most important clan, the Akhaltsy ( who are also known as the Tekintsy or Akhltekhintsy) were not able to obtain access to the post of leader of the Turkmen SSR.” But in that latter year, Saparmurat Niyazov, an Akhaltsy, came to power.
The rise of members of his tribe as the Soviet Union was collapsing “only intensified aspects of tribalism in the already sovereign state.” And as a result, “in the 1990s, one of the most influential Turkmen clans, the Yomuds, were almost completely removed from positions of power.”
Like Niyazov, the second president of Turkmenistan belongs to the Akhal Tekintsy, and under his rule, “three quarters of all government bureaucrats and 90 percent of all members of the forces tructures are Tekintsy, primarily from the Akhal velayat” district,” a trend that has contributed to “the de-modernization” of the country.
“The internal processes the republic are in contradiction with the tendencies of the development of humanity and include such phenomena as the cultr of personality, isolationism,” and so on. Niyazov represented an extreme form of this, while Berdymukhamedov has softened its edges in what some call “the velvet clan revolution.”
Not surprisingly, these arrangements have angered some members of the groups that have been excluded from power, and it is among them that one could expect to find an opposition just as astronomers expect to find water under the ice of Jupiter’s moon. According to Mamedaliyev, there are three groups likely to provide opponents.
These include, he suggests, the Western, which is ethnically dominated by the Yomuds and economically connected with the Caspian; the eastern, around Mary which is Tekintsy but affected by its “closeness to Afghanistan, and the Northern, which is the most backward now but has the best prospects in the future.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Window on Eurasia: ‘Multitude of Parallels’ Between Brezhnev and Putin, United Russia Deputy Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 5 – In a new book entitled ‘Why Brezhnev Didn’t Become Putin,” Aleksandr Khinshtein not only argues that the former Soviet leader should be known not for “stagnation” but for “stability” and that there are “a multitude of parallels” between him and current Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
On Monday, “Komsomolskaya Pravda” published extensive excerpts from Khinshtein’s book, in which he talks about many Soviet and Russian leaders over the last half century, but perhaps the most intriguing segments of those presented concern the similarities the United Russia deputy sees between the two men (www.nsk.kp.ru/daily/25618.03/783765/).
As the newspaper’s Larisa Kaftan puts it, “the further from the Brezhnev era” people go, an era that was “named already during perestroika times as ‘stagnation, the more often [Russians] recall it with sympathy.” But Khinshtein, despite his promise not to write a hagiography, goes further than most.
Brezhnev, Khinshtein says, was “not always the old and infirm” man many remember. “In the first decade of his rule, a large part of his term, he was an energetic, active and quite liberal ruler, although if it was required, he was able to become quite tough.” And he succeeded in establishing a “relatively well-off stability.”
Indeed, the United Russia deputy continues, “the early Brezhnev” in many ways tried to do “what Putin is doing” now. And Khinshtein writes that “it is possible to draw a great multitude of parallels” between the two leaders,” including their interest in the Olympics, reliance on oil and gas, and ruling “the party and state” as “a sovereign democracy.”
“From time to time,” the deputy says, he cannot avoid feeling “a sense of déjà vu.”
On another issue, Khinshtein argues that had Brezhnev lived only a few days longer, he would have handed over his position as head of the party and become the party’s president, something that would have meant that his successor would have been someone other than Yuri Andropov, with all the differences in Soviet history that would have made.
“The Soviet Union,” he writes, “was hardly condemned to death, as the ideologues of liberalism attempt to convince us. Even in the terrible 1990, the situation in the country was at a minimum no worse than in 2007. And that means Brezhnev was not as guilty in the collapse of the empire as were his heirs Gorbachev and Yeltsin.”
Russia has never had too many ruler-builders, but unfortunately it has been “especially rich in revolutionaries” like Kerensky, Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin. “Only a single Russian ruler in the 20th century, albeit with qualifications can be called a builder, and however strange it may seem, that was Brezhnev.”
“No one intends to canonize Brezhnev,” the United Russia deputy writes. After all, “the late Brezhnev was almost like the late Yeltsin” down to “the smallest details.” But now Russians recognize that his era was not as Gorbachev and Yeltsin described it and said they would prefer to live in it almost as much as in Putin’s.
That brings Khinshtein to his description of Putin himself. “By his mentality,” the Duma deputy says, Putin is part of the Soviet Union experience. (He even admitted as much once, the deputy says, when he said that he could be considered to be “a successful product of the patriotic training of a Soviet man.”)
Putin was “born under Stalin, joined the party under Khrushchev, and was shaped as a personality under Brezhnev.” And it is “very indicative that among the greatest world tragedies Putin names precisely the collapse of the USSR” and says that “the collapse of the soviet empire is a crime.”
According to Khinshtein, “the attitude of an individual toward the death of the Union is a kind of litmus test of any politician.” For liberal-westernizingers, it is “a holiday of democracy. But unlike for them, “for Putin, the Soviet Union was not a prisonhouse of peoples, nor a hated empire, nor a distillation of evil.”
Instead, for the current Russian leader, “the USSR is his motherland in which there is enough of everything, both good and bad.”
Vienna, January 5 – In a new book entitled ‘Why Brezhnev Didn’t Become Putin,” Aleksandr Khinshtein not only argues that the former Soviet leader should be known not for “stagnation” but for “stability” and that there are “a multitude of parallels” between him and current Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
On Monday, “Komsomolskaya Pravda” published extensive excerpts from Khinshtein’s book, in which he talks about many Soviet and Russian leaders over the last half century, but perhaps the most intriguing segments of those presented concern the similarities the United Russia deputy sees between the two men (www.nsk.kp.ru/daily/25618.03/783765/).
As the newspaper’s Larisa Kaftan puts it, “the further from the Brezhnev era” people go, an era that was “named already during perestroika times as ‘stagnation, the more often [Russians] recall it with sympathy.” But Khinshtein, despite his promise not to write a hagiography, goes further than most.
Brezhnev, Khinshtein says, was “not always the old and infirm” man many remember. “In the first decade of his rule, a large part of his term, he was an energetic, active and quite liberal ruler, although if it was required, he was able to become quite tough.” And he succeeded in establishing a “relatively well-off stability.”
Indeed, the United Russia deputy continues, “the early Brezhnev” in many ways tried to do “what Putin is doing” now. And Khinshtein writes that “it is possible to draw a great multitude of parallels” between the two leaders,” including their interest in the Olympics, reliance on oil and gas, and ruling “the party and state” as “a sovereign democracy.”
“From time to time,” the deputy says, he cannot avoid feeling “a sense of déjà vu.”
On another issue, Khinshtein argues that had Brezhnev lived only a few days longer, he would have handed over his position as head of the party and become the party’s president, something that would have meant that his successor would have been someone other than Yuri Andropov, with all the differences in Soviet history that would have made.
“The Soviet Union,” he writes, “was hardly condemned to death, as the ideologues of liberalism attempt to convince us. Even in the terrible 1990, the situation in the country was at a minimum no worse than in 2007. And that means Brezhnev was not as guilty in the collapse of the empire as were his heirs Gorbachev and Yeltsin.”
Russia has never had too many ruler-builders, but unfortunately it has been “especially rich in revolutionaries” like Kerensky, Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin. “Only a single Russian ruler in the 20th century, albeit with qualifications can be called a builder, and however strange it may seem, that was Brezhnev.”
“No one intends to canonize Brezhnev,” the United Russia deputy writes. After all, “the late Brezhnev was almost like the late Yeltsin” down to “the smallest details.” But now Russians recognize that his era was not as Gorbachev and Yeltsin described it and said they would prefer to live in it almost as much as in Putin’s.
That brings Khinshtein to his description of Putin himself. “By his mentality,” the Duma deputy says, Putin is part of the Soviet Union experience. (He even admitted as much once, the deputy says, when he said that he could be considered to be “a successful product of the patriotic training of a Soviet man.”)
Putin was “born under Stalin, joined the party under Khrushchev, and was shaped as a personality under Brezhnev.” And it is “very indicative that among the greatest world tragedies Putin names precisely the collapse of the USSR” and says that “the collapse of the soviet empire is a crime.”
According to Khinshtein, “the attitude of an individual toward the death of the Union is a kind of litmus test of any politician.” For liberal-westernizingers, it is “a holiday of democracy. But unlike for them, “for Putin, the Soviet Union was not a prisonhouse of peoples, nor a hated empire, nor a distillation of evil.”
Instead, for the current Russian leader, “the USSR is his motherland in which there is enough of everything, both good and bad.”
Window on Eurasia: Tajuddin’s ‘Counterattack’ Points to a Return of ‘Mosque Trend’ in Russian Islam
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 5 – Roman Silantyev, a specialist on Islam who has offended many of Russia’s Muslim leaders but who enjoys continuing support from the Moscow Patriarchate, says that the creation of a new Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) in the Russian capital subordinate to Mufti Talgat Tajuddin, the head of the Central MSD in Ufa, strengthens “traditional” Islam.
Silantyev’s comment on the Russkaya liniya site (rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=45879) together with an otherwise inexplicable comment Tajuddin made to Interfax about building more mosques last year (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=38964) may provide an insight into how Moscow now defines “traditional Islam,” the kind officials say they favor.
In his interview, Silantyev suggested that Tajuddin’s latest moves in Moscow not only “destroy finally and completely” what he described as “the complete monopoly of the radicals” of Ravil Gainutdin’s Union of Muftis of Russia (SMR) and create a situation in which “the number of traditional Muslims in Moscow will increase.”
And not only did Silantyev stress that Tajuddin’s man in Moscow, Mufti Albir Krganov, has built “more than 40 mosques” in Chuvashia where he had been working up to now, but Tajuddin himself told the media that “in this year,” his Central MSD had “opened” more than 30 mosques across Russia.
Opening new mosques especially in the Russian capital is an extremely sensitive topic. Many Moscow residents oppose any new mosque – and at least some of them, it must be said, oppose the construction of new churches as well -- and most officials have been willing to follow their lead.
That makes the timing of Tajuddin’s remark intriguing because such a statement appears likely to spark more opposition to opening mosques in the capital and thus make Krganov’s and Tajuddin’s task more difficult, even though Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently promised to ensure that Moscow’s Muslims would get another mosque.
But considered from another perspective, Tajuddin’s boast together with Silantyev’s celebration of what the Ufa mufti’s moves in Moscow mean for “traditional Islam” make perfect sense, especially if one recalls Soviet-era discussions about Islam in the USSR and especially the divisions officials saw or imposed on the followers of that faith.
In the decades leading up to the collapse of the USSR, Soviet writers regularly divided Muslims into what they called “the mosque trend” and “the non-mosque trend.” The former consisted of the small number of officially sanctioned mullahs and MSDs who at Soviet insistence reduced Islam to a set of rituals conducted within the mosque.
The “non-mosque trend,” in contrast, included all Muslim practices from Sufism to fundamentalism that were opposed and persecuted by the state and that of necessity generally took place outside the mosque, thus earning this trend the label “underground” Islam in Western treatments of Soviet Muslims at that time.
That divide is at the source of the distinction post-Soviet Russian officials and commentators make between “traditional” Islam which both demonstrates loyalty to the state and cooperates with other “traditional” religions, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Jewish community, and the Buddhists.
Up to now, both officials and commentators like Silantyev have laid stress on loyalty and cooperation as the hallmarks of “traditional” Islam, but now, there appears to be a shift, one that focuses again on Islam as a set of rituals within the mosque as against those who operate outside the mosque and hence outside of official control.
Tajuddin, the last of the senior Soviet muftis, appears to be quite ready to accept that division and to place himself at the head of “the mosque trend” in Russian Islam, something that would give him and his Central MSD bureaucratic control and official approval even though it would drain much of the religious content of Islam away.
It seems clear that precisely such a bargain is what officials from Putin on down, experts like Silantyev, and not unimportantly the Russian Orthodox Church would like to see. But there are at least three reasons why this deal if that is what it is almost certainly won’t work in the way those who appear to be behind it hope.
First, what might be called “the non-mosque trend” in Russian Islam is far larger and more dynamic than its predecessors, and any attempt to control or suppress it will produce an explosion, something that even the application of massive force would be unlikely to be able to control.
Second, if Moscow and Tajuddin really hope to view traditional Islam as in effect “the mosque trend,” such an effort will call into question the entire MSD system, a governmental or quasi-governmental structure that has no basis in Islam. Indeed, Tajuddin’s “counter-attack” could presage its demise or at least make it increasingly irrelevant.
And third, such a deal creates problems not only for Muslims but also for Russian politicians who enter into such arrangements. Not only does it raise expectations that the state will be more forthcoming, but it also will generate anger among those who oppose helping Muslims or even helping religion in general.
Vienna, January 5 – Roman Silantyev, a specialist on Islam who has offended many of Russia’s Muslim leaders but who enjoys continuing support from the Moscow Patriarchate, says that the creation of a new Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) in the Russian capital subordinate to Mufti Talgat Tajuddin, the head of the Central MSD in Ufa, strengthens “traditional” Islam.
Silantyev’s comment on the Russkaya liniya site (rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=45879) together with an otherwise inexplicable comment Tajuddin made to Interfax about building more mosques last year (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=38964) may provide an insight into how Moscow now defines “traditional Islam,” the kind officials say they favor.
In his interview, Silantyev suggested that Tajuddin’s latest moves in Moscow not only “destroy finally and completely” what he described as “the complete monopoly of the radicals” of Ravil Gainutdin’s Union of Muftis of Russia (SMR) and create a situation in which “the number of traditional Muslims in Moscow will increase.”
And not only did Silantyev stress that Tajuddin’s man in Moscow, Mufti Albir Krganov, has built “more than 40 mosques” in Chuvashia where he had been working up to now, but Tajuddin himself told the media that “in this year,” his Central MSD had “opened” more than 30 mosques across Russia.
Opening new mosques especially in the Russian capital is an extremely sensitive topic. Many Moscow residents oppose any new mosque – and at least some of them, it must be said, oppose the construction of new churches as well -- and most officials have been willing to follow their lead.
That makes the timing of Tajuddin’s remark intriguing because such a statement appears likely to spark more opposition to opening mosques in the capital and thus make Krganov’s and Tajuddin’s task more difficult, even though Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently promised to ensure that Moscow’s Muslims would get another mosque.
But considered from another perspective, Tajuddin’s boast together with Silantyev’s celebration of what the Ufa mufti’s moves in Moscow mean for “traditional Islam” make perfect sense, especially if one recalls Soviet-era discussions about Islam in the USSR and especially the divisions officials saw or imposed on the followers of that faith.
In the decades leading up to the collapse of the USSR, Soviet writers regularly divided Muslims into what they called “the mosque trend” and “the non-mosque trend.” The former consisted of the small number of officially sanctioned mullahs and MSDs who at Soviet insistence reduced Islam to a set of rituals conducted within the mosque.
The “non-mosque trend,” in contrast, included all Muslim practices from Sufism to fundamentalism that were opposed and persecuted by the state and that of necessity generally took place outside the mosque, thus earning this trend the label “underground” Islam in Western treatments of Soviet Muslims at that time.
That divide is at the source of the distinction post-Soviet Russian officials and commentators make between “traditional” Islam which both demonstrates loyalty to the state and cooperates with other “traditional” religions, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Jewish community, and the Buddhists.
Up to now, both officials and commentators like Silantyev have laid stress on loyalty and cooperation as the hallmarks of “traditional” Islam, but now, there appears to be a shift, one that focuses again on Islam as a set of rituals within the mosque as against those who operate outside the mosque and hence outside of official control.
Tajuddin, the last of the senior Soviet muftis, appears to be quite ready to accept that division and to place himself at the head of “the mosque trend” in Russian Islam, something that would give him and his Central MSD bureaucratic control and official approval even though it would drain much of the religious content of Islam away.
It seems clear that precisely such a bargain is what officials from Putin on down, experts like Silantyev, and not unimportantly the Russian Orthodox Church would like to see. But there are at least three reasons why this deal if that is what it is almost certainly won’t work in the way those who appear to be behind it hope.
First, what might be called “the non-mosque trend” in Russian Islam is far larger and more dynamic than its predecessors, and any attempt to control or suppress it will produce an explosion, something that even the application of massive force would be unlikely to be able to control.
Second, if Moscow and Tajuddin really hope to view traditional Islam as in effect “the mosque trend,” such an effort will call into question the entire MSD system, a governmental or quasi-governmental structure that has no basis in Islam. Indeed, Tajuddin’s “counter-attack” could presage its demise or at least make it increasingly irrelevant.
And third, such a deal creates problems not only for Muslims but also for Russian politicians who enter into such arrangements. Not only does it raise expectations that the state will be more forthcoming, but it also will generate anger among those who oppose helping Muslims or even helping religion in general.
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