Paul Goble
Vienna, February 1 – The revolutionary events in Tunisia and Egypt raise the possibility, one Moscow analyst says, that Russia too may be on the verge of its own, “sixth” revolution, one that would likely be far bloodier and more violent than the 1991 events and that could resolve some of Russia’s fundamental contradictions but only at an enormous cost.
In an essay entitled “Thoughts about the Unthinkable,” Grani.ru essayist Yevgeny Ikhlov says that because “every thoughtful statesman” should be thinking about that possibility in the wake of recent events, it is time to ask “what awaits Russia in the event of a victory of its National Revolution?’ (www.grani.ru/blogs/free/entries/185802.html).
(Ikhlov adds in a footnote that “only now has become clear the wisdowm of the neo-conservatives of the Bush team, who insisted on pushing democratic reforms across the entire world and in the first instance in the Near East, and all the idiotism of their post-liberal critics who asserted that enlightened authoritarianism is more useful for non-Western peoples.)
“The pan-Arab democratic revolution” is occurring at just the time when “the end of Putinism” appears to be at hand, Ikhlov says, and he suggests that Russia may face what some of the Arab countries have: a revolution when the armed forces, who had been willing to crush opponents, refuse to move “against His Highness the People.”
According to Ikhlov, “the Tunisian regime was not only headed by an Arab Medvedev, it literally fulfilled all the plans of step by step modernization, literally according to the INSOR ‘reminiscence about the future.’ And this was the result:” an Arab revolution, “anti-corruption and anti-authoritarian at its base” recalling “the chain reaction” in Eastern Europe 20 years ago.
In the Tunisian events, he continues, “there was no anti-modernist egalitarian impulse so much a part of the Islamist revolution of Khomeini [in Iran in 1979] and ‘popular Bolshevism’ [in Russia] in 1917-1920,” despite the predictions of many that these latest events would proceed along the same path.
Ikhlov argues that one of the most interesting aspects of such repetitions in history is the tendency of each new phase to deal with issues that defined the previous period and structures and that could not be solved by it. Indeed, sometimes the real success of one revolution comes only in the next one, with the victory of March 1917 happening only in August 1991.
But the process of revolutionary change varied widely, and Ikhlov suggests that the approaching “fifth Russian revolution will not be so touchingly ‘velvet’ … or ‘orange’ [as were its predecessors] but on the contrary will be very harsh, sudden and literally a reversal of course as it was in Romania, Kyrgyzstan, Tunisia and Egypt …”
After the Manezh violence on December 11th, most Russian analysts focused on the likely “role of the Russian nationalist movement” in any such cataclysm. But Ikhlov says that it appears to him that “in the course of genuinely mass actions, the national-xenophobic, chauvinist component” is likely to quickly decline in importance.
That possibility, he suggests, makes it even more important to “look into the unthinkable.” And he calls for considering the December 11 events as “the beginning of the Great Russian National Revolution; in other words, that the moving force of the fifth Russian Revolution will become Russian neo-Nazism or revolutionary fascism” of the Mussolini-type.
Would such a revolution be capable of dealing with the growing problems Russia faces? Ikhlov suggests that it would have to address a large number of issues and would be forced to make “a complete break with the imperial inheritance. “In the case of a National Revolution … would arise an [ethnic] Russian state.”
“This would end,” Ikhlov says, “the 500-year-long argument of two tendencies in post-Horde Russian history – between the striving to the elaboration of a continental empire and the striving to the formation of a national state of the European type.”
Relatively few “have taken note,” he says, that in the past year, a cardinal change of direction has occurred within Russian nationalism.” Pan-Slavist dreams have been forgotten, unification with Belarus dropped, the division of Ukraine no longer discussed. Instead, “the dominant theme” has been “’the exclusion’ of the Caucasus from Russia.”
The second “historic task” of such a revolution, Ikhlov suggests, is “the liquidation” of the trauma Russians still feel as a result of the use of force by the state against the population as in 1937. Until Russia overcomes this almost “genetic fear of Chekist actions,” the Russian “will remain psychologically a slave.”
The third task of this revolution, he says, will be “the destruction of such a phenomena as ‘the nomenklatura,’ that is the monopolistically ruling closed social corporation which fills its ranks by ‘cooptation’ and the distinctive characteristic of which is the subordination of the division of social-political functions in the distribution of social-political roles.”
“Any mass revolution will liquidate the nomenklatura” and “in the harshest way” eliminate corruption and destroy the existing system of parties and elections. Bureaucrats will be afraid just as they were in 1989-1992, and Russia will emerge as a society without strata of that kind and with a power that has been deprived of its “sacredness” in the eyes of the population.
Such steps, Ikhlov argues, “are a necessary condition for the establishment of a contemporary civic nation.” But he adds, “everything just said does not mean that a nazi revolution is a good thing.” Rather such “thinking the unthinkable” should remind everyone of the tasks that Russia faces and that must be addressed to avoid a disaster.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Is Putin Planning to Give New Content to ‘Traditional Islam’ in Russia?
Paul Goble
Vienna, February 1 – Just as he has after every major terrorist act, Vladimir Putin has expressed his support for “traditional Islam,” an invocation that most analysts have seen as the Russian leader’s backing for the hyper-loyal leaders of Russia’s Muslim establishment and opposition to any versions of Islam, in particular fundamentalist ones, imported from abroad.
And to the extent that these analysts have discussed the term at all, they have seen it as a reflection of a desire by Moscow in Soviet times and since to make Islam inside Russia into faith with much the same hierarchy, loyalty and control over congregants that the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate displays.
But a new analysis of the term itself and Putin’s own comments in support of particular Islamic traditions suggests that he may be interested in giving it new content, either as part of an immediate electoral tactic to reach out to Muslim voters or as a strategy to cope with the aspirations of the increasing share of the Russian population made up by the faithful.
In an article on the Portal-credo.ru religious affairs site, Mikhail Zherebyatyev pointedly asks “what does Putin’s call to support ‘traditional Islam’ after the explosions in Domodedovo mean?” And he provides one of the clearest definitions yet of what that phenomenon consists of and what Putin means by it (www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=comment&id=1830).
As the religious affairs commentator points out, “both Muslims themselves and bureaucrats of various levels have a very cloudy idea about what are the characteristic signs of ‘traditional Islam’ and what other kind of Islam exists.” But their general attitudes about the two are more or less well-known.
At the most general, Zherebatyev suggests, “everything [in the minds of both groups] reduces to the opposition of ‘Wahhabis’ and ‘moderates’ and to the identification of ‘traditional as everything that is ‘our own’ and ‘non-traditional’ as everything which has been brought into [Russia] from abroad.”
But the term “traditional Islam” if one takes into account “the Russian historical background” is anything but homogenous. “At a minimum,” it involves three “independent phenomena:” popular Islam “filled with superstitions,” “enlightened Jadidism” which is sometimes called “Euroislam” and traditional society regulated by adat or shariat.
In reality, Zhyerebatyev says, none of these is found “in a pure form in contemporary Russia.” Each has an admixture of the others, and consequently, when someone talks about “traditional [Russian] Islam,” he is actually talking not about one thing but about a whole category of things.
Consequently, about the only thing most people mean when they speak of “traditional” Islam is a faith which follows the structure, loyalty and discipline of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, something that for Islam as a religious faith is a contradiction in terms, whatever Soviet or Russian officials believe.
Unlike Orthodox Christianity in its Muscovite variant, Islam is radically democratic, with elected mullahs and muftis. Moreover, because it does not have a clergy, it cannot have a clerical hierarchy by definition except by the total perversion of what Muslims are told to believe. And it is not Caesaropapist in its political conception.
That in turn means, Zherebatyev argues, that there is inevitably a growing divide between the often desiccated official Muslim structures in the Russian Federation, structures whose loyalty is the chief characteristic Moscow officials are referring to when they talk about “traditional Islam” and the wide range of religious phenomena affecting younger Muslims.
Indeed, he continues, “the politically protest nature of the choice of young people from the Caucasus and now already from the Middle Volga as well” who are following “’non-traditional Islam’” is “quite obvious.” And its radicalism is fed by the close ties between the politically accepted “traditional” Muslims and the Russian state.
“The distance between these two worlds is step by step increasing, and it is not clear what methods could be effective for promoting ‘traditional Islam’ among those who consciously are choosing ‘the non-traditional’ variant.” As a result, Moscow is rapidly losing control over and even influence on the latter.
That makes any effort by the Moscow authorities to try to give a new meaning to “traditional Islam” especially intriguing. As the Forum-MSK.org site pointed out on Saturday, Putin recently came out in support of increasing the size of kalym or bride price in the North Caucasus (forum-msk.org/material/economic/5375599.html).
As Mikhail Delyagin, the head of the Forum-MSK site editorial council said, “this is not a joke.” Putin put it on his official site and thus sent a signal to his subordinates that they should follow his lead in supporting an Islamic “tradition” that until recently Russian officials have almost unanimous denounced as “a survival of the past” that should be done away with.
Putin, however, is supporting it, something that Delyagin suggests raises the question as to whether he is prepared to accept even more such “traditions” as part of “traditional Islam.” But however that may be and however far the premier is prepared to go, it seems clear, Delyagin concludes, that Russia is being driven back “to the Middle Ages” by Putin’s approach.
Vienna, February 1 – Just as he has after every major terrorist act, Vladimir Putin has expressed his support for “traditional Islam,” an invocation that most analysts have seen as the Russian leader’s backing for the hyper-loyal leaders of Russia’s Muslim establishment and opposition to any versions of Islam, in particular fundamentalist ones, imported from abroad.
And to the extent that these analysts have discussed the term at all, they have seen it as a reflection of a desire by Moscow in Soviet times and since to make Islam inside Russia into faith with much the same hierarchy, loyalty and control over congregants that the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate displays.
But a new analysis of the term itself and Putin’s own comments in support of particular Islamic traditions suggests that he may be interested in giving it new content, either as part of an immediate electoral tactic to reach out to Muslim voters or as a strategy to cope with the aspirations of the increasing share of the Russian population made up by the faithful.
In an article on the Portal-credo.ru religious affairs site, Mikhail Zherebyatyev pointedly asks “what does Putin’s call to support ‘traditional Islam’ after the explosions in Domodedovo mean?” And he provides one of the clearest definitions yet of what that phenomenon consists of and what Putin means by it (www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=comment&id=1830).
As the religious affairs commentator points out, “both Muslims themselves and bureaucrats of various levels have a very cloudy idea about what are the characteristic signs of ‘traditional Islam’ and what other kind of Islam exists.” But their general attitudes about the two are more or less well-known.
At the most general, Zherebatyev suggests, “everything [in the minds of both groups] reduces to the opposition of ‘Wahhabis’ and ‘moderates’ and to the identification of ‘traditional as everything that is ‘our own’ and ‘non-traditional’ as everything which has been brought into [Russia] from abroad.”
But the term “traditional Islam” if one takes into account “the Russian historical background” is anything but homogenous. “At a minimum,” it involves three “independent phenomena:” popular Islam “filled with superstitions,” “enlightened Jadidism” which is sometimes called “Euroislam” and traditional society regulated by adat or shariat.
In reality, Zhyerebatyev says, none of these is found “in a pure form in contemporary Russia.” Each has an admixture of the others, and consequently, when someone talks about “traditional [Russian] Islam,” he is actually talking not about one thing but about a whole category of things.
Consequently, about the only thing most people mean when they speak of “traditional” Islam is a faith which follows the structure, loyalty and discipline of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, something that for Islam as a religious faith is a contradiction in terms, whatever Soviet or Russian officials believe.
Unlike Orthodox Christianity in its Muscovite variant, Islam is radically democratic, with elected mullahs and muftis. Moreover, because it does not have a clergy, it cannot have a clerical hierarchy by definition except by the total perversion of what Muslims are told to believe. And it is not Caesaropapist in its political conception.
That in turn means, Zherebatyev argues, that there is inevitably a growing divide between the often desiccated official Muslim structures in the Russian Federation, structures whose loyalty is the chief characteristic Moscow officials are referring to when they talk about “traditional Islam” and the wide range of religious phenomena affecting younger Muslims.
Indeed, he continues, “the politically protest nature of the choice of young people from the Caucasus and now already from the Middle Volga as well” who are following “’non-traditional Islam’” is “quite obvious.” And its radicalism is fed by the close ties between the politically accepted “traditional” Muslims and the Russian state.
“The distance between these two worlds is step by step increasing, and it is not clear what methods could be effective for promoting ‘traditional Islam’ among those who consciously are choosing ‘the non-traditional’ variant.” As a result, Moscow is rapidly losing control over and even influence on the latter.
That makes any effort by the Moscow authorities to try to give a new meaning to “traditional Islam” especially intriguing. As the Forum-MSK.org site pointed out on Saturday, Putin recently came out in support of increasing the size of kalym or bride price in the North Caucasus (forum-msk.org/material/economic/5375599.html).
As Mikhail Delyagin, the head of the Forum-MSK site editorial council said, “this is not a joke.” Putin put it on his official site and thus sent a signal to his subordinates that they should follow his lead in supporting an Islamic “tradition” that until recently Russian officials have almost unanimous denounced as “a survival of the past” that should be done away with.
Putin, however, is supporting it, something that Delyagin suggests raises the question as to whether he is prepared to accept even more such “traditions” as part of “traditional Islam.” But however that may be and however far the premier is prepared to go, it seems clear, Delyagin concludes, that Russia is being driven back “to the Middle Ages” by Putin’s approach.
Window on Eurasia: Nemtsov Outlines Ten Ways in Which Yeltsin Was Different and Better than Putin
Paul Goble
Vienna, February 1 – In a posting on his Ekho Moskvy blog today, Boris Nemtsov, who is a leader of the Solidarity Movement, outlines ten ways in which Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first president, was different and better than his successor, Vladimir Putin, a list that has already sparked outraged reactions from many of the latter’s partisans.
First of all, Nemtsov says, Yeltsin “inherited a bankrupted Soviet Union: there was no money, no gold reserves, no bread and now fuel.” Moreover, oil prices were relatively low. Putin on the other hand came to office when the Russian economy was growing and when the price of oil was rising to new records (echo.msk.ru/blog/nemtsov_boris/746374-echo/).
Second, he points out, Yeltsin dealt with his opponents in a very different way than Putin. He released from jail the leaders of the August 1991 putsch and the October 1993 rising, even though the latter would have shot him or confined him for life. Putin in contrast has continued to work to ensure that Mikhail Khodorkovsky will remain in jail for a long time to come.
Third, Yeltsin respected the media and when Vlad Listyev was killed in 1995, the president came to Ostankino and cried, asking the nation to forgive him for not being able to prevent that crime. After Ana Politkovskaya was killed, Putin in contrast said her death had done more harm than her publications.
Fourth, Nemtsov notes, “Yeltsin gave Russia a Constitution” – and “one no worse than the French and American.” But Putin gutted it, destroying in terms the institutions it provided for including among others “elections, independent courts, a free media, federalism and local self-administration.”
Fifth, Yeltsin was “insanely proud that he returned to Russia the Flag of freedom.” Not only did he conduct the revolution of 1991 under that banner but he created Flag Day.” Putin, on the other hand, “arrests people because they are carrying the Russian flag in the pedestrian zone of the Arbat.”
Sixth, Nemtsov continues, Yeltsin made Glinka’s patriotic hymn “the symbol of free democratic Russia.” Putin “returned the Stalinist hymn. Nemtsov said that when he told Putin that this showed a lack of respect for the millions of Stalin’s victims, Putin responded that the songs of a country must be like what the country is.
Seventh, according to the Solidarity leader, Yeltsin developed “good relations with [Russia’s] neighbors,” not entering into “gas wars, the disruption of diplomatic relations or threats.” Putin has been just the reverse. And now all around Russia are “enemies” rather than allies.
Eighth, Yeltsin began by appointing governors but yielded to the call of the governors that they be elected. Putin in contrast, “making use of the nightmarish terrorist act in Beslan in 2004 [for his own political purposes], did away with elections for the governors and destroyed federalism.”
Ninth, the two presidents displayed a very different attitude toward personal power and continuing in office. On New Years eve in 1999, Yeltsin voluntarily retired, but Putin has linked himself to power and taken steps to ensure that no one can challenge him, a clear indication that he “does not intend to leave it for anywhere else.”
And tenth, Yeltsin and Putin are fated to have a very different historical reputation. “Beyond doubt,” Nemtsov says, “Yeltsin is a complex and contradictory historical figure.” But above all else, he was “the founder of the new Russia” and he will be remembered for that. Putin on the other hand, will be recalled only “as a corrupt dictator whose rule was damned by the people.”
Not surprisingly, Nemtsov’s comparison of the two has outraged many, especially those who blame Yeltsin for destroying the USSR and for Russia’s difficulties after that. They have recorded their views in comments appended to his list, but none of them succeeds in calling into question in any fundamental way his observations, a useful thing to remember on this 80th anniversary of Yeltsin’s birth
Vienna, February 1 – In a posting on his Ekho Moskvy blog today, Boris Nemtsov, who is a leader of the Solidarity Movement, outlines ten ways in which Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first president, was different and better than his successor, Vladimir Putin, a list that has already sparked outraged reactions from many of the latter’s partisans.
First of all, Nemtsov says, Yeltsin “inherited a bankrupted Soviet Union: there was no money, no gold reserves, no bread and now fuel.” Moreover, oil prices were relatively low. Putin on the other hand came to office when the Russian economy was growing and when the price of oil was rising to new records (echo.msk.ru/blog/nemtsov_boris/746374-echo/).
Second, he points out, Yeltsin dealt with his opponents in a very different way than Putin. He released from jail the leaders of the August 1991 putsch and the October 1993 rising, even though the latter would have shot him or confined him for life. Putin in contrast has continued to work to ensure that Mikhail Khodorkovsky will remain in jail for a long time to come.
Third, Yeltsin respected the media and when Vlad Listyev was killed in 1995, the president came to Ostankino and cried, asking the nation to forgive him for not being able to prevent that crime. After Ana Politkovskaya was killed, Putin in contrast said her death had done more harm than her publications.
Fourth, Nemtsov notes, “Yeltsin gave Russia a Constitution” – and “one no worse than the French and American.” But Putin gutted it, destroying in terms the institutions it provided for including among others “elections, independent courts, a free media, federalism and local self-administration.”
Fifth, Yeltsin was “insanely proud that he returned to Russia the Flag of freedom.” Not only did he conduct the revolution of 1991 under that banner but he created Flag Day.” Putin, on the other hand, “arrests people because they are carrying the Russian flag in the pedestrian zone of the Arbat.”
Sixth, Nemtsov continues, Yeltsin made Glinka’s patriotic hymn “the symbol of free democratic Russia.” Putin “returned the Stalinist hymn. Nemtsov said that when he told Putin that this showed a lack of respect for the millions of Stalin’s victims, Putin responded that the songs of a country must be like what the country is.
Seventh, according to the Solidarity leader, Yeltsin developed “good relations with [Russia’s] neighbors,” not entering into “gas wars, the disruption of diplomatic relations or threats.” Putin has been just the reverse. And now all around Russia are “enemies” rather than allies.
Eighth, Yeltsin began by appointing governors but yielded to the call of the governors that they be elected. Putin in contrast, “making use of the nightmarish terrorist act in Beslan in 2004 [for his own political purposes], did away with elections for the governors and destroyed federalism.”
Ninth, the two presidents displayed a very different attitude toward personal power and continuing in office. On New Years eve in 1999, Yeltsin voluntarily retired, but Putin has linked himself to power and taken steps to ensure that no one can challenge him, a clear indication that he “does not intend to leave it for anywhere else.”
And tenth, Yeltsin and Putin are fated to have a very different historical reputation. “Beyond doubt,” Nemtsov says, “Yeltsin is a complex and contradictory historical figure.” But above all else, he was “the founder of the new Russia” and he will be remembered for that. Putin on the other hand, will be recalled only “as a corrupt dictator whose rule was damned by the people.”
Not surprisingly, Nemtsov’s comparison of the two has outraged many, especially those who blame Yeltsin for destroying the USSR and for Russia’s difficulties after that. They have recorded their views in comments appended to his list, but none of them succeeds in calling into question in any fundamental way his observations, a useful thing to remember on this 80th anniversary of Yeltsin’s birth
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