Paul Goble
Staunton, July 23 – As part of its effort to open the Arctic Sea route to ships travelling between Europe and Asia, Moscow is launching a 74-day expedition to identify “potentially dangerous” objects there, including “many containing radioactive materials” that were dumped there in Soviet times.
Maksim Vladimirov, a senior official at the Emergency Situations Ministry who is responsible for fire protection and civil defense, says that the expedition which will proceed from Arkhangelsk to Anadyr and back until October 3rd is “the longest in the 20 year history” of such explorations (eco.rian.ru/nature/20100720/256572364.html).
“The most important goal of the upcoming expedition,” he told journalists this week, “is the study of the status of potentially dangerous objects underwater,” including in particular “the many objects containing radioactive materials buried in the Tsivolki Gulf of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago” and in particular the nuclear core of the atomic icebreaker “Lenin.”
Vladimirov presented this expedition as a condition of his ministry’s efforts begun in 2009 to monitor potentially dangerous sites in the Black, Baltic and Okhotsk Seas and Lake Ladoga, including the work it did to determine the radiation threat from a Soviet nuclear submarine that sank in August 1985 150 kilometers from Vladivostok.
But in fact it is more than that in a double sense. On the one hand, the expedition will do more than just identify radiation threats along the Arctic Sea route. It will work with local officials to set up monitoring sites and rescue stations in Dudinsk, Tiksi, Pevek and Anadyr to assist with navigation and any accidents that may occur.
And on the other, this expedition comes on the tenth anniversary of the acquittal of Aleksandr Nikitin, the former Russian naval officer who in 1995 was charged with espionage by the FSB because of the information he supplied to Norway’s Bellona environmental protection organization about Soviet nuclear dumping in the Arctic Sea.
It thus represents a kind of belated official acknowledgement of precisely the kind of problems the Bellona report Nikitin contributed to, “The Russian Northern Fleet: Soures of Radioactive Contamination,” and may prompt precisely the kind of cleanup that Nikitin, Bellona and others have campaigned for (www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2010/nikitin_ten_years).
At least, that is the outcome one can hope for given that the number of ships transiting the Northern Sea route seems set to expand dramatically already this year, with ships carrying not only oil and gas but also bulk mineral cargoes moving along a path that only recently became effectively navigable for most shipping because of global warming.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Window on Eurasia: ‘Unwritten’ Directive from Moscow Blocking Construction of New Mosques in Russia, Moscow Imam Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 22 – Even if Moscow gives public approval for a new mosque, local officials follow “an unwritten directive” not to permit the construction of any new mosques in the Russian Federation, according to Shamil Alyautdinov, the imam of the Russian capital’s Memorial Mosque.
In comments on an Ekho Moskvy program on “Islamic Identity and Religious Radicalism, Alyautdinov said that this “unwritten directive” means that “even in certain North Caucasus republics, churches are being built today but not mosques,” a pattern that is radicalizing some Muslims (www.islamnews.ru/news-25550.html).
Indeed, the Moscow imam said, in one of the republics there where 60 percent of the population is Muslims, “there are more churches than mosque.” Moreover, there and elsewhere, Alyautdinov continued, Moscow approves the reconstruction of churches but “not on one mosque is there a sign indicating ‘repair’ or ‘construction.’”
But even in the Russian capital, Muslims have not been able to secure approval from local and regional officials to build new mosques, even when senior federal officials say that they have no objection, statements that many assume are both accurate and determinative but in fact turn out to be neither.
“In Moscow,” Alyautdinov said, “there are a total of four mosques,” while in Beijing, China, there are 70. When his interviewer objected that in Russia there are “more than 6,000 mosques, the Moscow imam responded that in China there are 30,000, even though the number of practicing Muslims in China is roughly the same as their number in Russia – 20 million.
The lack of mosques in Russia, he continued, means that a large share of Muslims there don’t know much about their faith or feel that they are from some other planet. As a result, they all too often lack the internal knowledge and resources to resist the appeals of radicals who tell them what they think Islam is.
Asked directly as to whether there is a radical trend in Russian Islam, Alyautdinov responded that “there is the term, Russian banditism.” And he noted that the way in which people are described depends to an unfortunate degree on their power position: those without power are described in negative terms; once they get power, the descriptions change.
The Moscow imam noted that “Palestinian parties and organizations which the mass media had called terrorists, then came to power, and with them, [the Russian media and the Russian government] began to conduct a conversation on an equal basis” and without such epithets.
Alyautdinov’s comments are important not so much because they are part of a longstanding Muslim effort to build more mosques in the Russian Federation than because they are an indication that Moscow appears to have decided to show more tolerance on this question and allow local officials to take the blame, even if Moscow is the source of the decision.
Staunton, July 22 – Even if Moscow gives public approval for a new mosque, local officials follow “an unwritten directive” not to permit the construction of any new mosques in the Russian Federation, according to Shamil Alyautdinov, the imam of the Russian capital’s Memorial Mosque.
In comments on an Ekho Moskvy program on “Islamic Identity and Religious Radicalism, Alyautdinov said that this “unwritten directive” means that “even in certain North Caucasus republics, churches are being built today but not mosques,” a pattern that is radicalizing some Muslims (www.islamnews.ru/news-25550.html).
Indeed, the Moscow imam said, in one of the republics there where 60 percent of the population is Muslims, “there are more churches than mosque.” Moreover, there and elsewhere, Alyautdinov continued, Moscow approves the reconstruction of churches but “not on one mosque is there a sign indicating ‘repair’ or ‘construction.’”
But even in the Russian capital, Muslims have not been able to secure approval from local and regional officials to build new mosques, even when senior federal officials say that they have no objection, statements that many assume are both accurate and determinative but in fact turn out to be neither.
“In Moscow,” Alyautdinov said, “there are a total of four mosques,” while in Beijing, China, there are 70. When his interviewer objected that in Russia there are “more than 6,000 mosques, the Moscow imam responded that in China there are 30,000, even though the number of practicing Muslims in China is roughly the same as their number in Russia – 20 million.
The lack of mosques in Russia, he continued, means that a large share of Muslims there don’t know much about their faith or feel that they are from some other planet. As a result, they all too often lack the internal knowledge and resources to resist the appeals of radicals who tell them what they think Islam is.
Asked directly as to whether there is a radical trend in Russian Islam, Alyautdinov responded that “there is the term, Russian banditism.” And he noted that the way in which people are described depends to an unfortunate degree on their power position: those without power are described in negative terms; once they get power, the descriptions change.
The Moscow imam noted that “Palestinian parties and organizations which the mass media had called terrorists, then came to power, and with them, [the Russian media and the Russian government] began to conduct a conversation on an equal basis” and without such epithets.
Alyautdinov’s comments are important not so much because they are part of a longstanding Muslim effort to build more mosques in the Russian Federation than because they are an indication that Moscow appears to have decided to show more tolerance on this question and allow local officials to take the blame, even if Moscow is the source of the decision.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Ignoring All but a Handful of Russia’s Nearly 1,000 Company Towns, Activists Say
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 22 – Moscow continues to ignore the serious problems of Russia’s nearly 1,000 company towns, with officials acknowledging only 335 of them and providing only 27 of them --including most prominently Pikalevo -- priority attention and investment, according to participants at a Social Chamber roundtable this week.
This approach, which many governors also have adopted, Yevgeny Markov, the head of Russia’s Union of Small Cities, said, reflects “a head in the sands” attitude on the part of officials that somehow, without anyone doing anything, “everything will right itself on its own” (www.gzt.ru/topnews/economics/-rossiiskie-monogoroda-ne-hotyat-povtoryatj-sudjbu-/315844.html?from=1columnupfromindex).
The company town problem, which attracted so much attention a year ago but which is now seldom discussed, arose in the early 1990s when entrepreneurs swept in, bought up city-forming industries in these places, and manifested “only one desire – to get the maximum profit and then move it offshore,” Markov said.
Local officials seldom have the clout or even the legal basis for obtaining information from businessmen let alone doing anything about it, the Union official continued, and consequently, workers have seen their wages go unpaid and their jobs disappear without much hope that things will change, barring a Pikalevo-like intervention from on high.
Pikalevo, where a demonstration by local workers brought forth a much-publicized visit by Vladimir Putin, is indeed doing since that time. The head of its administration, Sergey Veber, told the roundtable that things had gotten better and that Moscow officials were always prepared to listen to his requests for assistance.
But there are more than 900 other company towns, and Moscow simply has not developed a program for them, other speakers at the session said. Indeed, the only thing approximating a state policy for this category of places, they said, was the continuing and still unresolved discussion about the possibility of simply moving workers there to other locations.
And such an approach, many fear, could be counterproductive and make the situation worse. Economist Nikita Krichevsky said that moving people from one place to another was “asocial.” “It would destroy the customary way of life of tens and hundreds of thousands of people and recall the methods of collectivization and industrialization of the 1920s and 1930s.”
But barring massive outside investment, something that does not appear to be on offer either from the federal bureaucracy or private businesses, the company towns are increasingly being thrown back on their own dwindling resources, a situation that could lead to social explosions if a way out is not found.
One possible exit from the current problems, Markov said, would be for Russian company towns to copy the American experience in which “several thousand enterprises have become the property of the workers” “Of course,” he conceded, “our workers are still not ready and have not matured to the point that they could become real masters.”
But economists like Nikita Krichevsky are skeptical that could work. How could impoverished workers pay for the shares and if they received them for free, what would prevent them from recapitulating the failed experiment of voucher capitalism of the 1990s in which workers sold off their shares in order to get some income?
That is because, the economist said, “workers are not interested in property they are interested in pay.” There are ways to restrict such a rapid sale, but they would not always work either, he insisted. And consequently, such an arrangement under current Russian conditions almost certainly would fail.
Markov ended the session with a call for the government to finally face up to a problem that because of its size no one has wanted to deal with. Moscow must focus its attention on “the entire specter of the problem-filled small cities and development a policy toward company towns,” but the Union of Small Cities head said this without much apparent confidence.
Staunton, July 22 – Moscow continues to ignore the serious problems of Russia’s nearly 1,000 company towns, with officials acknowledging only 335 of them and providing only 27 of them --including most prominently Pikalevo -- priority attention and investment, according to participants at a Social Chamber roundtable this week.
This approach, which many governors also have adopted, Yevgeny Markov, the head of Russia’s Union of Small Cities, said, reflects “a head in the sands” attitude on the part of officials that somehow, without anyone doing anything, “everything will right itself on its own” (www.gzt.ru/topnews/economics/-rossiiskie-monogoroda-ne-hotyat-povtoryatj-sudjbu-/315844.html?from=1columnupfromindex).
The company town problem, which attracted so much attention a year ago but which is now seldom discussed, arose in the early 1990s when entrepreneurs swept in, bought up city-forming industries in these places, and manifested “only one desire – to get the maximum profit and then move it offshore,” Markov said.
Local officials seldom have the clout or even the legal basis for obtaining information from businessmen let alone doing anything about it, the Union official continued, and consequently, workers have seen their wages go unpaid and their jobs disappear without much hope that things will change, barring a Pikalevo-like intervention from on high.
Pikalevo, where a demonstration by local workers brought forth a much-publicized visit by Vladimir Putin, is indeed doing since that time. The head of its administration, Sergey Veber, told the roundtable that things had gotten better and that Moscow officials were always prepared to listen to his requests for assistance.
But there are more than 900 other company towns, and Moscow simply has not developed a program for them, other speakers at the session said. Indeed, the only thing approximating a state policy for this category of places, they said, was the continuing and still unresolved discussion about the possibility of simply moving workers there to other locations.
And such an approach, many fear, could be counterproductive and make the situation worse. Economist Nikita Krichevsky said that moving people from one place to another was “asocial.” “It would destroy the customary way of life of tens and hundreds of thousands of people and recall the methods of collectivization and industrialization of the 1920s and 1930s.”
But barring massive outside investment, something that does not appear to be on offer either from the federal bureaucracy or private businesses, the company towns are increasingly being thrown back on their own dwindling resources, a situation that could lead to social explosions if a way out is not found.
One possible exit from the current problems, Markov said, would be for Russian company towns to copy the American experience in which “several thousand enterprises have become the property of the workers” “Of course,” he conceded, “our workers are still not ready and have not matured to the point that they could become real masters.”
But economists like Nikita Krichevsky are skeptical that could work. How could impoverished workers pay for the shares and if they received them for free, what would prevent them from recapitulating the failed experiment of voucher capitalism of the 1990s in which workers sold off their shares in order to get some income?
That is because, the economist said, “workers are not interested in property they are interested in pay.” There are ways to restrict such a rapid sale, but they would not always work either, he insisted. And consequently, such an arrangement under current Russian conditions almost certainly would fail.
Markov ended the session with a call for the government to finally face up to a problem that because of its size no one has wanted to deal with. Moscow must focus its attention on “the entire specter of the problem-filled small cities and development a policy toward company towns,” but the Union of Small Cities head said this without much apparent confidence.
Window on Eurasia: Dam Bombing Could Be ‘Dress Rehearsal’ for Sochi Olympics, Moscow Analyst Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 22 – Most Russian commentators have suggested that the bombing this week of a hydroelectric dam in the North Caucasus was either simply a continuation of the activities of anti-government groups in that region or was specifically directed against the leadership of Kabardino-Balkaria or Presidential Plenipotentiary Aleksandr Khloponin.
All those factors could be at work, Aleksandr Krylov, a senior scholar at the Moscow Institute of International Economics and International Relations, acknowledges, but he argues that the bombing may in fact be part of a broader effort by Circassian groups and others to derail plans for the Sochi Olympics in 2014 (www.nakanune.ru/articles/14789).
Krylov specifically notes that “there is an intensification now in the North Caucasus of the Circassian problem, which is directly connected with the upcoming Olympiad, and certain forces are actively attempting to play the Circassian card for their own purposes,” an effort that has found “mass support in local society” there.
In support of his argument, Krylov points to what happened in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics. It was no accident, he suggests, that “on the eve of the Chinese Olympics the theme of Tibet and the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous district sounded to strongly. This was not a simple coincidence; there are influential forces in the world who strive to use ethnic games.”
Krylov’s suggestion is important for at least three reasons. First, it reflects a continuing lack of consensus in the Russian capital not only over the source of violence in the North Caucasus but also on how best to counter it, with officials divided between those who favor force and those who believe only economic change will lead to an improvement, albeit over time.
Second, it is yet another indication that those Circassians who seek the formation of a single republic for their nationality in the North Caucasus and demand official recognition of the genocide carried out against them nearly 150 years ago by tsarist authorities have gotten the attention of Moscow, albeit perhaps not the kind of attention they seek.
And third, and perhaps most important, Krylov’s argument highlights the growing tendency of officials in the Russian capital to view all issues in the North Caucasus through the prism of preparations for the Sochi Olympics, the 2014 games that Vladimir Putin has indicated he views as a major part of his legacy.
On the one hand, such a perspective suggests that Moscow may be prepared to use even more force against those like the Circassians it suspects of trying to undermine Russia’s ability to prepare for and stage the games and that the center will adopt an even harder line against the Circassians now than it has in the past.
And on the other, Krylov’s linkage of the Circassians and the question of the Sochi Games could simultaneously lead Moscow to devote more attention to the ethnic dimension of conflicts in the region, aspects of the conflict there which many in Moscow and elsewhere have discounted because of the rise of Islamist politics.
In response to questions put by Nakanune.ru, Krylov made a number of additional points about Russian policy in the North Caucasus in the wake of the latest attack. He said that the decision of anti-Russian forces to attack something as major as a dam shows that “the local underground has become more active” and that “the situation will continue to get worse.”
Indeed, he says, “it is completely possible that those forces which are striving toward the destabilization [of the region] want to push the situation there to the level of Chechnya a decade ago.” Given the likelihood of such plans, Krylov continues, “that is the chief cause” behind the dam explosion, and not “some kind of contradictions in the local elite.”
Asked directly what forces might be interested in such an outcome, Krylov responds that “there are many such forces both locally and abroad,” including Al Qaeda, “criminal groups, various foreign states who in some fashion want to put pressure on Russia in their interests and are using for this the Circassian factor and the unstable situation.”
Local elites, Krylov says, are exploiting all this, seeking to “shift responsibility” for everything onto Moscow and “receive from the federal center concessions and what is most important financial means.” And consequently in the years leading up to the Sochi Games, “we will have an extremely complex situation in this [Circassian] part of the Caucasus.”
According to Krylov, the most important thing Moscow can do is to define the problem correctly and “foresee threats.” Up to now, he says, “our powers that be have been reacting to what happens.” As a result, the initiative belongs not to the powers that be but rather to those who oppose them.
Fighting terrorism is hard for everyone, Krylov concedes, but it seems harder for Russia than for others. “Our western ‘allies’ learn from their mistakes and do not have repeats of the explosions which have occurred. With us, on the other hand, is observed a certain psychological freeze: terrorist acts take place with regularity and quite frequently. This is very disturbing.”
Asked whether the new law on the FSB will change the situation, Krylov says that only the future will tell. But he notes that “we have a large number of ideas and various documents, but then somehow this all is very poorly followed in the real work of the organs,” institutions that for all their shortcomings are nonetheless doing a great deal.
“If they were not effective,” the IMEMO analyst suggests, “the situation would be much worse, but up to now they have functioned insufficiently effectively in order to block the majority of threats which are arising for the security of the state.”
Staunton, July 22 – Most Russian commentators have suggested that the bombing this week of a hydroelectric dam in the North Caucasus was either simply a continuation of the activities of anti-government groups in that region or was specifically directed against the leadership of Kabardino-Balkaria or Presidential Plenipotentiary Aleksandr Khloponin.
All those factors could be at work, Aleksandr Krylov, a senior scholar at the Moscow Institute of International Economics and International Relations, acknowledges, but he argues that the bombing may in fact be part of a broader effort by Circassian groups and others to derail plans for the Sochi Olympics in 2014 (www.nakanune.ru/articles/14789).
Krylov specifically notes that “there is an intensification now in the North Caucasus of the Circassian problem, which is directly connected with the upcoming Olympiad, and certain forces are actively attempting to play the Circassian card for their own purposes,” an effort that has found “mass support in local society” there.
In support of his argument, Krylov points to what happened in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics. It was no accident, he suggests, that “on the eve of the Chinese Olympics the theme of Tibet and the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous district sounded to strongly. This was not a simple coincidence; there are influential forces in the world who strive to use ethnic games.”
Krylov’s suggestion is important for at least three reasons. First, it reflects a continuing lack of consensus in the Russian capital not only over the source of violence in the North Caucasus but also on how best to counter it, with officials divided between those who favor force and those who believe only economic change will lead to an improvement, albeit over time.
Second, it is yet another indication that those Circassians who seek the formation of a single republic for their nationality in the North Caucasus and demand official recognition of the genocide carried out against them nearly 150 years ago by tsarist authorities have gotten the attention of Moscow, albeit perhaps not the kind of attention they seek.
And third, and perhaps most important, Krylov’s argument highlights the growing tendency of officials in the Russian capital to view all issues in the North Caucasus through the prism of preparations for the Sochi Olympics, the 2014 games that Vladimir Putin has indicated he views as a major part of his legacy.
On the one hand, such a perspective suggests that Moscow may be prepared to use even more force against those like the Circassians it suspects of trying to undermine Russia’s ability to prepare for and stage the games and that the center will adopt an even harder line against the Circassians now than it has in the past.
And on the other, Krylov’s linkage of the Circassians and the question of the Sochi Games could simultaneously lead Moscow to devote more attention to the ethnic dimension of conflicts in the region, aspects of the conflict there which many in Moscow and elsewhere have discounted because of the rise of Islamist politics.
In response to questions put by Nakanune.ru, Krylov made a number of additional points about Russian policy in the North Caucasus in the wake of the latest attack. He said that the decision of anti-Russian forces to attack something as major as a dam shows that “the local underground has become more active” and that “the situation will continue to get worse.”
Indeed, he says, “it is completely possible that those forces which are striving toward the destabilization [of the region] want to push the situation there to the level of Chechnya a decade ago.” Given the likelihood of such plans, Krylov continues, “that is the chief cause” behind the dam explosion, and not “some kind of contradictions in the local elite.”
Asked directly what forces might be interested in such an outcome, Krylov responds that “there are many such forces both locally and abroad,” including Al Qaeda, “criminal groups, various foreign states who in some fashion want to put pressure on Russia in their interests and are using for this the Circassian factor and the unstable situation.”
Local elites, Krylov says, are exploiting all this, seeking to “shift responsibility” for everything onto Moscow and “receive from the federal center concessions and what is most important financial means.” And consequently in the years leading up to the Sochi Games, “we will have an extremely complex situation in this [Circassian] part of the Caucasus.”
According to Krylov, the most important thing Moscow can do is to define the problem correctly and “foresee threats.” Up to now, he says, “our powers that be have been reacting to what happens.” As a result, the initiative belongs not to the powers that be but rather to those who oppose them.
Fighting terrorism is hard for everyone, Krylov concedes, but it seems harder for Russia than for others. “Our western ‘allies’ learn from their mistakes and do not have repeats of the explosions which have occurred. With us, on the other hand, is observed a certain psychological freeze: terrorist acts take place with regularity and quite frequently. This is very disturbing.”
Asked whether the new law on the FSB will change the situation, Krylov says that only the future will tell. But he notes that “we have a large number of ideas and various documents, but then somehow this all is very poorly followed in the real work of the organs,” institutions that for all their shortcomings are nonetheless doing a great deal.
“If they were not effective,” the IMEMO analyst suggests, “the situation would be much worse, but up to now they have functioned insufficiently effectively in order to block the majority of threats which are arising for the security of the state.”
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Window on Eurasia: FSB Seeks Even Greater Voice in Control of Russian Border Areas
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 21 – In yet another indication that the FSB is regaining ever more of the powers the KGB had in Soviet times, officials at the Russian security service are seeking the inclusion of a provision in a law under preparation that would give them an effective veto over economic activities in a five kilometer deep zone along the Russian state border.
In today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” journalist Ivan Rodin reports that as Russian officials are finalizing a draft on a new law governing the country’s borders because the current one, adopted in 1993, is now out of date, the FSB is working to increase its role in this area of Russian life (www.ng.ru/politics/2010-07-21/3_fsb.html).
The existing border law was adopted prior to the adoption of the Russian Constitution in December 1993, and Russian leaders since that time repeatedly have called for new legislation. In 2005, FSB Border Service Chief Vladimir Pronichev presented a draft, and in 2007, then-President Vladimir Putin set up a new federal agency to deal with border issues.
But these actions took place without the support new laws would provide, and as a result, various groups now view the drafting of a replacement border law as a chance to maximize their powers. That is certainly what the FSB is trying to do, Rodin says, and it has focused on the question of land use, traditionally the most sensitive issue in Russian legislation.
According to the FSB proposal now circulating in the government, the “Nezavisimaya gazeta” journalist says, there would be established a five kilometer deep border zone, in which local officials would not be able to approve any land use without the approval of the FSB, something that would give the security service an effective veto over the border.
First of all, the journalist reports, the draft law would not allow the establishment of any businesses in zones along borders where the state border had not been defined by treaty. Among the borders that would affect most profoundly is the one between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
Second, the FSB draft would prohibit any land use that would interfere with border security, a provision so undefined and potentially expansive that the FSB would take near total control of all activities in the Russian Federation’s enormously long border zones much as the KGB had in Soviet times.
And third, the FSB proposals would prohibit, in ways that recall “the totalitarian past rather than the modernized future,” the presence in such zones of any firms where more than 50 percent of the ownership belonged to foreign citizens or foreign companies or to “people without citizenship.”
A staffer at the Duma security committee suggested that this last proposal looked “quite strange” given that unless one assumes that a firm with 51 percent foreign ownership is somehow more likely to be engaged in espionage or subversive activities than one in which 40 percent of the shares belong to foreigners.
Gennady Gudkov, deputy chairman of that committee, agreed, and he pointed to another shortcoming in the FSB proposals. A universal five kilometer border zone doesn’t make sense everywhere, he said. “It is one thing in Siberia, there perhaps it should be 50 kilometers, and quite another in Kaliningrad.”
Just what will emerge, of course, is far from clear, but Gudkov undoubtedly speaks for many legislators and those concerned about Constitutional rights when he says that he “would like to see in the text of the law a more precise listing of criteria, on the basis of which businessmen all the same could obtain agreement from the border services.”
If the new legislation retains the general language the FSB prefers, Gudkov and those who share his fears clearly believe, the risk is great that the Russian intelligence service will use such a new “law” to subvert the Russian Constitution and push Russia not forward to modernization but backward to some of the features of the Soviet past.
Staunton, July 21 – In yet another indication that the FSB is regaining ever more of the powers the KGB had in Soviet times, officials at the Russian security service are seeking the inclusion of a provision in a law under preparation that would give them an effective veto over economic activities in a five kilometer deep zone along the Russian state border.
In today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” journalist Ivan Rodin reports that as Russian officials are finalizing a draft on a new law governing the country’s borders because the current one, adopted in 1993, is now out of date, the FSB is working to increase its role in this area of Russian life (www.ng.ru/politics/2010-07-21/3_fsb.html).
The existing border law was adopted prior to the adoption of the Russian Constitution in December 1993, and Russian leaders since that time repeatedly have called for new legislation. In 2005, FSB Border Service Chief Vladimir Pronichev presented a draft, and in 2007, then-President Vladimir Putin set up a new federal agency to deal with border issues.
But these actions took place without the support new laws would provide, and as a result, various groups now view the drafting of a replacement border law as a chance to maximize their powers. That is certainly what the FSB is trying to do, Rodin says, and it has focused on the question of land use, traditionally the most sensitive issue in Russian legislation.
According to the FSB proposal now circulating in the government, the “Nezavisimaya gazeta” journalist says, there would be established a five kilometer deep border zone, in which local officials would not be able to approve any land use without the approval of the FSB, something that would give the security service an effective veto over the border.
First of all, the journalist reports, the draft law would not allow the establishment of any businesses in zones along borders where the state border had not been defined by treaty. Among the borders that would affect most profoundly is the one between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
Second, the FSB draft would prohibit any land use that would interfere with border security, a provision so undefined and potentially expansive that the FSB would take near total control of all activities in the Russian Federation’s enormously long border zones much as the KGB had in Soviet times.
And third, the FSB proposals would prohibit, in ways that recall “the totalitarian past rather than the modernized future,” the presence in such zones of any firms where more than 50 percent of the ownership belonged to foreign citizens or foreign companies or to “people without citizenship.”
A staffer at the Duma security committee suggested that this last proposal looked “quite strange” given that unless one assumes that a firm with 51 percent foreign ownership is somehow more likely to be engaged in espionage or subversive activities than one in which 40 percent of the shares belong to foreigners.
Gennady Gudkov, deputy chairman of that committee, agreed, and he pointed to another shortcoming in the FSB proposals. A universal five kilometer border zone doesn’t make sense everywhere, he said. “It is one thing in Siberia, there perhaps it should be 50 kilometers, and quite another in Kaliningrad.”
Just what will emerge, of course, is far from clear, but Gudkov undoubtedly speaks for many legislators and those concerned about Constitutional rights when he says that he “would like to see in the text of the law a more precise listing of criteria, on the basis of which businessmen all the same could obtain agreement from the border services.”
If the new legislation retains the general language the FSB prefers, Gudkov and those who share his fears clearly believe, the risk is great that the Russian intelligence service will use such a new “law” to subvert the Russian Constitution and push Russia not forward to modernization but backward to some of the features of the Soviet past.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow City Plans to Plan for an End to Communal Apartments by 2020
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 21 – The Moscow city government has announced that it plans to discuss in October steps that would finally allow the nearly 300,000 Muscovites still living in some 70,000 communal apartments – the notorious “kommunalkas” of Soviet times – to move into separate ones by 2016 under an “optimistic” scenario and by 2020 in a more “realistic” one.
Such housing arrangements were the product of the rapid urbanization of the Russian population during Soviet times and the inability and unwillingness of the Soviet powers that be to provide adequate housing for people moving from the often devastated villages to industrial centers in the city.
While “kommunalkas” represented a step forward from the barracks in which many Russians were initially confined in the course of this urbanization, they were, because people had to share kitchens and bathrooms, often the breeding grounds of all kinds of social pathologies, as Regis Wargnier brilliantly showed in his 1999 film “East-West.”
According to official statistics, in Moscow at the present time, there are 141,894 families with some 295,744 members living in 71,433 communal apartments at the present time, despite the economic growth that the Russian powers that be constantly celebrate and that Western observers focus on (www.annews.ru/news/detail.php?ID=230938).
But quite obviously, the rising tide in Russia has not lifted all boats, and Moscow city officials are currently focusing on what might be done to help those who remain in “kommunalkas.” “We expect,” one city housing official said, “that a program will be considered in the first half of October.”
Moscow officials say that “according to an ‘optimistic’ scenario,” kommunalkas will be eliminated in the Russian capital by 2016. But for the achievement of that goal, the city will have to add 656,000 square meters of housing for those living in the communal apartments, something that would cost 34.25 billion rubles (1.1 billion US dollars).
A more “realistic” projection, officials say, would have the current residents of “kommunalkas” moving into private apartments only by 2020, something that would require the construction of 754,000 square meters of housing at a cost of 25.4 billion rubles (800 million US dollars).
Given the track record of the Moscow city government and the Russian powers that be, even that “realistic” view is likely to prove overly “optimistic,” and consequently a kind of second class housing situation is likely to remain the fate of many Muscovites, even as the city’s average income continues to rise.
Staunton, July 21 – The Moscow city government has announced that it plans to discuss in October steps that would finally allow the nearly 300,000 Muscovites still living in some 70,000 communal apartments – the notorious “kommunalkas” of Soviet times – to move into separate ones by 2016 under an “optimistic” scenario and by 2020 in a more “realistic” one.
Such housing arrangements were the product of the rapid urbanization of the Russian population during Soviet times and the inability and unwillingness of the Soviet powers that be to provide adequate housing for people moving from the often devastated villages to industrial centers in the city.
While “kommunalkas” represented a step forward from the barracks in which many Russians were initially confined in the course of this urbanization, they were, because people had to share kitchens and bathrooms, often the breeding grounds of all kinds of social pathologies, as Regis Wargnier brilliantly showed in his 1999 film “East-West.”
According to official statistics, in Moscow at the present time, there are 141,894 families with some 295,744 members living in 71,433 communal apartments at the present time, despite the economic growth that the Russian powers that be constantly celebrate and that Western observers focus on (www.annews.ru/news/detail.php?ID=230938).
But quite obviously, the rising tide in Russia has not lifted all boats, and Moscow city officials are currently focusing on what might be done to help those who remain in “kommunalkas.” “We expect,” one city housing official said, “that a program will be considered in the first half of October.”
Moscow officials say that “according to an ‘optimistic’ scenario,” kommunalkas will be eliminated in the Russian capital by 2016. But for the achievement of that goal, the city will have to add 656,000 square meters of housing for those living in the communal apartments, something that would cost 34.25 billion rubles (1.1 billion US dollars).
A more “realistic” projection, officials say, would have the current residents of “kommunalkas” moving into private apartments only by 2020, something that would require the construction of 754,000 square meters of housing at a cost of 25.4 billion rubles (800 million US dollars).
Given the track record of the Moscow city government and the Russian powers that be, even that “realistic” view is likely to prove overly “optimistic,” and consequently a kind of second class housing situation is likely to remain the fate of many Muscovites, even as the city’s average income continues to rise.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Patriarchate Forced to Ask Russian Government for Help in ‘Liquidating’ Independent Orthodox
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 21 – Russia’s procurator general has dispatched a special commission to Vladimir oblast in order to consider “all possible variants of the final liquidation of the Russian Orthodox Apostolic Church,” an indirect confirmation of the failure of both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian powers that be to close that church down up to now.
In a commentary on Portal-credo.ru, Viktor Kroshechkin says that he has heard about this latest Moscow plan “from unofficial sources” but is certain that it is true and that it reflects both the failure of the Moscow Patriarch’s effort to close down independent Orthodox groups and the increasing support the Russian regime is prepared to provide in support of that effort.
While the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian powers that be have already confiscated a significant portion of the churches of the Apostolic Church, the religious affairs analyst says, this latest effort is “an indirect confirmation” that all these efforts have “not brought any particular results” (www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=news&id=78904).
Despite all the ideological campaigns against the Apostolic Church and moves by Russian courts to seize property belonging to it, Kroshechkin says, “not a single priest or a single community has left the [Apostolic] Church during this period or transferred its allegiance to the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.”
It is clear, he continues, that “such is the nature of the Orthodox faith that repression only strengthens it and unifies the believers.” And consequently, despite the ability of the Patriarchate and the Russian powers that be, the Apostolic Church continues to function even though it has fewer and fewer physical locations it can call its own.
“The authority of the Russian Orthodox Apostolic church among simple people in those regions where its parishes operate has been maintained, and Metropolitan Valentin does not want to enter into negotiations with the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate,” despite the efforts of the latter to start such talks.
Instead, Kroshechkin says, the metropolitan has been “brave enough to complain about the Russian ‘sovereign democratic’ powers that be to the Congress and Administration of the President of the United States.” That has prompted the Russian powers that be to launch “an analysis of the situation” and to ask about the health of Metropolitan Valentin.
The Russian “organs” have frequently told priests of the Apostolic Church that “they must ‘change the leadership’” of their church and either “joint the Moscow Patriarchate or for a start ‘remove Valentin’ from the post of head of the Church.” In some cases, they have been told that the only way to keep their parishes is to do one or the other.
But now, in support of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Russian powers that be have increased the threat: they have told Apostolic Church priests that they must choose to leave the ranks of the independent Orthodox church or “’receive a sentence’ for extremism or for ‘something worse.’”
At the very least, the Apostolic Church clergy have been told by Russian officials, they must enter into talks with the Moscow Patriarchate or “lose their state registration,” a step that would mean that any meeting of independent Orthodox believers would be “prohibited” not just by the Patriarchate but by the Russian authorities.
The Apostolic Orthodox leadership has no interest in talking to the Moscow Patriarchate and had concluded that the powers that be have decided to pursue “the complete liquidation of the Russian Orthodox Apostolic church by the methods of the Bolsheviks, not sparing anyone or anything.”
And those methods, Kroshechkin says, are “well known: to destroy or compromise the hierarchy, to seize churches, to drive believers into the catacombs, to declare them ‘sectarians’ and ‘enemies of Russia’ or to force priests to purchase their freedom by paying the price of cooperation in order to destroy the Church from the inside.”
The Suzdal bishopric of the Russian Orthodox Apostolic Church is now prepared to “the most unhappy scenarios,” all the more so because the Moscow Patriarchate has succeeded in enlisting the power of the civil powers that be, thereby sorrowing confusion among those who are concerned about the freedom of religion that the Russian Constitution promises.
Staunton, July 21 – Russia’s procurator general has dispatched a special commission to Vladimir oblast in order to consider “all possible variants of the final liquidation of the Russian Orthodox Apostolic Church,” an indirect confirmation of the failure of both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian powers that be to close that church down up to now.
In a commentary on Portal-credo.ru, Viktor Kroshechkin says that he has heard about this latest Moscow plan “from unofficial sources” but is certain that it is true and that it reflects both the failure of the Moscow Patriarch’s effort to close down independent Orthodox groups and the increasing support the Russian regime is prepared to provide in support of that effort.
While the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian powers that be have already confiscated a significant portion of the churches of the Apostolic Church, the religious affairs analyst says, this latest effort is “an indirect confirmation” that all these efforts have “not brought any particular results” (www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=news&id=78904).
Despite all the ideological campaigns against the Apostolic Church and moves by Russian courts to seize property belonging to it, Kroshechkin says, “not a single priest or a single community has left the [Apostolic] Church during this period or transferred its allegiance to the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.”
It is clear, he continues, that “such is the nature of the Orthodox faith that repression only strengthens it and unifies the believers.” And consequently, despite the ability of the Patriarchate and the Russian powers that be, the Apostolic Church continues to function even though it has fewer and fewer physical locations it can call its own.
“The authority of the Russian Orthodox Apostolic church among simple people in those regions where its parishes operate has been maintained, and Metropolitan Valentin does not want to enter into negotiations with the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate,” despite the efforts of the latter to start such talks.
Instead, Kroshechkin says, the metropolitan has been “brave enough to complain about the Russian ‘sovereign democratic’ powers that be to the Congress and Administration of the President of the United States.” That has prompted the Russian powers that be to launch “an analysis of the situation” and to ask about the health of Metropolitan Valentin.
The Russian “organs” have frequently told priests of the Apostolic Church that “they must ‘change the leadership’” of their church and either “joint the Moscow Patriarchate or for a start ‘remove Valentin’ from the post of head of the Church.” In some cases, they have been told that the only way to keep their parishes is to do one or the other.
But now, in support of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Russian powers that be have increased the threat: they have told Apostolic Church priests that they must choose to leave the ranks of the independent Orthodox church or “’receive a sentence’ for extremism or for ‘something worse.’”
At the very least, the Apostolic Church clergy have been told by Russian officials, they must enter into talks with the Moscow Patriarchate or “lose their state registration,” a step that would mean that any meeting of independent Orthodox believers would be “prohibited” not just by the Patriarchate but by the Russian authorities.
The Apostolic Orthodox leadership has no interest in talking to the Moscow Patriarchate and had concluded that the powers that be have decided to pursue “the complete liquidation of the Russian Orthodox Apostolic church by the methods of the Bolsheviks, not sparing anyone or anything.”
And those methods, Kroshechkin says, are “well known: to destroy or compromise the hierarchy, to seize churches, to drive believers into the catacombs, to declare them ‘sectarians’ and ‘enemies of Russia’ or to force priests to purchase their freedom by paying the price of cooperation in order to destroy the Church from the inside.”
The Suzdal bishopric of the Russian Orthodox Apostolic Church is now prepared to “the most unhappy scenarios,” all the more so because the Moscow Patriarchate has succeeded in enlisting the power of the civil powers that be, thereby sorrowing confusion among those who are concerned about the freedom of religion that the Russian Constitution promises.
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