Paul Goble
Staunton, April 4 – A Russian news agency reports that “more than one million Slavs” in Ukraine have converted to Islam since 1991, a figure that almost certainly is an exaggeration but one that reflects both Kyiv’s relatively tolerant approach to Islamic activism and Russian and Ukrainian fears of the possible appearance of Slavic-appearing suicide bombers.
In her report on Rosbalt.ru about a recent Kyiv conference on the problems and prospects of Islam in Ukraine, journalist Anna Steshenko comes up with that number on the basis of a statement by Gennady Udovenko of Narodna Rukh that there are now some 1.5 milllion “Islamic neophytes” in Ukraine (www.rosbalt.ru/ukraina/2011/03/31/834517.html).
Because there are no more than 300,000 Crimean Tatars and migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia could not be counted as neophytes, Steshenko suggests that these figures means that “more than one million” of Ukraine’s Muslims must be either ethnic Russians or ethnic Ukrainians.
Her calculation is likely incorrect for two reasons. On the one hand, Udovenko likely was referring to almost all Muslims in Ukraine rather than only newly-minted ones. In that case, the number of Slavic converts would be perhaps only 500,000 or even less. And on the other, Steshenko’s article is clearly intended to spark fears, thus making an exaggeration here likely.
Nonetheless, even if the smaller figure for Muslim converts among Slavs is used, the overall number of 1.5 Muslims in Ukraine means that today approximately one in 30 Ukrainian residents is a follower of Islam, a share much smaller than the more than one in five Muslims in Russia but one far larger than at any time in recent history.
As Steshenko notes, the Ukrainian government has followed a very different and more permissive approach to Islamic institutions than has Moscow. The radical Hizb-ut-Tahrir movement, which is banned in Russia, operates freely in Ukraine, thereby contributing to “the Islamization of the Slavic population and the radicalization of the Crimean Tatars.
At the recent conference, Ismail Kadi, the head of the all-Ukrainian Muslim organization Alraid, said that “Ukraine is an example for neighboring countries.” And other participants, including the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, Syria and Kuwait agreed, noting that “unlike Russia,” in Ukraine “conditions for the development of Islam have been put in place.
Yury Kochubey, a specialist at the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy, said Kyiv was pursuing “the correct policy toward Islamic organizations.” In the same speech, he sharply criticized Moscow’s approach of what he called “forced assimilation which has led to radicalization and extremism.
“In reality,” Steshenko continues, “at first glance, harmony rules in the relaztions of the [Ukrainian] state and all-possible Islamic organizations.” Alraid, for example, has seven centers in the largest cities, distributes a full-color twelve-page newspaper, and “teaches all who want the foundations of Islam.”
But she says, some of the Islamic propaganda in Ukraine bears an openly anti-Slavic and by implication anti-Russian character. According to Crimean media, she says, Muslims groups have distributed broadsides against smoking and drinking showing Slavs who are smoking or drunk and contrasting them with Muslims who are clearly flourishing and in good health.
Alraid itself, Steshenko says, which has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood abroad and the Party of Muslims of Ukraine, has special courses for young women who are paid 250 to 300 US dollars monthly to attend, money they lose if they do not wear the hijab and go to mosque regularly, an arrangement that the Rosbalt.ru journalist says is “the classic method of sects.”
The money for such activities, the journalist suggests, comes from religious ministries in Kuwait and Qatar. She says that “only government jurists and religious specialists are in a position to assert officially that the actions of Alraid are a threat to the state.” But Streshenko says that “Kyiv is behaving strangely.”
“Official Kyiv has never reacted” to statements by Tatar leaders that “their co-nationals are fighting against Russians in Chechnya,” she says, and the Ukrainian government “not once by word or deed has prevented Chechen militants from curing their wounds in Crimean and Odessa sanatoria” – despite a Russian-Ukrainian treaty banning this.
“Why does official Kyiv relate to Islamists” in this way, Steshenko asks rhetorically before suggesting that the answer “in general is simple.” Earlier Kyiv feared that Crimea might become part of Russia and so supported Islamic groups to block that, but now, with “the genie out of the bottle,” Ukraine has little choice but to continue to be deferential.
In Ukraine, Steshenko says, it is already widely recognized that “the influence of the Mejlis on the Tatar population is falling and that young people sympathize with the beared ones from Hizb-ut-Tahrir and other sects.” As a result, “radicals are driving the moderates out of Crimea’s mosques” – mosques that were build with “Saudi and Turkish money.”
Steshenko clearly shows her intentions when she concludes her article by quoting the message to the Kyiv conference of Deputy Culture Minsiter Yury Bogutsky to the effect that “Ukraine is creating all conditions necessary for the equality of ethnoses and religions” and then by asking “But what about the ethnic Russians, Mr. Minister?”
Monday, April 4, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Sibirians Leading Revival of ‘Geographic Separatism’ in Russian Federation
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 4 – The “Sibiryak’ movement, in one sense “an ordinary social protest which has taken geographic form,” is now “the most noteworthy part of a general process which people had forgotten about since the middle 1990s, geographic separatism,” according to a Russian political analyst.
Vyacheslav Igrunov, however, told Rimma Akhmirova of “Sobesednik” that it is far from the only one. Among the most important of the others are Rus Zalesskaya, Ingermanlandiya, Novgorodskoye Russkoye Veche, Mat-Zemlya in the Gorno-Altay, all of which “find supporters on their territories” (www.sobesednik.ru/incident/zemlya-rossiiskaya-budet-ubyvat-sibiryu).
And Igrunov suggested that the reason they are re-emerging now is that “in the country there is no common ideology, no political life, and no single set of ideals. And in the absence of political and intellectual freedom,” there is an entirely natural tendency to the splitting apart of any “single consciousness.”
This lack of a firm common identity, Akhmirova argues, helps to explain the declarations of some residents of the Russian Federation that they are “elfs,” “jedai,” and “residents of Middle Earth,” but more significantly, it explains why an increasing number prefer to identify themselves “on the basis of their geographic membership.”
And although the 2010 census results have not been yet published in full, the “Sobesednik” journalist continues, evidence already in hand suggests “a greater number of such people turn out to be not in the Caucasus, but in Siberia from which no one had expected a separatist threat.”
According to Marina Mitrenina, a Siberian activist in Tomsk, “the first powerful unifying action of people who consider themselves a special category was the flashmob ‘I am a Siberian’ which called on people to identify themselves as Siberians in the census forms.” She said that she is convinced that “thousands” of people “sympathized.”
“There could have been more, but the information was disseminated largely only through the Internet,” Mitrenina said. “Siberians have their own character and self-consciousness,” something Moscow has recognized when it needed their support as during World War II and Soviet construction projects.
Although Siberian activists like Nitrenina do not say so directly, Akhmirova says, one can sense that they believe that “during peaceful times, the powers that be [in Moscow] consider Siberia a colony, a source of valuable resources” whose people are important only to the extent that they can extract and export those resources for Moscow’s profit.
That attitude has always been present in Russian territories beyond the Urals, but now it has been strengthened, Siberian activists like Mikhail Kulekhov says, by the appearance of a new generation of people who have never travelled outside Siberia and “for whom Moscow is just as far away as the backside of the moon.”
In Soviet times, Kulekhov notes, the cost of an airline ticket to Moscow was less than a quarter of a worker’s monthly pay. Now, it is “much more” than the average salary. Consequently, people don’t go to the Russian capital. To travel to China,” he continues, “is simpler and less expensive.”
These high prices and low wages infuriate many Siberians, Kulekhov says. Irkutsk oblast alone provides from “a quarter to a third of Russian exports” of aluminum, wood, cellulose, and arms. “But the standard of living in this ‘rich region’ is approximately equal to that of Egypt. Who are we then if now a colony?”
Kulekhov adds that he and his friends initially wanted to call their movement “The Liberation Army of Siberia,” but “the Chekists” then asked if we did not intend to fight. “We told them no,” pointedly adding that “we simply couldn’t tolerate such a relationship to us and to our land.”
“For me,” Kulekhov continues, “Siberia is my land; my ancestors settled here several hundred years ago,” but the officials and businessmen in Moscow are more interested in foreign resorts than in this part of Russia. “Here they have only business.” And they would be willing to see the population of Siberia decline to “50-100,000” to service their needs.
According to Nitrenina, “Siberians do not even want money from the state. They can take care of themselves if they are given the opportunity to conduct free economic activity” and are “liberated from major corporations which are harming the environment” because Muscovites owners do not care what happens there.
Akhmirova concludes that “life beyond the Urals in fact is proceeding according to its own laws. They have their own heroes, idols, views, principles, even sayings, jokes and manners.” Indeed, she suggests, “Russia beyond the Urals is much more distinguished from Central Russia than even from the Caucasus.” And that more people there think “autonomously.”
“The main thing that unites [Siberia] from the point of simple people,” the “Sobesednik” journalist observes, “are taxes which the center collects the greater part of” while “leaving the people with their own problems.” But the Siberian movement is not just a tax revolt, however powerful that may be.
There is a powerful sense among the residents of this enormous territory of being very different than the European Russians and Muscovites, Akhmirova says, and Siberian activists are actively promoting this, by celebrating not only Orthodox holidays but Muslim ones and even reaching out to Siberian shamans.
Staunton, April 4 – The “Sibiryak’ movement, in one sense “an ordinary social protest which has taken geographic form,” is now “the most noteworthy part of a general process which people had forgotten about since the middle 1990s, geographic separatism,” according to a Russian political analyst.
Vyacheslav Igrunov, however, told Rimma Akhmirova of “Sobesednik” that it is far from the only one. Among the most important of the others are Rus Zalesskaya, Ingermanlandiya, Novgorodskoye Russkoye Veche, Mat-Zemlya in the Gorno-Altay, all of which “find supporters on their territories” (www.sobesednik.ru/incident/zemlya-rossiiskaya-budet-ubyvat-sibiryu).
And Igrunov suggested that the reason they are re-emerging now is that “in the country there is no common ideology, no political life, and no single set of ideals. And in the absence of political and intellectual freedom,” there is an entirely natural tendency to the splitting apart of any “single consciousness.”
This lack of a firm common identity, Akhmirova argues, helps to explain the declarations of some residents of the Russian Federation that they are “elfs,” “jedai,” and “residents of Middle Earth,” but more significantly, it explains why an increasing number prefer to identify themselves “on the basis of their geographic membership.”
And although the 2010 census results have not been yet published in full, the “Sobesednik” journalist continues, evidence already in hand suggests “a greater number of such people turn out to be not in the Caucasus, but in Siberia from which no one had expected a separatist threat.”
According to Marina Mitrenina, a Siberian activist in Tomsk, “the first powerful unifying action of people who consider themselves a special category was the flashmob ‘I am a Siberian’ which called on people to identify themselves as Siberians in the census forms.” She said that she is convinced that “thousands” of people “sympathized.”
“There could have been more, but the information was disseminated largely only through the Internet,” Mitrenina said. “Siberians have their own character and self-consciousness,” something Moscow has recognized when it needed their support as during World War II and Soviet construction projects.
Although Siberian activists like Nitrenina do not say so directly, Akhmirova says, one can sense that they believe that “during peaceful times, the powers that be [in Moscow] consider Siberia a colony, a source of valuable resources” whose people are important only to the extent that they can extract and export those resources for Moscow’s profit.
That attitude has always been present in Russian territories beyond the Urals, but now it has been strengthened, Siberian activists like Mikhail Kulekhov says, by the appearance of a new generation of people who have never travelled outside Siberia and “for whom Moscow is just as far away as the backside of the moon.”
In Soviet times, Kulekhov notes, the cost of an airline ticket to Moscow was less than a quarter of a worker’s monthly pay. Now, it is “much more” than the average salary. Consequently, people don’t go to the Russian capital. To travel to China,” he continues, “is simpler and less expensive.”
These high prices and low wages infuriate many Siberians, Kulekhov says. Irkutsk oblast alone provides from “a quarter to a third of Russian exports” of aluminum, wood, cellulose, and arms. “But the standard of living in this ‘rich region’ is approximately equal to that of Egypt. Who are we then if now a colony?”
Kulekhov adds that he and his friends initially wanted to call their movement “The Liberation Army of Siberia,” but “the Chekists” then asked if we did not intend to fight. “We told them no,” pointedly adding that “we simply couldn’t tolerate such a relationship to us and to our land.”
“For me,” Kulekhov continues, “Siberia is my land; my ancestors settled here several hundred years ago,” but the officials and businessmen in Moscow are more interested in foreign resorts than in this part of Russia. “Here they have only business.” And they would be willing to see the population of Siberia decline to “50-100,000” to service their needs.
According to Nitrenina, “Siberians do not even want money from the state. They can take care of themselves if they are given the opportunity to conduct free economic activity” and are “liberated from major corporations which are harming the environment” because Muscovites owners do not care what happens there.
Akhmirova concludes that “life beyond the Urals in fact is proceeding according to its own laws. They have their own heroes, idols, views, principles, even sayings, jokes and manners.” Indeed, she suggests, “Russia beyond the Urals is much more distinguished from Central Russia than even from the Caucasus.” And that more people there think “autonomously.”
“The main thing that unites [Siberia] from the point of simple people,” the “Sobesednik” journalist observes, “are taxes which the center collects the greater part of” while “leaving the people with their own problems.” But the Siberian movement is not just a tax revolt, however powerful that may be.
There is a powerful sense among the residents of this enormous territory of being very different than the European Russians and Muscovites, Akhmirova says, and Siberian activists are actively promoting this, by celebrating not only Orthodox holidays but Muslim ones and even reaching out to Siberian shamans.
Window on Eurasia: Injustice More than Islam Behind North Caucasus Terrorism, Expert Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 4 – Ninety percent of people in the North Caucasus who go into the forests to fight the Russian regime and its representatives are doing so because they or their families are seeking revenge for injustice rather than because they are motivated by any of the precepts of Islam, according to a close observer of that area.
“If [what is taking place]were only religious terrorism,” Aliy Totorkulov, the leader of the Russian Congress of Peoples of the Caucasus, says, Moscow “would be able to cope with it.” But “in the Caucasus, ethnic and religious terrorism constitute at most 10 percent” of the total. “Ninety percent is social.” (www.izvestia.ru/politic/article3153508/).
Sometimes this protest against arbitrariness and injustice on the part of officials is masked by Islamic slogans, Totorkulov acknowledges in an interview with Moscow’s “Izvestiya.” But in fact, in almost all cases, it reflects a deeper set of cultural attitudes among the peoples of that region, attitudes that Russian officials have violated.
It is important to understand that such protests are not driven by poverty but by a sense that officials are violating the proper organization of society, Totorkulov continues. “Caucasians are prepared to live in poverty,” but they are not willing to stand for injustice. And they have a tradition that tells them how to behave when they are confronted by that.
“In the Caucasus there were always abreks, people who took revenge” for violations of what most people there consider just. Now, most of those going into the mountains are abreks rather than terrorists. And that explains a major part of the support they receive: When a man goes into the forests to fight injustice, “his relatives always support him.”
Unlike residents of other parts of the Russian Federation, he continues, people in the North Caucasus do not feel they can seek redress for injustice any other way. “The North Caucasus republics are ruled by little princes who are given power from above.” As a result, they show little concern about those below.
Moreover, Totorkulov continues, there is “the Caucasus mentality.” While 86 percent of Russians say that “slavery still lives in [their] sub-consciousness” 150 years after the end of serfdom, the peoples in the Caucasus never knew serfdom and consequently in that region “live free people,” something Moscow has not yet been prepared to take into account.
Mixed among these abreks, he says, are “an insignificant minority” of fanatics and mercenaries, but Moscow will never succeed in overcoming the resistance until it understands that most of those who are engaged in this form of protest are doing so because of the injustice of the powers that be.
A major reason why some of the abreks misuse Islamic slogans, Totorkulov continues, is that they are fundamentally ignorant of the tenets of their religion, a situation which itself is a product of the complicated Soviet and Russian periods of North Caucasus history and the current “problem of fathers and sons” among religious leaders there.
“The religious leaders who now are in power [there] are elderly people. Their education, they received already in Soviet times having studied only the ABCs of Islam. The young religious leaders are a new generation,” products of Islamic universities abroad and offended by much that they see among the followers of the faith in the North Caucasus.
When the young leaders criticize their elders, the latter view them as a threat to their power, “as dangerous elements and [they] hand over this information to the force structures.” The center supports them because they are “the moderates” with whom Moscow has become “comfortable.”
But in fact, it is the younger Muslim leaders who could ultimately be part of the solution to the problems of the North Caucasus. Indeed, they could be its “salvation” because their knowledge of Islam will help their followers make progress toward a just and more democratic society.
Unfortunately, Moscow officials often do not understand this. They are sent reports by local officials who try to portray themselves in the best possible light and use language that makes their opponents, however justified, look like “Martians” with whom there is no basis for cooperation.
As a result, many at the center think they can “pacify the Caucasus” like General Yermolov did 150 years ago through force alone. That won’t work, Totorkulov argues, nor will the clumsy approach of Moscow which often changes leaderships in relatively peaceful republics and leaves in place the heads of more violent ones.
Moreover, the efforts of some Russian officials to rely on elders’ councils are misplaced. While such institutions were traditionally important, Soviet policies undermined their influence. Now, even if Moscow wants to revive them, many of the local officials don’t because such councils would naturally oppose them.
Totorkulov concludes that because “force will hardly solve all problems,” Moscow should seek to “disarm” the North Caucasus with friendship because the North Caucasian “will never behave badly toward someone who respects him.” And thatcan best be achieved by creating a genuine “civil society” which will eliminate excesses by the powers and the militants.
Staunton, April 4 – Ninety percent of people in the North Caucasus who go into the forests to fight the Russian regime and its representatives are doing so because they or their families are seeking revenge for injustice rather than because they are motivated by any of the precepts of Islam, according to a close observer of that area.
“If [what is taking place]were only religious terrorism,” Aliy Totorkulov, the leader of the Russian Congress of Peoples of the Caucasus, says, Moscow “would be able to cope with it.” But “in the Caucasus, ethnic and religious terrorism constitute at most 10 percent” of the total. “Ninety percent is social.” (www.izvestia.ru/politic/article3153508/).
Sometimes this protest against arbitrariness and injustice on the part of officials is masked by Islamic slogans, Totorkulov acknowledges in an interview with Moscow’s “Izvestiya.” But in fact, in almost all cases, it reflects a deeper set of cultural attitudes among the peoples of that region, attitudes that Russian officials have violated.
It is important to understand that such protests are not driven by poverty but by a sense that officials are violating the proper organization of society, Totorkulov continues. “Caucasians are prepared to live in poverty,” but they are not willing to stand for injustice. And they have a tradition that tells them how to behave when they are confronted by that.
“In the Caucasus there were always abreks, people who took revenge” for violations of what most people there consider just. Now, most of those going into the mountains are abreks rather than terrorists. And that explains a major part of the support they receive: When a man goes into the forests to fight injustice, “his relatives always support him.”
Unlike residents of other parts of the Russian Federation, he continues, people in the North Caucasus do not feel they can seek redress for injustice any other way. “The North Caucasus republics are ruled by little princes who are given power from above.” As a result, they show little concern about those below.
Moreover, Totorkulov continues, there is “the Caucasus mentality.” While 86 percent of Russians say that “slavery still lives in [their] sub-consciousness” 150 years after the end of serfdom, the peoples in the Caucasus never knew serfdom and consequently in that region “live free people,” something Moscow has not yet been prepared to take into account.
Mixed among these abreks, he says, are “an insignificant minority” of fanatics and mercenaries, but Moscow will never succeed in overcoming the resistance until it understands that most of those who are engaged in this form of protest are doing so because of the injustice of the powers that be.
A major reason why some of the abreks misuse Islamic slogans, Totorkulov continues, is that they are fundamentally ignorant of the tenets of their religion, a situation which itself is a product of the complicated Soviet and Russian periods of North Caucasus history and the current “problem of fathers and sons” among religious leaders there.
“The religious leaders who now are in power [there] are elderly people. Their education, they received already in Soviet times having studied only the ABCs of Islam. The young religious leaders are a new generation,” products of Islamic universities abroad and offended by much that they see among the followers of the faith in the North Caucasus.
When the young leaders criticize their elders, the latter view them as a threat to their power, “as dangerous elements and [they] hand over this information to the force structures.” The center supports them because they are “the moderates” with whom Moscow has become “comfortable.”
But in fact, it is the younger Muslim leaders who could ultimately be part of the solution to the problems of the North Caucasus. Indeed, they could be its “salvation” because their knowledge of Islam will help their followers make progress toward a just and more democratic society.
Unfortunately, Moscow officials often do not understand this. They are sent reports by local officials who try to portray themselves in the best possible light and use language that makes their opponents, however justified, look like “Martians” with whom there is no basis for cooperation.
As a result, many at the center think they can “pacify the Caucasus” like General Yermolov did 150 years ago through force alone. That won’t work, Totorkulov argues, nor will the clumsy approach of Moscow which often changes leaderships in relatively peaceful republics and leaves in place the heads of more violent ones.
Moreover, the efforts of some Russian officials to rely on elders’ councils are misplaced. While such institutions were traditionally important, Soviet policies undermined their influence. Now, even if Moscow wants to revive them, many of the local officials don’t because such councils would naturally oppose them.
Totorkulov concludes that because “force will hardly solve all problems,” Moscow should seek to “disarm” the North Caucasus with friendship because the North Caucasian “will never behave badly toward someone who respects him.” And thatcan best be achieved by creating a genuine “civil society” which will eliminate excesses by the powers and the militants.
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