Paul Goble
Vienna, January 31 – Many analysts have speculated that the events in Egypt, especially in the wake of the revolutionary events in Tunisia, will have affect other authoritarian regimes in the Arab world, but few have considered the ways in which these events may have an impact further afield, including on the Russian Federation.
But in an essay posted on the CaucasusTimes.com portal today, Sergey Markedonov, one of Russia’s leading specialists on the North Caucasus, argues that “the Egyptian factor” is likely to have a significant impact on the evolution of events in that region, albeit in ways that many do not know suspect (www.caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=20744).
That factor, the Russian analyst suggests, is likely to prove “particularly important” as far as the North Caucasus is concerned, as, Markedonov continues, “the terrorist attack on Domodedovo [Airport] demonstrates.” That is because an attack on that facility is an attack not only on Russian officialdom but on citizens of other countries.
If terrorist actions in the North Caucasus have become so common as to be part of the background noise, the attack on Domodedovo is something that could not be ignored, Markedonov says. “The goal of such an action is obvious.” On the one hand, it is intended to show Russia’s inability to hold the 2014 Olympics and the 2018 Football Championship.
But on the other hand – and Markedonov’s language suggests that he views this as the more important factor at least relative to the Egyptian events – the attack on Domodedovo is intended to show to the world that “the Caucasus jihad” has gone over to a general attack and that it has “the forces and resources needed to do every more.”
Like his predecessors Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has pursued a policy of modernization that has required him to take from Western sources many ideas an approaches, a borrowing that has made Egypt a more important power but only at the cost of exacerbating problems in Egyptian society.
“The social-economic transformations [his policies have entailed ] have violated the traditional foundations of Eastern society,” a transgression that has led to “a fundamentalist reaction to innovations and to withdraw into its difference and ‘uniqueness’” and thus reject everything Western.
From that, Markedonov continues, “Islamism is growing.” And despite Mubarak’s repressive regime, Egypt remains “one of the most serious centers of the jihadist movement,” something that means that those who are part of that movement elsewhere will attend to with utmost seriousness.
That is all the more so because, the Russian analyst continues, “Egyptian Islamists support without reservation the supporters of analogous transformations in other Muslim countries and hope for the construction or more precisely the revival of a unified Islamic state, the khalifate.”
And, Markedonov continues, “although for them the chief enemies are the United States, Israel and the secular Egyptian government, they also have negative feelings about Russia.” It is worth remembering that “about 40 percent of the Arab volunteers in the Afghan war agains thte Soviet Union were from Egypt.”
Now, he continues, “the Egyptian Islamists accuse Russia not of communist atheism but of suppressing ‘brothers in the faith’ in Chechnya, Daghestan, and the North Caucasus in general.” And to that end, the Egyptian supporters of “’pure Islam’” provide “serious” support to their fellows in the North Caucasus.
Many of the ideologues of the North Caucasus Islamists trace their ideas back to the Egyptian ideologist Said Kutb (1906-1966) who elaborated the doctrine of “jahilia,” according to which “true Muslims must struggle not only with ‘godless communism’ or ‘mercantile capitalism’ but also inside Muslim countries where the principles of the faith are distorted.”
In fact, to this day, Islamists in the North Caucasus consider Kutb, who was executed by the Egyptian secular powers to be “one of the martyrs.”
What is happening in Egypt now, Markedonov notes, is not the world of the Islamist element alone. It is a far broader phenomenon. But that very fact may have negative consequences for Russian power in the North Caucasus because as he points out “mass uprisings not infrequently throw overboard moderates” as events develop.
Since it intervened in Chechnya in 1994, Moscow has sought to limit the adverse reaction in the Arab world. It has succeeded in part, but if things change in a major way in Egypt, Russian calculations in this regard may have to be changed, especially if events in Egypt lead to changes elsewhere.
At the very least, “the fall of such a secular fortress as Egypt,” Markedonov concludes, “would create not a few new problems for Moscow” especially because Islamists in the North Caucasus will be watching what is taking place and drawing their own conclusions about what they can and should do next.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Putin’s Approach Prompts Educated Russians to Think about Emigration, “Novaya” Reports
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 31 – For the sixth time in less than a century, many Russians are thinking about emigration or even acting on that thought because “the model of the state built by Lenin and Stalin and now being softly restored by Putin is flawed from the outset,” benefiting the top elite and the masses perhaps but not the “the most educated and qualified.”
In the current issue of “Novaya gazeta,” Dmitry Oreshkin not only traces the history of the waves of emigration from Russia since 1917 but also discusses the specific motivations of the current generation of Russia’s “best and brightest” as shown by a poll conducted by the newspaper’s website (www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2011/010/00.html?print=201131011042).
A few days ago, Sergey Stepashin, the head of the Accounting Chamber, noted that 1,250,000 Russian Federation citizens had left the country for more or less permanent residence abroad over the course of the last several years, a figure that is consistent with the estimates of other demographers, Oreshkin says.
That figure is disturbing, the “Novaya” writer says, because it is approximately “the same number of people as those who left the country after the coming to power of the Bolsheviks.” And just as 90 years ago, most of those who left then and who are leaving now are drawn from the ranks of Russia’s most educated strata.
To try to get at the motivation of those leaving now, Oreshkin notes, “Novaya gazeta” conducted an online poll on its website concerning the motivations of those thinking about leaving. While not necessarily representative – “Novaya” is one of the most liberal papers in the country – the results are suggestive.
Of the 7237 people who responded to the online poll, 2.2 percent said they were thinking about leaving because of the growth of nationalist attitudes, one percent because of higher taxes, 28.9 percent because of the preparations for the return of Putin to power, and 62.5 percent for all these reasons taken together.
This “sixth wave” of Russian emigration, Oreshkin says, basically consists of “those who in the 1990s because of their youth an inborn optimist believed that freedom would really come and that Russian at last would become a normal country.” The Putin decade has destroyed these hopes and left these people feeling betrayed and hopeless.
From their perspective, the Soviet system is returning, albeit in a “soft” way. Its return, Oreshkin continues, “is felt everywhere, although still nowhere in a mortally dangerous concentration.” And that is all the more so the case because different groups feel this return in different sectors and in different ways.
“The main thing,” however, the “Novaya” writer continues, is that in the sixth wave “ju8st as in all previous cases, the most independent and qualified peoples, all for the same fundamental cause: the model of the state built by Lenin and Stalin and softly being restored by Putin is flawed from the outset.”
That system is “constructed for the powers and for the lumpen,” whose heads can be turned by the glorious imagery offered by the powers. But those who form what could be Russia’s dynamic middle class, “the strongest and most gifted people,” have no place in this “model.”
Such a pattern repeated over so many years, Oreshkin asserts, “cannot be an accident.” Instead, it is “a long-term and possibly instinctive policy directed at converting Russian into a country of slaves and masters,” people who don’t understand or who benefit from the fact that Putin has failed to keep his promises but has made the situation of Russia worse.
Despite Putin’s promises, taxes have risen, the number of bureaucrats has doubled, criminality has spread, economic growth has not taken place, despite the rise in oil prices, and corruption is worse than ever before. That has left the most talented and educated without the oxygen needed to create.
Russia’s “epochs of liberalization,” Oreshkin says, “create the preconditions for the appearance of economically active subjects and for future economic growth. But at the same time, they create a demand for civil rights, law, and a limitation on the arbitrary acitons of the state.”
That is, he writes, these periods “destroy the foundations of verticalism and autocratic power,” and consequently, they are almost invariably succeeded by periods of repression, when the powers that be use force to ensure that their control cannot be challenged and that they rather than the people as a whole will benefit from any new sources of income.
What is “in principle new” about the sixth wave, Oreshkin says, is that “it is the first” which does not see its departure as “irreversible. “If and when in Russian laws begin to be observed and not only the rulers of the Chekist corporation and consequently if possibilities for self-realization appear, these people will return.”
“They even now do not want to leave,” he writes, but they have concluded that they do not have any choice for themselves and their future if the Russian powers that be continue to act in the way that Putin is. One can only hope, Oreshkin implies, that they will have the chance to return and work for a better future for their country and themselves.
Vienna, January 31 – For the sixth time in less than a century, many Russians are thinking about emigration or even acting on that thought because “the model of the state built by Lenin and Stalin and now being softly restored by Putin is flawed from the outset,” benefiting the top elite and the masses perhaps but not the “the most educated and qualified.”
In the current issue of “Novaya gazeta,” Dmitry Oreshkin not only traces the history of the waves of emigration from Russia since 1917 but also discusses the specific motivations of the current generation of Russia’s “best and brightest” as shown by a poll conducted by the newspaper’s website (www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2011/010/00.html?print=201131011042).
A few days ago, Sergey Stepashin, the head of the Accounting Chamber, noted that 1,250,000 Russian Federation citizens had left the country for more or less permanent residence abroad over the course of the last several years, a figure that is consistent with the estimates of other demographers, Oreshkin says.
That figure is disturbing, the “Novaya” writer says, because it is approximately “the same number of people as those who left the country after the coming to power of the Bolsheviks.” And just as 90 years ago, most of those who left then and who are leaving now are drawn from the ranks of Russia’s most educated strata.
To try to get at the motivation of those leaving now, Oreshkin notes, “Novaya gazeta” conducted an online poll on its website concerning the motivations of those thinking about leaving. While not necessarily representative – “Novaya” is one of the most liberal papers in the country – the results are suggestive.
Of the 7237 people who responded to the online poll, 2.2 percent said they were thinking about leaving because of the growth of nationalist attitudes, one percent because of higher taxes, 28.9 percent because of the preparations for the return of Putin to power, and 62.5 percent for all these reasons taken together.
This “sixth wave” of Russian emigration, Oreshkin says, basically consists of “those who in the 1990s because of their youth an inborn optimist believed that freedom would really come and that Russian at last would become a normal country.” The Putin decade has destroyed these hopes and left these people feeling betrayed and hopeless.
From their perspective, the Soviet system is returning, albeit in a “soft” way. Its return, Oreshkin continues, “is felt everywhere, although still nowhere in a mortally dangerous concentration.” And that is all the more so the case because different groups feel this return in different sectors and in different ways.
“The main thing,” however, the “Novaya” writer continues, is that in the sixth wave “ju8st as in all previous cases, the most independent and qualified peoples, all for the same fundamental cause: the model of the state built by Lenin and Stalin and softly being restored by Putin is flawed from the outset.”
That system is “constructed for the powers and for the lumpen,” whose heads can be turned by the glorious imagery offered by the powers. But those who form what could be Russia’s dynamic middle class, “the strongest and most gifted people,” have no place in this “model.”
Such a pattern repeated over so many years, Oreshkin asserts, “cannot be an accident.” Instead, it is “a long-term and possibly instinctive policy directed at converting Russian into a country of slaves and masters,” people who don’t understand or who benefit from the fact that Putin has failed to keep his promises but has made the situation of Russia worse.
Despite Putin’s promises, taxes have risen, the number of bureaucrats has doubled, criminality has spread, economic growth has not taken place, despite the rise in oil prices, and corruption is worse than ever before. That has left the most talented and educated without the oxygen needed to create.
Russia’s “epochs of liberalization,” Oreshkin says, “create the preconditions for the appearance of economically active subjects and for future economic growth. But at the same time, they create a demand for civil rights, law, and a limitation on the arbitrary acitons of the state.”
That is, he writes, these periods “destroy the foundations of verticalism and autocratic power,” and consequently, they are almost invariably succeeded by periods of repression, when the powers that be use force to ensure that their control cannot be challenged and that they rather than the people as a whole will benefit from any new sources of income.
What is “in principle new” about the sixth wave, Oreshkin says, is that “it is the first” which does not see its departure as “irreversible. “If and when in Russian laws begin to be observed and not only the rulers of the Chekist corporation and consequently if possibilities for self-realization appear, these people will return.”
“They even now do not want to leave,” he writes, but they have concluded that they do not have any choice for themselves and their future if the Russian powers that be continue to act in the way that Putin is. One can only hope, Oreshkin implies, that they will have the chance to return and work for a better future for their country and themselves.
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