Paul Goble
Vienna, May 6 – Many people are now accustomed to hearing that Russia was a failed state until Boris Yeltsin, and few are startled anymore to hear suggestions that it is a criminal state. But according to one analyst, a recent remark by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin raises the question as to whether there is any state as such in the Russian Federation.
“How can there not be a state in Russia if the building of the state is our chief and general pride?” Yury Magarshak asks in an article in today’s “Vremya.” “How can there not be a state in Russia if state-thinking people form a large fraction of the citizens of the country? [And] how can there not be a state if many Russians remain convinced that the Motherland is a state?”
“Until very recently,” the New York-based Russian specialist on high technology and a frequent writer on Russia’s social and political problems, continues, he “also thought that a state existed in Russia.” But there are reasons to suppose that unfortunately a state does not exist” there (www.vremya.ru/2009/77/4/228487.html).
Of course, Magarshak writes, “Russia is a state in the sense that it occupies a large part of the globe and is a member of the United Nations. But it seems” – and according to Magarshak, Putin has unintentionally acknowledged as much – “that there is no state in Russia which fulfills the basic functions which a state is obligated to carry out.”
During his recent meeting with the Duma, Putin was asked whether it was time to end the flat tax on incomes in order to be in a better position to finance state programs. The prime minister responded by saying that such a step must not be taken because if it were, employers would pay people off the books, “in envelopes,” so as to escape taxation
“Judging by the news programs,” Magarshak says, “this answer satisfied the parliamentarians. But it does not satisfy me.” Indeed, the specialist, who was trained at Leningrad State University says, “it shocked” him because of what it said about the government of the country in which he was born and about which he cares so much.
Throughout human history, he writes, “one of the basic functions of a state alongside providing justice and security for its citizens has been the collection of taxes.” Indeed, for a functioning state, tax collection is “one of the easiest obligations” of central institutions. And if Russia today can’t do what other states have always done, “is it in fact a state at all?”
“But the situation is still worse,” Magarshak says. What Putin said means that “if Moscow were to end the current formal equality of citizens on income taxes, money would circulate in society via the shadow economy, that is criminally and illegally,” and thus be beyond the reach of the authorities.
“In other words,” the “Vremya” commentator says, “the prime minister was not only acknowledging to the entire world that the state cannot collect taxes … but also that it is not even capable of providing for the legal circulation of money in the country,” a situation other officials have conceded by noting that corruption in Russia is comparable in size to the national budget.
In making that remark, Magarshak says, Putin was certainly being “sincere. More than that, it is clear to every thoughtful Russian that in essence [the prime minister] is right: at the present time, the powers that be [in the Russian Federation] are powerless before the criminal world,” a situation that means that “there is in general no ‘vlast.’”
To the extent that is true, how is Russia going to get out of the current crisis? The situation is not encouraging, Magarshak says. Russians did well under Putin only because of high oil and gas prices, a situation that is unlikely to return anytime soon. And the country “does not produce any products which are competitive on the world market.”
Unfortunately, Magarshak notes, “there is no tradition of technology firms of a competitive level that are sending their goods to that market, and there are no corresponding specialists.” Moreover, even if they should “by a miracle” appear, “the presence of the shadow economy” seriously reduces the chance that they will be able to compete with foreign firms.
Magarshak ends his article by acknowledging that “no one in the world for a long time has been surprised by books about Russia with titles like ‘The Creation of a Criminal State.’ And no one is surprised in Russia. But a report that Russia does not have a state at all whether it be criminal, bandit, or thieving – nonetheless is unexpected and sad.”
But he says one “would like to think” that there is a cure for the “disease” Russia suffers from. Unfortunately, given the “seriousness” of the diagnosis, the course of treatment is likely going to require radical steps, including quite possibly the wholesale replacement of elites, even though that too may prove “insufficient.”
What is clear, however, is that both this situation and possible cures “must be discussed, especially during the crisis as the highest priority at all levels from television to the Duma.” That is because, Magarshak concludes, while Russia may not have a state just now, no one, including its citizens, has another Russia to turn to.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Window on Eurasia: Might the US Recognize Abkhazia and Turn Moscow’s Victory into Defeat?
Paul Goble
Vienna, May 6 – The United States and even more likely Turkey might change course, recognize the independence of Abkhazia, move to include both Abkhazia and Georgia into Western institutions like NATO and thus transform Moscow’s victory on the ground in August 2008 into a major geopolitical defeat, according to a Moscow analyst.
In what he acknowledges is a highly speculative article, Andrey Serenko, a political analyst at the Moscow Foundation for the Development of Information, argues that however improbable it may seem at present, the US and Turkey might recognize Abkhazia as part of a broader strategy of ousting Russia from the Caucasus (www.vestikavkaza.ru/node/2438).
And while the Moscow writer may be wrong both overall and in detail, his argument is worth exploring not only because it reflects a habit of mind quite frequently found in the Russian capital at the present time but also because it highlights the fluidity and openness of a situation in the Caucasus that most analysts are inclined to see as far more fixed than in fact is the case.
Despite the fact that much of the fighting between Russia and Georgia took place in South Ossetia rather than in Abkhazia – in fact, there was no fighting there during the recent war -- “the main goal”of both Moscow and Tbilisi was the latter because control of that breakaway republic was seen as controlling so much.
“If Tbilisi had been able to return Abkhazia to its control,” Serenko suggests, “the fate of the Russian Black Sea Fleet would have been fixed” and against Russia, whereas if, as happened, Abkhazia gained its independence as a result of Moscow’s actions, Russia’s ability to project power in the region would remain great.
Given the geopolitical importance of Abkhazia, the Moscow analyst says, it is implausible that the West will simply continue to repeat its declarations of support for the territorial integrity of the Republic Georgia and do nothing to counter the consequences of Russia’s victory there last summer.
One possible scenario, Serenko continues, would involve the following steps: “The United States could conduct shuttle talks between the Georgian and Abkhaz leaderships and on the basis of their outcome declare that Washington, following Moscow, will recognize the independence of Abkhazia.”
Today, “no one expects this from the Americans but precisely such a move could change the situation in the Southern Caucasus in in favor of the US, because following such recognition, American investments, major Western companies and NGOs would flood into Sukhumi,” leading at least some Abkhaz to lobby “for friendship with the US.”
Russia is certainly not prepared for such an American move, nor are the upper reaches of the Abkhazian leadership. President Sergey Bagapsh and his colleagues are “sincerely grateful” to Moscow for its assistance in their republic’s gaining independence and for its recognition of that status. And they believe that they can resist any blandishments from the West.
But Serenko says, “serious politicians inMoscow cannot be such optimists. Besides that, there are in Abkhazia, besides Bagapsh, politicians, bureaucrats, and petty businessmen who are striving to become major players and ‘win out’ some personal profit from independence achieved at long last. … Independence in order not to depend on or to take from all …”
“In the event of a successful American entrance into Abkhazia, Sukhumi could be offered the variant which the US and NATO have already proposed to Serbia and Kosovo – why argue and fight over borders? Both Serbia and Kosovo will be admitted to the European Union in which there are no internal borders and then into NATO.”
That formula will eventually work in the Balkans. Why not try it in the Caucasus? “Why should Georgia and Abkhazia fight and argue among themselves? They both an be admitted … [after a decent interval] … into the European Union and into NATO. And then the problem of borders and independence disappears on its own.”
“Is this a fantastic scenario?” Serenko asks rhetorically. “Nomore fantastic than the disintegration of the USSR, the disintegration of Serbia or the recognition of the independence of Kosovo, Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” events many said would never happened before they did and were proclaimed inevitable.
One of the reasons that Moscow should be concerned about an American rapprochement with Abkhazia is that if it occurred, “the political successes of Russia [in Georgia in particular and in the Caucasus regionmore generally] would instantly be transformed into a political defeat.”
First of all, the Moscow political commentator insists, “having recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia [last summer], Moscow deprived itself of the right to talk about the principle of the inviolability of the territorial integrity of states and weakened its position in European political projects.”
Second, Russia opened itself to more separatist challenges within, if not today “when in Moscow the powers that be are strong and the threats of separatism do not exist,” but in the future because “no one knows [what the situation will be either in Moscow or on Russia’s periphery] several years from now.
And third, “the independence of Abkhazia achieved by Russia can open the way for a new political project which Moscow would hardly like. The Abkhaz, the Cherkess, the Kabardins, the Adyge, and also their co-ethnics living in Turkey, Syria, and Jordan form one super-ethnos,” collectively and by themselves known as the Circassians, Serenko says.
Their existence could lead to greater activism by Turkey in this area even if the US doesn’t move. Many have noted that Ankara did not follow its Western partners in condemning Russia’s military and political moves in Georgia, and “it must not be excluded that Ankara could recognize Abkhazia” as part of its ongoing effort to project power in the Caucasus.
In that event, Serenko concludes ominously, if not entirely convincingly given the restrained language he used in presenting his scenario, “into the orbit of this game could be included three of the North Caucasus republics” – Adygeya, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachayevo-Cherkessia – which are included in Russia.”
Vienna, May 6 – The United States and even more likely Turkey might change course, recognize the independence of Abkhazia, move to include both Abkhazia and Georgia into Western institutions like NATO and thus transform Moscow’s victory on the ground in August 2008 into a major geopolitical defeat, according to a Moscow analyst.
In what he acknowledges is a highly speculative article, Andrey Serenko, a political analyst at the Moscow Foundation for the Development of Information, argues that however improbable it may seem at present, the US and Turkey might recognize Abkhazia as part of a broader strategy of ousting Russia from the Caucasus (www.vestikavkaza.ru/node/2438).
And while the Moscow writer may be wrong both overall and in detail, his argument is worth exploring not only because it reflects a habit of mind quite frequently found in the Russian capital at the present time but also because it highlights the fluidity and openness of a situation in the Caucasus that most analysts are inclined to see as far more fixed than in fact is the case.
Despite the fact that much of the fighting between Russia and Georgia took place in South Ossetia rather than in Abkhazia – in fact, there was no fighting there during the recent war -- “the main goal”of both Moscow and Tbilisi was the latter because control of that breakaway republic was seen as controlling so much.
“If Tbilisi had been able to return Abkhazia to its control,” Serenko suggests, “the fate of the Russian Black Sea Fleet would have been fixed” and against Russia, whereas if, as happened, Abkhazia gained its independence as a result of Moscow’s actions, Russia’s ability to project power in the region would remain great.
Given the geopolitical importance of Abkhazia, the Moscow analyst says, it is implausible that the West will simply continue to repeat its declarations of support for the territorial integrity of the Republic Georgia and do nothing to counter the consequences of Russia’s victory there last summer.
One possible scenario, Serenko continues, would involve the following steps: “The United States could conduct shuttle talks between the Georgian and Abkhaz leaderships and on the basis of their outcome declare that Washington, following Moscow, will recognize the independence of Abkhazia.”
Today, “no one expects this from the Americans but precisely such a move could change the situation in the Southern Caucasus in in favor of the US, because following such recognition, American investments, major Western companies and NGOs would flood into Sukhumi,” leading at least some Abkhaz to lobby “for friendship with the US.”
Russia is certainly not prepared for such an American move, nor are the upper reaches of the Abkhazian leadership. President Sergey Bagapsh and his colleagues are “sincerely grateful” to Moscow for its assistance in their republic’s gaining independence and for its recognition of that status. And they believe that they can resist any blandishments from the West.
But Serenko says, “serious politicians inMoscow cannot be such optimists. Besides that, there are in Abkhazia, besides Bagapsh, politicians, bureaucrats, and petty businessmen who are striving to become major players and ‘win out’ some personal profit from independence achieved at long last. … Independence in order not to depend on or to take from all …”
“In the event of a successful American entrance into Abkhazia, Sukhumi could be offered the variant which the US and NATO have already proposed to Serbia and Kosovo – why argue and fight over borders? Both Serbia and Kosovo will be admitted to the European Union in which there are no internal borders and then into NATO.”
That formula will eventually work in the Balkans. Why not try it in the Caucasus? “Why should Georgia and Abkhazia fight and argue among themselves? They both an be admitted … [after a decent interval] … into the European Union and into NATO. And then the problem of borders and independence disappears on its own.”
“Is this a fantastic scenario?” Serenko asks rhetorically. “Nomore fantastic than the disintegration of the USSR, the disintegration of Serbia or the recognition of the independence of Kosovo, Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” events many said would never happened before they did and were proclaimed inevitable.
One of the reasons that Moscow should be concerned about an American rapprochement with Abkhazia is that if it occurred, “the political successes of Russia [in Georgia in particular and in the Caucasus regionmore generally] would instantly be transformed into a political defeat.”
First of all, the Moscow political commentator insists, “having recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia [last summer], Moscow deprived itself of the right to talk about the principle of the inviolability of the territorial integrity of states and weakened its position in European political projects.”
Second, Russia opened itself to more separatist challenges within, if not today “when in Moscow the powers that be are strong and the threats of separatism do not exist,” but in the future because “no one knows [what the situation will be either in Moscow or on Russia’s periphery] several years from now.
And third, “the independence of Abkhazia achieved by Russia can open the way for a new political project which Moscow would hardly like. The Abkhaz, the Cherkess, the Kabardins, the Adyge, and also their co-ethnics living in Turkey, Syria, and Jordan form one super-ethnos,” collectively and by themselves known as the Circassians, Serenko says.
Their existence could lead to greater activism by Turkey in this area even if the US doesn’t move. Many have noted that Ankara did not follow its Western partners in condemning Russia’s military and political moves in Georgia, and “it must not be excluded that Ankara could recognize Abkhazia” as part of its ongoing effort to project power in the Caucasus.
In that event, Serenko concludes ominously, if not entirely convincingly given the restrained language he used in presenting his scenario, “into the orbit of this game could be included three of the North Caucasus republics” – Adygeya, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachayevo-Cherkessia – which are included in Russia.”
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Window on Eurasia: Existing Federal System Said a Threat to the Rights of All Russia’s Citizens – Regardless of Ethnicity
Paul Goble
Vienna, May 5 – The existing system of ethnic autonomies in the Russian Federation – including both republics like Tatarstan and autonomous districts like Chukotka -- “violates the civil rights” of all Russian citizens and should be replaced with a system of autonomies at the district and settlement level, according to a Moscow commentator.
On the one hand, Yevgeny Trifonov argues, the current system means that the rights of non-titular nationalities like ethnic Russians are violated on the territories of these structures, and on the other, it means that the rights of the titular nationalities are violated beyond their borders like the Tatars (www.gazeta.ru/comments/2009/04/29_a_2980821.shtml).
And both because of such violations and because of the “ethnocratic” approach of governments in both places, not only are the rights of all Russian citizens violated but many of them are increasingly influenced by nationalist and religious extremism, a development that threatens the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation.
This is not an entirely new argument: many Russian officials in recent years have called for the elimination of the national republics and districts, and former President Vladimir Putin certainly appeared to have that as a goal with his now stalled program of amalgamating smaller non-Russian federal subjects with larger and predominantly ethnic Russian ones.
But three aspects of Trifonov’s presentation represent innnovations and may set the stage for a new debate about how the Russian state should be organized in the future, especially because his proposals are likely to appear to at least some as offering something for almost all sides rather than being a clear tilt toward only one of them.
First, unlike most critics of the existing system, the “Gazeta” commentator does not focus on the violation of the rights of ethnic Russians alone but also on the problems non-Russians have either because many of them live outside the borders of their titular area or because they do not have one.
Second, again in contrast to most other writers, he suggests that regions with ethnic Russian majorities are often promoting a Russian nationalist agenda in exactly the same way that he and other authors routinely assert that the leaders of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan or the republics of the North Caucasus are doing.
And third, instead of simply calling as most others do for the suppression all national autonomies, Trifonov argues that the Russian Federation should, via constitutional change, shift to a system of smaller but ethnically-based districts that would protect the rights of all groups, minority and majority alike, without creating the basis for ethnocratic elites.
The “Gazeta” commentator begins his argument by arguing that “the ethnocratic regimes in Russia’s autonomies began to be formed under Stalin, they grew in strength during ‘stagnation,’ and after the collapse of the USSR assumed their final form, having strengthened with the help of their own constitutions the rights not of nations but of the ruling clans.”
In many ways, he suggest, the system of Russian autonomies “recalls the reservation sin the US, Canada and Brazil which preserve the backwardness of Indian tribes, subordinate them to the arbitrary actions of traditional leaders, and isolate the indigenous population from the remaining residents of these countries by limiting their civil rights.”
But as fewer people notice, Trifonov continues, “the rights of a citizen of the US or Brazil on the territories of [these] reservations are also limited. [That individual] cannot acquire property live or even live there and conduct business without the permission of the powers that be.”
The same situation exists in the Russian Federation now, he says, because titular nationalities are “deprived of the chance to develop their languages and cultures” for those of their members who live outside the borders of the republics bearing their name while at the same time, “the rights of the non-titular nationalities are limited on the territories of the autonomies.”
Within these autonomies, members of the titular nationality invariably insist on a disproportionate share of positions in the government and then use them to promote a nationalist vision. The situation in Tatarstan is typical of what goes on in all such autonomies and even more generally.
“Like any nationalist version of history, [the Tatar one] is simple: we (Russians, Tatars, Germans, Jews, or Papuans, it is necessary to stress) are a good, honest, hard-working and cultured people.” And all would be well, “if only the neighbors” who do not share these qualities “did not interfere.”
Not surprisingly, the members of other nations respond in kind, creating a vicious cycle. Thus, no one should be shocked that “in new Russian history textbooks there is now almost no comment about that enormous role which the Tatars, Bashkirs, Kalmyks, Germans and Ossetians played in the creation, development and defense of Russia.”
“A multi-national country, if it wants to preserve itself, must know and respect its peoples, regardless of their number, and preserve their culture, languages, and traditions,” Trifonov continues. But autonomous formations of the kind the Russian Federation now has do not do that: they promote the “power of the local nomenklatura” but not the nations themselves.
Indeed, he says, “the establishment of autonomies in Soviet times was a crime: the majority of peoples of Russia lived in a dispersed fashion, in separate villages and groups of villages among other peoples” rather than incompact quasi-nation states as the Soviet system of federalism presupposed.
That arrangement, he continues, meant that many members of titular nationalities found themselves beyond the borders of the autonomies bearing their names and thus subject either to assimilatory pressures or the appeals of nationalists and that many peoples, who were never given autonomy, were deprived of a chance to defend their cultures.
There is a way out of this often tragic situation: the creation of a large number of smaller national districts. The Soviet system operated in part in that way until the early 1930s when such districts were generally suppressed, and there are a few national districts still in existence to show the way.
These latter include the Anabar national (Dolgan-Evenk) ulus in Sakha, the Nanay district in Khabarovsk kray, Tofalariya in Irkutsk oblast, and the Wepsy national district in Karelia, but all of these are regulated by regional legislation. And Trifonov urges a national law and even constitutional change to provide such districts for all groups.
Such a law, he suggests, would allow for the creation of such a national district whenever the members of a particular nation constituted a certain share of the population, perhaps as small as 25 percent – and then provide for schools, media and other institutions in the language of that group but not impose them on others.
Trifonov is almost certainly right that such arrangements would provide expanded protection to many smaller peoples, but his ideas are certain to be opposed not only by larger nationalities that would see them as reducing their current status but also by those who would object to its cost and the way in which this plan would change the face of Russia.
Vienna, May 5 – The existing system of ethnic autonomies in the Russian Federation – including both republics like Tatarstan and autonomous districts like Chukotka -- “violates the civil rights” of all Russian citizens and should be replaced with a system of autonomies at the district and settlement level, according to a Moscow commentator.
On the one hand, Yevgeny Trifonov argues, the current system means that the rights of non-titular nationalities like ethnic Russians are violated on the territories of these structures, and on the other, it means that the rights of the titular nationalities are violated beyond their borders like the Tatars (www.gazeta.ru/comments/2009/04/29_a_2980821.shtml).
And both because of such violations and because of the “ethnocratic” approach of governments in both places, not only are the rights of all Russian citizens violated but many of them are increasingly influenced by nationalist and religious extremism, a development that threatens the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation.
This is not an entirely new argument: many Russian officials in recent years have called for the elimination of the national republics and districts, and former President Vladimir Putin certainly appeared to have that as a goal with his now stalled program of amalgamating smaller non-Russian federal subjects with larger and predominantly ethnic Russian ones.
But three aspects of Trifonov’s presentation represent innnovations and may set the stage for a new debate about how the Russian state should be organized in the future, especially because his proposals are likely to appear to at least some as offering something for almost all sides rather than being a clear tilt toward only one of them.
First, unlike most critics of the existing system, the “Gazeta” commentator does not focus on the violation of the rights of ethnic Russians alone but also on the problems non-Russians have either because many of them live outside the borders of their titular area or because they do not have one.
Second, again in contrast to most other writers, he suggests that regions with ethnic Russian majorities are often promoting a Russian nationalist agenda in exactly the same way that he and other authors routinely assert that the leaders of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan or the republics of the North Caucasus are doing.
And third, instead of simply calling as most others do for the suppression all national autonomies, Trifonov argues that the Russian Federation should, via constitutional change, shift to a system of smaller but ethnically-based districts that would protect the rights of all groups, minority and majority alike, without creating the basis for ethnocratic elites.
The “Gazeta” commentator begins his argument by arguing that “the ethnocratic regimes in Russia’s autonomies began to be formed under Stalin, they grew in strength during ‘stagnation,’ and after the collapse of the USSR assumed their final form, having strengthened with the help of their own constitutions the rights not of nations but of the ruling clans.”
In many ways, he suggest, the system of Russian autonomies “recalls the reservation sin the US, Canada and Brazil which preserve the backwardness of Indian tribes, subordinate them to the arbitrary actions of traditional leaders, and isolate the indigenous population from the remaining residents of these countries by limiting their civil rights.”
But as fewer people notice, Trifonov continues, “the rights of a citizen of the US or Brazil on the territories of [these] reservations are also limited. [That individual] cannot acquire property live or even live there and conduct business without the permission of the powers that be.”
The same situation exists in the Russian Federation now, he says, because titular nationalities are “deprived of the chance to develop their languages and cultures” for those of their members who live outside the borders of the republics bearing their name while at the same time, “the rights of the non-titular nationalities are limited on the territories of the autonomies.”
Within these autonomies, members of the titular nationality invariably insist on a disproportionate share of positions in the government and then use them to promote a nationalist vision. The situation in Tatarstan is typical of what goes on in all such autonomies and even more generally.
“Like any nationalist version of history, [the Tatar one] is simple: we (Russians, Tatars, Germans, Jews, or Papuans, it is necessary to stress) are a good, honest, hard-working and cultured people.” And all would be well, “if only the neighbors” who do not share these qualities “did not interfere.”
Not surprisingly, the members of other nations respond in kind, creating a vicious cycle. Thus, no one should be shocked that “in new Russian history textbooks there is now almost no comment about that enormous role which the Tatars, Bashkirs, Kalmyks, Germans and Ossetians played in the creation, development and defense of Russia.”
“A multi-national country, if it wants to preserve itself, must know and respect its peoples, regardless of their number, and preserve their culture, languages, and traditions,” Trifonov continues. But autonomous formations of the kind the Russian Federation now has do not do that: they promote the “power of the local nomenklatura” but not the nations themselves.
Indeed, he says, “the establishment of autonomies in Soviet times was a crime: the majority of peoples of Russia lived in a dispersed fashion, in separate villages and groups of villages among other peoples” rather than incompact quasi-nation states as the Soviet system of federalism presupposed.
That arrangement, he continues, meant that many members of titular nationalities found themselves beyond the borders of the autonomies bearing their names and thus subject either to assimilatory pressures or the appeals of nationalists and that many peoples, who were never given autonomy, were deprived of a chance to defend their cultures.
There is a way out of this often tragic situation: the creation of a large number of smaller national districts. The Soviet system operated in part in that way until the early 1930s when such districts were generally suppressed, and there are a few national districts still in existence to show the way.
These latter include the Anabar national (Dolgan-Evenk) ulus in Sakha, the Nanay district in Khabarovsk kray, Tofalariya in Irkutsk oblast, and the Wepsy national district in Karelia, but all of these are regulated by regional legislation. And Trifonov urges a national law and even constitutional change to provide such districts for all groups.
Such a law, he suggests, would allow for the creation of such a national district whenever the members of a particular nation constituted a certain share of the population, perhaps as small as 25 percent – and then provide for schools, media and other institutions in the language of that group but not impose them on others.
Trifonov is almost certainly right that such arrangements would provide expanded protection to many smaller peoples, but his ideas are certain to be opposed not only by larger nationalities that would see them as reducing their current status but also by those who would object to its cost and the way in which this plan would change the face of Russia.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow No Longer Uses ‘Telephone Justice’ Because It Has Better Ways to Control the Courts, Retired Jurist Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, May 5 – Moscow no longer has to use the Soviet-era practice of “telephone justice” in which senior officials called judges to tell them what decisions to announce, according to a Russian jurist. Instead, the Kremlin has developed a far more effective “power vertical” in which the judges themselves can be counted on to return “correct” verdicts
Sergey Pashin, a retired federal judge who earlier helped to prepare the 1991 judicial reforms, argues that “the chief problem” is not ‘telephone justice’ but rather that judges themselves do not want to be independent” (www.specletter.com/independence-judgement/2009-04-22/sudebnaja-mantija-pljus-propusk-v-stolovuju-administratsii-prezidenta.html).
With the possible exception of a brief period during the early years of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, Pashin writes, “Russia’s judges always were dependent.” Many people had hoped that they would become more so, but “then inertia took the upper hand and everything returned” to what it had been.
“When people say that judges have become part of the executive power,” the former jurist says, they are deceiving themselves because “in fact there is no division of power in Russia” and consequently “judges are not part of the executive power but instead an element of the power vertical.”
Like Russian journalists who in most cases know what they can write and what they should not, Pashin continues, Russia’s judges “without any nudging from above” know “what decisions they can take and which ones they should not.” And he uses his article to explain why that is so.
On the one hand, the judges are part and parcel of the same “nomenklatura,” people who come from the same background as the militia commanders and prosecutors, “for whom human fate has never meant anything.” And because of that, he says, “in the majority of cases, judges are convinced that they are during something useful” by always agreeing with the government.
But on the other, the Russian government has not left much to chance, not only creating a system to ensure that all judges know what the regime wants but also exploiting the economic, career, and status desires of those serving in the courtroom to guarantee that those sitting in judgment will do what is required.
Administratively, and despite laws against such arrangements, Pashin notes, chief judges in most jurisdictions supervise what more junior jurists do, requiring the latter to report on all cases and especially on those in which the regime has a particular interest. (For examples, see specletter.com/independence-judgement/2009-04-13/sudnyi-den-rossiiskogo-pravosudija.html.)
Such arrangements violate the Russian law on the status of judges, which as Pashin notes, he helped to prepared. That law, he points out, specifies that “all judges of the Russian Federation have a common status and are distinguished one from the other only by their plenipotentiary responsibilities.”
But in Russian life, the jurist says, “everything has turned out differently.” The presidents of the court have “in fact usurped power” over the judges, combining in their persons “procedural, administrative, cadre and God knows what other functions.” And other officials often have paid the judges supplements, in violation of the law.
These violations of the legal code, of course, are something few pay much attention to, Pashin says, but they point to even more serious problems in the administration of justice. First, “the chairman of the court can always say to a judge: if you don’t want to serve and do what they tell you, you will be driven out of the system.” Thus, the chairman controls a judge’s career.
Second, the chairmen of the courts are closely tied to the Kremlin itself, through its Directorate of Affairs of the Presidential Administration, which appoints them and is in a position to distribute housing, vacations, and other benefits to those judges who go along and to withhold those things from those who don’t.
In addition to this “financial side,” Pashin says, there are the issues of career advancement and status. While the Kremlin’s Commission on Cadre Assignments is nowhere mentioned in the Russian legal code, its members, who are drawn from the procuracy, the FSB, and the interior ministry, control the fate of judges as well as others.
Because this commission is neither independent nor balanced by people who have an interest different than the siloviki, any Russian jurist who wants to remain on or to have a career as a judge knows what decisions he must take. And because status with the Kremlin matters, few Russian judges want to ignore the wishes of the powers that be.
What should be done? Pashin asks. And he suggests three steps, although it is fairly clear that he does not expect any of them to be made by the current Russian leadership, even if the current Russian president and current prime minister are people who have degrees from law schools.
First, he says, Russia must carry out a new reform of the judiciary, one that would make it genuinely independent as the reforms of 1991 anticipated. Second, there needs to be an influx of “fresh blood” into the system. Too many of the current judges are products of the force structures and should give way to young legal specialists.
And third, Pashin argues, the Russian government needs to create “parallel structures. If we do not trust our [current] judges, then we must establish arbitration courts,” institutions set up by the parties to a dispute on a contractual basis. Such a system, he concludes, could have “a positive effect.”
Vienna, May 5 – Moscow no longer has to use the Soviet-era practice of “telephone justice” in which senior officials called judges to tell them what decisions to announce, according to a Russian jurist. Instead, the Kremlin has developed a far more effective “power vertical” in which the judges themselves can be counted on to return “correct” verdicts
Sergey Pashin, a retired federal judge who earlier helped to prepare the 1991 judicial reforms, argues that “the chief problem” is not ‘telephone justice’ but rather that judges themselves do not want to be independent” (www.specletter.com/independence-judgement/2009-04-22/sudebnaja-mantija-pljus-propusk-v-stolovuju-administratsii-prezidenta.html).
With the possible exception of a brief period during the early years of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, Pashin writes, “Russia’s judges always were dependent.” Many people had hoped that they would become more so, but “then inertia took the upper hand and everything returned” to what it had been.
“When people say that judges have become part of the executive power,” the former jurist says, they are deceiving themselves because “in fact there is no division of power in Russia” and consequently “judges are not part of the executive power but instead an element of the power vertical.”
Like Russian journalists who in most cases know what they can write and what they should not, Pashin continues, Russia’s judges “without any nudging from above” know “what decisions they can take and which ones they should not.” And he uses his article to explain why that is so.
On the one hand, the judges are part and parcel of the same “nomenklatura,” people who come from the same background as the militia commanders and prosecutors, “for whom human fate has never meant anything.” And because of that, he says, “in the majority of cases, judges are convinced that they are during something useful” by always agreeing with the government.
But on the other, the Russian government has not left much to chance, not only creating a system to ensure that all judges know what the regime wants but also exploiting the economic, career, and status desires of those serving in the courtroom to guarantee that those sitting in judgment will do what is required.
Administratively, and despite laws against such arrangements, Pashin notes, chief judges in most jurisdictions supervise what more junior jurists do, requiring the latter to report on all cases and especially on those in which the regime has a particular interest. (For examples, see specletter.com/independence-judgement/2009-04-13/sudnyi-den-rossiiskogo-pravosudija.html.)
Such arrangements violate the Russian law on the status of judges, which as Pashin notes, he helped to prepared. That law, he points out, specifies that “all judges of the Russian Federation have a common status and are distinguished one from the other only by their plenipotentiary responsibilities.”
But in Russian life, the jurist says, “everything has turned out differently.” The presidents of the court have “in fact usurped power” over the judges, combining in their persons “procedural, administrative, cadre and God knows what other functions.” And other officials often have paid the judges supplements, in violation of the law.
These violations of the legal code, of course, are something few pay much attention to, Pashin says, but they point to even more serious problems in the administration of justice. First, “the chairman of the court can always say to a judge: if you don’t want to serve and do what they tell you, you will be driven out of the system.” Thus, the chairman controls a judge’s career.
Second, the chairmen of the courts are closely tied to the Kremlin itself, through its Directorate of Affairs of the Presidential Administration, which appoints them and is in a position to distribute housing, vacations, and other benefits to those judges who go along and to withhold those things from those who don’t.
In addition to this “financial side,” Pashin says, there are the issues of career advancement and status. While the Kremlin’s Commission on Cadre Assignments is nowhere mentioned in the Russian legal code, its members, who are drawn from the procuracy, the FSB, and the interior ministry, control the fate of judges as well as others.
Because this commission is neither independent nor balanced by people who have an interest different than the siloviki, any Russian jurist who wants to remain on or to have a career as a judge knows what decisions he must take. And because status with the Kremlin matters, few Russian judges want to ignore the wishes of the powers that be.
What should be done? Pashin asks. And he suggests three steps, although it is fairly clear that he does not expect any of them to be made by the current Russian leadership, even if the current Russian president and current prime minister are people who have degrees from law schools.
First, he says, Russia must carry out a new reform of the judiciary, one that would make it genuinely independent as the reforms of 1991 anticipated. Second, there needs to be an influx of “fresh blood” into the system. Too many of the current judges are products of the force structures and should give way to young legal specialists.
And third, Pashin argues, the Russian government needs to create “parallel structures. If we do not trust our [current] judges, then we must establish arbitration courts,” institutions set up by the parties to a dispute on a contractual basis. Such a system, he concludes, could have “a positive effect.”
Monday, May 4, 2009
Window on Eurasia: Ankara Said Using the Nurjilar Movement Against Russia
Paul Goble
Vienna, May 4 – In the last ten days, Russian commentators have suggested that Ankara’s recent agreement with Yerevan represents part of a larger Turkish effort to expand Ankara’s influence throughout the Caucasus and thus constitutes a threat to Russia’s position not only in the three South Caucasus countries but in the North Caucasus republics as well.
Now a Moscow specialist on security affairs has suggested that Turkey is making use of the Nurjilar movement, an Islamic group that the Russian Supreme Court declared to be extremist in April 2008, to project power through Azerbaijan into the North Caucasus and especially into Daghestan (www.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=2115).
This timing of this article suggests that it is related primarily to Moscow’s nervousness about the Armenian-Turkish rapprochement and Russia’s interest in torpedoing any progress toward a resolution of the Karabakh dispute, but its specific content points to some more immediate Moscow concerns about developments inside Russia’s borders.
Three weeks ago, Guriya Murklinskaya writes, the FSB arrested the members of an underground Nurjilar cell in the Daghestani city of Izberbash. Of those seized, nine were Russian citizens, seven citizens of Azerbaijan and one Turkish national, Erdemir Ali Ihsan, the coordinator of Nurjilar activities in Russia.
In the course of the ensuring investigation, the FSB reportedly learned that Ihsan had visited Nurjilar groups in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Kazan and Krasnoyarsk, a finding that if true suggests the movement continues to have a brought reach in Russia despite the ban.
And Murklinskaya suggests that Ankara, despite its official opposition to the Nurjilar, is making use of this movement as part of its effort “via the territory of Azerbaijan” to “attempt to take under its control the development of the situation in the North Caucasus” in general and “in the Republic of Daghestan” in particular.
The Nurjilar, a religious group named for its founder Said Nursi, who attracted more than five million followers during his lifetime and whose ideas which focus on the use of education to promote Islamic ideals have been continued by 40 of his students, some of whom have become involved with business and radical politics and, according to some reports, with drug trafficking.
At present, Murklinskaya continues, there are Nurjilar groups in some 87 countries, including clearly the Russian Federation. Their overall spiritual leader today, she writes is Fathullah Gulen, who was forced to flee from Turkey where he has been sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison to the United States where he now lives.
But many commentators, especially in Russia, argue that the Nurjilar are less a spiritual movement than a revolutionary one and that despite the ban on their activity in Turkey, they are in fact agents of influence or even more for the Turkish government as it seeks to expand its influence in the Caucasus and elsewhere.
Zagir Arukhov, the nationalities policy minister of Daghestan who was killed in May 2005, once said, Murklinskaya continues, that “the final goal of the ideologists and followers of the Nurjilar is the establishment in Eurasia of ‘a Turkic empire’ in Eurasia on the basis of ‘an enlightened version of the shariat.”
To that end, Arukhov argued, according to Murklinskaya, the Nurjilar have focused on penetrating existing educational institutions in the Russian Federation or even in setting up schools of their own. In Daghestan and other non-Russian republics, they were successful in doing both.
During the 1990s, she writes, the Nurjilar set up 24 schools, one university, one university branch, and three language institutes inside the Russian Federation. They financed research inside Russia and paid travel costs and stipends to students from the Russian Federation to study in Turkey.
These arrangements, Murklinskaya points out, “created the necessary legal foundation for lengthy stays by an unlimited number of citizens of Turkey on the territory of the North Caucasus as well as favorable conditions for intelligence and diversionary actions” by them and any local people they might recruit.
As their extra-religious activities became more obvious, Russian officials began to move against them, first in Daghestan in August 2002 when the Nurjilar lycees were closed and then in other cities of the Russian Federation. And more recently, the FSB and the MVD have moved to close nominally commercial businesses having Nurjilar links in the Southern Federal District.
These businesses, the Russian intelligence services have established, were being used by Turkish citizens to finance “anti-Russian Turkish general educational centers where the ideas of ‘an Islamic revolution’ and the creation of a ‘Great Turan’ state were propagated,” ostensibly separately from the Nurjilar.
But even though the Nurjilar schools and businesses have been closed, the group identified and arrested in Daghestan last month shows, Murklinskaya argues, that “the graduates and trainees [of these institutions] remain as do the children and relatives of these graduates and certain teachers and graduate students.”
“The majority of them,” the Moscow security affairs analyst concludes, constitute “a ready-made agency of influence for pan-Turkism,” however much they and the Turkish government claim otherwise. And as a result, “the poisonous seeds sown by the Nurjilar activists are continuing to bear fruit.”
Vienna, May 4 – In the last ten days, Russian commentators have suggested that Ankara’s recent agreement with Yerevan represents part of a larger Turkish effort to expand Ankara’s influence throughout the Caucasus and thus constitutes a threat to Russia’s position not only in the three South Caucasus countries but in the North Caucasus republics as well.
Now a Moscow specialist on security affairs has suggested that Turkey is making use of the Nurjilar movement, an Islamic group that the Russian Supreme Court declared to be extremist in April 2008, to project power through Azerbaijan into the North Caucasus and especially into Daghestan (www.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=2115).
This timing of this article suggests that it is related primarily to Moscow’s nervousness about the Armenian-Turkish rapprochement and Russia’s interest in torpedoing any progress toward a resolution of the Karabakh dispute, but its specific content points to some more immediate Moscow concerns about developments inside Russia’s borders.
Three weeks ago, Guriya Murklinskaya writes, the FSB arrested the members of an underground Nurjilar cell in the Daghestani city of Izberbash. Of those seized, nine were Russian citizens, seven citizens of Azerbaijan and one Turkish national, Erdemir Ali Ihsan, the coordinator of Nurjilar activities in Russia.
In the course of the ensuring investigation, the FSB reportedly learned that Ihsan had visited Nurjilar groups in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Kazan and Krasnoyarsk, a finding that if true suggests the movement continues to have a brought reach in Russia despite the ban.
And Murklinskaya suggests that Ankara, despite its official opposition to the Nurjilar, is making use of this movement as part of its effort “via the territory of Azerbaijan” to “attempt to take under its control the development of the situation in the North Caucasus” in general and “in the Republic of Daghestan” in particular.
The Nurjilar, a religious group named for its founder Said Nursi, who attracted more than five million followers during his lifetime and whose ideas which focus on the use of education to promote Islamic ideals have been continued by 40 of his students, some of whom have become involved with business and radical politics and, according to some reports, with drug trafficking.
At present, Murklinskaya continues, there are Nurjilar groups in some 87 countries, including clearly the Russian Federation. Their overall spiritual leader today, she writes is Fathullah Gulen, who was forced to flee from Turkey where he has been sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison to the United States where he now lives.
But many commentators, especially in Russia, argue that the Nurjilar are less a spiritual movement than a revolutionary one and that despite the ban on their activity in Turkey, they are in fact agents of influence or even more for the Turkish government as it seeks to expand its influence in the Caucasus and elsewhere.
Zagir Arukhov, the nationalities policy minister of Daghestan who was killed in May 2005, once said, Murklinskaya continues, that “the final goal of the ideologists and followers of the Nurjilar is the establishment in Eurasia of ‘a Turkic empire’ in Eurasia on the basis of ‘an enlightened version of the shariat.”
To that end, Arukhov argued, according to Murklinskaya, the Nurjilar have focused on penetrating existing educational institutions in the Russian Federation or even in setting up schools of their own. In Daghestan and other non-Russian republics, they were successful in doing both.
During the 1990s, she writes, the Nurjilar set up 24 schools, one university, one university branch, and three language institutes inside the Russian Federation. They financed research inside Russia and paid travel costs and stipends to students from the Russian Federation to study in Turkey.
These arrangements, Murklinskaya points out, “created the necessary legal foundation for lengthy stays by an unlimited number of citizens of Turkey on the territory of the North Caucasus as well as favorable conditions for intelligence and diversionary actions” by them and any local people they might recruit.
As their extra-religious activities became more obvious, Russian officials began to move against them, first in Daghestan in August 2002 when the Nurjilar lycees were closed and then in other cities of the Russian Federation. And more recently, the FSB and the MVD have moved to close nominally commercial businesses having Nurjilar links in the Southern Federal District.
These businesses, the Russian intelligence services have established, were being used by Turkish citizens to finance “anti-Russian Turkish general educational centers where the ideas of ‘an Islamic revolution’ and the creation of a ‘Great Turan’ state were propagated,” ostensibly separately from the Nurjilar.
But even though the Nurjilar schools and businesses have been closed, the group identified and arrested in Daghestan last month shows, Murklinskaya argues, that “the graduates and trainees [of these institutions] remain as do the children and relatives of these graduates and certain teachers and graduate students.”
“The majority of them,” the Moscow security affairs analyst concludes, constitute “a ready-made agency of influence for pan-Turkism,” however much they and the Turkish government claim otherwise. And as a result, “the poisonous seeds sown by the Nurjilar activists are continuing to bear fruit.”
Window on Eurasia: Kyiv Disputes Moscow’s Claim Few Ukrainians in Russia Want Native Language Schools
Paul Goble
Vienna, May 4 – Moscow’s assertion that ethnic Ukrainians in the Russian Federation, that country’s second largest nationality, do not have any problems with education in their own national language because they are not asking for it “does not correspond to reality,” according to a spokesman for the Ukrainian foreign ministry.
A week ago, Andrey Nesterenko, a spokesman for the foreign ministry, said, in responding to an OSCE report, acknowledged that there were few Ukrainian language schools but said that reflected an absence of demand by Ukrainians for them rather than a Moscow policy against such schools (rus.newsru.ua/ukraine/27apr2009/ukrschool.html).
The lack of such demands, the Russian diplomat continued, reflects what he described as “the closeness of the Eastern Slavic languages and cultures, the common history (Kievan Rus, the Moscow State, the Russian Empire and the USSR) and the common Christian faith” of the Russians and Ukrainians.
Not surprisingly, Ukrainians and Ukrainian officials were outraged not only because Moscow has always insisted on the provision of Russian-language schools in Ukraine – and complained when any of them are closed – but also because Nesterenko’s claim about the situation in Russia where in fact Ukrainians would like Ukrainian-language schools “does not correspond to the facts” (www.vz.ru/news/4/30/282440.html).
Indeed, Ukrainian commentators have pointed out, Ukraine does support Russian language education in its schools and that last year, the OSCE commissar on national minorities declared after examining the situation there that he did not find “any violation of the rights of the Russian language population in Ukraine” (rus.newsru.ua/ukraine/27mar2008/mova.html).
Vasily Kirilich, a spokesman for the Ukrainian foreign ministry, said that Nesterenko’s statement was intended to mislead the OSCE by creating “the false impression of the supposedly problem-free nature of Ukrainian national cultural development in Russia,” a particular travesty because ethnic Ukrainians at 2.5 million are the second largest national minority there.
He pointed out that in Moscow alone, there are now more than 250,000 ethnic Ukrainians but not a single middle school with instruction in the Ukrainian language, something that creates problems both for the indigenous Ukrainian population of the city and the many other Ukrainians who “work temporarily” there and plan to return to Ukraine.
Elsewhere in the Russian Federation, throughout which ethnic Ukrainians are to be found, the situation is even worse, he said. At present “there is no school” anywhere in the Russian Federation where the entire academic program is conducted in the Ukrainian language. There exists only [a few] schools with an ethno-national (ethno-cultural) component.”
The Ukrainian diplomat was clearly infuriated by the suggestion that Ukrainians living in the Russian Federation were not interested in preserving their own language through the schools and that, to use Nesterenko’s words, “citizens of the Russian Federation of Ukrainian nationality and Russians among citizens of Ukraine are in a different ethno-cultural situation.”
Russian commentaries in support of Moscow’s point of view, such as Aleksandr Karavayev today, have suggested that the Ukrainians have only themselves to blame. Moscow has routinely supported Russian-language efforts in Ukraine, but Kyiv has been largely inactive in supporting Ukrainian-programs in Ukraine (www.ia-centr.ru/expert/4599/).
While there is some truth in what Karavayev says, that claim ignores two longer-standing if unfortunate realities. On the one hand, in Soviet times, Moscow provided Russian-language schools in all republics but did not provide any schools for non-Russians in their language outside their titular territories.
Thus, while Ukrainians living in Ukraine did have schools in Ukrainian, those Ukrainians living elsewhere did not, unlike Russians who in almost all cases had Russian-language schools wherever they lived. The current situation is a survival of that past, one Ukrainians and many other non-Russians decry.
And on the other, this pattern reflects an even older view, long propounded by Russians and accepted by many Western specialists. According to that view, Ukrainians and Belarusians are “byproducts” of Russian ethno-national development, and thus it is entirely appropriate that they be integrated linguistically and politically with the Russian nation and state.
In fact, as the Ukrainians and Belarusians know and, as statements like that of Kirilich last week show, are increasingly prepared to defend, those two nations have a separate and distinct ethno-national and political history, one that deserves equal treatment and respect not only from the Russians but from all members of the international community as well.
Vienna, May 4 – Moscow’s assertion that ethnic Ukrainians in the Russian Federation, that country’s second largest nationality, do not have any problems with education in their own national language because they are not asking for it “does not correspond to reality,” according to a spokesman for the Ukrainian foreign ministry.
A week ago, Andrey Nesterenko, a spokesman for the foreign ministry, said, in responding to an OSCE report, acknowledged that there were few Ukrainian language schools but said that reflected an absence of demand by Ukrainians for them rather than a Moscow policy against such schools (rus.newsru.ua/ukraine/27apr2009/ukrschool.html).
The lack of such demands, the Russian diplomat continued, reflects what he described as “the closeness of the Eastern Slavic languages and cultures, the common history (Kievan Rus, the Moscow State, the Russian Empire and the USSR) and the common Christian faith” of the Russians and Ukrainians.
Not surprisingly, Ukrainians and Ukrainian officials were outraged not only because Moscow has always insisted on the provision of Russian-language schools in Ukraine – and complained when any of them are closed – but also because Nesterenko’s claim about the situation in Russia where in fact Ukrainians would like Ukrainian-language schools “does not correspond to the facts” (www.vz.ru/news/4/30/282440.html).
Indeed, Ukrainian commentators have pointed out, Ukraine does support Russian language education in its schools and that last year, the OSCE commissar on national minorities declared after examining the situation there that he did not find “any violation of the rights of the Russian language population in Ukraine” (rus.newsru.ua/ukraine/27mar2008/mova.html).
Vasily Kirilich, a spokesman for the Ukrainian foreign ministry, said that Nesterenko’s statement was intended to mislead the OSCE by creating “the false impression of the supposedly problem-free nature of Ukrainian national cultural development in Russia,” a particular travesty because ethnic Ukrainians at 2.5 million are the second largest national minority there.
He pointed out that in Moscow alone, there are now more than 250,000 ethnic Ukrainians but not a single middle school with instruction in the Ukrainian language, something that creates problems both for the indigenous Ukrainian population of the city and the many other Ukrainians who “work temporarily” there and plan to return to Ukraine.
Elsewhere in the Russian Federation, throughout which ethnic Ukrainians are to be found, the situation is even worse, he said. At present “there is no school” anywhere in the Russian Federation where the entire academic program is conducted in the Ukrainian language. There exists only [a few] schools with an ethno-national (ethno-cultural) component.”
The Ukrainian diplomat was clearly infuriated by the suggestion that Ukrainians living in the Russian Federation were not interested in preserving their own language through the schools and that, to use Nesterenko’s words, “citizens of the Russian Federation of Ukrainian nationality and Russians among citizens of Ukraine are in a different ethno-cultural situation.”
Russian commentaries in support of Moscow’s point of view, such as Aleksandr Karavayev today, have suggested that the Ukrainians have only themselves to blame. Moscow has routinely supported Russian-language efforts in Ukraine, but Kyiv has been largely inactive in supporting Ukrainian-programs in Ukraine (www.ia-centr.ru/expert/4599/).
While there is some truth in what Karavayev says, that claim ignores two longer-standing if unfortunate realities. On the one hand, in Soviet times, Moscow provided Russian-language schools in all republics but did not provide any schools for non-Russians in their language outside their titular territories.
Thus, while Ukrainians living in Ukraine did have schools in Ukrainian, those Ukrainians living elsewhere did not, unlike Russians who in almost all cases had Russian-language schools wherever they lived. The current situation is a survival of that past, one Ukrainians and many other non-Russians decry.
And on the other, this pattern reflects an even older view, long propounded by Russians and accepted by many Western specialists. According to that view, Ukrainians and Belarusians are “byproducts” of Russian ethno-national development, and thus it is entirely appropriate that they be integrated linguistically and politically with the Russian nation and state.
In fact, as the Ukrainians and Belarusians know and, as statements like that of Kirilich last week show, are increasingly prepared to defend, those two nations have a separate and distinct ethno-national and political history, one that deserves equal treatment and respect not only from the Russians but from all members of the international community as well.
Window on Eurasia: Zyuganov Would Like Moscow to Annex Abkhazia, South Ossetia
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.
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.
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