Paul Goble
Staunton, May 4 – To the usual charge that “enemies of Russia” are responsible for all the country’s problems, the current powers that be in Moscow routinely blame “the wild 1990s” with their “incorrect foreign and domestic policies” for temporary difficulties, even though they themselves emerged from precisely that period, according to a Russian analyst.
In an essay entitled “Why is the Lie about the 1990s Necessary?” Andrey Gusev surveys the direct relationship between the current tandem and that decade and important parallel between that latest “thaw” in Russian history and the cold “winters” which seem to invariably return there after any such warming (news.babr.ru/?IDE=93298).
Russia’s current leaders entered “big politics” in the 1990s and were shaped as political figures “in the second half” of that decade, a time when the country “having understood Gorbachev’s perestroika and Yeltsin’s revolution without much debate moved along the path of oligarchic capitalism.”
Moreover, those years were “the time when the first Chechen war ended, when society wanted stability after the default of 1998, but there still existed political competition,” and few Russians thought that being ruled by a single party of corrupted officials would be their lot anytime soon.
Today, Gusev continues, “the Russian political space has been cleansed down to the bottom,” with the media controlled by the state. But, the analyst says, “this does not eliminate the need to explain to the population the reasons for the largely unsuccessful rule of the St. Petersburg chekists.”
The current powers that be routinely invoke the traditional explanation for problems: “the enemies of Russia are guilty of everything.” But they have now added a second explanation: “our provisional failures are the result of the incorrect foreign and domestic policy” of those who ruled the country in the last decade of the 20th century.
That is why the 1990s are now called “wild.” Under Yeltsin, Gusev writes, “Chubais was guilty on all points. [Now] under the Petersburg tandem, the wild 90s are to blame.” Those who think and reflect can see this is an absurdity, but for the ordinary Russian who gets his information from state television and the politically ambitious, it all makes sense.
And now the tandem and its supporters are not afraid to declare openly in a Stalinist fashion that “life has become better; life has become more joyous” as long as everyone recognizes that “no one has the right to move forward without the United Russia party,” which has overcome “the wild 90s.”
Since 1991 enough time has passed, Gusev continues, to dispassionately assess the situation. “On the greater part of the post-Soviet space authoritarian regimes or even quasi-dictatorships have solidified their hold. The exceptions have become [only] the Baltic countries, Georgia, and in part Ukraine.”
It is also true that in the 1990s, Gusev says, there were “a mass of mistakes and crimes,” something no one should “close his eyes to.” The default happened, capital flight happened, the dishonest presidential elections of 1996 happened, and “the biggest mistake of the state” occurred – the Chechen war began which has drawn through its fires “a million Russian men.” All this “could not fail to leave a mark on the entire country.”
“Today’s authoritarian Russian regime is at a crossroads,” Gusev concludes. “Its bearers would like nothing to change but they understand that this is impossible for any lengthy period of time.” Moreover, they know that they have to modernize the economy, that that requires “modernization of political life,” and that that in turn leads to the competition they fear.
“The alternative is a dictatorship,” Gusev points out, but he suggests that the tandem “has still not decided” to go that route. But if they do or even if they continue their current way forward for some interval of time, it will be increasingly obvious that the 1990s were not “wild” but “only a law in the middle of a long Russian winter.”
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Hopes to Make the Next 100 Years ‘Century of the North’
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 4 – Moscow officials want to make the next 100 years “the century of the North,” a time when Russians and others will move north and east rather than south and west. But a Siberian commentator argues that a genuine “rebranding” of the region will have some profound consequences for Russian politics and society.
At the second Eurasian Economic Youth Forum in Yekaterinburg last week, Valery Yazev, the vice speaker of the Russian Duma, said that young people from Russian and around the world will be involved in the coming century in the development of the Arctic and the Far North (www.oilru.com/news/252471/).
That is especially true of and important for Russians, he continued, “Russia historically was established as a powerful state in the great civilizational advance for the mastery of the endless spaces of the Russian north, Siberia and the Far East.” This process, he said, “forged the Russian national character” and “showed the entire world our possibilities.”
As President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have stressed, Yazev continued, “the path to the north is possible only under conditions of fruitful international dialogue” because “the continental shelf must be ‘a zone of peace and cooperation’” rather than a place of conflict among nations.
That in turn means, the Duma leader said, that young people will have “not only to participate in the economic mastery of the North but also to develop a philosophy of a new movement to the North,” to draw on the successes of the past and use them to innovate in the future.
The conference reflected not only Yazev’s perspectives but also those of Aleksandr Dugin, a leading neo-Eurasianist. The meeting declared that “our Eurasianism is looking for models and concepts which promote a New Northern Oecumene, the cradle of the civilization which nurtured the Russian empire and its allies, the USSR, and the CIS” (www.barentsobserver.com/eurasian-youth-looks-towards-russian-north.4914333-116321.html).
In a related but perhaps even more indicative move, President Medvedev signed new legislation this week that makes it easier for foreign workers in the North and elsewhere to get visas and secure them for their families, an issue that had sometimes been a problem earlier (www.barentsobserver.com/russia-improves-conditions-for-foreign-specialists.4915952-116321.html).
If Yazev and Dugin viewed the past of Russia’s conquest of the North in a positive way and argued that Russia in the future should draw on what was done then to reinforce Russian national culture and identity in the future, another writer argues that the Northern “brand” needs to be modified, a change that will affect the Russian nation itself profoundly,.
In an essay on “Brand Arctic” published this week in Karelia, Siberian theorist and activist Dmitry Verkhoturov suggests that the Soviet-era “meta-brand” on the Arctic carried within it several dangerous and destructive messages, messages that must be changed if the future is to be better than the past (rk.karelia.ru/2011/05/daesh-novyiy-brend-arktiki/).
On the one hand, he says, the Soviet “Arctic brand” treated the region as “an empty land where no one lived until polar expeditions appeared which discovered everything and entered them on the map. And on the other, “this brand was the root of a sense that everything is permitted,” that Soviet people working there “can do what they liked.”
A simplification like all brands, “brand Arctic” ignored or papered over such things as “the bloody wars with local peoples which lasted for decades,” the spread of alcoholism, the deportation of peoples like the Nentsy, and the environmental contamination ranging from oil spills to the wholesale scrapping of nuclear fuel.
“For definite circles now,” Verkhoturov continues, “the most valuable thing in the Arctic brand is not the geographic discoveries and the polar researchers who have long ago gone to their graves.” Rather, it is “the ideological justification of the idea that everything is permitted and that there are no limits” on what those running the area can do.
In Siberia, such Soviet-era brands have had to interact with those from other sources, thus creating “an entire mosaic of meanings and signs,” with regard to the Arctic, “this is not the case.” Instead, it appears, Moscow hopes that it will be able to “replace one meta-brand with another” of the same type.
In Verkhoturov’s view, Russians “need a new Artic brand, a new understanding of this region, its history, its present and its future. Without a change in the brand it will hardly be possible to make any essential moves forward in the existing situation.” And he suggests that new brand should have four elements.
First of all, people must understand that “the Arctic unifies,” tying people from around the Arctic Ocean. Second, “the Arctic has its own laws and rules of behavior” learned by local people over thousands of years. Third, in the Arctic, the individual “is closer to the cosmos than anywhere else on earth” and stands “face to face with the forces of nature. And fourth, the people who live in the high north have a cultural knowledge which others must take into consideration.
Coming up with such a new “meta-brand” for the Arctic should not be all that difficult, Verkhoturov says. “What one needs is only to love and value it in all its multiplicity and manifestations and above all to respect it.” Simply exploiting it will not serve either the high North or Russia as a whole.
Staunton, May 4 – Moscow officials want to make the next 100 years “the century of the North,” a time when Russians and others will move north and east rather than south and west. But a Siberian commentator argues that a genuine “rebranding” of the region will have some profound consequences for Russian politics and society.
At the second Eurasian Economic Youth Forum in Yekaterinburg last week, Valery Yazev, the vice speaker of the Russian Duma, said that young people from Russian and around the world will be involved in the coming century in the development of the Arctic and the Far North (www.oilru.com/news/252471/).
That is especially true of and important for Russians, he continued, “Russia historically was established as a powerful state in the great civilizational advance for the mastery of the endless spaces of the Russian north, Siberia and the Far East.” This process, he said, “forged the Russian national character” and “showed the entire world our possibilities.”
As President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have stressed, Yazev continued, “the path to the north is possible only under conditions of fruitful international dialogue” because “the continental shelf must be ‘a zone of peace and cooperation’” rather than a place of conflict among nations.
That in turn means, the Duma leader said, that young people will have “not only to participate in the economic mastery of the North but also to develop a philosophy of a new movement to the North,” to draw on the successes of the past and use them to innovate in the future.
The conference reflected not only Yazev’s perspectives but also those of Aleksandr Dugin, a leading neo-Eurasianist. The meeting declared that “our Eurasianism is looking for models and concepts which promote a New Northern Oecumene, the cradle of the civilization which nurtured the Russian empire and its allies, the USSR, and the CIS” (www.barentsobserver.com/eurasian-youth-looks-towards-russian-north.4914333-116321.html).
In a related but perhaps even more indicative move, President Medvedev signed new legislation this week that makes it easier for foreign workers in the North and elsewhere to get visas and secure them for their families, an issue that had sometimes been a problem earlier (www.barentsobserver.com/russia-improves-conditions-for-foreign-specialists.4915952-116321.html).
If Yazev and Dugin viewed the past of Russia’s conquest of the North in a positive way and argued that Russia in the future should draw on what was done then to reinforce Russian national culture and identity in the future, another writer argues that the Northern “brand” needs to be modified, a change that will affect the Russian nation itself profoundly,.
In an essay on “Brand Arctic” published this week in Karelia, Siberian theorist and activist Dmitry Verkhoturov suggests that the Soviet-era “meta-brand” on the Arctic carried within it several dangerous and destructive messages, messages that must be changed if the future is to be better than the past (rk.karelia.ru/2011/05/daesh-novyiy-brend-arktiki/).
On the one hand, he says, the Soviet “Arctic brand” treated the region as “an empty land where no one lived until polar expeditions appeared which discovered everything and entered them on the map. And on the other, “this brand was the root of a sense that everything is permitted,” that Soviet people working there “can do what they liked.”
A simplification like all brands, “brand Arctic” ignored or papered over such things as “the bloody wars with local peoples which lasted for decades,” the spread of alcoholism, the deportation of peoples like the Nentsy, and the environmental contamination ranging from oil spills to the wholesale scrapping of nuclear fuel.
“For definite circles now,” Verkhoturov continues, “the most valuable thing in the Arctic brand is not the geographic discoveries and the polar researchers who have long ago gone to their graves.” Rather, it is “the ideological justification of the idea that everything is permitted and that there are no limits” on what those running the area can do.
In Siberia, such Soviet-era brands have had to interact with those from other sources, thus creating “an entire mosaic of meanings and signs,” with regard to the Arctic, “this is not the case.” Instead, it appears, Moscow hopes that it will be able to “replace one meta-brand with another” of the same type.
In Verkhoturov’s view, Russians “need a new Artic brand, a new understanding of this region, its history, its present and its future. Without a change in the brand it will hardly be possible to make any essential moves forward in the existing situation.” And he suggests that new brand should have four elements.
First of all, people must understand that “the Arctic unifies,” tying people from around the Arctic Ocean. Second, “the Arctic has its own laws and rules of behavior” learned by local people over thousands of years. Third, in the Arctic, the individual “is closer to the cosmos than anywhere else on earth” and stands “face to face with the forces of nature. And fourth, the people who live in the high north have a cultural knowledge which others must take into consideration.
Coming up with such a new “meta-brand” for the Arctic should not be all that difficult, Verkhoturov says. “What one needs is only to love and value it in all its multiplicity and manifestations and above all to respect it.” Simply exploiting it will not serve either the high North or Russia as a whole.
Window on Eurasia: Are the EU’s Roma about to Move to Russia?
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 4 – Rising tensions between the Roma and the titular nationalities of the European Union have sparked reports in Moscow that some of this often-despised community are about to be moved to the Russian Federation, either on their own or from a deal between the EU and Russian officials who believe that that country needs all the migrants it can get.
Yesterday, “Komsomolskaya Pravda” reported about this possibility (www.km.ru/v-rossii/2011/05/03/migratsionnaya-politika-v-rossii/evropa-zaselit-rossiyu-tsyganami-nashi-vlasti-v), picking up on a story that had run the day before on the Tolkovatel.ru portal (ttolk.ru/?p=3665).
According to Tolkovatel.ru, the possibility of an agreement by which Europe’s Roma will be dispatched to the Russian Federation and possibly Ukraine is to be the subject of upcoming discussions between the EU and the Russian Federation, a step France and several East European countries support but the Germany reportedly opposes.
The first public mention of this, Tolkovatel.ru said, was a “Komsomolskaya Pravda” radio program on April 12 when Roman Grokholsky, a leader of the Roma community in the Russian Federation, said that in his view, “Russia for economic reasons could accept [Europe’s Roma]. It is an enormous land” (kp.ru.daily/25667/828997/).
As Yuri Filatov put in yesterday’s “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” “Europe it seems has found a radical solution for the problems of its Roma [who number between nine and twelve million] – simply to take them and resettle them in Russia.”
European countries do not have a good record in their dealings with the Roma. Last year, for example, French President Nicolas Sarkozy expelled “several thousand” of them to Bulgaria and Romania, an action that was denounced by international human rights groups but generally supported by the French people and by residents of many other EU countries.
But despite this support, European governments have concluded, Filatov continues, that is “neither technically nor economically” feasible “to deport all the Roma to Romania or Bulgaria as was done in the past: the sizes of these countries do not allow that and local nationalists are protesting ever more loudly against” that idea.
As a result, Europeans have come up with the notion “why not resettle all the Roma in Russia (and also in Ukraine),” which have the space and the jobs to accommodate them and which, in the view of the Europeans, have a tradition of tolerance for the Roma, as reflected in Russian novels and music.
It is anticipated, the paper says, that “each Roma family would receive from the European Union money for travel and resettlement.” The exact amount hasn’t been determined but it would likely be in the range of 500 euros per person, the amount Roma deported from France received earlier.
“In this way,” Filatov says, “by counting on our accommodating spirit and hospitality, ‘tolerant’ Europe wants on our account to resolve the problem of its own intolerance. And it is worth noting that in the circles in and around the powers that be in Russia, there is actively being prepared the basis for such decisions.”
Indeed, the “Komsomolskaya Pravda” journalist says, the Russian elite is thinking about far more than just Europe’s Roma. Specifically, it is thinking about the Chinese and even Africans as a means of addressing the Russian Federation’s increasingly severe demographic decline.
Filatov cites the comments of Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya, the head of the migration laboratory of the Institute of Economic Prognostication at the Russian Academy of Sciences, at a meeting last week devoted to the demographic dimensions of Moscow’s strategy paper for 2020 (slon.ru/articles/587652/).
Given Russia’s declines in its overall population and especially among working age cohorts, Zayonchkovskaya said, Russia will have to attract at least 20 million additional migrants over the next 15 years. Central Asian countries can supply no more than six million of these, and so most will have to come from China.
Chinese workers are already coming into Russia and they will only increase in number over the coming years, Zayonchkovskaya said, noting that “the longer we put our heads in the sand, the more unexpected this will be for us.” And there is going to be a big change: by mid-century, she said, there will be more ethnic Chinese in Russia than Tatars.
Such migration flows will only feed more xenophobic attitudes among Russians, such as those that the recently banned (the case is now on appeal) Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) reflect and seek to channel. And it is no surprise that the DPNI portal features these stories about Europe’s Roma.
But Zayonchkovskaya’s comments reflect the dilemma in which the Russian government finds itself: If it allows more immigration, increasingly from non-Slavic peoples, it will face an ever more antagonistic population. But if it doesn’t, the Russian economy will suffer, and the regime will face class rather than ethnic anger.
Staunton, May 4 – Rising tensions between the Roma and the titular nationalities of the European Union have sparked reports in Moscow that some of this often-despised community are about to be moved to the Russian Federation, either on their own or from a deal between the EU and Russian officials who believe that that country needs all the migrants it can get.
Yesterday, “Komsomolskaya Pravda” reported about this possibility (www.km.ru/v-rossii/2011/05/03/migratsionnaya-politika-v-rossii/evropa-zaselit-rossiyu-tsyganami-nashi-vlasti-v), picking up on a story that had run the day before on the Tolkovatel.ru portal (ttolk.ru/?p=3665).
According to Tolkovatel.ru, the possibility of an agreement by which Europe’s Roma will be dispatched to the Russian Federation and possibly Ukraine is to be the subject of upcoming discussions between the EU and the Russian Federation, a step France and several East European countries support but the Germany reportedly opposes.
The first public mention of this, Tolkovatel.ru said, was a “Komsomolskaya Pravda” radio program on April 12 when Roman Grokholsky, a leader of the Roma community in the Russian Federation, said that in his view, “Russia for economic reasons could accept [Europe’s Roma]. It is an enormous land” (kp.ru.daily/25667/828997/).
As Yuri Filatov put in yesterday’s “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” “Europe it seems has found a radical solution for the problems of its Roma [who number between nine and twelve million] – simply to take them and resettle them in Russia.”
European countries do not have a good record in their dealings with the Roma. Last year, for example, French President Nicolas Sarkozy expelled “several thousand” of them to Bulgaria and Romania, an action that was denounced by international human rights groups but generally supported by the French people and by residents of many other EU countries.
But despite this support, European governments have concluded, Filatov continues, that is “neither technically nor economically” feasible “to deport all the Roma to Romania or Bulgaria as was done in the past: the sizes of these countries do not allow that and local nationalists are protesting ever more loudly against” that idea.
As a result, Europeans have come up with the notion “why not resettle all the Roma in Russia (and also in Ukraine),” which have the space and the jobs to accommodate them and which, in the view of the Europeans, have a tradition of tolerance for the Roma, as reflected in Russian novels and music.
It is anticipated, the paper says, that “each Roma family would receive from the European Union money for travel and resettlement.” The exact amount hasn’t been determined but it would likely be in the range of 500 euros per person, the amount Roma deported from France received earlier.
“In this way,” Filatov says, “by counting on our accommodating spirit and hospitality, ‘tolerant’ Europe wants on our account to resolve the problem of its own intolerance. And it is worth noting that in the circles in and around the powers that be in Russia, there is actively being prepared the basis for such decisions.”
Indeed, the “Komsomolskaya Pravda” journalist says, the Russian elite is thinking about far more than just Europe’s Roma. Specifically, it is thinking about the Chinese and even Africans as a means of addressing the Russian Federation’s increasingly severe demographic decline.
Filatov cites the comments of Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya, the head of the migration laboratory of the Institute of Economic Prognostication at the Russian Academy of Sciences, at a meeting last week devoted to the demographic dimensions of Moscow’s strategy paper for 2020 (slon.ru/articles/587652/).
Given Russia’s declines in its overall population and especially among working age cohorts, Zayonchkovskaya said, Russia will have to attract at least 20 million additional migrants over the next 15 years. Central Asian countries can supply no more than six million of these, and so most will have to come from China.
Chinese workers are already coming into Russia and they will only increase in number over the coming years, Zayonchkovskaya said, noting that “the longer we put our heads in the sand, the more unexpected this will be for us.” And there is going to be a big change: by mid-century, she said, there will be more ethnic Chinese in Russia than Tatars.
Such migration flows will only feed more xenophobic attitudes among Russians, such as those that the recently banned (the case is now on appeal) Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) reflect and seek to channel. And it is no surprise that the DPNI portal features these stories about Europe’s Roma.
But Zayonchkovskaya’s comments reflect the dilemma in which the Russian government finds itself: If it allows more immigration, increasingly from non-Slavic peoples, it will face an ever more antagonistic population. But if it doesn’t, the Russian economy will suffer, and the regime will face class rather than ethnic anger.
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