Paul Goble
Staunton, September 26 – The widow of Father Daniel Sysoyev, a young Russian Orthodox pastor missionary who in the view of the Moscow Patriarchate, was “martyred” in November 2009 by Islamist extremists, has written a novel about a young woman who out of her love for her husband finds herself in a camp where Islamists prepare suicide bombers.
The subject is explosive enough in today’s Russia, but the impact of this novel is certain to be far greater than would otherwise be the case because the book is to be published with the imprimatur of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church and thus will be seen by many as a statement of its views (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=37507).
At the very least, the appearance of this book by Yulia Sysoyeva will again focus attention not only on her late husband’s murder and the fate of the many suspected of killing him but also and far more importantly on his push for missionary work by the Russian Orthodox Church not only about the non-traditional faiths but also and especially among Muslims.
Sysoyev, born in 1974, was at the time of his death the pastor of Moscow’s Church of the Apostle Thomas. But more important, he had attracted attention both for his active missionary work among Muslims and Protestants and his willingness to debate the leaders of these faiths and the opponents among the Orthodox of such missionary activity.
(Most Orthodox hierarchs have no objection to missionary work among those they call the non-traditional faiths in that country, but these leaders generally follow the line laid down a decade ago by the churchman who is now patriarch that the Orthodox should not proselytize among the other “traditional” faiths – Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism.)
Sysoyev argued that the Orthodox faith requires its adherents to spread the Good News of
Christianity to others. And during the last decade of his life, he gained the reputation of being an active missionary among the rapidly growing Muslim community of the Russian capital, a reputation that may have cost him his life.
On November 19, 2009, he was shot in his own church. Officials moved quickly and arrested a Kyrgyz national on suspicion. That individual, however, died while in detention, an outcome that led some to believe there was a cover up and others, including radical Islamists in the North Caucasus, to declare that they rather than the man arrested had killed Sysoyev.
At the time of his death, Patriarch Kirill called Father Daniel Sysoyev “a martyr” for the cause of missionary work, and many Orthodox priests and hierarchs have routinely invoked his name and his ideas since then, arguing that the Church must not be afraid, as Sysoyev was not afraid, of seeking to convert Muslims now living in Moscow and other Russian cities.
By giving its support to the novel Sysoyev’s widow has written, one that judging by the brief Interfax account will portray Muslims in a negative way by suggesting they want to recruit Russians as suicide bombers, the Moscow Patriarchate is encouraging anti-Muslim attitudes among the Orthodox, thus exacerbating inter-religious and inter-ethnic tensions in Russia.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Window on Eurasia: To Cut Costs, Irkutsk Governor Wants to Move All 6500 Residents of One District Out of Their Homes
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 26 – Irkutsk Governor Dmitry Mezentsev has directed officials there to come up with plans to resettle the 6500 residents of his region’s Mamsko-Chuisk district because it costs so much to heat their homes in the winter, a step that he says would save the region’s budget 130 million rubles (4 million US dollars) a year.
Mezentsev says that “if this sum were divided among the residents, each would receive 21,000 rubles (700 US dollars) a piece,” an amount that means “it is impossible to speak about the effective expenditure of budgetary funds.” Moreover, he said, once these people moved, they would have better housing and a better way of life (www.nts-tv.ru/?q=node/28942).
But it is unlikely that many of those whom Irkutsk would like to shift will believe him or that the money saved from not providing heating in the winter to this district would actually go to the people involved. Indeed, if the past is any guide, many of those the powers that be want to move are likely to refuse.
However, this effort not only highlights the extraordinary difficulties that both officials and the population face in areas of Russia beyond the Urals, difficulties rooted in the enormous distances and absence of key infrastructure, but it appears likely to attract even more attention to a disturbing portrait of life in Siberia and the Russian Far East circulating on the blogosphere.
In contrast to the up-beat and prettified picture of life in the region that accompanied Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent road trip there, journalist Yuri Pankov provides a Muscovite’s view of what he describes as a dying society in a 6000-word diary entitled “The Brotherhood of the End” (news.babr.ru/?IDE=88485 and news.babr.ru/?IDE=88486).
Like most diaries – and Pankov spent several weeks in various cities and villages of Siberia this summer – this one features more specific facts than generalizations. But the journalist is more interested than many in moving from the one to the other, and that is perhaps why so many Siberians have paid attention, despite their anger at his words (www.news.babr.ru/?IDE=88569).
According to Pankov, his visit this time – he was last there in the 1980s when conditions were better or at least people were more optimistic – forced him to conclude that “THE COUNTRY HAD DIED. [Emphasis in the original.] Without exaggeration. But no one has taken note of this. They have simply forgotten it for a long, long time.”
In many ways, Siberian cities like Bratsk recall the situation that existed in Moscow “at the beginning of the 1990s.” An “unbelievable” number of drunks, “no churches in principle” because the Soviets had closed them, and “the improbable popularity of taxis” which “simple people use even to go for bread because they are so fearful of thieves and murderers.”
Moreover, Pankov continues, “Siberia and the Far East are lost already. Everyone [there] curses the Chinese but they understand that without them nothing good can be expected. It is better if one’s husband is a Chinese, there is work in Chinese companies, there are Chinese fruits, Chinese restaurants, and vacations in China.”
Environmental degradation is extreme. In Bratsk, people often hear sirens from the factories, just as in Soviet times, to announce that the firms are putting wastes into the air or water. And the water in the lakes and rivers is so polluted that doctors say no one should eat the fish from them, although local people in their poverty do so anyway.
In many Siberian villages and even cities, there are three times as many women as men, a situation that often leads to irregular living arrangements. Women are afraid to get abortions lest they be left unable to have more children, and in some places, they have to give birth in emergency service vehicles because hospitals are so far away.
In some villages, he writes, the number of people actually living is much smaller than the number officials think are there. Local people conceal the deaths and departures in order to continue to receive the pensions of the departed, the only way such residents have to survive given low incomes and the high cost of food from other parts of Russia.
Moreover, Pankov says, his visit proved to him that Siberia has not been “electrified” as many believe. That is a myth. Many places do not have any electricity at all, and even in tourist centers on Lake Baikal, there is power from local diesel generators only for “three or four hours in the evening and one hour in the morning.”
Conditions are now so bad, he continues, that many young people, even though they fear what may happen to them, view service in the military as “salvation,” a way out of their difficulties and one that resembles what many Soviet citizens felt as a result of collectivization in the 1920s and 1930s.
That is what Siberian villages and towns are like now, he says. “All Siberia is one big de-kulakized village.”
Siberians, he writes, view political parties as “commercial enterprises” rather than expressions of the views of one or another part of the population. They see elections are completely fraudulent, and because television exposes them to the better life that Russians elsewhere have, many of them are increasingly angry at Moscow.
For the people he met, “a national leader in Russia would be only someone who builds roads. Nothing more than that is necessary. That is, in general, no rights, no elections, land, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, or conscience – here in one settlement of 1400 residents there are no believers at all.”
The only ones who have even been baptized are those who came to Siberia to earn money in the 1960s or who are the descendents of exiled kulaks. Indeed, Pankov says, people in the villages, “live like animals. They throw trash directly out the door.” Even the youngest curse rather than speak. “The people here are degenerating.”
Only roads will save the situation, he continues, but he provides the interesting detail that as in Soviet times, there are no local maps. He asked various officials to provide him one and even after more than a week, no one could find even a single map of the district. Given that people had nowhere to go, that ultimately was no surprise.
“One of the leading intellectuals of Bratsk,” Pankov said, is a veterinarian who is able to speak freely because he is subordinate not to local officials but to people in Irkutsk. He was the one who said no one should eat fish from the local reservoir, lest the poisons in the water make people ill.
And the veterinarian summed up his feelings about the situation in his Siberian city with words that Pankov might have been able to agree with, at least in part. “A fish rots from the head,” as the saying goes, the vet said, but at the present time, “the country is rotting from Moscow.”
Staunton, September 26 – Irkutsk Governor Dmitry Mezentsev has directed officials there to come up with plans to resettle the 6500 residents of his region’s Mamsko-Chuisk district because it costs so much to heat their homes in the winter, a step that he says would save the region’s budget 130 million rubles (4 million US dollars) a year.
Mezentsev says that “if this sum were divided among the residents, each would receive 21,000 rubles (700 US dollars) a piece,” an amount that means “it is impossible to speak about the effective expenditure of budgetary funds.” Moreover, he said, once these people moved, they would have better housing and a better way of life (www.nts-tv.ru/?q=node/28942).
But it is unlikely that many of those whom Irkutsk would like to shift will believe him or that the money saved from not providing heating in the winter to this district would actually go to the people involved. Indeed, if the past is any guide, many of those the powers that be want to move are likely to refuse.
However, this effort not only highlights the extraordinary difficulties that both officials and the population face in areas of Russia beyond the Urals, difficulties rooted in the enormous distances and absence of key infrastructure, but it appears likely to attract even more attention to a disturbing portrait of life in Siberia and the Russian Far East circulating on the blogosphere.
In contrast to the up-beat and prettified picture of life in the region that accompanied Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent road trip there, journalist Yuri Pankov provides a Muscovite’s view of what he describes as a dying society in a 6000-word diary entitled “The Brotherhood of the End” (news.babr.ru/?IDE=88485 and news.babr.ru/?IDE=88486).
Like most diaries – and Pankov spent several weeks in various cities and villages of Siberia this summer – this one features more specific facts than generalizations. But the journalist is more interested than many in moving from the one to the other, and that is perhaps why so many Siberians have paid attention, despite their anger at his words (www.news.babr.ru/?IDE=88569).
According to Pankov, his visit this time – he was last there in the 1980s when conditions were better or at least people were more optimistic – forced him to conclude that “THE COUNTRY HAD DIED. [Emphasis in the original.] Without exaggeration. But no one has taken note of this. They have simply forgotten it for a long, long time.”
In many ways, Siberian cities like Bratsk recall the situation that existed in Moscow “at the beginning of the 1990s.” An “unbelievable” number of drunks, “no churches in principle” because the Soviets had closed them, and “the improbable popularity of taxis” which “simple people use even to go for bread because they are so fearful of thieves and murderers.”
Moreover, Pankov continues, “Siberia and the Far East are lost already. Everyone [there] curses the Chinese but they understand that without them nothing good can be expected. It is better if one’s husband is a Chinese, there is work in Chinese companies, there are Chinese fruits, Chinese restaurants, and vacations in China.”
Environmental degradation is extreme. In Bratsk, people often hear sirens from the factories, just as in Soviet times, to announce that the firms are putting wastes into the air or water. And the water in the lakes and rivers is so polluted that doctors say no one should eat the fish from them, although local people in their poverty do so anyway.
In many Siberian villages and even cities, there are three times as many women as men, a situation that often leads to irregular living arrangements. Women are afraid to get abortions lest they be left unable to have more children, and in some places, they have to give birth in emergency service vehicles because hospitals are so far away.
In some villages, he writes, the number of people actually living is much smaller than the number officials think are there. Local people conceal the deaths and departures in order to continue to receive the pensions of the departed, the only way such residents have to survive given low incomes and the high cost of food from other parts of Russia.
Moreover, Pankov says, his visit proved to him that Siberia has not been “electrified” as many believe. That is a myth. Many places do not have any electricity at all, and even in tourist centers on Lake Baikal, there is power from local diesel generators only for “three or four hours in the evening and one hour in the morning.”
Conditions are now so bad, he continues, that many young people, even though they fear what may happen to them, view service in the military as “salvation,” a way out of their difficulties and one that resembles what many Soviet citizens felt as a result of collectivization in the 1920s and 1930s.
That is what Siberian villages and towns are like now, he says. “All Siberia is one big de-kulakized village.”
Siberians, he writes, view political parties as “commercial enterprises” rather than expressions of the views of one or another part of the population. They see elections are completely fraudulent, and because television exposes them to the better life that Russians elsewhere have, many of them are increasingly angry at Moscow.
For the people he met, “a national leader in Russia would be only someone who builds roads. Nothing more than that is necessary. That is, in general, no rights, no elections, land, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, or conscience – here in one settlement of 1400 residents there are no believers at all.”
The only ones who have even been baptized are those who came to Siberia to earn money in the 1960s or who are the descendents of exiled kulaks. Indeed, Pankov says, people in the villages, “live like animals. They throw trash directly out the door.” Even the youngest curse rather than speak. “The people here are degenerating.”
Only roads will save the situation, he continues, but he provides the interesting detail that as in Soviet times, there are no local maps. He asked various officials to provide him one and even after more than a week, no one could find even a single map of the district. Given that people had nowhere to go, that ultimately was no surprise.
“One of the leading intellectuals of Bratsk,” Pankov said, is a veterinarian who is able to speak freely because he is subordinate not to local officials but to people in Irkutsk. He was the one who said no one should eat fish from the local reservoir, lest the poisons in the water make people ill.
And the veterinarian summed up his feelings about the situation in his Siberian city with words that Pankov might have been able to agree with, at least in part. “A fish rots from the head,” as the saying goes, the vet said, but at the present time, “the country is rotting from Moscow.”
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Moscow’s Failure to Stem Flight of Ethnic Russians from North Caucasus Blamed for Continuing Violence There
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 25 – Moscow has failed to stabilize the North Caucasus or even reduce the threats to Russian sovereignty and control there, a “Segodnya” commentator says, because it has failed to stem the flight of ethnic Russians from the region, the very people who he argues provide the glue that holds the country together.
Instead, Petr Ivanchenko argues in yesterday’s paper, the central powers that be have sought to buy friends from within the local elites, either through massive spending which quickly disappears into corrupt pockets or through the offer of more or less unrestricted autonomy in exchange for declarations of loyalty. Neither tactic has worked.
And consequently, he suggests, Moscow should again rely, as the tsarist and to a lesser extent the Soviet authorities did, on ethnic Russian and Cossack communities there, protecting those that remain and encouraging others to return in order to ensure that the center will in fact control the North Caucasus (www.segodnia.ru/index.php?pgid=2&partid=10&newsid=12565).
But while Ivanchenko acknowledges in his essay that many non-Russians blame all their problems on “the Russians,” largely because of what he calls “Wahhabi propaganda,” he fails to consider whether a Moscow policy which relied on the ethnic Russians might provoke even more resistance from non-Russians in that unstable region.
Although the Russian leadership has not been shy about using force – in fact, it appears to have launched major operations in Daghestan and Chechnya this weekend – Moscow currently is placing its bets on providing more jobs for people there, self-confidently believing that “unemployment is the root of all evils” in the North Caucasus.
That is the thrust of the new Strategy of Development of the North Caucasus Federal District Up to 2025 that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Presidential Plenipotentiary Aleksandr Khloponin have been pushing, Ivanchenko continues, but there is no reason to think that such an approach will work any better than the ones Moscow has tried before.
Not only is it “unclear how such programs can be achieved under conditions of terror and general fear” – Ivanchenko notes that as far as tourism is concerned, “militants in Kabardino-Balkaria have already begun the intentional murder of vacationers” – but the enormous sums of money Moscow plans to spend will simply disappear.
(What is truly perverse, he notes, is that in the preamble to the Strategy, its authors acknowledge that the money Moscow has spent up to now has not had a positive effect.” But then, “as we see, the new strategic concept proposes practically the same thing … to be carried out by “the very same people” who up to now have not used the money as intended.)
What should be obvious to everyone, the “Segodnya” commentator says, is that the ground has not been prepared in the North Caucasus for such projects. Instead, Moscow will spend money, officials in the North Caucasus will pocket it, and the Russian Federation will still face threats to its sovereign control of that region.
Ivanchenko notes that the Americans are beginning to learn that in Afghanistan. They thought they had been able to “purchase the loyalty” of their opponents. But that hasn’t worked, just as it did not work for the Russian Federation after the Khasavyurt peace accord with Chechnya signed by then Security Council deputy head Boris Berezovsky.
“Money from the Russian budget will find its way into the pockets of the local political elite which does not have any influence on the terrorists and cannot improve the situation,” Ivanchenko says. And thus it will do nothing to dissuade “many Caucasians” from blaming Moscow and the ethnic Russians for their problems.
The continuing thievery and corruption of regional leaders whom Stalin would have called at best “’our sons of bitches’” had been pushing ever more people in Moscow to accept the idea that the only way out is to allow local leaders to do whatever they want as long as they keep the peace and constantly declare their loyalty to Moscow.
That is what Moscow has done in Chechnya, but while the declarations of loyalty continue, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has not been able to maintain order even in his home village. Moreover, the militants can attack his capital at any time, and Chechen criminals can operate far beyond “the borders of this ‘reservation.’”
Given that reality, Ivanchenko continues, it is time to look for another solution to the problem, and he offers his: increasing reliance on and the reinforcement of the ethnic Russian community still in the North Caucasus in the ways that both the tsarist regime and the Soviet authorities did in the past.
Ethnic Russians and Cossacks, he suggests, are precisely the people who can cope with the situation in the North Caucasus if they are supported. And he quotes with approval Soviet Marshal Ivan Bagramyan’s observation that “if in a military unit, there are fewer than 50 percent ethnic Russians, then it should be reformed because it would not be militarily capable.”
That “formulation,” Ivanchenko suggests, “must be applied not only in the military sphere.”
What is instructive, he continues, is that “even the authors” of the North Caucasus strategy document point out that “one of the causes of the existing problems is the outflow of the Christian population from the Caucasus,” a view that has its roots in Putin’s 1999 declarations about “the genocide of Russians” in Chechnya.
His remarks gave some Russians hope a decade ago, but then “the Kremlin decided to promote ‘the Chechenization’ of the conflict, and about the genocide none of the leaders of the country spoke anymore.” But it is time, the Russian commentator says, to remember precisely this, instead of throwing good money after bad and relying on purchased “friends.”
Staunton, September 25 – Moscow has failed to stabilize the North Caucasus or even reduce the threats to Russian sovereignty and control there, a “Segodnya” commentator says, because it has failed to stem the flight of ethnic Russians from the region, the very people who he argues provide the glue that holds the country together.
Instead, Petr Ivanchenko argues in yesterday’s paper, the central powers that be have sought to buy friends from within the local elites, either through massive spending which quickly disappears into corrupt pockets or through the offer of more or less unrestricted autonomy in exchange for declarations of loyalty. Neither tactic has worked.
And consequently, he suggests, Moscow should again rely, as the tsarist and to a lesser extent the Soviet authorities did, on ethnic Russian and Cossack communities there, protecting those that remain and encouraging others to return in order to ensure that the center will in fact control the North Caucasus (www.segodnia.ru/index.php?pgid=2&partid=10&newsid=12565).
But while Ivanchenko acknowledges in his essay that many non-Russians blame all their problems on “the Russians,” largely because of what he calls “Wahhabi propaganda,” he fails to consider whether a Moscow policy which relied on the ethnic Russians might provoke even more resistance from non-Russians in that unstable region.
Although the Russian leadership has not been shy about using force – in fact, it appears to have launched major operations in Daghestan and Chechnya this weekend – Moscow currently is placing its bets on providing more jobs for people there, self-confidently believing that “unemployment is the root of all evils” in the North Caucasus.
That is the thrust of the new Strategy of Development of the North Caucasus Federal District Up to 2025 that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Presidential Plenipotentiary Aleksandr Khloponin have been pushing, Ivanchenko continues, but there is no reason to think that such an approach will work any better than the ones Moscow has tried before.
Not only is it “unclear how such programs can be achieved under conditions of terror and general fear” – Ivanchenko notes that as far as tourism is concerned, “militants in Kabardino-Balkaria have already begun the intentional murder of vacationers” – but the enormous sums of money Moscow plans to spend will simply disappear.
(What is truly perverse, he notes, is that in the preamble to the Strategy, its authors acknowledge that the money Moscow has spent up to now has not had a positive effect.” But then, “as we see, the new strategic concept proposes practically the same thing … to be carried out by “the very same people” who up to now have not used the money as intended.)
What should be obvious to everyone, the “Segodnya” commentator says, is that the ground has not been prepared in the North Caucasus for such projects. Instead, Moscow will spend money, officials in the North Caucasus will pocket it, and the Russian Federation will still face threats to its sovereign control of that region.
Ivanchenko notes that the Americans are beginning to learn that in Afghanistan. They thought they had been able to “purchase the loyalty” of their opponents. But that hasn’t worked, just as it did not work for the Russian Federation after the Khasavyurt peace accord with Chechnya signed by then Security Council deputy head Boris Berezovsky.
“Money from the Russian budget will find its way into the pockets of the local political elite which does not have any influence on the terrorists and cannot improve the situation,” Ivanchenko says. And thus it will do nothing to dissuade “many Caucasians” from blaming Moscow and the ethnic Russians for their problems.
The continuing thievery and corruption of regional leaders whom Stalin would have called at best “’our sons of bitches’” had been pushing ever more people in Moscow to accept the idea that the only way out is to allow local leaders to do whatever they want as long as they keep the peace and constantly declare their loyalty to Moscow.
That is what Moscow has done in Chechnya, but while the declarations of loyalty continue, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has not been able to maintain order even in his home village. Moreover, the militants can attack his capital at any time, and Chechen criminals can operate far beyond “the borders of this ‘reservation.’”
Given that reality, Ivanchenko continues, it is time to look for another solution to the problem, and he offers his: increasing reliance on and the reinforcement of the ethnic Russian community still in the North Caucasus in the ways that both the tsarist regime and the Soviet authorities did in the past.
Ethnic Russians and Cossacks, he suggests, are precisely the people who can cope with the situation in the North Caucasus if they are supported. And he quotes with approval Soviet Marshal Ivan Bagramyan’s observation that “if in a military unit, there are fewer than 50 percent ethnic Russians, then it should be reformed because it would not be militarily capable.”
That “formulation,” Ivanchenko suggests, “must be applied not only in the military sphere.”
What is instructive, he continues, is that “even the authors” of the North Caucasus strategy document point out that “one of the causes of the existing problems is the outflow of the Christian population from the Caucasus,” a view that has its roots in Putin’s 1999 declarations about “the genocide of Russians” in Chechnya.
His remarks gave some Russians hope a decade ago, but then “the Kremlin decided to promote ‘the Chechenization’ of the conflict, and about the genocide none of the leaders of the country spoke anymore.” But it is time, the Russian commentator says, to remember precisely this, instead of throwing good money after bad and relying on purchased “friends.”
Window on Eurasia: Daghestanis Outraged by Moscow’s Decision to Shift Border with Azerbaijan
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 25 – Daghestanis, who as one commentator noted angrily this week “in 1999 stood up in defense of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation” when they opposed a Chechen invasion have now been forced to watch “the violation of this [very same] territorial integrity by the government itself.”
In an article published yesterday, Ruslan Kurbanov, a scholar who serves on the working group of the Social Chamber for the Caucasus, said he was specifically referring to the agreement between Moscow and Baku over the flow of the Samur River which forms the border of the two countries (gazeta-nv.ru/content/view/4821/109/).
That accord, which Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made the centerpiece of his visit to Baku, shifted the line from the Azerbaijani shore of the river as it had been in Soviet times to the middle of the river, thus “allowing control of the Samur hydro-system to remain in the hands of the Azerbaijani side.”
Since the signing of that accord earlier this month, Kurbanov says, Daghestani journalists and bloggers have advanced numerous arguments as to “why for the peoples of Daghestan this agreement is a misfortune and why Russia’s inability to defend the interests of its own population, even of Caucasus nationality, is a humiliation.”
What makes their arguments particularly compelling, the Makhachkala writer says, is that “this is not a unique case.” Russia has been yielding territory for some time. And this process has involved “small units” of territory “now in the South and now in the East,” inevitably raising the question as to when this might stop.
In 2005, Kurbanov continues, Moscow and Beijing reached agreement on the partial demarcation of the Sino-Russian border. As a result of this accord, Russia handed over a total of 337 square kilometers to China, something that sparked “hot discussions” in Moscow and the Russian Far East about whether this had been the right thing to do.
At that time, he recalls, “opponents of that transfer of territory pointed out that these were strategically important lands for Russia because they were rich in natural resources. But defenders of this decision of the government asserted that the loss in land was not very big for Russia and that the improvement of strategic relations with China was much more important.”
But only three years later, however, Moscow agreed to hand over still more territory to China so that it could “solemnly claim” that territorial issues between the countries, “negotiations about which had lasted more than 40 years,” had all been resolved, something many Russians had assumed had already taken place in 2005.
That is worrisome, Kurbanov says, because “if in this way Moscow will resolve all territorial problems, then nothing will remain from the Great Russia [of today] in the very near future. “ What guarantees does anyone have that Moscow won’t resolve the Kuriles dispute with Japan in Tokyo’s favor to “improve relations” with Tokyo?
Or what about Kaliningrad oblast, Kurbanov asks rhetorically, “which before World War II was [Germany’s] East Prussia and whose capital Kaliningrad was Konigsberg? Or how can one “not recall about Azerbaijani pretensions not only to the Samur but also to the [southern Daghestani] city of Derbent and the land adjoining it?
And all these things raise the larger and potentially far more fateful question, Kurbanov suggests: “Does the current Russian elite have any point at which it is prepared to stop making territorial concessions to its neighbors if the interests of simple people do not agitate anyone [among that elite]?”
The anger Daghestanis now feel is important for two reasons. On the one hand, it suggests that many of them now view Moscow as incapable of defending existing borders, a conclusion that is especially dangerous in a region where any appearance of weakness can lead people to conclude that it is time to shift allegiances.
And on the other, and more immediately, Moscow’s failure to recall the time when Daghestanis stood up and defended the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation only 11 years ago almost certainly means that fewer of them will be prepared to do so again and that more will be prepared to accept border changes that Moscow won’t like at all.
UPDATE on September 27. The anger of Daghestanis about Moscow's concessions to Azerbaijan on the border river is now being echoed by some Russian commentators in Moscow. See, for example, www.apn.ru/publications/article23198.htm
Staunton, September 25 – Daghestanis, who as one commentator noted angrily this week “in 1999 stood up in defense of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation” when they opposed a Chechen invasion have now been forced to watch “the violation of this [very same] territorial integrity by the government itself.”
In an article published yesterday, Ruslan Kurbanov, a scholar who serves on the working group of the Social Chamber for the Caucasus, said he was specifically referring to the agreement between Moscow and Baku over the flow of the Samur River which forms the border of the two countries (gazeta-nv.ru/content/view/4821/109/).
That accord, which Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made the centerpiece of his visit to Baku, shifted the line from the Azerbaijani shore of the river as it had been in Soviet times to the middle of the river, thus “allowing control of the Samur hydro-system to remain in the hands of the Azerbaijani side.”
Since the signing of that accord earlier this month, Kurbanov says, Daghestani journalists and bloggers have advanced numerous arguments as to “why for the peoples of Daghestan this agreement is a misfortune and why Russia’s inability to defend the interests of its own population, even of Caucasus nationality, is a humiliation.”
What makes their arguments particularly compelling, the Makhachkala writer says, is that “this is not a unique case.” Russia has been yielding territory for some time. And this process has involved “small units” of territory “now in the South and now in the East,” inevitably raising the question as to when this might stop.
In 2005, Kurbanov continues, Moscow and Beijing reached agreement on the partial demarcation of the Sino-Russian border. As a result of this accord, Russia handed over a total of 337 square kilometers to China, something that sparked “hot discussions” in Moscow and the Russian Far East about whether this had been the right thing to do.
At that time, he recalls, “opponents of that transfer of territory pointed out that these were strategically important lands for Russia because they were rich in natural resources. But defenders of this decision of the government asserted that the loss in land was not very big for Russia and that the improvement of strategic relations with China was much more important.”
But only three years later, however, Moscow agreed to hand over still more territory to China so that it could “solemnly claim” that territorial issues between the countries, “negotiations about which had lasted more than 40 years,” had all been resolved, something many Russians had assumed had already taken place in 2005.
That is worrisome, Kurbanov says, because “if in this way Moscow will resolve all territorial problems, then nothing will remain from the Great Russia [of today] in the very near future. “ What guarantees does anyone have that Moscow won’t resolve the Kuriles dispute with Japan in Tokyo’s favor to “improve relations” with Tokyo?
Or what about Kaliningrad oblast, Kurbanov asks rhetorically, “which before World War II was [Germany’s] East Prussia and whose capital Kaliningrad was Konigsberg? Or how can one “not recall about Azerbaijani pretensions not only to the Samur but also to the [southern Daghestani] city of Derbent and the land adjoining it?
And all these things raise the larger and potentially far more fateful question, Kurbanov suggests: “Does the current Russian elite have any point at which it is prepared to stop making territorial concessions to its neighbors if the interests of simple people do not agitate anyone [among that elite]?”
The anger Daghestanis now feel is important for two reasons. On the one hand, it suggests that many of them now view Moscow as incapable of defending existing borders, a conclusion that is especially dangerous in a region where any appearance of weakness can lead people to conclude that it is time to shift allegiances.
And on the other, and more immediately, Moscow’s failure to recall the time when Daghestanis stood up and defended the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation only 11 years ago almost certainly means that fewer of them will be prepared to do so again and that more will be prepared to accept border changes that Moscow won’t like at all.
UPDATE on September 27. The anger of Daghestanis about Moscow's concessions to Azerbaijan on the border river is now being echoed by some Russian commentators in Moscow. See, for example, www.apn.ru/publications/article23198.htm
Window on Eurasia: A Tajik Muslim, Trained by Turks, Arabs and Malaysians, Now Teaches Koran Recitation to Kazan Tatars
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 25 – The complex ways in which Muslims from various former Soviet republics have interacted with the Islamic world outside is reflected in the career of Ibrahim Sabirov, a Tajik trained by Turks, Yemenis and Saudis, who now heads training center for the recitation of the Koran Recitation in Tatarstan.
On Thursday, the new Islamsng.com portal published an interview with him conducted by Dzhannat Sergey Markus, an ethnic Russian convert to Islam who is active in both the print and electronic media as a commentator on developments in the Muslim community in the Russian Federation and the former Soviet republics (islamsng.com/tjk/tradition/171).
And while Sabirov’s career is certainly not typical, it is instructive both in highlighting the role Central Asian and especially foreign Muslims have played in the restoration of Islam in Russia and in showing the way very conservative forms of Islam, such as memorization of the Koran (“hafiz”), are gaining ground even in Kazan, a center of Jadidist reforms.
In 2003, Sabirov founded the Center for the Preparation of Hafizes of the Koran at the Russian Islamic University in the Tatarstan capital. Asked why such a center was set up only then and not immediately after “freedom of conscience became a reality in Russia with the start of perestroika” in the late 1980s, Sabirov blamed it on “the tragic history of our country.”
“More precisely,” he said, it happened because of those repressive acts which seriously undermined Islamic traditions in the Russian Empire and especially in the Middle Volga region and then almost completely destroyed them during the period of the Soviet regime” with its anti-religious program.
Given that, he continued, “restoring such a precise art as the reading of the Koran and in particular the experience of the hafiz, who know the Koranic text by heart and are masters of repeating it is extraordinarily difficult because in this case what is especially important are living people” who have that skill and can pass it on directly to their pupils.
Such people represent a chain extending back to Mohammed who learned the Koran by heart from the Archangel Gabriel and then passed it on to others. Consequently, “when listening to the Koran today from a real reader, we approach this chain.” And that is why the oppressors of Islam always try not only to destroy mosques and burn books but to break this chain.”
Markus said that helped to explain why a Tajik would have to come to Tatarstan from Central Asia where there are many more such schools to restore this tie. Sabirov agreed, noting that “being further from the imperial and soviet centers, our traditions were preserved in a more vital way. Now,” he said, “we are called to help other brothers.”
As for himself, Sabirov said, he began to learn the Koran at home in Tajikistan but only fully mastered it and became a hafiz when he “received the tradition from Aduljalil Kasim from Yemen,” a scholar who now also works at his center. Others acquired that skill abroad or from those who had been abroad.
When Islam was reborn in Russia in the 1990s, Sabirov continued, it happened when “the first hafizes appeared from abroad, and certain young people studied the Koran in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The first Tatarstan hafizes were students of Karaers Muqerrem from Turkey.” Sabirov said he was among their number but noted that he also studied in Malaysia.
Like other traditional Muslims, Sabirov argued that “every letter of the Koran, read in the Arabic languages at times even without an understanding of its meaning, enriches the spirit of an individual and is counted for him as a good deed,” a view that many Jadid modernists have challenged, arguing instead that gaining knowledge rather than rote learning is key.
But if he is a traditionalist in some respects, Sabirov has proved a modernizer in others, albeit explaining his innovation, the training of young women as hafizes as a restoration of “a most ancient tradition.” And he has taken the lead in training young people in camps and in using the Internet for distance learning with Muslim experts in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
. Moreover, Sabirov said that he ensures that the students at his Center not only memorize the Koran but also gain knowledge in the Arabic language, calligraphy, Islamic law and traditions, and even physical fitness.
When asked about the impact of Tatar language and culture on what he is doing, Sabirov pointed out that “the culture of Islam presupposes diversity and does not reject national uniqueness,” adding that “Tatar musicality (and this literally is in the sub-consciousness even of babes) is based on the five tone scale.”
“The child begins to think (including musically) in the spirit of his ancestors,” Sabirov said. “Our task is to develop his abilities in general, then to teach him to teach in Arabic (that is, according to the Koran) in order that he will then return to his roots,” ones deeper than the nationality that he may already have come to know.
Staunton, September 25 – The complex ways in which Muslims from various former Soviet republics have interacted with the Islamic world outside is reflected in the career of Ibrahim Sabirov, a Tajik trained by Turks, Yemenis and Saudis, who now heads training center for the recitation of the Koran Recitation in Tatarstan.
On Thursday, the new Islamsng.com portal published an interview with him conducted by Dzhannat Sergey Markus, an ethnic Russian convert to Islam who is active in both the print and electronic media as a commentator on developments in the Muslim community in the Russian Federation and the former Soviet republics (islamsng.com/tjk/tradition/171).
And while Sabirov’s career is certainly not typical, it is instructive both in highlighting the role Central Asian and especially foreign Muslims have played in the restoration of Islam in Russia and in showing the way very conservative forms of Islam, such as memorization of the Koran (“hafiz”), are gaining ground even in Kazan, a center of Jadidist reforms.
In 2003, Sabirov founded the Center for the Preparation of Hafizes of the Koran at the Russian Islamic University in the Tatarstan capital. Asked why such a center was set up only then and not immediately after “freedom of conscience became a reality in Russia with the start of perestroika” in the late 1980s, Sabirov blamed it on “the tragic history of our country.”
“More precisely,” he said, it happened because of those repressive acts which seriously undermined Islamic traditions in the Russian Empire and especially in the Middle Volga region and then almost completely destroyed them during the period of the Soviet regime” with its anti-religious program.
Given that, he continued, “restoring such a precise art as the reading of the Koran and in particular the experience of the hafiz, who know the Koranic text by heart and are masters of repeating it is extraordinarily difficult because in this case what is especially important are living people” who have that skill and can pass it on directly to their pupils.
Such people represent a chain extending back to Mohammed who learned the Koran by heart from the Archangel Gabriel and then passed it on to others. Consequently, “when listening to the Koran today from a real reader, we approach this chain.” And that is why the oppressors of Islam always try not only to destroy mosques and burn books but to break this chain.”
Markus said that helped to explain why a Tajik would have to come to Tatarstan from Central Asia where there are many more such schools to restore this tie. Sabirov agreed, noting that “being further from the imperial and soviet centers, our traditions were preserved in a more vital way. Now,” he said, “we are called to help other brothers.”
As for himself, Sabirov said, he began to learn the Koran at home in Tajikistan but only fully mastered it and became a hafiz when he “received the tradition from Aduljalil Kasim from Yemen,” a scholar who now also works at his center. Others acquired that skill abroad or from those who had been abroad.
When Islam was reborn in Russia in the 1990s, Sabirov continued, it happened when “the first hafizes appeared from abroad, and certain young people studied the Koran in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The first Tatarstan hafizes were students of Karaers Muqerrem from Turkey.” Sabirov said he was among their number but noted that he also studied in Malaysia.
Like other traditional Muslims, Sabirov argued that “every letter of the Koran, read in the Arabic languages at times even without an understanding of its meaning, enriches the spirit of an individual and is counted for him as a good deed,” a view that many Jadid modernists have challenged, arguing instead that gaining knowledge rather than rote learning is key.
But if he is a traditionalist in some respects, Sabirov has proved a modernizer in others, albeit explaining his innovation, the training of young women as hafizes as a restoration of “a most ancient tradition.” And he has taken the lead in training young people in camps and in using the Internet for distance learning with Muslim experts in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
. Moreover, Sabirov said that he ensures that the students at his Center not only memorize the Koran but also gain knowledge in the Arabic language, calligraphy, Islamic law and traditions, and even physical fitness.
When asked about the impact of Tatar language and culture on what he is doing, Sabirov pointed out that “the culture of Islam presupposes diversity and does not reject national uniqueness,” adding that “Tatar musicality (and this literally is in the sub-consciousness even of babes) is based on the five tone scale.”
“The child begins to think (including musically) in the spirit of his ancestors,” Sabirov said. “Our task is to develop his abilities in general, then to teach him to teach in Arabic (that is, according to the Koran) in order that he will then return to his roots,” ones deeper than the nationality that he may already have come to know.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Russia Caught between ‘Asiatic’ and ‘European’ Models of Relations between a Secular State and a Muslim Minority, Analyst Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 24 – Most Russian commentators compare how Russia deals with its Muslim community to the ways in which European countries treat theirs, but a leading Muslim editor in Moscow says that a far more suggestive comparison at least for the present is between the situation in Russia and that in Asian countries with significant Muslim minorities.
In an essay posted on Islam.ru, Abdulla Rinat Mukhametov, that site’s deputy chief editor, notes that many Russian specialists on Muslims, including Ruslan Kurbanov, have focused almost exclusively on the European experience when discussing the status of Muslims in the Russian Federation (www.islam.ru/pressclub/tema/lutaziar/).
But in his view, Mukhametov writes, “one should compare Russia as far as its relations with its domestic Muslim community is concerned not with Europe but with Asia or more precisely with those Asian countries in which a significant Muslim minority lives” and in that way avoid the mistake of assuming that Russia’s situation is “in principle unique.”
“The experience of European and more generally Western Muslim minorities, despite its brief history, today has turned out to be much more studied that the analogous processes in Asia,” the Islam.ru editor says, a reflection of the fact that their appearance “at the center of the world concerns experts far more than the rest.”
“But for us living in Russia,” Mukhametov continues, “it is extremely important to know how Islam has existed and exists in such countries as China, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and even Burma and Vietnam to a certain degree” and even “with certain qualifications,” in the Balkans, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus and Lithuania.”
That is because historically Russia “has much in common with these countries as far as its dealings with Islam. First of all, as in them, “Islam is a traditional, historically rooted religion.” In Russia as in the others, Muslims are “indigenous residents on the land where they live and not migrants or their descendents as in Europe.”
Second, again in these countries and in Russia, “the Muslim minority has problems with the government of one or another level of intensity.” Third, in all of them and in Russia, “Islam and Muslims have played in the history of their countries a much more important and positive role than that which the governments are prepared to acknowledge.”
Fourth, “in all these countries,” Muslims are split between the loyal and the integrated, on the one hand, and those in open and often armed conflict with the central government, on the other. In Russia, Mukhametov points out, this divide runs between “the community of Muslims of the Volga-Urals region” and the Muslims of “the destabilized North Caucasus.”
Moreover, he notes, in all these countries as in Russia itself, these problems are not always strictly religious. They also reflect “the political-territorial separatism of some Muslims and disagreement with this position by another part of the faithful,” a divide with roots extending far back into history and not always based in the first instance on Islam.
And finally, in all these countries as again as in Russia, “Muslims are a kind of ‘younger brothers,’ who de facto do not have equal status with the majority,” even if de jure they do. That lower status typically reflects the reality that “at one time, their ancestors suffered an historical defeat and have remained in a subordinate position.”
Viewed from this “Asian” perspective, he continues, “the Russian Federation is crudely speaking the best government of an ‘Asiatic’ type of interrelationships with [its] Muslim minorities.” But unfortunately, the situation is changing, and Russia may soon acquire “the most problematic” aspects of the ‘European’ relationship while losing the best of the ‘Asiatic.’
Because of the enormous flows of immigration from Central Asia and other “former colonies of the Russian Empire … Islam in the Russian Federation increasingly recalls the ‘European’ type where the overwhelming majority of followers of Islam are immigrants or their descendents of the second or in the best case third generation.”
And as a result, Mukhametov says, “the centuries-old ‘Asian’ identity of Islam in Russia is rapidly changing before our eyes,” a shift that represents “the main challenge, above all for the indigenous Muslims” of Russia but also for Russian society and the Russian powers that be who must respond.
Until the end of the Soviet period, most Russians had good reason to associate Muslims with “the Tatar neighbor” who may have lived next door for decades. But after that time, with the violence in the North Caucasus, that image of the Muslim of Russia was replaced for many by that of “the Caucasus militant” or of “the illiterate and scruffy gastarbeiter.”
The influx of Muslims from Central Asia and the Caucasus means, he continues, that “after 20 to 30 years, the indigenous Muslim population of Russia, the communities of the Volga-Urals and North Caucasus regions will become minorities in relation to the Central Asian majority—a long-term trend which it is impossible to change whether one likes it or not.”
It is already the case in some Russian cities where there are more Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kyrgyz than indigenous Russian Muslims in the parishes of the mosques, and anger about that both among ethnic Russians and indigenous Muslims is helping to transform the Muslim community of Russia into something “it never was before.”
Mukhametov says that he believes that “in the 21st century, the Russian Federation will be not that country of ‘the Asian-Muslim’ type as it was,” but rather “will become ‘Europeans,’” in that “the problem of Islam and migration [will be viewed as] one and the same thing. With one distinction, [Russia’s] situation will be an order of magnitude worse.”
The reason for that, he suggests, is that “Russia is not prepared for such a turn of events and what is still worse, it does not want to get prepared.” Instead, people continue to act “as if nothing is happening or as if someone else is responsible for our problems and that someone consequently must resolve them.” Unfortunately, there is no reason to expect anyone will.
Staunton, September 24 – Most Russian commentators compare how Russia deals with its Muslim community to the ways in which European countries treat theirs, but a leading Muslim editor in Moscow says that a far more suggestive comparison at least for the present is between the situation in Russia and that in Asian countries with significant Muslim minorities.
In an essay posted on Islam.ru, Abdulla Rinat Mukhametov, that site’s deputy chief editor, notes that many Russian specialists on Muslims, including Ruslan Kurbanov, have focused almost exclusively on the European experience when discussing the status of Muslims in the Russian Federation (www.islam.ru/pressclub/tema/lutaziar/).
But in his view, Mukhametov writes, “one should compare Russia as far as its relations with its domestic Muslim community is concerned not with Europe but with Asia or more precisely with those Asian countries in which a significant Muslim minority lives” and in that way avoid the mistake of assuming that Russia’s situation is “in principle unique.”
“The experience of European and more generally Western Muslim minorities, despite its brief history, today has turned out to be much more studied that the analogous processes in Asia,” the Islam.ru editor says, a reflection of the fact that their appearance “at the center of the world concerns experts far more than the rest.”
“But for us living in Russia,” Mukhametov continues, “it is extremely important to know how Islam has existed and exists in such countries as China, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and even Burma and Vietnam to a certain degree” and even “with certain qualifications,” in the Balkans, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus and Lithuania.”
That is because historically Russia “has much in common with these countries as far as its dealings with Islam. First of all, as in them, “Islam is a traditional, historically rooted religion.” In Russia as in the others, Muslims are “indigenous residents on the land where they live and not migrants or their descendents as in Europe.”
Second, again in these countries and in Russia, “the Muslim minority has problems with the government of one or another level of intensity.” Third, in all of them and in Russia, “Islam and Muslims have played in the history of their countries a much more important and positive role than that which the governments are prepared to acknowledge.”
Fourth, “in all these countries,” Muslims are split between the loyal and the integrated, on the one hand, and those in open and often armed conflict with the central government, on the other. In Russia, Mukhametov points out, this divide runs between “the community of Muslims of the Volga-Urals region” and the Muslims of “the destabilized North Caucasus.”
Moreover, he notes, in all these countries as in Russia itself, these problems are not always strictly religious. They also reflect “the political-territorial separatism of some Muslims and disagreement with this position by another part of the faithful,” a divide with roots extending far back into history and not always based in the first instance on Islam.
And finally, in all these countries as again as in Russia, “Muslims are a kind of ‘younger brothers,’ who de facto do not have equal status with the majority,” even if de jure they do. That lower status typically reflects the reality that “at one time, their ancestors suffered an historical defeat and have remained in a subordinate position.”
Viewed from this “Asian” perspective, he continues, “the Russian Federation is crudely speaking the best government of an ‘Asiatic’ type of interrelationships with [its] Muslim minorities.” But unfortunately, the situation is changing, and Russia may soon acquire “the most problematic” aspects of the ‘European’ relationship while losing the best of the ‘Asiatic.’
Because of the enormous flows of immigration from Central Asia and other “former colonies of the Russian Empire … Islam in the Russian Federation increasingly recalls the ‘European’ type where the overwhelming majority of followers of Islam are immigrants or their descendents of the second or in the best case third generation.”
And as a result, Mukhametov says, “the centuries-old ‘Asian’ identity of Islam in Russia is rapidly changing before our eyes,” a shift that represents “the main challenge, above all for the indigenous Muslims” of Russia but also for Russian society and the Russian powers that be who must respond.
Until the end of the Soviet period, most Russians had good reason to associate Muslims with “the Tatar neighbor” who may have lived next door for decades. But after that time, with the violence in the North Caucasus, that image of the Muslim of Russia was replaced for many by that of “the Caucasus militant” or of “the illiterate and scruffy gastarbeiter.”
The influx of Muslims from Central Asia and the Caucasus means, he continues, that “after 20 to 30 years, the indigenous Muslim population of Russia, the communities of the Volga-Urals and North Caucasus regions will become minorities in relation to the Central Asian majority—a long-term trend which it is impossible to change whether one likes it or not.”
It is already the case in some Russian cities where there are more Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kyrgyz than indigenous Russian Muslims in the parishes of the mosques, and anger about that both among ethnic Russians and indigenous Muslims is helping to transform the Muslim community of Russia into something “it never was before.”
Mukhametov says that he believes that “in the 21st century, the Russian Federation will be not that country of ‘the Asian-Muslim’ type as it was,” but rather “will become ‘Europeans,’” in that “the problem of Islam and migration [will be viewed as] one and the same thing. With one distinction, [Russia’s] situation will be an order of magnitude worse.”
The reason for that, he suggests, is that “Russia is not prepared for such a turn of events and what is still worse, it does not want to get prepared.” Instead, people continue to act “as if nothing is happening or as if someone else is responsible for our problems and that someone consequently must resolve them.” Unfortunately, there is no reason to expect anyone will.
Window on Eurasia: Military Pensioners in 12 Russian Cities Call for Putin’s Ouster
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 24 – Last weekend, Russian military retirees and their families took part in demonstrations in 12 cities of the Volga-Ural military district both to call attention to their plight and to advance political demands, including calls for internal troops not to obey orders to use force against the people and for the dismissal of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
As organizers pointed out, “the official media” in Moscow “modestly kept quiet” about these protests, and details about them are only now coming to light in the blogosphere, on some regional sites, and on opposition portals in the Russian capital (news.babr.ru/?IDE=88558, www.pbrus.org/main/557-sobytiya-v-ulyanovske-voennosluzhashhie.html, and www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=4C9C8E1C6E824).
Organizers of the meetings, which attracted 400 people in Ulyanovsk and smaller numbers in the other cities, pointed out that “military personnel are a special part of the civilian population of the country … people who have consciously chosen their fate to defend their country and their people from aggressors.”
“And having chosen service to the Fatherland,” the organizers said, “the country and government guarantee them social security and defense after they take their pensions as a special category of citizens.” But in recent years, they continued, that contract has broken down: military people have served the state but the state has not served them.
The continuing reform of the army and fleet have “shameless” thrown many officers and their families “into the streets,” leaving them without the most basic requirements. And these people include “not only elderly soldiers but also young officers aged 30” and wives who while following their husbands did not have a chance to work.
Faced with this situation, the organizers continued, Russian military retirees have written senior officers and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin but “they have not received a single answer.” And consequently, “beginning on May 19, 2010, the military personnel of Ulyanovsk have begun on a monthly basis to picket and advance social demands.”
(The 19th of the month was chosen because it refers to the number of the article in the Russian Constitution about military service. In this respect, this latest movement among military retirees is an echo of efforts by human rights activists to protest violations of basic rights every 31st of the month.)
“Recognizing perfectly well that the defense of social rights is a matter of politics, the military people have been supported by social-political organizations like the Unified Civic Front, Solidarity, RNDS, the Other Russia, the KPRF, LDPR and also the population of the city of Ulyanovsk.” And now these demonstrations are spreading and becoming more political.
“At the present time,” the organizers say, “the people have come down with ‘an immune deficit of faith,’ an analogue to HIV/AIDS only for society as a whole.” Indeed, “a vicious circle” has developed: The powers that be ignore the people, even those who have “defended and protected the state.” Consequently, military retirees must protest.
One participant, Boris Smekhnov, a lieutenant colonel retired from the tank forces and head of the Unified Regional Staff for the Defense of the Social Rights of Military People and Their Families, told the Ulyanovsk protest that “we understand perfectly well that no less than 80 percent of the population is dissatisfied with the policies being implemented by the powers.”
“Even those who serve and receive good pay today are dissatisfied with it because they understand very well that they do not have a future,” Smekhnov continued. That is because, he said, “the people no longer have any power in the country, and the defense capability of the country is at a low level.”
More pointedly, he said he was concerned by “the establishment in Russia of a large number of internal forces. In the Oath,” he pointed out, “there are no words about fighting with one’s own people. This is something which officers of the internal forces must remember” and it is something which the powers that be appear to have forgotten.
The Ulyanovsk meeting adopted appeals to serving officers and soldiers and to President Dmitry Medvedev. In them, the protesters asserted that “Our Motherland is in Danger… not from external enemies but from the pathetic policy of the power of the property owners who conceal themselves behind a distorted image about the state.”
They then identify the following eight problems in Russia today: First, “power is concentrated in the hands of a single party ‘United Russia.’” Second, the country’s social-economic and political crisis is deepening. Third, the armed forces are being destroyed. Fourth, industry and agriculture are collapsing.
Fifth, national projects have failed. Sixth, the gap between rich and poor is increasing at a fantastic rate. Seventh, life in Ulyanovsk oblast is far below the all-Russia average. And eighth, the powers that be are “shamelessly using the administrative resource” to ensure their survival in office while “completely violating the constitutional rights of the voters.”
Consequently, they made the following demands; the dismissal of Putin and his government, the dismissal of the regional and city authorities, an end to state financing of “pocket media,” a cut in the size of the bureaucracy, and an end to billing the population for communal services.
In addition, these appeals called for the adoption of “decisive measures” to end the decay of the military, an increase in pensions for all citizens “except highly paid bureaucrats,” and “the return of the state rest homes to the oblast and city council of veterans. If their demands are ignored, the participants said, they will stage hunger strikes in the future.
Staunton, September 24 – Last weekend, Russian military retirees and their families took part in demonstrations in 12 cities of the Volga-Ural military district both to call attention to their plight and to advance political demands, including calls for internal troops not to obey orders to use force against the people and for the dismissal of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
As organizers pointed out, “the official media” in Moscow “modestly kept quiet” about these protests, and details about them are only now coming to light in the blogosphere, on some regional sites, and on opposition portals in the Russian capital (news.babr.ru/?IDE=88558, www.pbrus.org/main/557-sobytiya-v-ulyanovske-voennosluzhashhie.html, and www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=4C9C8E1C6E824).
Organizers of the meetings, which attracted 400 people in Ulyanovsk and smaller numbers in the other cities, pointed out that “military personnel are a special part of the civilian population of the country … people who have consciously chosen their fate to defend their country and their people from aggressors.”
“And having chosen service to the Fatherland,” the organizers said, “the country and government guarantee them social security and defense after they take their pensions as a special category of citizens.” But in recent years, they continued, that contract has broken down: military people have served the state but the state has not served them.
The continuing reform of the army and fleet have “shameless” thrown many officers and their families “into the streets,” leaving them without the most basic requirements. And these people include “not only elderly soldiers but also young officers aged 30” and wives who while following their husbands did not have a chance to work.
Faced with this situation, the organizers continued, Russian military retirees have written senior officers and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin but “they have not received a single answer.” And consequently, “beginning on May 19, 2010, the military personnel of Ulyanovsk have begun on a monthly basis to picket and advance social demands.”
(The 19th of the month was chosen because it refers to the number of the article in the Russian Constitution about military service. In this respect, this latest movement among military retirees is an echo of efforts by human rights activists to protest violations of basic rights every 31st of the month.)
“Recognizing perfectly well that the defense of social rights is a matter of politics, the military people have been supported by social-political organizations like the Unified Civic Front, Solidarity, RNDS, the Other Russia, the KPRF, LDPR and also the population of the city of Ulyanovsk.” And now these demonstrations are spreading and becoming more political.
“At the present time,” the organizers say, “the people have come down with ‘an immune deficit of faith,’ an analogue to HIV/AIDS only for society as a whole.” Indeed, “a vicious circle” has developed: The powers that be ignore the people, even those who have “defended and protected the state.” Consequently, military retirees must protest.
One participant, Boris Smekhnov, a lieutenant colonel retired from the tank forces and head of the Unified Regional Staff for the Defense of the Social Rights of Military People and Their Families, told the Ulyanovsk protest that “we understand perfectly well that no less than 80 percent of the population is dissatisfied with the policies being implemented by the powers.”
“Even those who serve and receive good pay today are dissatisfied with it because they understand very well that they do not have a future,” Smekhnov continued. That is because, he said, “the people no longer have any power in the country, and the defense capability of the country is at a low level.”
More pointedly, he said he was concerned by “the establishment in Russia of a large number of internal forces. In the Oath,” he pointed out, “there are no words about fighting with one’s own people. This is something which officers of the internal forces must remember” and it is something which the powers that be appear to have forgotten.
The Ulyanovsk meeting adopted appeals to serving officers and soldiers and to President Dmitry Medvedev. In them, the protesters asserted that “Our Motherland is in Danger… not from external enemies but from the pathetic policy of the power of the property owners who conceal themselves behind a distorted image about the state.”
They then identify the following eight problems in Russia today: First, “power is concentrated in the hands of a single party ‘United Russia.’” Second, the country’s social-economic and political crisis is deepening. Third, the armed forces are being destroyed. Fourth, industry and agriculture are collapsing.
Fifth, national projects have failed. Sixth, the gap between rich and poor is increasing at a fantastic rate. Seventh, life in Ulyanovsk oblast is far below the all-Russia average. And eighth, the powers that be are “shamelessly using the administrative resource” to ensure their survival in office while “completely violating the constitutional rights of the voters.”
Consequently, they made the following demands; the dismissal of Putin and his government, the dismissal of the regional and city authorities, an end to state financing of “pocket media,” a cut in the size of the bureaucracy, and an end to billing the population for communal services.
In addition, these appeals called for the adoption of “decisive measures” to end the decay of the military, an increase in pensions for all citizens “except highly paid bureaucrats,” and “the return of the state rest homes to the oblast and city council of veterans. If their demands are ignored, the participants said, they will stage hunger strikes in the future.
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