Paul Goble
Staunton, February 18 – Exploiting current discussions about the need for all residents of the Russian Federation to identify themselves in civic rather than ethnic terms, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, has stepped up his campaign to do away with the non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation.
On Tuesday, Zhirinovsky told a press conference in Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic, that “in the Russian Empire, there was the correct territorial division” of the country, one without any “national subjects” because territories were divided into governships and bore geographic names (finugor.ru/node/16295).
And yesterday, the LDPR leader again called for the end of national republics within Russia in a radio broadcast for Chechen television, saying that “all national republics should be converted into geographic designations: Not Tataria, the capital of Kazan but Kazan kray, not Bashkiria, but Ufa kray” and so on (www.annews.ru/news/detail.php?ID=244395).
Precisely because of his flamboyance, Zhirinovsky’s proposals are often dismissed out of hand, but his statements often reflect what others in Moscow are thinking but are not yet prepared to say. And his calls for the elimination of national republics over the last 20 years have tracked with the attitudes of others in the Russian capital.
Consequently, his comments deserve close attention, not because they are necessarily going to be translated immediately into action but because they form part of Russian thinking – and even more because non-Russians are likely to see his proposals as a serious threat to their remaining powers.
In his remarks in the Komi capital, Zhirinovsky not only noted that the designations of many places came from geography rather than ethnicity but said that he expected that “in the near future, there will be formed “20 major territorial entities which will have only geographic names.”
“We have 100 nationalities” in the Russian Federation, the LDPR leader said, “but this does not mean that we will be shutting them down. [Rather,] for the successful development of the regions are needed territorial forms. Komis, Karels, Udmurts – all these are the Finno-Ugric group; here there are no problems.”
He added that “for this division of the country,” he began speaking “20 years ago. We see,” he said, “to what national divisions lead – a hidden civil war is going on. The division of the country took place in 1991; we lost a third of the territory and half of the population, when the republics left it.”
And he suggested Russians should consider the American experience: “In the US, there are 50 states and 300 million people.” Russia in contrast has “83 regions and 140 million.” When six subjects were amalgamated with larger units, they benefited, Zhirionovsky said, because Moscow put more money into them to sweeten the deal.
In his comments to Chechen television, Zhirinovsky said much the same but extended his idea to the North Caucasus and Middle Volga, regions which have larger populations and in many cases more intense ethnic identification with particular republics than is the case in at least some Finno-Ugric areas.
Why does he want to take this step of eliminating ethnically defined republics, Zhirinovsky asked rhetorically, and he immediately answered “in order that the names of national regions won’t be mentioned, and people won’t be offended” by reports about criminals and terrorists from their areas.
“Why in recent years have the names Chechnya, Ingushetia, Daghestan and the like so often been mentioned in the news media” with regard to terrorists? If something happens in any point of Russia, and the individual is from there, that will be reported. Why? Because this is a significant indicator for police as to where they should begin their search.”
“If we didn’t have any republics, no one would ever make use of nationality,” Zhirinovsky said.
And he added that he had always opposed ethnic republics “because there is no such system anywhere in the world or ever was one. The Bolsheviks thought it up.” This division led to the end of the Soviet Union and is the cause of no end of difficulties in the Russian Federation now.
(It is worth recalling, although Zhirinovsky does not, that there is a long tradition in Russia and the Soviet Union to suggest dividing up the country on a non-ethnic basis like the US. One of the Decembrists proposed dividing the empire into 13 states, and shortly before the USSR disintegrated, Mikhail Gorbachev mused in public about dividing the Soviet Union into 50.)
As it often does, Russia’s New Region news agency has launched an online poll about Zhirinovsky’s proposal. While the results are hardly likely to be scientific – those who respond are entirely self-selected – the decision of the agency’s editors suggests that they at least believe LDPR leader’s proposals have some support (www.nr2.ru/moskow/321082.html).
Friday, February 18, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Waqfs Spreading Across the Russian Federation, Expert Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, February 17 – While Moscow commentators have been talking about the possibility, Muslims in several regions of the Russian Federation have begun to restore waqfs, the Islamic arrangement in which income from specific properties is assigned to mosques and medrassahs, thus freeing them from dependence on contributions or official assistance.
Over the last three years, after “NG-Religii” published a discussion of the tradition of waqf properties in Russian history, various Muslim leaders and republic officials have tried to revive them, even though at the present time, there is no clear basis for their legal existence. Indeed, at least in its classical form, waqf property remains banned in Russia.
But a new article by M.Sh. Aydagulov, the economic advisor to the chairman of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Nizhny Novgorod, not only discusses the legal twists and turns that those promoting the restoration of waqfs have followed but also describes places where waqfs are active in today’s Russia (www.islamrf.ru/news/analytics/islamic_finance/15128/).
Entitling his article “Russian Waqfs: From Discussion to Creation,” Aydagulov points out that “waqfs already exist in contemporary Russia” and that more are being planned, including in his own city of Nizhny. In highland Daghestan, for example, V.O. Bobrovnikov has traced their emergence in great detail.
According to Bobrovnikov, “in dozens of collective farms in the mountainous and foothill regions [of Daghestan], rural administrations (not always publically) have returned to the mosques a large part of the private fields and gardens (waqfs) which were attached to them prior to collectivization.”
“In spite of Russian and republic laws,” the Moscow scholar says, “the pre-revolutionary lists of waqfs … have received legal recognition … The public opinion of the population follows events there in order that the new owners of the mosque lands contribute to the account of the mosque a specific part of the harvest.”
A broader effort to restore waqf property and to provide it with a legal foundation has been pursued in Tatarstan over the last 13 years, Aydagulov says. In 1998, the MSD there created the position of “chairman of the waqfs” as one of the first deputy muftis, and in 1999, the republic passed a law legitimating the restoration of such property.
Because the Russian civil code “does not have such a term as ‘waqf property,’” the Nizhny expert continues, the Tatars sought to get around this by describing the waqfs as the property of the mosques. “In this way, waqfs exist de facto there,” he says, a development that has prompted Tatar and other officials to try to square the law with reality.
As Vladimir Putin worked to ensure that there was a common legal space in the Russian Federation, this effort became more urgent. In March 2008, Tatarstan Mufti Gusman-khazrat Iskhakov wrote to Dmitry Medvedev who was then the first vice prime minister of the Russian Federation about this.
Iskhakov said that Moscow would do well to change the law so that waqfs could be legal because the income from such property arrangements “would permit Islamic organizations to become independent of foreign sponsors who was seeking to impose on Russian Muslims an alien ideology.”
In support of this appeal, the State Council of Tatarstan called for the Duma to revise Russian law so as to include the concept of waqfs, making much the same argument that these institutions would keep the mosques and other Muslim organizations from falling under foreign influence. The Duma has not yet acted on that request.
But as opponents of this idea noted, the legalization of waqfs would have at least two negative consequences from the point of view of the Russian state. On the one hand, such institutions if they became widespread would have the effect of making the mosques and medressahs supported by them more independent of the MSDs and hence of the state.
And on the other, the legalization of waqfs could lead Muslims to seek restitution of waqf lands under the terms of legislation, pushed by the Russian Orthodox Church, that calls for the restitution of church property seized by the Bolsheviks. While a waqf can be any form of physical property, it is often land – and before 1917, Russia’s waqfs covered an enormous area.
Some Russian experts on Islam, including Leonid Syukiyaynen, argue that waqfs could be effectively legalized by defining them as charitable foundations. That would solve many legal problems, but it could raise others, including that these institutions could be closed down at any time and the danger that control of such income would pass into the wrong hands.
Despite Moscow’s resistance, many Muslim communities across the Russian Federation are pressing for the restoration of waqfs, especially to support medrassahs and other Islamic educational institutions. A driving force behind that may be that funding from abroad for such institutions has been cut back in recent years.
And these communities have come up with a variety of legal theories to defend what they want to do. In Nizhny Novgorod, for example, the MSD is equating waqf property with Russian Orthodox Church monasteries and thus going ahead with the creation of waqfs to support the operation of an Islamic Cultural Center set to open later this year.
According to Aydagulov, this process has accelerated since the visit last year of a delegation from the Islamic Development Bank to Kazan. Since then, waqfs have been set up in the largest cities of Russia as well as in many smaller villages and rural areas. That makes the legal issues increasingly important.
What is “extremely important,” the Nizhny expert says, is that “this process occurs within the framework of the legal field of a secular Russian state as well as under the control of the Muslims themselves.” Whether those two concerns can be squared is an open question, but however that may be, “Russian waqfs are experiencing a new birth.”
Vienna, February 17 – While Moscow commentators have been talking about the possibility, Muslims in several regions of the Russian Federation have begun to restore waqfs, the Islamic arrangement in which income from specific properties is assigned to mosques and medrassahs, thus freeing them from dependence on contributions or official assistance.
Over the last three years, after “NG-Religii” published a discussion of the tradition of waqf properties in Russian history, various Muslim leaders and republic officials have tried to revive them, even though at the present time, there is no clear basis for their legal existence. Indeed, at least in its classical form, waqf property remains banned in Russia.
But a new article by M.Sh. Aydagulov, the economic advisor to the chairman of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Nizhny Novgorod, not only discusses the legal twists and turns that those promoting the restoration of waqfs have followed but also describes places where waqfs are active in today’s Russia (www.islamrf.ru/news/analytics/islamic_finance/15128/).
Entitling his article “Russian Waqfs: From Discussion to Creation,” Aydagulov points out that “waqfs already exist in contemporary Russia” and that more are being planned, including in his own city of Nizhny. In highland Daghestan, for example, V.O. Bobrovnikov has traced their emergence in great detail.
According to Bobrovnikov, “in dozens of collective farms in the mountainous and foothill regions [of Daghestan], rural administrations (not always publically) have returned to the mosques a large part of the private fields and gardens (waqfs) which were attached to them prior to collectivization.”
“In spite of Russian and republic laws,” the Moscow scholar says, “the pre-revolutionary lists of waqfs … have received legal recognition … The public opinion of the population follows events there in order that the new owners of the mosque lands contribute to the account of the mosque a specific part of the harvest.”
A broader effort to restore waqf property and to provide it with a legal foundation has been pursued in Tatarstan over the last 13 years, Aydagulov says. In 1998, the MSD there created the position of “chairman of the waqfs” as one of the first deputy muftis, and in 1999, the republic passed a law legitimating the restoration of such property.
Because the Russian civil code “does not have such a term as ‘waqf property,’” the Nizhny expert continues, the Tatars sought to get around this by describing the waqfs as the property of the mosques. “In this way, waqfs exist de facto there,” he says, a development that has prompted Tatar and other officials to try to square the law with reality.
As Vladimir Putin worked to ensure that there was a common legal space in the Russian Federation, this effort became more urgent. In March 2008, Tatarstan Mufti Gusman-khazrat Iskhakov wrote to Dmitry Medvedev who was then the first vice prime minister of the Russian Federation about this.
Iskhakov said that Moscow would do well to change the law so that waqfs could be legal because the income from such property arrangements “would permit Islamic organizations to become independent of foreign sponsors who was seeking to impose on Russian Muslims an alien ideology.”
In support of this appeal, the State Council of Tatarstan called for the Duma to revise Russian law so as to include the concept of waqfs, making much the same argument that these institutions would keep the mosques and other Muslim organizations from falling under foreign influence. The Duma has not yet acted on that request.
But as opponents of this idea noted, the legalization of waqfs would have at least two negative consequences from the point of view of the Russian state. On the one hand, such institutions if they became widespread would have the effect of making the mosques and medressahs supported by them more independent of the MSDs and hence of the state.
And on the other, the legalization of waqfs could lead Muslims to seek restitution of waqf lands under the terms of legislation, pushed by the Russian Orthodox Church, that calls for the restitution of church property seized by the Bolsheviks. While a waqf can be any form of physical property, it is often land – and before 1917, Russia’s waqfs covered an enormous area.
Some Russian experts on Islam, including Leonid Syukiyaynen, argue that waqfs could be effectively legalized by defining them as charitable foundations. That would solve many legal problems, but it could raise others, including that these institutions could be closed down at any time and the danger that control of such income would pass into the wrong hands.
Despite Moscow’s resistance, many Muslim communities across the Russian Federation are pressing for the restoration of waqfs, especially to support medrassahs and other Islamic educational institutions. A driving force behind that may be that funding from abroad for such institutions has been cut back in recent years.
And these communities have come up with a variety of legal theories to defend what they want to do. In Nizhny Novgorod, for example, the MSD is equating waqf property with Russian Orthodox Church monasteries and thus going ahead with the creation of waqfs to support the operation of an Islamic Cultural Center set to open later this year.
According to Aydagulov, this process has accelerated since the visit last year of a delegation from the Islamic Development Bank to Kazan. Since then, waqfs have been set up in the largest cities of Russia as well as in many smaller villages and rural areas. That makes the legal issues increasingly important.
What is “extremely important,” the Nizhny expert says, is that “this process occurs within the framework of the legal field of a secular Russian state as well as under the control of the Muslims themselves.” Whether those two concerns can be squared is an open question, but however that may be, “Russian waqfs are experiencing a new birth.”
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