Paul Goble
Vienna, January 13 – In advance of the 20th anniversary of the Soviet massacre of Lithuanians today, the Russian embassy in Vilnius expressed its “condolences to all the victims and their relatives” but insisted that the Russian Federation is not responsible for “alleged Soviet atrocities” in Lithuania in January 1991.
Instead, the Russian embassy said, Lithuania should “leave history lessons to the historians” because “any other approach would lead us to excessive politicizing, the escalation of tensions and thus hamper Russian-Lithuanian dialogue,” a statement that like so many Russian ones in the past seeks to have it both ways (en.rian.ru/world/20110112/162117844.html).
And while many in Russia and the West are likely to agree with that argument, the reality is that Moscow is not prepared to “leave history lessons to the historians” but rather continues to insist that it has the right to impose its own version of events on everyone else and to attack suggestions by others that there may be more accurate accounts.
On the one hand, in this case as in so many others, the post-Soviet Russian authorities routinely insist that their country is within its rights to take credit for anything Soviet they want to take credit for, such as the role of the USSR in the defeat of Hitler during World War II and the Soviet space program.
But on the other, they also continue to argue that they should not be held accountable for anything Soviet that they do not want to be and that they are the sole judge of what those things are, a position many in the West are reluctant to challenge or increasingly to support challenges to that notion by others.
That reinforces the danger that both Russians and others are slipping into a kind of history in the passive voice regarding Soviet actions, a history in which “mistakes were made” but no one is responsible and one which encourages those who supported such actions to take them again and denies their victims closure and everyone else the lessons of the past.
On this, the last “round” anniversary of these events when almost all the principal players are still alive, there are indeed many unanswered questions about what happened in January 1991 in the Lithuanian capital, but precisely because of that, it is important to remember both what happened and who has done what to reveal or conceal that past.
And that is especially important because January 13, 1991, was truly a day “the universe changed,” a day when it became obvious to almost everyone that Moscow had lost any chance of holding on to the three occupied Baltic countries or even the 12 union republics of the USSR unless it returned to the kind of Stalinist brutality few mercifully had any stomach for.
At the start of 1991, three events converged out of which the Vilnius tragedy came: the Baltic drive for independence was not only intensifying but becoming a model for other nations controlled from Moscow, the world was focused on preparations to expel Saddam Hussein from Iraq, and Mikhail Gorbachev, after a period of liberalization, was moving to the right.
One should remember that only two months earlier, Eduard Shevardnadze resigned as Gorbachev’s foreign minister warning that a dictatorship was coming, although he did not specify whether this was what Gorbachev personally wanted or whether Gorbachev was being forced in that direction by others.
However that may be, on January 6, Gorbachev ordered the introduction of Soviet forces into Lithuania and five other republics ostensibly to enforce the Soviet military draft but in fact as a show of force to crush the national movements there. On January 8th, the 76th Airborne Division based in Pskov were flown into Lithuania.
On the night of January 13th, Soviet forces moved to capture the television tower and other communications facilities. Lithuanians came out in large numbers, and at the TV tower, the paratroopers fired into the crowd, killing fourteen people outright and wounding directly or indirectly 600 other Lithuanians.
Lithuanian courts have attempted to bring those immediately responsible to justice. In 1999, they tried and convicted six former Soviet soldiers for their involvement in the January 1991 crimes. But Lithuania has not been able to try 23 others because, prosecutors say, “all the suspects have taken refuge in Russia and Belarus and these countries refuse to extradite them.”
The Soviet actions in Vilnius sparked popular outrage around the world, with large demonstrations in most world capitals, even though most Western governments were restrained because they very much hoped to keep Moscow within the coalition against Saddam Hussein, a coalition that some American officials represented the true end of the Cold War.
But there was another event on January 13th in the Baltic states that very much deserves to be remembered. On that day, Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Republic, flew to Tallinn in order to sign agreements with the representatives of the three Baltic states recognizing their independence.
In the event, the Russian leader was able to sign these accords with only two of the three because the Lithuanian representatives were unable to come from Vilnius. But while many forget, it is these documents which Estonia and Latvia view as major steps toward the recovery of their de facto independence.
Yeltsin, however, did more than that. He issued a call, broadcast into the Soviet Union first by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty and then other outlets, to Russian officers and men not to obey illegal orders to fire at unarmed civilians and freely elected governments as Soviet forces had just done in the Lithuanian capital.
From Moscow’s perspective, that was an act of sedition, and many believed that Yeltsin had just signed his own death warrant. In order that he would not be lost in an airplane “accident” on his way back to the Russian capital, the senior Soviet commander in Estonia provided him with a car and driver to take Yeltsin by land back to Leningrad/St. Petersburg.
That commander was Major General Dzhokhar Dudayev, who later served as president of Chechnya and against whom Yeltsin, in his capacity as the first president of the newly independent Russian Federation, launched an unsuccessful war but a successful assassination attempt.
The history of January 13, 1991, is thus complicated. But that is all the more reason for encouraging the broadest possible discussion of it now rather than dismissing it as something of only academic interest as the successors to the authors of the tragedy in Vilnius are currently trying to do.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Russia’s Muslims Increasingly Intellectually Active, Commentator Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 13 – A decade ago, Russia’s Muslim community published few works by its own members, but now, over half of all the books issued by Muslim publishing houses in that country are the work of members of the Russian umma, a trend that calls attention to the many important developments in that community over the last decade.
Among the most important and related to the increase in the number of domestically authored Muslims books, Akhmad Makarov says in a survey of developments in Russia’s Muslim community in the first decade of the 21st century is a general rise in “the intellectual level of Russian Muslims (www.islamrf.ru/news/analytics/point-of-view/14708/).
“If at the start of the 1990s, the words ‘observant Muslim’ and ‘man with a higher education’ were considered to be mutually exclusive, then by the end of the last decade, [people with advanced degrees] praying in Russian mosques have become almost a commonplace,” Makarov says.
This “new actor in the Muslim umma,” he says, is “the professional intelligentsia which as a role defines the mainstream development of society, its discourse and its imagery.” Today, “despite the fact that [this group] does not yet play a leading role in the Muslim community of Russia, the very presence of this stratum dictates marked qualitative changes.”
One of these is a change in language. In Soviet times, Tatar, Kumyk and to a lesser extent Arabic were the languages of Soviet Muslims, but now, almost everywhere, the language of homilies and publications is in Russian, and Russian translations of the Koran are widely used by the faithful.
Another related change concerns where the umma’s intellectual life is centered. A hundred years ago, it was located in places like Sterlibashevo, Kargaly, Orenbug, and Zakazanya, but now those places have yielded to major Russian cities like Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, as well as other locations where there were no Muslims at all until a few decades ago.
Over the past decade, no new Islamic political movements were launched, Makarov notes, and the three pre-existing super-Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs) – the Central MSD, the Union of Muftis of Russia, and the North Caucasus MSD – retained their positions, and almost all new MSDs formed subordinating themselves to one or another of them.
With the end of the war in Chechnya, that republic has become “a model of the greatest use of Islam as a political resource” among the republics of the Russian Federation.” Tatarstan is not far behind in that regard, and “the positioning of Tatarstan and Chechnya as display windows of Russia Islam is actively being used by Russia’s federal leadership.”
Over the past decade, Makarov continues, there has been “an uninterrupted growth in the number of Muslims” in the Russian Federation. That growth reflects three things: natural growth (with Muslim nations having higher birthrates than death rates), immigration (which has come almost exclusively from Muslim countries), and growth in religious consciousness.
“All Muslim ethnic groups of [Russia],” Makarov notes, continue to experience “natural increases … In some it is more, in others less but in principle this is a general phenomenon. As it happens, this growth does not depend on religiosity among North Caucasus and Central Asian groups, but it is directly related to levels of religiosity among the Tatars and Bashkirs.
The second source of growth, from immigration, reflects the fact that most migrant workers coming into the Russian Federation now are Muslims from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. These arrivals, Makarov notes, “are playing an ever greater role in the life of the Muslim community of Russia.”
And the third source of growth, the intensification of belief and an interest in learning more about the faith, is “a phenomenon characteristic not only for the Muslims of Russia but also for other confessions.” It is an “all-Russian” development, Makarov argues and not “specific to [that country’s] Muslims.”
During the last decade, he continues, “a large part” of the Muslim media emerged. If in the1990s, Muslims tried to break into the mainstream press, then by its end, he says, “it was understood that that path had not prospects.” And concomitantly, there began to appear “new, professional” Muslim news outlets, on the Internet and also journals and newspapers.
Makarov notes that there has been “a very interesting” change in the area of book publishing. In the 1990s, there were few books published and “practically all” of them were translations. Now, “at a minimum, half of the publications reflect original texts” written by Muslims from within the Russian umma itself.
That change promises new intellectual breakthroughs in the future, Makarov says, a necessity given that the umma in Russia has become “more organized, more professional and has grown quantitatively and qualitatively,” trends that he suggests will continue and require ever new approaches to many issues facing the community.
Vienna, January 13 – A decade ago, Russia’s Muslim community published few works by its own members, but now, over half of all the books issued by Muslim publishing houses in that country are the work of members of the Russian umma, a trend that calls attention to the many important developments in that community over the last decade.
Among the most important and related to the increase in the number of domestically authored Muslims books, Akhmad Makarov says in a survey of developments in Russia’s Muslim community in the first decade of the 21st century is a general rise in “the intellectual level of Russian Muslims (www.islamrf.ru/news/analytics/point-of-view/14708/).
“If at the start of the 1990s, the words ‘observant Muslim’ and ‘man with a higher education’ were considered to be mutually exclusive, then by the end of the last decade, [people with advanced degrees] praying in Russian mosques have become almost a commonplace,” Makarov says.
This “new actor in the Muslim umma,” he says, is “the professional intelligentsia which as a role defines the mainstream development of society, its discourse and its imagery.” Today, “despite the fact that [this group] does not yet play a leading role in the Muslim community of Russia, the very presence of this stratum dictates marked qualitative changes.”
One of these is a change in language. In Soviet times, Tatar, Kumyk and to a lesser extent Arabic were the languages of Soviet Muslims, but now, almost everywhere, the language of homilies and publications is in Russian, and Russian translations of the Koran are widely used by the faithful.
Another related change concerns where the umma’s intellectual life is centered. A hundred years ago, it was located in places like Sterlibashevo, Kargaly, Orenbug, and Zakazanya, but now those places have yielded to major Russian cities like Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, as well as other locations where there were no Muslims at all until a few decades ago.
Over the past decade, no new Islamic political movements were launched, Makarov notes, and the three pre-existing super-Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs) – the Central MSD, the Union of Muftis of Russia, and the North Caucasus MSD – retained their positions, and almost all new MSDs formed subordinating themselves to one or another of them.
With the end of the war in Chechnya, that republic has become “a model of the greatest use of Islam as a political resource” among the republics of the Russian Federation.” Tatarstan is not far behind in that regard, and “the positioning of Tatarstan and Chechnya as display windows of Russia Islam is actively being used by Russia’s federal leadership.”
Over the past decade, Makarov continues, there has been “an uninterrupted growth in the number of Muslims” in the Russian Federation. That growth reflects three things: natural growth (with Muslim nations having higher birthrates than death rates), immigration (which has come almost exclusively from Muslim countries), and growth in religious consciousness.
“All Muslim ethnic groups of [Russia],” Makarov notes, continue to experience “natural increases … In some it is more, in others less but in principle this is a general phenomenon. As it happens, this growth does not depend on religiosity among North Caucasus and Central Asian groups, but it is directly related to levels of religiosity among the Tatars and Bashkirs.
The second source of growth, from immigration, reflects the fact that most migrant workers coming into the Russian Federation now are Muslims from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. These arrivals, Makarov notes, “are playing an ever greater role in the life of the Muslim community of Russia.”
And the third source of growth, the intensification of belief and an interest in learning more about the faith, is “a phenomenon characteristic not only for the Muslims of Russia but also for other confessions.” It is an “all-Russian” development, Makarov argues and not “specific to [that country’s] Muslims.”
During the last decade, he continues, “a large part” of the Muslim media emerged. If in the1990s, Muslims tried to break into the mainstream press, then by its end, he says, “it was understood that that path had not prospects.” And concomitantly, there began to appear “new, professional” Muslim news outlets, on the Internet and also journals and newspapers.
Makarov notes that there has been “a very interesting” change in the area of book publishing. In the 1990s, there were few books published and “practically all” of them were translations. Now, “at a minimum, half of the publications reflect original texts” written by Muslims from within the Russian umma itself.
That change promises new intellectual breakthroughs in the future, Makarov says, a necessity given that the umma in Russia has become “more organized, more professional and has grown quantitatively and qualitatively,” trends that he suggests will continue and require ever new approaches to many issues facing the community.
Window on Eurasia: Russia Rapidly Running Out of Its ‘Soviet Reserve,’ Kagarlitsky Warns
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 13 – The “Soviet reserve” of infrastructure and technology on which Russian officials and the Russian economy have been relying for 20 years is rapidly running out, leaving the country with little choice but to launch a crash program to try to bring these sectors up to speed or face the prospect of further decline, according to Boris Kagarlitsky.
Some scholars, including Kagarlitsky, have been warning about this for more than a decade, but the recent series of technological disasters, including Moscow’s inability to keep the capital’s two major airports open during a snow storm, have attracted broader attention to the problem (www.stoletie.ru/tekuschiiy_moment/konec_sovetskogo_zapasa_2011-01-11.htm).
Indeed, as so often happens in Russia, this issue was captured in the form of a joke in which one Muscovite asks another: Where are you going for New Years? Domodedovo or Sheremetyevo, the two airports where so many were trapped for days by a snow storm when they were trying to get out of down.
Kagarlitsky, the outspoken director of the Moscow Institute of Globalization and Social Movements, says that because of the failure to invest in the upkeep and modernization of this infrastructure, “Russian capitalism cannot guarantee a more or less comfortable existence for even its numerically small ‘middle class.’”
At its end, the Soviet Union lagged far behind Western Europe as far as infrastructure was concerned, Kagarlitsky says. “But with the collapse of the USSR, things became much worse.” Roads, heating and water networks, and the production and distribution of electricity “all continued to exist as it were on their own and by inertia.”
Breakdowns became “the norm,” but “modernization of technology and the replacement of equipment took place only under extreme necessity when the old had produced its last kopeck” of profit and could do no more. Until that point, it and the system of which it was a part were allowed to limp along.
That shouldn’t have surprised anyone, Kagarlitsky suggests, because “market economies cope not too well with such problems.” Much of the infrastructure in other countries, roads in particular, was either built by non-democratic governments or by democratic regimes facing the kind of crisis they could overcome only with massive government investment.
The situation with regard to electricity generation and distribution, however, was handled rather better. Western countries continued to modernize this sector, Kagarlitsky says, and “only Russia, an energy superpower according to Chubais continues to live with the technology of the 1960s.”
And it shouldn’t surprise anyone that all this is now wearing out and breaking down. The last straw, he continues, turned out to be “the product of the general industrial decline,” a decline that “did not cease even during the period of economic growth of the first decade of the 21st century.”
It is true that many enterprises renewed their operation during that period, but they did so with “old equipment and technology.” And in the areas of transportation, electricity and heating, “the situation remained at full stop.” The government distributed money, but not enough and for those receiving it “it was easier to paint than to build.”
Things increasingly are breaking down, but “the powers that be continue to consider each new accident as a unique situation. They demand that the guilty be found and punished.” That happens, but “almost no one is able to say public that the system itself is guilty” and to force the powers that be to act on that reality.
Today, Kagarlitsky says, “Russian infrastructure and industry is working on the basis of the potential laid up already in Soviet times.” He notes that one of his colleagues had joked that “the Soviet Union was prepared to survive an atomic war because it had over-engineered everything by a factor of five or ten.”
Well, Kagarlitsky continues, “an atomic war did not happen; instead of it, liberal reforms attacked, the consequences of which turned out to be approximately the same as after a major military defeat.” The only difference, he says, is that “after a lost war, a country rebuilds, but with us, the reforms are called successful and continue to be carried out.”
“Sooner or later, the Soviet potential will be exhausted,” he says, suggesting that we have “already approached this end.” The situation with regard to science, education and culture is “just the same, [and] several years from now, we will cease to complain about the brain drain of scholars and artists” because “there won’t be anyone left to leave.”
There is only one good thing about all this, Kagarlitsky concludes: “in such a situation, radical changes are inevitable.” But “it is too bad that one can no longer live by spending one’s inheritance,” which is what Russia and Russians have been doing in effect since the Soviet Union collapsed.
Vienna, January 13 – The “Soviet reserve” of infrastructure and technology on which Russian officials and the Russian economy have been relying for 20 years is rapidly running out, leaving the country with little choice but to launch a crash program to try to bring these sectors up to speed or face the prospect of further decline, according to Boris Kagarlitsky.
Some scholars, including Kagarlitsky, have been warning about this for more than a decade, but the recent series of technological disasters, including Moscow’s inability to keep the capital’s two major airports open during a snow storm, have attracted broader attention to the problem (www.stoletie.ru/tekuschiiy_moment/konec_sovetskogo_zapasa_2011-01-11.htm).
Indeed, as so often happens in Russia, this issue was captured in the form of a joke in which one Muscovite asks another: Where are you going for New Years? Domodedovo or Sheremetyevo, the two airports where so many were trapped for days by a snow storm when they were trying to get out of down.
Kagarlitsky, the outspoken director of the Moscow Institute of Globalization and Social Movements, says that because of the failure to invest in the upkeep and modernization of this infrastructure, “Russian capitalism cannot guarantee a more or less comfortable existence for even its numerically small ‘middle class.’”
At its end, the Soviet Union lagged far behind Western Europe as far as infrastructure was concerned, Kagarlitsky says. “But with the collapse of the USSR, things became much worse.” Roads, heating and water networks, and the production and distribution of electricity “all continued to exist as it were on their own and by inertia.”
Breakdowns became “the norm,” but “modernization of technology and the replacement of equipment took place only under extreme necessity when the old had produced its last kopeck” of profit and could do no more. Until that point, it and the system of which it was a part were allowed to limp along.
That shouldn’t have surprised anyone, Kagarlitsky suggests, because “market economies cope not too well with such problems.” Much of the infrastructure in other countries, roads in particular, was either built by non-democratic governments or by democratic regimes facing the kind of crisis they could overcome only with massive government investment.
The situation with regard to electricity generation and distribution, however, was handled rather better. Western countries continued to modernize this sector, Kagarlitsky says, and “only Russia, an energy superpower according to Chubais continues to live with the technology of the 1960s.”
And it shouldn’t surprise anyone that all this is now wearing out and breaking down. The last straw, he continues, turned out to be “the product of the general industrial decline,” a decline that “did not cease even during the period of economic growth of the first decade of the 21st century.”
It is true that many enterprises renewed their operation during that period, but they did so with “old equipment and technology.” And in the areas of transportation, electricity and heating, “the situation remained at full stop.” The government distributed money, but not enough and for those receiving it “it was easier to paint than to build.”
Things increasingly are breaking down, but “the powers that be continue to consider each new accident as a unique situation. They demand that the guilty be found and punished.” That happens, but “almost no one is able to say public that the system itself is guilty” and to force the powers that be to act on that reality.
Today, Kagarlitsky says, “Russian infrastructure and industry is working on the basis of the potential laid up already in Soviet times.” He notes that one of his colleagues had joked that “the Soviet Union was prepared to survive an atomic war because it had over-engineered everything by a factor of five or ten.”
Well, Kagarlitsky continues, “an atomic war did not happen; instead of it, liberal reforms attacked, the consequences of which turned out to be approximately the same as after a major military defeat.” The only difference, he says, is that “after a lost war, a country rebuilds, but with us, the reforms are called successful and continue to be carried out.”
“Sooner or later, the Soviet potential will be exhausted,” he says, suggesting that we have “already approached this end.” The situation with regard to science, education and culture is “just the same, [and] several years from now, we will cease to complain about the brain drain of scholars and artists” because “there won’t be anyone left to leave.”
There is only one good thing about all this, Kagarlitsky concludes: “in such a situation, radical changes are inevitable.” But “it is too bad that one can no longer live by spending one’s inheritance,” which is what Russia and Russians have been doing in effect since the Soviet Union collapsed.
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