Paul Goble
Baku, January 9 – Muslims in the Russian Federation are now doing what many religious and ethnic minorities in other countries have done in the past: organizing special parties for their children timed to coincide with the festivals of the locally dominant culture to ensure that their offspring will be better able to resist its blandishments.
Three days ago, on Russian Christmas Eve, Muslim activists in Moscow organized a special children’s celebration of the Islamic holiday, Kurban Bayram. But in contrast to such gatherings in the past, this one was intended to combine fun with a clearly defined message (http://www.islamnews.ru/news-8981.html).
Instead of just listening to readings of the Koran or saying prayers, activities that might not have attracted the youngest members of the Muslim community, organizers hired professional clowns and actors and encouraged the children to run about and play games.
But the meeting came with a message. According to the Islamnews.ru report, the youngsters were shown “a happy play about Father Frost, who by mistake shows up at a Kurban Bayram celebration.” And in the course of this play, “the children learn that Father Frost is not a Muslim hero and not a magician but simply a fellow in fancy dress.”
One of the session’s organizers, Galina Al’shabakh of the Golubushka Muslim Women’s Organization, said that the goal of the celebration was “to explain to children what Kurban Bayram is so that they would not confuse it with the [Russian] New Year” or with any other holiday.
And she noted that the celebration had been specifically directed at Muslim families with three or more children who may have been suffering the Russian version of cabin fever over the long winter break. Not only was the group able to find sponsors,but parents were eager to pay the 200 rubles (8 U.S. dollars) allocated for the presents.
After the gathering was over, Al'shabakh said that it was obvious from “the happy faces of the children” and “the satisfied parents” that such parties where young people “can learn both about Kurban Bayram and about Father Frost are undoubtedly useful” and should be arranged not only next year in Moscow but elsewhere in Russia as well.
There are some preliminary indications that some Muslim groups elsewhere have already begun to do the same time. In Saratov oblast, Muslim activists organized a winter camp for children aged 8 to 16 to teach them about Islam and to contrast its principles and practices with other faiths (http://www.islamonline.ru/m/nov/?i=2935).
Mufti Mukaddas Khazrat Bibarsov of the Volga Region Muslim Spiritual Directorate, supported the organizers of this camp and suggests that “similar measures need to be carried out as frequently as possible in all regions of the country and to involve as many young men and women as possible.”
If the Muslim response to such efforts has been overwhelmingly positive, it is as yet unclear how Orthodox Christian Russians will view what some of them will certainly see as an attack on their culture and an indication that the Muslims of the Russian Federation increasingly seek not integration into the broader society but separation.
That is all the more likely because many Orthodox Russians and especially the Russian Orthodox Church currently view their own Christmas traditions as threatened by Western commercialism, something they associate with increasing invocations of the values of the U.S.-style Santa Claus (http://www.regions.ru/news/2116391/ ).
Consequently, Russian anger about commercialism and Russian anger about Muslims are likely, if unexpectedly, to prove mutually reinforcing, making each more more difficult for those who feel it to change for those who are threatened by it to defend themselves against
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Window on Eurasia: FSB Admits It’s Catching Fewer Spies Now Than in the Past
Paul Goble
Baku, January 8 – Russia’s FSB has acknowledged that it caught fewer spies in 2007 than the year before, something it has not done during the presidency of Vladimir Putin and an admission two of Moscow’s top specialists on security services say represents “the most unexpected event of the past year.”
In an article for Yezhednevniy zhurnal posted on the Agentura.ru website, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan note that FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev has admitted that his agency caught 22 officers of foreign intelligence services and 71 of their agents in 2007 (http://www.agentura.ru/press/about/jointprojects/ej/itogi2007/).
That compares with his report a year ago that the Russian intelligence service had caught 27 foreign officers and 89 agents in 2006, the two experts said. And while Patrushev gave no details about either group, making both sets of numbers more “virtual” than real, acknowledging any decline at all is unprecedented in Putin’s Russia.
Such an admission, the two researchers say, is especially intriguing now given three other recent developments which might make it more difficult for the FSB to expand – or alternatively might be just the occasion for a new consolidation of Russia’s intelligence services under its aegis.
First, Patrushev’s echoing of Putin’s claim that Moscow has been victorious in the struggle against terrorism in the North Caucasus might lead others in the Russian government to conclude that it was time to reduce the size of the FSB’s budget and reach rather than expand them as the FSB has always tried to do.
Second, any admission of a shortcoming increases the risk that the FSB could lose out in funding battles with other intelligence services and force structures. Since Putin took power, the country’s special services as a group have received a relatively stable 10 percent of the state budget, but the share allocated to each has changed.
Funding for the interior ministry, the internal forces, the justice ministry, the procuracy and the prison system have increased dramatically – the budget for the procuracy has risen 800 percent since 2000 – apparently reflecting the Kremlin’s judgment, the analysts say, that these institutions are the “main prop” of the regime.
That conclusion, the two writers continue, is buttressed by the organizations to which the Kremlin has turned to in its actions against the country’s political opposition. Among these institutions are the Presidential Administration itself, the OMON, and the special forces of the interior ministry. The FSB, they note, is not found on this list.
And third, there is the continuing competition among the Russian intelligence services for control over activities abroad. Under Boris Yeltsin, only the military’s GRU and the SVR, which was the successor to the foreign intelligence operations of the KGB, were charged with conducting intelligence operations abroad.
But in 1999, the FSB created several subdivisions responsible for foreign intelligence, an indication that its leadership, including Putin, wanted to see it involved in foreign intelligence just as the KGB in which Putin had served in East Germany had been before the end of the Soviet Union.
For most of the last eight years, this ambiguous situation continued, Soldatov and Borogan say. But 2007 introduced a certain clarity. Last October, Putin named former prime minister Mikhail Fradkov to head of the SVR and charged him with defending “the economic interests of our companies abroad.”
Then, on December 4, the two analysts note, Putin announced that “the technical intelligence service ought to work more actively.” And at the same time, Yevgeniy Primakov, head of the Trade-Industrial Chamber, proposed that technical intelligence work for the state corporation Rostekhnologia.
Primakov “knows whereof he speaks,” Soldatov and Borogan point out, because from 1991 to 1996, he headed the SVR. And consequently, the SVR has been clearly assigned responsibility for protecting the interests of Russian arms trade abroad, something consistent with Fradkov’s earlier work in Soviet times.
That leaves open the issue of what the FSB is responsible for in the foreign field. On the one hand, it opens the way for that senior service to engage in more espionage activities. But on the other, it highlights the FSB’s involvement in one key area – the killing of Moscow’s enemies abroad.
The Litvinenko case in London attracted a great deal of attention, but many did not notice that the British did not react as harshly as many might have expected given the available evidence of FSB involvement. And perhaps more significant have been the killings and kidnappings of members of the Chechen diaspora in Azerbaijan since 2006.
Consequently, the two analysts conclude, the FSB could face some budget problems at home because of Patrushev’s admission. But because there are certain things only it can do abroad, the Kremlin shows little sign that it will lessen its support for and use of the FSB in 2008.
Baku, January 8 – Russia’s FSB has acknowledged that it caught fewer spies in 2007 than the year before, something it has not done during the presidency of Vladimir Putin and an admission two of Moscow’s top specialists on security services say represents “the most unexpected event of the past year.”
In an article for Yezhednevniy zhurnal posted on the Agentura.ru website, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan note that FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev has admitted that his agency caught 22 officers of foreign intelligence services and 71 of their agents in 2007 (http://www.agentura.ru/press/about/jointprojects/ej/itogi2007/).
That compares with his report a year ago that the Russian intelligence service had caught 27 foreign officers and 89 agents in 2006, the two experts said. And while Patrushev gave no details about either group, making both sets of numbers more “virtual” than real, acknowledging any decline at all is unprecedented in Putin’s Russia.
Such an admission, the two researchers say, is especially intriguing now given three other recent developments which might make it more difficult for the FSB to expand – or alternatively might be just the occasion for a new consolidation of Russia’s intelligence services under its aegis.
First, Patrushev’s echoing of Putin’s claim that Moscow has been victorious in the struggle against terrorism in the North Caucasus might lead others in the Russian government to conclude that it was time to reduce the size of the FSB’s budget and reach rather than expand them as the FSB has always tried to do.
Second, any admission of a shortcoming increases the risk that the FSB could lose out in funding battles with other intelligence services and force structures. Since Putin took power, the country’s special services as a group have received a relatively stable 10 percent of the state budget, but the share allocated to each has changed.
Funding for the interior ministry, the internal forces, the justice ministry, the procuracy and the prison system have increased dramatically – the budget for the procuracy has risen 800 percent since 2000 – apparently reflecting the Kremlin’s judgment, the analysts say, that these institutions are the “main prop” of the regime.
That conclusion, the two writers continue, is buttressed by the organizations to which the Kremlin has turned to in its actions against the country’s political opposition. Among these institutions are the Presidential Administration itself, the OMON, and the special forces of the interior ministry. The FSB, they note, is not found on this list.
And third, there is the continuing competition among the Russian intelligence services for control over activities abroad. Under Boris Yeltsin, only the military’s GRU and the SVR, which was the successor to the foreign intelligence operations of the KGB, were charged with conducting intelligence operations abroad.
But in 1999, the FSB created several subdivisions responsible for foreign intelligence, an indication that its leadership, including Putin, wanted to see it involved in foreign intelligence just as the KGB in which Putin had served in East Germany had been before the end of the Soviet Union.
For most of the last eight years, this ambiguous situation continued, Soldatov and Borogan say. But 2007 introduced a certain clarity. Last October, Putin named former prime minister Mikhail Fradkov to head of the SVR and charged him with defending “the economic interests of our companies abroad.”
Then, on December 4, the two analysts note, Putin announced that “the technical intelligence service ought to work more actively.” And at the same time, Yevgeniy Primakov, head of the Trade-Industrial Chamber, proposed that technical intelligence work for the state corporation Rostekhnologia.
Primakov “knows whereof he speaks,” Soldatov and Borogan point out, because from 1991 to 1996, he headed the SVR. And consequently, the SVR has been clearly assigned responsibility for protecting the interests of Russian arms trade abroad, something consistent with Fradkov’s earlier work in Soviet times.
That leaves open the issue of what the FSB is responsible for in the foreign field. On the one hand, it opens the way for that senior service to engage in more espionage activities. But on the other, it highlights the FSB’s involvement in one key area – the killing of Moscow’s enemies abroad.
The Litvinenko case in London attracted a great deal of attention, but many did not notice that the British did not react as harshly as many might have expected given the available evidence of FSB involvement. And perhaps more significant have been the killings and kidnappings of members of the Chechen diaspora in Azerbaijan since 2006.
Consequently, the two analysts conclude, the FSB could face some budget problems at home because of Patrushev’s admission. But because there are certain things only it can do abroad, the Kremlin shows little sign that it will lessen its support for and use of the FSB in 2008.
Window on Eurasia: A Potemkin Mosque for Sochi’s Olympic Village?
Paul Goble
Baku, January 8 – Russian officials have told the leaders of the 20,000-strong Muslim community in Sochi that they will finally be allowed to open a mosque – but only for the period during which the 2014 Olympic Winter Games will be held in that North Caucasus city.
They will be allowed to set up a mosque just before the games open so that Muslim athletes will be able to say prayers and Western news agencies will be able to report on that fact, but then they will have to close it down immediately after the Olympic flame is extinguished.
Tavza Ramazanova, the head of the local Muslim community, told Islam.ru last week that this announcement was especially bitter because the Sochi Olympics had seemed to offer a breakthrough moment for a community that has had to make do without a mosque for many years (http://www.islam.ru/pressclub/islamofobia/olimicsochi/).
The Sochi Muslim community has sought permission to open a mosque since the end of Soviet times, she said. Its members have routinely appealed to local leaders and written to Tatarstan President Mintimir Shaimiyev, to Union of Muftis of Russia (SMR) head Ravil’ Gainutdin, and even to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But so far they have not been able to overcome the opposition of local officials, Ramazanova said. The latter have done everything they can to efface the Muslim history of the town, she continued, and former Governor Nikolai Kondratenko frequently said in public that the city and region would never give land to the followers of Islam.
More recently, Ramazanova said, Shaimiyev had asked the Krasnodar’s current governor Aleksandr Tkachev to intervene, and the latter had responded that Sochi’s Muslims should appeal to the leadership not of the region in which Sochi is located but to that of Adygeia.
What possible role could the Adygei play in Krasnodar kray where Sochi is, Ramazanova asked rhetorically. They have their own republic, and unlike the Muslims of Sochi who do not even have land for a mosque or a cemetery, they have long had their own mosque and other Muslim facilities.
The Olympics seemed to provide just the opening that Sochi’s Muslims had needed. On the one hand, there would be an enormous number of Muslim athletes and press attention to how they were treated. And on the other, Dubai and other Arab countries have announced plans to invest a billion dollars in helping the city prepare
What has been both surprising and disappointing, the Muslim leader said, is that Muslim businessmen from Dubai have shown no interest in doing anything about the absence of a mosque in Sochi. And she suggested that this absence of interest helps to explain why Russian officials are continuing to behave as they are.
In many ways, the situation with regard to Sochi’s Muslims may even be deteriorating in advance of the Olympics, Ramazanova suggested. “Sochi was a normal city in which all lived comfortably until the head of the administration wanted to make the city ‘only for Russians’ so that there would not be any trace of Islam.”
She reported that city architect Gusev recently said to her: “’Tavza-khanum, you know that this is Orthodox land?’” a statement that officials have tried to make good by erecting churches and public crosses but that, she continued, is very much at odds with history.
Not only has Sochi had a Muslim population for centuries, indeed for longer than there have been Russians there, it was the site of the deportation of more than a million Circassians to the Ottoman Empire 140 years ago, something neither the Circassians abroad nor many of their co-ethnics in Sochi and the North Caucasus have ever forgotten.
Ramazanova told Islam.ru that she would continue the struggle she has waged for the last 13 years to open a mosque in Sochi. And when asked why she rather than a man was leading the community, she replied that it seems to be a Muslim woman can get away with more than a Muslim man whom many Russians will assume is a terrorist.
Baku, January 8 – Russian officials have told the leaders of the 20,000-strong Muslim community in Sochi that they will finally be allowed to open a mosque – but only for the period during which the 2014 Olympic Winter Games will be held in that North Caucasus city.
They will be allowed to set up a mosque just before the games open so that Muslim athletes will be able to say prayers and Western news agencies will be able to report on that fact, but then they will have to close it down immediately after the Olympic flame is extinguished.
Tavza Ramazanova, the head of the local Muslim community, told Islam.ru last week that this announcement was especially bitter because the Sochi Olympics had seemed to offer a breakthrough moment for a community that has had to make do without a mosque for many years (http://www.islam.ru/pressclub/islamofobia/olimicsochi/).
The Sochi Muslim community has sought permission to open a mosque since the end of Soviet times, she said. Its members have routinely appealed to local leaders and written to Tatarstan President Mintimir Shaimiyev, to Union of Muftis of Russia (SMR) head Ravil’ Gainutdin, and even to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But so far they have not been able to overcome the opposition of local officials, Ramazanova said. The latter have done everything they can to efface the Muslim history of the town, she continued, and former Governor Nikolai Kondratenko frequently said in public that the city and region would never give land to the followers of Islam.
More recently, Ramazanova said, Shaimiyev had asked the Krasnodar’s current governor Aleksandr Tkachev to intervene, and the latter had responded that Sochi’s Muslims should appeal to the leadership not of the region in which Sochi is located but to that of Adygeia.
What possible role could the Adygei play in Krasnodar kray where Sochi is, Ramazanova asked rhetorically. They have their own republic, and unlike the Muslims of Sochi who do not even have land for a mosque or a cemetery, they have long had their own mosque and other Muslim facilities.
The Olympics seemed to provide just the opening that Sochi’s Muslims had needed. On the one hand, there would be an enormous number of Muslim athletes and press attention to how they were treated. And on the other, Dubai and other Arab countries have announced plans to invest a billion dollars in helping the city prepare
What has been both surprising and disappointing, the Muslim leader said, is that Muslim businessmen from Dubai have shown no interest in doing anything about the absence of a mosque in Sochi. And she suggested that this absence of interest helps to explain why Russian officials are continuing to behave as they are.
In many ways, the situation with regard to Sochi’s Muslims may even be deteriorating in advance of the Olympics, Ramazanova suggested. “Sochi was a normal city in which all lived comfortably until the head of the administration wanted to make the city ‘only for Russians’ so that there would not be any trace of Islam.”
She reported that city architect Gusev recently said to her: “’Tavza-khanum, you know that this is Orthodox land?’” a statement that officials have tried to make good by erecting churches and public crosses but that, she continued, is very much at odds with history.
Not only has Sochi had a Muslim population for centuries, indeed for longer than there have been Russians there, it was the site of the deportation of more than a million Circassians to the Ottoman Empire 140 years ago, something neither the Circassians abroad nor many of their co-ethnics in Sochi and the North Caucasus have ever forgotten.
Ramazanova told Islam.ru that she would continue the struggle she has waged for the last 13 years to open a mosque in Sochi. And when asked why she rather than a man was leading the community, she replied that it seems to be a Muslim woman can get away with more than a Muslim man whom many Russians will assume is a terrorist.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Window on Eurasia: Kondopoga-Like Clashes Now Possible Everywhere in Russia at Any Time, Expert Says
Paul Goble
Baku, January 7 – Increasing tensions between Russians and Caucasian migrants and Moscow’s failure to address this problem mean that violent clashes like those which occurred in Kondopoga at the end of summer in 2006 could be repeated “at any time and in any territory of the Russian Federation,” according to a new investigation.
In a detailed study of what happened in that Karelian city 18 months ago, Igor’ Pal’tsev suggests that Kondopoga represents “in miniature” the country as a whole. Neither its population nor its officials were unique in any way, and consequently, similar incidents are likely (http://www.rosbaltnord.ru/2008/01/05/445361.html).
Indeed, the human rights advisor to the Karelian government told RosbaltNord.ru at the end of last week, not only have similar clashes already been reported in a few cities, but he and most residents of Karelia believe that there already have been far more of them than officials have been willing to admit or the media report.
The 38-page study features a chronology, interviews with participants and experts, and a vast array of polling data. But because the report was released just before the holidays, it attracted little attention. (For the report itself: http://321.karelia.ru/ December 20; for a first news story: http://www.rosbaltnord.ru/2007/12/19/441777.html.)
Now, with the winter holidays approaching their end and links to the report appearing in the past few days not only on the anti-immigrant portal Movement Against Illegal Immigration (dpni.com) but also the religious affairs site of the Institute on Religion and Politics (i-r-p.ru), that almost certainly will change.
Two groups are likely to reject Pal’tsev’s findings out of hand: those in Moscow who will view his argument as an effort by Karelian officials to escape blame, and those both in the Russian capital and elsewhere who will be disturbed by his focus on the reasons many ethnic Russians feel so angry rather than on the rights of minorities.
But Pal’tsev’s report is important precisely because he puts Kondopoga in the broader context of social and political change and of the absence of an effective Russian nationality policy and because he focuses on the attitudes of the ethnic Russian majority, often the last group whose attitudes human rights organizations focus on.
Citing poll results and quoting those directly involved in Kondopoga, Pal’tsev insists that the crisis there was the result of the social changes that took place not only there but throughout the country after 1991, changes that brought more Russians into contact with non-Russians and reordered the ethnic hierarchy most had come to expect.
On the one hand, he notes, the new freedoms individuals had to move from one place to another and to open small businesses and thus possibly enrich themselves were exploited far more often by people from the Caucasus rather than by the ethnic Russians themselves, a trend that threatened the primacy Russians had always assumed was theirs.
And on the other hand, he argues, the central Russian government, given its focus on economic issues, both ignored the impact of these developments and often exacerbated them by playing down, in the opinion of many Russians, of the role members of non-Russians groups played in the rising tide of crime across the country.
Given this pattern, Pal’tsev says, many Russians in Kondopoga and elsewhere are infuriated both by the actions of the new arrivals whose culture and mores are very different than their own and by the actions or -- more commonly -- inactions of their own government in responding to this new reality.
The intensity of these feelings meant that it took very little to set off the Russian community in Kondopoga and that the first demand of that community was that Moscow and its local representatives do something to defend the rights and interests of the majority or at least get out of the way and allow Russians to do so on their own.
Such attitudes are not confined to Kondopoga, Pal’tsev continues, citing a variety of survey data to support his point. And they will only intensify if Moscow does not recognize that “the majority of Russians” are unhappy with many of the changes, ethnic as well as economic, that have shaken their lives over the last 15 years.
If the government fails to implement a serious nationality policy, he said, then “a further sharpening of inter-ethnic relations” will inevitably occur. And in the relatively near future, that trend could even lead to “the disintegration of the [Russian] state” much as anger against hapless Soviet officials helped power the destruction of the USSR.
Baku, January 7 – Increasing tensions between Russians and Caucasian migrants and Moscow’s failure to address this problem mean that violent clashes like those which occurred in Kondopoga at the end of summer in 2006 could be repeated “at any time and in any territory of the Russian Federation,” according to a new investigation.
In a detailed study of what happened in that Karelian city 18 months ago, Igor’ Pal’tsev suggests that Kondopoga represents “in miniature” the country as a whole. Neither its population nor its officials were unique in any way, and consequently, similar incidents are likely (http://www.rosbaltnord.ru/2008/01/05/445361.html).
Indeed, the human rights advisor to the Karelian government told RosbaltNord.ru at the end of last week, not only have similar clashes already been reported in a few cities, but he and most residents of Karelia believe that there already have been far more of them than officials have been willing to admit or the media report.
The 38-page study features a chronology, interviews with participants and experts, and a vast array of polling data. But because the report was released just before the holidays, it attracted little attention. (For the report itself: http://321.karelia.ru/ December 20; for a first news story: http://www.rosbaltnord.ru/2007/12/19/441777.html.)
Now, with the winter holidays approaching their end and links to the report appearing in the past few days not only on the anti-immigrant portal Movement Against Illegal Immigration (dpni.com) but also the religious affairs site of the Institute on Religion and Politics (i-r-p.ru), that almost certainly will change.
Two groups are likely to reject Pal’tsev’s findings out of hand: those in Moscow who will view his argument as an effort by Karelian officials to escape blame, and those both in the Russian capital and elsewhere who will be disturbed by his focus on the reasons many ethnic Russians feel so angry rather than on the rights of minorities.
But Pal’tsev’s report is important precisely because he puts Kondopoga in the broader context of social and political change and of the absence of an effective Russian nationality policy and because he focuses on the attitudes of the ethnic Russian majority, often the last group whose attitudes human rights organizations focus on.
Citing poll results and quoting those directly involved in Kondopoga, Pal’tsev insists that the crisis there was the result of the social changes that took place not only there but throughout the country after 1991, changes that brought more Russians into contact with non-Russians and reordered the ethnic hierarchy most had come to expect.
On the one hand, he notes, the new freedoms individuals had to move from one place to another and to open small businesses and thus possibly enrich themselves were exploited far more often by people from the Caucasus rather than by the ethnic Russians themselves, a trend that threatened the primacy Russians had always assumed was theirs.
And on the other hand, he argues, the central Russian government, given its focus on economic issues, both ignored the impact of these developments and often exacerbated them by playing down, in the opinion of many Russians, of the role members of non-Russians groups played in the rising tide of crime across the country.
Given this pattern, Pal’tsev says, many Russians in Kondopoga and elsewhere are infuriated both by the actions of the new arrivals whose culture and mores are very different than their own and by the actions or -- more commonly -- inactions of their own government in responding to this new reality.
The intensity of these feelings meant that it took very little to set off the Russian community in Kondopoga and that the first demand of that community was that Moscow and its local representatives do something to defend the rights and interests of the majority or at least get out of the way and allow Russians to do so on their own.
Such attitudes are not confined to Kondopoga, Pal’tsev continues, citing a variety of survey data to support his point. And they will only intensify if Moscow does not recognize that “the majority of Russians” are unhappy with many of the changes, ethnic as well as economic, that have shaken their lives over the last 15 years.
If the government fails to implement a serious nationality policy, he said, then “a further sharpening of inter-ethnic relations” will inevitably occur. And in the relatively near future, that trend could even lead to “the disintegration of the [Russian] state” much as anger against hapless Soviet officials helped power the destruction of the USSR.
Window on Eurasia: ‘Not By Oil Alone’— Azerbaijan’s Wine Industry Bounces Back
Paul Goble
Baku, January 7 – Azerbaijan’s wine industry, nearly destroyed by Mikhail Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign, the Armenian occupation of 20 percent of that country in the 1980s, and the political and economic disorders of the early 1990s, is rapidly recovering both in terms of output and quality.
And while there is little chance that Azerbaijani wine sales will be more important than oil exports as a source of income – and believe it or not, wine earned Baku more than oil as recently as 35 years ago – viticulture there is already playing an increasingly important economic and social role.
In a delightfully upbeat assessment published last week under the title “Not By Oil Alone,” Ismail Agakishiyev, a Moscow State University specialist on the post-Soviet states, traces the complicated rise, fall and recovery of viticulture in Azerbaijan and the production of wine and cognac there (http://www.ia-centr.ru/expert/156/).
Grapes have been cultivated and wines produced in what is now Azerbaijan for millennia, as classical writers like Herodotus and Strabo testify and more recent archeological investigations confirm, Agakishiyev notes, a reflection of the more than 450 different categories of wild grape found there.
But the modern period of wine production has its origins in the arrival of Germans from Württemberg who were settled in the region by tsar Aleksandr I in 1817-18 as part of St. Petersburg’s effort to tighten its grip on what was then one of its southern provinces.
In the course of the 19th century, German firms there took the lead in developing both wine and cognac, shipping both north to Russian markets. Following the Bolshevik revolution, these firms were nationalized and continued to produce some of the highest quality wines and cognacs in the Soviet Union.
Azerbaijani wine and cognac production peaked at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, the Moscow State University scholar says, with more than 1.5 million tons of grapes harvested annually and more than 100 million rubles earned from wine production alone.
But these accomplished were nearly wiped out in the late 1980s and early 1990s by three events. First, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s ill-conceived and badly carried out anti-alcohol campaign led to the destruction of more than 130,000 hectares of vineyards as well as the closure of 192 processing plants.
Those actions entailed an estimated direct cost of more than 630 million rubles but more seriously they ravaged rural Azerbaijan by throwing thousands of people out of their traditional line of work and leaving them with little hope for employment save to flee to the already overburdened cities.
Second, Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign by throwing thousands of ethnic Armenians in Karabakh out of work helped spark the conflict over that region and led ultimately to the Armenian occupation of nearly 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory and the additional loss to Baku of access to 43,000 hectares of wine.
And third, the economic dislocations of the end of the Soviet Union also played a role, disrupting traditional relationships between producers and consumers and leading to the collapse of many firms, including those involved in all stages of wine and cognac production, and leading to a further retrenchment in this sector.
As a result, while there had been 276,000 hectares of vineyards in 1985, by the early 1990s, there were only 20,000 hectares still being cultivated. The rest had been destroyed either at Moscow’s order, by military conflict, or by the departure of those who had long taken care of them.
There the situation might have remained, Agakishiyev writes, had it not been for Azerbaijan’s decision in 2001 to use oil revenues to begin restoring vineyards at the rate of 500 to 800 hectares a year. So far, that project, decreed by then President Heydar Aliyev, has led to the renewed cultivation of 8,000 hectares.
Azerbaijan has been assisted in this process both by the International Institute of Genetic Resources which is interested in maintaining the genetic diversity of grapes and other crops and by foreign firms, both from the Russian Federation and Western Europe, who believe there is profit to be made.
According to the Moscow scholar, the latter have every reason for such beliefs. After a brief bout of problems with fraudulent production in the 1990s, Baku has reestablished effective quality control and its wines have won 27 prizes at international competitions since 1991.
But as important as these profits are in powering the recovery of Azerbaijan’s wine industry, there is another and potentially far more important consequence of that development. It can help rural Azerbaijan recover and that by itself will help the country as a whole escape the time of troubles the last 20 years have been.
Baku, January 7 – Azerbaijan’s wine industry, nearly destroyed by Mikhail Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign, the Armenian occupation of 20 percent of that country in the 1980s, and the political and economic disorders of the early 1990s, is rapidly recovering both in terms of output and quality.
And while there is little chance that Azerbaijani wine sales will be more important than oil exports as a source of income – and believe it or not, wine earned Baku more than oil as recently as 35 years ago – viticulture there is already playing an increasingly important economic and social role.
In a delightfully upbeat assessment published last week under the title “Not By Oil Alone,” Ismail Agakishiyev, a Moscow State University specialist on the post-Soviet states, traces the complicated rise, fall and recovery of viticulture in Azerbaijan and the production of wine and cognac there (http://www.ia-centr.ru/expert/156/).
Grapes have been cultivated and wines produced in what is now Azerbaijan for millennia, as classical writers like Herodotus and Strabo testify and more recent archeological investigations confirm, Agakishiyev notes, a reflection of the more than 450 different categories of wild grape found there.
But the modern period of wine production has its origins in the arrival of Germans from Württemberg who were settled in the region by tsar Aleksandr I in 1817-18 as part of St. Petersburg’s effort to tighten its grip on what was then one of its southern provinces.
In the course of the 19th century, German firms there took the lead in developing both wine and cognac, shipping both north to Russian markets. Following the Bolshevik revolution, these firms were nationalized and continued to produce some of the highest quality wines and cognacs in the Soviet Union.
Azerbaijani wine and cognac production peaked at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, the Moscow State University scholar says, with more than 1.5 million tons of grapes harvested annually and more than 100 million rubles earned from wine production alone.
But these accomplished were nearly wiped out in the late 1980s and early 1990s by three events. First, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s ill-conceived and badly carried out anti-alcohol campaign led to the destruction of more than 130,000 hectares of vineyards as well as the closure of 192 processing plants.
Those actions entailed an estimated direct cost of more than 630 million rubles but more seriously they ravaged rural Azerbaijan by throwing thousands of people out of their traditional line of work and leaving them with little hope for employment save to flee to the already overburdened cities.
Second, Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign by throwing thousands of ethnic Armenians in Karabakh out of work helped spark the conflict over that region and led ultimately to the Armenian occupation of nearly 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory and the additional loss to Baku of access to 43,000 hectares of wine.
And third, the economic dislocations of the end of the Soviet Union also played a role, disrupting traditional relationships between producers and consumers and leading to the collapse of many firms, including those involved in all stages of wine and cognac production, and leading to a further retrenchment in this sector.
As a result, while there had been 276,000 hectares of vineyards in 1985, by the early 1990s, there were only 20,000 hectares still being cultivated. The rest had been destroyed either at Moscow’s order, by military conflict, or by the departure of those who had long taken care of them.
There the situation might have remained, Agakishiyev writes, had it not been for Azerbaijan’s decision in 2001 to use oil revenues to begin restoring vineyards at the rate of 500 to 800 hectares a year. So far, that project, decreed by then President Heydar Aliyev, has led to the renewed cultivation of 8,000 hectares.
Azerbaijan has been assisted in this process both by the International Institute of Genetic Resources which is interested in maintaining the genetic diversity of grapes and other crops and by foreign firms, both from the Russian Federation and Western Europe, who believe there is profit to be made.
According to the Moscow scholar, the latter have every reason for such beliefs. After a brief bout of problems with fraudulent production in the 1990s, Baku has reestablished effective quality control and its wines have won 27 prizes at international competitions since 1991.
But as important as these profits are in powering the recovery of Azerbaijan’s wine industry, there is another and potentially far more important consequence of that development. It can help rural Azerbaijan recover and that by itself will help the country as a whole escape the time of troubles the last 20 years have been.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Note to Visitors
Because I am relocating, I will post my next Window at the beginning of the week of January 7. Best Regards and Happy Holidays. Paul Goble
Window on Eurasia: Putin Said Losing Control of Xenophobia He Helped Legitimize
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 3 – President Vladimir Putin is rapidly losing control over the rising tide of Russian xenophobia and ethno-nationalism that almost a decade ago helped him become president and that in the years since he has helped to legitimize, according to one of Moscow’s leading experts on these phenomena.
In a new book, a chapter of which is available online, Aleksandr Verkhovskiy argues that Putin and his regime no longer can hope to reverse this trend by their own actions and consequently are simply trying to redirect Russian anger away from domestic targets toward foreign ones (http://www.polit.ru/research/12/28/verhovsky.html).
But while the Russian leader can certainly help whip up Russian anger toward the West with his use of what some have called “civilizational nationalism,” the SOVA Analytic center expert says, there seems little chance that this will reduce the threat xenophobic ethno-nationalism represents for the future of the Russian Federation.
On the one hand, the SOVA Analytic Center specialist says, xenophobic attitudes increasingly infects Russian ethno-nationalism because Putin and other senior leaders have appeared to sanction growing hostility among many ethnic Russians toward many minorities, especially in the wake of the Kondopoga riots of a year ago.
And on the other, Russian ethno-nationalism itself now affects groups and parties across virtually the entire political spectrum, again including United Russia and others close to Putin, rather than being confined as they were for most of the 1990 to marginal individuals and groups with little or no chance of coming to power.
Consequently, and to a certain extent in ways that parallel his exploitation of xenophobic attitudes against Chechens, Putin is again serving as the midwife of a phenomenon which may mean future Russian leaders will have to defer to this trend even more than he has.
In the course of his 12,000-word article, Verkhovskiy covers the ideological evolution of Russian ethno-nationalism over the last 16 years. While he notes that his treatment of this topic is in many ways superficial, he touches on more topics than can be mentioned here.
Nonetheless, given the importance of this issue, Verkhovskiy’s specific arguments deserve careful consideration, whether they have been made before and are largely common ground or they are something new and certain -- because they concern Putin and his policies -- to be controversial.
In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, he writes, the ethno-nationalisms of minority groups within the Russian Federation played a far greater role in Russian political life than did the nationalism of ethnic Russian majority. But by 1995, the relative importance of the two had changed.
By that time, ethno-nationalism among minority groups had run its course, and members of most of these groups, with the obvious exception of the Chechens and a few others, shifted from efforts at national self-determination toward a concern with the defense of their rights as ethnic minorities.
And precisely because the Yeltsin regime was so hostile to Russian nationalism, many Russians came to feel that they were the truly “insulted and injured,” a sense that helped power ethno-nationalism at the mass level and the articulation of various ethno-national agendas by a series of typically small marginal groups.
Verkhovskiy surveys the programs of six of these groups – the Red Patriots, the Black Hundreds revivalists, the neo-Eurasians, the neo-Nazis, the White Power skinheads, and the Russian separatists – in order to show that each was more concerned about ideological niceties than about winning support from the regime or the population.
But then, he continues, the rise of Putin changed the relationship among Russian nationalists, the Russian population more generally, and the Russian president.
If the Russian nationalists of the 1990s almost invariably viewed President Boris Yeltsin as the enemy, the Russian nationalists of the 2000s often view Putin not only as someone they can support but – and this is even more important to many -- as a leader who intentionally or not has paved the way for them to come to power.
That in turn led some nationalists to soft-pedal their rhetoric in the hopes of gaining influence with both the people and the political parties that might contribute to their further rise. And that in turn has meant that as a group, they began to articulate a new national populism, one drawing on social as well as ethnic themes.
That shift made their programs less offensive to many both in Russia and outside – after all, they now talking about addressing real social problems rather than attacking ethnic minorities there were increasingly interested in stressing Russia’s differences with the West.
But it did not mean that everyone involved in this movement had become less xenophobic or even racist, Verkhovskiy insists, but it did mean that their new stance offered Putin and some of those around him with the hope that they could redirect and thus assume some measure of control over this set of attitudes by playing to this theme.
Three factors helped promote this process, Verkhovskiy says. First, “the increasing legitimization of nationalist ideals and xenophobic emotions characteristic for the political scene and the mass media in the new decade allowed [these groups] to broaden the circle of likeminded people” less concerned about ideology as such.
Second, because ethno-nationalism had infected virtually all political parties and groups, it became more an influence group or set of attitudes within most of them rather than a single party that could be isolated and controlled. Indeed, Kremlin efforts to set up such a party have repeatedly failed.
If there is today no single Russian nationalist party, however, there is a community of nationalists, many of whom passed through the marginal groups in the 1990s and now work to influence the parties, media outlets and government offices where they now sit, a network that the Kremlin has not been willing or perhaps able to destroy.
And third, the regime itself, from Putin down, has been infected by these ideas. After all, as Verkhovskiy notes, the president has appeared to legitimate many of them both in his often inflammatory statements about the Chechens and in his actions or non-actions concerning many other minorities.
But as other statements by the Russian president show, Putin appears to be concerned that for many Russian xenophobic nationalists, he has not been willing to go as far as they would like either to strike out at immigrants or promote the idea of a “Russia for the Russians.”
Indeed, at least some of the more extreme xenophobic elements and ethno-nationalists among the Russians certainly view what Verkhovskiy describes as Putin’s latest effort to refocus their anger away from the domestic minorities to foreign states as evidence of this.
This effort involves the promotion of a still amorphous set of ideas that another Moscow specialist on Russian xenophobia, Emil Pain, has labeled “civilizational nationalism,” the view that Russia is a unique civilization very different from and necessarily at odds with the West.
Among the key elements of this concept are the following: Russia is not an ethnic whole or an empire but rather a civilization defined by its ideas. Its cultural and political traditions mean that it should not follow the West. And its ideological core is provided by Russian Orthodoxy.
Aleksandr Panarin, a neo-Eurasian in the past, is one of the chief articulators of this trend. In his writings, he openly opposes globalization, the West and “especially the United States” and seeks to promote a centralized and extremely authoritarian Russian state as a necessary step toward the formation of a new Orthodox Russian Empire.
As ideal types, Verkhovskiy says, imperial and ethnic nationalism contradict one another, but in practice, at least in the Russian case, they in fact interact and reinforce rather than undermine each other. But as he notes in conclusion, that observation begs another question: Can ethnic and “civilizational” nationalism co-exist?
Putin is clearly betting that they can, at least in his time. But his failure to anticipate the role that the monster of xenophobic Russian nationalism on which he rode to power would ultimately play suggests, Verkhovskiy concludes, that the current Russian president may be mistaken again.
Vienna, January 3 – President Vladimir Putin is rapidly losing control over the rising tide of Russian xenophobia and ethno-nationalism that almost a decade ago helped him become president and that in the years since he has helped to legitimize, according to one of Moscow’s leading experts on these phenomena.
In a new book, a chapter of which is available online, Aleksandr Verkhovskiy argues that Putin and his regime no longer can hope to reverse this trend by their own actions and consequently are simply trying to redirect Russian anger away from domestic targets toward foreign ones (http://www.polit.ru/research/12/28/verhovsky.html).
But while the Russian leader can certainly help whip up Russian anger toward the West with his use of what some have called “civilizational nationalism,” the SOVA Analytic center expert says, there seems little chance that this will reduce the threat xenophobic ethno-nationalism represents for the future of the Russian Federation.
On the one hand, the SOVA Analytic Center specialist says, xenophobic attitudes increasingly infects Russian ethno-nationalism because Putin and other senior leaders have appeared to sanction growing hostility among many ethnic Russians toward many minorities, especially in the wake of the Kondopoga riots of a year ago.
And on the other, Russian ethno-nationalism itself now affects groups and parties across virtually the entire political spectrum, again including United Russia and others close to Putin, rather than being confined as they were for most of the 1990 to marginal individuals and groups with little or no chance of coming to power.
Consequently, and to a certain extent in ways that parallel his exploitation of xenophobic attitudes against Chechens, Putin is again serving as the midwife of a phenomenon which may mean future Russian leaders will have to defer to this trend even more than he has.
In the course of his 12,000-word article, Verkhovskiy covers the ideological evolution of Russian ethno-nationalism over the last 16 years. While he notes that his treatment of this topic is in many ways superficial, he touches on more topics than can be mentioned here.
Nonetheless, given the importance of this issue, Verkhovskiy’s specific arguments deserve careful consideration, whether they have been made before and are largely common ground or they are something new and certain -- because they concern Putin and his policies -- to be controversial.
In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, he writes, the ethno-nationalisms of minority groups within the Russian Federation played a far greater role in Russian political life than did the nationalism of ethnic Russian majority. But by 1995, the relative importance of the two had changed.
By that time, ethno-nationalism among minority groups had run its course, and members of most of these groups, with the obvious exception of the Chechens and a few others, shifted from efforts at national self-determination toward a concern with the defense of their rights as ethnic minorities.
And precisely because the Yeltsin regime was so hostile to Russian nationalism, many Russians came to feel that they were the truly “insulted and injured,” a sense that helped power ethno-nationalism at the mass level and the articulation of various ethno-national agendas by a series of typically small marginal groups.
Verkhovskiy surveys the programs of six of these groups – the Red Patriots, the Black Hundreds revivalists, the neo-Eurasians, the neo-Nazis, the White Power skinheads, and the Russian separatists – in order to show that each was more concerned about ideological niceties than about winning support from the regime or the population.
But then, he continues, the rise of Putin changed the relationship among Russian nationalists, the Russian population more generally, and the Russian president.
If the Russian nationalists of the 1990s almost invariably viewed President Boris Yeltsin as the enemy, the Russian nationalists of the 2000s often view Putin not only as someone they can support but – and this is even more important to many -- as a leader who intentionally or not has paved the way for them to come to power.
That in turn led some nationalists to soft-pedal their rhetoric in the hopes of gaining influence with both the people and the political parties that might contribute to their further rise. And that in turn has meant that as a group, they began to articulate a new national populism, one drawing on social as well as ethnic themes.
That shift made their programs less offensive to many both in Russia and outside – after all, they now talking about addressing real social problems rather than attacking ethnic minorities there were increasingly interested in stressing Russia’s differences with the West.
But it did not mean that everyone involved in this movement had become less xenophobic or even racist, Verkhovskiy insists, but it did mean that their new stance offered Putin and some of those around him with the hope that they could redirect and thus assume some measure of control over this set of attitudes by playing to this theme.
Three factors helped promote this process, Verkhovskiy says. First, “the increasing legitimization of nationalist ideals and xenophobic emotions characteristic for the political scene and the mass media in the new decade allowed [these groups] to broaden the circle of likeminded people” less concerned about ideology as such.
Second, because ethno-nationalism had infected virtually all political parties and groups, it became more an influence group or set of attitudes within most of them rather than a single party that could be isolated and controlled. Indeed, Kremlin efforts to set up such a party have repeatedly failed.
If there is today no single Russian nationalist party, however, there is a community of nationalists, many of whom passed through the marginal groups in the 1990s and now work to influence the parties, media outlets and government offices where they now sit, a network that the Kremlin has not been willing or perhaps able to destroy.
And third, the regime itself, from Putin down, has been infected by these ideas. After all, as Verkhovskiy notes, the president has appeared to legitimate many of them both in his often inflammatory statements about the Chechens and in his actions or non-actions concerning many other minorities.
But as other statements by the Russian president show, Putin appears to be concerned that for many Russian xenophobic nationalists, he has not been willing to go as far as they would like either to strike out at immigrants or promote the idea of a “Russia for the Russians.”
Indeed, at least some of the more extreme xenophobic elements and ethno-nationalists among the Russians certainly view what Verkhovskiy describes as Putin’s latest effort to refocus their anger away from the domestic minorities to foreign states as evidence of this.
This effort involves the promotion of a still amorphous set of ideas that another Moscow specialist on Russian xenophobia, Emil Pain, has labeled “civilizational nationalism,” the view that Russia is a unique civilization very different from and necessarily at odds with the West.
Among the key elements of this concept are the following: Russia is not an ethnic whole or an empire but rather a civilization defined by its ideas. Its cultural and political traditions mean that it should not follow the West. And its ideological core is provided by Russian Orthodoxy.
Aleksandr Panarin, a neo-Eurasian in the past, is one of the chief articulators of this trend. In his writings, he openly opposes globalization, the West and “especially the United States” and seeks to promote a centralized and extremely authoritarian Russian state as a necessary step toward the formation of a new Orthodox Russian Empire.
As ideal types, Verkhovskiy says, imperial and ethnic nationalism contradict one another, but in practice, at least in the Russian case, they in fact interact and reinforce rather than undermine each other. But as he notes in conclusion, that observation begs another question: Can ethnic and “civilizational” nationalism co-exist?
Putin is clearly betting that they can, at least in his time. But his failure to anticipate the role that the monster of xenophobic Russian nationalism on which he rode to power would ultimately play suggests, Verkhovskiy concludes, that the current Russian president may be mistaken again.
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