Paul Goble
Vienna, May 4 – The leader of the Russian Communist Party said in Strasbourg last week that in his view, it would be “desirable” if Moscow were to annex Abkhazia and South Ossetia, an opinion several Russian commentators said reflected the thinking of many in the upper reaches of the government of the Russian Federation.
Speaking to Georgian journalists on the sidelines of a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) last week, Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the KPRF, said that “history does not turn backwards” and that Moscow will “not back away from [its] recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia” (www.rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=182666).
And then he added that if it were up to him, “I would conduct a referendum and would include Abkhazia and South Ossetia within Russia,” a comment that was posted on the KPRF website last Thursday (kprf.ru/international/66074.html) and one that apparently reflects the generally unexpressed views of many in Moscow.
In reporting Zyuganov’s remarks, the Russkaya Liniya portal -- a Russian Orthodox site with close ties to the Russian government and statist Russian nationalists -- asked several of its regular contacts for their comments about the possibility of such a move, one that would send shockwaves not only in those two breakaway republics but across the post-Soviet space as well.
Vladimir Timakov, a deputy in the Tula Oblast Duma, told the site that Moscow would have “first of all to ask South Ossetia and Abkhazia whether they want to unify themselves with Russia.” From his perspective, Timakov said, such a step “would be completely logical. But in the current environment,” there would be problems.
Such a move, he said, would “be conceived as an annexation by Russia of part of Georgia. [And] therefore it would be more correct to preserve the status quo, as is now being done. But if these states would become part of Russia, this would be a natural course of events,” however much many Georgians and the international community might oppose.
Timakov suggested that another reason for Moscow to go slow is that “one should remember that the Georgians are all the same an Orthodox people and therefore it is necessary to organize things more calmly.” But the Tula deputy continued, as for him, he “would be glad if Georgia itself were to become part of Russia.”
At present, he conceded, that is “impossible, although it is desirable.”
A second Russkaya Liniya interlocutor, former Duma deputy Aleksandr Chuyev said that “the inclusion of South Ossetia into Russia is a question which we will resolve when the time comes.” For now, however, he continued, “besides guaranteeing” these states full sovereignty, Moscow should work to bring their “legislation in correspondence with the Russian.”
That is not a process that should be rushed, because “the republics all the same have lived according to their own laws, and there life is quite different from ours.” Moscow should also work to beef up the external borders of these republics, something the Russian government has already taken steps to do.
“Gradually” and in ways that will “not create unnecessary tensions,” Chuyev suggested, Moscow and the two republics will be able to resolve “more important social tasks” and then will be able “to conduct referenda” because “the idea of unifying Abkhazia and South Ossetia [with Russia] not utopian but not just now timely.”
But a third Russkaya Liniya contact, St. Petersburg political scientist Sergey Lebedev, suggested that the unification of the two republics is “not only desirable but entirely possible:” He called for referenda to unite South Ossetia with North Ossetia and to reaffirm Abkhazia’s quest in 1989 to be recognized as “a union republic of the USSR or part of Russia.”
Arguing that Zyuganov had expressed the right idea, Lebedev said that “it is understandable that the international community will react very nervously to this initiative for the simple reason that it will create the precedent of changing borders. And that means that after
That trend, in turn, “could lead to the reestablishment of historical Russia in the borders of the Russian Federation and the Soviet Union. Strictly speaking, even de jure, these republics today are independent states,” the political commentator from the northern capital continued, “but de facto these are Russian gubernia.”
Such views are often found on nationalist sites, but Lebedev continued by suggesting that “the Kremlin shares Zyuganov’s position although official acknowledgement of the necessity of the unification of these republics is not going to come soon” because while many of the powers that be think that way, they are afraid the West would “freeze their accounts” if they said so.”
Three things are interesting about these comments, even if they do not reflect as broad a consensus in the Kremlin as Zyuganov and his supporters imply. First, these speakers like the Russian government and the West treat Abkhazia and South Ossetia as equivalent situations, something that is not true, with the former far more committed to independence than the latter.
Second, the willingness of Zyuganov to make this proposal and in Strasbourg no less shows that he and others in the Russian capital have no intention of backing away from their commitment to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whatever some in the West may think, but instead are prepared to press ahead still further.
And third, Zyuganov’s comments may in fact be a trial balloon by Russian officials who are attempting to test the waters for Western reaction. By suggesting that Moscow might go even further than the annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, some in the Russian government may be attempting to gauge whether some in the West are prepared to engage in a grand bargain.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
Window on Eurasia: Six Months After Zyazikov’s Ouster, Ingushetia Remains Unstable
Paul Goble
Vienna, May 1 – On October 31 of last year, Moscow dismissed Murat Zyazikov, the widely despised president of Ingushetia, and installed Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, a much-decorated Ingush colonel in the Russian Army, in his place, a move that many both in that North Caucasus republic and more generally marked the dawn of a new day there.
Now, six months later, Kavkaz-uzel.ru has offered an assessment of what has changed and what has not, concluding that while Yevkurov has been far more effective in working with the population and with Moscow than his predecessor, the republic he heads is still “far from stable” and in some respects may be getting even less so (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/153606).
Because Zyazikov sought to suppress all independent media, falsified election results and other data, and is widely suspected of ordering the killing of at least one major opposition figure, many Ingush were prepared to see almost anyone else as an improvement. At the very least, they were ready to give the new man the benefit of the doubt.
Yevkurov, the Caucasus news service points out, made the most of this. He “began a dialogue with the opposition” and even appointed some of its members to senior positions in his administration. He developed good relations with the human rights community. And he worked hard to end blood feuds among the Ingush taips.
Moreover, Yevkurov purged the organs of power, using charges of corruption as the basis for ousting many of Zyazikov’s people. And because of his actions in reaching out to the population and fighting corruption, the current president was far more successful in getting federal funds, something that by itself helped him to build authority.
During the last few months, Kavkz-uzel.ru continues, Yevkurov has begun to purge the law enforcement agencies, many of which had become little more than Zyazikov’s personal hit squads. Yevkurov set up a hot line for Ingush to telephone in complaints about the violation of their rights by these groups.
Even more important, the new president set up a Societal Commission on Human Rights and included in its membership “deputies of parliament, representatives of the force structures, as well as leaders of non-governmental organizations and ordinary citizens of the republic,” an institution that marked a clean break from Zyazikov’s approach.
On one of the most sensitive issues, the question of the Prigorodny district from which many Ingush were forced to flee more than 15 years ago, Yevkurov made it clear that he did not intend to try to change its borders but that he supported “the most rapid return of Ingush refugees to the places of their former residence on the territory of North Ossetia.”
But at the same time, the Internet news portal continued, Yevkurov “has not yet been able to establish complete control over the situation in the region” or limit the upward trend of some of the most disturbing measures of violence in that republic which, prior to Zyazikov was an island of stability, but now ranks among the most unstable.
According to the Memorial Human Rights Center, the number of killings is up sharply so far this year. Since January 1, 21 civilians, 12 officials of local force structures, and six military personnel from the outside have been killed, and over the same period, the force structures have killed 20 militants. Moreover, kidnappings have remained frequent.
. (Figures from the republic’s interior ministry are slightly different but also worrisome. During the first quarter, it reports, the authorities killed 27 militants, losing 18 uniformed law enforcement officers and two civilian officials.” In addition, the ministry said, some 44 people on the government side had been wounded during militant attacks.)
But if the statistics tell one side of the story, the attitudes of the population tell another. One Ingush man told Kavkaz-uzel.ru that Yevkurov “really enjoys the sympathy of the population. He travels throughout the republic, tries to listen to all, and gives people the chance to openly express themselves on the most pressing problems.”
Those were steps Zyazikov never took, and they are welcome. But now six months into his presidency, many in Ingushetia appear to be concerned that however open Yevkurov is to contacts with the population, he has not been able to reduce the level of violence. And with each passing week, more of them are likely asking whether openness, however welcome, is enough.
Vienna, May 1 – On October 31 of last year, Moscow dismissed Murat Zyazikov, the widely despised president of Ingushetia, and installed Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, a much-decorated Ingush colonel in the Russian Army, in his place, a move that many both in that North Caucasus republic and more generally marked the dawn of a new day there.
Now, six months later, Kavkaz-uzel.ru has offered an assessment of what has changed and what has not, concluding that while Yevkurov has been far more effective in working with the population and with Moscow than his predecessor, the republic he heads is still “far from stable” and in some respects may be getting even less so (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/153606).
Because Zyazikov sought to suppress all independent media, falsified election results and other data, and is widely suspected of ordering the killing of at least one major opposition figure, many Ingush were prepared to see almost anyone else as an improvement. At the very least, they were ready to give the new man the benefit of the doubt.
Yevkurov, the Caucasus news service points out, made the most of this. He “began a dialogue with the opposition” and even appointed some of its members to senior positions in his administration. He developed good relations with the human rights community. And he worked hard to end blood feuds among the Ingush taips.
Moreover, Yevkurov purged the organs of power, using charges of corruption as the basis for ousting many of Zyazikov’s people. And because of his actions in reaching out to the population and fighting corruption, the current president was far more successful in getting federal funds, something that by itself helped him to build authority.
During the last few months, Kavkz-uzel.ru continues, Yevkurov has begun to purge the law enforcement agencies, many of which had become little more than Zyazikov’s personal hit squads. Yevkurov set up a hot line for Ingush to telephone in complaints about the violation of their rights by these groups.
Even more important, the new president set up a Societal Commission on Human Rights and included in its membership “deputies of parliament, representatives of the force structures, as well as leaders of non-governmental organizations and ordinary citizens of the republic,” an institution that marked a clean break from Zyazikov’s approach.
On one of the most sensitive issues, the question of the Prigorodny district from which many Ingush were forced to flee more than 15 years ago, Yevkurov made it clear that he did not intend to try to change its borders but that he supported “the most rapid return of Ingush refugees to the places of their former residence on the territory of North Ossetia.”
But at the same time, the Internet news portal continued, Yevkurov “has not yet been able to establish complete control over the situation in the region” or limit the upward trend of some of the most disturbing measures of violence in that republic which, prior to Zyazikov was an island of stability, but now ranks among the most unstable.
According to the Memorial Human Rights Center, the number of killings is up sharply so far this year. Since January 1, 21 civilians, 12 officials of local force structures, and six military personnel from the outside have been killed, and over the same period, the force structures have killed 20 militants. Moreover, kidnappings have remained frequent.
. (Figures from the republic’s interior ministry are slightly different but also worrisome. During the first quarter, it reports, the authorities killed 27 militants, losing 18 uniformed law enforcement officers and two civilian officials.” In addition, the ministry said, some 44 people on the government side had been wounded during militant attacks.)
But if the statistics tell one side of the story, the attitudes of the population tell another. One Ingush man told Kavkaz-uzel.ru that Yevkurov “really enjoys the sympathy of the population. He travels throughout the republic, tries to listen to all, and gives people the chance to openly express themselves on the most pressing problems.”
Those were steps Zyazikov never took, and they are welcome. But now six months into his presidency, many in Ingushetia appear to be concerned that however open Yevkurov is to contacts with the population, he has not been able to reduce the level of violence. And with each passing week, more of them are likely asking whether openness, however welcome, is enough.
Window on Eurasia: Saudis Turn Down Moscow’s Request to Boost Russia’s Haj Quota
Paul Goble
Vienna, May 1 – The Saudi officials responsible for setting national quotas for Muslim pilgrims to Mecca announced the allocation of 20,500 slots for hajis from the Russian Federation in 2009, the exact number that country is supposed to have on the basis of existing formulas but 4500 fewer came from Russia last year and fewer than Moscow wanted to send this.
The Saudis have long allocated haj quotas on the basis of one-tenth of one percent of the estimated number of Muslims in a particular country, but in recent years, the Russian government has sought and received a higher allocation, arguing that there is pent-up demand because few Muslims were able to make the pilgrimage during Soviet times.
Saudi deference to the Russian government on this point in the past, however, angered Muslims in other countries, many of whom have been forced to wait years if not decades for the change to make the haj required of all believers capable of going on it at least once in the course of their lifetimes (www.islamrf.ru/news/russia/rusnews/8445/).
But Moscow’s failure to get a higher quota this year creates three problems for the Russian government. First, given that many more Muslims in the Russian Federation want to go than there are slots, at least some of them are going to see the new lower number as an indication that their country did not press hard enough.
That is especially likely because a majority of Russian hajis come from the North Caucasus -- and especially from the extremely unstable republics of Chechnya and Daghestan. Indeed, it is almost certain that anti-regime activists will point to this decline in the haj quota as one more reason for local people to support them.
Second, the number of Muslims from Russia who will actually perform the haj is likely to be larger than the number of slots, creating a problem for both Moscow which will thus be faced with losing control of the situation and the Saudis. Indeed, in announcing quotas this year, the Saudis said that Moscow must ensure that all hajis from Russia return when the haj is over.
Indeed, in both of the last two years, there were problems with Russian hajis who came on their own, did not march under the Russian flag, and sometimes remained long after the haj was completed, creating problems for all concerned and prompting the Russians to beef up their offices in Saudi Arabia to deal with the problem.
And third, both because Moscow wants to present its Muslim face to the Islamic world and because Muslims in Russia want larger quotas, the latter are likely to press for an acknowledgement by Moscow that there are in fact more than the 20.5 million Muslims in Russia the current haj quota is based on.
That sets the stage for a serious debate between Russian nationalists and the leaders of the increasingly influential Russian Orthodox Church who want to minimize the size of the Islamic community in Russia and the increasingly numerous Muslims who want recognition of the growth of their community.
As Moscow discusses plans for a census next year, such discussions are likely to intensify because given recent cutbacks in the amount of money allocated for that enumeration, there will be pressure from many Russians to eliminate questions that would highlight the growth of the Muslim community and alternatively from Muslims to do the opposite.
Meanwhile, in another development in the Muslim world that is likely to resonate in the Russian Federation, officials at the Organization of the Islamic Conference have announced plans to “impose order” on the increasing flow of fetwas, legal opinions about particular cases for Muslims but documents often treated by others as having broader applicability.
This week, at the 19th conference of the OIC’s International Islamic Academy of Fihta (IIFA), officials and scholars said they wanted to end “the current chaos in the publication of fetwas, which in part contradict one another” and thus represent a source of confusion rather than guidance for the faithful (www.islam.com.ua/news/6122/).
Whether the OIC can achieve its goal in this regard is far from clear given that the number of fetwas being issued around the world is now running at the rate of 1600 a week, according to scholars at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University who are computerizing them but without yet making a concerted effort to prioritize them.
But this action of the OIC is likely to find an echo in the Russian Federation where both the Russian government and the leaderships of the Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs) are certain to see this effort by the Islamic community abroad as both a model for and a justification of greater control over fetwas, both those issued in Russia and those from abroad.
And to the extent that Russian officials and Russian Muslims do so, that could lead to a tighter “power vertical” within the Islamic community of that country, contradicting the radically decentralized nature of the Muslim faith and reinforcing the government-backed MSDs at a time when ever more Muslims there are asking whether they should continue to exist.
Vienna, May 1 – The Saudi officials responsible for setting national quotas for Muslim pilgrims to Mecca announced the allocation of 20,500 slots for hajis from the Russian Federation in 2009, the exact number that country is supposed to have on the basis of existing formulas but 4500 fewer came from Russia last year and fewer than Moscow wanted to send this.
The Saudis have long allocated haj quotas on the basis of one-tenth of one percent of the estimated number of Muslims in a particular country, but in recent years, the Russian government has sought and received a higher allocation, arguing that there is pent-up demand because few Muslims were able to make the pilgrimage during Soviet times.
Saudi deference to the Russian government on this point in the past, however, angered Muslims in other countries, many of whom have been forced to wait years if not decades for the change to make the haj required of all believers capable of going on it at least once in the course of their lifetimes (www.islamrf.ru/news/russia/rusnews/8445/).
But Moscow’s failure to get a higher quota this year creates three problems for the Russian government. First, given that many more Muslims in the Russian Federation want to go than there are slots, at least some of them are going to see the new lower number as an indication that their country did not press hard enough.
That is especially likely because a majority of Russian hajis come from the North Caucasus -- and especially from the extremely unstable republics of Chechnya and Daghestan. Indeed, it is almost certain that anti-regime activists will point to this decline in the haj quota as one more reason for local people to support them.
Second, the number of Muslims from Russia who will actually perform the haj is likely to be larger than the number of slots, creating a problem for both Moscow which will thus be faced with losing control of the situation and the Saudis. Indeed, in announcing quotas this year, the Saudis said that Moscow must ensure that all hajis from Russia return when the haj is over.
Indeed, in both of the last two years, there were problems with Russian hajis who came on their own, did not march under the Russian flag, and sometimes remained long after the haj was completed, creating problems for all concerned and prompting the Russians to beef up their offices in Saudi Arabia to deal with the problem.
And third, both because Moscow wants to present its Muslim face to the Islamic world and because Muslims in Russia want larger quotas, the latter are likely to press for an acknowledgement by Moscow that there are in fact more than the 20.5 million Muslims in Russia the current haj quota is based on.
That sets the stage for a serious debate between Russian nationalists and the leaders of the increasingly influential Russian Orthodox Church who want to minimize the size of the Islamic community in Russia and the increasingly numerous Muslims who want recognition of the growth of their community.
As Moscow discusses plans for a census next year, such discussions are likely to intensify because given recent cutbacks in the amount of money allocated for that enumeration, there will be pressure from many Russians to eliminate questions that would highlight the growth of the Muslim community and alternatively from Muslims to do the opposite.
Meanwhile, in another development in the Muslim world that is likely to resonate in the Russian Federation, officials at the Organization of the Islamic Conference have announced plans to “impose order” on the increasing flow of fetwas, legal opinions about particular cases for Muslims but documents often treated by others as having broader applicability.
This week, at the 19th conference of the OIC’s International Islamic Academy of Fihta (IIFA), officials and scholars said they wanted to end “the current chaos in the publication of fetwas, which in part contradict one another” and thus represent a source of confusion rather than guidance for the faithful (www.islam.com.ua/news/6122/).
Whether the OIC can achieve its goal in this regard is far from clear given that the number of fetwas being issued around the world is now running at the rate of 1600 a week, according to scholars at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University who are computerizing them but without yet making a concerted effort to prioritize them.
But this action of the OIC is likely to find an echo in the Russian Federation where both the Russian government and the leaderships of the Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs) are certain to see this effort by the Islamic community abroad as both a model for and a justification of greater control over fetwas, both those issued in Russia and those from abroad.
And to the extent that Russian officials and Russian Muslims do so, that could lead to a tighter “power vertical” within the Islamic community of that country, contradicting the radically decentralized nature of the Muslim faith and reinforcing the government-backed MSDs at a time when ever more Muslims there are asking whether they should continue to exist.
Window on Eurasia: Duma Draft Law Against Rehabilitating Fascism Dangerous Nonsense, Moscow Commentator Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, May 1 – A bill under consideration in the Duma designed to counter “the rehabilitation in the new independent states of Nazism,” likely to be passed and signed into law in the coming weeks, makes no sense in legal terms, is historically “stupid,” and opens the door to a dangerous form of “political theater,” according to a leading Moscow commentator.
In an article in today’s “Yezhednevny zhurnal,” Yevgeny Ikhlov writes that while neither he nor anyone else is against standing up against any recrudescence of totalitarianism, this particular piece of legislation is hardly the way to go about doing that. Instead, it has the capacity to make its authors and supporters look ridiculous (www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=9034).
First of all, he points out, the draft bill is “a legal nonsense” because, by imposing penalties on those who express a different view on the history of World War II, it directly contradicts an 11-year-old ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, whose decisions Moscow is committed by treaty to respect and implement.
In September 1998, the Strasbourg court held in the case of Lehideux and Isorni v. France that “the presentation of a point of view on historical events which does not correspond to an officially adopted one does not represent a misuse of freedom of speech,” and consequently, anyone charged under the terms of the new bill would certainly invoke that in his defense.
Second, Ikhlov continues, the draft legislation is “a historical stupidity. “ Instead of focusing attention on Nazism, the bill has the effect of focusing attention on the Soviet past and especially on the Stalinist period.
The bill defines “Nazism (national socialism) [as] a totalitarian ideology and the practice of its application by Hitlerite Germany, its allies, and its accomplices” that involved “totalitarian terrorist methods of power … the propaganda of the supremacy of some nations over others, the committing of military crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.”
“Doesn’t this remind you of something?” Ikhlov asks his readers, and he cites the following decision of the Russian Constitutional Court from November 30, 1992, which defined the nature of the Soviet system.
“In the country,” the Russian court held, “over the course of a lengthy period of time ruled a regime of unlimited power of a small group of communist functionaries … who used force. … the leading structures of the CPSU were the initiators and their local structures carried out repressions against millions of Soviet people, including those peoples who were deported.”
“We see,” Ikhlov continues, “that in correspondence with Russian law, in the course of a lengthy period of time … on the territory of the USSR operated a totalitarian terrorist regime. But making a hero out of it is in no way prohibited.” Instead, President Dmitry Medvedev has again made November 7th, when the Soviet state was founded, a national holiday.
Can it be, Ikhlov asks, that “the entire difference is that Nazism ranked nations and not classes?” But that too is nonsensical from the point of view of history. “Hitlerism never drew up a precise hierarchy of ethnoses, [because] it never entered into the heads [of the Nazis] to consider Jews and non-Aryans nations.”
“The sad truth of history,” the Moscow writer suggests, “is that on the territory of the USSR, France, Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece, the Second World War was accompanied by [a series of] domestic civil wars,” conflicts that broke out because the German military gave rightist opponentts of leftist governments a chance to fight the latter.
“The hundreds and hundreds of thousands of armed collaborationists were not a form of betrayal; they were a front in a civil war,” Ikhlov says. It is thus “stupid and shameful” to fix “by law the correctness of one of the versions of this civil war, where various peoples were tragically caught “between two, let us use the words of the laws, totalitarian terrorist regimes.”
In this civil war, the Moscow commentator continues, “some ‘defended’ Auschwitz and Baby Yar; others Kolyma and the Butovo polygon.” And the draft bill’s constant but quite often incorrect reference to the decisions of the Nurnberg tribunal at the end of World War II ultimately cannot obscure that reality.
“The tragic truth of history is that all participants in World War II committed crimes of war. But the crimes of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition were called that only by historians and publicists; they were never assessed” by a duly constituted international court, and the proposed Russian legislation would not do that either.
And third, Ikhlov continues, the bill is a piece of “political theater,” intended to make propaganda points rather than become part of the rule of law, and one that appears set to serve as “a false pretext for dimwitted censorship and idiotic conflicts with the neighbors” of the Russian Federation.
On the one hand, the law contains a large number of assertions about the legal standing of the Russian Federation which are simply untrue, including the remarkable and absurd suggestion that “the Russian Federation is the continuer [rather than legal successor] of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
And on the other, this bill could lead to absurd cases in which leaders of neighboring states – Ikhlov cites the president of Ukraine and the prime minister of Estonia – are charged with violating the law, convicted by a Moscow court – since that is where their embassies are – and where the sentence is enforced by Gazprom cutting off the gas to their countries.
Despite these problems, Ikhlov says, the bill is likely to be passed by the Duma and signed by President Medvedev because no one in the Moscow political establishment will want to say anything that their opponents could and would construe as a defense of the totalitarianism of another state. Defending such a system at home, of course, is another matter entirely.
Vienna, May 1 – A bill under consideration in the Duma designed to counter “the rehabilitation in the new independent states of Nazism,” likely to be passed and signed into law in the coming weeks, makes no sense in legal terms, is historically “stupid,” and opens the door to a dangerous form of “political theater,” according to a leading Moscow commentator.
In an article in today’s “Yezhednevny zhurnal,” Yevgeny Ikhlov writes that while neither he nor anyone else is against standing up against any recrudescence of totalitarianism, this particular piece of legislation is hardly the way to go about doing that. Instead, it has the capacity to make its authors and supporters look ridiculous (www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=9034).
First of all, he points out, the draft bill is “a legal nonsense” because, by imposing penalties on those who express a different view on the history of World War II, it directly contradicts an 11-year-old ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, whose decisions Moscow is committed by treaty to respect and implement.
In September 1998, the Strasbourg court held in the case of Lehideux and Isorni v. France that “the presentation of a point of view on historical events which does not correspond to an officially adopted one does not represent a misuse of freedom of speech,” and consequently, anyone charged under the terms of the new bill would certainly invoke that in his defense.
Second, Ikhlov continues, the draft legislation is “a historical stupidity. “ Instead of focusing attention on Nazism, the bill has the effect of focusing attention on the Soviet past and especially on the Stalinist period.
The bill defines “Nazism (national socialism) [as] a totalitarian ideology and the practice of its application by Hitlerite Germany, its allies, and its accomplices” that involved “totalitarian terrorist methods of power … the propaganda of the supremacy of some nations over others, the committing of military crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.”
“Doesn’t this remind you of something?” Ikhlov asks his readers, and he cites the following decision of the Russian Constitutional Court from November 30, 1992, which defined the nature of the Soviet system.
“In the country,” the Russian court held, “over the course of a lengthy period of time ruled a regime of unlimited power of a small group of communist functionaries … who used force. … the leading structures of the CPSU were the initiators and their local structures carried out repressions against millions of Soviet people, including those peoples who were deported.”
“We see,” Ikhlov continues, “that in correspondence with Russian law, in the course of a lengthy period of time … on the territory of the USSR operated a totalitarian terrorist regime. But making a hero out of it is in no way prohibited.” Instead, President Dmitry Medvedev has again made November 7th, when the Soviet state was founded, a national holiday.
Can it be, Ikhlov asks, that “the entire difference is that Nazism ranked nations and not classes?” But that too is nonsensical from the point of view of history. “Hitlerism never drew up a precise hierarchy of ethnoses, [because] it never entered into the heads [of the Nazis] to consider Jews and non-Aryans nations.”
“The sad truth of history,” the Moscow writer suggests, “is that on the territory of the USSR, France, Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece, the Second World War was accompanied by [a series of] domestic civil wars,” conflicts that broke out because the German military gave rightist opponentts of leftist governments a chance to fight the latter.
“The hundreds and hundreds of thousands of armed collaborationists were not a form of betrayal; they were a front in a civil war,” Ikhlov says. It is thus “stupid and shameful” to fix “by law the correctness of one of the versions of this civil war, where various peoples were tragically caught “between two, let us use the words of the laws, totalitarian terrorist regimes.”
In this civil war, the Moscow commentator continues, “some ‘defended’ Auschwitz and Baby Yar; others Kolyma and the Butovo polygon.” And the draft bill’s constant but quite often incorrect reference to the decisions of the Nurnberg tribunal at the end of World War II ultimately cannot obscure that reality.
“The tragic truth of history is that all participants in World War II committed crimes of war. But the crimes of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition were called that only by historians and publicists; they were never assessed” by a duly constituted international court, and the proposed Russian legislation would not do that either.
And third, Ikhlov continues, the bill is a piece of “political theater,” intended to make propaganda points rather than become part of the rule of law, and one that appears set to serve as “a false pretext for dimwitted censorship and idiotic conflicts with the neighbors” of the Russian Federation.
On the one hand, the law contains a large number of assertions about the legal standing of the Russian Federation which are simply untrue, including the remarkable and absurd suggestion that “the Russian Federation is the continuer [rather than legal successor] of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
And on the other, this bill could lead to absurd cases in which leaders of neighboring states – Ikhlov cites the president of Ukraine and the prime minister of Estonia – are charged with violating the law, convicted by a Moscow court – since that is where their embassies are – and where the sentence is enforced by Gazprom cutting off the gas to their countries.
Despite these problems, Ikhlov says, the bill is likely to be passed by the Duma and signed by President Medvedev because no one in the Moscow political establishment will want to say anything that their opponents could and would construe as a defense of the totalitarianism of another state. Defending such a system at home, of course, is another matter entirely.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Window on Eurasia: Moscow has ‘Cast Aside’ Siberia, Threatening Russia’s Future, Scholar Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, April 30 – For the first time in more than a century, a Moscow-based politician and scholar from the Altai says, Russia’s central government has “cast aside” Siberia, a region that is not only rich in natural resources but whose unique spirit is critical for reform, thus putting the future of Russia as a whole at risk.
In an interview in “Baikalskiye vesti” yesterday, Vladimir Ryzhkov, currently a professor at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, says that “Siberia, which for the course of a century was celebrated not only for its natural but its human wealth has been converted into an ever poorer kray, forgotten by God and Moscow” (www.politirkutsk.ru/view.php/276/1.php).
The region’s population is not only declining, he says, but its level of education and culture is falling as well, trends that mean “if the political elite does not recognize fully the seriousness of the situation, it will soon become too late to engage in any talk about ‘the fates of Siberia.’”
Ryzhkov says that he is talking about Siberia as “a geographic term,” the two federal districts that extend from the Urals to the Pacific that constitutes 80 percent of Russia’s territory, 22 percent of the country’s population, and is responsible for 30 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
But the population is declining. Since 1990, five million of its residents have died or left. As a result, the population of Chukotka has fallen by more than half, of Magadan by 40 percent, Kamchatka by 18 percent, and so on. And this is happening despite the wealth of the region and security considerations with regard to China with its enormous population next door.
What is surprising, Ryzhkov says, is that this trend reverses the one that the Russian government had promoted in the past. “From the beginning of the conquest of Siberia,” he notes, “that is the region to which came the strongest, most progressive, and most freedom-loving people.”
Until the 1980s, the average income of Siberians was higher than in Central Russia, the share of those with higher education was greater, and the fraction who subscribed to newspapers was also larger. “In a word,” he says, Siberians were “a highly educated, cultural, dynamic and urbanized” people.
Ryzhkov acknowledges that some of the current problems of the region reflect the fallout from Soviet economic development strategies, strategies that promoted the company towns whose basic industries are failing without their managers or workers having any other economic options in the same place.
But now the collapse of these cities has been accelerated by Moscow policies which mean that it is cheaper to fly from Moscow to Western Europe than it is to fly from the Russian capital to Vladivostok. As a result, Ryzhkov points out, “six of the ten poorest regions of the Russian Federation are Siberian.”
Asked whether there is any “way out” from this situation, Ryzhkov says that there is but that the political elite in Moscow, which he notes includes “few Siberians” besides Sergey Shoygu, must begin to focus on the region and recognize that Moscow must “leave a greater part of the taxes collected there” to Siberia.
In addition, he argues, Moscow must come up with a special program to transform company towns, something that does not exist at the federal level, so that the people who live in them will not flee but redirect their energies to new purposes for their benefit and the benefit of the country as a whole.
Moreover, he says, Moscow should intervene to make sure that no private company has a monopoly on air travel so that Siberians don’t have to pay such high prices for tickets. And he suggests that the Russian Federation should “restore the Soviet system” of quotas for students at higher educational systems so that those from areas far from Moscow will get a chance.
But Ryzhkov’s most important comments concern what he called “the special qualities” of Siberians. Unlike Russians in the European portion of the country, “in whose blood is the memory of serfdom,” Siberians never knew landowners, and consequently, they are “more brave and direct in politics and in life.”
Moreover, he says, “they are very entrepreneurial, show initiative, and are businesslike. It is no accident that an enormous number of businessmen [in Russia] are Siberians.” And Ryzhkov concludes, if everything else were equal, “the first who would run ahead [in that sector and presumably many others] would be the Siberians.”
Vienna, April 30 – For the first time in more than a century, a Moscow-based politician and scholar from the Altai says, Russia’s central government has “cast aside” Siberia, a region that is not only rich in natural resources but whose unique spirit is critical for reform, thus putting the future of Russia as a whole at risk.
In an interview in “Baikalskiye vesti” yesterday, Vladimir Ryzhkov, currently a professor at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, says that “Siberia, which for the course of a century was celebrated not only for its natural but its human wealth has been converted into an ever poorer kray, forgotten by God and Moscow” (www.politirkutsk.ru/view.php/276/1.php).
The region’s population is not only declining, he says, but its level of education and culture is falling as well, trends that mean “if the political elite does not recognize fully the seriousness of the situation, it will soon become too late to engage in any talk about ‘the fates of Siberia.’”
Ryzhkov says that he is talking about Siberia as “a geographic term,” the two federal districts that extend from the Urals to the Pacific that constitutes 80 percent of Russia’s territory, 22 percent of the country’s population, and is responsible for 30 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
But the population is declining. Since 1990, five million of its residents have died or left. As a result, the population of Chukotka has fallen by more than half, of Magadan by 40 percent, Kamchatka by 18 percent, and so on. And this is happening despite the wealth of the region and security considerations with regard to China with its enormous population next door.
What is surprising, Ryzhkov says, is that this trend reverses the one that the Russian government had promoted in the past. “From the beginning of the conquest of Siberia,” he notes, “that is the region to which came the strongest, most progressive, and most freedom-loving people.”
Until the 1980s, the average income of Siberians was higher than in Central Russia, the share of those with higher education was greater, and the fraction who subscribed to newspapers was also larger. “In a word,” he says, Siberians were “a highly educated, cultural, dynamic and urbanized” people.
Ryzhkov acknowledges that some of the current problems of the region reflect the fallout from Soviet economic development strategies, strategies that promoted the company towns whose basic industries are failing without their managers or workers having any other economic options in the same place.
But now the collapse of these cities has been accelerated by Moscow policies which mean that it is cheaper to fly from Moscow to Western Europe than it is to fly from the Russian capital to Vladivostok. As a result, Ryzhkov points out, “six of the ten poorest regions of the Russian Federation are Siberian.”
Asked whether there is any “way out” from this situation, Ryzhkov says that there is but that the political elite in Moscow, which he notes includes “few Siberians” besides Sergey Shoygu, must begin to focus on the region and recognize that Moscow must “leave a greater part of the taxes collected there” to Siberia.
In addition, he argues, Moscow must come up with a special program to transform company towns, something that does not exist at the federal level, so that the people who live in them will not flee but redirect their energies to new purposes for their benefit and the benefit of the country as a whole.
Moreover, he says, Moscow should intervene to make sure that no private company has a monopoly on air travel so that Siberians don’t have to pay such high prices for tickets. And he suggests that the Russian Federation should “restore the Soviet system” of quotas for students at higher educational systems so that those from areas far from Moscow will get a chance.
But Ryzhkov’s most important comments concern what he called “the special qualities” of Siberians. Unlike Russians in the European portion of the country, “in whose blood is the memory of serfdom,” Siberians never knew landowners, and consequently, they are “more brave and direct in politics and in life.”
Moreover, he says, “they are very entrepreneurial, show initiative, and are businesslike. It is no accident that an enormous number of businessmen [in Russia] are Siberians.” And Ryzhkov concludes, if everything else were equal, “the first who would run ahead [in that sector and presumably many others] would be the Siberians.”
Window on Eurasia: New Russian Patriarch Enlists Regime’s Help to Suppress Independent Orthodox Believers
Paul Goble
Vienna, April 30 – A Russian appeals court has left in force a decision of a lower court to allow allowing the state to seize eight church buildings in Suzdal belonging to the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, the latest indication of the manner in which Patriarch Kirill is using the state to suppress any independence among Orthodox believers.
That is the conclusion of Aleksandr Khramov, a religious affairs writer, in a commentary published yesterday on Portal-credo.ru, a conclusion highlighting both the newly enthroned patriarch’s well-known authoritarian tendencies and an increasingly dangerous collusion between his church and the Russian state (www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=comment&id=1575).
In decisions announced yesterday, the collegiums of the First Appellate Arbitration Court in Vladimir left in force the February 12th judgment of the Vladimir Oblast Arbitration Court which granted a government request to seize the churches, ostensibly because their parishes had violated one or another rules of the use of their properties.
The oblast official who initiated the case has routinely insisted that the Moscow Patriarchate “does not have any relationship to this case,” but that assertion Khramov argues is a total “lie.” The government does not need these churches and almost certainly will hand them over to the local bishop of the Moscow Patriarchate in short order.
Three aspects of this case are especially disturbing, the religious affairs writer says. First, the entire process of going after independent believers “suddenly accelerated after Kirill became the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate,” an indication of his influence with the government generally and President and Mrs. Medvedev in particular.
Thus what is happening in Suzdal sets a precedent that is likely to be used elsewhere in the Russian Federation soon: The Moscow Patriarchate will enlist the power of the state to go after its enemies and even after those believers who seek only the right to worship in their own way independently of Kirill and his “power vertical” inside the church.
Second, while the independent believers plan to appeal, “even now,” Khramov writes, “the majority of them are seized by the darkest forebodings: In the era of ‘missionary mobilization,’ which the new Patriarch has proclaimed, all those unwilling to enter into the ranks of ‘the supporters of the faith’ under the flags of the Moscow Patriarchate” will be in trouble.
And third, there is a very real danger of violent clashes between the followers of such independent churches and the state. On the one hand, because they believe in their mission, the followers of such independent Orthodox groups say they do not plan to simply obey what they see as an illegal and unconstitutional seizure of their property.
Metropolitan Valentin, a leader of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, has publicly declared that “even if they use clubs to drive us out, we will suffer for the truth and suffer for Orthodoxy. We will not give the keys [to the churches to the Russian government for handing over to the Patriarchate]. We will not leave.”
And on the other, the government appears to be gearing up to use force against them. Officials have announced that on May 18th, there will be a large “anti-terrorist training course.” In advance of that, it is already clear that for the Russian government as for the Patriarchate, “the terrorists” in Suzdal will not be “militants but Orthodox believers.”
Such an expansive reading of “terrorist” by the authorities, one that they appear prepared to extend to those whose only crime is that they are not followers of the government-approved faith, may ultimately prove to be the most dangerous aspect of this situation, one that has attracted some attention from religious rights organizations but so far little from anyone else.
Vienna, April 30 – A Russian appeals court has left in force a decision of a lower court to allow allowing the state to seize eight church buildings in Suzdal belonging to the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, the latest indication of the manner in which Patriarch Kirill is using the state to suppress any independence among Orthodox believers.
That is the conclusion of Aleksandr Khramov, a religious affairs writer, in a commentary published yesterday on Portal-credo.ru, a conclusion highlighting both the newly enthroned patriarch’s well-known authoritarian tendencies and an increasingly dangerous collusion between his church and the Russian state (www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=comment&id=1575).
In decisions announced yesterday, the collegiums of the First Appellate Arbitration Court in Vladimir left in force the February 12th judgment of the Vladimir Oblast Arbitration Court which granted a government request to seize the churches, ostensibly because their parishes had violated one or another rules of the use of their properties.
The oblast official who initiated the case has routinely insisted that the Moscow Patriarchate “does not have any relationship to this case,” but that assertion Khramov argues is a total “lie.” The government does not need these churches and almost certainly will hand them over to the local bishop of the Moscow Patriarchate in short order.
Three aspects of this case are especially disturbing, the religious affairs writer says. First, the entire process of going after independent believers “suddenly accelerated after Kirill became the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate,” an indication of his influence with the government generally and President and Mrs. Medvedev in particular.
Thus what is happening in Suzdal sets a precedent that is likely to be used elsewhere in the Russian Federation soon: The Moscow Patriarchate will enlist the power of the state to go after its enemies and even after those believers who seek only the right to worship in their own way independently of Kirill and his “power vertical” inside the church.
Second, while the independent believers plan to appeal, “even now,” Khramov writes, “the majority of them are seized by the darkest forebodings: In the era of ‘missionary mobilization,’ which the new Patriarch has proclaimed, all those unwilling to enter into the ranks of ‘the supporters of the faith’ under the flags of the Moscow Patriarchate” will be in trouble.
And third, there is a very real danger of violent clashes between the followers of such independent churches and the state. On the one hand, because they believe in their mission, the followers of such independent Orthodox groups say they do not plan to simply obey what they see as an illegal and unconstitutional seizure of their property.
Metropolitan Valentin, a leader of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, has publicly declared that “even if they use clubs to drive us out, we will suffer for the truth and suffer for Orthodoxy. We will not give the keys [to the churches to the Russian government for handing over to the Patriarchate]. We will not leave.”
And on the other, the government appears to be gearing up to use force against them. Officials have announced that on May 18th, there will be a large “anti-terrorist training course.” In advance of that, it is already clear that for the Russian government as for the Patriarchate, “the terrorists” in Suzdal will not be “militants but Orthodox believers.”
Such an expansive reading of “terrorist” by the authorities, one that they appear prepared to extend to those whose only crime is that they are not followers of the government-approved faith, may ultimately prove to be the most dangerous aspect of this situation, one that has attracted some attention from religious rights organizations but so far little from anyone else.
Window on Eurasia: Russian Media Play Up US Bank’s Call for Moscow Not to Publish Unemployment Data
Paul Goble
Vienna, April 30 – In an unusual but unfortunately not unprecedented development, Russian media are hyping a suggestion by analysts at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch that Moscow should not publish unemployment statistics so frequently lest it lead to “the destabilization of the social situation” in the Russian Federation.
Not only do such notions, however much they might help some investors, violate American principles on the free flow of information, they fail to recognize that such proposals reinforce Moscow’s proclivity to secrecy and generate suspicions among the Russian people that are far more likely to be destabilizing than the release of information would be.
In an article today about the Russian government’s plans to conduct “the anti-crisis Petersburg forum in a new ‘interactive format,’” “Nezavisimaya gazeta” reported that analysts at the US bank have published a new report calling the growth of unemployment in Russia “an ever more significant problem” (www.ng.ru/economics/2009-04-30/4_tvshow.html?insidedoc).
According to the Moscow paper, the American investment analysts, who had earlier identified Russia as one of the most important emerging markets said that “the decision of the [Russian] government to publish statistics on unemployment every month was premature since it could contribute to the destabilization of the situation.”
While “Nezavisimaya gazeta” put this American suggestion at the end of its article, many Russian news outlets have made it the center of their reporting. Newsru.com, for example, headlined its article “The US Advises the Russian Government Not to Publish Unemployment Data in Order to Avoid Instability” (www.newsru.com/russia/30apr2009/bezrabotitsa.html).
But that news agency also noted that this call by an American firm for the Russian government to release even less information than it had was belated. Newsru.com noted that “even before” the Americans offered this advice, the Russian Statistical Committee “had ceased to publish monthly reports.”
That action, one of several cutbacks in statistical and other forms of government information in the Russian Federation, “immediately led media [there] to conclude that the government wants them to reduce their coverage of unwelcome trends,” a desire that the report suggested now enjoyed the support of American bankers as well.
Russian media and Russian officials pay close attention to what Americans, official and otherwise, say about their country, far more than the reverse, and they often invoke such statements to press their own agendas or at least to legitimize them, again in ways very different from the way in which American outlets treat suggestions coming from Russia.
Indeed, Russian outlets have also played up the conclusions of the US-based Eurasia Group on “Risks in an Unstable World” which suggested that growing unemployment and inflation in Russia could lead to a crisis in which Vladimir Putin might soon replace Dmitry Medvedev as president by offering himself as “the savior of the fatherland.”
That makes any American suggestion, especially one for the Russian government to reduce the amount of information available to the Russian people, far more important than it might otherwise be, a reminder if one still is needed for those in the US writing about developments in that country to exercise extreme caution.
Vienna, April 30 – In an unusual but unfortunately not unprecedented development, Russian media are hyping a suggestion by analysts at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch that Moscow should not publish unemployment statistics so frequently lest it lead to “the destabilization of the social situation” in the Russian Federation.
Not only do such notions, however much they might help some investors, violate American principles on the free flow of information, they fail to recognize that such proposals reinforce Moscow’s proclivity to secrecy and generate suspicions among the Russian people that are far more likely to be destabilizing than the release of information would be.
In an article today about the Russian government’s plans to conduct “the anti-crisis Petersburg forum in a new ‘interactive format,’” “Nezavisimaya gazeta” reported that analysts at the US bank have published a new report calling the growth of unemployment in Russia “an ever more significant problem” (www.ng.ru/economics/2009-04-30/4_tvshow.html?insidedoc).
According to the Moscow paper, the American investment analysts, who had earlier identified Russia as one of the most important emerging markets said that “the decision of the [Russian] government to publish statistics on unemployment every month was premature since it could contribute to the destabilization of the situation.”
While “Nezavisimaya gazeta” put this American suggestion at the end of its article, many Russian news outlets have made it the center of their reporting. Newsru.com, for example, headlined its article “The US Advises the Russian Government Not to Publish Unemployment Data in Order to Avoid Instability” (www.newsru.com/russia/30apr2009/bezrabotitsa.html).
But that news agency also noted that this call by an American firm for the Russian government to release even less information than it had was belated. Newsru.com noted that “even before” the Americans offered this advice, the Russian Statistical Committee “had ceased to publish monthly reports.”
That action, one of several cutbacks in statistical and other forms of government information in the Russian Federation, “immediately led media [there] to conclude that the government wants them to reduce their coverage of unwelcome trends,” a desire that the report suggested now enjoyed the support of American bankers as well.
Russian media and Russian officials pay close attention to what Americans, official and otherwise, say about their country, far more than the reverse, and they often invoke such statements to press their own agendas or at least to legitimize them, again in ways very different from the way in which American outlets treat suggestions coming from Russia.
Indeed, Russian outlets have also played up the conclusions of the US-based Eurasia Group on “Risks in an Unstable World” which suggested that growing unemployment and inflation in Russia could lead to a crisis in which Vladimir Putin might soon replace Dmitry Medvedev as president by offering himself as “the savior of the fatherland.”
That makes any American suggestion, especially one for the Russian government to reduce the amount of information available to the Russian people, far more important than it might otherwise be, a reminder if one still is needed for those in the US writing about developments in that country to exercise extreme caution.
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