Paul Goble
Staunton, April 27 – The plans of some in Moscow that the center could build an all-Russian Muslim organization around the new mufti of Tatarstan and thus weaken both the two other Muslim bodies with such pretentions, the Union of Muftis of Russia (SMR) and the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD), have run into trouble before they could take off.
On the one hand, boosting the position of the Muslim leader in Tatarstan has led the authorities in Kazan to adopt an even more Islamic, not to say Islamist, position in their public appeals. And on the other, the election of a new mufti has led to a split in the ranks of the Tatarstan MSD’s congregations with some breaking off to form a new MSD of their own.
Following the election of Ildus Fayzov as the mufti of Tatarstan two weeks ago, Roman Silantyev, a specialist on Islam with close ties to the Moscow Patriarchate and notorious for his attacks on SMR head Ravil Gainutdin, played up the idea that Fayzov could become a paramount leader of Islam in Russia (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=dujour&div=374).
Silantyev’s idea was based on Fayzov’s declaration that the Tatarstan MSD of which he had become the leader would not be part of the SMR even though Fayzov’s predecessor Gusman Iskakov had been vice president of this organization “on his own initiative and as a private person,” the Russian Islamic expert said.
Moreover, because the Tatarstan MSD has numerous parishes beyond the borders of that Middle Volga republic and not just in adjoining areas, Silantyev continued, Fayzov is in a position to present himself as “the leader of an all-Russian Muslim structure,” one which already controls, according to Silantyev, a fifth of all the Muslim congregations in Russia.
As Silantyev points out, the Russian government has its problems not only with the SMR and Central MSD in Ufa – the North Caucasus Muslim organization does not play an all-Russian role – and because Moscow is disappointed in the results of its recent effort to create an all-Russian Muftiate up to now. Consequently, the Kremlin “can begin” to look at Fayzov.
The Russian expert outlines some of the reasons for what he calls “a cooling of relations” between the SMR and Kazan, including issue of Wahhabism, ties with the Central MSD and Talgat Tajuddin, and the fact that an SMR leader took the lead in opposing Fayzov in the run up to the mufti election in Kazan.
Silantyev’s suggestion, which almost certainly reflects the ideas of many in Moscow and especially those close to the Russian Orthodox Church, has run into difficulties for reasons that he and others should have anticipated, reasons that reflect both the nature of Russian political life and the nature of Islam.
If Moscow would like to see another center of Islamic administration in the Russian Federation, establishing it in Kazan has the potential to create a serious problem for the center because it gives the leadership of the Republic of Tatarstan yet another lever to advance itself as spokesman or at least bellwether for all the non-Russians of the Russian Federation.
That is because Kazan can now, as it is doing, present itself as a spokesman for Islam too. On Monday, for example, Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov noted in a message to the World Congress of Tatars that “religion plays a big role in the preservation of national identity” and that Kazan is “concerned” about the situation of Islam in other parts of Russia.
Islam, the Tatarstan leader continued, is “the foundation of Tatar culture” and consequently, when today “mosques in regions of Russia are passing over into alien hands which do not very much strive to preserve our Tatar traditions, the traditions of our ancestors, it is necessary to focus attention on this (www.islamrf.ru/news/russia/rusnews/15835/).
But perhaps a more immediate if ultimately less serious problem for the Russian authorities is that the Tatarstan MSD is now at risk of disintegrating into two or more smaller MSDs, with Muslims in Almetyevsk declaring today that they do not want to subordinate to the Tatarstan MSD of Fayzov (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=40530).
Because the MSD system has no canonical basis in Islam – such institutions are a political-administrative convenience for Russian officials who would like Islam to be a church like Orthodoxy – any parish can decide to opt out of an MSD whenever it likes, at least from the point of view of Islamic law.
And in this case, it appears that local Muslim leaders, at least some of whom opposed Fayzov’s election and his increasingly active program, have decided that the most effective way to register their objections is to withdraw. If they do and if others follow, Fayzov may not have the base that Silantyev and others hope for.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Window on Eurasia: North Caucasian Reminds Russians Moscow is Subsidizing More than the North Caucasus
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 27 – Russian nationalists are angry that Moscow is subsidizing the Muslim North Caucasus, but a North Caucasus analyst has reminded them and everyone else that Moscow is also subsidizing other and predominantly Russian regions as well, something he suggests the nationalists should be thinking about as well.
On Saturday, the Russian Civic Union and the Front of National Salvation organized a demonstration in Moscow to call for an end to Russian government subsidies to the North Caucasus. About 400 people listened to speakers denounce Russian spending in that restive region (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/184396/).
One of the participants in that demonstration, Viktor Sobolyev of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), said that his party was the only one in the Duma which has constantly raised the issue of Russian money flowing into non-Russian portions of the country and wants to see it go to Russian regions instead.
But the meeting was about more than just Russian money supposedly going to waste in the North Caucasus. It also was about corruption, and one participant told Kavkaz-uzel.ru that he fully agreed with speakers there that “’a fish rots from the head’ and that corruption begins here [in Moscow] in the highest echelons of power.?
One North Caucasian commentator, political scientist Ruslan Martagov said it was completely understandable that Russians were concerned about the flow of money to the North Caucasus and to corruption there. “How can one explain such large transfers … to simple people” when there are many worthy projects elsewhere in Russia that remain without funding?
And such ordinary Russians, he continued, are outraged by the corruption in the North Caucasus, although most of them recognize that “the corrupted Kremlin has given birth to a corrupted elite in the North Caucasus It has given it birth and it is feeding it as well.” Over time, this will lead to more inter-ethnic tensions.
That is because Moscow has the opportunity to start up a new conflict in the North Caucasus if its own position becomes shaky, and when it does so, the political scientist suggested, “in the eyes of society, this will be completely justified,” an attitude that makes questions about funding the North Caucasus potentially serious.
But another North Caucasian expert, Aslambek Paskachev, an academic who heads the Russian Congress of Peoples of the Caucasus, said Russian nationalists “should turn their attention to the Far East and the Volga region which are getting more subsidies than the republics of the Caucasus” because of the way in which the Russian system is now arranged.
And as far as corruption is concerned, “then in the North Caucasus, it is just the same as it is everywhere else.” Because that is the case, the holding of the Saturday’s meeting, he suggested, prompts the question as to who may be trying to play “the Caucasus card for their own political purposes.”
On the other hand, Paskachev continued, “let’s consider who is feeding whom and who has fed whom at various periods of modern history.” He noted that he had worked in the Chechen-Ingush Gosplan in Soviet times and that at that time, the republic had sent 21 million tons of oil to the rest of Russia every year” – including rocket fuel for Yuri Gagarin’s flight!
That alone shows how wrong speakers at Saturday’s meeting where when they asserted that “the North Caucasus has never given the country a single scholar, artist or writer … All the income from oil went in those years into a common union pot. And our republic, using the meeting’s language, during the so-called stagnation ‘fed’ more than one region of Russia.”
“Why then is it necessary to hate all those who live in the South of Russia,” Paskachev asked. Advancing “Slogans like ‘the Caucasus for the Caucasians’ and ‘Russia for the Russians,’ the North Caucasian specialist said, “will only lead to the collapse” of the Russian Federation as a whole.
.
Staunton, April 27 – Russian nationalists are angry that Moscow is subsidizing the Muslim North Caucasus, but a North Caucasus analyst has reminded them and everyone else that Moscow is also subsidizing other and predominantly Russian regions as well, something he suggests the nationalists should be thinking about as well.
On Saturday, the Russian Civic Union and the Front of National Salvation organized a demonstration in Moscow to call for an end to Russian government subsidies to the North Caucasus. About 400 people listened to speakers denounce Russian spending in that restive region (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/184396/).
One of the participants in that demonstration, Viktor Sobolyev of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), said that his party was the only one in the Duma which has constantly raised the issue of Russian money flowing into non-Russian portions of the country and wants to see it go to Russian regions instead.
But the meeting was about more than just Russian money supposedly going to waste in the North Caucasus. It also was about corruption, and one participant told Kavkaz-uzel.ru that he fully agreed with speakers there that “’a fish rots from the head’ and that corruption begins here [in Moscow] in the highest echelons of power.?
One North Caucasian commentator, political scientist Ruslan Martagov said it was completely understandable that Russians were concerned about the flow of money to the North Caucasus and to corruption there. “How can one explain such large transfers … to simple people” when there are many worthy projects elsewhere in Russia that remain without funding?
And such ordinary Russians, he continued, are outraged by the corruption in the North Caucasus, although most of them recognize that “the corrupted Kremlin has given birth to a corrupted elite in the North Caucasus It has given it birth and it is feeding it as well.” Over time, this will lead to more inter-ethnic tensions.
That is because Moscow has the opportunity to start up a new conflict in the North Caucasus if its own position becomes shaky, and when it does so, the political scientist suggested, “in the eyes of society, this will be completely justified,” an attitude that makes questions about funding the North Caucasus potentially serious.
But another North Caucasian expert, Aslambek Paskachev, an academic who heads the Russian Congress of Peoples of the Caucasus, said Russian nationalists “should turn their attention to the Far East and the Volga region which are getting more subsidies than the republics of the Caucasus” because of the way in which the Russian system is now arranged.
And as far as corruption is concerned, “then in the North Caucasus, it is just the same as it is everywhere else.” Because that is the case, the holding of the Saturday’s meeting, he suggested, prompts the question as to who may be trying to play “the Caucasus card for their own political purposes.”
On the other hand, Paskachev continued, “let’s consider who is feeding whom and who has fed whom at various periods of modern history.” He noted that he had worked in the Chechen-Ingush Gosplan in Soviet times and that at that time, the republic had sent 21 million tons of oil to the rest of Russia every year” – including rocket fuel for Yuri Gagarin’s flight!
That alone shows how wrong speakers at Saturday’s meeting where when they asserted that “the North Caucasus has never given the country a single scholar, artist or writer … All the income from oil went in those years into a common union pot. And our republic, using the meeting’s language, during the so-called stagnation ‘fed’ more than one region of Russia.”
“Why then is it necessary to hate all those who live in the South of Russia,” Paskachev asked. Advancing “Slogans like ‘the Caucasus for the Caucasians’ and ‘Russia for the Russians,’ the North Caucasian specialist said, “will only lead to the collapse” of the Russian Federation as a whole.
.
Window on Eurasia: Despite Rising Oil Prices, Russians’ Standard of Living is Falling
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 27 – Many observers had assumed that recent increases in the price of oil and gas would boost living standards in the Russian Federation, a major exporter, but in fact, according to Moscow’s statistical agency, living standards there are again beginning to fall as is public confidence in the future.
In an article in today’s “Svobodnaya pressa,” Lev Ivanov and Dmitry Ivanov use Rosstat data to show that “despite the growing prices for oil and gas, the standard of living of Russians fell in March compared to a year earlier by 3.4 percent and that popular expectations about the future declined as well (svpressa.ru/economy/article/42654/).
Moreover, the two journalists point out, “if one looks at the graph of monetary incomes of the population offered by Rosstat, then it is obvious that this spring, the statistically average Russian lives approximately at the level of the height of the crisis, the winter of 2008/2009” and has not benefitted from the rise in the price of oil and gas.
Last month, compared to a year earlier and with inflation taken into account, the two “Svobodnaya pressa” writers say, average pay for Russians fell by 0.4 percent. They note that “the main reason” for this trend is not a decline in pay but rather “the continuing growth of the cost of living.”
And that trend in turn has sent consumer confidence tumbling. According to Rosstat, that index fell three percent in the first quarter of 2011, with only 13 percent of the population now expecting an improvement in their material position over the next 12 months, 23 percent expecting a decline, and 53 percent anticipating little change.
These figures, Ivanov and Ivanov say, put Russia in the range of the crisis countries of the European Union, Greece and Portugal, rather than with those EU states which are coming out of the recent economic crisis. And what is worse, they suggest, is that this decline in standard of living “correlates with the worsening situation of the Russian economy as a whole.”
GDP is falling as is investment, and the growth in incomes from the sale of oil and gas is not having an impact on the standard of living of ordinary Russians. Using Rosstat figures, they show that those at the top of the income pyramid are benefitting from these sales but those in the middle and bottom are not – or at least are not at a rate higher than inflation.
Given these figures, the two asked three specialists whether these figures suggested that there is “renewal of recession in Russia.” Aleksey Mikhailov, an expert at the Moscow Center of Economic and Political Research, replied that “all contemporary statistics are practically useless” because “they reflect the desires of the leaders and not real processes in the economy.”
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has declared that GDP grew 4.4 percent in the first quar4ter and so “we will soon with surprise find out that there was no fall in the real incomes of the population and no fall in investment in the first quarter .. Just wait for Rosstat’s corrections! All will be well.”
But if one considers the real situation and not that as presented by the country’s leadership, Mikhailov continues, one sees that investment has fallen well below plans and that ruble has strengthened and will continue to do so at ever higher costs to consumers, a situation that the government is doing nothing to correct.
“Russia is a prisoner of liberal fundamentalism,” the economist says, just as it was before the crisis of 1998. And undoubtedly, this will lead to a new crisis” once the price of oil falls or when the regime commits the next “stupidity” and thus sends Russia into a tailspin.
Yevgeny Yasin, the director of studies of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, was more measured in his language but equally damning in his conclusions. He pointed out that “citizens do not eat oil” and that as a result, income differentiation is increasing with “the majority becoming poorer.”
What is especially worrisome, he continued, is that “when there was a crisis, demand fell and prices should have fallen,” but Russia “did not make use of this situation” and introduce reforms in the economy. Inflation remains high, “and this will lead to a further decline in real incomes.”
“Growing prices for oil will not save the situation,” Yasin said, because “if the temporary extra incomes will be wasted on everyday expenses,” that will only give the illusion that things are well for a time. And “when after this the crisis comes,” the money that could have been put to good use for investment in change won’t be available.
And finally, Mikhail Khazin, the head of the NEOKON consulting company, said that the situation reflects serious distortions in the Russian economy. The price of oil has doubled but domestic production has declined, with all the oil earnings going to the rich rather than being used for social purposes.
“As a result,” Khazin says, “the incomes of the population are falling, [and] real inflation is much higher than what our government says.” Together these trends are promoting “degradation in our economy” at a rapid rate. And that can be seen in particular in the case of inflation.
If one ignores the export sector, one sees that the real disposable incomes of the population are falling and thus the sales of such goods as well. That means, Khazin says, that “the possibility of earning profits” there has declined as well. “Who then will invest in an economy in which profits are falling?”
Staunton, April 27 – Many observers had assumed that recent increases in the price of oil and gas would boost living standards in the Russian Federation, a major exporter, but in fact, according to Moscow’s statistical agency, living standards there are again beginning to fall as is public confidence in the future.
In an article in today’s “Svobodnaya pressa,” Lev Ivanov and Dmitry Ivanov use Rosstat data to show that “despite the growing prices for oil and gas, the standard of living of Russians fell in March compared to a year earlier by 3.4 percent and that popular expectations about the future declined as well (svpressa.ru/economy/article/42654/).
Moreover, the two journalists point out, “if one looks at the graph of monetary incomes of the population offered by Rosstat, then it is obvious that this spring, the statistically average Russian lives approximately at the level of the height of the crisis, the winter of 2008/2009” and has not benefitted from the rise in the price of oil and gas.
Last month, compared to a year earlier and with inflation taken into account, the two “Svobodnaya pressa” writers say, average pay for Russians fell by 0.4 percent. They note that “the main reason” for this trend is not a decline in pay but rather “the continuing growth of the cost of living.”
And that trend in turn has sent consumer confidence tumbling. According to Rosstat, that index fell three percent in the first quarter of 2011, with only 13 percent of the population now expecting an improvement in their material position over the next 12 months, 23 percent expecting a decline, and 53 percent anticipating little change.
These figures, Ivanov and Ivanov say, put Russia in the range of the crisis countries of the European Union, Greece and Portugal, rather than with those EU states which are coming out of the recent economic crisis. And what is worse, they suggest, is that this decline in standard of living “correlates with the worsening situation of the Russian economy as a whole.”
GDP is falling as is investment, and the growth in incomes from the sale of oil and gas is not having an impact on the standard of living of ordinary Russians. Using Rosstat figures, they show that those at the top of the income pyramid are benefitting from these sales but those in the middle and bottom are not – or at least are not at a rate higher than inflation.
Given these figures, the two asked three specialists whether these figures suggested that there is “renewal of recession in Russia.” Aleksey Mikhailov, an expert at the Moscow Center of Economic and Political Research, replied that “all contemporary statistics are practically useless” because “they reflect the desires of the leaders and not real processes in the economy.”
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has declared that GDP grew 4.4 percent in the first quar4ter and so “we will soon with surprise find out that there was no fall in the real incomes of the population and no fall in investment in the first quarter .. Just wait for Rosstat’s corrections! All will be well.”
But if one considers the real situation and not that as presented by the country’s leadership, Mikhailov continues, one sees that investment has fallen well below plans and that ruble has strengthened and will continue to do so at ever higher costs to consumers, a situation that the government is doing nothing to correct.
“Russia is a prisoner of liberal fundamentalism,” the economist says, just as it was before the crisis of 1998. And undoubtedly, this will lead to a new crisis” once the price of oil falls or when the regime commits the next “stupidity” and thus sends Russia into a tailspin.
Yevgeny Yasin, the director of studies of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, was more measured in his language but equally damning in his conclusions. He pointed out that “citizens do not eat oil” and that as a result, income differentiation is increasing with “the majority becoming poorer.”
What is especially worrisome, he continued, is that “when there was a crisis, demand fell and prices should have fallen,” but Russia “did not make use of this situation” and introduce reforms in the economy. Inflation remains high, “and this will lead to a further decline in real incomes.”
“Growing prices for oil will not save the situation,” Yasin said, because “if the temporary extra incomes will be wasted on everyday expenses,” that will only give the illusion that things are well for a time. And “when after this the crisis comes,” the money that could have been put to good use for investment in change won’t be available.
And finally, Mikhail Khazin, the head of the NEOKON consulting company, said that the situation reflects serious distortions in the Russian economy. The price of oil has doubled but domestic production has declined, with all the oil earnings going to the rich rather than being used for social purposes.
“As a result,” Khazin says, “the incomes of the population are falling, [and] real inflation is much higher than what our government says.” Together these trends are promoting “degradation in our economy” at a rapid rate. And that can be seen in particular in the case of inflation.
If one ignores the export sector, one sees that the real disposable incomes of the population are falling and thus the sales of such goods as well. That means, Khazin says, that “the possibility of earning profits” there has declined as well. “Who then will invest in an economy in which profits are falling?”
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