Paul Goble
Staunton, April 10 – Because of the success Protestant missionaries have had in traditionally Muslim regions in the Russian Federation, some in the Orthodox Church want to make common cause with them against Islam, a view that the leader of the Evangelical Church there rejects.
In an interview published in the current issue of “NG-Religii,” Bishop Sergey Ryakhovsky, the president of the Russian United Union of Evangelical Christians, says that he is against such an approach that just as he is against “crusades in any of their manifestation” (religion.ng.ru/events/2011-04-06/1_episkop.html).
Ryakhovsky says that it is a fundamental tenet of his church that an individual is either a Christian or he is not and that ethnic or denominational differences are secondary to that fundamental requirement, but he adds that he does not want his church to become embroiled in a clash with followers of other faiths.
The recent murder of Bishop Artur Suleymanov in the North Caucasus, Ryakhovsky continues, “was not a war of Islam with Christianity,” however much some may want to treat it in that way. “In the Russian Caucasus,” he points out, “the number of imams killed is an order of magnitude greater than that of Christian pastors.”
Bishop Arthus, the Russian Evangelical leader continues, “lived very peaceably with his neighbors who professed Islam and was a man respected in their eyes as a man of the Book and a just figure. The same situation obtains in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan,” Ryakhovsky adds, because “we teach believers to be respectful toward all people, their culture [and] traditions.”
Bishop Ryakhovsky adds that he has longstanding and good relations with the leaders “of the majority of the major centralized Muslim structures of Russia,” relations that have allowed the realization of “joint projects in the majority in the social sphere and in the area of strengthening inter-ethnic and inter-confessional peace in our country.”
None of these leaders, the bishop adds, has ever criticized him or the Protestant community “for aggressiveness or anything else. But it is natural that the successes [that the Protestant churches have enjoyed in Russia] has generated jealousy … Not everyone likes this [and] it is usually easier to cry with the weeping than be glad with the joyous.”
One young Russian Orthodox priest recently approached him, Ryakhovsky recounts, and said that “his goal was to convert to Orthodoxy as many Protestants as possible in order that they then under Orthodox banners would convert Muslims to Orthodoxy.” He said that the success of the Protestants and their “charisma” made such an approach desirable.
After making this comment, the bishop says, the young priest turned away without waiting for an answer. Apparently, Ryakhovsky adds, the priest did not learn much Greek in seminary. Had he, the bishop said, he would have known that charisma is “a gift of God” and that one must search for it in oneself rather than “attempt to find it in others.”
What makes this exchange so intriguing is that it represents a break in the Moscow Patriarchate’s efforts to freeze out the Protestants whom it often calls “sects” just as Patriarch Kirill is expanding dialogue with the Catholics and that such attitudes reflect the sense even among the Orthodox that all Christians must come together to fight the growth of Islam.
How far either of these trends can go, of course, remains very much a matter of debate. On the one hand, many Orthodox priests and bishops oppose anything resembling ecumenism as recent events in Izhevsk. And on the other, a too public effort to unite Christians against Muslims in Russia would likely backfire, leading to even greater unity among the latter.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Bukovsky’s Call to Try Gorbachev Deserves Support Not Condemnation, Podrabinek Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 10 – Vladimir Bukovsky’s call to bring Mikhail Gorbachev to trial for the crimes he committed as Soviet leader has met with “almost universal condemnation,” Aleksandr Podrabinek says, when the appeal of the former Soviet dissident should have been met with understanding and support.
In an essay on the Grani.ru portal, Podrabinek, himself a former dissident and longtime human rights activist argues that “the most intellectual and socially conscious part” of Russian society has failed by not helping Bukovsky in his “efforts to cleanse our history of myths and lies” (grani.ru/opinion/m.187520.html).
Among the actions for which the last Soviet leader would appear to bear responsibility, the human rights activist says, are the various applications of military force against peaceful civilian populations in Tbilisi in April 1989, Baku in January 1990, and Vilnius and Riga in January 1991 which left many dead and wounded in their wake.
“Behind all these operations of the Soviet army, the MVD and the KGB stood the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and (after March 1990) USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev,” Podravinek points out. “He was the supreme commander and first person” of that “still totalitarian state.”
Consequently, Podrabinek continues with the rhetorical question, “who if not he must in the first instance answer for the concrete crimes of the Soviet regime” during that period? That is the basis of Bukovsky’s argument, he says, but Bukovsky’s critics “from that most intellectual and conscious part” of society won’t face up to that.
“Their basic argument,” he continues, “is the absence of arguments! They do not argue with Bukovsky;” they simply condemn him. “They do not speak about those who died, about the responsibilities of the criminals whom it is necessary to find and judge. They forgive Gorbachev these victims,” and instead attack Bukovsky for raising the issue.
Among those doing so, Podrabinek says, is Leonid Radzikhovsky, who observed that the issue of trying Gorbachev does not arise because “no one has arrested [the former Soviet leader]” Consequently, in the view of that liberal commentator, “Bukovsky simply is engaging in PR for himself” (www.echo.msk.ru/programs/personalno/762216-echo/).
Another liberal, Vasily Utkin, has taken the same position, Podrabinek observes, calling Bukovsky’s call for Gorbachev to be tried “a step … dictated exclusively either by some absolutely absurd motives or by a desire simply to advertise himself” to the Russian public (www.echo.msk.ru/programs/razvorot-evening/762220-echo/).
Two more, Vladislav Bykov and Olga Derkach, simply “laugh[ed]” over Bukovsky’s idea by asking a series of “rhetorical questions [like] Has Bukovsky begun with Gorbachev only because in contrast to Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Yeltsin he is still alive? [or] what about the leaders of the more than 200 other countries? (grani.ru/blogs/free/entries/187470.html).
“It is extremely easy” to answer such queries, Podrabinek observes. Only living people can be brought to trial, Bukovsky “lacks the time and strength” to deal with all the world’s leaders. And Gorbachev should answer “not for all Soviet history but for military actions against the civilian population” while he was in office.
Aleksandr Skobov even suggests that he is “grateful to Gorbachev for liberating political prisoners, an action that counts for a lot” (grani.ru/blogs/free/entries/187498.html). But Podrabinek says, Skobov, himself a political prisoner, ought to remember those who died in Soviet jails while Gorbachev was ruler, including Vasil Stus’ and Anatoly Marchenko.
Moreover, if anyone tries to insist as Skobov and others have that Gorbachev didn’t “kill” these people, Podrabinek argues, then he says he will respond that “it was not he personally who liberated the political prisoners either.”
Nor does it suffice to argue as Valeriya Novodvorskaya and Konstantin Borovoy have that Gorbachev should not be held accountable because “in August 1991 he did not control the situation” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjqg-FRifA0). Are they prepared to say the Soviet leader “didn’t control the situation in 1989/”
And finally Viktor Shenderovich attacks Bukovsky for showing a lack of good taste (www.echo.msk.ru/programs/personalno/761960-echo/). But Podrabinek asks what does taste have to do with the issue? “This isn’t a restaurant or a theater or a game or even politics. This is a question of justice and of the duty of those who have survived before those who have died.”
The inability to bring Gorbachev to trial, something Podrabinek admits is “almost impossible,” is “not a curiosity but a misforture for our country and a shame for our jurisprudence.” It is an indictment on a society “which is prepared so easily to forget and forgive” what was done to it – and thus makes a repetition of such things more likely.
Some people like Bukovsky are prepared to stand up and make this demand, but “alas” such people are relatively few. “The majority experiences toward Gorbachev a feeling of devoted gratitude for the fact that he did not drown the country in blood,” with many thinking that “on the conscience of every leader of a country are such sins.”
But that is not the case. In Europe, what countries “except the socialist and the fascist have put down civil protests with tanks?” Podrabinek asks, pointing out that “this is not an all-human misfortune.” Instead, “it is a characteristic sign of totalitarian regimes” like the one Gorbachev ruled over.
Many Russians live by myths because they “do not want to know the truth. One of these myths is about Gorbachev as a reformer, a peacemaker and the author of democratic transformations.” But in fact, forces were at work beyond his control that led to the destruction of the totalitarian system, even as Gorbachev sought to defend it.
“Without doubt,” Podrabinek says, Gorbachev had “a first-class apparatchik nose” for events. Even during the August coup, he “said in Foros “in order then to come to victory, it was unimportant whose.” He would have remained in office had these larger forces not made it impossible for him to do so.
When Gorbachev finally “understood that it was impossible to save [the CPSU and the Soviet Empire], he successfully saved his own reputation,” but nothing more, Podrabinek argues. And thus he did not behave at the very last as Ceaucescu or Milosevich did, allowing many to conclude that he gets credit for avoiding a civil war.
But “whether one should be grateful to a tyrant for the fact that he did not tear to death all his subjects is a personal issue,” Podrabinek insists. Tragically, the West has not behaved any better than the Russian people in its assessment of Gorbachev and the role he played at the end of the Cold War and the end of the USSR.
“Europe is grateful [to Gorbachev] for the destruction of the Berlin Wall,” but “I have watched these remarkable pictures,” Podrabinek says. “Gorbachev was not there. The youth of Berlin destroyed the wall. Gorbachev took this as a given and di not begin to send in tanks,” undoubtedly a correct response but one any sensible politician would have adopted.
Where in this is “the heroism for which the West loves him?” Podrabinek asks, and he suggests that what has been taking place is evidence of “’the Stockholm syndrome’ of Western civilization,” of a situation in which hostages display positive feelings towards those who have taken or held them hostage.
“Communist collapsed not thanks to Gorbachev or even not in spite of him,” Podrabinek concludes. “He was too unremarkable a figure despite what would seem to be great opportunities. The tyranny was fated to be destroyed, and Gorbachev couldn’t do anything about that,” despite all his efforts and his willingness to sacrifice “hundreds of human lives.”
Staunton, April 10 – Vladimir Bukovsky’s call to bring Mikhail Gorbachev to trial for the crimes he committed as Soviet leader has met with “almost universal condemnation,” Aleksandr Podrabinek says, when the appeal of the former Soviet dissident should have been met with understanding and support.
In an essay on the Grani.ru portal, Podrabinek, himself a former dissident and longtime human rights activist argues that “the most intellectual and socially conscious part” of Russian society has failed by not helping Bukovsky in his “efforts to cleanse our history of myths and lies” (grani.ru/opinion/m.187520.html).
Among the actions for which the last Soviet leader would appear to bear responsibility, the human rights activist says, are the various applications of military force against peaceful civilian populations in Tbilisi in April 1989, Baku in January 1990, and Vilnius and Riga in January 1991 which left many dead and wounded in their wake.
“Behind all these operations of the Soviet army, the MVD and the KGB stood the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and (after March 1990) USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev,” Podravinek points out. “He was the supreme commander and first person” of that “still totalitarian state.”
Consequently, Podrabinek continues with the rhetorical question, “who if not he must in the first instance answer for the concrete crimes of the Soviet regime” during that period? That is the basis of Bukovsky’s argument, he says, but Bukovsky’s critics “from that most intellectual and conscious part” of society won’t face up to that.
“Their basic argument,” he continues, “is the absence of arguments! They do not argue with Bukovsky;” they simply condemn him. “They do not speak about those who died, about the responsibilities of the criminals whom it is necessary to find and judge. They forgive Gorbachev these victims,” and instead attack Bukovsky for raising the issue.
Among those doing so, Podrabinek says, is Leonid Radzikhovsky, who observed that the issue of trying Gorbachev does not arise because “no one has arrested [the former Soviet leader]” Consequently, in the view of that liberal commentator, “Bukovsky simply is engaging in PR for himself” (www.echo.msk.ru/programs/personalno/762216-echo/).
Another liberal, Vasily Utkin, has taken the same position, Podrabinek observes, calling Bukovsky’s call for Gorbachev to be tried “a step … dictated exclusively either by some absolutely absurd motives or by a desire simply to advertise himself” to the Russian public (www.echo.msk.ru/programs/razvorot-evening/762220-echo/).
Two more, Vladislav Bykov and Olga Derkach, simply “laugh[ed]” over Bukovsky’s idea by asking a series of “rhetorical questions [like] Has Bukovsky begun with Gorbachev only because in contrast to Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Yeltsin he is still alive? [or] what about the leaders of the more than 200 other countries? (grani.ru/blogs/free/entries/187470.html).
“It is extremely easy” to answer such queries, Podrabinek observes. Only living people can be brought to trial, Bukovsky “lacks the time and strength” to deal with all the world’s leaders. And Gorbachev should answer “not for all Soviet history but for military actions against the civilian population” while he was in office.
Aleksandr Skobov even suggests that he is “grateful to Gorbachev for liberating political prisoners, an action that counts for a lot” (grani.ru/blogs/free/entries/187498.html). But Podrabinek says, Skobov, himself a political prisoner, ought to remember those who died in Soviet jails while Gorbachev was ruler, including Vasil Stus’ and Anatoly Marchenko.
Moreover, if anyone tries to insist as Skobov and others have that Gorbachev didn’t “kill” these people, Podrabinek argues, then he says he will respond that “it was not he personally who liberated the political prisoners either.”
Nor does it suffice to argue as Valeriya Novodvorskaya and Konstantin Borovoy have that Gorbachev should not be held accountable because “in August 1991 he did not control the situation” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjqg-FRifA0). Are they prepared to say the Soviet leader “didn’t control the situation in 1989/”
And finally Viktor Shenderovich attacks Bukovsky for showing a lack of good taste (www.echo.msk.ru/programs/personalno/761960-echo/). But Podrabinek asks what does taste have to do with the issue? “This isn’t a restaurant or a theater or a game or even politics. This is a question of justice and of the duty of those who have survived before those who have died.”
The inability to bring Gorbachev to trial, something Podrabinek admits is “almost impossible,” is “not a curiosity but a misforture for our country and a shame for our jurisprudence.” It is an indictment on a society “which is prepared so easily to forget and forgive” what was done to it – and thus makes a repetition of such things more likely.
Some people like Bukovsky are prepared to stand up and make this demand, but “alas” such people are relatively few. “The majority experiences toward Gorbachev a feeling of devoted gratitude for the fact that he did not drown the country in blood,” with many thinking that “on the conscience of every leader of a country are such sins.”
But that is not the case. In Europe, what countries “except the socialist and the fascist have put down civil protests with tanks?” Podrabinek asks, pointing out that “this is not an all-human misfortune.” Instead, “it is a characteristic sign of totalitarian regimes” like the one Gorbachev ruled over.
Many Russians live by myths because they “do not want to know the truth. One of these myths is about Gorbachev as a reformer, a peacemaker and the author of democratic transformations.” But in fact, forces were at work beyond his control that led to the destruction of the totalitarian system, even as Gorbachev sought to defend it.
“Without doubt,” Podrabinek says, Gorbachev had “a first-class apparatchik nose” for events. Even during the August coup, he “said in Foros “in order then to come to victory, it was unimportant whose.” He would have remained in office had these larger forces not made it impossible for him to do so.
When Gorbachev finally “understood that it was impossible to save [the CPSU and the Soviet Empire], he successfully saved his own reputation,” but nothing more, Podrabinek argues. And thus he did not behave at the very last as Ceaucescu or Milosevich did, allowing many to conclude that he gets credit for avoiding a civil war.
But “whether one should be grateful to a tyrant for the fact that he did not tear to death all his subjects is a personal issue,” Podrabinek insists. Tragically, the West has not behaved any better than the Russian people in its assessment of Gorbachev and the role he played at the end of the Cold War and the end of the USSR.
“Europe is grateful [to Gorbachev] for the destruction of the Berlin Wall,” but “I have watched these remarkable pictures,” Podrabinek says. “Gorbachev was not there. The youth of Berlin destroyed the wall. Gorbachev took this as a given and di not begin to send in tanks,” undoubtedly a correct response but one any sensible politician would have adopted.
Where in this is “the heroism for which the West loves him?” Podrabinek asks, and he suggests that what has been taking place is evidence of “’the Stockholm syndrome’ of Western civilization,” of a situation in which hostages display positive feelings towards those who have taken or held them hostage.
“Communist collapsed not thanks to Gorbachev or even not in spite of him,” Podrabinek concludes. “He was too unremarkable a figure despite what would seem to be great opportunities. The tyranny was fated to be destroyed, and Gorbachev couldn’t do anything about that,” despite all his efforts and his willingness to sacrifice “hundreds of human lives.”
Window on Eurasia: Russia’s Ainu Community Makes Its Existence Known
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 10 – In addition to the Siberians, another indigenous nationality has surfaced in the Russian Federation east of the Urals in the 2010 census – the Ainu – one whose small number – approximately 100 -- bely the potential political and geopolitical significance of an ethnic community most of whose members are in Japan.
On the one hand, the recent earthquake and tsunami have focused attention on Japan, increasing the importance of all things that connect that country with others, including Russia. And on the other, because the Ainu live among other places in the Kurile Islands, the Ainu of Russia are likely to come to play a role in that dispute between Moscow and Tokyo.
Indeed, Russian scholars say, the very name Kurile derives from the Ainu word “Kuru” which simply means “people,” an origin that Russian officials are certain to point to in order to bolster Russian claims to these islands, especially now that Moscow is acknowledging that there are Ainu in Russia itself.
During preparations for the census, the Inforos.ru portal notes, the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology noted that “despite the absence [of this group] in the official enumeration of Russian peoples, part of our fellow citizens firmly continue to consider themselves Ainus” (inforos.ru/ru/?module=news&action=view&id=27280%20).
In Russian investigations beginning in the 18th century, the Ainu of the Russian Far East were often called Kamchadal Kurilites rather than Ainu because the term Ainu itself derives from the Ainu word “man” or “worthy man” and typically was connected with “military actions” and achievements.
Although the Ainu people have been indigenous to the area of the Far East and Japan for at least 7,000 years, Russian scholars say, “in Japan, the Ainus are considered ‘barbarians’ … and social marginals,” because they speak a language different from and look entirely different than the Japanese.
These same scholars report that “at the end of the 19th century,about 1500 Ainu lived in Russia,” but “after World War II, they were in part expelled and in part left on their own with the Japanese population.” Many of the others assimilated to the ethnic Russian population of the Russian Far East.
“According to the assertions of the Kamchadal Kurilites”—or Ainu of Russia – “all the names of the islands of the southern area were given by the tribes of the Ainu which at one point in the past occupied these territories.” Thus, Russian commentators say, “it is very change to say” that the Ainu were never there as some Japanese writers do.
That matters, these Russian commentators say, because “there are Ainus in Russia, an indigenous people which also has the right to consider these islands their own immemorial lands.”
One of these commentators, P. Alekseyev, argues that the Ainu should play a role in the resolution of the dispute over the Kurile Islands. “For this,” he says, “it is necessary to permit the Ainu (who were expelled by the Soviet government to Japan in 1945) to return from Japan to the land of their ancestors,” land that includes the Kuriles and much of the Russian Far East.
Russia “has neither people nor means fo rhte development of Sakhalin and the Kuriles, but the Ainu do,” Alekseyev says. Consequently, their return would “give a push to the economy of the Russian Far East” especially if there were formed for them “a national autonmy” within Russia that would embrace the Kurile Islands as well.
At the very least, Alekseyev argues, the Ainus now in Japan, precisely because they used to be “our citizens” and because “they were never allies of Japan and never will be” could become “the allies of Russia” as far as the Kuriles are concerned and held “liquidate” the present focus on the southern Kuriles in the Russian-Japanese relationship.
The Ainu of Russia have been pressing for official recognition as a nationality for some time. There were a spate of articles about them in the early 1990s, and after the Japanese recognized the Ainu as a distinct nationality in 2008, the Ainu of Kamchatka pressed for local recognition there (www.rg.ru/2008/04/03/reg-dvostok/ainu.html).
Now, especially in the wake of the natural disasters in Japan, the Ainus of Russia are pressing for greater recognition. There is now a Russian Association of the Far-Eastern Ainu (RADA as its Russian acronym) headed by Rechkabo Kakukhoningen (Boris Yaravoy), which is pressing the Ainu case.
For more details on this movement, its goals and its prospects, see among other sources, see among other articles, rusk.ru/st.php?idar=44728, tron.ru/ainu/rada/, tron.ru/ainu/kuril/dom.htm, and zvezdolettv.blogspot.com/2009/01/10.html?zx=b017943a71c2ad03,)
Staunton, April 10 – In addition to the Siberians, another indigenous nationality has surfaced in the Russian Federation east of the Urals in the 2010 census – the Ainu – one whose small number – approximately 100 -- bely the potential political and geopolitical significance of an ethnic community most of whose members are in Japan.
On the one hand, the recent earthquake and tsunami have focused attention on Japan, increasing the importance of all things that connect that country with others, including Russia. And on the other, because the Ainu live among other places in the Kurile Islands, the Ainu of Russia are likely to come to play a role in that dispute between Moscow and Tokyo.
Indeed, Russian scholars say, the very name Kurile derives from the Ainu word “Kuru” which simply means “people,” an origin that Russian officials are certain to point to in order to bolster Russian claims to these islands, especially now that Moscow is acknowledging that there are Ainu in Russia itself.
During preparations for the census, the Inforos.ru portal notes, the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology noted that “despite the absence [of this group] in the official enumeration of Russian peoples, part of our fellow citizens firmly continue to consider themselves Ainus” (inforos.ru/ru/?module=news&action=view&id=27280%20).
In Russian investigations beginning in the 18th century, the Ainu of the Russian Far East were often called Kamchadal Kurilites rather than Ainu because the term Ainu itself derives from the Ainu word “man” or “worthy man” and typically was connected with “military actions” and achievements.
Although the Ainu people have been indigenous to the area of the Far East and Japan for at least 7,000 years, Russian scholars say, “in Japan, the Ainus are considered ‘barbarians’ … and social marginals,” because they speak a language different from and look entirely different than the Japanese.
These same scholars report that “at the end of the 19th century,about 1500 Ainu lived in Russia,” but “after World War II, they were in part expelled and in part left on their own with the Japanese population.” Many of the others assimilated to the ethnic Russian population of the Russian Far East.
“According to the assertions of the Kamchadal Kurilites”—or Ainu of Russia – “all the names of the islands of the southern area were given by the tribes of the Ainu which at one point in the past occupied these territories.” Thus, Russian commentators say, “it is very change to say” that the Ainu were never there as some Japanese writers do.
That matters, these Russian commentators say, because “there are Ainus in Russia, an indigenous people which also has the right to consider these islands their own immemorial lands.”
One of these commentators, P. Alekseyev, argues that the Ainu should play a role in the resolution of the dispute over the Kurile Islands. “For this,” he says, “it is necessary to permit the Ainu (who were expelled by the Soviet government to Japan in 1945) to return from Japan to the land of their ancestors,” land that includes the Kuriles and much of the Russian Far East.
Russia “has neither people nor means fo rhte development of Sakhalin and the Kuriles, but the Ainu do,” Alekseyev says. Consequently, their return would “give a push to the economy of the Russian Far East” especially if there were formed for them “a national autonmy” within Russia that would embrace the Kurile Islands as well.
At the very least, Alekseyev argues, the Ainus now in Japan, precisely because they used to be “our citizens” and because “they were never allies of Japan and never will be” could become “the allies of Russia” as far as the Kuriles are concerned and held “liquidate” the present focus on the southern Kuriles in the Russian-Japanese relationship.
The Ainu of Russia have been pressing for official recognition as a nationality for some time. There were a spate of articles about them in the early 1990s, and after the Japanese recognized the Ainu as a distinct nationality in 2008, the Ainu of Kamchatka pressed for local recognition there (www.rg.ru/2008/04/03/reg-dvostok/ainu.html).
Now, especially in the wake of the natural disasters in Japan, the Ainus of Russia are pressing for greater recognition. There is now a Russian Association of the Far-Eastern Ainu (RADA as its Russian acronym) headed by Rechkabo Kakukhoningen (Boris Yaravoy), which is pressing the Ainu case.
For more details on this movement, its goals and its prospects, see among other sources, see among other articles, rusk.ru/st.php?idar=44728, tron.ru/ainu/rada/, tron.ru/ainu/kuril/dom.htm, and zvezdolettv.blogspot.com/2009/01/10.html?zx=b017943a71c2ad03,)
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