Paul Goble
Staunton, January 11 – The referendum on independence for Southern Sudan has prompted some Russians to complain that Moscow is more interested in the self-determination of people there than of Russians in the former Soviet republics, just one of the ways in which such issues anywhere in the world quickly acquire a Eurasian dimension. .
In a comment today, Modest Kolerov, the chief editor of the Regnum.ru news agency, complains that “the right of one of the peoples of Sudan for self-determination turns out to be more important for Russia than the right of the entire people of Transdniestria for independence” (www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1362872.html).
“Ever more often,” the nationalist editor continues, Russian diplomacy follows the West – in this case to the point of raising the level of “the representative of the mythical interests of Russia in Sudan to the level of a special representative of the president,” while Moscow continues to use ordinary diplomats for its contacts with Transdniestria.
“But the chief thing,” Kolerov continues, “is not in the external side of things but in the essence of the events that are taking place. Transdniestria has already conducted a referendum … and in Transdniestria already for 20 years there has been real statehood.” Russian is the state language, a third of its people are ethnic Russians, and 150,000 are Russian citizens.”
Despite that, the editor says, Moscow does not appear to consider this “a sufficient basis for its recognition, for the recognition of the right of its multi-national people to define its own fate. Why? Because Russia does not have a common border with Transdniestria,, as it does with Abkhazia and South Ossetia? Then Sudan for Russia almost is on the Moon.”
Or is the reason that “in the course of Romanian aggression in Transdniestria died ‘only’ a thousand people and not two million as in Sudan? [Or] because Sudan was not a unified state?” But if the latter, Kolerov continues, then it is worth talking about the lack of “a legitimate centralized power” in Moldova.
Or finally is it because “the West wants the dismemberment of Sudan” – even though it has refused to recognize the right of Transdniestria to establish its own national life?” But whatever the reason, “every falsehood must have a limit: to dismember Sudan and recognize its fragments … unites the West which dismembered Yugoslavia and Serbia and recognized Kosovo and Russia which recognized Abkhazia and South Osetia.”
“If after this does not follow the recognition by Russia of Transdniestria and if before this does not follow the recognition by Armenia of Nagorno Karabakh, then that will mean that for them only three factors have importance for the recognition of the inalienable rights of man: the sanction of the West, a location in Africa, and the murder at a minimum of two million people.”
A second Russian commentator, Sergey Minasyan, a senior scholar at the Moscow Institute of the Caucasus, focuses on the consequences of the Southern Sudan referendum for the future status of Karabakh, insisting that international recognition of the right of self-determination in this case will affect the South Caucasus (www.regnum.ru/news/1362951.html).
And a third Russian commentator, Aleksey Martynov, the director of the International Institute of New States, not only argues that “the referendum about the division of Sudan into north and south was something long ago decided” but that Sudan was blocked by Moscow from recognizing Abkhazia and South Osetia (www.regnum.ru/news/1362897.html).
According to Martynov, whose organization promotes the development of ties with newly emerged states, contacts between Sudan and the two breakaway republics in 2008 and 2009 “were crudely broken off by the Russian foreign ministry,” an action that he says “remains a mystery.”
These comments show the way in which people in one part of the world will seek to extrapolate from what is happening anywhere else and thus provide a cautionary note to those who invoke principles in one place when they do not want to have them invoked against themselves.
But having said that, it is important to recall that Kolerov and his news agency have been sharply criticized by Russian officials for overstepping what the officials see as legitimate journalistic boundaries, criticism that has attracted more attention to the editor and his site but that means these latest remarks may draw fire as well.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Window on Eurasia: ‘Matryoshka Modernization’ Degrading Russia and Destroying the State, Gontmakher Warns
Paul Goble
Staunton, January 10 – Moscow’s effort be to carry out a “Matryoshka modernization,” where “’the golden million’” will peacefully co-exist with the impoverished and excluded remainder of the population is leading to the degradation of Russia and a deepening gulf between the two groups, Yevgeny Gontmakher warns.
Indeed, the senior scholar at the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Development says, “the degradation of the state has reached such a state that the political elite being prisoner of the mirage of ‘the power vertical’ and ‘administered democracy’ have lost control over the processes that are taking place in the country” (echo.msk.ru/blog/gontmaher/740083-echo/).
The turn of the year, the frequent Moscow commentator says, has forced ever more people to ask “what is to be done” to prevent the country from sliding toward “a catastrophe” in which there will be a cledar division within society of “’ours’” and “’not ours’ and the former will use force to suppress the latter on an even broader scale than in Belarus.
In fact, the situation is “much worse,” he continues. “The ‘not ours’ are simply excluding themselves from social life through external and internal emigration” as well as being drowned out by propaganda. And the result of this “national catastrophe” is “irreversible degradation and the marginalization of a critically large portion of the people.”
Having restated the arguments he made in a “Vedomosti” article last month, Gontmakher suggests that the powers that be interested only in their own enrichment nonetheless have to be concerned about maintaining stability or there will not be any foreign investment or foreign workers on which and on whom the powers depend.
Consequently, those in power have to use a combination of means, including both spectacles and repression, to keep the majority in line, although “of course,” they can never say this explicitly. Instead, the members of “the golden million” say the right things but do not act upon them.
“The cause of this,” Gontmakher continues, “is not in evil intent but in the lack of correspondence between the qualities of the political elite that we have and the scope of modernization that Russia really needs,” one that would work to the benefit of the many rather than only the few.
But there is a bigger problem, one that prompts the question: “is it possible to realize in Russia the model of matryoshka modernization,” a modernization in which “the golden million” lives peacefully side by side with “all the rest of the population?” The answer of course is “no,” especially given the extent of the degradation of the state that has already occurred.
According to the Moscow commentator, “power in the localities has past to regional princelings and ‘authorities’ (which frequently are one and the same) who have taken control of the miitia and other law enforcement organs.” Such people erect “Potemkin villages” when the Moscow bosses appear but otherwise do as they like.
No small group of people can take control of this situation, Gontmakher argues. “More than that, “any attempt to interfere in the course of [these] events” by the current powers that be alone could, because of the reaction it would generate, “convert this political elite into a group of refugees from their own country.”
But despite that apocalyptic language, which clearly reflects both his own sense of the situation in the country and his frustration with the way Moscow is acting, Gontmakher says he wants to proposal “five columns” of people who, if they could come together could take upon themselves the difficult but not insoluble task of “the salvation of the country.”
These include street protests, the coming together of cultural figures, the organized and unregistered democratic opposition, the expert community “which has not lost its independence,”
and finally “the most massive naturally fifth column which speaking to the point must take on itself the enormous burden of the salvation of Russia.”
“These are millions of concerned people from all social strata,” Gontmakher says, “students, entrepreneurs, doctors, teachers, officers, and workers, the efforts of which in their work places, in their cities and settlements as a result must break the threatening tendencies of degradation and collapse.”
Only if these “columns” can come together in a single stream, the Moscow analyst argues, will there be “a chance for the salvation of Russiaand the beginning of its breakout into the circle of civilized countries.” His implication clearly is that if they don’t, the future for Russia will be very bleak indeed.
Gontmakher’s argument is likely to strike some among the powers that be as a call for a revolution. That is probably an overreading of his obviously deeply-felt words. But it is an indication of the level of Russia’s problems now that anyone as thoughtful as Gontmakher is talking not about managing problems but about trying to find a way to save the country.
Staunton, January 10 – Moscow’s effort be to carry out a “Matryoshka modernization,” where “’the golden million’” will peacefully co-exist with the impoverished and excluded remainder of the population is leading to the degradation of Russia and a deepening gulf between the two groups, Yevgeny Gontmakher warns.
Indeed, the senior scholar at the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Development says, “the degradation of the state has reached such a state that the political elite being prisoner of the mirage of ‘the power vertical’ and ‘administered democracy’ have lost control over the processes that are taking place in the country” (echo.msk.ru/blog/gontmaher/740083-echo/).
The turn of the year, the frequent Moscow commentator says, has forced ever more people to ask “what is to be done” to prevent the country from sliding toward “a catastrophe” in which there will be a cledar division within society of “’ours’” and “’not ours’ and the former will use force to suppress the latter on an even broader scale than in Belarus.
In fact, the situation is “much worse,” he continues. “The ‘not ours’ are simply excluding themselves from social life through external and internal emigration” as well as being drowned out by propaganda. And the result of this “national catastrophe” is “irreversible degradation and the marginalization of a critically large portion of the people.”
Having restated the arguments he made in a “Vedomosti” article last month, Gontmakher suggests that the powers that be interested only in their own enrichment nonetheless have to be concerned about maintaining stability or there will not be any foreign investment or foreign workers on which and on whom the powers depend.
Consequently, those in power have to use a combination of means, including both spectacles and repression, to keep the majority in line, although “of course,” they can never say this explicitly. Instead, the members of “the golden million” say the right things but do not act upon them.
“The cause of this,” Gontmakher continues, “is not in evil intent but in the lack of correspondence between the qualities of the political elite that we have and the scope of modernization that Russia really needs,” one that would work to the benefit of the many rather than only the few.
But there is a bigger problem, one that prompts the question: “is it possible to realize in Russia the model of matryoshka modernization,” a modernization in which “the golden million” lives peacefully side by side with “all the rest of the population?” The answer of course is “no,” especially given the extent of the degradation of the state that has already occurred.
According to the Moscow commentator, “power in the localities has past to regional princelings and ‘authorities’ (which frequently are one and the same) who have taken control of the miitia and other law enforcement organs.” Such people erect “Potemkin villages” when the Moscow bosses appear but otherwise do as they like.
No small group of people can take control of this situation, Gontmakher argues. “More than that, “any attempt to interfere in the course of [these] events” by the current powers that be alone could, because of the reaction it would generate, “convert this political elite into a group of refugees from their own country.”
But despite that apocalyptic language, which clearly reflects both his own sense of the situation in the country and his frustration with the way Moscow is acting, Gontmakher says he wants to proposal “five columns” of people who, if they could come together could take upon themselves the difficult but not insoluble task of “the salvation of the country.”
These include street protests, the coming together of cultural figures, the organized and unregistered democratic opposition, the expert community “which has not lost its independence,”
and finally “the most massive naturally fifth column which speaking to the point must take on itself the enormous burden of the salvation of Russia.”
“These are millions of concerned people from all social strata,” Gontmakher says, “students, entrepreneurs, doctors, teachers, officers, and workers, the efforts of which in their work places, in their cities and settlements as a result must break the threatening tendencies of degradation and collapse.”
Only if these “columns” can come together in a single stream, the Moscow analyst argues, will there be “a chance for the salvation of Russiaand the beginning of its breakout into the circle of civilized countries.” His implication clearly is that if they don’t, the future for Russia will be very bleak indeed.
Gontmakher’s argument is likely to strike some among the powers that be as a call for a revolution. That is probably an overreading of his obviously deeply-felt words. But it is an indication of the level of Russia’s problems now that anyone as thoughtful as Gontmakher is talking not about managing problems but about trying to find a way to save the country.
Window on Eurasia: Middle Aged Faithful Increasingly Dominate Russia’s Islamic Communities
Paul Goble
Staunton, January 10 – In Soviet times, elderly believers formed the public face of Islam. Then in the 1990s, they were overshadowed in many places and many minds by the influx of the very young. But today, 20 years after the end of the USSR, a leading Muslim commentator says, middle aged believers are increasingly predominant within the Islamic community of Russia.
That change reflects the maturation of the Muslim community there as a whole, Abdulla Rinat Mukhametov, the deputy chief editor of Islam.ru, the largest Muslim portal in the Russian Federation, both reflects the maturation of the umma in Russia and entails serious consequences for its future development (www.islam.ru/pressclub/analitika/wtodelate/).
Russia’s Muslim community, Mukhametov says, “is developing whether anyone wants to think about this or not,” but its obvious “quantitative” growth will not become “qualitative” until there is greater understanding of what is taking place and new and effective institutions are put in place.
“The process of the Islamic awakening in Russia is slowly but truly gathering force. It is already impossible to stop it.” Indeed, the portal editor says, “it appears that the point of non-return has already been passed” and a kind of “social chain reaction” is taking place and making the Islamic “way of life” a “concrete social model, at times positive and attractive.”
“In the sea of chaos, the monetarization of human relations, the commercialization of everyone and everything, the atomization of society, economic difficulties, and the pressure of mass culture, an ever larger number of people find for themselves in this [Islamic] way of life a way out and salvation.”
Indeed, he says, “people are turning to Islam when they see that its observance is not just the realm of marginals … but a way of life which guarantees stability, spiritual and physical comfort, and the chance to educate one’s children to respect their parents and moral and ethnic norms.”
According to Mukhametov, this represents a major shift from the first post-Soviet decade when religions of all kinds attracted people who were “particularly inclined to the mystical and ascetic model of religiosity.” Now, people are turning to Islam because it is “a way of life rather than a means of departing from life.”
This is, “so to speak, practical religiosity,” and into mosques are coming ever more often people of middle age” with responsible jobs, high pay and status and family responsibilities, a shift in the composition of the umma that the Islam.ru editor suggests seems to him to be “very important.”
Unlike young people who may be drawn to the mosque because of youthful enthusiasms and the elderly who may see it as a way station for the withdrawal from life, such middle-aged people with their responsibilities, Mukhametov says, “introduce a health conservatism and pragmatism into the umma,” thus helping it to overcome reaction and revolution.
And as more such people become active in the faith, he continues, others like them follow, allowing for what he calls “the velvet Islamization” of traditionally Muslim societies as well as others. That is what has taken place in the Middle Volga already, and it is occurring elsewhere as well.
In addition to discussing this generational change, Mukhametov also talks about the role of the Internet in changing the Russian umma, the impact of immigration from Central Asia on Russia’s faithful, and the challenges ahead for the quasi-state Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs) and the state itself.
Because of the Internet, he says, Russia’s Muslims are far less insular than they were. Instead, those who go online regularly “feel themselves part of the great organism of the global umma.” That means they do not practice “traditional Soviet Islam” and are not like those who did so in the past.
Migration from Central Asia and the Caucasus is changing Russia, and no one will be able to stop that process, “even if there were to be constructed a wall on the border with Kazakhstan like the one the US is building along its border with Mexico.” And the new arrivals are changing the Islamic community inside Russia.
According to various projections,” he says, “the number of Muslims will form from a quarter to a third of the population of the country in the coming two or three decades,” and this part of the population will be healthier because it will drink less and have more children than the current Russian residents.
“The experience in the West has shown that Muslim immigrants do not assimilate in any final way. In the extreme case, in two or three generations there is an outburst of processes of return to their earlier identity and its awakening, although less ethnic than religious” in most cases. “There is no reason to suppose that the situation will be different with us.”
Finally, Mukhametov focuses on the problems of Muslim administrations and the state. The current MSDs have not been able to deal with the problems of the last two decades, and “there are not many reasons to think that they will cope with the still more serious challenges of the Islamic awakening and migration.”
If the MSDs don’t modernize, they will be threatened with marginalization, something that is already happening to the detriment of the umma which needs leadership and the Russian state which needs to “create mechanisms of including the social energy” of the Muslims into a constructive path for the society as a whole.
Staunton, January 10 – In Soviet times, elderly believers formed the public face of Islam. Then in the 1990s, they were overshadowed in many places and many minds by the influx of the very young. But today, 20 years after the end of the USSR, a leading Muslim commentator says, middle aged believers are increasingly predominant within the Islamic community of Russia.
That change reflects the maturation of the Muslim community there as a whole, Abdulla Rinat Mukhametov, the deputy chief editor of Islam.ru, the largest Muslim portal in the Russian Federation, both reflects the maturation of the umma in Russia and entails serious consequences for its future development (www.islam.ru/pressclub/analitika/wtodelate/).
Russia’s Muslim community, Mukhametov says, “is developing whether anyone wants to think about this or not,” but its obvious “quantitative” growth will not become “qualitative” until there is greater understanding of what is taking place and new and effective institutions are put in place.
“The process of the Islamic awakening in Russia is slowly but truly gathering force. It is already impossible to stop it.” Indeed, the portal editor says, “it appears that the point of non-return has already been passed” and a kind of “social chain reaction” is taking place and making the Islamic “way of life” a “concrete social model, at times positive and attractive.”
“In the sea of chaos, the monetarization of human relations, the commercialization of everyone and everything, the atomization of society, economic difficulties, and the pressure of mass culture, an ever larger number of people find for themselves in this [Islamic] way of life a way out and salvation.”
Indeed, he says, “people are turning to Islam when they see that its observance is not just the realm of marginals … but a way of life which guarantees stability, spiritual and physical comfort, and the chance to educate one’s children to respect their parents and moral and ethnic norms.”
According to Mukhametov, this represents a major shift from the first post-Soviet decade when religions of all kinds attracted people who were “particularly inclined to the mystical and ascetic model of religiosity.” Now, people are turning to Islam because it is “a way of life rather than a means of departing from life.”
This is, “so to speak, practical religiosity,” and into mosques are coming ever more often people of middle age” with responsible jobs, high pay and status and family responsibilities, a shift in the composition of the umma that the Islam.ru editor suggests seems to him to be “very important.”
Unlike young people who may be drawn to the mosque because of youthful enthusiasms and the elderly who may see it as a way station for the withdrawal from life, such middle-aged people with their responsibilities, Mukhametov says, “introduce a health conservatism and pragmatism into the umma,” thus helping it to overcome reaction and revolution.
And as more such people become active in the faith, he continues, others like them follow, allowing for what he calls “the velvet Islamization” of traditionally Muslim societies as well as others. That is what has taken place in the Middle Volga already, and it is occurring elsewhere as well.
In addition to discussing this generational change, Mukhametov also talks about the role of the Internet in changing the Russian umma, the impact of immigration from Central Asia on Russia’s faithful, and the challenges ahead for the quasi-state Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs) and the state itself.
Because of the Internet, he says, Russia’s Muslims are far less insular than they were. Instead, those who go online regularly “feel themselves part of the great organism of the global umma.” That means they do not practice “traditional Soviet Islam” and are not like those who did so in the past.
Migration from Central Asia and the Caucasus is changing Russia, and no one will be able to stop that process, “even if there were to be constructed a wall on the border with Kazakhstan like the one the US is building along its border with Mexico.” And the new arrivals are changing the Islamic community inside Russia.
According to various projections,” he says, “the number of Muslims will form from a quarter to a third of the population of the country in the coming two or three decades,” and this part of the population will be healthier because it will drink less and have more children than the current Russian residents.
“The experience in the West has shown that Muslim immigrants do not assimilate in any final way. In the extreme case, in two or three generations there is an outburst of processes of return to their earlier identity and its awakening, although less ethnic than religious” in most cases. “There is no reason to suppose that the situation will be different with us.”
Finally, Mukhametov focuses on the problems of Muslim administrations and the state. The current MSDs have not been able to deal with the problems of the last two decades, and “there are not many reasons to think that they will cope with the still more serious challenges of the Islamic awakening and migration.”
If the MSDs don’t modernize, they will be threatened with marginalization, something that is already happening to the detriment of the umma which needs leadership and the Russian state which needs to “create mechanisms of including the social energy” of the Muslims into a constructive path for the society as a whole.
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