Paul Goble
Staunton, March 21 – Responding to claims by a former Russian nuclear power minister that only the telephone is a safer technology than nuclear power plants, Aleksandr Nikitin of the Bellona Ecological Defense Center says that the Japanese nuclear disaster is certain to have Chernobyl-like consequences.
On the one hand, those with financial interests in the construction and operation of such plants will continue to deny the dangers they represent, the longtime environmental activist says. And on the other, the people living near such plants will in the case of accidents suffer in ways that will be hard to count.
Last week, Ekho Moskvy featured an interview with Yevgeny Adamov, former Russian nuclear power minister (www.echo.msk.ru/programs/klinch/757462-echo). His claims about the safety of this industry were so hyperbolic that the Bellona organization asked Aleksandr Nikitin to comment on them (www.bellona.ru/articles_ru/articles_2011/Nikitin-Adamov).
The former nuclear power minister asserted that “of all technical objects from the point of view of life of people and harm for health, the least harm comes from nuclear energy. Only the telephone is more secure,” a view that Nikitin dismissed as completely false both when accidents occur and especially long afterwards.
Harm from nuclear accidents, Nikitin said, involves “not only the number of dead and suffering at the time when incidents occur but also the influence these incidents will have on future generations of people and on the natural environment.” Chernobyl is still having a negative impact on both, and analysts have no way of measuring this in advance.
Nikitin also dismissed Adamov’s assertion that the incident in Japan shows that “atomic energy is the most secure” and that “not one individual” will lose his life now or in the future as a result of the accident. That is simply not the case, Nikitin countered, noting that the radiation will remain in the area for many decades harming people and the environment.
And Nikitin said that Adamov’s arguments about the increasing number of technical means to protect against nuclear accidents in fact undercut themselves. “With the growing number of technical means guaranteeing security,” the Bellona expert continues, “the reliability of the system as a whole falls” because it depends on each and every one of them.
Nikitin also dismisses Adamov’s arguments that nuclear power will be demanded by countries “because it is more secure than other technologies and more ecological than they.” That is not the case, and the former Soviet naval captain turned ecological investigator provides examples.
And the Bellona expert notes the recent decisions of Germany, China and “even Nicaragua” to use other forms of energy. More are likely to follow, he says, because the Japanese events will represent a shock to the atomic power industry equal to that which occurred after Chernobyl.
But however that may be, Moscow is continuing to promote the exploitation and building of atomic energy plants not only insider the Russian Federation but in Turkey and Belarus. As Bellona’s Andrey Ozharovsky notes, “the powers that be in Russia are ignoring the lessons of the catastrophe” in Japan because there is so much profit to be made.
Indeed, Orzharovsky says, it appears that the current Russian leaders will “recognize the danger of atomic energy” only if there is an accident within the Russian Federation, a tragedy that their own blind self-confidence in this form of power tragically makes more rather than less likely (www.bellona.ru/articles_ru/articles_2011/Putin-Medvedev-Lobby).
Monday, March 21, 2011
Window on Eurasia: National Districts of Russian North, Born in Violence, Now Face a Sad End, Local Writer Suggests
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 21 – Moscow’s drive to amalgamate the autonomous districts that some of the numerically small peoples of the Russian North have has prompted one writer there to recall that these peoples actively and violently resisted Soviet ethnic engineering in the 1920s and 1930s, an implicit warning that at least some of them might mount a similar resistance now.
Writing in ”Nyar”yana vynder,” a newspaper in the Nenets Autonomous District, Irina Khanzerova notes that Yamalo-Nenets and Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous districts last year marked their 80th anniversaries, often with tears because “no one knows” whether they will have the chance to celebrate any future ones (nvinder.ru/?t=sm&d=11&m=0003&y=2011&n=9).
And precisely because of these doubts about the future, she writes, people are again reflecting “about the past and -- what is the main thing -- the future of the Northern autonomies” as these small and isolated communities seek to answer the question “what is the dawning day preparing for us?”
Describing her article as being about “a path from the past into the past,” Khanzerova notes at after 1917, the Soviet authorities created national districts in order to “ease the task of administration” by a profess of divide and rule and thus assist the communists in their efforts to do away with the traditional way of life of the peoples of the North.
But this “process of ‘dividing up,’” the Nenets journalist continues, “did not take place without resistance despite what we are told. Across the territories of the numerically small peoples broke out a wave of uprisings,” as the various peoples attempted to defend their way of life against the outsiders.
Consequently, Khanzerova argues, “no one today has the right to assert that the establishment of national districts in the near Arctic tundra took place quietly and happily and that the peoples living on the borderlands of a great state only awaited the coming of the new power.” Instead, “the new ‘happy autonomy’ was built on the bones of our grandfathers.”
She surveys the history of resistance in four of these districts: the Khanty-Mansiisk AO which was created in 1930 and still exists, the Evenk AO which was created in 1932 and disbanded in 2007, the Dolgan-Nenets AO which existed from 1931 to 2007, and the Chukotka AO which was established in 1930 but faces an uncertain future.
In the Khanty and Mansi areas, the population, who were earlier called Ostyaks, did not accept Soviet power, and the Mansi writer Yeremey Aypin notes that “in the folklore of the Siberian peoples in the 1920s appeared many legends and stories celebrating the former taiga life” as “better and freer” than the one the Soviets imposed.
In 1934, Khanzerova recounts, the Ob Khanty refused to meet their labor norms. Their children were seized and confined in Soviet orphanages, and many disappeared into the taiga. But in one district town, the NKVD surrounded and shot “approximately 300 people,” apparently a small fraction of the total number of executions there.
Soviet efforts to create an Event district took almost a decade because of local resistance. After Moscow called for that, a group of 60 Evenks seized the port of Ayan, thereby acquiring “a large quantity” of arms. And they were forced out only when the GPU dispatched one of its most notorious punitive detachments.
In 1932, a rising took place in Chumikan, After its defeat and in protest against Soviet efforts to regulate their lives, a group of Evenks left the RSFSR for China. Those who remained were subsequently shot as Chinese “spies.” Today, Khanzerova notes, “there are some 30,000 Evenks” in the Chinese district of Hingan.
When Soviet power arrived in the Taymyr, it immediately set about creating the GULAG. After an ethnographer talked about the shamans as “brakes” on the development of the Soviet system, “the ‘builders of a new world’ arrested all shamans and their assistance” and had them shot. Later 500 of their supporters were sent into the GULAG as punishment.
Chukotka, because of its enormous size and small population, was not subjected to full Sovietization until somewhat later. As a result, resistance took place not so much in the 1920s as in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1949, for example, Khanzerova writes, there was an uprising among the Chukchi but it was quickly suppressed.
To prevent a repetition, the Soviets carried out another form of ethnic engineering: they introduced detachments of Ukrainians, Jews, Belarusians and ethnic Russians from Novgorod and Pskov oblasts to overwhelm the local population, reducing it to a minority on its own land from time immemorial.
Thus, Khanzerova concludes, “nowhere in the northern expanses of Russia did the establishment of autonomous national districts take place peacefully and without blood.” Instead, that experiment organized by Moscow cost these peoples dearly. Now that Moscow is making new plans, few expect things to be different.
“Just how long the last of the Mohicans -- the Nenets AO, the Yamano-Nenets AO, the Khanty-Mansiisk AO, and the Chukotka AO -- will remain is something that today only the supreme power can say,” the Nenets writer says. “And its position [on this question] unfortunately is well known to us.”
Staunton, March 21 – Moscow’s drive to amalgamate the autonomous districts that some of the numerically small peoples of the Russian North have has prompted one writer there to recall that these peoples actively and violently resisted Soviet ethnic engineering in the 1920s and 1930s, an implicit warning that at least some of them might mount a similar resistance now.
Writing in ”Nyar”yana vynder,” a newspaper in the Nenets Autonomous District, Irina Khanzerova notes that Yamalo-Nenets and Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous districts last year marked their 80th anniversaries, often with tears because “no one knows” whether they will have the chance to celebrate any future ones (nvinder.ru/?t=sm&d=11&m=0003&y=2011&n=9).
And precisely because of these doubts about the future, she writes, people are again reflecting “about the past and -- what is the main thing -- the future of the Northern autonomies” as these small and isolated communities seek to answer the question “what is the dawning day preparing for us?”
Describing her article as being about “a path from the past into the past,” Khanzerova notes at after 1917, the Soviet authorities created national districts in order to “ease the task of administration” by a profess of divide and rule and thus assist the communists in their efforts to do away with the traditional way of life of the peoples of the North.
But this “process of ‘dividing up,’” the Nenets journalist continues, “did not take place without resistance despite what we are told. Across the territories of the numerically small peoples broke out a wave of uprisings,” as the various peoples attempted to defend their way of life against the outsiders.
Consequently, Khanzerova argues, “no one today has the right to assert that the establishment of national districts in the near Arctic tundra took place quietly and happily and that the peoples living on the borderlands of a great state only awaited the coming of the new power.” Instead, “the new ‘happy autonomy’ was built on the bones of our grandfathers.”
She surveys the history of resistance in four of these districts: the Khanty-Mansiisk AO which was created in 1930 and still exists, the Evenk AO which was created in 1932 and disbanded in 2007, the Dolgan-Nenets AO which existed from 1931 to 2007, and the Chukotka AO which was established in 1930 but faces an uncertain future.
In the Khanty and Mansi areas, the population, who were earlier called Ostyaks, did not accept Soviet power, and the Mansi writer Yeremey Aypin notes that “in the folklore of the Siberian peoples in the 1920s appeared many legends and stories celebrating the former taiga life” as “better and freer” than the one the Soviets imposed.
In 1934, Khanzerova recounts, the Ob Khanty refused to meet their labor norms. Their children were seized and confined in Soviet orphanages, and many disappeared into the taiga. But in one district town, the NKVD surrounded and shot “approximately 300 people,” apparently a small fraction of the total number of executions there.
Soviet efforts to create an Event district took almost a decade because of local resistance. After Moscow called for that, a group of 60 Evenks seized the port of Ayan, thereby acquiring “a large quantity” of arms. And they were forced out only when the GPU dispatched one of its most notorious punitive detachments.
In 1932, a rising took place in Chumikan, After its defeat and in protest against Soviet efforts to regulate their lives, a group of Evenks left the RSFSR for China. Those who remained were subsequently shot as Chinese “spies.” Today, Khanzerova notes, “there are some 30,000 Evenks” in the Chinese district of Hingan.
When Soviet power arrived in the Taymyr, it immediately set about creating the GULAG. After an ethnographer talked about the shamans as “brakes” on the development of the Soviet system, “the ‘builders of a new world’ arrested all shamans and their assistance” and had them shot. Later 500 of their supporters were sent into the GULAG as punishment.
Chukotka, because of its enormous size and small population, was not subjected to full Sovietization until somewhat later. As a result, resistance took place not so much in the 1920s as in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1949, for example, Khanzerova writes, there was an uprising among the Chukchi but it was quickly suppressed.
To prevent a repetition, the Soviets carried out another form of ethnic engineering: they introduced detachments of Ukrainians, Jews, Belarusians and ethnic Russians from Novgorod and Pskov oblasts to overwhelm the local population, reducing it to a minority on its own land from time immemorial.
Thus, Khanzerova concludes, “nowhere in the northern expanses of Russia did the establishment of autonomous national districts take place peacefully and without blood.” Instead, that experiment organized by Moscow cost these peoples dearly. Now that Moscow is making new plans, few expect things to be different.
“Just how long the last of the Mohicans -- the Nenets AO, the Yamano-Nenets AO, the Khanty-Mansiisk AO, and the Chukotka AO -- will remain is something that today only the supreme power can say,” the Nenets writer says. “And its position [on this question] unfortunately is well known to us.”
Window on Eurasia: Medvedev’s Offer to Resettle Japanese in Russian Far East Angers Nationalists and Regionalists
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 21 – President Dmitry Medvedev’s suggestion at a meeting of the Russian Security Council that Moscow should consider offering Japanese the chance to resettle in the underpopulated areas of the Russian Far East has outraged both Russian nationalists at the center and Russian activists in that region.
At the end of last week, Medvedev said that in the wake of the problems Japan has been having with the tsunami and nuclear power plant, “we now ought to think about the use in the case of necessity perhaps of part of the labor potential of our neighbors especially in the under-populated regions of Siberia and the Far East” (www.utro.ru/articles/2011/03/18/963182.shtml).
This notion was broached earlier in the week by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the outspoken leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, who said bluntly that “the Japanese islandsare unsuitable” for life because of the potential for cataclysms and that “Russia is an order of magnitude more stable in this regard” (www.utro.ru/articles/2011/03/14/961890.shtml).
Arguing that “the threat of disappearance hangs over the Japanese nation,” Zhirinovsky suggested that the government of the Russian Federationshould begin condultations about “resettling the residents of the islands on the territory of our country,” where, he suggested they could “learn Russian and be assimilated” and thereby gain Russian citizenship.
There is plenty of room for them in the Russian Far East, the LDPR leader suggested, even in terms of housing. Consider Magadan oblast alone, Zhirinovsky said. There, the population has declined from 400,000 to 160,000, but the housing stock has not, allowing Russia to “accept an enormous number of people.”
Not surprisingly, the idea of allowing for Japanese settlement on Russian territory, especially with the assistance of Moscow, has outraged many Russian nationalists (www.za-nauku.ru//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3952&Itemid=35) as well as xenophobic groups like DPNI (www.dpni.org/articles/lenta_novo/21291/).
But this notion has generated particular anger among the Russian population of the Russian Far East, some of whose members are suggesting that Medvedev has so far exceeded his authority that he should be impeached and warning that such an immigration program could lead Siberians to demand independence.
In a blog post picked up by the Globalsib.com news agency on Saturday, Sergey Kornyev, a Siberian regionalist who opposes independence for Siberia and the Far East, said that Medvedev’s proposal is so dangerous and outrageous as to constitute treason and that it should lead to his impeachment by the Federal Assembly (globalsib.com/9903/).
Kornyev outlined five reasons for that conclusion. First of all, he noted, “the president has agreed with the idea of massively introducing in the border regions of Russia citizens of a state which up to now is formally in a state of war with Russia, has territorial claims against it, and which in 1918-1925 occupied a significant part of Siberia and the Far East.”
When Japan was in occupation of that region, Kornyev points out, it attempted to assimilate the Russian population by introducing Japanese laws, renaming cities and streets “and so on,” an indication, the blogger implies, of what a new and massive Japanese presence in that area might mean.
Second, the blogger says, Medvedev by speaking of “the insufficient population” of Siberia and the Far East thus recognized “before the entire world that Russia has ‘excess land.’” That acknowledgement will only make it more difficult forMoscow to conduct talks “with allcountries which have or may have territorial claims against Russia.”
Indeed, Kornyev argues, “many abroad are certain to understand [medvedev’slatest] declaration as an official request for the dividing up of Russia in view of its insufficiently dense population.”
Third, “by this declaration,” he continues, “the President has provoked China, a neighbor, peaceful relations with which is the single guarantee of the securityand integrity of Russia. If Russia has ‘extra land’ for Japan, then why not for China? Why should China tolerate a situation where Japanese will populate areas China itself has claims on?”
According to Kornyev, “Provoking awar with China is the most terrible crime that a leader of Russia could commit.”
Fourth, he points out, “by this declaration, the President has objectively called forth the growth of separatist attitudes among the peoples of Siberia and the Far East who populated this land before Russia.” That is because these people know the fate that the Ainu have suffered under the Japanese, a fate that could be theirs if Medvedev’s proposal is accepted.
“In essence,” Kornyev argues, “the President has said that for Russia, the lands of these peoples is ‘superfluous.’ If [this land] is ‘superfluous, so perhaps it out to return the land to these people in order that they can order it more wisely?”
And fifth, he says, Medvedev’s remarks will give support to those who want to “accuse the leadership of Russia in the conscious genocide of the civil population which is living inthese regions. Any resettlement measure must be preceded by consultations with the residents of the regions involved and a careful social-economic evaluation.”
Kornyev says that “we are waitinguntil one of the parties represented in the State Duma will attempt to start the official procedure of impeachement on the basis of charges of state treason and an attack on the territorial integrity of Russia.” In advance of the December elections, the decision on this point is critical.
That is because, in advance of the Decemberelections, it “willallow us to find out if there is in the Duma atleast one party which itself is not a party of state treason.”
Staunton, March 21 – President Dmitry Medvedev’s suggestion at a meeting of the Russian Security Council that Moscow should consider offering Japanese the chance to resettle in the underpopulated areas of the Russian Far East has outraged both Russian nationalists at the center and Russian activists in that region.
At the end of last week, Medvedev said that in the wake of the problems Japan has been having with the tsunami and nuclear power plant, “we now ought to think about the use in the case of necessity perhaps of part of the labor potential of our neighbors especially in the under-populated regions of Siberia and the Far East” (www.utro.ru/articles/2011/03/18/963182.shtml).
This notion was broached earlier in the week by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the outspoken leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, who said bluntly that “the Japanese islandsare unsuitable” for life because of the potential for cataclysms and that “Russia is an order of magnitude more stable in this regard” (www.utro.ru/articles/2011/03/14/961890.shtml).
Arguing that “the threat of disappearance hangs over the Japanese nation,” Zhirinovsky suggested that the government of the Russian Federationshould begin condultations about “resettling the residents of the islands on the territory of our country,” where, he suggested they could “learn Russian and be assimilated” and thereby gain Russian citizenship.
There is plenty of room for them in the Russian Far East, the LDPR leader suggested, even in terms of housing. Consider Magadan oblast alone, Zhirinovsky said. There, the population has declined from 400,000 to 160,000, but the housing stock has not, allowing Russia to “accept an enormous number of people.”
Not surprisingly, the idea of allowing for Japanese settlement on Russian territory, especially with the assistance of Moscow, has outraged many Russian nationalists (www.za-nauku.ru//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3952&Itemid=35) as well as xenophobic groups like DPNI (www.dpni.org/articles/lenta_novo/21291/).
But this notion has generated particular anger among the Russian population of the Russian Far East, some of whose members are suggesting that Medvedev has so far exceeded his authority that he should be impeached and warning that such an immigration program could lead Siberians to demand independence.
In a blog post picked up by the Globalsib.com news agency on Saturday, Sergey Kornyev, a Siberian regionalist who opposes independence for Siberia and the Far East, said that Medvedev’s proposal is so dangerous and outrageous as to constitute treason and that it should lead to his impeachment by the Federal Assembly (globalsib.com/9903/).
Kornyev outlined five reasons for that conclusion. First of all, he noted, “the president has agreed with the idea of massively introducing in the border regions of Russia citizens of a state which up to now is formally in a state of war with Russia, has territorial claims against it, and which in 1918-1925 occupied a significant part of Siberia and the Far East.”
When Japan was in occupation of that region, Kornyev points out, it attempted to assimilate the Russian population by introducing Japanese laws, renaming cities and streets “and so on,” an indication, the blogger implies, of what a new and massive Japanese presence in that area might mean.
Second, the blogger says, Medvedev by speaking of “the insufficient population” of Siberia and the Far East thus recognized “before the entire world that Russia has ‘excess land.’” That acknowledgement will only make it more difficult forMoscow to conduct talks “with allcountries which have or may have territorial claims against Russia.”
Indeed, Kornyev argues, “many abroad are certain to understand [medvedev’slatest] declaration as an official request for the dividing up of Russia in view of its insufficiently dense population.”
Third, “by this declaration,” he continues, “the President has provoked China, a neighbor, peaceful relations with which is the single guarantee of the securityand integrity of Russia. If Russia has ‘extra land’ for Japan, then why not for China? Why should China tolerate a situation where Japanese will populate areas China itself has claims on?”
According to Kornyev, “Provoking awar with China is the most terrible crime that a leader of Russia could commit.”
Fourth, he points out, “by this declaration, the President has objectively called forth the growth of separatist attitudes among the peoples of Siberia and the Far East who populated this land before Russia.” That is because these people know the fate that the Ainu have suffered under the Japanese, a fate that could be theirs if Medvedev’s proposal is accepted.
“In essence,” Kornyev argues, “the President has said that for Russia, the lands of these peoples is ‘superfluous.’ If [this land] is ‘superfluous, so perhaps it out to return the land to these people in order that they can order it more wisely?”
And fifth, he says, Medvedev’s remarks will give support to those who want to “accuse the leadership of Russia in the conscious genocide of the civil population which is living inthese regions. Any resettlement measure must be preceded by consultations with the residents of the regions involved and a careful social-economic evaluation.”
Kornyev says that “we are waitinguntil one of the parties represented in the State Duma will attempt to start the official procedure of impeachement on the basis of charges of state treason and an attack on the territorial integrity of Russia.” In advance of the December elections, the decision on this point is critical.
That is because, in advance of the Decemberelections, it “willallow us to find out if there is in the Duma atleast one party which itself is not a party of state treason.”
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