Paul Goble
Staunton, May 10 – People throughout Russia and around the world can now follow developments in Daghestan as reported in traditional print and broadcast media online in that North Caucasus republic since virtually all media outlets there maintain frequently updated web sites, according to the Internet columnist for the republic’s “Nastoyashcheye vremya.”
In an article featuring a photograph of four older Daghestani women looking at a laptop computer, Bagdat Tumalayev who writes frequently on Internet issues in the North Caucasus provides a comprehensive listing of the traditional media outlets that have their own websites (gazeta-nv.ru/content/view/6002/109/).
As is the case elsewhere, such sites may be the salvation of some traditional media outlets by attracting more readers, listeners or viewers, of they may represent the death knell for others by causing people to stop reading, listening or viewing them. But the extent of such online media in the regions means Moscow will likely find it ever more difficult to control the flow of news.
Below the list of the sites Tumalayev offers.
Daghestani newspapers online:
Gazeta-nv.ru “Nastoyashcheye vremya” weekly
Ndelo.ru “Novoye delo” weekly
Dagpravda.ru “Dagestanskaya Pravda” daily
respublic.net “Respublika” weekly
chernovik.net “Chernovik” weekly
mi-dag.ru “Makhachkalionskiye izvestiya” daily
assalam.ru Newspaper of Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Daghestan
dagstadion.narod.ru “Stadium” sports newspaper
dagorlenok.ru “Orlenok Dagstana” youth newspaper
tryjenik.3dn.ru “Selsky truzhennik,” a regional paper
proji.ru “Prodzhi” features journal
dmdag.ru “Delovoy mir Dagestana”
Башня05.рф “Bashnya,” a youth newspaper with its own Facebook page
garage05.ru “Garage,” an automobile magazine
stpartner05.ru “Stroipartner,” a construction industry paper with a guide to firms in Daghestan
Television Sites:
gtrkdagestan.ru Daghestan state television
rutvstar.ru RuTV channel
tvchirkey.ru Daghestani Islamic television channel
tvdrk.ru Makhachkala advertising channel
mtv-stolica.ru MTV youth channel
Radio Sites:
radio-stolica.ru Stolitsa Radio site– сайт модного дагестанского радио «Столица».
mediaholding-stolica.ru Radio aggregator site
dagfm.ru Volna media group site
99fm.ru Kristall radio site
News Service Sites:
Riadagestan.ru RIA Dagestan news service
dagnews.com Independent analytic service
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Window on Eurasia: ‘No Confirmed Evidence’ of Al Qaeda Role in Caucasus Resistance Exists, Daghestani Journalist Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 10 – There is “no confirmed evidence” that Al Qaeda has played a role in the militant movement in the North Caucasus, and Moscow’s claims to the contrary are yet another effort by the Russian government to avoid facing the real basis for the anti-Moscow movement in the region, a Makhachkala journalist says.
In an article the current issue of “Nastoyashcheye vremya,” Ruslan Gereyev says that “representatives of Al Qaeda of course were in the North Caucasus” at various times “but they did not play a major role,” and “the general movement” there did “not depend on them, a sharp contrast to the situation in Bosnia or Somalia (gazeta-nv.ru/content/view/5988/109/).
Gereyev acknowledges that Al Qaeda operatives have visited the North Caucasus and that the organization has provided some funding for militants there, but “the Arabs have never achieved control of the administration of the resistance movement in the North Caucasus.” Instead, Gereyev says, “local Islamists have used” the Arabs rather than the other way around.
“Many who act in the North Caucasus,” he continues, “do not have direct ties to Al Qaeda,” and it is even more the case that “Al Qaeda itself has never had great influence in the North Caucasus,” despite all the claims that have been made by the Russian special forces to the contrary.
The Russian security services have tried to link the North Caucasus militants ot the Arabs by ascribing membership in Al Qaeda to Khattab and all Arabs who have appeared in the region, but the numbers of such people have been relatively small. And they do not snow that bin Laden ever realized control over what is taking place” in the region.
Under contemporary conditions, “there is no need” for Arabs to turn to Al Qaeda as the only possible source for support. “People coming from North Africa, the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have for a long time already their own channels of financing. They do not need Al Qaeda in order to carry out a jihad, including in the North Caucasus.”
As Gereyev notes, “experts have more than once declared that the information of the [Russian] sp[ecial services about the activities of Al Qaeda in the North Caucasus is not shown, although according to the data of the National Anti-Terrorist Committee, the terrorist network of Al Qaeda continuously finances the leaders of the armed Caucasus Emirate.”
But as the Daghestani journalist points out, “up to now, the causes which are giving birth to terrorism, including social, political, economic, and inter-ethnic conflicts,” especially in the North Caucasus, have not been eliminated by Russian government policies. Instead, Moscow hopes to win the sympathy of the West by suggesting Al Qaeda is behind Russia’s problems.
As a result, despite “the liquidation of bin Laden,” the level of terrorism throughout the world, including in the North Caucasus, will not change. Instead, his death at the hand of the Americans is likely to open “a Pandora’s box” of problems. Indeed, the Taliban of Afghanistan have already declared that they will take revenge.
Staunton, May 10 – There is “no confirmed evidence” that Al Qaeda has played a role in the militant movement in the North Caucasus, and Moscow’s claims to the contrary are yet another effort by the Russian government to avoid facing the real basis for the anti-Moscow movement in the region, a Makhachkala journalist says.
In an article the current issue of “Nastoyashcheye vremya,” Ruslan Gereyev says that “representatives of Al Qaeda of course were in the North Caucasus” at various times “but they did not play a major role,” and “the general movement” there did “not depend on them, a sharp contrast to the situation in Bosnia or Somalia (gazeta-nv.ru/content/view/5988/109/).
Gereyev acknowledges that Al Qaeda operatives have visited the North Caucasus and that the organization has provided some funding for militants there, but “the Arabs have never achieved control of the administration of the resistance movement in the North Caucasus.” Instead, Gereyev says, “local Islamists have used” the Arabs rather than the other way around.
“Many who act in the North Caucasus,” he continues, “do not have direct ties to Al Qaeda,” and it is even more the case that “Al Qaeda itself has never had great influence in the North Caucasus,” despite all the claims that have been made by the Russian special forces to the contrary.
The Russian security services have tried to link the North Caucasus militants ot the Arabs by ascribing membership in Al Qaeda to Khattab and all Arabs who have appeared in the region, but the numbers of such people have been relatively small. And they do not snow that bin Laden ever realized control over what is taking place” in the region.
Under contemporary conditions, “there is no need” for Arabs to turn to Al Qaeda as the only possible source for support. “People coming from North Africa, the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have for a long time already their own channels of financing. They do not need Al Qaeda in order to carry out a jihad, including in the North Caucasus.”
As Gereyev notes, “experts have more than once declared that the information of the [Russian] sp[ecial services about the activities of Al Qaeda in the North Caucasus is not shown, although according to the data of the National Anti-Terrorist Committee, the terrorist network of Al Qaeda continuously finances the leaders of the armed Caucasus Emirate.”
But as the Daghestani journalist points out, “up to now, the causes which are giving birth to terrorism, including social, political, economic, and inter-ethnic conflicts,” especially in the North Caucasus, have not been eliminated by Russian government policies. Instead, Moscow hopes to win the sympathy of the West by suggesting Al Qaeda is behind Russia’s problems.
As a result, despite “the liquidation of bin Laden,” the level of terrorism throughout the world, including in the North Caucasus, will not change. Instead, his death at the hand of the Americans is likely to open “a Pandora’s box” of problems. Indeed, the Taliban of Afghanistan have already declared that they will take revenge.
Window on Eurasia: Russians Caught Between Post-Imperial and Russian Identities, Orthodox Editor Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 10 – Russians today find themselves between a very real post-imperial identity and an ethnic Russian one, a situation in which they find it difficult if not impossible to define themselves or to consider their country or their nation in a positive way, according to the editor of the leading Russian Orthodox journal.
In an article posted on polit.ru based on a presentation he made to the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in April, Sergey Chapnin, the editor of the “Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate,” argues that these difficulties show that Russians routinely use the wrong terms to describe the reality surrounding them (www.polit.ru/country/2011/05/05/culture.html).
On the one hand, the editor says, Russians very much want to describe the world in which they live as Russian. But on the other, they continue to live in a post-Soviet one, a world that is “not a ‘frozen’ post-Soviet one, but rather an actively developing one,” even 20 years after the collapse of the USSR.
The values of post-Soviet culture, he continues, are “extremely contradictory and do not form a single picture.” Instead, they are so contradictory that “we have lost the ability to speak about ourselves, our ancestors and one another in a positive fashion and to create convincing and attractive models.”
As a result, “neither in high culture, nor in its mass variant is there any positive model of contemporary Russia. We do not like ourselves and we do not respect one another. An integral model of the present is lacking. The image of the past is mythologized … [and] there is no clear model of our future.”
As a result, “at the center of the new national mythology is only one event – the Great Victory in the Great Fatherland War,” a victory “conceived as the single ‘holy’ event of our history of the 20th century” and one whose celebration is “constructed as a religious action in which participate or at least sympathize the majority of Russians.”
And from this, Chapnin says, a kind of “civic religion with its own rules and rituals. The theme of victory is so ‘holy’ that to speak about it is possible only in the framework” established by “mass post-Soviet consciousness,” a situation that distorts both history and the consciousness of it.
“At the basis of this civic religion lie pagan values, meanings and symbols which were only partially modernized by communist propaganda,” including the eternal flame before which all bow but whose meaning within the traditions of Christianity is contradictory or even profoundly negative.
The cult of the Great Fatherland War entails a number of “extremely dangerous aspects,” the Orthodox editor says, including “the preservation and cultivation of ‘the image of the enemy,’” “the total heroization of war,” a sense of loss since victory, and “a primitive (pagan) understanding of patriotism.”
But perhaps the most serious of these is “the justification by virtue of the victory of all that happened in Russia in the10th century and above all with the totalitarian regime and Stalin personally.” And not surprisingly, in recent years, this “post-Soviet civic religion” has come into conflict with Russian culture as “inspired by the evangelical ideal.”
Because the Russian Orthodox Church is “a big Church,” it does not, indeed cannot provide “a common position” on all issues which are not directly part of Church doctrine. Instead, there have emerged what Chapnin calls three “church subcultures,” each with its own views on the Soviet past.
The first of these is “prepared to incorporate elements of Soviet culture” on the basis of a claim that “Soviet culture was more Christian by its content than is contemporary mass culture.” This is the largest of the three and includes almost all those who joined the priesthood in the last decade or so.
This group strives toward “social and cultural self-isolation,” shows “extreme lack of faith to any forms of ‘Western’ values,” and thus opposes ecumenism, changes in the Church itself, and any steps by the state which appear to threaten the Church including electronic numbering systems.
In reality, Chapnin argues, one can say that “this is Orthodoxy without tradition,” and “its representatives continue to struggle with the church problems of the past Soviet epoch – ecumenism and agents of the KGB within the Church,” even though “today these are already not real problems but phantoms.”
The second Church subculture is the successor to the Church underground of Soviet period, when the Church was persecuted. “This group,” Chapnin says, “consciously and consistently accepts nothing that is Soviet,” but it does so “peacefully and non-aggressively” because it recognizes that overcoming the past will take a long time.
Representatives of the second group also “well understand the universal character of Eastern-Slavic culture, but they know, love and value those forms of the cultural tradition” which exist within Russian Orthodoxy. A small group, it is will become smaller because its supporters are those who became priests in Soviet times or who were part of the Orthodox Church Abroad.
Finally, the third subculture combines a claim of links to the catacomb church but “on the other hand completely accepts the Soviet cultural matrix. In essence, this group has preserved the stylistics of Soviet propaganda and only replaced a number of terms and definitions, dropping ‘Soviet Union’ in favor of ‘Holy Rus,’ and ‘communist’ for ‘Orthodox.’”
Each of these groups supports a different version of Russian nationalism and Russian national culture and is in turn supported by them. And consequently, because the Church does not speak as one on these questions, it is not in a position to lead Russians along a single path to overcome the divisions in society which now exist.
Staunton, May 10 – Russians today find themselves between a very real post-imperial identity and an ethnic Russian one, a situation in which they find it difficult if not impossible to define themselves or to consider their country or their nation in a positive way, according to the editor of the leading Russian Orthodox journal.
In an article posted on polit.ru based on a presentation he made to the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in April, Sergey Chapnin, the editor of the “Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate,” argues that these difficulties show that Russians routinely use the wrong terms to describe the reality surrounding them (www.polit.ru/country/2011/05/05/culture.html).
On the one hand, the editor says, Russians very much want to describe the world in which they live as Russian. But on the other, they continue to live in a post-Soviet one, a world that is “not a ‘frozen’ post-Soviet one, but rather an actively developing one,” even 20 years after the collapse of the USSR.
The values of post-Soviet culture, he continues, are “extremely contradictory and do not form a single picture.” Instead, they are so contradictory that “we have lost the ability to speak about ourselves, our ancestors and one another in a positive fashion and to create convincing and attractive models.”
As a result, “neither in high culture, nor in its mass variant is there any positive model of contemporary Russia. We do not like ourselves and we do not respect one another. An integral model of the present is lacking. The image of the past is mythologized … [and] there is no clear model of our future.”
As a result, “at the center of the new national mythology is only one event – the Great Victory in the Great Fatherland War,” a victory “conceived as the single ‘holy’ event of our history of the 20th century” and one whose celebration is “constructed as a religious action in which participate or at least sympathize the majority of Russians.”
And from this, Chapnin says, a kind of “civic religion with its own rules and rituals. The theme of victory is so ‘holy’ that to speak about it is possible only in the framework” established by “mass post-Soviet consciousness,” a situation that distorts both history and the consciousness of it.
“At the basis of this civic religion lie pagan values, meanings and symbols which were only partially modernized by communist propaganda,” including the eternal flame before which all bow but whose meaning within the traditions of Christianity is contradictory or even profoundly negative.
The cult of the Great Fatherland War entails a number of “extremely dangerous aspects,” the Orthodox editor says, including “the preservation and cultivation of ‘the image of the enemy,’” “the total heroization of war,” a sense of loss since victory, and “a primitive (pagan) understanding of patriotism.”
But perhaps the most serious of these is “the justification by virtue of the victory of all that happened in Russia in the10th century and above all with the totalitarian regime and Stalin personally.” And not surprisingly, in recent years, this “post-Soviet civic religion” has come into conflict with Russian culture as “inspired by the evangelical ideal.”
Because the Russian Orthodox Church is “a big Church,” it does not, indeed cannot provide “a common position” on all issues which are not directly part of Church doctrine. Instead, there have emerged what Chapnin calls three “church subcultures,” each with its own views on the Soviet past.
The first of these is “prepared to incorporate elements of Soviet culture” on the basis of a claim that “Soviet culture was more Christian by its content than is contemporary mass culture.” This is the largest of the three and includes almost all those who joined the priesthood in the last decade or so.
This group strives toward “social and cultural self-isolation,” shows “extreme lack of faith to any forms of ‘Western’ values,” and thus opposes ecumenism, changes in the Church itself, and any steps by the state which appear to threaten the Church including electronic numbering systems.
In reality, Chapnin argues, one can say that “this is Orthodoxy without tradition,” and “its representatives continue to struggle with the church problems of the past Soviet epoch – ecumenism and agents of the KGB within the Church,” even though “today these are already not real problems but phantoms.”
The second Church subculture is the successor to the Church underground of Soviet period, when the Church was persecuted. “This group,” Chapnin says, “consciously and consistently accepts nothing that is Soviet,” but it does so “peacefully and non-aggressively” because it recognizes that overcoming the past will take a long time.
Representatives of the second group also “well understand the universal character of Eastern-Slavic culture, but they know, love and value those forms of the cultural tradition” which exist within Russian Orthodoxy. A small group, it is will become smaller because its supporters are those who became priests in Soviet times or who were part of the Orthodox Church Abroad.
Finally, the third subculture combines a claim of links to the catacomb church but “on the other hand completely accepts the Soviet cultural matrix. In essence, this group has preserved the stylistics of Soviet propaganda and only replaced a number of terms and definitions, dropping ‘Soviet Union’ in favor of ‘Holy Rus,’ and ‘communist’ for ‘Orthodox.’”
Each of these groups supports a different version of Russian nationalism and Russian national culture and is in turn supported by them. And consequently, because the Church does not speak as one on these questions, it is not in a position to lead Russians along a single path to overcome the divisions in society which now exist.
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