Paul Goble
Staunton, May 31 – Russians “at one and the same time feel themselves to be the greatest and the most oppressed nation on earth,” a situation that a Moscow commentator says reflects their “uncritical approach to themselves, the powers, and state propaganda” and that is the continuing source of many of their country’s most intractable problems.
In an essay in today’s “Gazeta,” Boris Tumanov explores the origins and the consequences of these “two unchanged and mutually exclusive leitmotifs” of Russian thought and suggests that even “the dialectic” will not help most people to understand why Russians feel the way they do (www.gazeta.ru/comments/2011/05/31_a_3633993.shtml).
“On the one hand,” he begins, the situation in which Russians find themselves in post-Soviet Russia, a country in which they form the overwhelming majority of the population and find themselves subordinate to “Russian state traditions including the mania for geopolitical greatness” allows them to view themselves “without irony” as the “state forming” nation.
And consequently, “when Russians are told in this situation that ‘Russia has risen from its knees,’ Russians for completely understandable reasons conceive this as being exclusively their due.” They ascribe “in a natural way” to “the current powers and to Vladimir Putin personally” the fact that they have begun “to live better and more happily.”
Any effort to cast doubt on this “idyl” or to point up “existing shortcomings” which any objective individual would have to acknowledge Russia, like any other country, has, Tumanov suggests, is considered by Russians to be the work of “born Russophobe who are working in the service of the enemies of Russia.”
But this belief that Russians are “the greatest of nations, the Moscow commentator says, “organically coexists with equally categorical assertions” by the Russians themselves that “Russians are the most oppressed nation in Russia, that Russians are dying out with their birthrate falling and morality growing, with Russians becoming impoverished” and so on.
Unfortunately, while believing these things to be true, most Russians do not have any understanding of whom they should address complaints about these things and “who is the guilty party of all these misfortunes,” even though they should recognize that such responsibility falls “above all on those people who administer” Russia.
That is not something Russians want to do because of their feeling that they are the greatest of nations and that their leaders are the best, and it is not something that intermediate leaders want to do because they recognize that there is little they can do about most of these problems.
But periodically, one or another politician, especially in the run up to elections, suggests that the issue should be addressed. Now that has happened again, Tumanov says, pointing to the proposal from Communist Duma deputy Vladimir Fedotkin to hold a parliamentary discussioin on “the conditions of life and fate of the Russian people.”
Such hearings, of course, Tumanov argues, “will become in fact a recognition of the fact that ten years of ‘stability, flowering, and getting up from one’s knees’ have led the Russian people to such a condition that it is time to reflect about its further fate and immediately improve the conditions of its life.”
The absurdity of this situation will be obvious because “our deputies will be forced to acknowledge the impoverished situation in which Russians, that is in essence, the overwhelming majority of the population are situated,” but they will find it almost impossible to take any real steps.
That is because “the people’s representatives and above all the United Russia party leaders even under torture will not agree to recognize their direct responsibility for the current misfortunes of the Russians and will always be looking for someone else on whom they can place all the blame.”
What is thus likely to happen? Tumanov suggests that there will be declarations about the Russians “as the state forming people” and possibly other “privileges for Russians,” although these too will remain “on paper” lest they spark a new “inter-ethnic catastrophe” among the country’s various ethnic groups.
Even the discussion promises to worsen ethnic relations, Tumanov says, even though the Russians themselves “will remain satisfied for the next two or three years” and then all this “will begin again,” with no end in sight all the more so because many Russians will be all too inclined to see the non-Russians as their oppressors, just as they did in Soviet times.
One of Russia’s greatest problems remains excessive drinking which in turn reduces life expectancy, Tumanov says, “It is necessary to drink less. But this assertion can be true only for those people who recognize their responsibility at a minimum for their own fate and still better for the fate of their society.”
“In other words, for those Russians who do not await from the powers that be instruction about how to love it, what to think and how to conduct onself and which are not seeking the causes of their own lack of well-being in the machinations of mythical ‘internal and external enemies,’” including “the non-Russians.”
Russia’s tragedy, Tumanov suggests, will continue “as long as the unnatural symbiosis between the insane deification of the powers” and the acceptance of existing conditions as beyond anyone’s control” exists among the majority of Russians. That time, unfortunately, is not yet, the commentator concludes.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Turkic Nogays Seek Their Own Ethnic Territory in the North Caucasus
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 31 – Despite the efforts, including the use of police power, by the Daghestani authorities to stop it, the Congress of the Nogays of Russia took place in their eponymous district in Daghestan and demanded that their historical homelands in Stavropol, Daghestan and Chechnya be reunited in a common Nogay motherland.
More than 3,000 people assembled at the stadium in Terkli-Mekteb under slogans like “Our Motherland is the Nogay Steppe,” “Rebirth or Disappearance?” “Our Ancestors were Heroes; Are You?” and “Indifference is Equivalent to Betrayal” and demanded “self-determination within the framework of a single administrative territorial unit.”
Specifically, Kavkaz-Uzel.ru reported, the May 29 meeting called for declaring the RSFSR degree of 1957 “anti-constitutional and anti-people” because that Moscow action left the Nogays divided in three different federal units and without one of their own (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/186275/).
More immediately, the participants demanded that the Russian procuracy examine the Daghestani law on livestock to see if it corresponds to federal legislation. According to that law, “the lands where the Nogays live” and have from time immemorial used for agricultural purposes are being taken from them for industrial development.
And the residents of the Nogay district in Daghestan used this meeteing to call for general popular elections of the head of that district. Elections to the district assembly, which will “then choose the head of the district are expected in the fall,” according to the Kavkaz-Uzel.ru report.
The news agency also reported that “the approach to the stadium where the Congress of the Nogays of Russia took place was blocked and under militia guard,” a reflection of the opposition “a number of representatives of the powers that be had expressed” beforehand (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/186269/).
The opposition of these officials is completely understandable given the challenge that the Nogays represent. Although they number only about 47,000 in the Russian Federation itself, the Turkic-speaking Nogays claim that there are “approximately five million Nogays” living abroad, mostly in Turkey and the Middle East.
That means that like the Circassians who want the formation of a common Circassian Republic and who have support from diaspora communities and like the Turkic-speaking Balkars who have been making demands about greater protection from Moscow in Kabasrdino-Balkaria, the Nogays are in a position to trigger more tension and instability in the North Caucasus.
It is thus likely that some in Makhachkala and Moscow will try to present the Nogays as they have the Circassians and Didos as agents for Georgian or Western interests, but in fact, the Nogays, just like the others, have real grievances which the Russian Federation has so far shown little interest in addressing.
And at the very least, the Nogay demand for the restoration of a single Nogay territory is certain to have a chilling effect on the push by some in the Russian capital to do away with existing ethnic republics by reminding everyone involved that many non-Russians see these institutions as the key to their survival and that some who lack them hope to get them back.
Staunton, May 31 – Despite the efforts, including the use of police power, by the Daghestani authorities to stop it, the Congress of the Nogays of Russia took place in their eponymous district in Daghestan and demanded that their historical homelands in Stavropol, Daghestan and Chechnya be reunited in a common Nogay motherland.
More than 3,000 people assembled at the stadium in Terkli-Mekteb under slogans like “Our Motherland is the Nogay Steppe,” “Rebirth or Disappearance?” “Our Ancestors were Heroes; Are You?” and “Indifference is Equivalent to Betrayal” and demanded “self-determination within the framework of a single administrative territorial unit.”
Specifically, Kavkaz-Uzel.ru reported, the May 29 meeting called for declaring the RSFSR degree of 1957 “anti-constitutional and anti-people” because that Moscow action left the Nogays divided in three different federal units and without one of their own (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/186275/).
More immediately, the participants demanded that the Russian procuracy examine the Daghestani law on livestock to see if it corresponds to federal legislation. According to that law, “the lands where the Nogays live” and have from time immemorial used for agricultural purposes are being taken from them for industrial development.
And the residents of the Nogay district in Daghestan used this meeteing to call for general popular elections of the head of that district. Elections to the district assembly, which will “then choose the head of the district are expected in the fall,” according to the Kavkaz-Uzel.ru report.
The news agency also reported that “the approach to the stadium where the Congress of the Nogays of Russia took place was blocked and under militia guard,” a reflection of the opposition “a number of representatives of the powers that be had expressed” beforehand (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/186269/).
The opposition of these officials is completely understandable given the challenge that the Nogays represent. Although they number only about 47,000 in the Russian Federation itself, the Turkic-speaking Nogays claim that there are “approximately five million Nogays” living abroad, mostly in Turkey and the Middle East.
That means that like the Circassians who want the formation of a common Circassian Republic and who have support from diaspora communities and like the Turkic-speaking Balkars who have been making demands about greater protection from Moscow in Kabasrdino-Balkaria, the Nogays are in a position to trigger more tension and instability in the North Caucasus.
It is thus likely that some in Makhachkala and Moscow will try to present the Nogays as they have the Circassians and Didos as agents for Georgian or Western interests, but in fact, the Nogays, just like the others, have real grievances which the Russian Federation has so far shown little interest in addressing.
And at the very least, the Nogay demand for the restoration of a single Nogay territory is certain to have a chilling effect on the push by some in the Russian capital to do away with existing ethnic republics by reminding everyone involved that many non-Russians see these institutions as the key to their survival and that some who lack them hope to get them back.
Window on Eurasia: Is Siberia Becoming Russia’s Catalonia?
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 31 – Ever since the Olympic Games in Barcelona, the world has grown accustomed to the slogan “Catalonia is not Spain,” a St. Petersburg writer says, and uses an essay in that city’s “Nevskoye vremya” to ask “how great is the probability of hearing something similar about Siberia?”
For a long time, Denis Terentyev says, most political analysts viewed Siberian separatists as “a marginal movement,” one “whose goal is a prior unattainable, and thus quite unlike “the more or less serious” movements in the Caucasus, Tatarstan, and Urals Republic” because “Siberian separate from Russia could not exist” (www.nvspb.ru/stories/sibir-otdelno-45365).
Siberian separatism received a great deal of attention ten to fifteen years ago, Terentyev notes, even though “the movement of independence in Siberia did not arise then” and has not disappeared so. Instead, in recent years, “unique actions of civil disobedience have seized the entire region,” with it becoming the done thing to identify as a Sibirian in the census.
Terentyev suggests that these people are in fact Russians and have identified as such in the past, but he notes that “Irkutsk journalists say that the number of ‘separatists’ is really about 80 to 90 percent” of the population and that now “in local business the first question addressed to a potential partner is whether he is a Siberian or a Muscovite.”
A “Muscovite,” the writer continues, “can be someone from Petersburg, Bryansk or Balashikha – for the locals he is a symbol of ‘the colonial regime.’” The reason for the rise of this new nationality, Terentyev says is “as a reaction to the actions of the center” which have taken the wealth of the region and given far too little back.
In Siberian schools, “teachers tell the children that their native kray is fabulously wealthy, that here are 85 percent of the reserves of Russian natural gas, 60 percent of the oil, 75 percent of the coal and 70 percent of the aluminum.” And they accurately note that “a large part of the earnings [from these sectors] is taken by Moscow.”
One Irkutsk editor told him, Terentyev says, that “the center is beginning to understand the danger of what is taking place.” Its response is what one might expect: Representatives of the center have “had conversations [with him and other editors] about the undesirability of publications on the theme of Siberian separatism.”
The impact of such “conversations” is obvious, that editor said, from the way in which the media there have treated the case of former OMON officer Aleksandr Budnikov, who received a suspended sentence of two years for “extremist” comments posted on the Internet but who now faces four years in prison for seeking to separate Siberia from Russia by force.
The latest charges were filed after Budnikov and “several hundred of like-minded people” decided to seek the recall of their representatives in the Duma and Federation Council, the editor said, because as he said, “these people are not expressing our interests and the Constitution allows us to recall them.”
But Terentyev says, the ban Moscow wants extends far beyond this case. “In the newspapers, it has become not acceptable to write that the history of Siberia even before the Novosibirsk militiaman was full of attempts at self-determination,” and that in 1918, Siberia existed as an independent state albeit for only a short time.
In the nineteenth century, in fact, Anton Chekhov “note3d that Siberians are not like other Russians,” and today,, “as a result of the poor image of Russians in the world, it is more honorable to call oneself a Siberian,” all the more so because Siberians blame Moscow for their problems and see the rise of China with its high rises and paved roads.
On their side of the Sino-Russian border, the residents of Siberia see decaying peasant huts and “even federal highways that are not paved.” Not surprisingly, Terentyev says, “local residents draw the conclusion that Moscow is guilty in everything.” But he concludes that they should remember that “with separation, the problems of Siberia would only deepen.”
However that may be, Siberian activists are continuing to press for greater autonomy or even more. As one comment appended to Terentyev’s essay noted, “Siberians are already prepared to hold a referendum on uniting Siberia with the United States” (ru-ru.facebook.com/#!/home.php?sk=group_112982375434933&ap=1).
And another Siberian activist drew another conclusion. Yes, Siberians look like Russians, and they share many characteristics with them. But they are not engaged in “trading off the Motherland” as Muscovites are because unlike in the capital, “in the provinces it is impossible to do that” (sibirnet.ru/node/84).
Staunton, May 31 – Ever since the Olympic Games in Barcelona, the world has grown accustomed to the slogan “Catalonia is not Spain,” a St. Petersburg writer says, and uses an essay in that city’s “Nevskoye vremya” to ask “how great is the probability of hearing something similar about Siberia?”
For a long time, Denis Terentyev says, most political analysts viewed Siberian separatists as “a marginal movement,” one “whose goal is a prior unattainable, and thus quite unlike “the more or less serious” movements in the Caucasus, Tatarstan, and Urals Republic” because “Siberian separate from Russia could not exist” (www.nvspb.ru/stories/sibir-otdelno-45365).
Siberian separatism received a great deal of attention ten to fifteen years ago, Terentyev notes, even though “the movement of independence in Siberia did not arise then” and has not disappeared so. Instead, in recent years, “unique actions of civil disobedience have seized the entire region,” with it becoming the done thing to identify as a Sibirian in the census.
Terentyev suggests that these people are in fact Russians and have identified as such in the past, but he notes that “Irkutsk journalists say that the number of ‘separatists’ is really about 80 to 90 percent” of the population and that now “in local business the first question addressed to a potential partner is whether he is a Siberian or a Muscovite.”
A “Muscovite,” the writer continues, “can be someone from Petersburg, Bryansk or Balashikha – for the locals he is a symbol of ‘the colonial regime.’” The reason for the rise of this new nationality, Terentyev says is “as a reaction to the actions of the center” which have taken the wealth of the region and given far too little back.
In Siberian schools, “teachers tell the children that their native kray is fabulously wealthy, that here are 85 percent of the reserves of Russian natural gas, 60 percent of the oil, 75 percent of the coal and 70 percent of the aluminum.” And they accurately note that “a large part of the earnings [from these sectors] is taken by Moscow.”
One Irkutsk editor told him, Terentyev says, that “the center is beginning to understand the danger of what is taking place.” Its response is what one might expect: Representatives of the center have “had conversations [with him and other editors] about the undesirability of publications on the theme of Siberian separatism.”
The impact of such “conversations” is obvious, that editor said, from the way in which the media there have treated the case of former OMON officer Aleksandr Budnikov, who received a suspended sentence of two years for “extremist” comments posted on the Internet but who now faces four years in prison for seeking to separate Siberia from Russia by force.
The latest charges were filed after Budnikov and “several hundred of like-minded people” decided to seek the recall of their representatives in the Duma and Federation Council, the editor said, because as he said, “these people are not expressing our interests and the Constitution allows us to recall them.”
But Terentyev says, the ban Moscow wants extends far beyond this case. “In the newspapers, it has become not acceptable to write that the history of Siberia even before the Novosibirsk militiaman was full of attempts at self-determination,” and that in 1918, Siberia existed as an independent state albeit for only a short time.
In the nineteenth century, in fact, Anton Chekhov “note3d that Siberians are not like other Russians,” and today,, “as a result of the poor image of Russians in the world, it is more honorable to call oneself a Siberian,” all the more so because Siberians blame Moscow for their problems and see the rise of China with its high rises and paved roads.
On their side of the Sino-Russian border, the residents of Siberia see decaying peasant huts and “even federal highways that are not paved.” Not surprisingly, Terentyev says, “local residents draw the conclusion that Moscow is guilty in everything.” But he concludes that they should remember that “with separation, the problems of Siberia would only deepen.”
However that may be, Siberian activists are continuing to press for greater autonomy or even more. As one comment appended to Terentyev’s essay noted, “Siberians are already prepared to hold a referendum on uniting Siberia with the United States” (ru-ru.facebook.com/#!/home.php?sk=group_112982375434933&ap=1).
And another Siberian activist drew another conclusion. Yes, Siberians look like Russians, and they share many characteristics with them. But they are not engaged in “trading off the Motherland” as Muscovites are because unlike in the capital, “in the provinces it is impossible to do that” (sibirnet.ru/node/84).
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