Paul Goble
Vienna, September 3 – Nearly 25 percent of Russian men have passed through their country’s prison system at some point in their lives, an enormous share of the total and a group whose experiences are shaping Russian society, politics, and even the country’s image in foreign capitals, according to a retired Supreme Court justice.
In yesterday’s “Rossiiskaya gazeta,” Vladimir Radchenko provided extensive data to support his argument that the percentage of Russians who are in or who have passed through what he calls “our ‘prison population’” has reached a critical level in terms of its impact on the broader society (rg.ru/2008/09/02/radchenko.html).
The impact of those who returned from the GULAG in the 1950s has received a great deal of attention, but that of those who were convicted or jailed at the end of the Soviet period or since 1991 has received less, Radchenko notes. But he points out that the numbers in each case are large and current judicial arrangements suggest the numbers and impact are on thel increase.
Between 1992 and 2007, more than 15 million citizens of the Russian Federation were convicted in criminal cases, and five million of them served time in the country’s prisons or camps, figures that constitute more than 10 percent and three percent of the population respectively.
These figures represent a huge jump from the late Soviet period, Radchenko points out. Between 1987 and 1991, statistics show, only 2.5 million Russians were convicted, a figure almost 50 percent lower per year than in the post-Soviet Russian Federation, although higher than the immediately preceding period because of a tightening of republic legal codes.
At present, the jurist continues, Russian society is being flooded with those – one quarter of the adult male population – who now have “a jail education” either in Soviet or Russian penal institutions. Not only does this show that draconian laws do not cut crime – indeed, they may result in more crimes being registered – but it points to other developments as well.
Radchenko focuses on the first of these consequences and urges both a revision in the country’s criminal code to reduce the number of those convicted incarcerated and to improve the ways in which the penal system prepares those it is about to release for re-entry into the larger society.
But others are highlighting Radchenko’s argument about the impact of such massive prison experience in Russian society and are extending it as well. In a commentary on the Sobkorr.ru portal yesterday, Yuri Gladysh notes that such experience is leading to “the criminalization of Russian society” (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48BD279FBE652.html).
Not only are prisons and camps leading their graduates to commit more crimes, he writes, but the release and return of those who have served time “is contributing to the rapid transformation of the country into an enormous ‘zone,’ with all the ensuring consequences” that are increasingly on public view.
Ever more widely are individual Russians and Russian leaders using “criminal terminology,” the former because so many of them have experience with the prison system and the latter because this allows them to portray themselves as being close to the people. Vladimir Putin’s comments about the Chechens in 2000 and the Georgians now are classic examples.
But that is far from the worst consequence of former prisoners on Russian society, Gladysh insists. On the one hand, their attitudes are having a rapid and large impact on the values of that society, undermining much of the “social-cultural” foundation on which Russian society has rested “for several centuries.
And on the other, the criminalization of Russia, especially as it has affected the actions and statements of Russian leaders, has now had a serious impact on the image of Russia abroad, both among its competitors and more recently among its supposed closest friends, an impact that is reducing Moscow’s influence.
That has become especially obvious during the Georgian crisis, the Sobkorr.ru commentator says. And it can be clearly seen in the ways Russian leaders have talked and acted over the last few weeks and Moscow propagandists have regularly accused the West of wanting to act as “international gendarmes.”
“But how could it be otherwise?” Gladysh asks rhetorically and with obvious bitterness. “After all, when they are confronted by hooligans, law-abiding citizens usually call the police. That is a completely natural reaction.”
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Window on Eurasia: Russia ‘Losing Ingushetia before Absorbing South Ossetia,’ Moscow Analysts Say
Paul Goble
Vienna, September 2 -- The death of Magomed Yevloyev, which most Ingush and rights groups blame on the government of Murat Zyazikov, his officials say was an accident, and a few writers suggest was a provocation by the West, has radicalized opinion there to the point that, in the words of one analyst, Russia risks “losing Ingushetia before it can absorb South Ossetia.”
Yevloyev, the owner of the independent news portal Ingushetiya.ru which Zyazikov has long sought to shut down and a major opposition figure in his own right, died of bullet wounds to the head while in the custody of Zyazikov’s militia on Sunday. And his funeral yesterday grew into a mass protest, leading to a meeting today that the authorities dispersed.
At the funeral, opposition figures said that the Yevloyev family had declared a blood feud with the Zyazikovs and the family of his interior minister and indicated that protest meetings would continue until Zyazikov was removed from office and held responsible for his actions against the people of Ingushetia.
Indeed, one of the speakers said that the murder of Yevloyev by Zyazikov’s thugs ends any hope for the rule of law as long as the incumbent president remains. Not only does this make it more rather than less likely that people on both sides will now turn to violence, but it also means more Ingush will call for independence (www.ingushetiya.ru/news/15402.html).
The meeting today adopted a resolution calling on Ruslan Aushev, whom KGB general Zyazikov replaced in 2002, apparently because Aushev was too popular and too independent, to return to Ingushetia in order to lead the movement against his successor and thus prevent the “destruction” of more Ingush (www.nr2.ru/incidents/194104.html).
That meeting, unlike the one today, was broken up by police loyal to Zyazikov, although the interior ministry there said no one had been hurt and although opposition leaders said they would organize new protests (www.grani.ru/Politics/Russia/Regions/m.140837.html and www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/news/id/1228312.html).
Zyazikov’s confidence that he could arrange the murder of a political opponent with the expectation that Moscow would back him up is disturbing. But even more striking is the way in which this latest action completes his transformation of Ingushetia from one of the most loyal republics in the North Caucasus to one whose people seek independence.
As Sobkorr.ru observer Sergey Petrunin pointed out yesterday, Ingushetia was a relatively quiet place in the 1990s, with a population that did not want to be linked to the independence-minded Chechens and a political opposition that was always interested in working within the law (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48BBCC227BD35.html).
But now thanks to the actions and crimes of Zyazikov, Ingushetia has been “transformed into almost the most unstable [republic in the North Caucasus and the biggest headache” for Moscow, “surpassing even neighboring Chechnya.” Indeed, Petrunin said, “many observers now consider that “what is taking place in Ingushetia can be classified as a real civil war.”
But an even sharper and more devastating comment was made by Moscow commentator Mikhail Delyagin on the Forum.msk.ru portal today. “Russia,” he writes,” has not succeeded in uniting with itself South Ossetia” but it has “already lost Ingushetia,” thanks to the actions of Zyazikov and his clique (forum.msk.ru/material/news/524732.html).
“The actions of the authorities in Ingushetia do not have any reasonable justification or explanation,” Delyagin continues. Indeed, what is taking place there recalls the Gongadze case in Ukraine which triggered the Orange Revolution there. But the situation in Ingushetia in fact is much worse.
(Heorhiy Gongadze was the 31-year-old publisher of the opposition Internet journal “Ukrainska Pravda” in Kyiv when he disappeared in September 2000. He was later found beheaded, and widespread suspicions that the highest levels of the Ukrainian government were behind his murder helped power the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.)
Under Zyazikov, there has been “total lawlessness,” and “no one even thinks to try to hide it.” That is not something that can be corrected if the same people remain in power. Indeed, Delyagin argues, the only thing Moscow can do to try to “save the situation” is “to immediately arrest the entire administration of Ingushetia and all the siloviki there without exception.”
Then, using the resources at its disposal, the Moscow commentator concludes, the central Russian government should vigorously interrogate all these officials which the Putin government dispatched to that region in order to determine “which of them perhaps is less guilty” than the others.
That is unlikely to happen. Were Moscow to do that, other regions in the North Caucasus and elsewhere, including in particular Mari El, would rise up as well. But unless Moscow either sacrifices Zyazikov or applies sufficient force to intimidate and not just enrage, Ingushetia is likely to lead a new “parade of sovereignties” which could threaten Russia as a whole.
Vienna, September 2 -- The death of Magomed Yevloyev, which most Ingush and rights groups blame on the government of Murat Zyazikov, his officials say was an accident, and a few writers suggest was a provocation by the West, has radicalized opinion there to the point that, in the words of one analyst, Russia risks “losing Ingushetia before it can absorb South Ossetia.”
Yevloyev, the owner of the independent news portal Ingushetiya.ru which Zyazikov has long sought to shut down and a major opposition figure in his own right, died of bullet wounds to the head while in the custody of Zyazikov’s militia on Sunday. And his funeral yesterday grew into a mass protest, leading to a meeting today that the authorities dispersed.
At the funeral, opposition figures said that the Yevloyev family had declared a blood feud with the Zyazikovs and the family of his interior minister and indicated that protest meetings would continue until Zyazikov was removed from office and held responsible for his actions against the people of Ingushetia.
Indeed, one of the speakers said that the murder of Yevloyev by Zyazikov’s thugs ends any hope for the rule of law as long as the incumbent president remains. Not only does this make it more rather than less likely that people on both sides will now turn to violence, but it also means more Ingush will call for independence (www.ingushetiya.ru/news/15402.html).
The meeting today adopted a resolution calling on Ruslan Aushev, whom KGB general Zyazikov replaced in 2002, apparently because Aushev was too popular and too independent, to return to Ingushetia in order to lead the movement against his successor and thus prevent the “destruction” of more Ingush (www.nr2.ru/incidents/194104.html).
That meeting, unlike the one today, was broken up by police loyal to Zyazikov, although the interior ministry there said no one had been hurt and although opposition leaders said they would organize new protests (www.grani.ru/Politics/Russia/Regions/m.140837.html and www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/news/id/1228312.html).
Zyazikov’s confidence that he could arrange the murder of a political opponent with the expectation that Moscow would back him up is disturbing. But even more striking is the way in which this latest action completes his transformation of Ingushetia from one of the most loyal republics in the North Caucasus to one whose people seek independence.
As Sobkorr.ru observer Sergey Petrunin pointed out yesterday, Ingushetia was a relatively quiet place in the 1990s, with a population that did not want to be linked to the independence-minded Chechens and a political opposition that was always interested in working within the law (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48BBCC227BD35.html).
But now thanks to the actions and crimes of Zyazikov, Ingushetia has been “transformed into almost the most unstable [republic in the North Caucasus and the biggest headache” for Moscow, “surpassing even neighboring Chechnya.” Indeed, Petrunin said, “many observers now consider that “what is taking place in Ingushetia can be classified as a real civil war.”
But an even sharper and more devastating comment was made by Moscow commentator Mikhail Delyagin on the Forum.msk.ru portal today. “Russia,” he writes,” has not succeeded in uniting with itself South Ossetia” but it has “already lost Ingushetia,” thanks to the actions of Zyazikov and his clique (forum.msk.ru/material/news/524732.html).
“The actions of the authorities in Ingushetia do not have any reasonable justification or explanation,” Delyagin continues. Indeed, what is taking place there recalls the Gongadze case in Ukraine which triggered the Orange Revolution there. But the situation in Ingushetia in fact is much worse.
(Heorhiy Gongadze was the 31-year-old publisher of the opposition Internet journal “Ukrainska Pravda” in Kyiv when he disappeared in September 2000. He was later found beheaded, and widespread suspicions that the highest levels of the Ukrainian government were behind his murder helped power the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.)
Under Zyazikov, there has been “total lawlessness,” and “no one even thinks to try to hide it.” That is not something that can be corrected if the same people remain in power. Indeed, Delyagin argues, the only thing Moscow can do to try to “save the situation” is “to immediately arrest the entire administration of Ingushetia and all the siloviki there without exception.”
Then, using the resources at its disposal, the Moscow commentator concludes, the central Russian government should vigorously interrogate all these officials which the Putin government dispatched to that region in order to determine “which of them perhaps is less guilty” than the others.
That is unlikely to happen. Were Moscow to do that, other regions in the North Caucasus and elsewhere, including in particular Mari El, would rise up as well. But unless Moscow either sacrifices Zyazikov or applies sufficient force to intimidate and not just enrage, Ingushetia is likely to lead a new “parade of sovereignties” which could threaten Russia as a whole.
Window on Eurasia: Are More Border Changes Ahead in Eurasia?
Paul Goble
Vienna, September 2 – The widespread assumption that the Russian Federation will ultimately incorporate South Ossetia into its territory has led a Georgian parliamentarian to suggest Tbilisi should be making its own territorial demands on Russia, a proposal that calls attention to the ways in which border changes have taken place in Eurasia in recent times.
Yesterday, Georgian agencies reported that Koba Habazi, a member of the Georgian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, has urged Tbilisi to lodge a territorial claim against Russia with the United Nations for Sochi in order to make it more difficult for Moscow to hold the Olympics there in 2014 (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48BBB62F5364D.html).
“I am not saying that this is achievable at the present stage,” Habazi said, “but when a territory becomes disputed [as this action would make Sochi], then the chances for holding the Olympiad there are reduced” – especially since the world is now dividing up between those who back Moscow and those who are its opponents.
In making this proposal, Habazi was adding his voice to those in the United States Congress who have introduced a resolution calling on the International Olympic Committee not to hold the games in Sochi because of Moscow’s military actions in Georgia, a resolution that is slated to be voted on later this month.
Commenting on this Georgian parliamentarian’s suggestion, Sobkorr.ru’s Igor Gladysh says that “one can certainly understand the logic” behind it and even find certain “historical justifications” for Georgia’s claim as well as for a variety of other claims that countries might lodge against the Russian Federation – or other states.
“In almost the entire territory of the present-day Russian Federation there lived in former times peoples who did not have any relationship to the Slavs,” he writes. And “even the basin of the Moscow river was a place where Finno-Ugric tribes lived,” something which Gladysh noted, he himself “had more than once had the occasion” to comment upon.
And he noted that others have picked up this theme as well. On this week’s “Vesti nedeli” television program, Dmitry Kiselyev went so far as to cite communism’s founding father, Karl Marx, as having “expressed doubt in the very fact of the existence of the Russian nation as such.”
But -- and this is Gladysh’s main point -- “the majority of major powers of the world find themselves in an analogous situation,” on in which many other countries or peoples “might advance similar claims,” something most do not do because they know similar claims could be advanced against them and because they can be confident that almost no one will support them.
Nonetheless, Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and widespread predictions that it will ultimately absorb the latter if not the former call attention to three things that the international community has largely ignored or even flatly denied. First, border changes among the Soviet republics before 1991 were not rare – there were more than 200 of them.
Second, there have been territorial changes among the post-Soviet states since that time, most recently between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which sparked protests in the latter, and between Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation, which has been managed relatively calmly over the last month (www.easttime.ru/news/1/3/708.html).
And third, because of this history and because of its implications for the future of the former Soviet republics and even their survival, Russia’s latest moves have renewed discussions in many of them about the way in which tsarist and Soviet officials changed borders in order to control them. (See, for example, www.ethnoglobus.com/?page=full&id=355).
There is a fourth aspect of this situation but it is not truly political: That is the shifting of the borders of economic or religious groups as the result of political border changes. Among the most contentious of these at present are possible changes in the borders of the canonical territory of various Orthodox churches (www.vremya.ru/2008/159/51/211564.html).
Russia’s actions in Georgia thus entail yet another threat to stability: By suggesting that borders are in play and that they can be changed by military action rather than negotiation, Moscow has exacerbated national feelings among both Russians who see this as a step toward rebuilding the empire and non-Russians who fear that is exactly what Moscow intends.
And those feelings are going to play a significant role in the lives of all the countries of Eurasia, even if at the end of the day, the borders remain where they have been, because by casting doubt on that, the Russian government has not only snubbed its nose at the international system but raised a question the answer to which always cuts more than one way.
Vienna, September 2 – The widespread assumption that the Russian Federation will ultimately incorporate South Ossetia into its territory has led a Georgian parliamentarian to suggest Tbilisi should be making its own territorial demands on Russia, a proposal that calls attention to the ways in which border changes have taken place in Eurasia in recent times.
Yesterday, Georgian agencies reported that Koba Habazi, a member of the Georgian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, has urged Tbilisi to lodge a territorial claim against Russia with the United Nations for Sochi in order to make it more difficult for Moscow to hold the Olympics there in 2014 (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48BBB62F5364D.html).
“I am not saying that this is achievable at the present stage,” Habazi said, “but when a territory becomes disputed [as this action would make Sochi], then the chances for holding the Olympiad there are reduced” – especially since the world is now dividing up between those who back Moscow and those who are its opponents.
In making this proposal, Habazi was adding his voice to those in the United States Congress who have introduced a resolution calling on the International Olympic Committee not to hold the games in Sochi because of Moscow’s military actions in Georgia, a resolution that is slated to be voted on later this month.
Commenting on this Georgian parliamentarian’s suggestion, Sobkorr.ru’s Igor Gladysh says that “one can certainly understand the logic” behind it and even find certain “historical justifications” for Georgia’s claim as well as for a variety of other claims that countries might lodge against the Russian Federation – or other states.
“In almost the entire territory of the present-day Russian Federation there lived in former times peoples who did not have any relationship to the Slavs,” he writes. And “even the basin of the Moscow river was a place where Finno-Ugric tribes lived,” something which Gladysh noted, he himself “had more than once had the occasion” to comment upon.
And he noted that others have picked up this theme as well. On this week’s “Vesti nedeli” television program, Dmitry Kiselyev went so far as to cite communism’s founding father, Karl Marx, as having “expressed doubt in the very fact of the existence of the Russian nation as such.”
But -- and this is Gladysh’s main point -- “the majority of major powers of the world find themselves in an analogous situation,” on in which many other countries or peoples “might advance similar claims,” something most do not do because they know similar claims could be advanced against them and because they can be confident that almost no one will support them.
Nonetheless, Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and widespread predictions that it will ultimately absorb the latter if not the former call attention to three things that the international community has largely ignored or even flatly denied. First, border changes among the Soviet republics before 1991 were not rare – there were more than 200 of them.
Second, there have been territorial changes among the post-Soviet states since that time, most recently between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which sparked protests in the latter, and between Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation, which has been managed relatively calmly over the last month (www.easttime.ru/news/1/3/708.html).
And third, because of this history and because of its implications for the future of the former Soviet republics and even their survival, Russia’s latest moves have renewed discussions in many of them about the way in which tsarist and Soviet officials changed borders in order to control them. (See, for example, www.ethnoglobus.com/?page=full&id=355).
There is a fourth aspect of this situation but it is not truly political: That is the shifting of the borders of economic or religious groups as the result of political border changes. Among the most contentious of these at present are possible changes in the borders of the canonical territory of various Orthodox churches (www.vremya.ru/2008/159/51/211564.html).
Russia’s actions in Georgia thus entail yet another threat to stability: By suggesting that borders are in play and that they can be changed by military action rather than negotiation, Moscow has exacerbated national feelings among both Russians who see this as a step toward rebuilding the empire and non-Russians who fear that is exactly what Moscow intends.
And those feelings are going to play a significant role in the lives of all the countries of Eurasia, even if at the end of the day, the borders remain where they have been, because by casting doubt on that, the Russian government has not only snubbed its nose at the international system but raised a question the answer to which always cuts more than one way.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow’s Moves in Georgia Reinforcing Authoritarianism in Russia
Paul Goble
Vienna, September 2 – Moscow’s moves in Georgia are having a profound impact on Russian domestic politics and policies, not only tightening the relationship between Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin but sparking the kind of witch hunts for “a fifth column” that presage even more repression at least in the short term.
The interrelationship between Russia’s foreign and domestic politics and policies has always been closer than many either there or in the West have assumed. And as the fallout from the Georgian events shows, this linkage is now closer than ever before, according to an article in today’s “Nezavizimaya gazeta” (www.ng.ru/ng_politics/2008-09-02/13_echo.html).
Surveying the opinion of the expert community in Moscow, the paper’s Vladimir Razumov argues that many are convinced that Medvedev and Putin responded to the Georgian moves in South Ossetia in the way that they did because the Russian people, increasingly affected by the nationalist rhetoric of the Kremlin, was more than prepared to go along.
Initially, he points out, some commentators suggested that Moscow would not respond to Georgia’s action because South Ossetia was not central to the Russian government’s interest in pocketing the profits from the export of oil and gas. Indeed, many felt, there was a sense that any action could put those profits at risk.
But both the Medvedev-Putin tandem and the Russian people more generally viewed Tbilisi’s actions as a challenge to Russia’s standing in the world, and so the actions of the former were supported by the latter with enthusiasm in most cases, a pattern that convinced the Russian leadership that the people would support its moves even beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Thus, the “Nezavisimaya gazeta” journalist continues, “the behavior of the Russian ruling elite in the last weeks is a demonstration that it does not fear anyone or anything anymore – not only domestic but foreign opponents – and that it intends to establish the rules of the game both in internal and in foreign policy.”
And he adds, “the quiet reaction of the [Russian population] without any outburst of hurrah-patriotic and revanchist attitudes, shows that society accepts what has taken place as a given,” a set of inclinations that is already having consequences for Russian politics and Russian policies at home.
Among the most important of these, only some of which are enumerated by Razumov, are the following: First, Moscow’s actions in Georgia have cemented the relationship between Medvedev and Putin, with the former now closer to Putin than ever before, willing to sacrifice many of his reforms and not the harbinger of liberalism many had expected.
Second, the conflict in Georgia has sparked both new Russian actions to clamp down hard on those few remaining media outlets, including Internet blogs, which are not controlled by the regime and calls for going after what many nationalists calls “the fifth column” within Russia, a group for most that includes both non-Russians and Russian opposition figures.
And third, Moscow’s actions in Georgia have had an impact on two domestic groups – economic elites and non-Russian republics – that seem certain to play a role in Russian political life in the coming days. On the one hand, however patriotic they may be, Russian businessmen can hardly be pleased with the collapse of their portfolios and investment possibilities.
And on the other, increasing restiveness in Ingushetia as well as in other parts of the North Caucasus and the Middle Volga suggests that Moscow will be confronted with new ethnic challenges that both the elite’s own inclinations and the population’s current attitudes are likely to want to respond to with force.
In both cases, the Russian government will undoubtedly take a hard line, not because it is forced to by the population as it might be if that country were a democracy but rather because the regime can count on support from the majority of Russians if it portrays all such actions as standing up to threats from abroad and especially from the United States.
That interaction between Russian domestic and foreign policy does not point to any softening in either sphere at least in the short term. In foreign affairs, this is likely to make it increasingly difficult for Western governments to find a common language with Russian leaders either now or in the coming months, however hard the former try and the latter demand.
And in domestic affairs, it suggests that Russia will move in an increasingly authoritarian direction, striking out at domestic “enemies” in the name of fighting foreign ones and thus threatening many of the freedoms which the Russian people acquired after 1991 and making a popular explosion there eventually if not immediately all the more likely.
Vienna, September 2 – Moscow’s moves in Georgia are having a profound impact on Russian domestic politics and policies, not only tightening the relationship between Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin but sparking the kind of witch hunts for “a fifth column” that presage even more repression at least in the short term.
The interrelationship between Russia’s foreign and domestic politics and policies has always been closer than many either there or in the West have assumed. And as the fallout from the Georgian events shows, this linkage is now closer than ever before, according to an article in today’s “Nezavizimaya gazeta” (www.ng.ru/ng_politics/2008-09-02/13_echo.html).
Surveying the opinion of the expert community in Moscow, the paper’s Vladimir Razumov argues that many are convinced that Medvedev and Putin responded to the Georgian moves in South Ossetia in the way that they did because the Russian people, increasingly affected by the nationalist rhetoric of the Kremlin, was more than prepared to go along.
Initially, he points out, some commentators suggested that Moscow would not respond to Georgia’s action because South Ossetia was not central to the Russian government’s interest in pocketing the profits from the export of oil and gas. Indeed, many felt, there was a sense that any action could put those profits at risk.
But both the Medvedev-Putin tandem and the Russian people more generally viewed Tbilisi’s actions as a challenge to Russia’s standing in the world, and so the actions of the former were supported by the latter with enthusiasm in most cases, a pattern that convinced the Russian leadership that the people would support its moves even beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Thus, the “Nezavisimaya gazeta” journalist continues, “the behavior of the Russian ruling elite in the last weeks is a demonstration that it does not fear anyone or anything anymore – not only domestic but foreign opponents – and that it intends to establish the rules of the game both in internal and in foreign policy.”
And he adds, “the quiet reaction of the [Russian population] without any outburst of hurrah-patriotic and revanchist attitudes, shows that society accepts what has taken place as a given,” a set of inclinations that is already having consequences for Russian politics and Russian policies at home.
Among the most important of these, only some of which are enumerated by Razumov, are the following: First, Moscow’s actions in Georgia have cemented the relationship between Medvedev and Putin, with the former now closer to Putin than ever before, willing to sacrifice many of his reforms and not the harbinger of liberalism many had expected.
Second, the conflict in Georgia has sparked both new Russian actions to clamp down hard on those few remaining media outlets, including Internet blogs, which are not controlled by the regime and calls for going after what many nationalists calls “the fifth column” within Russia, a group for most that includes both non-Russians and Russian opposition figures.
And third, Moscow’s actions in Georgia have had an impact on two domestic groups – economic elites and non-Russian republics – that seem certain to play a role in Russian political life in the coming days. On the one hand, however patriotic they may be, Russian businessmen can hardly be pleased with the collapse of their portfolios and investment possibilities.
And on the other, increasing restiveness in Ingushetia as well as in other parts of the North Caucasus and the Middle Volga suggests that Moscow will be confronted with new ethnic challenges that both the elite’s own inclinations and the population’s current attitudes are likely to want to respond to with force.
In both cases, the Russian government will undoubtedly take a hard line, not because it is forced to by the population as it might be if that country were a democracy but rather because the regime can count on support from the majority of Russians if it portrays all such actions as standing up to threats from abroad and especially from the United States.
That interaction between Russian domestic and foreign policy does not point to any softening in either sphere at least in the short term. In foreign affairs, this is likely to make it increasingly difficult for Western governments to find a common language with Russian leaders either now or in the coming months, however hard the former try and the latter demand.
And in domestic affairs, it suggests that Russia will move in an increasingly authoritarian direction, striking out at domestic “enemies” in the name of fighting foreign ones and thus threatening many of the freedoms which the Russian people acquired after 1991 and making a popular explosion there eventually if not immediately all the more likely.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Window on Eurasia: Moscow to Help Iran Complete Bushehr Atomic Plant
Paul Goble
Vienna, September 1 – Another piece of fallout from the rise in tensions between Moscow and the West over Russia’s invasion of Georgia is Moscow’s announcement that it will help Iran complete the construction of the nuclear plant in Bushehr, a project that had been delayed by U.S. objections that Tehran would use that facility to build a nuclear weapon.
Last Thursday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was prepared to do complete construction there whatever the Americans say, a statement both intended to put pressure on Washington to back down over Georgia and highlighting the reality, seldom admitted by the West, that Moscow has been behind the Iranian project for more than a decade.
Two reports in the last 24 hours have heightened concerns in this regard. Yesterday, the London “Telegraph” reported that Washington is “concerned” that Moscow will provide Iran with its S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, a development that would make it vastly more costly for the U.S. or Israel to attack the facility.
Russia’s S-300 system, the paper said, is “one of the most advanced multi-target anti-aircraft systems in the world, with a reported ability to track up to 100 targets simultaneously while engaging up to 12 at the same time. It has a range of about 200 kilometers and can hit targets at altitudes of 27,000 meters.”
And the “Telegraph” quoted Dan Goure, who advises the Pentagon as saying that “if Tehran obtained the S-300, it would be a game-changer in military thinking for tackling Iran,” thus raising the possibility of “Israeli air attacks before [that system is] operational” (www.defence.pk/forums/world-affairs/13905-telegraph-us-fears-russia-sell-s-300-iran.html).
Then today, the “Jerusalem Post” said that officials from Russia’s atomic construction firm, Atomstroyexport, will arrive in Iran tomorrow to “discuss the completion of the 1,000-megawatt power plant” in Bushehr,” a project Moscow has been working on since 1995 (www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1220186492375&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull).
Russia’s ambassador to Iran, the Israeli paper said, has “given assurances” to Tehran that “Bushehr will be supplying nuclear energy by early next year.” But many in Israel, the United States and Europe are concerned that Iran will use the plant less to provide power for its economy than to process uranium for the construction of nuclear weapons.
That is why the United States and Europe have sought both directly and through the IAEA to force Iran to give up its nuclear program, even though both Tehran and Moscow insist that it is for peaceful purposes only. Now, by its announcement, Russia has significantly raised the stakes in this standoff.
But in evaluating these reports, two things need to be kept in mind. On the one hand, Moscow’s actions certainly are clearly designed to pressure the West to back down from sanctions against Russia by reminding everyone of Moscow’s capacity to create problems elsewhere. After all, few Russians would be pleased to see Iran become a nuclear power.
And on the other hand, the two new articles follow reports last week there and in the United States that Israel may launch an airstrike against Bushehr. Consequently, at least some in the Israeli capital and Washington may have an interest in playing up reports of Russian actions to justify just such a strike.
Vienna, September 1 – Another piece of fallout from the rise in tensions between Moscow and the West over Russia’s invasion of Georgia is Moscow’s announcement that it will help Iran complete the construction of the nuclear plant in Bushehr, a project that had been delayed by U.S. objections that Tehran would use that facility to build a nuclear weapon.
Last Thursday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was prepared to do complete construction there whatever the Americans say, a statement both intended to put pressure on Washington to back down over Georgia and highlighting the reality, seldom admitted by the West, that Moscow has been behind the Iranian project for more than a decade.
Two reports in the last 24 hours have heightened concerns in this regard. Yesterday, the London “Telegraph” reported that Washington is “concerned” that Moscow will provide Iran with its S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, a development that would make it vastly more costly for the U.S. or Israel to attack the facility.
Russia’s S-300 system, the paper said, is “one of the most advanced multi-target anti-aircraft systems in the world, with a reported ability to track up to 100 targets simultaneously while engaging up to 12 at the same time. It has a range of about 200 kilometers and can hit targets at altitudes of 27,000 meters.”
And the “Telegraph” quoted Dan Goure, who advises the Pentagon as saying that “if Tehran obtained the S-300, it would be a game-changer in military thinking for tackling Iran,” thus raising the possibility of “Israeli air attacks before [that system is] operational” (www.defence.pk/forums/world-affairs/13905-telegraph-us-fears-russia-sell-s-300-iran.html).
Then today, the “Jerusalem Post” said that officials from Russia’s atomic construction firm, Atomstroyexport, will arrive in Iran tomorrow to “discuss the completion of the 1,000-megawatt power plant” in Bushehr,” a project Moscow has been working on since 1995 (www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1220186492375&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull).
Russia’s ambassador to Iran, the Israeli paper said, has “given assurances” to Tehran that “Bushehr will be supplying nuclear energy by early next year.” But many in Israel, the United States and Europe are concerned that Iran will use the plant less to provide power for its economy than to process uranium for the construction of nuclear weapons.
That is why the United States and Europe have sought both directly and through the IAEA to force Iran to give up its nuclear program, even though both Tehran and Moscow insist that it is for peaceful purposes only. Now, by its announcement, Russia has significantly raised the stakes in this standoff.
But in evaluating these reports, two things need to be kept in mind. On the one hand, Moscow’s actions certainly are clearly designed to pressure the West to back down from sanctions against Russia by reminding everyone of Moscow’s capacity to create problems elsewhere. After all, few Russians would be pleased to see Iran become a nuclear power.
And on the other hand, the two new articles follow reports last week there and in the United States that Israel may launch an airstrike against Bushehr. Consequently, at least some in the Israeli capital and Washington may have an interest in playing up reports of Russian actions to justify just such a strike.
Window on Eurasia: Tbilisi’s Decision to Break with Moscow Leaves Georgians in Russia with Fewer Defenders
Paul Goble
Vienna, September 1 – Tbilisi’s decision to break diplomatic relations with Moscow following the Russian invasion has left ethnic Georgians living in the Russian Federation with fewer defenders, created new complications for Georgians with dual citizenship, and set up new obstacles for Russian citizens who may want to travel to Georgia.
The Georgian government’s action has not led to the closure of its consulate in Moscow – Under diplomatic rules, consulates can continue to function even after a diplomatic break – but it remains unclear which third country embassy will house a Georgian interest section – those of Ukraine and Azerbaijan are most often mentioned (www.izvestia.ru/politic/article3120013/).
After the diplomats of Georgia and Russia who are in the process of returning home, the people most immediately affected by this decision are the estimated half million ethnic Georgians living in the Russian Federation and their families at home who often depend on transfer payments from their relatives working abroad.
Given the rising hostility to Georgians that the Russian media have whipped up over the conflict, many of these people are at risk of being attacked by xenophobic groups like the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) and skinheads and now they face these threats without the protection that embassies can give.
Not surprisingly, given its earlier call during the course of the Russian invasion for Moscow to intern all Georgians living in the Russian Federation, DPNI’s website yesterday celebrated reports that the Russian militia is stepping up its fight against “the Georgian mafia” in Russia (www.dpni.org/articles/lenta_novo/9860/).
But as commentaries in the Moscow media have pointed out, the Georgians in Russia face other problems: First, it is unclear how the Georgian consulate in Moscow will be able to intervene on behalf of Georgians who live far from the Russian capital. Second, it is uncertain how they will be able to send transfer payments home.
And third, given that some of them now have married Russians or have taken Russian citizenship, it is unclear how they will arrange to travel to Georgia, a problem that may be especially acute in the case of Georgians living in the southern portions of the Russian Federation and in border areas there.
That is because Tbilisi has changed the rules for getting a visa, something that affects both Georgians in that category and Russian citizens more generally. In the past, such visitors could obtain a visa at border crossing points by paying a little more than 40 U.S. dollars, but now Russian citizens must obtain one in a third country.
At the very least, that will complicate the lives of those Russian citizens who had wanted to travel to Georgia, and more likely, it will lead to a significant decline in the number doing so, depressing investment in the Georgian economy and making it more difficult for Tbilisi to rebuild after the devastation visited upon that country by Russian forces.
Not surprisingly, Russians and Russian officials are outspokenly angry about all this, but so too are at least some ethnic Georgians in Russia. A Moscow priest whose church houses the parish of the Georgian Orthodox Church there said today that Tbilisi’s decision “will create difficulties” for innocent people (www.blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=3&id=22457).
No one can blame Tbilisi for breaking diplomatic relations with Moscow. That is the normal course of action for a government whose territory has been invaded by the armed forces of another state. But given the interrelationships of these two countries, this move will have serious human consequences, which tragically some in each capital are quite ready to exploit.
Vienna, September 1 – Tbilisi’s decision to break diplomatic relations with Moscow following the Russian invasion has left ethnic Georgians living in the Russian Federation with fewer defenders, created new complications for Georgians with dual citizenship, and set up new obstacles for Russian citizens who may want to travel to Georgia.
The Georgian government’s action has not led to the closure of its consulate in Moscow – Under diplomatic rules, consulates can continue to function even after a diplomatic break – but it remains unclear which third country embassy will house a Georgian interest section – those of Ukraine and Azerbaijan are most often mentioned (www.izvestia.ru/politic/article3120013/).
After the diplomats of Georgia and Russia who are in the process of returning home, the people most immediately affected by this decision are the estimated half million ethnic Georgians living in the Russian Federation and their families at home who often depend on transfer payments from their relatives working abroad.
Given the rising hostility to Georgians that the Russian media have whipped up over the conflict, many of these people are at risk of being attacked by xenophobic groups like the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) and skinheads and now they face these threats without the protection that embassies can give.
Not surprisingly, given its earlier call during the course of the Russian invasion for Moscow to intern all Georgians living in the Russian Federation, DPNI’s website yesterday celebrated reports that the Russian militia is stepping up its fight against “the Georgian mafia” in Russia (www.dpni.org/articles/lenta_novo/9860/).
But as commentaries in the Moscow media have pointed out, the Georgians in Russia face other problems: First, it is unclear how the Georgian consulate in Moscow will be able to intervene on behalf of Georgians who live far from the Russian capital. Second, it is uncertain how they will be able to send transfer payments home.
And third, given that some of them now have married Russians or have taken Russian citizenship, it is unclear how they will arrange to travel to Georgia, a problem that may be especially acute in the case of Georgians living in the southern portions of the Russian Federation and in border areas there.
That is because Tbilisi has changed the rules for getting a visa, something that affects both Georgians in that category and Russian citizens more generally. In the past, such visitors could obtain a visa at border crossing points by paying a little more than 40 U.S. dollars, but now Russian citizens must obtain one in a third country.
At the very least, that will complicate the lives of those Russian citizens who had wanted to travel to Georgia, and more likely, it will lead to a significant decline in the number doing so, depressing investment in the Georgian economy and making it more difficult for Tbilisi to rebuild after the devastation visited upon that country by Russian forces.
Not surprisingly, Russians and Russian officials are outspokenly angry about all this, but so too are at least some ethnic Georgians in Russia. A Moscow priest whose church houses the parish of the Georgian Orthodox Church there said today that Tbilisi’s decision “will create difficulties” for innocent people (www.blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=3&id=22457).
No one can blame Tbilisi for breaking diplomatic relations with Moscow. That is the normal course of action for a government whose territory has been invaded by the armed forces of another state. But given the interrelationships of these two countries, this move will have serious human consequences, which tragically some in each capital are quite ready to exploit.
Window on Eurasia: Ingush Opposition to Pursue Independence after Police Murder Website Owner
Paul Goble
Vienna, September 1 – The opposition in Ingushetia has tried to work within the Russian political system to replace republic head Murat Zyazikov, but now, following the death of a website owner there yesterday from wounds he suffered while detained by Zyazikov’s militia, it has decided that it has no choice but to consider pursing independence for that republic.
Even though it has become one of the hottest of the Russian Federation’s “hot spots” in recent months, with disappearances and killings an increasing feature of public life, that North Caucasus republic had been notable for its lack of a serious opposition group interested in pursuing independence.
But now over the last few days, one has begun to crystallize. On Saturday, Ingushetiya.ru reported that the unrecognized People’s Parliament of Ingushetiya Mekhk-Kkhel would meet to discuss beginning to collect signatures calling for independence, after which the site was attacked and has been inaccessible (www.caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=16347).
And on Sunday, after Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of that Internet news portal which Zyazikov has sought to close, died from wounds he received at the hands of the local militia, even the more moderate Ingush opposition leaders have decided to pursue independence, and both the Kremlin and Zyazikov, the Kremlin’s man there, have no one to blame but themselves.
Magomed Khazbiyev, the head of the committee that collected more than 80,000 signatures demanding that Moscow replace Zyazikov, said on Ekho Moskvy yesterday that the killing of Yevloyev had radicalized public opinion and was leading ever more Ingush to demand an investigation and think about independence (newsru.com/russia/31aug2008/haz.html).
“We must ask Europe or America to separate us from Russia. If we don’t fit in here, we do not know what else to do,” he said, adding that those who killed Yevloyev must be brought to justice and that “the genocide of the Ingush people” being conducted by the Kremlin must be stopped.”
He said that the Ingush opposition would call a meeting to decide what to do next, adding that some Ingush living in Europe plan to hold a demonstration in front of the building where European leaders are discussing sanctions against the Russian Federation for its aggression in Georgia.
Khazbiyev and his fellow Ingush opposition figures are clearly reluctant to cross this Rubicon. Indeed, Kavkazcenter.com, a website that supports independence for the entire North Caucasus, reported the reaction of the Ingush opposition to the murder of one of its active leaders almost with scorn (kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2008/08/31/60674.shtml).
In his concluding remarks on Ekho Moskvy, that site said, “the anti-Zyazikov opposition figure could not find anything better to say than to ask the Kremlin again “to finally turn its attention to that lie about the flourishing Ingushetia which Murat Zyazikov has been dishing out to the entire world.”
But however that may be, the death of Yevloyev after he was taken into custody on his return to Ingushetia from Moscow is so transparently the result of official actions and the explanations Zyazikov’s officials have offered are so transparently false that even more Ingush are certain to be radicalized in the coming days.
Yevloyev was in perfect health when he was seized by the militia as he deplaned, something he had warned of only last week, and he was so severely wounded in the head when Zyazikov’s interior ministry officers dropped him off at a hospital that there was no possibility that he could recover.
And the official explanations, which include suggestions that there was a struggle between militia officers and Yevloyev over a gun which went off accidentally, are so patently absurd that there are reports that prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation. But few Ingush expect it to be an honest one (www.echo.msk.ru/news/537600-echo.html).
Instead, it is widely assumed that prosecutors will seek to limit blame to the officers directly involved rather than investigate the possibility, even likelihood that more senior figures including republic Interior Minister Musa Medov and Zyazikov himself were behind what many are already calling “a political murder.”
The Ingush human rights organization Mashr has already carried out its own investigation, and its leaders told the Regnum news agency that if the testimony of witnesses with whom they spoke was true, then there was every real to suspect that Zyazikov and Medov were directly involved (www.regnum.ru/news/fd-south/ingush/1048564.html).
And Mashr’s conclusions have been seconded by Russian-wide human rights organizations like the Moscow Helsinki Group, Memorial, Human Rights Watch, and AGORA, something that should help keep the pressure on officials to do something and to raise the political temperature in Ingushetia (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48BAC3E87106D.html).
This case creates a real problem for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. If they sacrifice Zyazikov who is close to both men, they would certainly calm the situation in Ingushetia but could trigger demonstrations elsewhere among those unhappy with the Moscow appointees who run their republics and regions.
But if they do not, Ingushetia almost certainly explode, creating a vastly more serious security problem for the Russian authorities not only across the North Caucasus but behind what is now Moscow’s new front line in Georgia and the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Vienna, September 1 – The opposition in Ingushetia has tried to work within the Russian political system to replace republic head Murat Zyazikov, but now, following the death of a website owner there yesterday from wounds he suffered while detained by Zyazikov’s militia, it has decided that it has no choice but to consider pursing independence for that republic.
Even though it has become one of the hottest of the Russian Federation’s “hot spots” in recent months, with disappearances and killings an increasing feature of public life, that North Caucasus republic had been notable for its lack of a serious opposition group interested in pursuing independence.
But now over the last few days, one has begun to crystallize. On Saturday, Ingushetiya.ru reported that the unrecognized People’s Parliament of Ingushetiya Mekhk-Kkhel would meet to discuss beginning to collect signatures calling for independence, after which the site was attacked and has been inaccessible (www.caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=16347).
And on Sunday, after Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of that Internet news portal which Zyazikov has sought to close, died from wounds he received at the hands of the local militia, even the more moderate Ingush opposition leaders have decided to pursue independence, and both the Kremlin and Zyazikov, the Kremlin’s man there, have no one to blame but themselves.
Magomed Khazbiyev, the head of the committee that collected more than 80,000 signatures demanding that Moscow replace Zyazikov, said on Ekho Moskvy yesterday that the killing of Yevloyev had radicalized public opinion and was leading ever more Ingush to demand an investigation and think about independence (newsru.com/russia/31aug2008/haz.html).
“We must ask Europe or America to separate us from Russia. If we don’t fit in here, we do not know what else to do,” he said, adding that those who killed Yevloyev must be brought to justice and that “the genocide of the Ingush people” being conducted by the Kremlin must be stopped.”
He said that the Ingush opposition would call a meeting to decide what to do next, adding that some Ingush living in Europe plan to hold a demonstration in front of the building where European leaders are discussing sanctions against the Russian Federation for its aggression in Georgia.
Khazbiyev and his fellow Ingush opposition figures are clearly reluctant to cross this Rubicon. Indeed, Kavkazcenter.com, a website that supports independence for the entire North Caucasus, reported the reaction of the Ingush opposition to the murder of one of its active leaders almost with scorn (kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2008/08/31/60674.shtml).
In his concluding remarks on Ekho Moskvy, that site said, “the anti-Zyazikov opposition figure could not find anything better to say than to ask the Kremlin again “to finally turn its attention to that lie about the flourishing Ingushetia which Murat Zyazikov has been dishing out to the entire world.”
But however that may be, the death of Yevloyev after he was taken into custody on his return to Ingushetia from Moscow is so transparently the result of official actions and the explanations Zyazikov’s officials have offered are so transparently false that even more Ingush are certain to be radicalized in the coming days.
Yevloyev was in perfect health when he was seized by the militia as he deplaned, something he had warned of only last week, and he was so severely wounded in the head when Zyazikov’s interior ministry officers dropped him off at a hospital that there was no possibility that he could recover.
And the official explanations, which include suggestions that there was a struggle between militia officers and Yevloyev over a gun which went off accidentally, are so patently absurd that there are reports that prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation. But few Ingush expect it to be an honest one (www.echo.msk.ru/news/537600-echo.html).
Instead, it is widely assumed that prosecutors will seek to limit blame to the officers directly involved rather than investigate the possibility, even likelihood that more senior figures including republic Interior Minister Musa Medov and Zyazikov himself were behind what many are already calling “a political murder.”
The Ingush human rights organization Mashr has already carried out its own investigation, and its leaders told the Regnum news agency that if the testimony of witnesses with whom they spoke was true, then there was every real to suspect that Zyazikov and Medov were directly involved (www.regnum.ru/news/fd-south/ingush/1048564.html).
And Mashr’s conclusions have been seconded by Russian-wide human rights organizations like the Moscow Helsinki Group, Memorial, Human Rights Watch, and AGORA, something that should help keep the pressure on officials to do something and to raise the political temperature in Ingushetia (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48BAC3E87106D.html).
This case creates a real problem for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. If they sacrifice Zyazikov who is close to both men, they would certainly calm the situation in Ingushetia but could trigger demonstrations elsewhere among those unhappy with the Moscow appointees who run their republics and regions.
But if they do not, Ingushetia almost certainly explode, creating a vastly more serious security problem for the Russian authorities not only across the North Caucasus but behind what is now Moscow’s new front line in Georgia and the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
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