tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34988294032457584832024-01-12T05:19:52.325-05:00WindowonEurasiaPaul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.comBlogger3001125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-44380794699490748162011-06-16T04:55:00.002-05:002011-06-16T04:55:53.435-05:00'Window on Eurasia' Closing for the Time BeingBecause of family medical matters, I am indefinitely suspending my production of Windows on Eurasia. Over the course of almost seven years, I have thoroughly enjoyed producing more than 5500 of them and especially receiving the many comments from all of you that have made me feel part of a larger community. I thus sign off for the present at least with both regrets and thanks. Paul GoblePaul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-52047693908570197422011-06-08T09:56:00.002-05:002011-06-08T09:56:41.629-05:00Window on Eurasia: Arab Spring Leads Authoritarian Leaders in Post-Soviet Space to Look to Moscow for SupportPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 8 – Even if conditions in post-Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus are so different from those in the Arab world that a repetition of an Arab Spring there remains unlikely, the authoritarian rulers in these two regions are sufficiently nervous about popular unrest that they are looking to Moscow for possible support in the event of disorders.<br />
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Indeed, according to an article by Viktoriya Panfilova in today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” Russian and Uzbek experts say that the possibility of Russian support under such circumstances will be the focus of talks during President Dmitry Medvedev’s meetings with his Uzbek counterpart Islam Karimov in Tashkent next week (www.ng.ru/cis/2011-06-08/7_karimov.html).<br />
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Aleksey Malashenko of the Moscow Carnegie Center explicitly says that “during the negotiations in Tashkent, Islam Karimov will seek to clarify how and to what extent Russia can support Uzbekistan,” an issue that has become more important to the Uzbek leader since the meeting of the Uzbek opposition in Berlin.<br />
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“Karimov does not fear the actions of the opposition,” Malashenko says. “Uzbekistan is not Egypt but nevertheless he understands that life is changing. And in this changed environment,” the US is changing its relations with key allies such as Israel. Consequently, for Karimov, “it is important to understand how Moscow will conduct itself.”<br />
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That is all the more important for the Uzbek leader because in recent weeks, there have been several developments in Moscow which raise concerns for him. The Duma has discussed introducing a visa requirement for Uzbeks and other Central Asians, and the Russian media have featured articles about Andijan, where Karimov forcibly suppressed his opponents.<br />
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At the same time, Panfilova reports, other Russian experts, including Yevgeny Boyko, say that the Uzbek leader has reason for concern about where the West is heading regarding him and his regime. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom recently called for an end to assistance to Tashkent until Karimov guarantees freedom of religion.<br />
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This conjunction of Russian and American commentary, Malashenko says, means that Karimov may now be afraid of “the possibility of the development of a more consolidated position between Washington and Moscow concerning his own person,” a joint position that he may fear would threaten his political survival.<br />
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Boyko agrees, given that the situation of the Central Asian countries and particularly of Uzbekistan has often been profoundly affected by US-Russian relations. Consequently, the “Nezavismaya gazeta” writer suggests, he may seek to try to restore ties with Russia in order to reinsure his regime.<br />
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That is all the more so because the US is likely to pull its forces out of Afghanistan in the medium term and thus be less interested or willing to support Karimov’s regime. Moscow thus could be an increasingly important prop, but Moscow, other analysts say, will want a demonstration of loyalty, including the flow of gas northward to Russia rather than to Asia.<br />
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Many commentaries have speculated about the possible spread of the Arab Spring to the authoritarian states of the post-Soviet region, but it may be the case in many of these countries that the fears of the incumbent elites about such a political development will play a more important role in the geopolitics of the area than will any “disorders” that may arise.<br />
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Indeed, the fears of elites in these countries about challenges from below may drive them into the hands of Russia or open a new set of opportunities for China given that neither Moscow nor Beijing will put as high a value on human rights as the West, and that geopolitical opportunity is likely to be at the center of discussions in those two capitals as well.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-37556739337036162482011-06-07T06:21:00.000-05:002011-06-07T06:21:17.858-05:00Window on Eurasia: Russian Senator’s Proposal to Restore Katorga as a Punishment CriticizedPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 7 – A member of the Federation Council has called for the restoration of the tsarist-era system of katorga under which those guilty of especially serious crimes such a terrorism, drug dealing or child murders would be sentenced to harsh physical labor without the possibility of commutation of sentence, or the right of correspondence. <br />
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Aleksey Aleksandrov, chairman of the Federation Council’s committee on constitutional law, speaking at a congress of jurists at Moscow State University this past week called for the introduction of the legal category of “evil doer” and the use of the katorga system as punishment for such criminals (svpressa.ru/society/article/44173/).<br />
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But Russian legal specialists are appalled by this idea. Lyudmila Alpern, the deputy head of the Center for the Support of the Reform of Criminal Justice, for example, told Andrey Polunin of “Svobodnaya pressa” that “our senators do not have a good idea of what katorga involved” in tsarist times or how it might be applied now.<br />
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In tsarist times, Alpern pointed out, there were various categories of katorga, some of which involved servitude of up to 20 years and some less with individuals convicted of certain crimes able to earn their way out of katorga while others were not. Thus the notion of permanent katorga would be an innovation.<br />
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During the Soviet period, “katorga did not exist.” Instead, “we had corrective labor camps. Of course, they were connected with a form of punishment which existed in tsarist times. This was group punishment,” a form which Europe dispensed with in the middle of the nineteenth century.” Katorga punishment was and is “amoral,” Alpern said.<br />
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The Soviet-era GULAG was much worse than katorga as it did not make allowances for prisoners to have their families with them. “Of course, for families, [it] was a terrible test: children sometimes died and women had great difficulties. But a fact remains a fact: toward the katorga inmate, the authorities acted in a human way.”<br />
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The GULAG system “destroyed this, and that was why it was so different from katorga. In the Soviet GULAG, an individual was connected to no one, he was completely deprived of social possibilities and he was made into an absolute slave,” something that had not been true of those sentenced to katorga.<br />
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Alpern said that despite the call for the restoration of katorga, the Russian penitentiary system is very different now compared to tsarist times. The main reason is ideological. In tsarist times, the authorities did not try to reeducate or reform anyone, demanding only work and then leaving prisoners more or less on their own in the barracks.<br />
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In those barracks, the tsarist-era prisoners set their own rules, were visited and sent food and even clothes and money by Russians beyond the walls because people at that time “understood that everyone could become a katorga inmate and thus called those arrested ‘sufferers’ or ‘unfortunates.’ <br />
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Today, Alpern continued, “other norms” govern the situation. Jails attempt to reeducate people, but those outside the prison walls are not so inclined to view them as people much like themselves, instead assuming that they are hardened criminals who deserve whatever punishment they are given.<br />
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Conditions in Russian prisons have improved since the 1990s when such institutions were inadequately funded, prisoners forced to wear their own clothes, and disease rampant, but Alpern said, Russia still has a long way to go to come up to the standards of the European penal model, although it has made progress. <br />
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Talk about restoring katorga does nothing to promote this process, but it may create another real problem for Moscow. Some Siberians are worried that their land could against be “the place for katorga,” something that will make their situation even more a “genuine” katorga than it already is (www.baikal24.ru/page.php?action=showItem&type=news&id=58783).Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-57785940723846635812011-06-07T06:20:00.002-05:002011-06-07T06:20:16.153-05:00Window on Eurasia: Salafis Employ Flashmob Technique to Bring 5,000 Young Daghestanis into the StreetsPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 7 – In a startling demonstration of the spread of new technologies to the North Caucasus, the leaders of the Salafi trend in Islam in Daghestan, one at odds with the dominant Sufi trend there and often associated with political radicalism, used the flashmob technique to bring 5,000 young people into the streets of Makhachaka last week.<br />
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In reporting on this event, which was staged in order to demonstrate to visitors from Moscow that people in that republic are not going to sit still for the current situation there much longer, the Islamic Civilization web portal said that this “Islamist flashmob can be called an historic event for Daghestan” (http://www.islamcivil.ru/article.php?aid=647).<br />
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“For the first time,” the portal said, “Muslim youth have expressed their unambiguous protest to that disorder which characterizes the republic regarding human rights and civic freedoms” and their support for the Salafis who stand against the dominant Sufi trend of Islam in Daghestan.<br />
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According to the organizers, the site continued, “they did not have any certainty that even 1,000 people would come” when they issued their flashmob call. “But no fewer than 5,000 did,” an outcome which shows the flashmob technique works even in relatively backward Daghestan and that Salafi Islam can assemble more than trade unions, United Russia or other groups.<br />
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This is such a breakthrough event that it is worth recounting in some detail. During the morning of June 1, young people began to assemble on Makhachkala’s Rodop boulevard. Many people were out because it was the Day of the Defense of Children. But “the Salafi youth decided,” the portal says, “to stage a certain flashmob.”<br />
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“Among the people were not evident followers of the other bloc, tariqat Islam,” an indication that this was a Salafi enterprise. When about 3,000 had assembled, the crowd moved up Gamzatov prospect toward the National Library where the Russian President’s Council on the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights was meeting.<br />
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According to Daghestani officials, “the Salafis who had assembled at the National Library did not have the right to meet and hence to speak and display placards.” The crowd remained largely silent at the urging of their leader Abbas Kebedov, the leader of the Salafii organization Aklu-s-Sunna val-Jamaa, who asked that they not “give in to provocations.”<br />
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At that time, a column of interior ministry OMON troops from the Urals approached. Some in the Salafi crowd then shouted “Allah Akbar,” and the militia formed a defense line apparently fearful of what might happen. If anyone had shot at that moment, there could have been a disaster.<br />
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But what happened instead was this: the militia asked the crowd to move away from the National Library, and the Salafi leaders led the group to the Salafi mosque on Kotrov Street.” The crowd moved toward the mosque,” gathering others on the way with “some taking pictures of the march on their mobile telephones.”<br />
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After prayers at the mosque, Kebedov arrived along with other Salafi activists. He called on the young people to “preserve” their peaceful approach, “to remain in the mosque and not in any case to go to the forum at the library building,” given that the OMON had brought up armored vehicles.<br />
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The Daghestani authorities, Kebedov told the crowd, “do not want a resolution to the difficult situation which exists in the republic.” The only hope therefore is on “delegates from Moscow.” But he continued, “this is our victory; today we have been able to do this.” His speech was “accompanied by shouts of ‘Allah Akbar!’”<br />
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The visitors from Moscow “did not come to the mosque as had been decided earlier; insteadof this, five representatives of the Salafi community were delegated to meet with them.” The Salafi representatives were chosen and accompanied Kebedov and others to the forum. According to the Islamic Civilization report, there took place “a sharp and open conversation.”<br />
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“Today,” the Salafi representatives said, “five thousand people assembled. Today, they stood peacefully; tomorrow, if nothing is done to stop the situation in Daghestan with kidnappings and murders of innocent people, nothing will stop these young men.” According to the portal, “this monologue, it was clear, had an impact on the guests.”Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-7802462327753155232011-06-07T06:19:00.002-05:002011-06-07T06:19:29.547-05:00Window on Eurasia: Non-Russians Winning ‘Memory Wars’ while Russians Still Losing Theirs, Bordyugov SaysPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 7 – The non-Russian countries in the post-Soviet space are more or less quickly “liberating themselves from the Soviet and Imperial past,” but the Russians have not found a way – or do not want to find one – to do the same thing, according to a leading Moscow specialist on contemporary history.<br />
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In yesterday’s “Novaya gazeta,” Gennady Bordyugov, a member of the RIA Novosti council of experts, sums up the findings of his latest book, “Memory Wars on the Post-Soviet Space” (in Russian, Moscow, 2011) by noting that “history is again playing a mean joke with Russia” in this regard (www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2011/060/18.html).<br />
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Russia’s inability or unwillingness to make progress in this regard, he says, helps to explain why many Russians have reacted so angrily to what is taking place in the CIS countries and the Baltics in recent years, a reaction that many observers since 2005 have characterized as “wars” over memory.<br />
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Such observers, Bordyugov continues, in recent times have argued that these wars are calming down, pointing to the March 2008 appeal of Memorial for “peaceful dialogue about the common past” and to the decision of most but of course not all post-Soviet states to mark Victory Day, arguably the most important civic holiday in Russia.<br />
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But in fact, the historican says, Russia will continue to face “memory wars” for some time to come, perhaps less often in the realm of foreign relations than within the country itself. Deep disagreements over Stalin, the Lenin Mausoleum, the approaching 400th anniversary of the Romanovs, the centenary of World War I, and the revolution all guarantee that.<br />
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In each of these cases and in others as well, he points out, the essence of the divide will be over how to say “farewell” to the Soviet and Imperial pasts or face their “re-animation in new forms.” And all of those debates will be conditioned by the process of “re-Stalinization or de-Stalinization” now taking place.<br />
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The commission formed by the Kremlin to oppose “the falsification of history” will defend Soviet traditional assessments of most historical events, but that commission’s approach will be opposed by another Kremlin body, the Council of Human Rights, which has proposed a broad program of de-Stalinization.<br />
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Indeed, Bordyugov argues, the methods of these two groups regarding historical memory are remarkably similar. “Representatives of both sides presuppose the continued politicization of history, the suppression of those who think differently, “a unification of approaches to the past,” and so on, first in the schools and then more generally.<br />
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Another reason for that assumption, Bordyugov suggests, is that “de-Stalinization is a reflection of the new ideological course of Medvedev,” a course that ensures that Russians are “on the eve of a new outbreak of ‘memory wars,’” this time as so often in the past one “subordinate to the struggle for power.”<br />
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There is “a way out” of all this, the historian says. It requires an end to the politicization of the Soviet past and to the use of discussions about that past as part of electoral struggles. In fact, there should be “a temporary moratorium on themes that call forth a split in society,” as so many of these issues do.<br />
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“A wise policy on history could allow for filling the great and tragic Soviet epoch with a human context, in the contexts of which ‘memory wars’ would become senseless,” Bordyugov argues, something that must be approached with care because “the transition from ‘soviet’ to ‘russian’ is far from completion.<br />
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Another means of reducing the intensity of “memory wars,” he says, is “the inclusion of national histories within the broader space of the past.” That too will be hard because “our current political and simply human culture to put it mildly is far from perfection” and thus there will always be a temptation to fight about the past.<br />
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But while the obstacles to moving beyond “memory wars” are clear, Bordyugov says, their recollection should not become a reason for not trying to overcome them. Moving beyond them is a precondition for achieving “a humane view of the past,” a view which unlike many positions now on offer avoids both demonization and panegyrics.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-2134271482805972262011-06-06T04:10:00.000-05:002011-06-06T04:10:55.565-05:00Window on Eurasia: Internet Changing Russian Political Humor and Russian Politics as Well, Commentator SaysPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 6 – Anecdotes about leaders and policies have long been an important part of Russian life, but the Internet is transforming its form and content because falling prices for connectivity are increasing the number of users and rising download speeds are making video clips more widely accessible, according to a Moscow commentator.<br />
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On the “Russky zhurnal” portal, Aleksandr Chausov argues that at present Russians are “observing an evolution of the form of jokes about politicians and politics as a whole,” with “the transition from television to the Web and the development of Internet technology being decisive events in this process (www.russ.ru/pole/O-politike-s-yumorom).<br />
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As a result of the spread of the Internet, he says, Russians can now watch video clips and look at thousands of images rather than relying primarily on text alone, and “the video clip is understood by an individual much easier than the typical text, however brilliantly it may be written.” As a result, Chausov continues, humor is increasingly taking a visual form.<br />
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In addition, the sense of “anonymity and security” that the Web appears to allow “gives rise to the illusion that everything is possible,” and the increasing use of the Internet and especially video in political campaigns invites those who want to make jokes about the politicians who use this format to do the same. <br />
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This has led, Chausov says, to the appearance of “a new and unexpected phenomenon” as far as Russian mass culture is concerned: the appearance of “political comics on the Net.” In the West, “so called video comics or computer comics” are not a new phenomenon, And in Russia, they are no full-blown, with most including written texts instead of only oral presentations.<br />
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But these are instructive as far as political humor is concerned, Chausov argues. “The most well-known [of these] are the super hero comics.” Russian society “unconsciously is waiting for a hero, someone who will come and save everyone.” That is because, however much they joke about it, Russians view the powers as “a sacral phenomenon.”<br />
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That in turn means that “the bearers of power are a little super human. They can be ‘evil doers’ or ‘heroes,’ but all the same they are of a different order than ‘the ordinary man.’” That was true of the “Puppets” series on television, and it is even more clearly manifested on Internet video clips about the current leadership.<br />
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However, there is one interesting detail, Chausov says. Vladimir Putin in most of these clips is presented not only as a super hero but also as “’a man like everyone else,’” a unique case in Russian humor. While it is unclear how this combination will play itself out – whether the sacred will conquer the ordinary or the other way around – it likely will affect Russian culture.<br />
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In the most hopeful outcome, one likely to become more possible as the Internet grows, this will “take out of the mentality of our society the genetic sense of the sacred nature of power,” something that will open the way for a different relationship between those in power and those in society than has ever existed in Russia up to now.<br />
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And that possibility becomes clearer if one understands that “in the Russian segment of the Net, there is a somewhat different approach to politics and politicians than in the United States. There, “politics has already for a long time been to a certain degree a show” and politicians as a result “not only administrators and government managers but showmen.”Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-4072602365155878362011-06-06T04:08:00.002-05:002011-06-06T04:08:29.543-05:00Window on Eurasia: Russians Now Feel They are Second Class Citizens in their Own Country, Moscow Writer SaysPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 6 – Six months after the clashes in Manezh Square, radical Russian nationalists groups are increasing their activity, supported by the increasing number of ethnic Russians who feel that they are second class citizens in their own country because the powers that be are giving more support to North Caucasians and Central Asian immigrants.<br />
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In an article in Friday’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta” entitled “Russians Feel a Sense of National Inequality in Their Own Country,” Maksim Glukharev provides a wealth of detail on the activities of radical Russian nationalist groups, pointing out that Moscow has banned only three of “about 30” and allowed the banned groups to operate under different names.<br />
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But the most intriguing portion of his article concerns the attitudes among ordinary Russians as opposed to members of elite groups that help explain why an increasing number of the former are supporting the nationalists and why few of the latter are willing to talk about this increasingly dangerous trend (www.ng.ru/politics/2011-06-03/1_nacionalizm.html).<br />
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Glukharev suggests that the answers to both questions are to be found in the very different life experiences of the two groups. “It is well known,” he points out, that members of the powers that be in contrast to the population “never personally encounter manifestations of nationalism” by outside groups.<br />
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Travelling about in official cars, these elites “do not risk finding themselves” in places where there are “spontaneous” clashes between “extremists and gastarbeiters.” Therefore, they do not risk being accused of being part of disorders simply when they turn out to be witnesses of such events.”<br />
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Moreover, while the elites “send their children abroad to study,” other Russians have to send their children to schools which increasingly, albeit informally “are divided into two camps, those for the Russians and those for the Caucasians,” with ever more Russians asking why they are supporting those who are shooting at them.<br />
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Glukharev points out that “the activity of the [Russian nationalist radicals] frequently has mass support from the side of ordinary people who observe the complete escape from punishment of representatives of diaspora communities. People,” he says, “feel sharply the injustice of the existing situation.”<br />
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Ordinary Russians “do not understand why arrivals from the Caucasus and countries of the near abroad frequently act so boldly, driving about in expensive foreign cards and while ignoring Russian laws engage in firefights in public places?” Where are the law enforcement agencies when these things are happening – and why do they so often let these miscreants go?<br />
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When leaders, including Vladimir Putin, deny the obvious, claiming that there is no ethnic dimension to this or that crime, Russians become even angrier because from their point of view it is obvious that there is just such a dimension. “This situation gives rise to that objective component of dissatisfaction which was displayed in the Manezh Square” last December.<br />
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That component can be described as the sense that many Russians have that they are being treated less well than members of other ethnic groups and that officialdom is protecting the minorities rather than the ethnic Russians. And not surprisingly, such feelings are being used by “various extremist organizations.”<br />
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According to Glukharev, what happened in Manezh Square is “an indicator of deep problems in the attitudes of society -- based, in particular, on a lack of acceptance of the corrupt ties between people from the Caucasus and Asian regions and members of the Russian organs of power.<br />
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If this situation is going to change, the “Nezavisimaya gazeta” writer suggests, there must be “at a minimum a discussion in society because in order to resolve such complicated problems, the powers must base themselves on society. But how can they do so when society doesn’t trust them – and has serious reasons for not trusting them?”<br />
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After talking about nationalism in Russian society in the wake of Manezh six months ago, the country’s leadership “has not returned to the theme.” The powers that be have an explanation: “any incautious word could provoke new inter-ethnic conflicts. But keeping quiet about these problems is to put one’s head in the sand – and to await the next Manezh.”Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-19404026132473300452011-06-06T04:07:00.000-05:002011-06-06T04:07:05.219-05:00Window on Eurasia: Politicians Exploit, Exacerbate ‘Clash of Civilizations’ in MoldovaPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 6 – In the run-up to local elections in Moldova yesterday, some politicians sought to exploit Chisinau’s March 14th decision to register a Muslim group thereby making it appear that Moldova is riven by “a clash of civilizations” -- even though Moldova has only 300 Muslims and even though few objected when the registration decision was originally made.<br />
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In an essay on Win.ru, Irina Katanina sorts out this discussion which has attracted some attention abroad both in its own right and because of what it says about the way in which electoral politics can divide societies along ethno-religious lines when the minority constitutes a larger share of the population (www.win.ru/topic/7383.phtml).<br />
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As she points out, the appearance of “the Islamic factor” in these local elections was “unexpected” given that there are so few Muslims there and that “in the majority of districts of Moldova” – the major exception being Turkic Gagauzia – “the construction of Muslim religious facilities would take place relatively peacefully. <br />
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In March, the Moldovan justice ministry registered the first Muslim organization in that country, the Islamic League of Moldova. That body, its leader Timur Turdugulov said, is to “protect and defend the rights of Muslims of Moldova. Earlier efforts in 1995 and 2005 to register Muslim groups there had been rejected.<br />
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As Katanina points out, “Moldova is an Orthodox country,” with sociological surveys showing that “not less than 96 percent” of its citizens profess Orthodoxy. And she notes as well that even during the 300 years of Ottoman rule, “not a single mosque was built” in what is now Moldova.<br />
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Sociologists report that there are “no more than 2000” Muslims in Moldova, and most of these are entrepreneurs from Turkey or Arab countries. Among Moldovan citizens, the scholars suggests, there are only “about 300” Muslims, a large fraction of whom are “new converts,” who have accepted Islam since 1991.<br />
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Within Moldova on this issue, the Gagauz occupy a special place. Speaking Turkish and at one point in the past themselves Muslim, the Gagauz “always particularly stress their attachment to Orthodoxy, and it was a Gagauz community organization, the Union of Orthodox Christians of Bujak who was “one of the first” to protest the March registration.<br />
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Consequently, while Moldovans elsewhere in the country would probably react quite peacefully to the appearance of a mosque or other Muslim institution, “it is possible to predict,” Katanina says, that “in Gagauzia there would be “stormy even violent action against such construction.”<br />
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That pattern makes the protests that have emerged during the electoral campaign elsewhere particularly instructive. Aleksandr Tenase, the former justice minister who signed the registration before his resignation, says that he had no legal basis to refuse given that “the Islamic League is not an extremist organization.”<br />
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And he suggested that “the crusade declared by religious leaders was organized by politicians with a single goal” – to attract attention by attacking anything their opponents had done. His view, Katanina says, is shared by “many observers” who point out that “the protests began not in March when the league was registered and not in April when people learned of it.”<br />
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Instead it began when the electoral campaign began. “Opposition communists who during the period of their ruloe did not allow Muslims to legalize themselves supported the priests,” with Igor Dodon, a candidate for mayor of Chisinau even declaring that “if he wins the elections, ‘there won’t be a mosque in the capital.’”<br />
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Representatives of “the majority of opposition figures, Katanina says, “also spoke out against” registration, ostensibly because “all responsibility for the possible explosive development of the interreligious situation in Moldova should be placed on the actions of the government of Vladimir Filat.”<br />
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“In any case,” Katanina concludes, “politicians of all masks who have been drawn into inter-confessional relations in the context of an electoral struggle well recognized the so-called ‘electoral profitability’ of this factor. “ But “apparently,” she continues, they haven’t reflected on how what they are doing may make the solution of real problems even more difficult later.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-68479577183028418352011-06-04T07:18:00.002-05:002011-06-04T07:18:46.923-05:00Window on Eurasia: Nations Far Beyond the North Caucasus May Seek Recognition of Genocides Conducted Against Them, Middle Volga Analyst SaysPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 4 – In the wake of Georgia’s recognition of the Circassian genocide, the head of the Volga Center of Regional and Ethno-Religious Research says, “it cannot be excluded” that there will soon be similar “campaigns” seeking similar international recognition of Russian-conducted genocides against the peoples of the Middle Volga and Siberia.<br />
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In an essay on the “Novoye Vostochnoye Obozreniye” portal yesterday, Rais Suleymanov whose center is part of the Russian Institute of Strategic Research argues that there is no reason to believe that the efforts to secure international recognition of genocide in Russia will be limited to the peoples of the North Caucasus (journal-neo.com/?q=ru/node/6876).<br />
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Indeed, he argues, both the purposes of the Circassian “campaign” and the way it was carried out make it likely that enemies of the Russian state will soon seek to repeat the Circassian model elsewhere in the Russian Federation, in the first instance in the Middle Volga and then among the peoples of Siberia.<br />
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According to Suleymanov, the use of the charge of genocide by Georgia and especially its President Mikhail Saakashvili is “directed at the intensification of anti-Russian attitudes in the Caucasus and more broadly in the future, in all national republics of Russia, including those in the Urals-Volga region and Siberia.”<br />
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Georgia’s action, he says, is intended to change the attitudes of “the current generation of North Caucasus peoples of Russia … toward their own country and citizens of which they are” and make them view it as “a state criminal which did not simply include the Caucasus in its own territory but wiped out their ancestors, driving htem from their historical lands.” <br />
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Putting it blluntly, Suleymanov says, this effort is intended to “insert into the consciousness an dhistorical memory of young Caucasians the idea that the presence of Russia in the Caucasus is illegitimate,” a view Russians with the exception of “part of the liberal intelligentsia” overwhelmingly reject.<br />
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Yana Amelina, the head of the Sector of Caucasus Research of the Russian Institute of Strategic Research, told Suleymanov that she fully agreed that Georgia’s sstep was political and “directed at the further complication of Russian-Georgian relations.” Tbilisi clearly hopes to destabilize the Caucaus and to embarrass Moscow concerning the Sochi Olympics.<br />
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Vladimir Belyayev, a professor of political science, sociology and management at the Kazan Technical University, agrees with this analysis as well. And Suleymanov reports that Irina Shebotnev, a member of the Jewish community in the Tatar capital, is angry that anyone would seek to extent the concept of the Holocaust to the Caucasus.<br />
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However, there are some supporters of Georgia’s action in the Middle Volga, Suleymanov continues. Rafiz Kashapov, the president of the Naberezhny Chelny section of the Tatar Social Center (TOTs) and a leading Tatar nationalist, says he has backed the Circassian effort since 2005.<br />
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Given that others now think the same way or can be made to think that way, Suleymanov argues, “one should not think that the campaign initiated from abroad for the recognition of genocides supposedly committed by Russia (read the Russian people) over the course of its history will be limited to the Circassians only.”<br />
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According to him, there is a well-developed political technology that may be applied to other parts of the Russian Federaiton. “Everything will begin,” the Circassian effort shows, with “the foreign and Russian liberal press” writing stories about “mass murders supposedly committed by Russia against the civilian non-Russian population.”<br />
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Of course, in the case of the Middle Volga, this will focus on events in the mid-16th century rather than the 19th as in the case of the Circassians, Suleymanov says. <br />
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“Then there will be organized in foreign countries inte3rnational scholarly conferences and various ‘round tables’ at which with a wise view will be reported on numerous ‘Holocausts’ committed by Russia agains the Tatars, Bashkirs, and the peoples of Siberia.” There may even be documentary films “about ‘the bloody policy of Russia’ and several ‘scholarly’ books.”<br />
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“The goal of the entire ideological campaign will be to change the historical memory and worldview of non-Russian peoples in which their own Russian state, the citizens of which they are will be viewed as an enslaver, a criminal and finally simply as the source of evil,” against which a struggle will be viewed as “liberating and noble.”<br />
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The strategy of the foreign world is “obvious,” Suleymanov says. “If part of the population will conceive their own state as illegitimate than this will only make possible the development of internal disintegrating consequences.”<br />
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And thus it is “possible that we will soon hear declarations by local separatists of Tatarstan about how horrible it is” that Moscow wants to “hold in Kazan the Universiad 2013 or the world football championship in 2018 – in this case ‘on the bones of the Tatar people,’” rather than the Circassian one.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-44152795643440588272011-06-03T07:57:00.002-05:002011-06-03T07:57:26.293-05:00Window on Eurasia: ‘Nostalgia’ for Stalin among Young Reflects Moscow’s Failure to Offer a Concrete Alternative Vision, Scholars SaysPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 3 – Young Russians increasingly deify Stalin not only because he represents a system radically different from that of Russia today but also because the contemporary Russian state has failed to offer a specific ideological alternative that is not mired in abstraction, accord to two Russian scholars.<br />
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In the course of a St. Petersburg conference last week on “Russian Self-Consciousness and the Space of Russia,” which concluded that this consciousness today is “under the power of destructive myths,” two participants addressed the increasing popularity of Stalin among Russian youth who never lived under the dictator (www.rosbalt.ru/piter/2011/05/28/853135.html).<br />
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Dmitry Astashkin, a professor of journalism at Novgorod State University, noted that “alongside attempts to borrow elements of foreign cultures, in contemporary Russian society there is a tendency to return to the Soviet model,” often among those and in places where few might expect it, especially in its extreme forms.<br />
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“Stalinist types and the personality of Stalin himself are viewed as the symbol of this model,” Astashkin said, in large measure because of their “radical difference from the present situation of the Russian Federation.” And this is expressed “among the most passionate part of society,” the young.<br />
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For Russian youth, he suggested, “Stalin and his activity are being mythologized, and [the dictator himself] is becoming a symbol of non-conformism, set in opposition [by younger Russians] to contemporary culture and the state arrangements” of the Russian Federation at the present time.<br />
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“A positive attitude toward Stalin is [thus] step by step ceasing to be found only among pensioners and veterans and is becoming part of the subculture of the youth.” The dictator is now referred to in popular songs, computer games, and in internet forums, a trend that was especially marked in the run-up to the May 9 Victory Day celebrations.<br />
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Astashkin suggested that it is “interesting” that “when talking about Stalin, young people are not in a position to operate on their own emotions and recollections,” since they were born after he died. “And that means that young Russians are borrowing ideas about Stalin from their own families.”<br />
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In short, “the real Stalin has been transformed into a myth about the Soviet empire, thus having ceased to be a dictator and having become a unique embodiment of a harsh style of administration and a symbol of order and social justice,” values that many young people are attracted to.<br />
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Consequently, Astashkin concluded, “until the state offers another path of development, Stalin will remain a resource for national identification” among Russians, something that may keep them in the sway of the past rather than allowing them to move forward into a different future.<br />
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A second speaker, Petr Smirnov, a professor at St. Petersburg State University, explored efforts by post-Soviet Russian governments to offer such an alternative basis for identity and pointed to the reasons why they have failed to take, especially among members of the younger generation.<br />
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The 1993 Constitution, Smirnov points out, represented “an attempt to offer another platform for national self-identification,” but it failed because it was too abstract. Instead of talking about specifically Russian values, it used language that could apply to any country on earth, thus limiting its utility and impact.<br />
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“The abstracted quality” and “all-human” nature of the provisions of the 1993 Constitution thus failed to find resonance among many Russians. According to Smirnov, it would have been better if the Russian Constitution had been formulated in a more distinctively Russian way.<br />
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For example, he suggests that instead of talking about human beings in general, the Constitution should have specified that “the highest value in the Russian Federation is recognized as the citizen of Russia, his life, dignity, rights and freedoms. The state is obligated to observe and defend conditions to allow each citizen to realize himself” fully.<br />
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Such a formulation, the St. Petersburg professor continues, “would have helped not only to limit the arbitrariness of all branches of state power and to serve as a reliable guide for conducting domestic and foreign policy but would have become the basis for the formation of a single Russian national identity of all ethnic groups within Russia.”Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-37692206739598265632011-06-03T07:21:00.002-05:002011-06-03T07:21:17.714-05:00Window on Eurasia: Russia Needs a Centralized Nationalities Policy and a Ministry to Carry It Out, Deputies SayPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 3 – The Russian government needs to adopt a nationalities policy for the country as a whole and to establish a special ministry to implement it, several Duma deputies say, pointing not only to the increasing number of ethnic conflicts around the country but also to the increasing and potentially dangerous tendency of the regions to go their own way in this area.<br />
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According to the Regions.ru portal, “local officials are hostages to a situation [in which ethnic conflicts are on the rise] and are forced to balance between the danger of accusations of xenophobia and support of nationalities on the one hand, and the danger of a new Kondopoga or Manezh, on the other (www.regions.ru/news/2357902/).<br />
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And their situation is becoming ever more problematic, the portal observes, because “the federal center as before is limiting itself to declarative language about the impermissibility of allowing the growth of xenophobic attitudes without offering any concrete decisions.” As a result, “local officials are trying to independently find ways of resolving this problem.”<br />
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As it often does on key issues, the portal has surveyed Russian parliamentarians concerning what should be done, and the ones with whom Regions.ru spoke, unanimously backed the idea of “creating in Russia a state organ which would occupy itself with the resolution of questions of nationality policy” rather than ceding power on this to the regions.<br />
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Vladimir Gusev, who represents Saratov oblast in the Federation Council, said that the time has come for the government to take up the question of inter-ethnic relations seriously and to create what does not now exist, a clearly defined nationality policy and a central bureaucracy to implement it.<br />
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In his view, “a multi-national country without a ministry for nationalities is nonsense.” He said that it was not important what this “organ” should be called, “a ministry, a committee, or a commission.” Rather, “the main thing, Gusev continued, “as is well known is not the form but its content.”<br />
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Amir Gallyamov, who represents the Amur oblast in the Federation Council, agreed. “Russia simply needs such an organization.” Without it, youth movements of a radical direction are growing stronger, some of which act against Muslims, others against Orthodox, a third against Russians, a fourth against Jews and so on.” <br />
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Gadzhimet Safaraliyev, a United Russia Duma deputy, also supported the idea of creating “a special government organ for nationality policy.” “Such a structure,” he said, existed in Soviet times and was headed in the early years by Joseph Stalin. A new Narkomnats is needed, he said, because the regional development ministry isn’t capable of resolving” all these issues.<br />
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Yury Afonin, a KPRF Duma deputy, added his support for such an agency, pointedly noting that “in questions of nationality policy, there is no place for independent activity at the regional level.” These questions “must be dealt with by a corresponding agency in the system of state power” and at the direction of the chief of state.<br />
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And Viktor Shudegov, a Just Russia Duma deputy, seconded that view. He said that the time had come to decide on a Russia-wide nationality policy and to set up an institution to ensure it is carried out. “Such agencies already exist at the regional level in a number of Russian Federation subjects, including in Udmurtiya which [he] represents.”<br />
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“Somehow or other,” he continued, “certain representatives of our power consider that if there is no federal ministry on nationality questions, then this means that there is no problem in this sphere.” But problems obviously do exist, Shudegov said, and they will continue until a policy is defined and an agency in Moscow set up.<br />
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Since Vladimir Putin disbanded the post-Soviet Russian ministry of nationalities a decade ago, there have been period calls for restoring it, but most of them have come now from politicians at the center worried about controlling the periphery but rather from non-Russians who believe such an institution would help them.<br />
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That makes this shift potentially significant, although there is a major hurtle to setting up such a ministry that none of these parliamentarians addressed: If such a body is given enough power to implement a nationalities policy, it will be a super-ministry and a threat to all others, but if it is not given such powers, it will simply become yet another bureaucratic structure.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-37112222583742707092011-06-03T06:57:00.002-05:002011-06-03T06:57:21.788-05:00Window on Eurasia: Radical Islam Again on the Upswing in Russia, Satanovsky SaysPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 3 – The liquidation of Osama bin Laden and Moscow’s military successes in the North Caucasus have inflicted “a serious defeat” to radical Islam in Russia, Yevgeny Satanovsky says, but despite these victories, Islamist radicals are regrouping themselves and present an ever greater threat to the Russian Federation.<br />
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In an interview published in the current issue of Lechaim.ru,” the president of the Moscow Institute of the Near East says that this development within Russia parallels but is not the product of the successes he says Islamists have been having across the Middle East in recent months (www.lechaim.ru/ARHIV/230/interview1.htm).<br />
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Satanovsky says that he looks with concern “at the situation in Kabardino-Balkaria and in Daghestan, in the republics of the Middle Volga and in major Russian cities,” particularly because it appears the Russia is falling “into lethargy” regarding Islamic extremism and appears to be forgetting that “dragons are reborn,” even if there are only a few teeth left.<br />
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Given what he sees and given the threat that comes from Muslims of the Russian Federation who have studied abroad, the Russian specialist on the Middle East, said that it would be a good idea to think about building “a kind of ‘iron curtain’ … for particular groups of people returning to Russian from those Arab and Islamic countries” where there is turbulence.<br />
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In addition, he argues, the Russian authorities need to conduct “a serious filtration of the muftiats and begin systematic work with the Muslim population in order that there will appear a certain alternative view to those attitudes which are being introduced into Russia from the outside” at the present time.<br />
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Satanovsky suggests that it would be a particular mistake to conclude that there is any link between the destruction of Islamist radicals in the North Caucasus and the death of bin Laden. “No connection exists,” he says, adding that “this is simply a war, a war for years and decades, a war on many fronts.”<br />
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“And when on one of the fronts a breakthrough takes place, one should not expect that this will immediately have an impact on another front.” Moreover and perhaps most disturbingly, Satanovsky continues, the movements inspired or affected by the Islamists may take a variety of forms, some very different from what one might expect.<br />
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“The ‘golden youth’ from the republics of the North Caucasus and the Middle Volga, living on the territory of Russia, studying at the Institute of Oriental Studies, and appearing on television openly say that ‘the Russian project’ is finished. That is, today here is still Russia but tomorrow will be some kind of jamaar, emirate or separate state.”<br />
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Other commentators such as Roman Silantyev, the outspoken specialist on Islam in Russia who has close ties to the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian government, share Satanovsky’s view, but other specialists warn against taking such an apocalyptic view on this issue.<br />
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Aleksey Malashenko, a Carnegie Moscow Center scholar, for example, calls such suggestions, especially with regard to the Middle Volga an invitation to “a witch hunt.” In his view, there is no extremism of the kind Satanovsky describes. Indeed, he says, “it is silly to talk about a Salafite threat” (www.ansar.ru/analytics/2011/06/01/16407).Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-74518628744223215142011-06-02T12:30:00.002-05:002011-06-02T12:30:40.535-05:00Window on Eurasia: Kulikov Urges Kremlin to Create New Body to Direct All Force Structures in Times of TroublePaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 2 – Army General Anatoly Kulikov has called on the Kremlin to creqate a new body, modelled the National Counter-Terrorism Committee and centered in the military’s general staff, to coordinate the activities of all force structures during emergency situations, natural or man-made.<br />
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Kulikov made his proposal at the Military Commanders Club during a conference at the end of May on coordinating force structures during emergency situations. At that time, the general “recommended that the president and government create in the [Army’s] General Staff a permanent organ to coordinate the actions of force structures during emergency situations.”<br />
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At present, the Emergency Situations Ministry has primary responsibility for reacting to “technogenic and natural catastrophes, fires, accidents” and similar phenomena, and the Interior Ministry has responsibility for control of any demonstrations or protests. Kulikov’s ideas would give the military a major voice over both (www.ng.ru/politics/2011-05-30/3_kartblansh.html). <br />
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The general noted at the meeting that “a certain time ago, the Russian Security Countil had become the coordinating organ among the force structures, but in fact, coordination of actions is being realized only on the basis of decisions taken by the president of the country” rather than in a continuous way.<br />
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That is a mistake, Kulikov continued, arguing that “the coordinating organ must be a permanently functioning one like the National Counter-Terrorist Committee.” He added that “the General Staff has already agreed that on its base should be established an operational staff attached to the coordination committee of the Security Council.”<br />
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Once those arrangements are made, he said, “the General Staff will fulfill its basic function not only in the sphere of defense but in the sphere of security as well,” something it is “ideally” situated to do by means of the coordination “of the actions of the force structures, including the collection of information, the processing of data, the setting of tasks,” and so on.<br />
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As “Nezavisimaya gazeta” notes it its report on Kulikov’s remarks, the general’s formulation, “the General Staff has expressed agreement” is “an interesting way to put the question given that on May 6, President Dmitry Medvedev signed directive 590 which significantly broadened the purview of the Security Council.<br />
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That directive specified that the Council “is an independent subdivision of the Presidential Administration with the rights of an administration” and defined its functions as including “the guaranteeing of national security, the organization of the defense of the country, including the construction and development of the Armed Forcdes, other forces, and so on.”<br />
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Thus,, that directive means the Security Council “de jure already is playing a coordinating role in ensuring national security and the defense of the country.” What then is Kulikov talking about, especially since he calls for “an operational staff for emergency situations at the coordination committee of the Security Council. But there is no such committee.”<br />
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The Security Council has seven inter-agency commissions, “Nezavisimaya” reports, “one of which, for military security is headed by Army General Yury Baluyevsky,” an opponent of the defense ministry. Consequent, “if an operational staff for emergency situations were established” there, it would mean that the Security Council and not the General Staff would “by law play the coordinating role.”<br />
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That explains part of Kulikov’s proposal, but it also appears to reflect his rather broader understanding of emergency situations, an understanding that includes not just natural and technogenic disasters but also crimes and protests that threaten to get out of hand, possibly to the point of undermining state power.<br />
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If protests like the one in Manezh Square in December were to spread, “Nezavisimaya” continues, “then by themselves neither the interior ministry nor the emergency situations ministry would be able to cope.” But that still leaves open the question as to whether the General Staff could do so more effectively.<br />
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It is thus likely that Kulikov’s floating of this idea reflects not only the tensions that have always existed between the Russian military and other force structures but also the concerns of some in the senior officer corps and elsewhere that conditions in the Russian Federation are deteriorating to a point that they may have to play a most unfamiliar role sometime soon.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-51918618536538990522011-06-02T11:00:00.001-05:002011-06-02T11:01:47.944-05:00Window on Eurasia: Inequality, Poverty Characterize Post-Soviet States, Statistics ShowPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 2 – Even though the top ten percent of the population of the post-Soviet states are wealthier than they ever were in the past, three out of every four residents of the Russian Federation are now poor, according to official statistics, with the situation being even worse in Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Azerbaijan and only a little better in Belarus.<br />
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In an article in today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” Anastsiya Bashkatova reports on what she describes as “the shocking findings about the inequality of incomes and poverty” in five post-Soviet states, a situation which has made “Russia and its nearest neighbors in the CIS brothers in social unhappiness” (www.ng.ru/economics/2011-06-02/4_antisocial.html).<br />
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That is because, Bashkatova continues, “the share of citizens with mid-range incomes in the largest economies of the CIS is several times lower than in socially oriented states,” an outcome that shows that “in essence, on the post-Soviet space have been built anti-social models of the economy.”<br />
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The economies of the five countries the experts reported on in “Voprosy statistiki” – Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Azerbaijan – share that in common with “the overwhelming majorities” of their populations belong to “the most needy and least secure stratas” and with “the highly paid either forming a minority or being absent statistically.”<br />
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Comparing the social pyramids in these countries with those typical of socially oriented countries is truly disturbing, the “Nezavisimaya gazeta” journalist says. In the latter, she points out, there are almost no citizens among the truly poor, those with less than average incomes form “about 20 percent,” those in the middle “about 60 percent,” and those well-paid 20 percent.<br />
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“Not one of the CIS countries listed,” she notes, “corresponded to this pattern of developed countries or was even close to it,” according to the analysis published in the Rosstat journal of data from 2008. Instead, they had far more poor and far fewer in the middle as far as income is concerned.<br />
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Indeed, “according to the data of sociologists and statisticians, in Russian there really is almost no middle class, because about 96 percent of Russians are poor and are distinguished from one another only by the level of impoverishment.” Only one percent is well-off by income, the investigators found.<br />
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The situation in Belarus is marginally better, “but in Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Azerbaijan,” it is worse with “more than 90 percent” of the population part of the needy or low paid segments. In other CIS countries, the situation may be even worse. And the researchers say that all are “very far from the optimal market model of distribution.”<br />
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Moreover, they argue, according to the “Nezavisimaya gazeta” report, that the situation is even worse than that because their figures were based on income requirements set by the governments of these countries, requirements that are “much lower than in developed countries” and thus allow the regimes involved to claim more progress than they have in fact made.<br />
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“If one applies to the CIS countries western measures of minimum wages,” Bashkatova writes, “then Russia along with its nearest neighbors falls more clearly in the group of the poor nations of the third world,” an indictment of their governments and a likely source of growing social tensions.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-24303378720642038562011-06-02T08:37:00.000-05:002011-06-02T08:37:04.058-05:00Window on Eurasia: Tajik Officials Have Closed 1500 Mosques Since Start of 2011Paul Goble<br />
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Staunton, June 2 – In the latest of a series of moves that recall the Soviet approach to Islam in Central Asia, Tajikistan has closed some 1500 mosques, in many cases at least nominally because their leaderships have failed to secure registration, health and tax documents that Dushanbe has been reluctant to give even when imams have applied for them.<br />
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The Islamsng.com portal reported yesterday that the Tajik government “continues to interfere in the religious life” of a republic where Islam and politics are not only thoroughly intermixed but one where the clashes in neighboring Afghanistan are continuing to shake the foundations of the state (islamsng.com/tjk/news/1994).<br />
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According to the report, Dushanbe has closed 1500 mosques this year, citing their owners for failing to have the necessary tax documents, permissions from the fire and health services, and official permission from district administrations – even though one imam, Inomjon Saidov, said that he had been trying to get such documents for two years.<br />
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Over the last two decades and largely because of the weakness of government institutions, the portal continued, mosques have appeared “on every large street” in Dushanbe and other Tajik cities. Most never registered with the authorities, and consequently, even more mosques are likely to be closed in the coming months.<br />
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Expert observers say, the news service continues, that “religious oppression [in Tajikistan] began seven years ago.” At first, women were banned from visiting mosques, then mosques were blocked from calling people to pray via loudspeakers, and children were prevented from wearing the hijab.<br />
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Then, last year, Dushanbe began insisting that all Tajiks studying at Islamic institutions in foreign countries return home and be checked to ensure that they were not importing radical ideas. And earlier this year, the Tajik government set up a special commission to ensure that imams have good morals, “rich religious knowledge,” and observe the laws.<br />
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Moreover, and perhaps most seriously, the government commission insisted that the imams be “laconic” and not preach more than 15 minutes at mosque ceremonies. In some cases, it appears, the imams have even been asked to clear their sermons in advance with government officials.<br />
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These restrictions recall the Soviet approach to mosques, an approach that undermined itself by driving many believers into what came to be known as “underground” or “parallel” Islam. And according to Islamsng.ru, experts believe that the current approach of the Tajikistan government may have the same effect and threaten “the security of the state.”<br />
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That is all the more likely because these actions are probably going to escape criticism from other governments who are inclined to look with favor or at least not to oppose any action that can be presented however implausibly as a move against Islamist radicalism and who view Tajikistan as a potential bulwark against the spread of Taliban-style violence northward.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-67084990875969810802011-06-01T15:50:00.002-05:002011-06-01T15:50:16.191-05:00Window on Eurasia: Moscow Plans Re-Adaptation Program for Up to 10,000 North Caucasians Who’ve Studied in Muslim CountriesPaul Goble<br />
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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.<br />
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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).<br />
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“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.<br />
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“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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.<br />
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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?”<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-33754604176018820672011-06-01T15:11:00.002-05:002011-06-01T15:11:16.070-05:00Window on Eurasia: Kirill Seeks to Tighten Control over Church by Dividing Up Existing BishopricsPaul Goble<br />
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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.<br />
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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).<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.” <br />
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“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.<br />
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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).<br />
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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.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-32078209705884667192011-06-01T14:23:00.000-05:002011-06-01T14:23:00.542-05:00Window on Eurasia: 21st Century to be ‘Century of the Majority,’ Tishkov SaysPaul Goble<br />
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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.<br />
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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).<br />
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“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.<br />
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“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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.” <br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.”<br />
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“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.”<br />
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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.’” <br />
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“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.”<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-44752738009929328682011-05-31T15:22:00.002-05:002011-05-31T15:22:49.837-05:00Window on Eurasia: Russians See Themselves as Both ‘the Greatest and the Most Oppressed of Nations,’ Moscow Commentator SaysPaul Goble<br />
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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.<br />
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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).<br />
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“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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.” <br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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“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.”<br />
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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.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-51623482801195368702011-05-31T07:36:00.002-05:002011-05-31T07:36:20.948-05:00Window on Eurasia: Turkic Nogays Seek Their Own Ethnic Territory in the North CaucasusPaul Goble<br />
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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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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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/).<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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/).<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-47451325205277302572011-05-31T07:00:00.002-05:002011-05-31T07:00:36.690-05:00Window on Eurasia: Is Siberia Becoming Russia’s Catalonia?Paul Goble<br />
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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?”<br />
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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).<br />
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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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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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).<br />
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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).Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-2320048552550663782011-05-28T09:07:00.002-05:002011-05-28T09:07:52.736-05:00Window on Eurasia: Gasprinsky, Reformer who Viewed Russia’s Muslims as a Single Nation, Held Up as ModelPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, May 28 – This year marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of Ismail-bey Gasprinsky, the Crimean Tatar leader who sought to unite the Muslims of the Russian Empire on a reformist rather than revolutionary basis in pre-parliamentary times. And some Muslim leaders in the Russian Federation are holding him up as a model for today.<br />
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This week, at a Moscow conference on “Ismail Gasprinsky and the Birth of the Unity of Russian Muslims,” academic specialists and Muslim leaders discussed his legacy and argued that Gasprinsky’s ideas can make a significant contribution to “the formation of an all-Russian civic identity” and to “the formation of a legal state” (www.islamrf.ru/news/umma/events/16181/).<br />
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Aydar Khabutdinov, a professor at the Kazan branch of the Russian Academy of Jurisprudence, recalled in an article published in advance of the conference that during Soviet times, communist officials did everything they could either to suppress Gasprinsky’s ideas or to blacken his reputation (www.islamrf.ru/news/culture/legacy/15887/).<br />
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“Even my generation of 40-year-olds,” Khabutdinov continued, “well remember how the ideas of Gasprinsky about the unity of Russia’s Muslims were denied in the name of regional and tribal divisions” and about how his writings about Koranic justice and legality were simply suppressed altogether.<br />
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A major reason for this, the Kazan professor suggested, is that Gasprinsky promoted ideas which represented a serious challenge to the Soviet state. “He taught young people to search and acquire knowledge and to generously devote themselves to the Motherland and the nation,” defining the latter as the Muslim community as a whole.<br />
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“Young radicals denounced Gasprinsky for his willingness to work with the powers that be, but [the Crimean Tatar thinker] was convinced that it would be possible to create a better future only by the labor of a free man and not by force” as many of his opponents within the umma and more generally believed.<br />
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“Bloody Russian history of the last century went in a different direction” than the one Gasprinsky advocated, Khabutdinov continued. But if the future of Russia and its growing Muslim community are to be better, then it is absolutely necessary to recover and then implement the great reformer’s ideas.<br />
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“It was no accident that Ismail-bay Gasprinsky became ‘the father of the epoch’ of the national development of Russia’s Muslims,” the Kazan scholar argues. Born on March 8, 1851, Gasprinsky grew up informed by the liberal ideas which “saved many countries of Europe from revolution.” Unfortunately, Khabutdinov said, “our Motherland was not among them.”<br />
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Most of Gasprinsky’s life was spent at a time when there was no parliament in Russia, and consequently, he devoted himself to using the press to advance his ideas. He founded the newspaper “Tercuman” in 1883, “the first stable newspaper in the history of Russia’s Muslims” and an outlet that helped define both the language and ideas of many of them.<br />
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His paper was explicitly directed toward “the consolidation around itself of representatives of all groups of the national elite, including the bourgeoisie, the spiritual leadership, the intelligentsia and the nobility,” and “in the absence of the opportunity to form political parties before 1917, it “filled the function of professional politicians and social leaders.”<br />
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As Khabutdinov noted, “the idea of the nation was one of the key concepts of the 19th century,” and Gasprinsky “borrowed from the philosophical doctrine of the Slavophiles the idea about ‘nationality as a collective personality having its own special calling” but extended it to argue that all the Muslims of Russia were members of one nation.<br />
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By the early years of the 20th century, Gasprinsky had developed a political program for this Turko-Tatar nation, a program that included by “typically bourgeois demands such as political and civic freedoms, a constitutional state and so on as well as legal acts and norms defining it as ‘a millet.’”<br />
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In Gasprinsky’s view, the Kazan scholar wrote, this millet would be “a special ethnic structure in the framework of the imperial state, one having a special legal status, a concentration around spiritual assemblies, a nationally-proportional system of the formation of organs of power and so on.” In short, he sought “a single religious autonomy” for the Muslims of Russia.<br />
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And he argued that “each nation must be a juridical person, have its own economic institutions (banks, cooperatives, etc.) an autonomous system of education, enlightenment and charitable organizations, and also a political structure,” something that could be achieved by education in a common Turkic language and social efforts rather than revolution.<br />
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Gasprinsky, Khabutdinov said, “frequently stressed that the era of medieval khans had passed and that Muslims from subjects of medieval states must be transformed into citizens of a state of Modern Times.” To that end, he called for overcoming “centuries-old fatalism” and a prejudice against re-interpreting the past.<br />
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Indeed, in the views of the jadids of that time, Gasprinsky had created their present must as the Tatar thinker Marjani had “returned to the Tatars their past. And when Gasprinsky died in August 1914, Muslims from across the Russian Empire mourned his passing even as Russia headed in a very different direction than the one he wanted.<br />
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The question that needs to be addressed today, Khabutdinov concluded, is “will we be able to fulfill the injunctions of ismail-bay and construct a better future for ourselves and for our children?”Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-63394704496198671572011-05-28T08:13:00.002-05:002011-05-28T08:13:46.614-05:00Window on Eurasia: Muscovites Live a Decade Longer than Do Russians beyond the Ring RoadPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, May 28 – Muscovites currently live on average nearly ten years longer than do Russians outside the capital, a reflection of differences in education, income and governmental support and yet another way in which residents of the capital city, on whom so many base their assessment of Russia as a whole, are in fact becoming almost another nation.<br />
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In an article posted on the “Svobodnaya pressa” portal yesterday, Svetlana Gomzikova points out that residents of the Russian capital and especially the most senior members of the elite have life expectancies equal to those in Switzerland and the US while other Russians have life expectancies typical of the developing world (svpressa.ru/society/article/43699/).<br />
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For the Russian Federation as a whole, United Nations statistics say, life expectancy for men is now 58.7 years and for women 71.8 years. These figures are 16 years lower than life expectancy for men in the United States and nine years lower than that for women in the US, and the Russian numbers are lower than all of the former Soviet republics, except Kazakhstan.<br />
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But these global Russian figures conceal as much as they reveal, Gomzikova suggests. Men living in Moscow have a life expectancy of 67.3 years, and Russian men living in the Central Administrative District of the Russian capital have a still longer live expectancy, 70.4 years. Women living there can expect to live 78.8 years.<br />
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The reason for that, demographers say, is in people there have “a high level of education and income [and] have greater possibilities to concern themselves with health.” Their conclusion, Gomzikova says, is “partially confirmed” by the fact that men in the south and southeastern parts of the capital have live expectancies two to three years less than for the city as a whole.<br />
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In addition, the “Svobodnaya pressa” journalist says, there are “significant differences in the mortality of the adult population depending on the level of education and the character of work: the level of mortality among workers and peasants is higher than among those who are engaged in mental work.”<br />
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Russian sociologists calculate that “mortality in Russia falls for men by nine percent and for women by seven percent for each additional year of schooling.” And that allows one to conclude, Gomrikova suggests, that “the growth of Russian mortality is the result of the growth of mortality in the less educated strata of the population.”<br />
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That has prompted demographers to argue that the Russian authorities now very concerned about demography should focus their efforts not so much on boosting the birth rate than on improving behavior and solving social problems – despite all the difficulties such a shift in approach would entail.<br />
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But despite the relatively low life expectancies among Russians, experts like Vladimir Khavinson, the head of the St. Petersburg Institute of Bio-Regulation and Gerontology say, Russia increasingly faces a problem that other countries are having to confront as well: the aging of the population and the increasing share of pensioners relative to workers.<br />
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That problem is all the greater in Russia because it has one of the lowest pension ages in the world. Given that the more educated and urbanized population lives longer, that in turn means that less educated workers are going to be forced to support larger numbers of older but more educated Russians, a situation that could generate new political conflicts.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-57431192186279854362011-05-27T11:43:00.002-05:002011-05-27T11:43:55.623-05:00Window on Eurasia: Moscow Must Pursue ‘Rossification’ of Immigrants, Expert SaysPaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, May 27 – As many as 40 percent of all immigrant workers in the Russian Federation would like to regularize their status and become full members of the community there, an expert on migration says, but neither the Russian state nor most members of Russian society are prepared to take the steps needed to meet them half way.<br />
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In part, this reflects a reaction to demagogic commentaries which have dramatically overstated the size of the problem Russia now faces, Vladimir Mukomel, a sociologist who is part of the Strategy 2020 expert group, but in part, it represents an unwillingness to pursue what he calls “Rossianization” rather than “Russificaiton” (svpressa.ru/society/article/43689/).<br />
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In an interview with “Svobodnaya pressa” journalist Kirill Zubkov, Mukomel comments first of all on some of the figures which have prompted Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov and other politicians to call for parliamentary hearings on the influx of people they suggest “do not have Russian memory” and “for whom the Russian land is something alien.”<br />
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According to Mukomel, “migration is not a problem with which one must struggle but it also is not a panacea for all problems.” It may solve some problems but only at the cost of creating others. And consequently, any discussion of how to address migration must consider both costs and benefits.<br />
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By 2030, he points out, Russia is “threatened by something worse than depopulation.” It is threatened by a decline of more than 12 million people of working age, even as the total decline of the population will be only 2.8 million. That means workers increasingly will have to support more non-workers, mostly the elderly, than in the past.<br />
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It is thus not clear, Mukomel says, “on whose account Russian pensions will live, given that the percent that they will form in the population is growing while the percentage of workers is falling.” And that will be even more true in the future, when after 2018, the current relative stabilization of Russia’s population ends and a new and more rapid decline begins.<br />
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Putting things in the simplest terms, the sociologist continues, “Russia needs new workers immediately, and Russia needs new citizens over time if Russia wants to have a future for itself.”<br />
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Many suggest that the solution is to be found in the mass influx of immigrants, but “migration is not a panacea.” And what is necessary is finding a way that allows for “the adaptation of migrants to Russian society – at least in the case of those migrants who want to settle in Russia and become equal citizens of the country.”<br />
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The total number of them, like the total number of migrants in the Russian Federation, is often exaggerated, Mukomel insists. There are about 160,000 who seek permanent residence, while something on the order of four million come for seasonal or temporary work and then return home.<br />
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The figures politicians toss about are far too large unless one counts all those now in the Russian Federation who were born elsewhere. “For the post-Soviet space, sucha method of accounting is unacceptable. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of citizens of Russia were born and for a long time lived in the former Soviet republics.<br />
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“If one follows the logic” of those who invoke the larger figure, Mukomel says, then one has to include in it such people as “Minister of Internal Affairs Rashid Nurgaliyev, who was born on the territory of what is now independent Kazakhstan. Moreover, the younger daughter of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Ekaterina, who was born in Dresden, also is an immigrant.”<br />
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While exact statistics are not available, the expert says, sociologists believe that “on average from 25 to 40 percent of the labor migrants who have come to Russia for work are prepared to be integrated” into Russian society.” In fact, many of them already have done so, although they are not in a position to regularize themselves legally.<br />
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The reasons for that, he suggests, lie in “the most complete lack of preparedness of [Russian] state structures” to do so as well as the unfortunate reality that “Russian society itself is not ready for the integration of immigrants,” despite the fact that most come from former Soviet areas and speak Russian.<br />
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As a result, Mukomel continues, “words about ‘the lack among those who come of Russian memory’ are also untrue: across the entire post-Soviet space, the Russian language is taught up to now and enjoys, for example in Tajikistan, serious demand” because “everyone understands” that one needs Russian if one is to work in Russia.<br />
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In other words, his interviewer says, “one is speaking about a certain variant of Russification?” To which Mukomel replies: “I would prefer the term ‘Rossification.’ In the final analysis, the entire history of Russia is the history of Russification, the integration into Rusian society of immigrant masses.”<br />
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“Karamzin, Chaadayev, Dal, even Pushkin,” Mukomel oints out, “are all descendents of migrants,” something that “should not be forgotten.” And as far as suggestions that new arrivals supposedly “will not defend the motherland,” one should remember such figures as Barklay de Tolli, Bagration, Totleben and tens of thousands of others” who nobly fought for it.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3498829403245758483.post-88512467958290834402011-05-27T08:26:00.002-05:002011-05-27T08:26:53.735-05:00Window on Eurasia: Russia’s Once Proud River Fleet Near CollapsePaul Goble<br />
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Staunton, May 27 – Russia’s river fleet on which Moscow in the past has relied to move bulk cargo given the shortage of reliable highways and rail lines is near a state of collapse, threatening the country’s economy and, because of the ecological problems its aging ships present, ability to export many things to European markets.<br />
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The Russian Federation has more than 100,000 kilometers of internal waterways deep enough for barge and other shipping traffic, but, Vladimir Rechmensky writes in this week’s “Argumenty nedeli,” the use of this network over the last 20 years has only fallen” and now involves less than two percent of all bulk transport (www.argumenti.ru/society/n290/108373).<br />
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According to the calculations of the Volga State Academy of Water Transport, shipping bulk cargo by water is 30 to 40 percent cheaper than moving the same amount by railway or highway, but because the amount now being carried is so small a percentage, Rechmensky says, “globally thinking manager-bureaucrats are not turning their attention” to the rivers.<br />
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Russia’s river fleet has always faced problems, experts say, because “in the best case,” the rivers are open for traffic only five months a year, meaning that they must make a profit for the entire year based on less than half a year’s operation. In addition, fuel costs have risen dramatically, and the lack of dredging has reduced the size of the available water network.<br />
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Because so little new money is going into this sector, Rechmensky continues, most of the ships are not equipped with contemporary geo-positioning systems. Instead of using GLONASS and GPS, as most other shippers now do, Russian captains are forced to navigate using maps which are updated only “once every three years,” a situation that can lead to accidents.<br />
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According to academic experts, the “Argumenty nedeli” journalist says, “at present, the state of the water arteries of the country is at the level it was at in the 1940s and 1950s. [They] and those working in this sector look with tears in their eyes at the step by step destruction of a system that was at one time capable of work.”<br />
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Except for yachts and high-end tourist vessels, the Russian river transport system is attracting ever less interest and support, and as a result, “the aging of port and hydro-technical arrangements and the river fleet itself is exceeding the rate of its rebuilding,” with many ships now beyond their projected lifespan and most “older than 30 years.”<br />
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With enough funding, these aging ships could be kept operational for several more decades, Rechmensky says, giving as an example a ship in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet which was launched in 1913. But if that is the case for domestic shipping, it is not sufficient when those barges try to carry goods to European ports.<br />
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Older ships and barges, Rechmensky points out, “do not correspond to the demands of ecological security” that European countries make and consequently they are not welcome in European ports, limiting the ability of Russia to export bulk cargoes in the most cost-efficient way.<br />
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To bring Russia’s river fleet up to international standards, the country would have to replace more than 80 percent of its vessels, some 8000 in all. Given current investment patterns, that is unlikely to happen, and as a result, Russia’s river fleet is “slowly but truly degrading” to the detriment of the country.Paul Goblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06334435525948569320noreply@blogger.com0