Paul Goble
Baku, January 21 – Nearly one in every six young people in the Russian Federation has nationalist views, compared to fewer than one in 20 of their elders, a senior Russian interior minister told a Moscow conference on “National Security in Russia at the Present Stage” over the weekend.
Among the young in his country, Aleksandr Chekalin, first deputy MVD chief said, “up to 15 percent” now have “nationalistic views,” compared to only 4.6 percent of the population as a whole, a pattern helps explain the dramatic rise in the number of extremist crimes (http://www.rian.ru/society/statistics_soc/20080119/97344036.html).
According to the deputy interior minister, the number of such incidents which have led prosecutors to file charges jumped from139 in 2005 to 356 last year. Chekalin added that his ministry believes there are 1,000 ethnically based criminal groups in the country.
Such attitudes, crimes and organizations, the MVD official said, have “a direct influence on the general security of the country.”
But in other remarks, the first deputy minister reported that the number of terrorist acts had fallen by 57 percent over the last year to 48 in 2007. At the same time, however, he told the meeting that there had been 759 “crimes of a terrorist character,” many of which consisted of “false reports of threats of explosions” (http://www.vss.su/node/154).
While saying there had been 18 cases of hostage taking and 837 kidnappings last year, he put these numbers in context by saying that there had been almost “half a million” economic crimes,” including 28,600 in the tax sphere, and pointing out that “every seventh crime” in Russia was committed by someone who was drunk at the time.
Chekalin’s complete text and those of other speakers at Saturday’s Moscow meeting have not yet been published so more details of his remarks may surface over the next several days. But what has been reported so far about the content of deputy minister’s speech Saturday prompts three comments.
First, all of his figures about crimes should be treated with caution not only because they involve only those reported to and resulting in charges by the authorities but also because prosecutors have broad latitude in deciding how to categorize particular crimes and in reporting them to the public.
That is why Chekalin could say in the same speech that the number of terrorist acts had declined to 48 last year – thus echoing the statements of President Vladimir Putin – but also say that there had been 759 “crimes of a terrorist nature” during the same period, a figure that if reported on its own would call into question Putin’s claims.
Second, in his discussion of attitudes, ethnically based crimes, and ethnically based criminal groups, the MVD deputy chief is lumping together those of ethnic Russians and those of non-Russian nationalities, something that makes it very difficult to know just what his message in fact was.
On the one hand, past MVD reporting suggest that his comments about nationalist attitudes have more to do with the ethnic Russian majority that with representatives of other groups. But on the other, these same considerations suggest that his comments about ethnic crime and ethnic criminal groups are more about the latter than the former.
And third, Chekalin’s figures about young people in the Russian Federation being more nationalistic are almost certainly true, but they too require some explanation, especially since he, at least in the reports so far, did not provide details on where he obtained those figures or on any differences between Russians and non-Russians.
A major part of the explanation for these generational differences is that young people, especially those in post-Soviet Russia, are likely to be more willing to express their nationalism openly than are those in older age cohorts. They simply do not feel the same political or ideological constraints their elders do.
At the same time, however, young people may have more reason to feel nationalist than do their parents and grandparents. Changes in the demographic make up of Russia and especially of its major cities mean that members of different ethnic groups are more likely to come into contact with other groups than were their parents.
And such increasing contact, especially if it is competitive as it is more likely to be among young people just entering independent life than it is among their elders who are in most cases more established, almost certainly will reinforce ethnic identities and generate nationalistic attitudes about other groups.
But however that may be, Chekalin’s figures point to two indisputable conclusions. On the one hand, the younger generation in that country is equally or even more nationalistic than the ones that came before. And on the other, the Russian government is worried about that trend and its impact on that country’s national security.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Window on Eurasia: The Day the Soviet Union Died
Paul Goble
Baku, January 20 – The exact place and time the Soviet Union died continues to be a matter of debate. Some say it occurred when Gorbachev handed over the nuclear football to Yeltsin at the end of December 1991. Others argue it took place earlier that month when the three Slavic presidents met to do away with the Soviet leader’s job.
Still others point to the failure of the Moscow coup in August of that year, the occasion of Yeltsin’s triumph and Gorbachev’s complete failure to understand what had taken place in his country. And some say it coincided with the Kremlin’s murderous attacks on the people of Lithuania and Latvia in January 1991.
But perhaps the moment that has the best claim to be the occasion when the Soviet Union died is one that up to now has had fewer advocates. It occurred a year earlier in Baku, when Moscow sought to suppress the Azerbaijanis but unwittingly snapped the fraying bonds of loyalty to the USSR that nation and others as well had felt.
On January 19-20, 1990, a date commemorated this year as every year by the people of Azerbaijan, Soviet security forces went on a rampage in Baku, killing or wounding hundreds of its citizens. While the exact number of victims is disputed, it was almost certainly greater than the total of all other Soviet police actions under Gorbachev.
The Soviet president and his comrades acted not to protect ethnic Armenians as they claimed but rather to punish Azerbaijanis for their increasingly independent stance and to send a message to them and to all the other republics that their Moscow rulers were prepared to do anything, including murder, to hold on to their power.
But the brutality of this act of state terrorism – a Soviet tank ran over the cary carrying some senior members of the Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences, and Soviet soldiers shot people at random on the street or even those looking out the windows of their apartments – had exactly the opposite effect that Moscow intended.
In Azerbaijan, the Kremlin’s action convinced even those who had doubted it before that they could have no future inside the USSR. Indeed, the day after the killings, many Communist Party members there, including some of its most senior leaders, tore up their party cards, an action that showed there would be now going back.
And elsewhere in the USSR the message Gorbachev and the Soviet leadership hoped to send backfired. Both where many were already seeking independence from Moscow and where few had yet thought about it, Soviet actions in Baku 18 years ago today did not intimidate but rather destroyed the fear that had kept the USSR together.
Besides the need for simple historical accuracy, there are three reasons for people in the region and the world why it is vitally important for everyone in the region and beyond to recognize that January 1990 in Baku was the time and place of the demise of the Soviet Union.
First, given the difficulties and uncertainties of the post-Soviet transitions in many of these countries, some members of the older generaton there now view the Soviet past with nostalgia. Having forgotten the evils of that system, they even tell pollsters that the Brezhnev years were “a golden age” when they were secure and their country respected.
Some political leaders across this region even have sought to exploit such attitudes to build their own power either by arguing, as Russia’s Vladimir Putin has done, that the end of the USSR was the greatest tragedy in the 20th century, or suggesting that the peoples of this region need Soviet-style stability even at the cost of freedom.
Such leaders naturally do not talk about the violence the Soviet system visited on individuals and groups whose only “crime” was to speak the truth and to entire nations -- be there Kazakhs, Lithuanians or Azerbaijanis -- whose only “deviation” was to want to have the chance to determine their own destinies.
Recalling to these people what happened at Baku 18 years ago today is thus important as a powerful antidote to any who have so forgotten what the Soviet system was like that they would support its full or partial return.
Second, with each passing year, the share of the population in the post-Soviet states who lived under and were shaped by the communist regime is declining, and in many places, it is falling fast. Few under the age of 40 today were formed by the communist regime, and none at all of those who are now under the age of 30.
Because these younger people do not have immediate memories of what Soviet rule meant, they frequently have a distorted or at least incomplete view of what it was about and thus are available for mobilization by unscrupulous politicians who play up what they say were the “glories” of that system while saying nothing about its costs.
The danger that young people, who should be the hope of the future, might help power a return to that past is so great that one Belarusian paper this week went out of its way to explain to the generation which never knew the USSR why no one should want its return (http://www.gazetaby.com/index.php?sn_nid=10925&sn_cat=37).
The Soviet Union, Salidarnasts’ wrote, began its life as “an unbridled, cruel and clever monster” but ended as “a powerless, malicious and pathetic figure,” capable of massive but senseless violence against its own people and others, yet incapable of giving anyone freedom, dignity, or a better life.
That system “would have been 85 years old on December 30th” of last year, the Belarusian paper observed, “But happily the USSR did not survive to that date.” One of the reasons it did not is that despite its outwardly impressive coercive powers, its people – again be they Balts, Belarusians or the residents of Baku – no longer respected it.
Having failed to provide any basis for loyalty other than fear, the Soviet Union was swept away into the dustbin of history it was always threatening to send others to when people there demonstrated that they were no longer afraid and that for them, Moscow’s period use of violence simply underscored the weakness of the system.
Informing this younger generation whose members never lived under communism about how that tectonic shift occurred in the Azerbaijani capital 18 years ago today thus can help immunize them against the duplicitous claims of those who distort the history of the Soviet past for their own purposes.
And third, many far beyond the borders of what was the Soviet Union need to learn in detail what happened in Baku and why the events there played such a critical role in the demise of the USSR so that they will be able to escape the still-widespread myths about just what happened here.
On the one hand, because so few people in the West in 1990 looked beyond Moscow except to those republics with large and active co-ethnic communities in the West, many analysts there continue to exaggerate the role of the Russians and those with such ties in the demise of the Soviet Union while minimizing the contributions of others.
To say this is in no way to play down the contributions that the Russians and these others made to the demise of the Soviet system both by calling attention to other crimes and by their struggling against the system. These were enormous. But both historical justice and the possibility of a better future requires a more comprehensive picture.
And on the other, because so many people in the West then and now view predominantly Muslim countries like Azerbaijan only through the prism of their conflicts with non-Muslims and as the objects of history rather than its subjects, they are unprepared to acknowledge the independent importance of what happens in these states.
The continuing failure of many in Western countries to do so reinforces a highly selective, culturally myopic view of the historical record. And far more seriously, it undermines the chances that Western countries and the peoples of these countries have to work together.
Reminding those in the West who have a less than comprehensive view about what happened in Baku 18 years ago today and the role that the people of Azerbaijan played in the death of the Soviet Union thus can ensure that they will be better prepared to help create a future in which tragedies like Black January will never happen again.
Baku, January 20 – The exact place and time the Soviet Union died continues to be a matter of debate. Some say it occurred when Gorbachev handed over the nuclear football to Yeltsin at the end of December 1991. Others argue it took place earlier that month when the three Slavic presidents met to do away with the Soviet leader’s job.
Still others point to the failure of the Moscow coup in August of that year, the occasion of Yeltsin’s triumph and Gorbachev’s complete failure to understand what had taken place in his country. And some say it coincided with the Kremlin’s murderous attacks on the people of Lithuania and Latvia in January 1991.
But perhaps the moment that has the best claim to be the occasion when the Soviet Union died is one that up to now has had fewer advocates. It occurred a year earlier in Baku, when Moscow sought to suppress the Azerbaijanis but unwittingly snapped the fraying bonds of loyalty to the USSR that nation and others as well had felt.
On January 19-20, 1990, a date commemorated this year as every year by the people of Azerbaijan, Soviet security forces went on a rampage in Baku, killing or wounding hundreds of its citizens. While the exact number of victims is disputed, it was almost certainly greater than the total of all other Soviet police actions under Gorbachev.
The Soviet president and his comrades acted not to protect ethnic Armenians as they claimed but rather to punish Azerbaijanis for their increasingly independent stance and to send a message to them and to all the other republics that their Moscow rulers were prepared to do anything, including murder, to hold on to their power.
But the brutality of this act of state terrorism – a Soviet tank ran over the cary carrying some senior members of the Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences, and Soviet soldiers shot people at random on the street or even those looking out the windows of their apartments – had exactly the opposite effect that Moscow intended.
In Azerbaijan, the Kremlin’s action convinced even those who had doubted it before that they could have no future inside the USSR. Indeed, the day after the killings, many Communist Party members there, including some of its most senior leaders, tore up their party cards, an action that showed there would be now going back.
And elsewhere in the USSR the message Gorbachev and the Soviet leadership hoped to send backfired. Both where many were already seeking independence from Moscow and where few had yet thought about it, Soviet actions in Baku 18 years ago today did not intimidate but rather destroyed the fear that had kept the USSR together.
Besides the need for simple historical accuracy, there are three reasons for people in the region and the world why it is vitally important for everyone in the region and beyond to recognize that January 1990 in Baku was the time and place of the demise of the Soviet Union.
First, given the difficulties and uncertainties of the post-Soviet transitions in many of these countries, some members of the older generaton there now view the Soviet past with nostalgia. Having forgotten the evils of that system, they even tell pollsters that the Brezhnev years were “a golden age” when they were secure and their country respected.
Some political leaders across this region even have sought to exploit such attitudes to build their own power either by arguing, as Russia’s Vladimir Putin has done, that the end of the USSR was the greatest tragedy in the 20th century, or suggesting that the peoples of this region need Soviet-style stability even at the cost of freedom.
Such leaders naturally do not talk about the violence the Soviet system visited on individuals and groups whose only “crime” was to speak the truth and to entire nations -- be there Kazakhs, Lithuanians or Azerbaijanis -- whose only “deviation” was to want to have the chance to determine their own destinies.
Recalling to these people what happened at Baku 18 years ago today is thus important as a powerful antidote to any who have so forgotten what the Soviet system was like that they would support its full or partial return.
Second, with each passing year, the share of the population in the post-Soviet states who lived under and were shaped by the communist regime is declining, and in many places, it is falling fast. Few under the age of 40 today were formed by the communist regime, and none at all of those who are now under the age of 30.
Because these younger people do not have immediate memories of what Soviet rule meant, they frequently have a distorted or at least incomplete view of what it was about and thus are available for mobilization by unscrupulous politicians who play up what they say were the “glories” of that system while saying nothing about its costs.
The danger that young people, who should be the hope of the future, might help power a return to that past is so great that one Belarusian paper this week went out of its way to explain to the generation which never knew the USSR why no one should want its return (http://www.gazetaby.com/index.php?sn_nid=10925&sn_cat=37).
The Soviet Union, Salidarnasts’ wrote, began its life as “an unbridled, cruel and clever monster” but ended as “a powerless, malicious and pathetic figure,” capable of massive but senseless violence against its own people and others, yet incapable of giving anyone freedom, dignity, or a better life.
That system “would have been 85 years old on December 30th” of last year, the Belarusian paper observed, “But happily the USSR did not survive to that date.” One of the reasons it did not is that despite its outwardly impressive coercive powers, its people – again be they Balts, Belarusians or the residents of Baku – no longer respected it.
Having failed to provide any basis for loyalty other than fear, the Soviet Union was swept away into the dustbin of history it was always threatening to send others to when people there demonstrated that they were no longer afraid and that for them, Moscow’s period use of violence simply underscored the weakness of the system.
Informing this younger generation whose members never lived under communism about how that tectonic shift occurred in the Azerbaijani capital 18 years ago today thus can help immunize them against the duplicitous claims of those who distort the history of the Soviet past for their own purposes.
And third, many far beyond the borders of what was the Soviet Union need to learn in detail what happened in Baku and why the events there played such a critical role in the demise of the USSR so that they will be able to escape the still-widespread myths about just what happened here.
On the one hand, because so few people in the West in 1990 looked beyond Moscow except to those republics with large and active co-ethnic communities in the West, many analysts there continue to exaggerate the role of the Russians and those with such ties in the demise of the Soviet Union while minimizing the contributions of others.
To say this is in no way to play down the contributions that the Russians and these others made to the demise of the Soviet system both by calling attention to other crimes and by their struggling against the system. These were enormous. But both historical justice and the possibility of a better future requires a more comprehensive picture.
And on the other, because so many people in the West then and now view predominantly Muslim countries like Azerbaijan only through the prism of their conflicts with non-Muslims and as the objects of history rather than its subjects, they are unprepared to acknowledge the independent importance of what happens in these states.
The continuing failure of many in Western countries to do so reinforces a highly selective, culturally myopic view of the historical record. And far more seriously, it undermines the chances that Western countries and the peoples of these countries have to work together.
Reminding those in the West who have a less than comprehensive view about what happened in Baku 18 years ago today and the role that the people of Azerbaijan played in the death of the Soviet Union thus can ensure that they will be better prepared to help create a future in which tragedies like Black January will never happen again.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Window on Eurasia: Chechen Fighting Intensifying, MVD Official Says
Paul Goble
Baku, January 19 – Chechen rebels have stepped up their attacks on Russian and pro-Moscow forces in that North Caucasus republic, according to a militia officer of the Grozny government. And his statement thus calls into question the Kremlin’s repeated claims that what it calls “the counter-terrorist operation” there is essentially over.
Moreover, the MVD official -- who spoke with a Caucasus Knot reporter on condition of anonymity – added that for “completely predictable” reasons, the fighting between the two sides will intensify still further in the run-up to the Russian presidential elections in March (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/news/id/1205918.html).
Russian and Chechen officials have discussed this possibility “for a long time,” he said, convinced that the foreign backers of the rebels “are extremely interested in the destabilization of the situation in the south of Russia” in advance of the elections and that they “will do everything they can to ensure that the conflict will continue.”
These foreign backers, the MVD officer continued, have given out large sums of money to the relatively few remaining rebels and “as is said, he who pays the piper calls the tune” – in this case, one that calls on them to step up their attacks. “There is nothing new in that,” the officer said.
At the same time, he continued, the number and size of rebel bands in Chechnya are much smaller than in the past and consequently “the diversionary-terrorist actions” that they can carry out are “petty” in comparison to those the rebels were able to conduct earlier. In any case, he said, their actions won’t have any impact on the overall situation.
But the Caucasus Knot journalist disputed that, noting in his article that “information arriving in recent days from the mountains and the foothills of the republic recalls the reports of the first years of ‘the counter-terrorist operation’” rather than the quieter times of the recent past.
Indeed, he said, “practically ever day there are cases of violent clashes and attacks by militants on the officers of law enforcement organs and the uniformed military personnel of the federal force. To support his point, the journalist cites just a few of clashes that his Internet portal has reported over the last few weeks.
And in addition, he offered the judgments of a 54-year-old Grozny resident about what is going on in Chechnya now. Suleiman [no last name given] said that if the war was continuing, this means in the first instance that it is necessary and profitable for someone.”
“I will never believe,” he said, “that the enormous Russian army and the thousands of officers of the local militia over the course of the last several years could not find and destroy the militants who now number, if one credits certain generals and politicians, no more than 700.”
Given that conviction, Suleyman continued, he was completely convinced that “the situation in Chechnya and in the Caucasus as a whole is being maintained artificially in order to keep Russian society in a state of tension and deflect the attention of citizens of the problems which exist today.”
At the current level of fighting, he said, “the military and the militia could ‘fight’ [there] for another 20 to 30 years,” during which time, “every general will build himself a dacha near Moscow, salt away enormous sums of money, become a Hero of Russia, receive the rank of marshal, and provide a good life for his children and grandchildren.”
Suleyman’s belief that pro-Moscow forces could defeat the rebels if they wanted to might be reassuring to the Interior Ministry official with whom the Caucasus Knot journalist spoke. After all, his words suggest that he has confidence in the ability of the military to defeat the rebels without too much difficulty.
But the Grozny resident’s suggestion that Moscow is continuing a war that still devastates his republic and his people only because senior Russian commanders are thus able to profit personally would be less welcome not only to that Chechen militia officer but to Russian leaders as well.
On the one hand, this suggestion highlights the increasing cynicism of Chechens and others about the Russian authorities. And on the other, such an attitude helps to explain why the rebels are still enjoy support in the population and why the current upsurge in the fighting may not die down anytime soon.
Baku, January 19 – Chechen rebels have stepped up their attacks on Russian and pro-Moscow forces in that North Caucasus republic, according to a militia officer of the Grozny government. And his statement thus calls into question the Kremlin’s repeated claims that what it calls “the counter-terrorist operation” there is essentially over.
Moreover, the MVD official -- who spoke with a Caucasus Knot reporter on condition of anonymity – added that for “completely predictable” reasons, the fighting between the two sides will intensify still further in the run-up to the Russian presidential elections in March (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/news/id/1205918.html).
Russian and Chechen officials have discussed this possibility “for a long time,” he said, convinced that the foreign backers of the rebels “are extremely interested in the destabilization of the situation in the south of Russia” in advance of the elections and that they “will do everything they can to ensure that the conflict will continue.”
These foreign backers, the MVD officer continued, have given out large sums of money to the relatively few remaining rebels and “as is said, he who pays the piper calls the tune” – in this case, one that calls on them to step up their attacks. “There is nothing new in that,” the officer said.
At the same time, he continued, the number and size of rebel bands in Chechnya are much smaller than in the past and consequently “the diversionary-terrorist actions” that they can carry out are “petty” in comparison to those the rebels were able to conduct earlier. In any case, he said, their actions won’t have any impact on the overall situation.
But the Caucasus Knot journalist disputed that, noting in his article that “information arriving in recent days from the mountains and the foothills of the republic recalls the reports of the first years of ‘the counter-terrorist operation’” rather than the quieter times of the recent past.
Indeed, he said, “practically ever day there are cases of violent clashes and attacks by militants on the officers of law enforcement organs and the uniformed military personnel of the federal force. To support his point, the journalist cites just a few of clashes that his Internet portal has reported over the last few weeks.
And in addition, he offered the judgments of a 54-year-old Grozny resident about what is going on in Chechnya now. Suleiman [no last name given] said that if the war was continuing, this means in the first instance that it is necessary and profitable for someone.”
“I will never believe,” he said, “that the enormous Russian army and the thousands of officers of the local militia over the course of the last several years could not find and destroy the militants who now number, if one credits certain generals and politicians, no more than 700.”
Given that conviction, Suleyman continued, he was completely convinced that “the situation in Chechnya and in the Caucasus as a whole is being maintained artificially in order to keep Russian society in a state of tension and deflect the attention of citizens of the problems which exist today.”
At the current level of fighting, he said, “the military and the militia could ‘fight’ [there] for another 20 to 30 years,” during which time, “every general will build himself a dacha near Moscow, salt away enormous sums of money, become a Hero of Russia, receive the rank of marshal, and provide a good life for his children and grandchildren.”
Suleyman’s belief that pro-Moscow forces could defeat the rebels if they wanted to might be reassuring to the Interior Ministry official with whom the Caucasus Knot journalist spoke. After all, his words suggest that he has confidence in the ability of the military to defeat the rebels without too much difficulty.
But the Grozny resident’s suggestion that Moscow is continuing a war that still devastates his republic and his people only because senior Russian commanders are thus able to profit personally would be less welcome not only to that Chechen militia officer but to Russian leaders as well.
On the one hand, this suggestion highlights the increasing cynicism of Chechens and others about the Russian authorities. And on the other, such an attitude helps to explain why the rebels are still enjoy support in the population and why the current upsurge in the fighting may not die down anytime soon.
Window on Eurasia: Putin Backs Plan to ‘Rate’ Western Democracies
Paul Goble
Baku, January 19 – Stung by Western assessments that Russia is becoming less free, Moscow officials say they will create a new organization of their own to “rate” democracy in the U.S. and other Western countries, clearly calculating that in the name of “balance,” some in the media will pair their assessments with Western ones.
In recent weeks, Freedom House, the Heritage Foundation, and other Western non-governmental organizations have released their annual assessments of the state of freedom in the Russian Federation and other post-communist countries. This year, most have given Moscow significantly lower marks.
Not surprisingly, many Russian officials from Putin on down are furious, seeing these measures as reflecting a double standard on the part of Western countries and lashing out at the NGOs as well as at the governments they believe stand behind them (http://lenta.ru/articles/2008/01/16/superrating/).
Most of this anger has been expressed in typical ways – denouncing those doing the ratings and Western presumptions of their right to evaluate the situation in Russia (http://www.caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=13622) or increasing criticism of countries like Estonia with higher marks (http://www.rosbalt.ru/2008/01/16/447706.html).
But now, some Russian officials who say they have President Putin’s backing have proposed taking an additional step: creating their own agency to monitor the status of democracy and freedom in those countries where the Western agencies are located (http://www.newsru.com/russia/18jan2008/centr.html).
According to yesterday’s Wall Street Journal – and it is from a translation of its article (http://www.inopressa.ru/wsj/2008/01/18/11:36:15/russia) that most Russian reports about this draw, Moscow will spend 700,000 Euros (1.1 million U.S. dollars) to open its own rating centers in Europe and the United States within two months.
Although Putin mentioned this possibility in Portugal in October, the New York paper said, the arrangements for setting up these rating centers are reportedly in the hands of Anatoliy Kucherena, a Moscow lawyer whom Putin appointed to the Russian Social Chamber in 2006.
It is unlikely that these Russian government-financed centers will ever gain the credibility in the countries they rate that Western groups have even if Western media will now cite them in the name of “balance” whenever Western agencies rate Russia. But they are not the primary audience, the Kremlin appears to have in mind.
On the one hand, it obviously hopes that media outside of Western Europe and the United States will take these evaluations seriously, something that will not only damage the reputations of Western countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America but help Moscow deflect criticism of itself by implying that such evaluations are all politicized.
And on the other, the Russian leadership hopes that this step will have an impact at home, reducing the number of its citizens who take the Western ratings seriously and thus reducing still further public demands there for a return to more democratic arrangements in the Russian Federation.
At the very least, this latest Kremlin initiative, like the closure of British Council offices across the Russian Federation, is unfortunately a step that in the current environment, Putin and his advisors assume will have more positive than negative consequences for themselves and their increasingly authoritarian regime.
Baku, January 19 – Stung by Western assessments that Russia is becoming less free, Moscow officials say they will create a new organization of their own to “rate” democracy in the U.S. and other Western countries, clearly calculating that in the name of “balance,” some in the media will pair their assessments with Western ones.
In recent weeks, Freedom House, the Heritage Foundation, and other Western non-governmental organizations have released their annual assessments of the state of freedom in the Russian Federation and other post-communist countries. This year, most have given Moscow significantly lower marks.
Not surprisingly, many Russian officials from Putin on down are furious, seeing these measures as reflecting a double standard on the part of Western countries and lashing out at the NGOs as well as at the governments they believe stand behind them (http://lenta.ru/articles/2008/01/16/superrating/).
Most of this anger has been expressed in typical ways – denouncing those doing the ratings and Western presumptions of their right to evaluate the situation in Russia (http://www.caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=13622) or increasing criticism of countries like Estonia with higher marks (http://www.rosbalt.ru/2008/01/16/447706.html).
But now, some Russian officials who say they have President Putin’s backing have proposed taking an additional step: creating their own agency to monitor the status of democracy and freedom in those countries where the Western agencies are located (http://www.newsru.com/russia/18jan2008/centr.html).
According to yesterday’s Wall Street Journal – and it is from a translation of its article (http://www.inopressa.ru/wsj/2008/01/18/11:36:15/russia) that most Russian reports about this draw, Moscow will spend 700,000 Euros (1.1 million U.S. dollars) to open its own rating centers in Europe and the United States within two months.
Although Putin mentioned this possibility in Portugal in October, the New York paper said, the arrangements for setting up these rating centers are reportedly in the hands of Anatoliy Kucherena, a Moscow lawyer whom Putin appointed to the Russian Social Chamber in 2006.
It is unlikely that these Russian government-financed centers will ever gain the credibility in the countries they rate that Western groups have even if Western media will now cite them in the name of “balance” whenever Western agencies rate Russia. But they are not the primary audience, the Kremlin appears to have in mind.
On the one hand, it obviously hopes that media outside of Western Europe and the United States will take these evaluations seriously, something that will not only damage the reputations of Western countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America but help Moscow deflect criticism of itself by implying that such evaluations are all politicized.
And on the other, the Russian leadership hopes that this step will have an impact at home, reducing the number of its citizens who take the Western ratings seriously and thus reducing still further public demands there for a return to more democratic arrangements in the Russian Federation.
At the very least, this latest Kremlin initiative, like the closure of British Council offices across the Russian Federation, is unfortunately a step that in the current environment, Putin and his advisors assume will have more positive than negative consequences for themselves and their increasingly authoritarian regime.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Window on Eurasia: Russian Right, by Ignoring the Past, Condemns Russia to Repeat It
Paul Goble
Baku, January 18 – Contemporary Russian conservatives refuse to acknowledge that many of the tragedies their country suffered in the 20th century were the direct result the insistence of their ideological predecessors that Russia can only exist in the form of an empire and must pursue a special path unlike any other country.
Still worse, according to a Moscow commentator who has prepared a translation of the work of Harvard’s Richard Pipes on Russian conservatism before 1917, those who support these ideas now, including an increasing number in the Kremlin itself, refuse to see that they are condemning Russia to a new round of disasters.
Reacting to a special issue of Ekspert entitled “Russia. Five Centuries of Empire,” Irina Pavlova argues that inspired by the Kremlin’s support for “continuity” in Russia’s national life based on these principles, a “majority” of her countrymen are falling into the trap George Santayana’s aphorism aptly sums up.
“In Russia,” she writes, “there has never been a shortage of discussions” about how the country should be organized. “There isn’t one now.” But at present, most of these debates are not informed by these earlier discussions or by a consideration of the impact they had (http://grani.ru/Society/History/m.132297.html).
Indeed, to the extent that the articles in Ekspert reflect the state of current thinking about Russia’s future, Pavlova says, it is unfortunately the case that “in all these arguments, there is essentially nothing new.” Pre-1917 Russian writers made identical arguments for the same ideas.
But those authors wrote “before the 1917 revolution which demolished the Russian empire and by so doing thereby demonstrated the weaknesses of their arguments.” Those who today call for Russia to be an empire and to follow a “special path” do not have that excuse.
Unfortunately, as the new issue of Ekspert demonstrates, the current generation of Russian conservatives “write[s] as if there had never been an October revolution with a bloody civil war or a Soviet empire built at the cost of millions of human live positions now but which collapsed in three days in August 1991.”
They do not provide any “analysis of mistakes and crimes” or draw “any conclusions” from what happened in Russia in the 20th century, she says. Instead, they echo President Vladimir Putin’s refrain that “there are far more bright spots in Russian history than dark ones” and that the end of the Soviet Union was “a tragedy.”
Like the Kremlin leader who shares so many of their ideas” and who also has been unwilling to consider the ways in which the continuities of Russia’s past have played out, today’s conservatives are certain that only they really love Russia” and that anyone who criticizes their ideas or their country is a Russophobe and unpatriotic.
And “in reality,” these so-called conservatives “love not the country or its people but rather the Russian government and the powers.” In the “Ekspert” articles, they are even prepared to assert that “Putin’s system of power and Russia are one and the same thing” and that “Russia without Putin is today geopolitically impossible.”
For contemporary Russian conservatives just like their predecessors in the 19th century, Pavlova continues, service to the state is the highest value. Indeed, they often equate that with freedom and democracy, thus subverting the real meaning of both those universal concepts.
And once again, those who claim to care about their country insist that “in Russia, the people exists for the state, not the state for the people” and that “Russia despotism and Russian unfreedom are to be preferred as the highest achievements of Russian history!”
But she continues, “if you really love Russia and not its current powers that be, then on the contrary you will want it to break out of the restricted path of its historical fate and proceed along the road precisely of Western civilization because humanity has not yet thought of any better political organization than democracy.”
That is a hard thing to convince Russians of, she acknowledges. Over the past 15 years, democracy has been discredited in the eyes of many of them. They do not associate it with “order and law but with disorder and illegality,” and neither they nor the political elite appear to believe that democracy, not dictatorship, will produce a state based on law.
“In a law-based state,” she points out, “the people do not fear the police. Business does not depend on the government, and bureaucrats serve to help someone who wants to open a business rather than put obstacles in his path.” In it, the opposition is protected, elections are meaningful, and “the state serves the people” rather than the reverse.
At the same time, Pavlova makes an important qualification. She notes that supporters of democracy are “not against an authoritarian rule for Russia, given its size and the scope of its problems. “ But they can support such a regime only if it works to put the country “on the path to a legal state, freedom and democracy and not to dictatorship.”
But she continues, it is worthy asking whether “the current president of Russia is following this path” or whether any of Russia’s current politicians is in fact “capable of conducting such a policy.” “Do you think,” Pavlova inquires, “such an understanding of state and law was taught at the law faculty of Leningrad State University?”
That puts an enormous responsibility on all those who talk about the history and future path of their country, but judging by what some are saying in journals like the Kremlin, it is a responsibility that most of them have signally failed to live up to. And because many in the Kremlin like their ideas, many Russians are going to suffer.
“Russia will not survive a new despotism and a new empire,” Pavlova warns, and “its collapse will be no less dramatic than it was in 1917 or 1991.” But in the calls for both on the pages of Ekspert, she says, one can finally get an answer to the question of what “the apologists for ‘sovereign democracy’ are thinking.”
And consequently, however much they repeatedly insist otherwise, most of those advocating a new empire and a “special path” for their country are far less concerned “about the future of Russia” than they are “about serving the immediate interests of the current powers that be.”
Baku, January 18 – Contemporary Russian conservatives refuse to acknowledge that many of the tragedies their country suffered in the 20th century were the direct result the insistence of their ideological predecessors that Russia can only exist in the form of an empire and must pursue a special path unlike any other country.
Still worse, according to a Moscow commentator who has prepared a translation of the work of Harvard’s Richard Pipes on Russian conservatism before 1917, those who support these ideas now, including an increasing number in the Kremlin itself, refuse to see that they are condemning Russia to a new round of disasters.
Reacting to a special issue of Ekspert entitled “Russia. Five Centuries of Empire,” Irina Pavlova argues that inspired by the Kremlin’s support for “continuity” in Russia’s national life based on these principles, a “majority” of her countrymen are falling into the trap George Santayana’s aphorism aptly sums up.
“In Russia,” she writes, “there has never been a shortage of discussions” about how the country should be organized. “There isn’t one now.” But at present, most of these debates are not informed by these earlier discussions or by a consideration of the impact they had (http://grani.ru/Society/History/m.132297.html).
Indeed, to the extent that the articles in Ekspert reflect the state of current thinking about Russia’s future, Pavlova says, it is unfortunately the case that “in all these arguments, there is essentially nothing new.” Pre-1917 Russian writers made identical arguments for the same ideas.
But those authors wrote “before the 1917 revolution which demolished the Russian empire and by so doing thereby demonstrated the weaknesses of their arguments.” Those who today call for Russia to be an empire and to follow a “special path” do not have that excuse.
Unfortunately, as the new issue of Ekspert demonstrates, the current generation of Russian conservatives “write[s] as if there had never been an October revolution with a bloody civil war or a Soviet empire built at the cost of millions of human live positions now but which collapsed in three days in August 1991.”
They do not provide any “analysis of mistakes and crimes” or draw “any conclusions” from what happened in Russia in the 20th century, she says. Instead, they echo President Vladimir Putin’s refrain that “there are far more bright spots in Russian history than dark ones” and that the end of the Soviet Union was “a tragedy.”
Like the Kremlin leader who shares so many of their ideas” and who also has been unwilling to consider the ways in which the continuities of Russia’s past have played out, today’s conservatives are certain that only they really love Russia” and that anyone who criticizes their ideas or their country is a Russophobe and unpatriotic.
And “in reality,” these so-called conservatives “love not the country or its people but rather the Russian government and the powers.” In the “Ekspert” articles, they are even prepared to assert that “Putin’s system of power and Russia are one and the same thing” and that “Russia without Putin is today geopolitically impossible.”
For contemporary Russian conservatives just like their predecessors in the 19th century, Pavlova continues, service to the state is the highest value. Indeed, they often equate that with freedom and democracy, thus subverting the real meaning of both those universal concepts.
And once again, those who claim to care about their country insist that “in Russia, the people exists for the state, not the state for the people” and that “Russia despotism and Russian unfreedom are to be preferred as the highest achievements of Russian history!”
But she continues, “if you really love Russia and not its current powers that be, then on the contrary you will want it to break out of the restricted path of its historical fate and proceed along the road precisely of Western civilization because humanity has not yet thought of any better political organization than democracy.”
That is a hard thing to convince Russians of, she acknowledges. Over the past 15 years, democracy has been discredited in the eyes of many of them. They do not associate it with “order and law but with disorder and illegality,” and neither they nor the political elite appear to believe that democracy, not dictatorship, will produce a state based on law.
“In a law-based state,” she points out, “the people do not fear the police. Business does not depend on the government, and bureaucrats serve to help someone who wants to open a business rather than put obstacles in his path.” In it, the opposition is protected, elections are meaningful, and “the state serves the people” rather than the reverse.
At the same time, Pavlova makes an important qualification. She notes that supporters of democracy are “not against an authoritarian rule for Russia, given its size and the scope of its problems. “ But they can support such a regime only if it works to put the country “on the path to a legal state, freedom and democracy and not to dictatorship.”
But she continues, it is worthy asking whether “the current president of Russia is following this path” or whether any of Russia’s current politicians is in fact “capable of conducting such a policy.” “Do you think,” Pavlova inquires, “such an understanding of state and law was taught at the law faculty of Leningrad State University?”
That puts an enormous responsibility on all those who talk about the history and future path of their country, but judging by what some are saying in journals like the Kremlin, it is a responsibility that most of them have signally failed to live up to. And because many in the Kremlin like their ideas, many Russians are going to suffer.
“Russia will not survive a new despotism and a new empire,” Pavlova warns, and “its collapse will be no less dramatic than it was in 1917 or 1991.” But in the calls for both on the pages of Ekspert, she says, one can finally get an answer to the question of what “the apologists for ‘sovereign democracy’ are thinking.”
And consequently, however much they repeatedly insist otherwise, most of those advocating a new empire and a “special path” for their country are far less concerned “about the future of Russia” than they are “about serving the immediate interests of the current powers that be.”
Window on Eurasia: New Satellite TV to Link World’s Circassians Together
Paul Goble
Baku, January 18 – Expelled from their Caucasian homeland by the tsars, scattered throughout the Middle East by the Ottomans, and subdivided by the Soviets, the five million Circassians of the world will soon be linked together via satellite TV, a joint project of Circassian activists in Jordan and Circassian regimes in the North Caucasus.
National Adiga Radio Television – Adiga is the self-designator of the Circassians – is based in Jordan but enjoys the active support of the large Circassian community in Turkey and the leaders of the Circassian republics of the North Caucasus (Adygeia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachay-Cherkessia).
And while NART began broadcasting on radio and over the Internet last summer (http://nart.narttv.com/), its organizers are now almost ready to begin sending out television programs via satellite first to the entire Middle East and the Northern Caucasus and then to the more than 40 other countries in which Circassians now live.
Because this effort is intended not only to unite this dispersed and divided community and to save its language and culture from extinction via assimilation, NART represents for many Circassians a dream come true and has generated a large number of stories about this broadcaster and the remarkable community behind it.
While leaders of the International Circassian Assembly and officials in the Circassian republics of the North Caucasus have long discussed the desirability of creating such a station, the current effort was led by a group of Circassians working in the Jordanian capital of Amman (http://sknews.ru/paper/2008/1/article.php?id=6&uin=5).
Because the head of that country’s radio and television corporation is himself an ethnic Circassian and because Circassians have long played a key role in the life of that country, the organizers, including Nart Nagoi and Khizim Naguar, have been able to secure the funding they need to go on the air.
In this effort, they have enjoyed the support of the International Chechen Association (www.natpress.net/stat.php?id=3145), Jordanian officials and Saudi bankers (www.elot.ru/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=444&Itemid=1),
and at least some of the leaders of the Circassian republics in the North Caucasus (http://www.elot.ru/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=436&Itemid=1).
Perhaps most significantly, they have not been actively opposed by Moscow which apparently does not view this information channel as a threat and certainly is loathe to risk offending the governments of the countries like Turkey and Jordan in which the Circassians have long played such an important role.
Despite this assistance and lack of opposition, the organizers say, their NART television effort has not yet raised all of the 480,000 U.S. dollars it will need to broadcast around the clock during its start-up year and the 200,000 U.S. dollars it will need to continue to do so in future years.
But enough money is coming in, they report, not only from wealthy Middle Eastern investors but also from Circassian communities around the world for them to make plans to begin television broadcasting by this summer. But perhaps more important, NART has benefitted from its connections in Jordan and in the North Caucasus.
In Amman, both ethnic Circassians working in media there and the Saudi prince who has funded the Jordanian capital’s “media city” have given them discounts. And Circassian governments in the North Caucasus are providing them with films and other kinds of programming.
Once its broadcasts begin, NART will help the Circassians parry some of the challenges of assimilation in Turkey and Jordan where few of the younger generation know their national language anymore and in Russia’s North Caucasus where the small size of the individual Circassian republics limits the opportunities of this community.
But to the extent that its broadcasts promotes a renewed sense of national unity among this dispersed group, NART will present some real challenges to some of the countries in which the Circassians now live, however much the governments of those states are willing to support them.
Indeed, in the run-up to the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, the place from which the Circassians were deported 140 years ago and in which many died, NART could help catalyze the anger more and more Circassians in the North Caucasus feel about the ways in which the Russian government continues to deal with them and their concerns.
And to the extent that happens – and it is difficult to see how such broadcasts, even on the most superficially anodyne topics, could avoid having that effect – NART, however small a thing it may now appear, is likely to loom larger and larger on the political stage of this entire region.
Baku, January 18 – Expelled from their Caucasian homeland by the tsars, scattered throughout the Middle East by the Ottomans, and subdivided by the Soviets, the five million Circassians of the world will soon be linked together via satellite TV, a joint project of Circassian activists in Jordan and Circassian regimes in the North Caucasus.
National Adiga Radio Television – Adiga is the self-designator of the Circassians – is based in Jordan but enjoys the active support of the large Circassian community in Turkey and the leaders of the Circassian republics of the North Caucasus (Adygeia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachay-Cherkessia).
And while NART began broadcasting on radio and over the Internet last summer (http://nart.narttv.com/), its organizers are now almost ready to begin sending out television programs via satellite first to the entire Middle East and the Northern Caucasus and then to the more than 40 other countries in which Circassians now live.
Because this effort is intended not only to unite this dispersed and divided community and to save its language and culture from extinction via assimilation, NART represents for many Circassians a dream come true and has generated a large number of stories about this broadcaster and the remarkable community behind it.
While leaders of the International Circassian Assembly and officials in the Circassian republics of the North Caucasus have long discussed the desirability of creating such a station, the current effort was led by a group of Circassians working in the Jordanian capital of Amman (http://sknews.ru/paper/2008/1/article.php?id=6&uin=5).
Because the head of that country’s radio and television corporation is himself an ethnic Circassian and because Circassians have long played a key role in the life of that country, the organizers, including Nart Nagoi and Khizim Naguar, have been able to secure the funding they need to go on the air.
In this effort, they have enjoyed the support of the International Chechen Association (www.natpress.net/stat.php?id=3145), Jordanian officials and Saudi bankers (www.elot.ru/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=444&Itemid=1),
and at least some of the leaders of the Circassian republics in the North Caucasus (http://www.elot.ru/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=436&Itemid=1).
Perhaps most significantly, they have not been actively opposed by Moscow which apparently does not view this information channel as a threat and certainly is loathe to risk offending the governments of the countries like Turkey and Jordan in which the Circassians have long played such an important role.
Despite this assistance and lack of opposition, the organizers say, their NART television effort has not yet raised all of the 480,000 U.S. dollars it will need to broadcast around the clock during its start-up year and the 200,000 U.S. dollars it will need to continue to do so in future years.
But enough money is coming in, they report, not only from wealthy Middle Eastern investors but also from Circassian communities around the world for them to make plans to begin television broadcasting by this summer. But perhaps more important, NART has benefitted from its connections in Jordan and in the North Caucasus.
In Amman, both ethnic Circassians working in media there and the Saudi prince who has funded the Jordanian capital’s “media city” have given them discounts. And Circassian governments in the North Caucasus are providing them with films and other kinds of programming.
Once its broadcasts begin, NART will help the Circassians parry some of the challenges of assimilation in Turkey and Jordan where few of the younger generation know their national language anymore and in Russia’s North Caucasus where the small size of the individual Circassian republics limits the opportunities of this community.
But to the extent that its broadcasts promotes a renewed sense of national unity among this dispersed group, NART will present some real challenges to some of the countries in which the Circassians now live, however much the governments of those states are willing to support them.
Indeed, in the run-up to the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, the place from which the Circassians were deported 140 years ago and in which many died, NART could help catalyze the anger more and more Circassians in the North Caucasus feel about the ways in which the Russian government continues to deal with them and their concerns.
And to the extent that happens – and it is difficult to see how such broadcasts, even on the most superficially anodyne topics, could avoid having that effect – NART, however small a thing it may now appear, is likely to loom larger and larger on the political stage of this entire region.
Window on Eurasia: FSB Vetting Candidates for Presidency of Northern Peoples NGO
Paul Goble
Baku, January 18 – Candidates for the presidency of a non-governmental organization of numerically small ethnic groups in Kamchatka now must be approved in advance by the Federal Security Service (FSB) as well as by prosecutors and the political leadership of that territory in the Russian Far East.
That requirement was announced by Kamchatka’s Vice Governor Aleksandr Drozdov at meeting with leaders of the Association of Numerically Small Indigenous Peoples of the North during which they were discussing arrangements for an upcoming congress of these ethnic communities.
And his words have sparked outrage among members of the group who said in an open letter released on Wednesday that Drozdov’s statement demonstrates that “control over the activities of public organizations by the kray authorities is expected to be harsh!’ (http://www.rapon.org, 16 January 2008).
Saying that they cannot remain silent in the face of this unconstitutional and illegal assertion of executive power and use of the security agencies in this way, the signatories of this appeal said that it was outrageous that the authorities there believe they have the right to decide “who will and who will not be” their organization’s leaders.
Even before announcing that the FSB and prosecutors would pass on potential candidates for the leadership of this NGO, Drozdov reshuffled the membership of the organizing committee but then, after protests by its former membership, restored all of those who had been dropped – all that is except one.
Oleg Zaporotskiy, the only person from Kamchatka who has taken part in all five Russian congresses of the small peoples of the North, was not allowed to return, the authors of the appeal said, because “apparently his candidacy did not receive [the now necessary] clearance from the FSB.”
The aboriginal population of Kamchatka on behalf of which he has worked for so many years had nominated him for the post of the Association’s president. But now, thanks to the intervention of the Russian security services, he will not be allowed to run for that office.
Zaporotskiy’s candidacy “evidently does not please the vice governor very much,” the appeal suggested, because as far as they can determine there is no other reason for Drozdov and other Kamchatka officials to prevent him from being elected or even taking part in the race.
The appeal concludes with the following observation: “It would be a good thing if all these actions of Drozdov could be characterized as his alone. But what if they have been agreed upon with the top leaders of the administration and kray council? Where are we going? Or [perhaps more accurately,] where are they leading us?”
But there are some larger and more disturbing questions that this appeal does not specify: Is all this the rogue operation of regional officials far from Moscow who assume that they can get away with such high-handed behavior because the groups involved are small and broader media attention is unlikely?
Or – and this is the most disturbing possibility of all -- was Drozdov’s move in fact orchestrated by security officials in Moscow who wanted to test public reaction – both in the Russian Federation and abroad – before seeking to extend this method of regulating other, larger NGOs elsewhere?
If that reading is correct, then any failure by outsiders to speak out now against these official actions against a small group representing ethnic communities that most people have never heard of may could mean that those who don’t will find themselves in the position Pastor Martin Niemuller did in Germany in the 1930s.
That heroic religious figure was compelled by his own conscience to reflect that when the Nazis came for the Jews, the communists, and the labor union leaders, he did not say anything because he was not a member of any of those groups. But when they came for him, he lamented, there was no one left to say anything on his behalf.
Baku, January 18 – Candidates for the presidency of a non-governmental organization of numerically small ethnic groups in Kamchatka now must be approved in advance by the Federal Security Service (FSB) as well as by prosecutors and the political leadership of that territory in the Russian Far East.
That requirement was announced by Kamchatka’s Vice Governor Aleksandr Drozdov at meeting with leaders of the Association of Numerically Small Indigenous Peoples of the North during which they were discussing arrangements for an upcoming congress of these ethnic communities.
And his words have sparked outrage among members of the group who said in an open letter released on Wednesday that Drozdov’s statement demonstrates that “control over the activities of public organizations by the kray authorities is expected to be harsh!’ (http://www.rapon.org, 16 January 2008).
Saying that they cannot remain silent in the face of this unconstitutional and illegal assertion of executive power and use of the security agencies in this way, the signatories of this appeal said that it was outrageous that the authorities there believe they have the right to decide “who will and who will not be” their organization’s leaders.
Even before announcing that the FSB and prosecutors would pass on potential candidates for the leadership of this NGO, Drozdov reshuffled the membership of the organizing committee but then, after protests by its former membership, restored all of those who had been dropped – all that is except one.
Oleg Zaporotskiy, the only person from Kamchatka who has taken part in all five Russian congresses of the small peoples of the North, was not allowed to return, the authors of the appeal said, because “apparently his candidacy did not receive [the now necessary] clearance from the FSB.”
The aboriginal population of Kamchatka on behalf of which he has worked for so many years had nominated him for the post of the Association’s president. But now, thanks to the intervention of the Russian security services, he will not be allowed to run for that office.
Zaporotskiy’s candidacy “evidently does not please the vice governor very much,” the appeal suggested, because as far as they can determine there is no other reason for Drozdov and other Kamchatka officials to prevent him from being elected or even taking part in the race.
The appeal concludes with the following observation: “It would be a good thing if all these actions of Drozdov could be characterized as his alone. But what if they have been agreed upon with the top leaders of the administration and kray council? Where are we going? Or [perhaps more accurately,] where are they leading us?”
But there are some larger and more disturbing questions that this appeal does not specify: Is all this the rogue operation of regional officials far from Moscow who assume that they can get away with such high-handed behavior because the groups involved are small and broader media attention is unlikely?
Or – and this is the most disturbing possibility of all -- was Drozdov’s move in fact orchestrated by security officials in Moscow who wanted to test public reaction – both in the Russian Federation and abroad – before seeking to extend this method of regulating other, larger NGOs elsewhere?
If that reading is correct, then any failure by outsiders to speak out now against these official actions against a small group representing ethnic communities that most people have never heard of may could mean that those who don’t will find themselves in the position Pastor Martin Niemuller did in Germany in the 1930s.
That heroic religious figure was compelled by his own conscience to reflect that when the Nazis came for the Jews, the communists, and the labor union leaders, he did not say anything because he was not a member of any of those groups. But when they came for him, he lamented, there was no one left to say anything on his behalf.
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