Paul Goble
Staunton, January 8 – The Soviet Union disintegrated remarkably peacefully largely because the Russian nation and its leaders did not behave in the way that the Serbs and their leaders did in the former Yugoslavia, despite the fears of many at the time that what took place in Yugoslavia would presage what would occur in the USSR.
But now, given the intensification of Russian nationalism and the willingness of some Russian leaders to play to that, a “Yugoslav variant” could threaten a disintegrating Russian Federation, the mere prospect of which should cause everyone to stop and think where their actions and statements may lead, according to an activist from the North Caucasus.
In an article on the SKNews.ru portal, Denga Khalidov, vice president of the Russian Congress of Peoples of the Caucasus and of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, argues that the dangerous of such a course are so great that Russians and non-Russians concerned about their country must come together (www.sknews.ru/main/44837-rossiya-yugoslavskij-variant.html).
Anger about the failure of officials to do their job in investigating a high-profile murder, Khalidov says, “was used by extremists from certain nationalist (youth) movements for igniting anti-Caucasus hysteria and disorders” in Moscow’s Manezh Square last month, as a result of which “dozens of innocent people of ‘non-Slavic nationality’ suffered.”
“The approaches to the resolution of social and nationality problems of Russia” these ideologues of the nationalist movement advocate represent, he says, “a new edition of ethnic racism,” something those who are “far from being the friends of Russia” are quite prepared to exploit.
The actual reasons for the increase in mass unhappiness in Russia, however, are “much deeper,” and include both Moscow’s “new colonial” approach and potentially fatal policies on the part of the elite “literally in all spheres of life:” ethnic, social-economic, culture and media, and national security.”
Indeed, Khalidov continues, it is fair to say that “all signs of a coming Russian ‘bunt’ are present … the result of a conscious and unconscious reaction to this policy.” And that is all the more so because some among the powers that be and expert community want to “channel Russian protest (and that of other indigenous peoples of Russia) in the wrong direction.”
That is they want to push Russian nationalists into “anti-Caucasus and anti-immigrant pogroms as well as in an anti-Islamic direction.” And it is precisely here, the Caucasus activist and analyst says where “the xenophobic attitudes ‘from below’ receive encouragement ‘from above.’”
“Such “controlled conflicts and chaos,” he suggests, “is the best ‘basis’ for continuing the most successful business in the entire history of humanity, when giant property (of billions of US dollars) remain in the hands of an extremely small group of people.” And this will be even more seirous if there is “a new stage of broad privatization.”
In this way, he argues, “the scenario of ‘Yugoslavia-II is being prepared for Russia” by its own capitalist allies who are counting on NATO and the West to keep them in power but who are pursuing a policy which may lead to “the possible occupation” of Russia and its “complete predictable division of the country into ‘zones of influence.’”
Those sparking ethnic and religious conflicts in Russia at the present time, by setting one group against another, Khalidov says, are “the new Azefs and Father Gapons,” people “who cannot guess about the strategic consequence of their ‘heroic’ efforts for the salvation of Russians and Russia as a whole.”
In order to prevent that, Khalidov says, Russian and Caucasus “national patriotic movements must immediately begin a dialogue and develop common principles and approaches to the resolution of growing problems in the interests of the country and of the peoples living in it,” including conflict prevention, joint appeals and joint public actions.
The first such meeting took place on December 14 at a roundtable organized by the editors of “Komsomolskaya Pravda.” But that must be only the beginning, he says, and the two groups, with a common commitment to Russia, can block the efforts of those who want to use ethnic conflicts against the country.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Church Attendance at Christmas Undercuts Moscow Patriarchate’s Claims on Orthodox Nature of Russian People
Paul Goble
Staunton, January 8 – Fewer than two percent of Russian citizens attended Orthodox Christmas church celebrations this year, a number that calls into question not only the claims of the Moscow Patriarchate that Russian population is overwhelmingly Orthodox but also the special relationship it has with the state and the state’s spending to promote Orthodoxy.
As Svetlana Solodovnik noted in yesterday’s “Yezhednevny zhurnal,” perhaps no other public organization has benefited as much from the tandem as the Russian Orthodox Church which has positioned itself as the moral arbiter of the majority and extracted both the return of property and enormous state subsidies (ej.ru/?a=note&id=10721).
Most of that state deference reflects the personal convictions of the leaders, especially Dmitry Medvedev and his wife, and their views about the role of Orthodoxy in the life of Russia past, present and future. But at least some of it reflects the acceptance by the secular authorities of the Patriarchate’s claims concerning the number of its followers.
(That second factor seems to be particularly important now given the growing evidence of religious fervor of the country’s Muslims as reflected in the massive celebration of Islamic holidays not only in traditional Muslim areas but particularly in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other “traditionally” Russian cities.)
Because of the impact both of Soviet anti-religious policies in the past and of the forces of secularization then and now, far fewer people are believers and active practitioners of any religion than most religious leaders regularly claim. But no denomination in Russia has more consistently overstated both the number and share of its followers.
Orthodox hierarchs routinely say that 65 to 85 percent of Russian Federation residents are Orthodox Christians, a figure that reflects their counting as believers almost all those who are members of historically Orthodox nationalities such as the Russians. In brief, they count as believers all “ethnic Orthodox” even as they dismiss equivalent claims about “ethnic Muslims.”
Obviously, precision in this question is difficult to achieve. On the one hand, declarations of faith are very different than actual belief and practice in Russia as everywhere else. And on the other, the sources of information about such matters vary widely, with religious leaders claiming more and others reporting fewer faithful.
But despite that, many in Russia attend to the numbers of people who take part in religious services especially on holidays as an important indicator. And this Christmas, which took place yesterday according to the Eastern calendar, the numbers of Russian Orthodox were both low and if anything smaller than in earlier years.
According to interior ministry sources, approximately 2.5 million people took part in the celebration of Orthodox Christmas this year, attending services in approximately 8500 churches. The attendees constitute fewer than two percent of the country’s population, and the number of Orthodox churches conducting Christmas services about two-thirds of all Orthodox churches.
In reporting these numbers, the Siberian news agency Babr.ru said that they once again “demonstrate the falsehoods of the demagogy of the Russian Orthodox church about the traditional Orthodox essence of the Russian people” and raise questions about state support for the Orthodox Church (news.babr.ru/?IDE=90878).
“It is curious,” the news service said, “that despite the strongest propaganda of Orthodoxy, including in the schools, the number of convinced believers over the last five years has not changed” and that the Patriarchate continues to “exaggerate the real figure by a factor of four to five.”
But it is not just in church attendance on a high holy day that the Russian Orthodox Church appears to be less widely supported than its leaders claim. This week, Archbishop Ioann of Belgorod, one of the most Orthodox places, released figures showing sharp declines in the number of practicing Orthodox there (www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=news&id=81743).
Not only have the number of divorces now risen to equal the number of marriages, but the share of people marrying in the church has fallen by two-thirds over the last several years, from 30 percent to only nine percent, the archbishop said, statistics that he acknowledged showed that the standing of Orthodoxy as a “fashion” among the population has changed.
But however that may be, the Russian state is pushing ahead with programs to push the cause of Russian Orthodoxy both at home and abroad. In the waning days of 2010, the country’s ministry of culture announced without much notice that it is spending “almost six million US dollars” on the popularization of Orthodoxy (http://www.marker.ru/news/3191).
Staunton, January 8 – Fewer than two percent of Russian citizens attended Orthodox Christmas church celebrations this year, a number that calls into question not only the claims of the Moscow Patriarchate that Russian population is overwhelmingly Orthodox but also the special relationship it has with the state and the state’s spending to promote Orthodoxy.
As Svetlana Solodovnik noted in yesterday’s “Yezhednevny zhurnal,” perhaps no other public organization has benefited as much from the tandem as the Russian Orthodox Church which has positioned itself as the moral arbiter of the majority and extracted both the return of property and enormous state subsidies (ej.ru/?a=note&id=10721).
Most of that state deference reflects the personal convictions of the leaders, especially Dmitry Medvedev and his wife, and their views about the role of Orthodoxy in the life of Russia past, present and future. But at least some of it reflects the acceptance by the secular authorities of the Patriarchate’s claims concerning the number of its followers.
(That second factor seems to be particularly important now given the growing evidence of religious fervor of the country’s Muslims as reflected in the massive celebration of Islamic holidays not only in traditional Muslim areas but particularly in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other “traditionally” Russian cities.)
Because of the impact both of Soviet anti-religious policies in the past and of the forces of secularization then and now, far fewer people are believers and active practitioners of any religion than most religious leaders regularly claim. But no denomination in Russia has more consistently overstated both the number and share of its followers.
Orthodox hierarchs routinely say that 65 to 85 percent of Russian Federation residents are Orthodox Christians, a figure that reflects their counting as believers almost all those who are members of historically Orthodox nationalities such as the Russians. In brief, they count as believers all “ethnic Orthodox” even as they dismiss equivalent claims about “ethnic Muslims.”
Obviously, precision in this question is difficult to achieve. On the one hand, declarations of faith are very different than actual belief and practice in Russia as everywhere else. And on the other, the sources of information about such matters vary widely, with religious leaders claiming more and others reporting fewer faithful.
But despite that, many in Russia attend to the numbers of people who take part in religious services especially on holidays as an important indicator. And this Christmas, which took place yesterday according to the Eastern calendar, the numbers of Russian Orthodox were both low and if anything smaller than in earlier years.
According to interior ministry sources, approximately 2.5 million people took part in the celebration of Orthodox Christmas this year, attending services in approximately 8500 churches. The attendees constitute fewer than two percent of the country’s population, and the number of Orthodox churches conducting Christmas services about two-thirds of all Orthodox churches.
In reporting these numbers, the Siberian news agency Babr.ru said that they once again “demonstrate the falsehoods of the demagogy of the Russian Orthodox church about the traditional Orthodox essence of the Russian people” and raise questions about state support for the Orthodox Church (news.babr.ru/?IDE=90878).
“It is curious,” the news service said, “that despite the strongest propaganda of Orthodoxy, including in the schools, the number of convinced believers over the last five years has not changed” and that the Patriarchate continues to “exaggerate the real figure by a factor of four to five.”
But it is not just in church attendance on a high holy day that the Russian Orthodox Church appears to be less widely supported than its leaders claim. This week, Archbishop Ioann of Belgorod, one of the most Orthodox places, released figures showing sharp declines in the number of practicing Orthodox there (www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=news&id=81743).
Not only have the number of divorces now risen to equal the number of marriages, but the share of people marrying in the church has fallen by two-thirds over the last several years, from 30 percent to only nine percent, the archbishop said, statistics that he acknowledged showed that the standing of Orthodoxy as a “fashion” among the population has changed.
But however that may be, the Russian state is pushing ahead with programs to push the cause of Russian Orthodoxy both at home and abroad. In the waning days of 2010, the country’s ministry of culture announced without much notice that it is spending “almost six million US dollars” on the popularization of Orthodoxy (http://www.marker.ru/news/3191).
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