Paul Goble
Staunton, February 26 – Because of the problems involved with data on the Russian government’s fight with militants in the republics of the North Caucasus, few commentators are prepared to sum and then disaggregate the numbers, thus either over-reacting to particular reports and failing to acknowledge just how variegated the region is.
A happy exception to this is the effort of the Kavkaz-Uzel.ru news agency, which yesterday published detailed and carefully sourced data on clashes between Russian forces and the militants over the past year showing that security is improving in some republics even as it is deteriorating in others (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/181243/).
According to this news agency, which has its own independent sources, “military actions in the North Caucasus have ever more shifted from Chechnya and Ingushetia to other republics of the South of Russia,” a pattern that means it is not appropriate “to speak about the worsening of the situation in the North Caucasus as a whole.”
Over the past year, the agency says, there has been “a positive trend” in Chechnya and Ingushetia,” two republics which featured far more violence in the past than now, “but at the same time, the situation in Daghestan and Kabardino-Balkaria has become much worse” than it was.
For the North Caucasus as a whole, the number of terrorist acts and their victims increased, with 238 explosions and 15 suicide bombings, nine attacks and one terrorist act more than in 2009. Measured another way, the agency said, more people suffered in 2010 than a year earlier, with 151 killed and 656 wounded, compared to 92 killed and 332 wounded.
But those summary findings hide a major shift, Kavkaz-Uzel said. The number of explosions and terrorist actions increased 350 percent in KBR and 168 percent in Daghestan while they fell by 61 percent in Chechnya and 47 percent in Ingushetia, the two most notorious hotspots in the past.
Kabardino-Balkaria, “which over the course of 2010” became the hottest of the hot spots in the North Caucasus, saw an increase in the number of terrorist explosions of more than 300 percent. Moreover, there was a suicide bombing, a kind of attack that had not been reported at all in2009.
In Daghestan, the rate of increase was less, Kavkaz-Uzel reported. There were 112 explosions in 2010 compared to 69 in 2009, but the number of suicide bombings rose from one to six, making that eastern republic the leader in that kind of terrorist action in the North Caucasus as a whole.
In Ingushetia and Chechnya, in contrast, the number of explosions fell from 86 to 40 and 62 to 39 respectively, and the number of suicide attacks fell from four to two and from nine to four. The Kavkaz-Uzel article also provides a tabular listing of these actions in all the republics of the North Caucasus as well as a listing of all suicide bombings during the last year.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Kremlin Fears Twitter Can Be Surrogate for Political Opposition, Soldatov Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, February 26 – The Kremlin fears that in Twitter, “the West has found a new means for advancing its interests after ‘the color revolutions,’” one in which “the weakness of the opposition is not an obstacle to regime change if Twitter technology comes to the rescue,” according to a leading independent Russian specialist on the security agencies.
In an article in yesterday’s “Yezhednevny zhurnal,” Andrey Soldatov, who heads the Agentura.ru portal, says that the Kremlin’s “hysterical” overreaction on the ability of this technology to cause political change precisely mirrors the overconfidence of some in the West about the power of this technology (www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=10845).
But it is not only the Kremlin that has overrated the role of Twitter and other social media, Soldatov continues. The Russian opposition is once again displaying the “optimism” about its own prospects, the kind of misplaced optimism “which first appeared during the time of the Iranian demonstrations in 2009.
Soldatov cites with approval the conclusions of Yevgeny Morozov, whose book “Net Delusion” argues that Western politicians look to Twitter because they remain prisoners of ideas “formulated at the end of the Cold War” which held that the free flow of information by itself, then via Xeroxes and faxes, would suffice to overthrow authoritarian regimes.
Now, twenty years later, “the same experts” are placing the same hopes in the social media – and because they are doing so, Morozov notes, they are ignoring both broader social attitudes and the specific capabilities of these regimes and the limitations of the oppositions in them.
Given the “eternal suspiciousness” of people in the Kremlin, Soldatov continues, it is not surprising that its denizens have picked up on these ideas and in an often uncritical way. That explains why President Dmitry Medevedev said in Vladikavkaz that the West “had earlier prepared an [Egyptian] scenario for us.”
But the optimism about such technologies in the West and among Russian opposition groups, the Moscow expert says, is equally misplaced. One the one hand, Twitter has played about the same role in Egypt as it did in Iran – and the latter unrest, however much attention it attracted, did not lead to regime change.
And on the other, there are very few Russian websites that actually generate news. Most who carry news do so as aggregators of the production of other media, most of which is subject to far greater government influence or even control than the blogosphere is generally assumed to be.
That should lead to a more sober appreciation of the impact of social media, “but the reaction of Medvedev shows that in the Kremlin, [this] threat is being taken seriously.” And consequently, Soldatov says, it is worth examining which parts of the Russian government bureaucracy are most actively involved in responding.
The Kremlin itself, he continues, does not have its own “group of experts or expert institute where a strategy for the Web has been developed.” That lack was highlighted during the course of the preparation of the law on the Internet, one that was dominated by public relations concerns rather than anything else.
As a result, Moscow’s policies in this area are still dominated less by the Presidential Administration than by the two structures, the FSB and the Interior Ministry which “have sections devoted to work with the Internet and which over the last few years have several times quite precisely demonstrated which approach they consider the only correct one.”
The method of Internet supervision preferred by the FSB and MVD, Soldatov writes, consists of “the total registration of users,” with users being required to submit passport information, net operators more extensive materials, and so on. And in reaction to the events in the Middle East, the two agencies have called for new laws to allow that to happen.
These agencies also are interested in putting out stories on the net under “false names” and employing hackers to take down sites the Russian authorities do not approve of. As far as the Presidential Administration is concerned, Soldatov says, it “is inclined to more adventurist methods,” among them its establishment of a Kremlin bloggers school.
While an institution bearing that name was closed shortly after it was set up two years ago, the Moscow expert continues, it has been replaced by something called the “Youth Call of the Organs of Local Administration,” within the framework of which the authorities provide guidance on working on the Internet.
.
Staunton, February 26 – The Kremlin fears that in Twitter, “the West has found a new means for advancing its interests after ‘the color revolutions,’” one in which “the weakness of the opposition is not an obstacle to regime change if Twitter technology comes to the rescue,” according to a leading independent Russian specialist on the security agencies.
In an article in yesterday’s “Yezhednevny zhurnal,” Andrey Soldatov, who heads the Agentura.ru portal, says that the Kremlin’s “hysterical” overreaction on the ability of this technology to cause political change precisely mirrors the overconfidence of some in the West about the power of this technology (www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=10845).
But it is not only the Kremlin that has overrated the role of Twitter and other social media, Soldatov continues. The Russian opposition is once again displaying the “optimism” about its own prospects, the kind of misplaced optimism “which first appeared during the time of the Iranian demonstrations in 2009.
Soldatov cites with approval the conclusions of Yevgeny Morozov, whose book “Net Delusion” argues that Western politicians look to Twitter because they remain prisoners of ideas “formulated at the end of the Cold War” which held that the free flow of information by itself, then via Xeroxes and faxes, would suffice to overthrow authoritarian regimes.
Now, twenty years later, “the same experts” are placing the same hopes in the social media – and because they are doing so, Morozov notes, they are ignoring both broader social attitudes and the specific capabilities of these regimes and the limitations of the oppositions in them.
Given the “eternal suspiciousness” of people in the Kremlin, Soldatov continues, it is not surprising that its denizens have picked up on these ideas and in an often uncritical way. That explains why President Dmitry Medevedev said in Vladikavkaz that the West “had earlier prepared an [Egyptian] scenario for us.”
But the optimism about such technologies in the West and among Russian opposition groups, the Moscow expert says, is equally misplaced. One the one hand, Twitter has played about the same role in Egypt as it did in Iran – and the latter unrest, however much attention it attracted, did not lead to regime change.
And on the other, there are very few Russian websites that actually generate news. Most who carry news do so as aggregators of the production of other media, most of which is subject to far greater government influence or even control than the blogosphere is generally assumed to be.
That should lead to a more sober appreciation of the impact of social media, “but the reaction of Medvedev shows that in the Kremlin, [this] threat is being taken seriously.” And consequently, Soldatov says, it is worth examining which parts of the Russian government bureaucracy are most actively involved in responding.
The Kremlin itself, he continues, does not have its own “group of experts or expert institute where a strategy for the Web has been developed.” That lack was highlighted during the course of the preparation of the law on the Internet, one that was dominated by public relations concerns rather than anything else.
As a result, Moscow’s policies in this area are still dominated less by the Presidential Administration than by the two structures, the FSB and the Interior Ministry which “have sections devoted to work with the Internet and which over the last few years have several times quite precisely demonstrated which approach they consider the only correct one.”
The method of Internet supervision preferred by the FSB and MVD, Soldatov writes, consists of “the total registration of users,” with users being required to submit passport information, net operators more extensive materials, and so on. And in reaction to the events in the Middle East, the two agencies have called for new laws to allow that to happen.
These agencies also are interested in putting out stories on the net under “false names” and employing hackers to take down sites the Russian authorities do not approve of. As far as the Presidential Administration is concerned, Soldatov says, it “is inclined to more adventurist methods,” among them its establishment of a Kremlin bloggers school.
While an institution bearing that name was closed shortly after it was set up two years ago, the Moscow expert continues, it has been replaced by something called the “Youth Call of the Organs of Local Administration,” within the framework of which the authorities provide guidance on working on the Internet.
.
Window on Eurasia: Russian Focus on Middle East Unrest Points to a National Identity Crisis, Commentator Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, February 26 – Both the Russian authorities and members of the Russian opposition are currently discussing the future of their country not as they usually did earlier on the basis of European models but rather in terms of unrest in the countries of the Middle East, a shift that a leading Moscow commentator says reflects a serious national identity crisis.
Writing for the Grani.ru portal yesterday, Dmitry Shusharin notes that “at the endof the 1980s, progressive Soviet society was delighted by the velvet revolutions.” That is what Russians need, its members said. And things “almost turned out that way, although not completely” (grani.ru/opinion/shusharin/m.186545.html).
“The countries of tank socialism returned to the national histories that had been interrupted,” and “Russians put an end to the artificial and anti-national Soviet Union and got a chance to establish anew [their] national statehood.” In short, Shusharin says, “The velvet revolutions were a worthy model for emulation.”
The same thing was true of the so-called “color revolutions,” he continues, all the more so because these were “events in countries which had more in common with our country than just common borders.” But now, the Grani.ru commentator says, Russians appear to be focusing on other models.
Russian attitudes “to the destabilization in the enormous space from the Maghreb to the Far East,” Shusharin says, “is extremely strange.” In talking about this unrest, those in power are “repeating the clichés about a conspiracy of unseen forces, exactly the same thing that they said during the color revolutions.”
And “the progressive intelligentsia” is also using clichés, albeit “with a different tonality.” For them, what is happening are “positive changes” and “popular uprisings,” Shusharin continues. “And of course,” such people are talking about “the victory of Twitter over tyranny.”
Both sides, the commentator suggests, know better about what is taking place, “only the powers that be do not want what is taking place, and the color forces dream about the possibility that Russia will drawn into this process.” This is clearly a sign of “an identity crisis: 20 years ago, [they] looked for models of political behavior in Europe; now, they are looking elsewhere.”
This “identity crisis” of Russians, one that suggest they see themselves no longer in terms of Europe but rather as part of “the periphery of the civilized world” could lead to “a new isolation of Russia if the ruling elite [as a result] refuses to take part in joint action with other countries in the resolution of the new problems.”
By focusing on the paternalistic regimes in the Middle East now in crisis rather than on the liberal democracies of the West, Russians are effectively viewing themselves as part of the former and thus at risk of taking similar steps to overcome that crisis within their own country, something that could make the situation in Russia itself even worse.
Moreover, when one examines the nature of the crisis in the Middle East, Shusharin says, one observes that there is a combination of enormous natural wealth and “the impossibility of self-realization in the clutches of an archaic social system,” which have “played such a significant role in the birth and development of contemporary terrorism.”
And what is “the main thing: for the paternalistically oriented population, [expanded government aid] becomes just the same kind of narcotic as oil dollars. Without a change of the basic stereotypes of behavior, above all labor norms and values, nothing changes in these countries.”
An example of this within Russia, Shusharin suggests, “is the attempt at the pacification of Chechnya and the fate of investments in the North Caucasus.”
Consequently, he argues, “the destabilization of the periphery is not an occasion either for paranoid unmasking of the moves of ‘the Washington obkom’ or for happiness about the renewal of the world as at the time of the velvet and color revolutions.” There is no movement forward, at least not yet; at best, there will be “a cyclical renewal of the ruling elites.”
But Shusharin concludes that “the Arab scenario” does not “threaten” Russia “for one simple reason.” Russia already was infected with “’the Arab disease,’ which was given birth by the heightened paternalistic expectations of the population.” That revolt took place in Russia “already in 1993.” And no one could call that revolt “massive.”
Russians therefore should not be considering the Arab situation as a model for their future. Instead, Shusharin argues, they should be asking themselves “why machinations with elections … which have become the basis for color revolutions in other countries do not generate anger in the Russian voter.”
Staunton, February 26 – Both the Russian authorities and members of the Russian opposition are currently discussing the future of their country not as they usually did earlier on the basis of European models but rather in terms of unrest in the countries of the Middle East, a shift that a leading Moscow commentator says reflects a serious national identity crisis.
Writing for the Grani.ru portal yesterday, Dmitry Shusharin notes that “at the endof the 1980s, progressive Soviet society was delighted by the velvet revolutions.” That is what Russians need, its members said. And things “almost turned out that way, although not completely” (grani.ru/opinion/shusharin/m.186545.html).
“The countries of tank socialism returned to the national histories that had been interrupted,” and “Russians put an end to the artificial and anti-national Soviet Union and got a chance to establish anew [their] national statehood.” In short, Shusharin says, “The velvet revolutions were a worthy model for emulation.”
The same thing was true of the so-called “color revolutions,” he continues, all the more so because these were “events in countries which had more in common with our country than just common borders.” But now, the Grani.ru commentator says, Russians appear to be focusing on other models.
Russian attitudes “to the destabilization in the enormous space from the Maghreb to the Far East,” Shusharin says, “is extremely strange.” In talking about this unrest, those in power are “repeating the clichés about a conspiracy of unseen forces, exactly the same thing that they said during the color revolutions.”
And “the progressive intelligentsia” is also using clichés, albeit “with a different tonality.” For them, what is happening are “positive changes” and “popular uprisings,” Shusharin continues. “And of course,” such people are talking about “the victory of Twitter over tyranny.”
Both sides, the commentator suggests, know better about what is taking place, “only the powers that be do not want what is taking place, and the color forces dream about the possibility that Russia will drawn into this process.” This is clearly a sign of “an identity crisis: 20 years ago, [they] looked for models of political behavior in Europe; now, they are looking elsewhere.”
This “identity crisis” of Russians, one that suggest they see themselves no longer in terms of Europe but rather as part of “the periphery of the civilized world” could lead to “a new isolation of Russia if the ruling elite [as a result] refuses to take part in joint action with other countries in the resolution of the new problems.”
By focusing on the paternalistic regimes in the Middle East now in crisis rather than on the liberal democracies of the West, Russians are effectively viewing themselves as part of the former and thus at risk of taking similar steps to overcome that crisis within their own country, something that could make the situation in Russia itself even worse.
Moreover, when one examines the nature of the crisis in the Middle East, Shusharin says, one observes that there is a combination of enormous natural wealth and “the impossibility of self-realization in the clutches of an archaic social system,” which have “played such a significant role in the birth and development of contemporary terrorism.”
And what is “the main thing: for the paternalistically oriented population, [expanded government aid] becomes just the same kind of narcotic as oil dollars. Without a change of the basic stereotypes of behavior, above all labor norms and values, nothing changes in these countries.”
An example of this within Russia, Shusharin suggests, “is the attempt at the pacification of Chechnya and the fate of investments in the North Caucasus.”
Consequently, he argues, “the destabilization of the periphery is not an occasion either for paranoid unmasking of the moves of ‘the Washington obkom’ or for happiness about the renewal of the world as at the time of the velvet and color revolutions.” There is no movement forward, at least not yet; at best, there will be “a cyclical renewal of the ruling elites.”
But Shusharin concludes that “the Arab scenario” does not “threaten” Russia “for one simple reason.” Russia already was infected with “’the Arab disease,’ which was given birth by the heightened paternalistic expectations of the population.” That revolt took place in Russia “already in 1993.” And no one could call that revolt “massive.”
Russians therefore should not be considering the Arab situation as a model for their future. Instead, Shusharin argues, they should be asking themselves “why machinations with elections … which have become the basis for color revolutions in other countries do not generate anger in the Russian voter.”
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