Paul Goble
Staunton, May 9 – Svetlana Medvedeva, Russia’s first lady, currently plays an active role in promoting the spread of the values of the Russian Orthodox Church not only in Russian society at large but in the Russian elite in particular, according to members of the Orthodox clergy who have known her for nearly 20 years.
In the current issue of “Sovershenno sekretno,” Aleksey Chelnokov surveys their opinions about what he calls “the phenomenon of the First Lady,” a woman whose role in the life of the Russian Federation is far larger than any of her immediate predecessors and far more important than most suspect (www.sovsekretno.ru/magazines/article/2786).
While much of his article is devoted to the Russian first lady’s childhood, first encounters with her husband, and his role in “glamorous” events like fashion shows and the promotion of particular Russian artists, Chelnokov devotes particular attention to her role in the Church not only in the 1990s but more recently.
It is said, Chelnokov notes, that Svetlana Medvedeva entered the church thanks to her “religious older sister already in the 1990s” when “fate, more precisely God, put her in touch with the pastor” of a church across the Moscow River from the Kremlin, Father Vladimir Volgin, a remarkable figure in his own right.
Not only is he the pastor of four different congregations but he is the son of the actress Yekaterina Vasilyeva and has been responsible for bringing into the church “Irina Abramovich, the mother of five children of the oligarch Roman Abramovich” and for making a pilgrimage with Svetlana Medvedeva.
The First Lady, he told “Sovershenno-Seketrno,” is “an individual of high morality and strong, I would even say, strategic mind,” adding that he was sure that her “experience of contact with holy things” has had an impact on her work in the program for the spiritual and moral training of young people.
Father Volgin said that he accompanied Russian First Family to Mount Athos in Greece and that “sometimes” he is invited to visit the couple “at the government dacha of the Administration of the Affairs of the President.” When that first happened, officials often looked at him askance, but now that has changed.
And he added that some of the senior officials he had met there now visit Mount Athos or other Orthodox pilgrimage sits “several times a year,” another indication of a change of attitude at the top. Father Volgin added that the Medvedevs are not shy about expressing their faith to those whom they know.
Another Orthodox priest with whom Chelnokov spoke was Father Kiprian who heads the Church’s Institute for Expertise on Educational Programs and Governmetn-Confession Relations. Born in 1953 into a family of atheists, he nonetheless became a monk in 1994 and since 1997, a member of the Academic Committee of the Russian Orthodox Church.
He has worked closely with Svetlana Medvedeva since 2007 when she was given the Church’s Olga Order and became a member of the advisory committee of the Spiritual-Moral culture Program for the Rising Generation of Russia, that was created at the behest of then-Patriarch Aleksii II.
At present, Kiprian, who serves as the secretary of this Church project said, “Svetlana vladimirovna is involved in the formation of a new membership” for that council and in the development of a program for its activities over the next decade. “The conception has not changed, but the extent of its activity has been significantly increased,” he added.
Under her influence, the group is promoting the Orthodox holiday of Sts. Peter and Fevronia as a counter to “the challenges of the Catholic Saint Valentine.” And the First Lady is involved in various projects including supporting religious communities and a home for mentally handicapped children.
And in a final comment, Father Kiprian made a remark about Vladimir Putin that may say even more about relations between the Medvedev’s and the prime minister than he intended. He called that Putin had suggested after the Manezh clashes that “Orthodoxy in many ways is even closer to Islam than let us say to the Catholics.”
“Perhaps,” Father Kiprian said laughing, “it is closer to Vladimir Vladimirovich personally. Islam is an Old Testament branch, a single religion which aspires to exclusiveness, by calling all others unbelievers.” Insisting on its similarities with Orthodoxy, the Orthodox churchman said, “is conditioned by some personal preferences” of Putin himself.”
Monday, May 9, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Central Asia on Brink of ‘Inter-Ethnic Explosion,’ Moscow Scholar Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 9 – An” inter-ethnic explosion” in Central Asia and Kazakhstan is increasingly likely given both the impact of gastarbeiters flowing from the southern part of that region to the north and the increasingly widespread idea of a ‘Greater Uzbekistan,” according to a Moscow ethnographer.
Georgy Sitnyansky, a researcher on Central Asia at the Center of Asian and Pacific Research at the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, argues in addition that Russia is interested in particular in stability in Kazakhstan and Northern Kyrgyzstan, the only “potential subjects of Eurasian integration” (www.regnum.ru/news/1402208.html).
The author of a new monograph, “Ethnic Conflicts in Central Asia and the National Interests of Russia,” told Regnum in an interview posted online on Friday that while Kazakhstan stands somewhat apart from the problems of the other Central Asian countries because of the ethnic composition of its population, that may change.
At present, Sityansky noted, only about 40 percent of the population of Kazakhstan is ethnically Kazakh, something that makes the slogan “Kazakhstan for the Kazakhs” relatively unimportant. But 20 years from now, that could change, both because of the outflow of European nationalities and because of the influx of migrants from the south.
For the time being, he continued, Kazakhstan has been able to “block the influx of Uzbeks by inviting Kazakhs from Mongolia, the Oralmans.” But the question arises, “for how long will this work? For how long will Kazakhstan be able to avoid the problems that gastarbeiters from the south have already caused in the Russian Federation and Kyrgyzstan?
But the region may not have to wait that long for inter-ethnic explosions in other places, Sityansky argued. Kyrgyzstan was “the first bell” in that regard. But “as far as the activity of Uzbekistan is concerned,” the notion of a “Greater Uzbekistan” could trigger conflicts in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan as well.
Events like those which shook Osh last year could push Uzbekistan to take more dramatic action. That is all the more likely because it would have the effect of allowing Tashkent to displace Astana as the regional leader. But at the same time, “in Uzbekistan itself, the situation for economic regions is not as stable as it appears.”
Thus, these domestic Uzbek problems might drive Tashkent to behave aggressively toward its neighbors, but such actions in turn could “end badly for itself.” It is of course possible that “namely the dislike of Uzbeks living in Kyrgyzstan for the Karimov regime [in Uzbekistan] may restrain this process.”
“But,” Sityansky continued, “that regime can be changed – the last events in the Arab countries show that any dictatorship may be overthrown, and then a different attitude of the Osh Uzbeks toward Tashkent would be possible.”
Moscow has an interest in stability in Central Asia in general and “in the first instance on the territories of Kazakhstan and Northern Kyrgyzstan,” two places which have potential for “Eurasian integration.” But a change in Tashkent could bring to power an Islamist regime and that would threaten Russian interests immediately.
Asked whether NATO’s military campaign in Libya is a precedent for a possible Russian response in Central Asia, the Moscow scholar says that such a precedent could be invokved only in the most extreme cases. “For the time being, [Moscow will use] all possible levers of pressure on Karimov” to prompt him to liberalize.
Sityansky concluded his article by saying that “if ‘the flow [of gastarbeiters] from south to north] is not stopped, then in the mid to long term, one cannot exclude even the fall of Kazakhstan into the orbit of radical Islamization.” That seemed improbable to many in Kyrgyzstan a decade ago, but now, the ethnologist says, it is happening.
Staunton, May 9 – An” inter-ethnic explosion” in Central Asia and Kazakhstan is increasingly likely given both the impact of gastarbeiters flowing from the southern part of that region to the north and the increasingly widespread idea of a ‘Greater Uzbekistan,” according to a Moscow ethnographer.
Georgy Sitnyansky, a researcher on Central Asia at the Center of Asian and Pacific Research at the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, argues in addition that Russia is interested in particular in stability in Kazakhstan and Northern Kyrgyzstan, the only “potential subjects of Eurasian integration” (www.regnum.ru/news/1402208.html).
The author of a new monograph, “Ethnic Conflicts in Central Asia and the National Interests of Russia,” told Regnum in an interview posted online on Friday that while Kazakhstan stands somewhat apart from the problems of the other Central Asian countries because of the ethnic composition of its population, that may change.
At present, Sityansky noted, only about 40 percent of the population of Kazakhstan is ethnically Kazakh, something that makes the slogan “Kazakhstan for the Kazakhs” relatively unimportant. But 20 years from now, that could change, both because of the outflow of European nationalities and because of the influx of migrants from the south.
For the time being, he continued, Kazakhstan has been able to “block the influx of Uzbeks by inviting Kazakhs from Mongolia, the Oralmans.” But the question arises, “for how long will this work? For how long will Kazakhstan be able to avoid the problems that gastarbeiters from the south have already caused in the Russian Federation and Kyrgyzstan?
But the region may not have to wait that long for inter-ethnic explosions in other places, Sityansky argued. Kyrgyzstan was “the first bell” in that regard. But “as far as the activity of Uzbekistan is concerned,” the notion of a “Greater Uzbekistan” could trigger conflicts in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan as well.
Events like those which shook Osh last year could push Uzbekistan to take more dramatic action. That is all the more likely because it would have the effect of allowing Tashkent to displace Astana as the regional leader. But at the same time, “in Uzbekistan itself, the situation for economic regions is not as stable as it appears.”
Thus, these domestic Uzbek problems might drive Tashkent to behave aggressively toward its neighbors, but such actions in turn could “end badly for itself.” It is of course possible that “namely the dislike of Uzbeks living in Kyrgyzstan for the Karimov regime [in Uzbekistan] may restrain this process.”
“But,” Sityansky continued, “that regime can be changed – the last events in the Arab countries show that any dictatorship may be overthrown, and then a different attitude of the Osh Uzbeks toward Tashkent would be possible.”
Moscow has an interest in stability in Central Asia in general and “in the first instance on the territories of Kazakhstan and Northern Kyrgyzstan,” two places which have potential for “Eurasian integration.” But a change in Tashkent could bring to power an Islamist regime and that would threaten Russian interests immediately.
Asked whether NATO’s military campaign in Libya is a precedent for a possible Russian response in Central Asia, the Moscow scholar says that such a precedent could be invokved only in the most extreme cases. “For the time being, [Moscow will use] all possible levers of pressure on Karimov” to prompt him to liberalize.
Sityansky concluded his article by saying that “if ‘the flow [of gastarbeiters] from south to north] is not stopped, then in the mid to long term, one cannot exclude even the fall of Kazakhstan into the orbit of radical Islamization.” That seemed improbable to many in Kyrgyzstan a decade ago, but now, the ethnologist says, it is happening.
Window on Eurasia: Soviet People Fought Against Hitler Rather than For Stalin, St. Petersburg Scholar Argues
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 9 – The viciousness of the Nazis against both Jews and Russians explains why the Soviet population shifted from indifference or even hostility to the Stalinist regime at the start of the war to the kind of passionate commitment its defense that led to the defeat of Hitler’s Germany and the salvation of the Soviet Union, according to a St. Petersburg scholar.
Many Western historians and some Russians ones have made this argument before,but its appearance now is worth noting because it challenges the image of the Soviet regime and especially its Stalinist variant now being presented by Vladimir Putin and many Russian nationalist writers.
In an article in the current issue of “Znamya,” Sergey Tsirel, a professor of the St. Petersburg branch of the Higher School of Economics, argues that Russians today need to more clearly understand what their ancestors were thinking when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and why they changed their minds a year later (magazines.russ.ru/znamia/2011/5/ci8.html).
Tsirel outlines the “strong sides” of the pre-war Soviet Union before discussing what he sees as the potentially fatal weaknesses of that regime. Among the former were industrialization, a “logical ideology,” well-organized propaganda, the lack of alternative leaders, fanatic devotion to Stalin by the Communist Party and urban youth, and “a powerful repressive apparatus.”
But despite these strengths, he points out, the Soviet Union had an extraordinarily difficult time in defeating Finland, a much smaller and less well-armed opponent. And it almost completely failed to defend itself during the first year of the German invasion of the USSR in 1941.
“Military theoreticians and defenders of the Stalinist regime have been able to explain the causes of this shameful defeat,” Tsirel points out, by talking about the importance of the blitzkrieg. But their explanations fail to explain why after these losses, “the army nevertheless not only stood up to the onslaught of the occupiers but achieved significant victories.
The real reason first for the defeats and then for the victories, however, is seldom mentioned: “If soldiers do not want to fight and commanders cannot or are afraid to command, then automatic weapons and machineguns will not save” an army or a people from defeat from a much less well-armed opponent.
There are many examples of this, Tsirel continues. “Pacifist, internally divided France [for example,] could not show a worthy resistance to Hitler [in 1940] when the forces of the two sides were approximately equal.” And the Soviet Union in an even better position in terms of arms could not do so either in the first months of the war.
Again, apologists for Stalin provide numerous explanations for this, but Tsirel argues that these miss the fundamental point: “the widespread hunger in the collective farms just five to seven years after the terrible famine of 1933” caused by the pursuit of military strength “made a significant farm of the population indifferent to the defense of the country.
To be sure, Tsirel continues, “there was not real mass hunger, but the short period of easing in 1936-38 in that regard, which was used by Stalin for reprisals against the elite had ended, and mass hunger in the countryside began again,” as did broader repression “against simple people … which thus touched broad strata of the population.”
He cites statistics to show that “by the winter of 1939 the majority of Soviet people were encountering difficulties with getting enough food.” There was hunger in some areas, rationing in most, and “tens of thousands of peasants who were trying to save themselves from hunder fled into the cities.”
All this led to increased disease and morality, “especially among the young,” and a reduction in the birthrate. Indeed, “the general social-economic crisis” brought on by Stalin’s armament programs and industrialization had led to the near collapse of “the demographic subsystem of Soviet society.”
Such problems, which defenders of the system are accustomed to dismissing as “temporary difficulties,” nonetheless left the population indifferent at best to the fate of the regime and in many cases hostile to its survival, and those attitudes rather than the supremacy of the German war machine explain the near collapse of Soviet power in 1941.
But instead of exploiting these attitudes, Tsirel continues, the Germans transformed them into the attitudes of an enemy they could not defeat. At first, the German forces attacked primarily Jews and Roma, but soon by their attacks on Russians and other Slavs, they made it obvious that they had come not as liberators but as new and even worse masters.
Indeed, Tsirel argues, “the fear of people concerning what would happen to them ‘under the Germans’” not only became a theme of Soviet propaganda but also played a fundamental role in changing people from indifferent defenders of the USSR into passionate opponents of the German invaders.
As a result, “the rotting colossus began to develop real legs.” Consequently, one must conclude that it was not the cruelty of Stalin which won out but rather – “thank God!” – the racist policies of Hitler which turned those who could have become his allies into his most committed opponents and ultimately the people who defeated him and his system.
Moreover, the enormous losses that the Soviet people suffered in their fight helped most but not all of the world forget the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Finnish war and the Katyn executions. But what really saved Stalin’s regime was Hitler’s decision not to allow the USSR to join the Nazi-led Tripartite Alliance.
Had Hitler acted differently at that time, had he not been struck by the weakness the Soviet Union displayed in the Finnish war, “only a change of regime, for example, the killing of Stalin and Molotov like the killing of Mussolini could have allowed the USSR to count itself among the anti-fascist block of victors.”
In short, Tsirel says, “the surprising ability of Russia to lose small and unjust wars and to win in great and just ones in combination with the bloody anti-Semitism of Hitler and his hatred fo rhte Slavs saved Russia from dishonor and destruction, and converted the terrible dictatorship of Stalin and the tyrant himself into ‘saviors of humanity.’”
Staunton, May 9 – The viciousness of the Nazis against both Jews and Russians explains why the Soviet population shifted from indifference or even hostility to the Stalinist regime at the start of the war to the kind of passionate commitment its defense that led to the defeat of Hitler’s Germany and the salvation of the Soviet Union, according to a St. Petersburg scholar.
Many Western historians and some Russians ones have made this argument before,but its appearance now is worth noting because it challenges the image of the Soviet regime and especially its Stalinist variant now being presented by Vladimir Putin and many Russian nationalist writers.
In an article in the current issue of “Znamya,” Sergey Tsirel, a professor of the St. Petersburg branch of the Higher School of Economics, argues that Russians today need to more clearly understand what their ancestors were thinking when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and why they changed their minds a year later (magazines.russ.ru/znamia/2011/5/ci8.html).
Tsirel outlines the “strong sides” of the pre-war Soviet Union before discussing what he sees as the potentially fatal weaknesses of that regime. Among the former were industrialization, a “logical ideology,” well-organized propaganda, the lack of alternative leaders, fanatic devotion to Stalin by the Communist Party and urban youth, and “a powerful repressive apparatus.”
But despite these strengths, he points out, the Soviet Union had an extraordinarily difficult time in defeating Finland, a much smaller and less well-armed opponent. And it almost completely failed to defend itself during the first year of the German invasion of the USSR in 1941.
“Military theoreticians and defenders of the Stalinist regime have been able to explain the causes of this shameful defeat,” Tsirel points out, by talking about the importance of the blitzkrieg. But their explanations fail to explain why after these losses, “the army nevertheless not only stood up to the onslaught of the occupiers but achieved significant victories.
The real reason first for the defeats and then for the victories, however, is seldom mentioned: “If soldiers do not want to fight and commanders cannot or are afraid to command, then automatic weapons and machineguns will not save” an army or a people from defeat from a much less well-armed opponent.
There are many examples of this, Tsirel continues. “Pacifist, internally divided France [for example,] could not show a worthy resistance to Hitler [in 1940] when the forces of the two sides were approximately equal.” And the Soviet Union in an even better position in terms of arms could not do so either in the first months of the war.
Again, apologists for Stalin provide numerous explanations for this, but Tsirel argues that these miss the fundamental point: “the widespread hunger in the collective farms just five to seven years after the terrible famine of 1933” caused by the pursuit of military strength “made a significant farm of the population indifferent to the defense of the country.
To be sure, Tsirel continues, “there was not real mass hunger, but the short period of easing in 1936-38 in that regard, which was used by Stalin for reprisals against the elite had ended, and mass hunger in the countryside began again,” as did broader repression “against simple people … which thus touched broad strata of the population.”
He cites statistics to show that “by the winter of 1939 the majority of Soviet people were encountering difficulties with getting enough food.” There was hunger in some areas, rationing in most, and “tens of thousands of peasants who were trying to save themselves from hunder fled into the cities.”
All this led to increased disease and morality, “especially among the young,” and a reduction in the birthrate. Indeed, “the general social-economic crisis” brought on by Stalin’s armament programs and industrialization had led to the near collapse of “the demographic subsystem of Soviet society.”
Such problems, which defenders of the system are accustomed to dismissing as “temporary difficulties,” nonetheless left the population indifferent at best to the fate of the regime and in many cases hostile to its survival, and those attitudes rather than the supremacy of the German war machine explain the near collapse of Soviet power in 1941.
But instead of exploiting these attitudes, Tsirel continues, the Germans transformed them into the attitudes of an enemy they could not defeat. At first, the German forces attacked primarily Jews and Roma, but soon by their attacks on Russians and other Slavs, they made it obvious that they had come not as liberators but as new and even worse masters.
Indeed, Tsirel argues, “the fear of people concerning what would happen to them ‘under the Germans’” not only became a theme of Soviet propaganda but also played a fundamental role in changing people from indifferent defenders of the USSR into passionate opponents of the German invaders.
As a result, “the rotting colossus began to develop real legs.” Consequently, one must conclude that it was not the cruelty of Stalin which won out but rather – “thank God!” – the racist policies of Hitler which turned those who could have become his allies into his most committed opponents and ultimately the people who defeated him and his system.
Moreover, the enormous losses that the Soviet people suffered in their fight helped most but not all of the world forget the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Finnish war and the Katyn executions. But what really saved Stalin’s regime was Hitler’s decision not to allow the USSR to join the Nazi-led Tripartite Alliance.
Had Hitler acted differently at that time, had he not been struck by the weakness the Soviet Union displayed in the Finnish war, “only a change of regime, for example, the killing of Stalin and Molotov like the killing of Mussolini could have allowed the USSR to count itself among the anti-fascist block of victors.”
In short, Tsirel says, “the surprising ability of Russia to lose small and unjust wars and to win in great and just ones in combination with the bloody anti-Semitism of Hitler and his hatred fo rhte Slavs saved Russia from dishonor and destruction, and converted the terrible dictatorship of Stalin and the tyrant himself into ‘saviors of humanity.’”
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