Paul Goble
Baku, January 12 – Russians reacted angrily when Andrew Kuchins, an American specialist, recently laid out a nightmare scenario for their country – see, among others, http://www.apn.ru/publications/article18872 -- but now some of them have found an earlier American seer whose predictions they very much want to believe in.
That prophet is Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), who is remembered in the U.S. mostly if at all for his writings about the “lost continent” of Atlantis. But as Komsomol’skaya Pravda pointed out this week, the American seer predicted a bright future for Russia in the 21st century as the leader of a new non-communist USSR.
And even more to the liking of some, he also predicted more than half a century ago that the east coast of the United States would be submerged as a result of global warming, a development that would significantly detract from that country’s ability to challenge Russia (http://www.kp.ru/daily/24029.4/93145).
Cayce, who worked at various times as a unlicensed doctor, hypnotist, and photographer, won a following first for his medical cures and psychic readings and then for his numerous books. Later, his fame was spread by the even more enthusiastic reports of his followers.
One of the places Cayce wrote the most about, Komsomol’skaya Pravda pointed out, was Russia. And because so many of his predictions for that country in the 20th century, it suggested, Russians should pay close attention to what he said would happen there in the 21st.
Among Cayce’s predictions concerning Russia in the last century were the following: He said there would be two world wars in the 20th century, he said that the world would go into an economic crisis in 1929. And he said that “communists would lose their power” in Russia before that century ended.
With regard to Russia in the current century, Cayce wrote that having liberated itself from communism, that country would fall into a deep crisis, one from which it would escape “thanks to friendship with a people on whose money is written ‘We Believe in God,’” a clear reference to the inscription “In God We Trust” on the American dollar.
But this post-communist crisis, Cayce predicted, would not last long. And “out of [the new, post-communist] Russia hope will come into the world. Not from the communists or the Bolsheviks but from free Russia,” thanks “above all” to “the religious development” of the Russian people.
As that takes place, Cayce predicted, “those people who have close relations [with Russia] will begin to live better,” and Russia itself will take the lead in establishing “the organization of life [not just within its own borders] but across the entire world.”
One of Cayce’s predictions for the future, Komsomol’skaya Pravda suggested, experts “only a few years ago” would have “considered entirely fantastic” but now looks as if it could happen. The American prophet said that he foresaw Russia taking the lead in laying the foundation for “the rebirth of the Soviet Union after 2010.”
Like the Slavic seer Vanga with whom the Moscow paper compares him, Cayce clearly believed that “Russia will again become a great empire.” Moreover, because of global warming, the eastern portion of the United States will be inundated, rendering that country less of a challenge to the new Russia.
Cayce promised his readers that he would be back to check on the accuracy of his predictions, telling them that he would be born again in the U.S. state of Nebraska in 2100. At that time, he said, those affected by his predictions , including the Russians, would be able to hold him fully accountable.
Many Americans still buy copies of Cayce’s prophecies, but few scholars take him seriously. Indeed, in a transparent effort to appear balanced, Komsomol’skaya Pravda interviewed a skeptical American scholar. But by so doing, it implicitly suggested that it couldn’t find someone equally skeptical in Russia.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Window on Eurasia: Komis Get a Nationality Ministry Again But Will It Save Them?
Paul Goble
Baku, January 11 -- The Komis again have a ministry of nationalities but its leaders appear more concerned about using it to counter Finno-Ugric activities in the West than about saving a 250,000-member community whose future is very much in question because of a rising tide of social and economic problems.
On January 1, the Komi Republic government reestablished a ministry for nationality affairs, an institution that had existed between 1995 and 2003 but whose responsibilities had been assumed by a department within the republic’s ministry of culture (http://komionline.ru/news/75132).
The ministry’s head, Valeriy Korobov, who had been first deputy culture minister, said this week that the republic had abolished the earlier Minnats because its leaders had focused too narrowly on folkloric issues and that his had been created because Komis are increasingly interested in their roots and the rebirth of national traditions.
Moreover, he said, the new ministry, which includes representatives from various other administrative organs, will focus on a broad range of issues and play a coordinating role in the defense of the Komis and other minorities in a republic where ethnic Russians form nearly 60 percent of the population.
But his further comments suggest that Korobov, his staff, and the republic leadership may be more concerned with using this ministry to fend off international criticism of how the Russian authorities are treating Finno-Ugric populations than in actually addressing the problems of that community.
He pointedly noted that his ministry will have a special department for work with Finno-Ugric groups elsewhere and Komi diasporas in particular, and the republic media noted that along with this ministry, officials there have created a Finno-Ugric Cultural Center of the Russian Federation (http://komionline.ru/news/7364).
That institution will presumably work to counter the criticism officials and intellectuals in the three independent Finno-Ugric states – Estonia, Finland and Hungary – have levied at what is going on with their co-ethnic and co-linguistic communities in the Russian Federation.
That possibility, even likelihood, helps to explain the caution with which Komi intellectuals have greeted the restoration of an institution whose demise they opposed (http://www.komionline.ru/news/6715). They clearly hope it will do something for their community whose members are suffering so much.
One indication of just how bad things are came less than a week after the new ministry was created. Health officials reported that the Komis are literally drinking themselves to death, consuming as much as nine liters of pure alcohol per capita every year (http://www.mari.ee/rus/news/soc/2008/01/06.html).
Not only is that figure dramatically higher than in earlier years, but it is one liter more than the World Health Organization has said is the amount capable of damaging the genes of those who consume it. And since this figure is for the entire population, actual consumption by adult males is undoubtedly much higher still.
In addition to that looming health problem, the Komis face many of the same difficulties their fellow peoples of the Russian North do. And three of these problem areas were the subject of intense and worried coverage in the media of this enormous and increasingly troubled region.
First, officials reported that nearly half of the 40 languages spoken in this region are at the edge of extinction in this generation, and despite efforts by the Russian government to slow this process, the majority of young people in most of these language communities do not speak their native tongue (http://www.raipon.ru, January 9).
Second, reflecting Vladimir Putin’s efforts to combine smaller non-Russian regions with larger Russian ones, Arkhangelsk officials may stop construction of what would have been the only road linking the Nenets District with the rest of Russia
(http://www.barentsobserver.com/index.php?id=4448931&cat=16149&xforceredir=1&noredir=1).
And third, the folding in the Ust-Orda Buryat Autonomous District into Irkutsk Oblast has undermined the interests of the Buryats, highlighting the duplicity of the promises made before the referendum and prompting their leaders to fight back (http://tayga.info/news/26293/ and http://www.aifvs.ru/nomer/555/01-1.shtml).
Of course, in some parts of the Russian North relations between officials and members of the titular nationality and its intellectual leaders are better than others. In the Komi Republic, for example, they have been relatively good -- a least compared to the situation in the Republic of Mari El.
There, the ethnic Russian president has never been able to find a common language with that Finno-Ugric nationality. Instead, he has acted as if he were the leader of an occupying force, alternately treating the Mari as the enemy and staging ceremonies to suggest otherwise (http://www.mari.ee/rus/articles/culture/2008/01/01.html).
Given these problems, the recreation of a nationalities ministry in the Komi Republic is very much a step in the right direction, but it may be that those who created in it were more interested in such imagery than they were in making sure that the Komis and their fellow peoples of the North have a future.
Baku, January 11 -- The Komis again have a ministry of nationalities but its leaders appear more concerned about using it to counter Finno-Ugric activities in the West than about saving a 250,000-member community whose future is very much in question because of a rising tide of social and economic problems.
On January 1, the Komi Republic government reestablished a ministry for nationality affairs, an institution that had existed between 1995 and 2003 but whose responsibilities had been assumed by a department within the republic’s ministry of culture (http://komionline.ru/news/75132).
The ministry’s head, Valeriy Korobov, who had been first deputy culture minister, said this week that the republic had abolished the earlier Minnats because its leaders had focused too narrowly on folkloric issues and that his had been created because Komis are increasingly interested in their roots and the rebirth of national traditions.
Moreover, he said, the new ministry, which includes representatives from various other administrative organs, will focus on a broad range of issues and play a coordinating role in the defense of the Komis and other minorities in a republic where ethnic Russians form nearly 60 percent of the population.
But his further comments suggest that Korobov, his staff, and the republic leadership may be more concerned with using this ministry to fend off international criticism of how the Russian authorities are treating Finno-Ugric populations than in actually addressing the problems of that community.
He pointedly noted that his ministry will have a special department for work with Finno-Ugric groups elsewhere and Komi diasporas in particular, and the republic media noted that along with this ministry, officials there have created a Finno-Ugric Cultural Center of the Russian Federation (http://komionline.ru/news/7364).
That institution will presumably work to counter the criticism officials and intellectuals in the three independent Finno-Ugric states – Estonia, Finland and Hungary – have levied at what is going on with their co-ethnic and co-linguistic communities in the Russian Federation.
That possibility, even likelihood, helps to explain the caution with which Komi intellectuals have greeted the restoration of an institution whose demise they opposed (http://www.komionline.ru/news/6715). They clearly hope it will do something for their community whose members are suffering so much.
One indication of just how bad things are came less than a week after the new ministry was created. Health officials reported that the Komis are literally drinking themselves to death, consuming as much as nine liters of pure alcohol per capita every year (http://www.mari.ee/rus/news/soc/2008/01/06.html).
Not only is that figure dramatically higher than in earlier years, but it is one liter more than the World Health Organization has said is the amount capable of damaging the genes of those who consume it. And since this figure is for the entire population, actual consumption by adult males is undoubtedly much higher still.
In addition to that looming health problem, the Komis face many of the same difficulties their fellow peoples of the Russian North do. And three of these problem areas were the subject of intense and worried coverage in the media of this enormous and increasingly troubled region.
First, officials reported that nearly half of the 40 languages spoken in this region are at the edge of extinction in this generation, and despite efforts by the Russian government to slow this process, the majority of young people in most of these language communities do not speak their native tongue (http://www.raipon.ru, January 9).
Second, reflecting Vladimir Putin’s efforts to combine smaller non-Russian regions with larger Russian ones, Arkhangelsk officials may stop construction of what would have been the only road linking the Nenets District with the rest of Russia
(http://www.barentsobserver.com/index.php?id=4448931&cat=16149&xforceredir=1&noredir=1).
And third, the folding in the Ust-Orda Buryat Autonomous District into Irkutsk Oblast has undermined the interests of the Buryats, highlighting the duplicity of the promises made before the referendum and prompting their leaders to fight back (http://tayga.info/news/26293/ and http://www.aifvs.ru/nomer/555/01-1.shtml).
Of course, in some parts of the Russian North relations between officials and members of the titular nationality and its intellectual leaders are better than others. In the Komi Republic, for example, they have been relatively good -- a least compared to the situation in the Republic of Mari El.
There, the ethnic Russian president has never been able to find a common language with that Finno-Ugric nationality. Instead, he has acted as if he were the leader of an occupying force, alternately treating the Mari as the enemy and staging ceremonies to suggest otherwise (http://www.mari.ee/rus/articles/culture/2008/01/01.html).
Given these problems, the recreation of a nationalities ministry in the Komi Republic is very much a step in the right direction, but it may be that those who created in it were more interested in such imagery than they were in making sure that the Komis and their fellow peoples of the North have a future.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Window on Eurasia: Ingush Provide Definitive Evidence of Fraud in Russian Vote
Paul Goble
Baku, January 11 – More than half of the registered voters in Ingushetia have signed declarations that they did not take part in the December 2 elections, despite claims by the pro-Kremlin leadership there that 98 percent of the electorate voted and almost as high a percentage cast their ballots for President Putin’s United Russia Party.
This is thus the clearest and most definitive evidence yet of electoral fraud during that tally that most independent observers were confident had taken place, although this new information does not indicate whether the fraud was perpetrated on the Kremlin’s order or by regional subordinates keen to demonstrate their enthusiastic support for Putin.
And because this action is attracting the attention of Moscow newspapers and other media outlets, it is entirely possible that democracy activists in other parts of the Russian Federation where improbable participation rates were reported will copy what the Ingush have done.
On Wednesday night, Ingushetia.ru reported that organizers of the “I Didn’t Vote!” campaign in that republic had collected 87,340 declarations from Ingushetia residents over the age of 18 asserting that they did not take part in the December elections for the Russian Federation State Duma (http://www.ingushetiya.ru/news/12820.html).
Even if some of these declarations are themselves problematic, the vast number of them – 54.5. percent of the total number of those registered to vote there – provides convincing evidence that Ingush President Murat Zyazikov and his associates were stretching the truth when they reported that 98 percent of the electorate had taken part.
And the actual number of those not taking part in that December vote almost certainly was even greater than the “I Didn’t Vote!” campaign has found. Its organizers note that they have not yet visited some 24 villages and towns and are considering whether to continue their signature gathering for a few more days.
The signed declarations have been put into 290 volumes that are now in the hands of Moscow lawyers who plan to transmit them to the Procurator General of the Russian Federation with a request that the election results from Ingushetia at least be reviewed and possibly overturned.
Reporting of this kind is the reason for the continuing efforts by Zyazikov and Moscow to close down the independent-minded Ingushetia.ru site. Having failed to do so through pressure on the local ISP provider, redirection of visitors to porno sites, and threats on the life of the site owner’s father, this week the authorities did something new.
They overloaded the site’s popular forums with material so radical that its posting would certainly subject the site’s current owners to charges of extremism and thus forced them to restrict access to the forums to registered users lest such posts become the basis for officials to shut down the site itself (http://www.ingushetiya.ru/news/12813.html).
Baku, January 11 – More than half of the registered voters in Ingushetia have signed declarations that they did not take part in the December 2 elections, despite claims by the pro-Kremlin leadership there that 98 percent of the electorate voted and almost as high a percentage cast their ballots for President Putin’s United Russia Party.
This is thus the clearest and most definitive evidence yet of electoral fraud during that tally that most independent observers were confident had taken place, although this new information does not indicate whether the fraud was perpetrated on the Kremlin’s order or by regional subordinates keen to demonstrate their enthusiastic support for Putin.
And because this action is attracting the attention of Moscow newspapers and other media outlets, it is entirely possible that democracy activists in other parts of the Russian Federation where improbable participation rates were reported will copy what the Ingush have done.
On Wednesday night, Ingushetia.ru reported that organizers of the “I Didn’t Vote!” campaign in that republic had collected 87,340 declarations from Ingushetia residents over the age of 18 asserting that they did not take part in the December elections for the Russian Federation State Duma (http://www.ingushetiya.ru/news/12820.html).
Even if some of these declarations are themselves problematic, the vast number of them – 54.5. percent of the total number of those registered to vote there – provides convincing evidence that Ingush President Murat Zyazikov and his associates were stretching the truth when they reported that 98 percent of the electorate had taken part.
And the actual number of those not taking part in that December vote almost certainly was even greater than the “I Didn’t Vote!” campaign has found. Its organizers note that they have not yet visited some 24 villages and towns and are considering whether to continue their signature gathering for a few more days.
The signed declarations have been put into 290 volumes that are now in the hands of Moscow lawyers who plan to transmit them to the Procurator General of the Russian Federation with a request that the election results from Ingushetia at least be reviewed and possibly overturned.
Reporting of this kind is the reason for the continuing efforts by Zyazikov and Moscow to close down the independent-minded Ingushetia.ru site. Having failed to do so through pressure on the local ISP provider, redirection of visitors to porno sites, and threats on the life of the site owner’s father, this week the authorities did something new.
They overloaded the site’s popular forums with material so radical that its posting would certainly subject the site’s current owners to charges of extremism and thus forced them to restrict access to the forums to registered users lest such posts become the basis for officials to shut down the site itself (http://www.ingushetiya.ru/news/12813.html).
Window on Eurasia: Publishing Stalin Becomes Profitable -- Again -- in Putin’s Russia
Paul Goble
Baku, January 11 – Books about Joseph Stalin are becoming ever more numerous and their publication ever more profitable in the Russian Federation of Vladimir Putin, a development that is prompting his most devoted followers to revise, reprint and extend the Soviet dictator’s collected works.
In an article posted online this week, S. Yu. Ruchenkov says that those devoted to Stalin’s memory are not doing so for the money but rather to ensure that everyone will be able to overcome the distortions of Stalin’s record that have been introduced by his detractors (http://forum.msk.ru/material/news/424763.html).
Stalin’s own works, which ran to only 13 volumes at the time of his death, included far from all of what he had written, Ruchenkov notes, because the Soviet leader believed that his works should serve the propagandistic goal of leading the of the USSR upward toward communism.
But now, as more and more archival material has become available and as so much time has passed, Ruchenkov argues, history demands that those who appreciate Stalin republish the volumes issued in his lifetime, re-issue additional ones released in the late 1990s, and extend the series as more materials are located.
This effort was begun in 1997 by Moscow State University professor Richard Kosolapov, who oversaw the publication (with Ruchenkov’s assistance) of the three volumes – no. 14, 15, and 16 – that had already been assembled during Stalin’s lifetime but not published because of his death and of three additional volumes as well.
The first three were selected according to the same principles and formatted in the same way as the 13 volumes published prior to 1953 and covered many of the most important events in Soviet history between 1934 and 1953. The last three covered a wider time frame and included many documents Stalin himself had chosen not to publish.
Tragically in the view of Ruchenkov, “there was no place for the achievements of the leader of the country in the pre-war 1930s and for the Supreme Commander in the country of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev.” But now under Putin, there is not only a place but an expanding market for his works.
Because Russians now have direct access to Stalin’s works, he continues, they will recognize that he was “the bright representative of the new Bolshevik type of leaders who led the struggle of workers, peasants and soldiers with the landowners, capitalists and their protectors abroad” and not the monster he is often made out to be.
In volume 20, which is devoted to Stalin’s role in the first period of the Russian Civil War, Ruchenkov says, “more than half of the documents will be published for the first time.” And a planned volume 21 will be devoted to Stalin’s role in the defense of Petrograd (St. Petersburg).
Future volumes will carry Stalin’s story further and undermine the lies of both Western-oriented liberals who see him only as a brutal dictator and contemporary Russian “patriots” who have overturned most of the Soviet leader’s legacy and “bow down” before priests at Christmas and Easter.
But because many of the volumes published in the late 1990s are now out of print, Ruchenkov continues, he and his colleagues are issuing a second edition of numbers 14 through 16 as well as a series of “solid collections” of specialized materials by and about Stalin.
One of these volumes will focus on Stalin’s negotiation with the Germans that resulted in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, an accord whose associated texts – known to most as “the secret protocols” – have been, in the opinion of Ruchenkov falsified by liberal historians.
“For the first time,” he writes, Russian readers will be able to familiarize themselves with “adequate Russian translation of this most important historical document” and they will learn what really happened during the war with Finland and during the first days of the German invasion of the USSR.
Moreover, the second edition of volume 14 includes Stalin’s personal orders to Yezhov and Beria concerning “the theme of repressions.” Not surprisingly, Ruchenkov says, “the personal directives of the leader” to these heads of the security services were not published during his lifetime.
But despite all the materials that Ruchenkov reports that he and his colleagues have gathered, there are clearly many more he and they have not seen. A large number of documents remain in the FSB’s Central Archive, and the leaders of that security agency have “politely refused” his requests to examine and make use of it.
Consequently, despite the volumes already published in the two series, “The Organs of State Security in the Great Fatherland War” and “Stalin and the Lubyanka” – which was overseen by Aleksandr Yakovlev, who Ruchenkov describes as that “vile rascal” – much of Stalin’s legacy is unlikely to get into print anytime soon.
But as important as the revised volume 14 is, Ruchenkov continues, “the real pearl of the publication” series he is overseeing will be the revised and expanded volume 15 that is devoted to the war years, the time of his most titanic efforts on behalf of the Soviet people.
The second edition of volume 16 will also be significantly revised and enlarged, he says, including previously unpublished materials from the presidential and Politburo archives. It will thus provide the fullest picture yet of Stalin’s role at the start of the Cold War and in relations with other countries in the socialist camp.
At the end of his article, Ruchenkov provides information on how those who want it can order volume 14 electronically for only 200 rubles (8 U.S. dollars) plus shipping – and how they can get it for even less if they order at one time six copies for their friends and associates.
Clearly, Stalin’s cause lives on in the minds of some – but it has been infused with the most up-to-date principles of modern marketing, something the late Soviet dictator would likely have viewed as a contradiction in terms.
Baku, January 11 – Books about Joseph Stalin are becoming ever more numerous and their publication ever more profitable in the Russian Federation of Vladimir Putin, a development that is prompting his most devoted followers to revise, reprint and extend the Soviet dictator’s collected works.
In an article posted online this week, S. Yu. Ruchenkov says that those devoted to Stalin’s memory are not doing so for the money but rather to ensure that everyone will be able to overcome the distortions of Stalin’s record that have been introduced by his detractors (http://forum.msk.ru/material/news/424763.html).
Stalin’s own works, which ran to only 13 volumes at the time of his death, included far from all of what he had written, Ruchenkov notes, because the Soviet leader believed that his works should serve the propagandistic goal of leading the of the USSR upward toward communism.
But now, as more and more archival material has become available and as so much time has passed, Ruchenkov argues, history demands that those who appreciate Stalin republish the volumes issued in his lifetime, re-issue additional ones released in the late 1990s, and extend the series as more materials are located.
This effort was begun in 1997 by Moscow State University professor Richard Kosolapov, who oversaw the publication (with Ruchenkov’s assistance) of the three volumes – no. 14, 15, and 16 – that had already been assembled during Stalin’s lifetime but not published because of his death and of three additional volumes as well.
The first three were selected according to the same principles and formatted in the same way as the 13 volumes published prior to 1953 and covered many of the most important events in Soviet history between 1934 and 1953. The last three covered a wider time frame and included many documents Stalin himself had chosen not to publish.
Tragically in the view of Ruchenkov, “there was no place for the achievements of the leader of the country in the pre-war 1930s and for the Supreme Commander in the country of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev.” But now under Putin, there is not only a place but an expanding market for his works.
Because Russians now have direct access to Stalin’s works, he continues, they will recognize that he was “the bright representative of the new Bolshevik type of leaders who led the struggle of workers, peasants and soldiers with the landowners, capitalists and their protectors abroad” and not the monster he is often made out to be.
In volume 20, which is devoted to Stalin’s role in the first period of the Russian Civil War, Ruchenkov says, “more than half of the documents will be published for the first time.” And a planned volume 21 will be devoted to Stalin’s role in the defense of Petrograd (St. Petersburg).
Future volumes will carry Stalin’s story further and undermine the lies of both Western-oriented liberals who see him only as a brutal dictator and contemporary Russian “patriots” who have overturned most of the Soviet leader’s legacy and “bow down” before priests at Christmas and Easter.
But because many of the volumes published in the late 1990s are now out of print, Ruchenkov continues, he and his colleagues are issuing a second edition of numbers 14 through 16 as well as a series of “solid collections” of specialized materials by and about Stalin.
One of these volumes will focus on Stalin’s negotiation with the Germans that resulted in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, an accord whose associated texts – known to most as “the secret protocols” – have been, in the opinion of Ruchenkov falsified by liberal historians.
“For the first time,” he writes, Russian readers will be able to familiarize themselves with “adequate Russian translation of this most important historical document” and they will learn what really happened during the war with Finland and during the first days of the German invasion of the USSR.
Moreover, the second edition of volume 14 includes Stalin’s personal orders to Yezhov and Beria concerning “the theme of repressions.” Not surprisingly, Ruchenkov says, “the personal directives of the leader” to these heads of the security services were not published during his lifetime.
But despite all the materials that Ruchenkov reports that he and his colleagues have gathered, there are clearly many more he and they have not seen. A large number of documents remain in the FSB’s Central Archive, and the leaders of that security agency have “politely refused” his requests to examine and make use of it.
Consequently, despite the volumes already published in the two series, “The Organs of State Security in the Great Fatherland War” and “Stalin and the Lubyanka” – which was overseen by Aleksandr Yakovlev, who Ruchenkov describes as that “vile rascal” – much of Stalin’s legacy is unlikely to get into print anytime soon.
But as important as the revised volume 14 is, Ruchenkov continues, “the real pearl of the publication” series he is overseeing will be the revised and expanded volume 15 that is devoted to the war years, the time of his most titanic efforts on behalf of the Soviet people.
The second edition of volume 16 will also be significantly revised and enlarged, he says, including previously unpublished materials from the presidential and Politburo archives. It will thus provide the fullest picture yet of Stalin’s role at the start of the Cold War and in relations with other countries in the socialist camp.
At the end of his article, Ruchenkov provides information on how those who want it can order volume 14 electronically for only 200 rubles (8 U.S. dollars) plus shipping – and how they can get it for even less if they order at one time six copies for their friends and associates.
Clearly, Stalin’s cause lives on in the minds of some – but it has been infused with the most up-to-date principles of modern marketing, something the late Soviet dictator would likely have viewed as a contradiction in terms.
Window on Eurasia: New Law Says Russian Firms Can’t be Called ‘Russian’ Any More
Paul Goble
Baku, January 11 – Tens of thousands of Russian firms, foreign businesses operating in that country, and non-governmental organizations there will have to change their names if a new Russian Federation law banning the use of a country’s name in their titles is strictly applied.
This is just one of dozens of new pieces of legislation that went into effect at the start of the year, some of which are prompting individuals and groups to sue, other acts are already having unintended consequences, and still a third group of new legislation almost certain to be revised or simply ignored.
For the first time since 1927, the Russian government is setting the rules for private businesses and NGOs. According to legislation that took effect January 1, firms and other organizations will not be able to use the full or abbreviated names of the Russian Federation, foreign states, or words derived from them in their own titles.
They will also be banned from using “the official names of federal and regional organs of state power, international organizations, public organizations, and designations that run counter to public interests and the principles of humanity and morality” (http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article.shtml?2008/01/10/139390).
The only exceptions the law allows, Vedomosti explained yesterday, are firms that the government owns more than a 75 percent share and other firms who are able to convince the courts that they should be granted special treatment. The law also specifies that firms and organizations must conform to the act by their next re-registration.
Lawyers told the newspaper that they expect an enormous number of suits over this issue to land in court. Among the companies they said were likely to file cases were Aeroflot which under the terms of the law could not call itself “Russian airlines” and even the Swiss firm Nestle-Russia, which could not bear the country name.
Other possible cases could be brought by British American Tobacco or even Deutsche Bank, although the lawyers with whom Vedomosti spoke suggested that most of these firms would likely to be able to get an exemption from the strictest application of the new rule.
But many smaller firms and especially non-governmental organizations may lack the funds to challenge Russian officialdom demands that they change their name. And consequently, unless the Duma revises or revokes these provisions, the only protection they will have will be Russian case law, an uncertain defense at best.
That is only one of the new laws that have gone into effect this month in Russia. Among the others – see http://www.mk.ru/blogs/MK/2008/01/09/society/332300/ -- likely to cast a large and in some cases unintended shadow on the future of that country are measures calling for
*****The elimination of draft deferments for doctors and teachers in rural areas, a step combined with a cut in the length of required military service to 12 months but one that is likely to reduce still further the number of medical and education graduates willing to work in the Russian countryside.
*****Dramatic increases in fines and other punishments for those who violate traffic laws and, in the city of Moscow, for those who do not clean up after their dogs, write profanity on walls, or engage in prostitution, penalties that many people may seek to avoid by offering bribes to militiamen.
*****An end to the moratorium on the private purchase of cultural monuments. Some 90,000 sites will now go on the block. While purchasers must commit themselves to preserving them, many officials are likely to look the other way once the sales transaction has been completed, thus leading to a further despoliation of Russia’s heritage.
*****The clear marking of all genetically modified foods, an unusual development on the Russian scene that could help spark demands there for additional and far more dramatic consumer protection measures. And supplements to the pensions of retirees living in northern regions, a measure that could help reduce the outflow of ethnic Russians who moved into those areas voluntarily or otherwise during Soviet times.
*****And an end to the requirement that Russian firms employing foreigners or those without citizenship at locations abroad will no longer have to pay Russia’s high social tax (http://www.zvezda.ru/news_read.php?id=18761). That could lead more firms to invest abroad, thus reducing the number of jobs available to Russians at home, but it will eliminate yet another incentive for ethnic Russians without citizenship in Estonia and Latvia to seek citizenship in the Russian Federation.
Baku, January 11 – Tens of thousands of Russian firms, foreign businesses operating in that country, and non-governmental organizations there will have to change their names if a new Russian Federation law banning the use of a country’s name in their titles is strictly applied.
This is just one of dozens of new pieces of legislation that went into effect at the start of the year, some of which are prompting individuals and groups to sue, other acts are already having unintended consequences, and still a third group of new legislation almost certain to be revised or simply ignored.
For the first time since 1927, the Russian government is setting the rules for private businesses and NGOs. According to legislation that took effect January 1, firms and other organizations will not be able to use the full or abbreviated names of the Russian Federation, foreign states, or words derived from them in their own titles.
They will also be banned from using “the official names of federal and regional organs of state power, international organizations, public organizations, and designations that run counter to public interests and the principles of humanity and morality” (http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article.shtml?2008/01/10/139390).
The only exceptions the law allows, Vedomosti explained yesterday, are firms that the government owns more than a 75 percent share and other firms who are able to convince the courts that they should be granted special treatment. The law also specifies that firms and organizations must conform to the act by their next re-registration.
Lawyers told the newspaper that they expect an enormous number of suits over this issue to land in court. Among the companies they said were likely to file cases were Aeroflot which under the terms of the law could not call itself “Russian airlines” and even the Swiss firm Nestle-Russia, which could not bear the country name.
Other possible cases could be brought by British American Tobacco or even Deutsche Bank, although the lawyers with whom Vedomosti spoke suggested that most of these firms would likely to be able to get an exemption from the strictest application of the new rule.
But many smaller firms and especially non-governmental organizations may lack the funds to challenge Russian officialdom demands that they change their name. And consequently, unless the Duma revises or revokes these provisions, the only protection they will have will be Russian case law, an uncertain defense at best.
That is only one of the new laws that have gone into effect this month in Russia. Among the others – see http://www.mk.ru/blogs/MK/2008/01/09/society/332300/ -- likely to cast a large and in some cases unintended shadow on the future of that country are measures calling for
*****The elimination of draft deferments for doctors and teachers in rural areas, a step combined with a cut in the length of required military service to 12 months but one that is likely to reduce still further the number of medical and education graduates willing to work in the Russian countryside.
*****Dramatic increases in fines and other punishments for those who violate traffic laws and, in the city of Moscow, for those who do not clean up after their dogs, write profanity on walls, or engage in prostitution, penalties that many people may seek to avoid by offering bribes to militiamen.
*****An end to the moratorium on the private purchase of cultural monuments. Some 90,000 sites will now go on the block. While purchasers must commit themselves to preserving them, many officials are likely to look the other way once the sales transaction has been completed, thus leading to a further despoliation of Russia’s heritage.
*****The clear marking of all genetically modified foods, an unusual development on the Russian scene that could help spark demands there for additional and far more dramatic consumer protection measures. And supplements to the pensions of retirees living in northern regions, a measure that could help reduce the outflow of ethnic Russians who moved into those areas voluntarily or otherwise during Soviet times.
*****And an end to the requirement that Russian firms employing foreigners or those without citizenship at locations abroad will no longer have to pay Russia’s high social tax (http://www.zvezda.ru/news_read.php?id=18761). That could lead more firms to invest abroad, thus reducing the number of jobs available to Russians at home, but it will eliminate yet another incentive for ethnic Russians without citizenship in Estonia and Latvia to seek citizenship in the Russian Federation.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Window on Eurasia: Muslims in Formerly Closed Russian City Increasingly Active
Paul Goble
Baku, January 10 – The 17,000-srong Islamic community in and around Ozersk, the formerly closed city known as Chelyabinsk-65 where Moscow produces nuclear weapons components and processes spent nuclear fuel, is increasingly active not only among the unfortunate of all faiths but also with Muslim troops stationed there.
In an interview posted online this week, Gabdulla Shaymardanov, who heads that community there, said that his group has stepped up its activities among Muslims and non-Muslims alike in both the civilian and military sectors of that defense industry center (http://www.islamnasledie.ru/interviews.php?id=845).
The community was set up three years ago and registered last summer but now boasts a social fund, a women’s group, a military outreach program, and ties with three Russia-wide organizations: the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of the European Russia, the MSD of the Asiatic Russia, and the Russia Islamic Inheritance group.
But it is his community’s specific activities that Shaymardanov is particularly proud of. Some of the faithful routinely visit to the two local orphanages, one for invalids and the other for those who have no one in the world. And the community, even though it does not yet have a mosque, provides funds for the older children.
Under Russian law, when a resident of an orphanage reaches 16, he is given housing and then simply told to live on his own, the mullah said. “But to a certain degree, these children are not ready for independent life. We help them through this transition, provide them with legal assistance and so on.”
Another area in which the Ozersk Muslims are active is working with Muslim soldiers. Their number is increasing, and in one unit that arrived last December, Shaymardanov said, 30 percent of the draftees were at least ethnic Muslims – Tatars, Bashkirs, and North Caucasus nationalities.
He noted that he had succeeded in getting commanders to agree to allow Muslim soldiers time off to come to the prayer hall during Muslim holidays and even for daily prayers. While many of these ethnic Muslims are not active believers, Shaymardanov said that he hoped contact with other Muslims would help them become so.
The Muslim leader said that his parishioners concern themselves not just with the problems of Muslim soldiers but with soldiers of other faiths. Two years ago, one soldier, a Christian, was suffering because his parents’ house burned down. The Ozersk community provided him and them with “both material and moral support.”
What is more, the Islamic leader said, members of his congregation conduct regular meetings with soldiers of all faiths to discuss their problems and how those problems might be resolved. “The basic problem during the first stages of service,” he noted, “is psychological.” And “we cannot leave these young men on their own.”
Yet another area where the Ozersk Muslim community is active is among Muslims behind bars. Since last year, penal officials have allowed his fellow Muslims to send Muslim prisoners Islamic literature, visit them and answer their questions about the faith and life more generally.
Local officials apparently are not put off by this activity; indeed, some clearly welcome what the Muslims are doing. They have allotted a room for the Muslims to pray in and given the community a plot of land on which to build a mosque, Shaymardanov said, and the community plans to begin construction in the spring.
(One indication of the positive attitude that the leaders of Ozersk have toward the Muslims and their activities is that the city’s website (http://www.ozersk.ru/) this week features a specific reference to the Muslim new year, something rarely found on the sites of other predominantly Russian and Orthodox cities and towns.)
The Muslim leader said proudly that “the Muslim community of the town is growing from day to day. There are .now about17,000 Muslims in the Ozersk city district and many more in nearby villages. And they have some political clout: Shaymardanov was elected last year to the district Social Chamber.
In that body, the Muslim activist continued, he worries about social questions and the continuing impact of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Indeed, he sees his Chamber work and his parish activities as coinciding in their concerns for the “social defense of the population, the spiritual-moral education of youth and so on.”
Asked what he planned to do next in this formerly closed city, Shaymardanov said that he wanted to reach out to Muslims living in distant villages. In many of them, he said, “there are no Muslim organizations, mosques, and medrassas.” And people there need information about the faith just as much as those in Ozersk do.
Baku, January 10 – The 17,000-srong Islamic community in and around Ozersk, the formerly closed city known as Chelyabinsk-65 where Moscow produces nuclear weapons components and processes spent nuclear fuel, is increasingly active not only among the unfortunate of all faiths but also with Muslim troops stationed there.
In an interview posted online this week, Gabdulla Shaymardanov, who heads that community there, said that his group has stepped up its activities among Muslims and non-Muslims alike in both the civilian and military sectors of that defense industry center (http://www.islamnasledie.ru/interviews.php?id=845).
The community was set up three years ago and registered last summer but now boasts a social fund, a women’s group, a military outreach program, and ties with three Russia-wide organizations: the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of the European Russia, the MSD of the Asiatic Russia, and the Russia Islamic Inheritance group.
But it is his community’s specific activities that Shaymardanov is particularly proud of. Some of the faithful routinely visit to the two local orphanages, one for invalids and the other for those who have no one in the world. And the community, even though it does not yet have a mosque, provides funds for the older children.
Under Russian law, when a resident of an orphanage reaches 16, he is given housing and then simply told to live on his own, the mullah said. “But to a certain degree, these children are not ready for independent life. We help them through this transition, provide them with legal assistance and so on.”
Another area in which the Ozersk Muslims are active is working with Muslim soldiers. Their number is increasing, and in one unit that arrived last December, Shaymardanov said, 30 percent of the draftees were at least ethnic Muslims – Tatars, Bashkirs, and North Caucasus nationalities.
He noted that he had succeeded in getting commanders to agree to allow Muslim soldiers time off to come to the prayer hall during Muslim holidays and even for daily prayers. While many of these ethnic Muslims are not active believers, Shaymardanov said that he hoped contact with other Muslims would help them become so.
The Muslim leader said that his parishioners concern themselves not just with the problems of Muslim soldiers but with soldiers of other faiths. Two years ago, one soldier, a Christian, was suffering because his parents’ house burned down. The Ozersk community provided him and them with “both material and moral support.”
What is more, the Islamic leader said, members of his congregation conduct regular meetings with soldiers of all faiths to discuss their problems and how those problems might be resolved. “The basic problem during the first stages of service,” he noted, “is psychological.” And “we cannot leave these young men on their own.”
Yet another area where the Ozersk Muslim community is active is among Muslims behind bars. Since last year, penal officials have allowed his fellow Muslims to send Muslim prisoners Islamic literature, visit them and answer their questions about the faith and life more generally.
Local officials apparently are not put off by this activity; indeed, some clearly welcome what the Muslims are doing. They have allotted a room for the Muslims to pray in and given the community a plot of land on which to build a mosque, Shaymardanov said, and the community plans to begin construction in the spring.
(One indication of the positive attitude that the leaders of Ozersk have toward the Muslims and their activities is that the city’s website (http://www.ozersk.ru/) this week features a specific reference to the Muslim new year, something rarely found on the sites of other predominantly Russian and Orthodox cities and towns.)
The Muslim leader said proudly that “the Muslim community of the town is growing from day to day. There are .now about17,000 Muslims in the Ozersk city district and many more in nearby villages. And they have some political clout: Shaymardanov was elected last year to the district Social Chamber.
In that body, the Muslim activist continued, he worries about social questions and the continuing impact of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Indeed, he sees his Chamber work and his parish activities as coinciding in their concerns for the “social defense of the population, the spiritual-moral education of youth and so on.”
Asked what he planned to do next in this formerly closed city, Shaymardanov said that he wanted to reach out to Muslims living in distant villages. In many of them, he said, “there are no Muslim organizations, mosques, and medrassas.” And people there need information about the faith just as much as those in Ozersk do.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Window on Eurasia: VTsIOM Now Part of Kremlin’s ‘Propaganda Machine’ – Morar
Paul Goble
Baku, January 9 – The All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM), Moscow’s largest survey firm, has been corruptly transformed from an independent polling firm into a part of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, according to Natalia Morar, the New Times journalist who was denied re-entry to Russia last month.
In a carefully documented story posted online yesterday entitled “Payment for Loyalty,” Morar describes how the Presidential Administration has insisted on structuring surveys to get the results it wants and then rewarded VTsIOM leaders by allowing them to privatize state property, avoid paying taxes and send the profits to offshore banks.
This corrupt exchange, Morar says, has been especially important during this year of elections because the Kremlin needs the right answers in order to sway public opinion and votes and can count on the fact that many people will assume that VTsIOM’s reports are accurate (http://newtimes.ru/news/2008-01-08/2008-01-08-6/).
According to Morar, Aleksei Chesnakov, the deputy chief of section of the Presidential Administration responsible for domestic politics, carefully keeps track of what polls VTsIOM plans to do and meets frequently with VTsIOM director Valeriy Fedorov to review questions, answers, and presentation.
“Every Friday,” Morar reports, officials in the Presidential Administration go over and then approve the press releases that VTsIOM has scheduled to release in the following week to ensure that these will be on message. But the Kremlin’s involvement at VTsIOM is far deeper than that, the investigative says.
Sometimes, she says, its officials demand the inclusion or deletion of particular questions. But most often they limit themselves to requiring that the questions and answers be written in a way that leads respondents to give the answers that the Kremlin needs.
The use of leading questions in public opinion research is “absolutely impermissible,” Lev Gudkov, the head of the Levada Center polling company. “It is either cheating or political technology, but it does not have any relationship to sociology whatsoever.” At the very least, “it is not scientific.”
At least some working-level people at VTsIOM feel the same way. Leontiy Byzov, the head of social-political analysis there, told Morar that using leading questions and leading answers is simply a concealed way of advancing particular ideas and thus nothing more than propaganda.
For their loyalty, the top people in VTsIOM have been well-rewarded, Morar continues, highlighting just how important their distorted picture of Russian public opinion is for President Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin advisors in their effort to strengthen their grip on power.
Not only have they been able to effectively privatize what is a state company – indeed, Kremlin officials are on its board – but VTsIOM leaders have been able to avoid paying the taxes they owe by means of a series of shadow companies and to send their profits to offshore accounts in the British Virgin Islands and Cyprus.
Morar shared documentation on this with financial experts who confirmed her judgment that this was more than simply sharp business practice. Given that VTsIOM is still nominally a state enterprise, one expert said, such actions are too risky -- unless those involved enjoy protection at the highest levels.
But perhaps the most damning and certainly the most immediately accessible indication of what is going on are the words of a highly placed VTsIOM employee who not surprisingly insisted on anonymity.
He told Morar that “they [in the Kremlin] are paying us for loyalty by giving us the opportunity to steal. They permit us to use certain financial flows and they do not control what we do with them. This is a classical example of bureaucratic rent: the use of a state enterprise for the extraction of incomes going into the pockets of bureaucrats.”
Indeed, he said, “they permit us to work only as long as we fulfill all [their] conditions. But if we say something somewhere beyond what is wanted, they will immediately dispense with us. In general,” the source added, “VTsIOM in its current form is not a research organization … It is part of the [Kremlin’s] propaganda machine.”
For all those who remember the extraordinarily positive role VTsIOM played in the past, Morar suggests, it is truly tragic that this institution has been so thoroughly corrupted, even if as yet many people do not view its findings as any more unreliable than those of other polling organizations.
Established in December 1987, VTsIOM played a key role in the creation of modern polling in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period. In 1998, it was transformed into a unitary state enterprise, and the following year, it was given the status of a scientific institution.
But in 2003, VTsIOM was converted into an open stock company entirely capitalized by the state. That step led to the departure of Yuri Levada and the other top sociologists who had worked there up to that point and to the installation of Fedorov, the director who now does the Kremlin’s bidding.
Baku, January 9 – The All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM), Moscow’s largest survey firm, has been corruptly transformed from an independent polling firm into a part of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, according to Natalia Morar, the New Times journalist who was denied re-entry to Russia last month.
In a carefully documented story posted online yesterday entitled “Payment for Loyalty,” Morar describes how the Presidential Administration has insisted on structuring surveys to get the results it wants and then rewarded VTsIOM leaders by allowing them to privatize state property, avoid paying taxes and send the profits to offshore banks.
This corrupt exchange, Morar says, has been especially important during this year of elections because the Kremlin needs the right answers in order to sway public opinion and votes and can count on the fact that many people will assume that VTsIOM’s reports are accurate (http://newtimes.ru/news/2008-01-08/2008-01-08-6/).
According to Morar, Aleksei Chesnakov, the deputy chief of section of the Presidential Administration responsible for domestic politics, carefully keeps track of what polls VTsIOM plans to do and meets frequently with VTsIOM director Valeriy Fedorov to review questions, answers, and presentation.
“Every Friday,” Morar reports, officials in the Presidential Administration go over and then approve the press releases that VTsIOM has scheduled to release in the following week to ensure that these will be on message. But the Kremlin’s involvement at VTsIOM is far deeper than that, the investigative says.
Sometimes, she says, its officials demand the inclusion or deletion of particular questions. But most often they limit themselves to requiring that the questions and answers be written in a way that leads respondents to give the answers that the Kremlin needs.
The use of leading questions in public opinion research is “absolutely impermissible,” Lev Gudkov, the head of the Levada Center polling company. “It is either cheating or political technology, but it does not have any relationship to sociology whatsoever.” At the very least, “it is not scientific.”
At least some working-level people at VTsIOM feel the same way. Leontiy Byzov, the head of social-political analysis there, told Morar that using leading questions and leading answers is simply a concealed way of advancing particular ideas and thus nothing more than propaganda.
For their loyalty, the top people in VTsIOM have been well-rewarded, Morar continues, highlighting just how important their distorted picture of Russian public opinion is for President Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin advisors in their effort to strengthen their grip on power.
Not only have they been able to effectively privatize what is a state company – indeed, Kremlin officials are on its board – but VTsIOM leaders have been able to avoid paying the taxes they owe by means of a series of shadow companies and to send their profits to offshore accounts in the British Virgin Islands and Cyprus.
Morar shared documentation on this with financial experts who confirmed her judgment that this was more than simply sharp business practice. Given that VTsIOM is still nominally a state enterprise, one expert said, such actions are too risky -- unless those involved enjoy protection at the highest levels.
But perhaps the most damning and certainly the most immediately accessible indication of what is going on are the words of a highly placed VTsIOM employee who not surprisingly insisted on anonymity.
He told Morar that “they [in the Kremlin] are paying us for loyalty by giving us the opportunity to steal. They permit us to use certain financial flows and they do not control what we do with them. This is a classical example of bureaucratic rent: the use of a state enterprise for the extraction of incomes going into the pockets of bureaucrats.”
Indeed, he said, “they permit us to work only as long as we fulfill all [their] conditions. But if we say something somewhere beyond what is wanted, they will immediately dispense with us. In general,” the source added, “VTsIOM in its current form is not a research organization … It is part of the [Kremlin’s] propaganda machine.”
For all those who remember the extraordinarily positive role VTsIOM played in the past, Morar suggests, it is truly tragic that this institution has been so thoroughly corrupted, even if as yet many people do not view its findings as any more unreliable than those of other polling organizations.
Established in December 1987, VTsIOM played a key role in the creation of modern polling in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period. In 1998, it was transformed into a unitary state enterprise, and the following year, it was given the status of a scientific institution.
But in 2003, VTsIOM was converted into an open stock company entirely capitalized by the state. That step led to the departure of Yuri Levada and the other top sociologists who had worked there up to that point and to the installation of Fedorov, the director who now does the Kremlin’s bidding.
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