Paul Goble
Staunton, June 1 – “Up to 10,000” young people from the North Caucasus are studying or have studied Islam abroad where they have received “doubtful ideological positions,” the Russian presidential plenipotentiary for the region says, and officials are working on a program to re-adapt them to life inside the Russian Federation.
In an interview in today’s “Vedomosti,” Aleksandr Khloponin says that Moscow “cannot prevent” people from travelling abroad given that “Russia has a visa-free regime with many countries.” But officials must make sure that they do not bring back and spread harmful ideas (www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article/261264/programma_po_vosstanovleniyu_chechni_vypolnena_aleksandr).
“According to our estimates,” Khloponin adds, there are “from 1000 to 10,000 of our youth studying or who have studied on the territories of countries” where they “can receive” potentially harmful ideas. Among these countries, “in particular” he continues, are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey.
“In this connection, we now are developing a program of adaptation of young men who are returning from there. This task has been given to the Ministry of Regional Affairs, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Federal Migration Service.” And before the end of the year, there is to be created “a data base” on who had studied what and where.
According to Khloponin, “it is natural that an individual who spends five years in a country where the the laws of shariat operate has an absolutely different understanding of life. We will help this individual. He should not give up his convictions, but he must understand that it is necessary to live according to the rules of the country to which he has returned.”
If the returnee does not change his views, Khloponin continues, “we will think about how to control his further activity. This individual must not work in the educational sector with children or conduct enlightenment activity in mosques. We will work with the Muslim spiritual administrations: they must exercise control within the limits of their competence.”
Asked whether such actions do not violate human rights, Khloponin responded that those who suggest that should consider the problems he faces and recognize that “there is nothing illegal in our actions, we are only proposing a program of adaptation. Ifg you want to work in a private company, fine, no one will interfere.”
Most of Khloponin’s interview was devoted to other issues, to his insistence that the basic task of restoring the Chechen Republic has been “in practice” achieved and that his current challenge is “to develop the economy of this and all other Caucasus republics” in order to find jobs for 400,000 unemployed young men.
Most of his remarks on those issues repeat what he has said before. But Khloponin makes four other comments that deserve attention. First, he downplayed the role of foreigners in financing the militants, saying “why should anyone seek money from Western foundations when it is possible to force local entrepreneuers to pay tribute and obtain a great deal more money?”
Second, he insists, it is now time to end the assignment of positions on the basis of ethnicity. “In order to preserve or not destroy” a shaky peace, he said, Russian officials, including himself, have been willing to “close our eyes” to this practice, one htat “all healthy thinking people” understand is “a survival of the past.” It must be ended gradually.
Third, Khloponin says, he faces a serious challenge to ensure that “in the formation of [party] lists for the upcoming elections, there are not included people who are close to the criminal structures or band formations.” As far as United Russia is concerned, he suggests, the Peoples Front will play a key role in that.
And fourth, he concludes, his being both a plenipotentiary representative of the president and a vice prime minister helps him do his work more effectively. Consequently, Khloponin suggests that in his opinion, it would be well to think about arranging things in the same way in other federal districts.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Kirill Seeks to Tighten Control over Church by Dividing Up Existing Bishoprics
Paul Goble
Staunton, June 1 – Patriarch Kirill is continuing to divide up the existing bishoprics within the Russian Orthodox Church in order to strengthen his control of local parishes, some of whom have gone their own way in the much larger sees inherited from the Soviet past, according to a leading Moscow specialist on religious affairs.
In a comment reported by “Kommersant,” Roman Lunkin, the director of the Moscow Institute of Religion and Law, says that Patriarch Kirill’s decision to form new eparchates, in the North Caucasus earlier this year and across the former Soviet space this week is intended to “strengthen” the patriarchate’s powers in localities (www.kommersant.ru/doc/1650916).
In the larger sees which have now been divided, Lunkin continues, “the parishes often live on their own because the ruling hierarch cannot physically follow what is taking place in all of them.” Consequently, the formation of the new bishoprics will increase the powers of the bishops over parishes and of the patriarch over the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole.
Moreover, because all the new bishops are “people devoted to [Kirill],” Lunkin suggests, this increase in their number will reduce the chance for the formation of any serious opposition group within the church and mean that Kirill will have a power vertical within the church equivalent to the one Vladimir Putin built in the Russian political system.
As Pavel Korobov of “Kommersant” ponts out, “the restructuring of the territorial-administrative structure of the Russian Orthodox Church began … in March … when the Synod took a decision to create several new bishoprics in the North Caucasus” in place of the two – centered in Stavropol and Baku – that had supervised parishes in that region.
This week, Kirill and the Synod took the following additional steps in this direction. First, they divided the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in Estonia into two parts, creating a new bishop for Narva and environs and removing this heavily ethnic Russian region from the control of Metropolitan Kornilii of Tallinn and All Estonia.
Second, the patriarch and his advisors divided what had been the Mordovian and Saransk bishopric into two new “church-territorial units, the Krasnoslobodskaya and Ardatskaya bishoprics.” Third, they reorganized the Tobolsk-Tyiumen bishopric, removing from its supervision the territory of Khanty-Mansiisk AO and the Yamarlo-Nenets AO, and forming two new bishoprics, the Khanty-Mansiisk and Sugurtskaya and the Salekhard and Novo-Urengoy.
And fourth, Kirill and the Synod restructured the Krasnoyarskaya and Yeniseyskaya bishopric, forming in its place a Yenisey and Norilsk bishopric and a Krasnoyarsk and Achinsk bishopric. As a result of these changes, the ROC of the Moscow Patriarchate now has 164 bishoprics to supervise some 30,000 parishes, many beyond the borders of Russia itself.
In announcing these changes, Vladimir Vigilyansky, press spokesman for Patriarch Kirill, noted that “in Greece, there is a bishop in every city, but we have a structure inherited from Soviet times when one city of a bishopric was separated from another by a thousand kilometers and when parishioners did not who was their ruling hierarch.”
“The reduction in the size of the bishoprics,” he continued, “will improve administration.” Moreover, by increasing the number of bishoprics and bringing their borders into closer correspondence with those of the state, the ROC may be in an even better position to influence politics.
But such explanation may not be the whole story or even the most important part of it. On the one hand, Lidiya Orlova writes in today’s “NG-Religii,” the church has no shortage of bishops but also no shortage of ambitious priests, many of whom “carry a marshal’s baton” in their cassocks (religion.ng.ru/events/2011-06-01/3_arhierei.html).
And on the other, as Kirill himself a most experienced church apparatchik certainly knows from his own life in Soviet times, there are few better ways to make the power of Moscow beyond challenge than by dividing up larger units on the Russian periphery that might at some point constitute a challenge and staffing the new smaller units with loyalist.
Staunton, June 1 – Patriarch Kirill is continuing to divide up the existing bishoprics within the Russian Orthodox Church in order to strengthen his control of local parishes, some of whom have gone their own way in the much larger sees inherited from the Soviet past, according to a leading Moscow specialist on religious affairs.
In a comment reported by “Kommersant,” Roman Lunkin, the director of the Moscow Institute of Religion and Law, says that Patriarch Kirill’s decision to form new eparchates, in the North Caucasus earlier this year and across the former Soviet space this week is intended to “strengthen” the patriarchate’s powers in localities (www.kommersant.ru/doc/1650916).
In the larger sees which have now been divided, Lunkin continues, “the parishes often live on their own because the ruling hierarch cannot physically follow what is taking place in all of them.” Consequently, the formation of the new bishoprics will increase the powers of the bishops over parishes and of the patriarch over the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole.
Moreover, because all the new bishops are “people devoted to [Kirill],” Lunkin suggests, this increase in their number will reduce the chance for the formation of any serious opposition group within the church and mean that Kirill will have a power vertical within the church equivalent to the one Vladimir Putin built in the Russian political system.
As Pavel Korobov of “Kommersant” ponts out, “the restructuring of the territorial-administrative structure of the Russian Orthodox Church began … in March … when the Synod took a decision to create several new bishoprics in the North Caucasus” in place of the two – centered in Stavropol and Baku – that had supervised parishes in that region.
This week, Kirill and the Synod took the following additional steps in this direction. First, they divided the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in Estonia into two parts, creating a new bishop for Narva and environs and removing this heavily ethnic Russian region from the control of Metropolitan Kornilii of Tallinn and All Estonia.
Second, the patriarch and his advisors divided what had been the Mordovian and Saransk bishopric into two new “church-territorial units, the Krasnoslobodskaya and Ardatskaya bishoprics.” Third, they reorganized the Tobolsk-Tyiumen bishopric, removing from its supervision the territory of Khanty-Mansiisk AO and the Yamarlo-Nenets AO, and forming two new bishoprics, the Khanty-Mansiisk and Sugurtskaya and the Salekhard and Novo-Urengoy.
And fourth, Kirill and the Synod restructured the Krasnoyarskaya and Yeniseyskaya bishopric, forming in its place a Yenisey and Norilsk bishopric and a Krasnoyarsk and Achinsk bishopric. As a result of these changes, the ROC of the Moscow Patriarchate now has 164 bishoprics to supervise some 30,000 parishes, many beyond the borders of Russia itself.
In announcing these changes, Vladimir Vigilyansky, press spokesman for Patriarch Kirill, noted that “in Greece, there is a bishop in every city, but we have a structure inherited from Soviet times when one city of a bishopric was separated from another by a thousand kilometers and when parishioners did not who was their ruling hierarch.”
“The reduction in the size of the bishoprics,” he continued, “will improve administration.” Moreover, by increasing the number of bishoprics and bringing their borders into closer correspondence with those of the state, the ROC may be in an even better position to influence politics.
But such explanation may not be the whole story or even the most important part of it. On the one hand, Lidiya Orlova writes in today’s “NG-Religii,” the church has no shortage of bishops but also no shortage of ambitious priests, many of whom “carry a marshal’s baton” in their cassocks (religion.ng.ru/events/2011-06-01/3_arhierei.html).
And on the other, as Kirill himself a most experienced church apparatchik certainly knows from his own life in Soviet times, there are few better ways to make the power of Moscow beyond challenge than by dividing up larger units on the Russian periphery that might at some point constitute a challenge and staffing the new smaller units with loyalist.
Window on Eurasia: 21st Century to be ‘Century of the Majority,’ Tishkov Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, June 1 – “If the 20th century was the century of minorities,” the director of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology says, “the 21st century will be the century of the majority in the sense of recognizing its interests, demands and rights,” a view likely to please Russian nationalists even as it frightens national minorities in that country.
In a comment posted on the “Russky zhurnal” portal, Valery Tishkov, often the object of attack by Russian nationalists, argues that this is the case because “either at the level of the state or at the level of particular regions within countries, minorities turn out to be in a situation of the ruling majority” (www.russ.ru/Mirovaya-povestka/XXI-vek-priznaet-prava-bol-shinstva).
“All contemporary states,” Tishkov points out, “have a complex ethnic, religious and racial composition,” and consequently, “all contemporary nations display a cultural complexity.” Of course, “that was the case earlier but it wasn’t recognized” because it was assumed that all members of such nations were the same.
“Only with the development of democracy and with the acquisition of a voice of the so-called silent groups of minorities” did it turn out, Tishkov said, that various “territorial, cultural and historical identities” existed within the nation. And this sense of variety was exacerbated by the arrival of immigrant groups.
The experience of various European countries shows that “a particular challenge became not eethnic migration but migration connected with a different religious culture.” Indeed, Tishkov says, “it was more difficult to adapt or integrate not so much people different by language, tradition, phenotype or skin color as by membership in a different religion.”
This religious “barrier,” the Russian ethnographer argues, “is much more different to overcome” because “people almost never shift from one religion to another, and Islam in general harshly punishes and does not accept the possibility of departure let alone a transfer to another religion.”
This difficulty, Tishkov argues, has generated a certain “panic” with many commentators even suggesting that “the policy of multiculturalism is to blame, that it was a mistake and so on,” a view that has contributed to “the activation of conservative, ultra-right forces and political parties.”
The countries where this has happened most clearly are “the countries of Euro-Atlantic civilization, inclusing Eastern Europe and the territory of the former USSR in certain parts of which democracy has existed already for a long time.” But it is particularly obvious where democracy is in the process of development.
As there become “greater possibilities to insist on their rights in the frameworks of various international conventions, declarations, and chargers about the rights of minorities or about the rights of citizens which belong to ethnic, racial or religious minorities,” members of these groups will not surprisingly make use of them.
This pattern of development, Tishkov says, is “connected not only with political democratization but also with economic development,” especially since economic development has attracted immigration flows. “Countries which do not accept migrants have not been characterized by particular success in their development.”
At the same time, of course, immigration brings with it certain “political, social or emotional-ideological risks,” all the more so because “it is rarely acknowledged by politicians that [most countries, including Russia] have benefited more from immigration than they have lost.”
Integrating immigrants is a challenge, Tishkov says. “The formula, e pluribus unum, is used in many countries,” and “many democracies are constructed on the formula of unity in multiplicity, but sometimes doubt is cast on this formula and in opposition to it appears the idea that it is necessary to make all the same even to the point of forming a mono-culture.”
“But this is unreal,” he continues, and suggests that “democracy must be build on the recognition of diversity, of the rights, demands and interests of people and citizens which are connected with their culture and with their ethnic or religion origin” even as “a common civic solidarity must be affirmed.”
In the case of the Russian Federation, Tishkov says, “one is speaking in this case about a [non-ethnic] Russia identity, about an all-Russian patriotism. Here the formula is not ‘ether-or’ (either you are an [ethnic] Russian or a [non-ethnic] Russian; or you are a Chechen or you are a [non-ethnic] Russian, but ‘both-and.’”
“And this must be reflected not only in administrative-government arrangements but also in questions of access to power,” Tishkov says. “It must not be the case that one group, the bears of one nationality declare themselves a state-forming ethnos or people and usurp in their favor all power.”
Officialdom must reflect “the composition of the population of the country,” albeit “there must not be quotas,” the ethnographer says. And he suggests that this century will be a century of majorities because “either at the level of the state or in particular regions,” minorities will be majorities and thus will be interested in defending majoritarian principles.
Moreover, Tishkov says, “minorities [at the present time] have international protection, they are able to organize themselves, to advance themselves and to make demands up to the level of international Strasbourg Courts” and thus it is no longer the case that majorities always “outvote” minorities.
If Tishkov is correct and the 21st century will be “the century of the majority,” that could present even more threats to existing states that “the century of minorities” did because many minorities will want to make sure that they are majorities and thus seek the formation of their own states rather than integration into existing ones.
Staunton, June 1 – “If the 20th century was the century of minorities,” the director of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology says, “the 21st century will be the century of the majority in the sense of recognizing its interests, demands and rights,” a view likely to please Russian nationalists even as it frightens national minorities in that country.
In a comment posted on the “Russky zhurnal” portal, Valery Tishkov, often the object of attack by Russian nationalists, argues that this is the case because “either at the level of the state or at the level of particular regions within countries, minorities turn out to be in a situation of the ruling majority” (www.russ.ru/Mirovaya-povestka/XXI-vek-priznaet-prava-bol-shinstva).
“All contemporary states,” Tishkov points out, “have a complex ethnic, religious and racial composition,” and consequently, “all contemporary nations display a cultural complexity.” Of course, “that was the case earlier but it wasn’t recognized” because it was assumed that all members of such nations were the same.
“Only with the development of democracy and with the acquisition of a voice of the so-called silent groups of minorities” did it turn out, Tishkov said, that various “territorial, cultural and historical identities” existed within the nation. And this sense of variety was exacerbated by the arrival of immigrant groups.
The experience of various European countries shows that “a particular challenge became not eethnic migration but migration connected with a different religious culture.” Indeed, Tishkov says, “it was more difficult to adapt or integrate not so much people different by language, tradition, phenotype or skin color as by membership in a different religion.”
This religious “barrier,” the Russian ethnographer argues, “is much more different to overcome” because “people almost never shift from one religion to another, and Islam in general harshly punishes and does not accept the possibility of departure let alone a transfer to another religion.”
This difficulty, Tishkov argues, has generated a certain “panic” with many commentators even suggesting that “the policy of multiculturalism is to blame, that it was a mistake and so on,” a view that has contributed to “the activation of conservative, ultra-right forces and political parties.”
The countries where this has happened most clearly are “the countries of Euro-Atlantic civilization, inclusing Eastern Europe and the territory of the former USSR in certain parts of which democracy has existed already for a long time.” But it is particularly obvious where democracy is in the process of development.
As there become “greater possibilities to insist on their rights in the frameworks of various international conventions, declarations, and chargers about the rights of minorities or about the rights of citizens which belong to ethnic, racial or religious minorities,” members of these groups will not surprisingly make use of them.
This pattern of development, Tishkov says, is “connected not only with political democratization but also with economic development,” especially since economic development has attracted immigration flows. “Countries which do not accept migrants have not been characterized by particular success in their development.”
At the same time, of course, immigration brings with it certain “political, social or emotional-ideological risks,” all the more so because “it is rarely acknowledged by politicians that [most countries, including Russia] have benefited more from immigration than they have lost.”
Integrating immigrants is a challenge, Tishkov says. “The formula, e pluribus unum, is used in many countries,” and “many democracies are constructed on the formula of unity in multiplicity, but sometimes doubt is cast on this formula and in opposition to it appears the idea that it is necessary to make all the same even to the point of forming a mono-culture.”
“But this is unreal,” he continues, and suggests that “democracy must be build on the recognition of diversity, of the rights, demands and interests of people and citizens which are connected with their culture and with their ethnic or religion origin” even as “a common civic solidarity must be affirmed.”
In the case of the Russian Federation, Tishkov says, “one is speaking in this case about a [non-ethnic] Russia identity, about an all-Russian patriotism. Here the formula is not ‘ether-or’ (either you are an [ethnic] Russian or a [non-ethnic] Russian; or you are a Chechen or you are a [non-ethnic] Russian, but ‘both-and.’”
“And this must be reflected not only in administrative-government arrangements but also in questions of access to power,” Tishkov says. “It must not be the case that one group, the bears of one nationality declare themselves a state-forming ethnos or people and usurp in their favor all power.”
Officialdom must reflect “the composition of the population of the country,” albeit “there must not be quotas,” the ethnographer says. And he suggests that this century will be a century of majorities because “either at the level of the state or in particular regions,” minorities will be majorities and thus will be interested in defending majoritarian principles.
Moreover, Tishkov says, “minorities [at the present time] have international protection, they are able to organize themselves, to advance themselves and to make demands up to the level of international Strasbourg Courts” and thus it is no longer the case that majorities always “outvote” minorities.
If Tishkov is correct and the 21st century will be “the century of the majority,” that could present even more threats to existing states that “the century of minorities” did because many minorities will want to make sure that they are majorities and thus seek the formation of their own states rather than integration into existing ones.
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