Paul Goble
Fairfax, March 30 – Moscow prosecutors have refused a call by Russian human rights activists to ban as extremist the notorious anti-Semitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a work that inspired Adolf Hitler and that now is attracting a large audience in Russia, a country that “is proud it defeated fascism.”
Responding to a call by the For Human Rights Movement for banning this openly anti-Semitic work, the prosecutors explained their decision not to do so by referring to a “psycho-linguistic” analysis conducted by the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (www.vestnikcivitas.ru/pbls/1354).
According to the prosecutors, the Institute’s analysis concluded that “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” “has critical historical-educaitonal and political-enlightenment importance. Information about calls to action against other nationalities and religious groups is lacking in the book.”
In reporting what he called “this shameful event for Russia,” Vadim Belotserkovsky said that the decision of the prosecutors not to find this forgery extremist “testifies to the success” of organized fascism in Russia and especially to the continuing impact on official thinking of the December 11 Manezh Square protests.
“For the first time in the history of [Russia],” he writes, “skinheads at the walls of the Kremlin and alongside the grave of the unknown soldier should ‘Zieg Heil,’ gave Nazi solutes and beat passersby who appeared to be ‘non-Russian types.’ From 5,000 to 10,000 young fascists assembled on that day in the Manezh Square.”
Belotserkovsky focuses his essay on when and why what he calls “organized fascism” emerged in Russia. He dates the emergence of this phenomenon to late 1981 when the Soviet authorities fearful that the ideas of cooperative socialism being put forward by the Polish Solidarity movement might spread to the Soviet Union and undermine their power.
On November 18th of that year, KGB head Yury Andropov who would soon succeed Leonid Brezhnev as CPSU leader gave an interview to the BBC in which he said thzat “deeply alien to us is this treatment of self-administration which draws toward anarcho-syndicalism, to the splitting apart of society into independent and competing corporations, toward democracy without discipline, to an understanding of rights without responsibilities.”
The Soviet media did not publish this interview or provide any reliable information on what Solidarity wanted. Instead, its outlets talked about Solidarity as a conspiracy of the CIA and the Zionists and sought to divide Solidarity by promoting the Grunwald Group which called for a truly Polish approach.
At approximately the same time, the Pamyat’ Patriotic Society was set up in Russia which spoke out against the role of Jews in the USSR. In all likelihood, Belotserkovsky says, both the Grunwald Group and Pamyat were the offspring of ideas hatched in the CPSU Central Committee apparatus.
After Solidarity was suppressed, Pamyat went into a period of quiescence but “in this way in 1981 in Soviet Russia was established the first fascist organization” in the USSR. And it continued to be kept as a possible ally of the powers in the event that a serious working class movement should emerge and spark a revolution in Russia.
“But alas,” Belotserkovsky says, “such a revolution did not take place in Russia.” Worse, the leader of post-Soviet Russia was a member of the old nomenklatura, Boris Yeltsin. And consequently, it is not surprising that “already being the head of Moscow, [Yeltsin] invided to the Moscow City Soviet the leaders of Pamyat.
As Yeltsin’s supporters note, the future president condemned the Pamyat people for their “anti-party slogans.” But Belotserkovsky says, Yeltsin did not say anything about their “anti-Semitic slogans.” He subsequently made use of Pamyat against his opponents and allowed or sponsored the emergence of the even more radical group, Russian National Unity (RNE).
Yeltsin’s war against Chechnya, Belotserkovsky continues, by its cruelty and viciousness trained an entire generation of young men who were willing to listen to fascist sloganeering and in some cases to engage in fascist-style racist violence and murder. And not surprisingly, Pamyat figured in these organizations and was on the Manezh Square.
Pamyat, Russia’s first fascist organization, Belotserkovsky says, was created to oppose Polish solidarist ideas. Now, it is being employed by the powers that be because of their fears that Russia is withering away because of falling population. But the powers will learn that “fascism will not help them” in this area.
Instead, its appearance reflects “the agony” that Russia has already entered into and intensifies that development, trends that themselves are the product of “the fear of the powers before progress,” just as the fear of social progress in Western Europe led to the rise of fascism 90 years ago. Europe has moved on, but “Russia is marching in the same place.”
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Puts Kozak in Charge of Nationality Policy While Keeping Him as Overseer of Sochi Olympics
Paul Goble
Fairfax, March 30 – The Russian government has put Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak in charge of the conduct of nationality policy in addition to his responsibilities for overseeing the preparation of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, a combination that highlights Moscow’s growing concerns about Circassian criticism of this venue.
In a commentary on Politcom.ru yesterday, Roksana Burntaseva argues that Kozak is well-qualified to oversee nationality policy through a state commission but that he may be most useful to Moscow in the context of what many are now calling “the Circassian question” regarding the Olympiad in Sochi (www.politcom.ru/11672.html).
“Several Circassian organizations have accused the federal powers that be and the organizers of the Olympiad of ignoring the historic possession of the lands of Greater Sochi by Circassian tribes,” populations who were expelled from the Russian Empire in 1864 with so much many lives lost that some have labeled that event a genocide.
With Kozak’s new position, he can “if this will be necessary” serve as “a counter-argument for the International Olympic Committee and other interested sides” should it prove to be the case that “the conflict around the Circassian question will receive further development.” Indeed, Kozak’s new post will thus have “positive” results “from a political point of view.”
That is all the more likely to be the most important reason behind his appointment given that “it is obvious that the appointment of a single individual even someone with experience of working with national minorities will hardly be able to help resolve ‘the nationality question’ in Russia to a significant degree.”
Such an appointment became a near certainty, Moscow media outlets say, after President Dmitry Medvedev at a recent State Council meeting rejected calls for restoring a Ministry for Nationality Affairs such as existed between 1994 and 2001 but agreed that there was a need to have someone coordinate policy in this area (vz.ru/politics/2011/3/28/479327.html).
Kozak has great experience in this area not only as a result of his earlier work in the Presidential Administration on local and regional affairs but also because of his service between 2004 and 2007 as Presidential plenipotentiary for the Southern Federal District which at that time included all of the troubled North Caucasus republics.
Valery Tishkov, who served as nationalities minister in the 1990s before Vladimir Putin disbanded the ministry and transferred its functions to the interior ministry, the foreign ministry, and the ministry of economic development, told “Vzglyad” that Kozak’s success will “depend” on who will serve on the nationalities commission he will oversee.
That is all the more so, Tishkov continued, because Kozak, like other vice premiers, is overwhelmed with work and thus will have to rely heavily on the commission and its staff if he is to be effective. If the commission consists of serious people, Tishkov suggested, the prospects for real progress exist. If not, then it is likely that little will be accomplished.
Fairfax, March 30 – The Russian government has put Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak in charge of the conduct of nationality policy in addition to his responsibilities for overseeing the preparation of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, a combination that highlights Moscow’s growing concerns about Circassian criticism of this venue.
In a commentary on Politcom.ru yesterday, Roksana Burntaseva argues that Kozak is well-qualified to oversee nationality policy through a state commission but that he may be most useful to Moscow in the context of what many are now calling “the Circassian question” regarding the Olympiad in Sochi (www.politcom.ru/11672.html).
“Several Circassian organizations have accused the federal powers that be and the organizers of the Olympiad of ignoring the historic possession of the lands of Greater Sochi by Circassian tribes,” populations who were expelled from the Russian Empire in 1864 with so much many lives lost that some have labeled that event a genocide.
With Kozak’s new position, he can “if this will be necessary” serve as “a counter-argument for the International Olympic Committee and other interested sides” should it prove to be the case that “the conflict around the Circassian question will receive further development.” Indeed, Kozak’s new post will thus have “positive” results “from a political point of view.”
That is all the more likely to be the most important reason behind his appointment given that “it is obvious that the appointment of a single individual even someone with experience of working with national minorities will hardly be able to help resolve ‘the nationality question’ in Russia to a significant degree.”
Such an appointment became a near certainty, Moscow media outlets say, after President Dmitry Medvedev at a recent State Council meeting rejected calls for restoring a Ministry for Nationality Affairs such as existed between 1994 and 2001 but agreed that there was a need to have someone coordinate policy in this area (vz.ru/politics/2011/3/28/479327.html).
Kozak has great experience in this area not only as a result of his earlier work in the Presidential Administration on local and regional affairs but also because of his service between 2004 and 2007 as Presidential plenipotentiary for the Southern Federal District which at that time included all of the troubled North Caucasus republics.
Valery Tishkov, who served as nationalities minister in the 1990s before Vladimir Putin disbanded the ministry and transferred its functions to the interior ministry, the foreign ministry, and the ministry of economic development, told “Vzglyad” that Kozak’s success will “depend” on who will serve on the nationalities commission he will oversee.
That is all the more so, Tishkov continued, because Kozak, like other vice premiers, is overwhelmed with work and thus will have to rely heavily on the commission and its staff if he is to be effective. If the commission consists of serious people, Tishkov suggested, the prospects for real progress exist. If not, then it is likely that little will be accomplished.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Planning to Abolish Non-Russian Republics, Pavlova Says
Paul Goble
Fairfax, March 30 – Under the cover of the international effort against Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, the leaders of the ruling United Russia Party are planning to abolish the non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation and to create a unitary state far more severe in its constraints than even the one Stalin established in the USSR, according to Irina Pavlova.
But this effort which is explicitly intended to prevent the disintegration of the Russian Federation, the Grani.ru commentator continues, will put in place a delayed action political “mine” even more powerful and dangerous than the one that Stalin put in place and that led to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 (www.grani.ru/opinion/m.187367.html).
And consequently, unless the security services maintain their current all-powerful position, she argues, the country is likely not only to disintegrate at some point in the future but to do so not in a peaceful manner as was the case with the USSR but rather accompanied by a violent “civil war.”
That risk will undoubtedly be invoked by the security agencies and their political supporters as yet another reason why the regime cannot afford to loosen up or liberalize in any way, but the policies that will flow from that argument will have negative political and economic consequences for the Russian population even before the entire system ultimately collapses.
“It is now already clear,” Pavlova begins, “that the military operation of the Western coalition forces against Libyan dictator Qaddafi will have tragic consequences for Russian liberalism and democracy” and that Moscow will now seek “further centralization and popular subordination in the name of the greatness of power and defense against a foreign enemy.”
And “all this is taking place,” the Grani-ru commentator suggests, “under noise about differences in the tandem, about the reformation of the Right Task Party, and about expert reports concerning the democratization of the Russian political system. And under the sound of public approval.,
At the beginning of March, she points out, Abudl-Khakim Sultygov, United Russia’s coordinator for nationality policy, said in an interview (svpressa.ru/society/article/39660) what he and other United Russia people had three years earlier outlined in a document posted on the Kreml.org portal (http://www.kreml.org/opinions/164932766).
According to Sultygov, Russia needs to be “a unitary state,” a notion that politicians like Vladimir Zhirinovsky have long promoted. But “in this case, this idea is being offered by “a functionary of the party of power, responsible in its leadership for nationality policy,” and thus carried far more weight.
Sultygov suggested, Pavlova recalls, that the non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation should “thinkabout giving up their republic status,’since “any discussion about doing away with national republics fromabove” would be viewed as “provocative” or worse. The only way it could work, Sultygov argued, is thus “from below.”
An even last August points the way. On August 12, 2010, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov declared that “in a single state there must be only one president, and in the subjects, the first persons could be called the heads of the republics” or something else, an idea that has now become a Russian law.
“The ideological predecessor of Mr.Sultygov,” Pavlova continues, “is Comrade Stalin who is respected by the [current] Russian elite. “Stalin’s project of unifying the Soviet republics” had them becoming autonomies within the Russian Federation rather than a union of republics, “as Lenin had insisted.”
“As a result of the political and personal clashes of 1922-1923, Stalin formally agreed with Lenin’s criticizes and replaced the Russian Federation with the Soviet Union, but the essence [of Stalin’s ideas] remained unchanged.” As a result, the Soviet Union “was not a federation … but a unitary state formation, albeit with the formal right of republics to separate.”
“Hoping to prevent the scenario of the disintegration of the Soviet Union fromcoming true in contemporary Russia,” Pavlova argues, “Sultygov [in fact] goes further than Stalin. He proposes that he republics refuse even formal autonomous status and be considered only as territorial units of a single state, the Russian Federation.”
To that end and fearful of a repetition of the Manezh Square events, Sultygov also copies Stalin in the way he proceeds by offering extraordinary praise to the [ethnic] Russian people. He says that “Russia is the Russian Republic and the Constitution of the country is the [ethnic] Russian Constitution.”
(On the APN.ru site this week, there is a remarkable survey of Stalin’s and the Soviet elite’s development of the idea of ethnic Russian supremacy in a nominally multi-ethnic class-based state. See www.apn.ru/publications/article23929.htm.)
In sum, Pavlova writes, “if Stalin proclaimed the [ethnic] Russian people the synonym of the Soviet … then today the [ethnic] Russian people is proclaimed the synonym of the [non-ethnic] Russian people.”
Sultygov, the Grani commentator continues, “has presented to society a model of Russia of the not distance future, a unitary state more severe than the Soviet Union.” Creation of such a state “in order to prevent its disintegration will inevitably require fromt eh current power elite still more centralization.”
One of the consequences of this, Pavlova says, is that “real inter-ethnic problems which exist in the country will be driven into the underground.” And in response to that, Moscow will make even more sweeping the terms of the anti-extremist article in the Russian legal code and play up the role of the [ethnic] Russian nation still further.
Clearly, Sultygov’s beau ideal of state construction is what Ramzan Kadyrov has achieved in Chechnya. “He is certain,” Pavlova writes, “that abroad, present-day Chechnya is seen as ‘a Russian miracle,” thus repeating some of the arguments commentator Yulia Latynina has made in this regard.
Pavlova concludes by recalling that at the dawn of the Soviet period, with a powerful party apparatus already in place, “Stalin laid a delayed action mine [under his system,] a mine which exploded in 1991” when the Soviet Union “fell apart into 15 independent countries” in what was a “relatively peaceful” way and “strictly according to their [Soviet] borders.”
The current leadership in Moscow with this policy is burying “an even more powerful mine” under the political system. “If the power vertical of the security services disappears ... the consequence will be a large-scale civil war.” And consequently, those who are taking these steps clearly believe that they will be in power “forever.”
Fairfax, March 30 – Under the cover of the international effort against Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, the leaders of the ruling United Russia Party are planning to abolish the non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation and to create a unitary state far more severe in its constraints than even the one Stalin established in the USSR, according to Irina Pavlova.
But this effort which is explicitly intended to prevent the disintegration of the Russian Federation, the Grani.ru commentator continues, will put in place a delayed action political “mine” even more powerful and dangerous than the one that Stalin put in place and that led to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 (www.grani.ru/opinion/m.187367.html).
And consequently, unless the security services maintain their current all-powerful position, she argues, the country is likely not only to disintegrate at some point in the future but to do so not in a peaceful manner as was the case with the USSR but rather accompanied by a violent “civil war.”
That risk will undoubtedly be invoked by the security agencies and their political supporters as yet another reason why the regime cannot afford to loosen up or liberalize in any way, but the policies that will flow from that argument will have negative political and economic consequences for the Russian population even before the entire system ultimately collapses.
“It is now already clear,” Pavlova begins, “that the military operation of the Western coalition forces against Libyan dictator Qaddafi will have tragic consequences for Russian liberalism and democracy” and that Moscow will now seek “further centralization and popular subordination in the name of the greatness of power and defense against a foreign enemy.”
And “all this is taking place,” the Grani-ru commentator suggests, “under noise about differences in the tandem, about the reformation of the Right Task Party, and about expert reports concerning the democratization of the Russian political system. And under the sound of public approval.,
At the beginning of March, she points out, Abudl-Khakim Sultygov, United Russia’s coordinator for nationality policy, said in an interview (svpressa.ru/society/article/39660) what he and other United Russia people had three years earlier outlined in a document posted on the Kreml.org portal (http://www.kreml.org/opinions/164932766).
According to Sultygov, Russia needs to be “a unitary state,” a notion that politicians like Vladimir Zhirinovsky have long promoted. But “in this case, this idea is being offered by “a functionary of the party of power, responsible in its leadership for nationality policy,” and thus carried far more weight.
Sultygov suggested, Pavlova recalls, that the non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation should “thinkabout giving up their republic status,’since “any discussion about doing away with national republics fromabove” would be viewed as “provocative” or worse. The only way it could work, Sultygov argued, is thus “from below.”
An even last August points the way. On August 12, 2010, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov declared that “in a single state there must be only one president, and in the subjects, the first persons could be called the heads of the republics” or something else, an idea that has now become a Russian law.
“The ideological predecessor of Mr.Sultygov,” Pavlova continues, “is Comrade Stalin who is respected by the [current] Russian elite. “Stalin’s project of unifying the Soviet republics” had them becoming autonomies within the Russian Federation rather than a union of republics, “as Lenin had insisted.”
“As a result of the political and personal clashes of 1922-1923, Stalin formally agreed with Lenin’s criticizes and replaced the Russian Federation with the Soviet Union, but the essence [of Stalin’s ideas] remained unchanged.” As a result, the Soviet Union “was not a federation … but a unitary state formation, albeit with the formal right of republics to separate.”
“Hoping to prevent the scenario of the disintegration of the Soviet Union fromcoming true in contemporary Russia,” Pavlova argues, “Sultygov [in fact] goes further than Stalin. He proposes that he republics refuse even formal autonomous status and be considered only as territorial units of a single state, the Russian Federation.”
To that end and fearful of a repetition of the Manezh Square events, Sultygov also copies Stalin in the way he proceeds by offering extraordinary praise to the [ethnic] Russian people. He says that “Russia is the Russian Republic and the Constitution of the country is the [ethnic] Russian Constitution.”
(On the APN.ru site this week, there is a remarkable survey of Stalin’s and the Soviet elite’s development of the idea of ethnic Russian supremacy in a nominally multi-ethnic class-based state. See www.apn.ru/publications/article23929.htm.)
In sum, Pavlova writes, “if Stalin proclaimed the [ethnic] Russian people the synonym of the Soviet … then today the [ethnic] Russian people is proclaimed the synonym of the [non-ethnic] Russian people.”
Sultygov, the Grani commentator continues, “has presented to society a model of Russia of the not distance future, a unitary state more severe than the Soviet Union.” Creation of such a state “in order to prevent its disintegration will inevitably require fromt eh current power elite still more centralization.”
One of the consequences of this, Pavlova says, is that “real inter-ethnic problems which exist in the country will be driven into the underground.” And in response to that, Moscow will make even more sweeping the terms of the anti-extremist article in the Russian legal code and play up the role of the [ethnic] Russian nation still further.
Clearly, Sultygov’s beau ideal of state construction is what Ramzan Kadyrov has achieved in Chechnya. “He is certain,” Pavlova writes, “that abroad, present-day Chechnya is seen as ‘a Russian miracle,” thus repeating some of the arguments commentator Yulia Latynina has made in this regard.
Pavlova concludes by recalling that at the dawn of the Soviet period, with a powerful party apparatus already in place, “Stalin laid a delayed action mine [under his system,] a mine which exploded in 1991” when the Soviet Union “fell apart into 15 independent countries” in what was a “relatively peaceful” way and “strictly according to their [Soviet] borders.”
The current leadership in Moscow with this policy is burying “an even more powerful mine” under the political system. “If the power vertical of the security services disappears ... the consequence will be a large-scale civil war.” And consequently, those who are taking these steps clearly believe that they will be in power “forever.”
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