Paul Goble
Staunton, March 27 – Just as he has done in so many other spheres of Russian life, Patriarch Kirill last week moved to expand the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the North Caucasus through the use of the two tools at his disposal: the reorganization of the church’s structure there and meeting with senior Russian officials.
But at least one commentator notes that in taking these steps, Kirill is walking a fine line between satisfying the needs of his own institution and those of the Russian state, a reflection of what that writer suggests is “the systematic crisis” in the Russian Federation with the increasing tensions among various parts of the bureaucracy, secular and religious.
At a meeting last Tuesday, the Holy Synod disbanded the former Stavropol and Vladikavkas archbishopric which had overseen Stavropol kray and the North Caucasus republics of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Osetia, Ingushetia and Chechnya and sent its head Archbishop Feofan to Chelyabinsk (www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/1434630.html).
In place of the disbanded archbishopric, the Synod created three new sees with three new leaders:
• the Pyatigorsk and Cherkess bishopric which will be headed by Smolensk and Vyazemsk Bishop Feofilak and will include the parishes of Mineralovod, Predgorny and Kirov districts and also the respublics of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachayevo-Cherkessia;
• the Vladikavkaz and Makhachkala archbishopric which will led by Elista and Kymyk Archbishop Zosima and include Orthodox congregations in North Osetia-Alania, Daghestan, Ingushetia, and Chechnya; and
• the Stavropol and Nevinomyssky archbishopric which will include the remainder of the previous Stavropol and Vladikavkaz archbishopric and will be headed by Bishop Kirill of Pavlovo-Posadsky, who will retain his position as head of the Synod Committee on Relations with the Cossacks.
At the same session, the Synod expressed its “gratitude” to Baku and Caspian Bishop Aleksandr for his supervision of the Orthodox parishes in Daghestan and his “support of Orthodox-Muslim cooperation.” But it eliminated his role there, reducing his sphere of activity to Azerbaijan and changing his title to the bishop of Baku and Azerbaijan.
Also at that meeting, the Holy Synod thanked Feofan “for his many efforts to strengthen church life in the North Caucasus” and his “conduct of dialogue with Muslim communities directed at the establishment of peace and concord in the multi-national society” of that part of the Russian Federation.
Feofan, who earlier served as patriarchal representative to Africa and the East and who who has been viewed as a rising star in the Church, will now seek to promote Orthodoxy in the much-troubled see of Chelyabinsk (www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/31190.html and ura.ru/content/chel/24-03-2011/articles/1036256292.html).
In a related development, Patriarch Kirill on Friday received Aleksandr Khloponin, the Presidential plenipotentiary representative for the North Caucasus, a meeting at which the Church leader explained these administrative changes and the political one expressed the hope that they would help fill “the spiritual vacuum” there (rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=47448).
Three aspects of these moves are worth noting: First, they reflect Kirill’s effort to create a power vertical within the church. Second, they reflect his desire to bring religious and political borders into correspondence. And third, they suggest he will pursue a more differentiated policy in the North Caucasus, with more attention to the Cossacks.
But as the editors of Religiopolis.org note, this combination of “bureaucracy and politics” may not work as any of its participants hope. Both the Church and the government are pursuing their own bureaucratic interests, and this combination may end by harming both of them and the interests of believers as well (www.religiopolis.org/news/2275-bjurokratija-i-politika.html).
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Influx of Ethnic Chinese Worries Kyrgyz
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 27 – Having watched Beijing dominate the indigenous Turkic population of Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan) by means of the dispatch of Han Chinese to that region, many people in Kyrgyzstan fear that the same fate could await their country, given what some of them see as the massive and uncontrolled influx of Han Chinese.
In an article in the Kyrgyz newspaper “Sayat press” a week ago, Turdugul Karimova says that “according to unofficial data, there now live in Kyrgyzstan more than 100,000 Chinese,” most of whom are engaged in trade in the marks of Bishkek and other major Kyrgyz cities (www.gezitter.org/society/1901/).
Nearly all of them have arrived over the past 20 years, the Kyrgyz journalist writes, with some 150 to 200 ethnic Chinese arriving in Kyrgyzstan every month, only some of whom then return to their own country. As a result, “Chinatowns” are being formed in that Central Asian state, and its residents are asking “how is the spread of Chinese influence to be stopped?”
Relations between the Turkic Kyrgyz and the Han Chinese have a long history. At one point, according to Kyrgyz historians, “the Kyrgyz seized China and established a khanate there for 300 years,” Karimova writes, and in the Manas, the national epic, there are accounts of various wars between the two peoples.
In the past, the Kyrgyz journalist says, the Kyrgyz were deeply suspicious of the Chinese and “did not allow” them to come onto Kyrgyz lands because of the fear that the enormous difference in the size of the two peoples would mean that the Kyrgyz would soon drown in a Chinese sea.
Such attitudes continue. Kuseyn Isayev, a Kyrgyz sociologist, for example, observes that “if into the country arrives one Chinese, after ten days there will be 100 chinese and after 100 days, a 1000 and thus, having increased so rapidly in numbers, they will quickly conquer the entire country.”
After 1991, however, the Kyrgyz not only opened the border with China but “gave away to China the very valuable land of Uzengy-Kuush, where there should have been constructed three electrical stations and where there is valuable agricultural land.” This territory, Isayev says, has now been “lost forever.”
The Kyrgyz interior ministry is responsible for regulating the flow of immigrants into the country, but it is clearly failing to do so, Karimova writes. Many Chinese come on short-term visas and then remain in violation of the terms of their entrance. As a result, the number of Chinese in Kyrgyzstan is constantly growing.
According to specialists, she continues, “if this phenomenon is not stopped at the state border, then several years from now, the Chinese may completely ‘drown’ Kyrgyzstan.” But “unfortunately, now from the side of the official powers, there are no measures being planned or carried out to limit the number of Chinese coming into the country.”
One of the consequences of the influx of ethnic Chinese, Karimova says, is a dramatic increase in intermarriage between Han Chinese men and Kyrgyz women. A few years ago, such unions were a rarity, but now “they have become an ordinary thing,” further breaking down Kyrgyz defenses.
Isayev notes, Karimova reports, that “thanks to such a policy, China signified all of Eastern Turkestan.” And he argues that “the time has come for the Kyrgyz to think about their own honor and worth.” The residents of Kyrgyzstan “must not sell their holy land which they received from their ancestors.”
First of all, the Kyrgyz journalist says, “it is necessary to limit” the presence of Chinese traders in the bazaars. The Chinese there are becoming rich “by working in the largest bazaars,” benefitting from the willingness of the Kyrgyz to allow them to do so, something neighboring Central Asian countries do not.
Karimov notes that except for Kyrgyzstan, “not in a single post-Soviet country are Chinese citizens permitted to freely trade in bazaars. This is controlled by special laws.” Kyrgyzstan adopted such a law in 2007, she says, but “unfortunately a little later, a moratorium was declared on this law.”
According to Karimova, “specialists consider that the time has come” to restore this law. Otherwise, they say, the consequences will be disastrous. But tragically in their view, the current leaders in Bishkek are occupied with their own “personal interests, and no one is focusing on this circumstance which threatens the future of our country.”
Staunton, March 27 – Having watched Beijing dominate the indigenous Turkic population of Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan) by means of the dispatch of Han Chinese to that region, many people in Kyrgyzstan fear that the same fate could await their country, given what some of them see as the massive and uncontrolled influx of Han Chinese.
In an article in the Kyrgyz newspaper “Sayat press” a week ago, Turdugul Karimova says that “according to unofficial data, there now live in Kyrgyzstan more than 100,000 Chinese,” most of whom are engaged in trade in the marks of Bishkek and other major Kyrgyz cities (www.gezitter.org/society/1901/).
Nearly all of them have arrived over the past 20 years, the Kyrgyz journalist writes, with some 150 to 200 ethnic Chinese arriving in Kyrgyzstan every month, only some of whom then return to their own country. As a result, “Chinatowns” are being formed in that Central Asian state, and its residents are asking “how is the spread of Chinese influence to be stopped?”
Relations between the Turkic Kyrgyz and the Han Chinese have a long history. At one point, according to Kyrgyz historians, “the Kyrgyz seized China and established a khanate there for 300 years,” Karimova writes, and in the Manas, the national epic, there are accounts of various wars between the two peoples.
In the past, the Kyrgyz journalist says, the Kyrgyz were deeply suspicious of the Chinese and “did not allow” them to come onto Kyrgyz lands because of the fear that the enormous difference in the size of the two peoples would mean that the Kyrgyz would soon drown in a Chinese sea.
Such attitudes continue. Kuseyn Isayev, a Kyrgyz sociologist, for example, observes that “if into the country arrives one Chinese, after ten days there will be 100 chinese and after 100 days, a 1000 and thus, having increased so rapidly in numbers, they will quickly conquer the entire country.”
After 1991, however, the Kyrgyz not only opened the border with China but “gave away to China the very valuable land of Uzengy-Kuush, where there should have been constructed three electrical stations and where there is valuable agricultural land.” This territory, Isayev says, has now been “lost forever.”
The Kyrgyz interior ministry is responsible for regulating the flow of immigrants into the country, but it is clearly failing to do so, Karimova writes. Many Chinese come on short-term visas and then remain in violation of the terms of their entrance. As a result, the number of Chinese in Kyrgyzstan is constantly growing.
According to specialists, she continues, “if this phenomenon is not stopped at the state border, then several years from now, the Chinese may completely ‘drown’ Kyrgyzstan.” But “unfortunately, now from the side of the official powers, there are no measures being planned or carried out to limit the number of Chinese coming into the country.”
One of the consequences of the influx of ethnic Chinese, Karimova says, is a dramatic increase in intermarriage between Han Chinese men and Kyrgyz women. A few years ago, such unions were a rarity, but now “they have become an ordinary thing,” further breaking down Kyrgyz defenses.
Isayev notes, Karimova reports, that “thanks to such a policy, China signified all of Eastern Turkestan.” And he argues that “the time has come for the Kyrgyz to think about their own honor and worth.” The residents of Kyrgyzstan “must not sell their holy land which they received from their ancestors.”
First of all, the Kyrgyz journalist says, “it is necessary to limit” the presence of Chinese traders in the bazaars. The Chinese there are becoming rich “by working in the largest bazaars,” benefitting from the willingness of the Kyrgyz to allow them to do so, something neighboring Central Asian countries do not.
Karimov notes that except for Kyrgyzstan, “not in a single post-Soviet country are Chinese citizens permitted to freely trade in bazaars. This is controlled by special laws.” Kyrgyzstan adopted such a law in 2007, she says, but “unfortunately a little later, a moratorium was declared on this law.”
According to Karimova, “specialists consider that the time has come” to restore this law. Otherwise, they say, the consequences will be disastrous. But tragically in their view, the current leaders in Bishkek are occupied with their own “personal interests, and no one is focusing on this circumstance which threatens the future of our country.”
Window on Eurasia: Russia Now Suffering a Legitimacy Crisis, Moscow Commentator Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 27 – Ever fewer Russians view the political system in their country as lawful and legitimate, according to a Moscow commentator, a situation which is not “pre-revolutionary” as some think but rather “pre-collapse” because of the absence of any opposition parties or forces which could take power and restore public confidence in the regime.
In an essay on APN.ru last week, Igor Boykov argues that “the real ratings of trust in practically all power institutions in [the Russian Federation] at present are not simply low but catastrophically low” and that the gap between “the ruling hierarchy” and everyone else is increasing more rapidly than even in the 1990s (www.apn.ru/publications/article23883.htm).
This was obscured during much of the last decade, he continues, by the “anomalously” high personal rating of Vladimir Putin, “anomalous” because it was in stark contrast to “the low level of public trust in the institutions of power in general, the existence of which even representatives of the powers did not and do not deny.”
Given the various methods the regime used to boost these figures, the real level of trust even in Putin was undoubtedly much lower than the Kremlin claimed, but now, the level of trust in him and his tandem partner Dmitry Medvedev has fallen even by these measures, suggesting that the actual level of trust in the country’s leadership is very much lower indeed.
But this collapse in trust is not limited to the two top leaders. It extends to the members of the Duma, regional and republic officials, and the entire bureaucracy. And this “alienation is often leading to total nihilism and to a general anger and hatred” by the population for those who rule over it.
Such underlying attitudes, Boykov argues, help to explain “the expression of mass support” for the five Primorsky youths who became known as the partisans and for the support around the country for those who took part in the Manezh Square demonstrations at the end of last year.
“I do not doubt,” the Moscow commentator continues, “that in thousands and thousands of young Russian heads after this still more strongy became rooted the idea that to achieve from the existing powers the fulfillment of their obligations … is possible only by means of public and massive street pressure on them.”
Ever more Russians, he suggests, are asking themselves “the logical question: What kind of a state is this and what kind of ‘power vertical’ are we talking about which can be forced to fulfill its obligations … only by means of mass marches on the Kremlin and clashes with the OMON?”
“In practice, the state cannot even defend its own citizens. Throughout the entire country exist organized criminal groups linked with the powers which kill people and keep in fear entire regions,” as “the tragic events in the stanitsa of Kushchevskaya” showed the world “this dark side of contemporary Russian life.”
“And yet no one is really thinking about struggling with this,” Boykov says, arguing that this raises the question “about the legitimacy of the existing social-political system in the eyes of our fellow citizens … about the agreement of the people with the powers that it, the people, voluntarily recognizes the right of the powers” to fulfill its obligations.
The recent round of municipal elections only confirms this. Participation was way down even officially, Boykov says, and the actual levels of participation were much lower than that, with only “one quarter to one fifth” of the country’s population bothering to go to the polls and vote.
In these citcumstances, had voters the right to cast their ballots “against all,” the ruling party of United Russia would have suffered “a crushing fiasco” and not won the victory that its leaders have insisted on calling the outcome. Indeed, Boykov argues, it is clear that this vote was more about “legitimizing” Russia’s rulers in the eyes of foreigners than in those of Russians.
“Tbe decline in trust to the powers and to everything connected with them has reached threatening proportions,” Boykov says. “In Russian the people does not trust anyone or anything: the government, the deputies, the bureaucrats, the police, the army, the courts, the system of education and health” and so one.
At the same time, no one trusts those who are called the opposition because no one would “seriously call Vladimir Zhirinovsky an opposition figure or Gennady Zyuganov the hope for all the insulted and injured, even at a time when there are millions of such people in Russia” who might hope for such a defense.
“In the 1990s and even at the start of the 2000s, many people had illusions about the possibility of successful conduct of a parliamentary struggle,” but now, Boykov insists, “there does not remain a trace of that.” Instead, all political battles look like some kind of play orchestrated by “bureaucrats … at the command of the Presidential Administration.”
The state machine continues by a kind of inertia, and the people expect nothing from it. “For many of them, the contemporary powers that be are the embodinment of all the most low, shameful and unjust, and this relationship, as long as the exiswting social-political system is preserved is impossible to change.”
Consequently, as the legitimacy of the powers become less, “the more strongly the powers are forced to operate on the instruments of force and repression,” something that weakens the legitimacy of the powers still further because it is obvious to all that only “crude force” is keeping the regime in power.
“Some might call this situation pre-revolutionary,” Boykov says, but he argues that it is “now not pre-revolutionary, but pre-collapse – and this is something much worse.” That is because in a revolutionary situation one can perceive some individual or group that might take power, but at present in Russia, “we do not observe” even that.
And thus there is a “paradoxical” but “tragic” situation, Boykov says. “In the state machine of the Russian Federation, everything has rotted from top to bottom … but there is not on view any real social-political force which could seize power and stop this terrible process of destruction and unraveling.”
As a result, the Moscow commentator argues, the existing system will fall at some point in the future only as the result of the acitons of “catacomb” groups, but they will be able to succeed only when those in power suffer “a complete loss” of the ability to deploy coercion in defense of themselves, if not of the country over which they rule.
Staunton, March 27 – Ever fewer Russians view the political system in their country as lawful and legitimate, according to a Moscow commentator, a situation which is not “pre-revolutionary” as some think but rather “pre-collapse” because of the absence of any opposition parties or forces which could take power and restore public confidence in the regime.
In an essay on APN.ru last week, Igor Boykov argues that “the real ratings of trust in practically all power institutions in [the Russian Federation] at present are not simply low but catastrophically low” and that the gap between “the ruling hierarchy” and everyone else is increasing more rapidly than even in the 1990s (www.apn.ru/publications/article23883.htm).
This was obscured during much of the last decade, he continues, by the “anomalously” high personal rating of Vladimir Putin, “anomalous” because it was in stark contrast to “the low level of public trust in the institutions of power in general, the existence of which even representatives of the powers did not and do not deny.”
Given the various methods the regime used to boost these figures, the real level of trust even in Putin was undoubtedly much lower than the Kremlin claimed, but now, the level of trust in him and his tandem partner Dmitry Medvedev has fallen even by these measures, suggesting that the actual level of trust in the country’s leadership is very much lower indeed.
But this collapse in trust is not limited to the two top leaders. It extends to the members of the Duma, regional and republic officials, and the entire bureaucracy. And this “alienation is often leading to total nihilism and to a general anger and hatred” by the population for those who rule over it.
Such underlying attitudes, Boykov argues, help to explain “the expression of mass support” for the five Primorsky youths who became known as the partisans and for the support around the country for those who took part in the Manezh Square demonstrations at the end of last year.
“I do not doubt,” the Moscow commentator continues, “that in thousands and thousands of young Russian heads after this still more strongy became rooted the idea that to achieve from the existing powers the fulfillment of their obligations … is possible only by means of public and massive street pressure on them.”
Ever more Russians, he suggests, are asking themselves “the logical question: What kind of a state is this and what kind of ‘power vertical’ are we talking about which can be forced to fulfill its obligations … only by means of mass marches on the Kremlin and clashes with the OMON?”
“In practice, the state cannot even defend its own citizens. Throughout the entire country exist organized criminal groups linked with the powers which kill people and keep in fear entire regions,” as “the tragic events in the stanitsa of Kushchevskaya” showed the world “this dark side of contemporary Russian life.”
“And yet no one is really thinking about struggling with this,” Boykov says, arguing that this raises the question “about the legitimacy of the existing social-political system in the eyes of our fellow citizens … about the agreement of the people with the powers that it, the people, voluntarily recognizes the right of the powers” to fulfill its obligations.
The recent round of municipal elections only confirms this. Participation was way down even officially, Boykov says, and the actual levels of participation were much lower than that, with only “one quarter to one fifth” of the country’s population bothering to go to the polls and vote.
In these citcumstances, had voters the right to cast their ballots “against all,” the ruling party of United Russia would have suffered “a crushing fiasco” and not won the victory that its leaders have insisted on calling the outcome. Indeed, Boykov argues, it is clear that this vote was more about “legitimizing” Russia’s rulers in the eyes of foreigners than in those of Russians.
“Tbe decline in trust to the powers and to everything connected with them has reached threatening proportions,” Boykov says. “In Russian the people does not trust anyone or anything: the government, the deputies, the bureaucrats, the police, the army, the courts, the system of education and health” and so one.
At the same time, no one trusts those who are called the opposition because no one would “seriously call Vladimir Zhirinovsky an opposition figure or Gennady Zyuganov the hope for all the insulted and injured, even at a time when there are millions of such people in Russia” who might hope for such a defense.
“In the 1990s and even at the start of the 2000s, many people had illusions about the possibility of successful conduct of a parliamentary struggle,” but now, Boykov insists, “there does not remain a trace of that.” Instead, all political battles look like some kind of play orchestrated by “bureaucrats … at the command of the Presidential Administration.”
The state machine continues by a kind of inertia, and the people expect nothing from it. “For many of them, the contemporary powers that be are the embodinment of all the most low, shameful and unjust, and this relationship, as long as the exiswting social-political system is preserved is impossible to change.”
Consequently, as the legitimacy of the powers become less, “the more strongly the powers are forced to operate on the instruments of force and repression,” something that weakens the legitimacy of the powers still further because it is obvious to all that only “crude force” is keeping the regime in power.
“Some might call this situation pre-revolutionary,” Boykov says, but he argues that it is “now not pre-revolutionary, but pre-collapse – and this is something much worse.” That is because in a revolutionary situation one can perceive some individual or group that might take power, but at present in Russia, “we do not observe” even that.
And thus there is a “paradoxical” but “tragic” situation, Boykov says. “In the state machine of the Russian Federation, everything has rotted from top to bottom … but there is not on view any real social-political force which could seize power and stop this terrible process of destruction and unraveling.”
As a result, the Moscow commentator argues, the existing system will fall at some point in the future only as the result of the acitons of “catacomb” groups, but they will be able to succeed only when those in power suffer “a complete loss” of the ability to deploy coercion in defense of themselves, if not of the country over which they rule.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Tatarstan’s Shaimiyev Again Challenges the Kremlin
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 22 – Mintimir Shaimiyev, the longtime president of Tatarstan, has laid down a broad challenge to Moscow not only by announcing his decision to resign from the leadership of the United Russia Party which he helped to found but also by reaffirming his belief that Russia must remain a federation in which all its indigenous nations have a voice.
Not surprisingly, Shaimiyev’s resignation from the leadership of United Russia has attracted the greater attention from Moscow analysts who have speculated about the possible impact of that step on the upcoming elections, but in reality, Shaimiyev’s views on federalism and support for the nations within Russia may have a greater impact.
That is because Shaimiyev and the republic he long headed and whose current leadership he formed has often served as the bellwether of attitudes and policies in the other non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation and also and perhaps equally importantly on the position of the heads of predominantly ethnic Russian regions as well.
On Friday, Shaimiyev announced his resignation from the leadership of United Russia and laid out his ideas in a major interview with the Tatar-language newspaper “Tatar gazite” (www.tatargazeta.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70:-q-q&catid=4:2010-11-04-15-26-09&Itemid=11. A Russian translation has now appeared (etatar.ru/20/39572).
Asked to evaluate his time in politics, the Tatarstan leader said that “our greatest success was raising the authority of our nation” because “we were able to radically change relations toward the Tatars,” often during periods of extraordinary political and economic changes and challenges.
Shaimiyev said that he did not have any major regrets about his time in office, although he conceded it was sometimes difficult to work when other Tatars demanded “freedom” and “independence” and suggested that he was “a weakling” in comparison with Chechnya’s Dzhokhar Dudayev.
He explained his relationship with United Russia in the following way: “I am the co-president of the Supreme Council of United Russia because I was one of the organizers of the party” rather than because he joined something that others had created. But now, Shaimiyev suggested, circumstances have changed.
“Unfortunately,” he said, neither United Russia nor any other party in the country supports “a multi-national and federative state system in Russia.” And consequently, “I do not intend to remain a co-president.” Others, who are in the presidium of that party can continue to work, “but I am in retirement.”
But Shaimiyev said he was disappointed that the party he helped found “cannot exert sufficient influence on the economic and political situation in the country.” Despite its dominance, it has not acted as “the center-right” party he backed. Instead, it has played with certain “leftist” ideas.
But Shaimiyev rejected the idea that Russia was facing the kind of political challenges now shaking the Arab world. “The situation with us is not like their situation. It is not surprising that peoples who have nothing to lose have begun” to act in this way. “In Russia the situation is different … In our history, there have been a sufficient number of revolutions.”
The Tatar leader then turned his attention to nationality problems and policies. Arguing that “the roots of this problem are deep,” Shaimiyev noted that he has “always said that … Russia needs a nationality policy more than other countries,” something that many in Moscow do not appear to understand.
Moscow must focus on these issues because “under conditions of democratic development,” it and the rest of Russia have no choice. “And one should not compare us with the United States,” “an entirely different world” whose residents called themselves Americans whatever their ethnic background.
“In our situation,” he said, it is “an absurdity” to declare that Tatars are “[non-ethnic] Russians of Tatar origin.” “If we want to live in a democracy, there must be a federation in the true sense … There cannot be democracy in a unitary Russia. My native language and my nationality are my right, given from birth, and no one can take them away from me.”
And Shaimiyev concluded with two further observations that challenge Moscow. On the one hand, he said that the law directing heads of republics to be called presidents is not indisputable. And on the other, he said that Moscow leaders have failed to consult with regional leaders the way Boris Yeltsin did in the early 1990s. The issue is not just “elections.”
This interview has sparked numerous commentaries in Moscow. Writing for Polit.ru yesterday, forexample, Mikhail Zakharov suggested that Shaimiyev’s declaration was an unwelcome “signal” to the leadership in the Russian capital, one that represents a threat of “sabotage” of the upcoming elections (www.polit.ru/event/2011/03/21/6aimiev.html).
Zakharov noted that the way in which Shaimiyev delivered his message is instructive of the Tatar leader’s political skills: in a Tatar language newspaper rather than in a Russian one in Kazan or in a central news agency. Nonetheless, he said, “in the center such signals are noted” if with a certain delay.
And Andrey Polunin of “Svobodnaya pressa” today offered a survey of reaction. Yevgeny Minchenko, the director of the International Instituteof Political Expertise, said that Shaimiyev’s remarks showed that “there is a chance that Shaimiyev will try again to play a role in [Russian Federation] politics” (svpressa.ru/politic/article/40766/).
“It is obvious,” Minchenko noted, “that today there is dissatisfaction on the part of regional elites with the politicies of the federal center,” given Moscow’s ongoing centralization drive and its discounting of the role of national minorities, other than those in the North Caucasus.
Members of the Tatar diaspora in Moscow have told him, Minchenko continued, that “we do not understand, given that there are far more of us than representatives of other nationalities and that we made an enormous constribution to the establishment of Russian statehood why the Chechens have such a disproportionate influence.”
Aleksey Mukhin, the director general of the Center of Political Information, focused on another aspect of Shaimiyev’s critique. He noted that Shaimiyev’s “accusationthat the party has noface is a seirous thing which can be interpreted as an attack on the leader of the party and its senior functionaries.”
Vladimir Pribalovsky, the president of the Panorama Research Center, in turn said that Shaimiyev’s remarks only reinforced the Tatar leader’s reputation for political sophistication and care. Shaimiyev isn’t going into opposition; instead, he is seeking to preserve his power in the Kazan “tandem” of which he is a part together with Rustam Minnikhanov.
But Dmitry Orlov, the director generalof the Agency of Political and Economic Communications, suggested that no one should make too much of Shaimiyev’s remarks because his decision to leave the leadership of United Russia had obviously been agreed upon in advance with Moscow and reflected his lower status as a former republic head.
Staunton, March 22 – Mintimir Shaimiyev, the longtime president of Tatarstan, has laid down a broad challenge to Moscow not only by announcing his decision to resign from the leadership of the United Russia Party which he helped to found but also by reaffirming his belief that Russia must remain a federation in which all its indigenous nations have a voice.
Not surprisingly, Shaimiyev’s resignation from the leadership of United Russia has attracted the greater attention from Moscow analysts who have speculated about the possible impact of that step on the upcoming elections, but in reality, Shaimiyev’s views on federalism and support for the nations within Russia may have a greater impact.
That is because Shaimiyev and the republic he long headed and whose current leadership he formed has often served as the bellwether of attitudes and policies in the other non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation and also and perhaps equally importantly on the position of the heads of predominantly ethnic Russian regions as well.
On Friday, Shaimiyev announced his resignation from the leadership of United Russia and laid out his ideas in a major interview with the Tatar-language newspaper “Tatar gazite” (www.tatargazeta.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70:-q-q&catid=4:2010-11-04-15-26-09&Itemid=11. A Russian translation has now appeared (etatar.ru/20/39572).
Asked to evaluate his time in politics, the Tatarstan leader said that “our greatest success was raising the authority of our nation” because “we were able to radically change relations toward the Tatars,” often during periods of extraordinary political and economic changes and challenges.
Shaimiyev said that he did not have any major regrets about his time in office, although he conceded it was sometimes difficult to work when other Tatars demanded “freedom” and “independence” and suggested that he was “a weakling” in comparison with Chechnya’s Dzhokhar Dudayev.
He explained his relationship with United Russia in the following way: “I am the co-president of the Supreme Council of United Russia because I was one of the organizers of the party” rather than because he joined something that others had created. But now, Shaimiyev suggested, circumstances have changed.
“Unfortunately,” he said, neither United Russia nor any other party in the country supports “a multi-national and federative state system in Russia.” And consequently, “I do not intend to remain a co-president.” Others, who are in the presidium of that party can continue to work, “but I am in retirement.”
But Shaimiyev said he was disappointed that the party he helped found “cannot exert sufficient influence on the economic and political situation in the country.” Despite its dominance, it has not acted as “the center-right” party he backed. Instead, it has played with certain “leftist” ideas.
But Shaimiyev rejected the idea that Russia was facing the kind of political challenges now shaking the Arab world. “The situation with us is not like their situation. It is not surprising that peoples who have nothing to lose have begun” to act in this way. “In Russia the situation is different … In our history, there have been a sufficient number of revolutions.”
The Tatar leader then turned his attention to nationality problems and policies. Arguing that “the roots of this problem are deep,” Shaimiyev noted that he has “always said that … Russia needs a nationality policy more than other countries,” something that many in Moscow do not appear to understand.
Moscow must focus on these issues because “under conditions of democratic development,” it and the rest of Russia have no choice. “And one should not compare us with the United States,” “an entirely different world” whose residents called themselves Americans whatever their ethnic background.
“In our situation,” he said, it is “an absurdity” to declare that Tatars are “[non-ethnic] Russians of Tatar origin.” “If we want to live in a democracy, there must be a federation in the true sense … There cannot be democracy in a unitary Russia. My native language and my nationality are my right, given from birth, and no one can take them away from me.”
And Shaimiyev concluded with two further observations that challenge Moscow. On the one hand, he said that the law directing heads of republics to be called presidents is not indisputable. And on the other, he said that Moscow leaders have failed to consult with regional leaders the way Boris Yeltsin did in the early 1990s. The issue is not just “elections.”
This interview has sparked numerous commentaries in Moscow. Writing for Polit.ru yesterday, forexample, Mikhail Zakharov suggested that Shaimiyev’s declaration was an unwelcome “signal” to the leadership in the Russian capital, one that represents a threat of “sabotage” of the upcoming elections (www.polit.ru/event/2011/03/21/6aimiev.html).
Zakharov noted that the way in which Shaimiyev delivered his message is instructive of the Tatar leader’s political skills: in a Tatar language newspaper rather than in a Russian one in Kazan or in a central news agency. Nonetheless, he said, “in the center such signals are noted” if with a certain delay.
And Andrey Polunin of “Svobodnaya pressa” today offered a survey of reaction. Yevgeny Minchenko, the director of the International Instituteof Political Expertise, said that Shaimiyev’s remarks showed that “there is a chance that Shaimiyev will try again to play a role in [Russian Federation] politics” (svpressa.ru/politic/article/40766/).
“It is obvious,” Minchenko noted, “that today there is dissatisfaction on the part of regional elites with the politicies of the federal center,” given Moscow’s ongoing centralization drive and its discounting of the role of national minorities, other than those in the North Caucasus.
Members of the Tatar diaspora in Moscow have told him, Minchenko continued, that “we do not understand, given that there are far more of us than representatives of other nationalities and that we made an enormous constribution to the establishment of Russian statehood why the Chechens have such a disproportionate influence.”
Aleksey Mukhin, the director general of the Center of Political Information, focused on another aspect of Shaimiyev’s critique. He noted that Shaimiyev’s “accusationthat the party has noface is a seirous thing which can be interpreted as an attack on the leader of the party and its senior functionaries.”
Vladimir Pribalovsky, the president of the Panorama Research Center, in turn said that Shaimiyev’s remarks only reinforced the Tatar leader’s reputation for political sophistication and care. Shaimiyev isn’t going into opposition; instead, he is seeking to preserve his power in the Kazan “tandem” of which he is a part together with Rustam Minnikhanov.
But Dmitry Orlov, the director generalof the Agency of Political and Economic Communications, suggested that no one should make too much of Shaimiyev’s remarks because his decision to leave the leadership of United Russia had obviously been agreed upon in advance with Moscow and reflected his lower status as a former republic head.
Window on Eurasia: Power Vertical ‘No Panacea’ against Russia’s Disintegration, Academy of Sciences Expert Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 22 – Despite the claims of Vladimir Putin and his supporters, the creation of a power vertical is “no panacea” against the possible disintegration of the Russian State, according to a legal specialist at the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Indeed, Mekhti Sharifov argues, the idea that unitarism will save Russia and ensure its greatness reflects a failure to understand that neither the Russian Empire northe USSR were ever “unitary states in the classical sense” (www.peoples-rights.info/2011/03/rossiya-i-nadnacionalnoe-setevoe-federativnoe-soobshhestvo/).
And in fact, the legal scholar suggests, the untrammelled pursuit of a unitary state to prevent the disintegration of the Russian Federation may by ignoring the diversity of the country and the need for horizontal as well as vertical ties create conditions that will lead to precisely the opposite outcome that its backers hope for.
“Ever more frequently,” Sharifov writes in a heavily footnoted, 5300-word article, “the question about the fate of the federation in Russia is being raised,” with “the crisis in federative relationsgiving many a basis to advance demans for the transformation of the country into a unitary republic.”
The supporters of this view, the Moscow scholar points out, “assert that periods of the greatest glory of Russia were those when the country had a unitary form of state structure. However, history testifies to the reverse: the Russian Empire and the USSR were never unitary states in the classical sense.”
Before 1917, autonomy was “a form of the effective administration” of many non-Russian borderlands in the Russian Empire, a form adopted because “the autocracy recognized htat it is impossible to ‘administer in one and the same ways’ peoples as different as the Turkmens, Finns, and Poles, Sharifov says.
Such arrangements did not make the Russian Empire a federal state, but “one must not ignore the elements of federalism” which did exist, and the same thing is true, the Institute of State and Law expert argues, with regard to the USSR, “which was formed as a confederation but with time was transformed into a federative state.”
Paying attention to this aspect is important, he continues, because “excessive centralization of power and the unjustified unification of the system of state administration undermined the foundations of the state by provoking crises (the revolutions of 1905-06, 1917, and the Brezhnev ‘stagnation’) and the breaking away of national borderlands (Poland and Finland at the start of the 20th century and the republics of the USSR at its end).”
Efforts over the last decade to strengthen “the vertical of power” have “led to the deformationof the federal system,” creating a system which is “formally a federation but de facto a unitary state.” Nevertheless, these efforts have not had solved the problem – separatism -- that their authors pointed to as the reason for moving in that direction.
“The problem of separatism in the North Caucasus” in fact, Shafirov argues, “has entered a new stage.” Separatist challenges by the Chechens and Ingush remain “unresolved,” and they have been joined now by a new separatism challenge from the Circassians, at least in part in response to the growth of the power vertical.
Russia’s “federative structure is a weakly hierarchical structure which in the early stages of its establishment has not given visible results and requires significant resources,” again at least in part because the powers that be have failed to understand the nature of the challenge before them and have preferred to focus on separatism or “’the parade of sovereignties.’”
The “harsh” power vertical they have put in place, that is “a harshly hierarchical system of administration, is not effective as a long-term strategy since it requires significant resource support for its functioning,” and thus prevents Russia from addressing its most pressing problems domestically and internationally.
Federalism can provide a way out of this dilemma, Sharifov argues, by giving “a politicaland legal opportunity” to the regions for “participation in the adoption and realization of state-wide issues,” allowing both citizens and the subjects of the federation to play a role in both cases.
Unfortunately, he continues, “existing Russian legislation does not contain the institutional instruments through which the subject of the federation could participate in the formation of the state-wide expression of will,” thus limiting the utility of these structures for the state and indeed transforming them into a threat to it.
“The main cause of the failure of the course of strengthening the vertical of power lies in its lack of correspondence with the tendencies of the development of the state as a social-political institution,” Sharifov says, tendencies that require both vertical and horizontal “redistribution” of authority.
“The vertical redistribution of authorities presupposes the transfer of sovereign rights to super-national (international organizations) and subnational levels (civil society),” Sharifov argues, while “the horizontal redistribution requires the transfer of rights to regional and municipal organs of power.”
These two “vectors,” he suggests “can be combined in one term – federalism,” a concept which is “much broader than the term ‘federation.’” Federalism may exist even “without a federation.” Indeed, Sharifov shows in a survey of various countries, including the US, Israel, the European Union and China, it is a precondition of modernity in the post-industrial world.
Indeed, Sharifov insists, “democratization and the development of civil society on the one hand and the broadening of the authority of international organizations on the other is a manifestation of federalization respectively at the national and super-national levels” in the post-Cold War environment.
But in addition to federalism, there is a need for an ideological self-definition, he suggests, something Russia also lacks, thus putting it at a disadvantage domestically and internationally because “federalism and an ideological imperative are the two foundations of the formation of the basic players on the international arena of the 21st century.”
To get out of its current difficulties, ones that have left Russia at the level of many failed or failing states, Russia’s leaders must show the kind of political courage that has not been much in evidence and change directions both domestically and in their approach to international affairs.
Among the steps these leaders need to take domestically, Sharifov argues is the conclusion of a new federal treaty, the elimination of the ethnic basis of federal units while reducing the number of the federal structures, and the provision of a clear definition of the competence of all levels of the state.
Internationally, he says, Moscow must “distance itself from the political elites in post-Soviet republics who are inclined toward authoritarianism,” focus on improving the standard of human life, create firm ties “with the civil societies of the post-Soviet republics, and create its own analogues to the Euroregions with the CIS countries.
Sharifov does not hold out much hope that anyone in Moscow will take these steps anytime soon, but he suggests that if the leadership does not take them, the power vertical won’t save the country and Russia will fall further and further behind the rest of the world which is moving toward federalism and democracy domestically and internationally.
Staunton, March 22 – Despite the claims of Vladimir Putin and his supporters, the creation of a power vertical is “no panacea” against the possible disintegration of the Russian State, according to a legal specialist at the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Indeed, Mekhti Sharifov argues, the idea that unitarism will save Russia and ensure its greatness reflects a failure to understand that neither the Russian Empire northe USSR were ever “unitary states in the classical sense” (www.peoples-rights.info/2011/03/rossiya-i-nadnacionalnoe-setevoe-federativnoe-soobshhestvo/).
And in fact, the legal scholar suggests, the untrammelled pursuit of a unitary state to prevent the disintegration of the Russian Federation may by ignoring the diversity of the country and the need for horizontal as well as vertical ties create conditions that will lead to precisely the opposite outcome that its backers hope for.
“Ever more frequently,” Sharifov writes in a heavily footnoted, 5300-word article, “the question about the fate of the federation in Russia is being raised,” with “the crisis in federative relationsgiving many a basis to advance demans for the transformation of the country into a unitary republic.”
The supporters of this view, the Moscow scholar points out, “assert that periods of the greatest glory of Russia were those when the country had a unitary form of state structure. However, history testifies to the reverse: the Russian Empire and the USSR were never unitary states in the classical sense.”
Before 1917, autonomy was “a form of the effective administration” of many non-Russian borderlands in the Russian Empire, a form adopted because “the autocracy recognized htat it is impossible to ‘administer in one and the same ways’ peoples as different as the Turkmens, Finns, and Poles, Sharifov says.
Such arrangements did not make the Russian Empire a federal state, but “one must not ignore the elements of federalism” which did exist, and the same thing is true, the Institute of State and Law expert argues, with regard to the USSR, “which was formed as a confederation but with time was transformed into a federative state.”
Paying attention to this aspect is important, he continues, because “excessive centralization of power and the unjustified unification of the system of state administration undermined the foundations of the state by provoking crises (the revolutions of 1905-06, 1917, and the Brezhnev ‘stagnation’) and the breaking away of national borderlands (Poland and Finland at the start of the 20th century and the republics of the USSR at its end).”
Efforts over the last decade to strengthen “the vertical of power” have “led to the deformationof the federal system,” creating a system which is “formally a federation but de facto a unitary state.” Nevertheless, these efforts have not had solved the problem – separatism -- that their authors pointed to as the reason for moving in that direction.
“The problem of separatism in the North Caucasus” in fact, Shafirov argues, “has entered a new stage.” Separatist challenges by the Chechens and Ingush remain “unresolved,” and they have been joined now by a new separatism challenge from the Circassians, at least in part in response to the growth of the power vertical.
Russia’s “federative structure is a weakly hierarchical structure which in the early stages of its establishment has not given visible results and requires significant resources,” again at least in part because the powers that be have failed to understand the nature of the challenge before them and have preferred to focus on separatism or “’the parade of sovereignties.’”
The “harsh” power vertical they have put in place, that is “a harshly hierarchical system of administration, is not effective as a long-term strategy since it requires significant resource support for its functioning,” and thus prevents Russia from addressing its most pressing problems domestically and internationally.
Federalism can provide a way out of this dilemma, Sharifov argues, by giving “a politicaland legal opportunity” to the regions for “participation in the adoption and realization of state-wide issues,” allowing both citizens and the subjects of the federation to play a role in both cases.
Unfortunately, he continues, “existing Russian legislation does not contain the institutional instruments through which the subject of the federation could participate in the formation of the state-wide expression of will,” thus limiting the utility of these structures for the state and indeed transforming them into a threat to it.
“The main cause of the failure of the course of strengthening the vertical of power lies in its lack of correspondence with the tendencies of the development of the state as a social-political institution,” Sharifov says, tendencies that require both vertical and horizontal “redistribution” of authority.
“The vertical redistribution of authorities presupposes the transfer of sovereign rights to super-national (international organizations) and subnational levels (civil society),” Sharifov argues, while “the horizontal redistribution requires the transfer of rights to regional and municipal organs of power.”
These two “vectors,” he suggests “can be combined in one term – federalism,” a concept which is “much broader than the term ‘federation.’” Federalism may exist even “without a federation.” Indeed, Sharifov shows in a survey of various countries, including the US, Israel, the European Union and China, it is a precondition of modernity in the post-industrial world.
Indeed, Sharifov insists, “democratization and the development of civil society on the one hand and the broadening of the authority of international organizations on the other is a manifestation of federalization respectively at the national and super-national levels” in the post-Cold War environment.
But in addition to federalism, there is a need for an ideological self-definition, he suggests, something Russia also lacks, thus putting it at a disadvantage domestically and internationally because “federalism and an ideological imperative are the two foundations of the formation of the basic players on the international arena of the 21st century.”
To get out of its current difficulties, ones that have left Russia at the level of many failed or failing states, Russia’s leaders must show the kind of political courage that has not been much in evidence and change directions both domestically and in their approach to international affairs.
Among the steps these leaders need to take domestically, Sharifov argues is the conclusion of a new federal treaty, the elimination of the ethnic basis of federal units while reducing the number of the federal structures, and the provision of a clear definition of the competence of all levels of the state.
Internationally, he says, Moscow must “distance itself from the political elites in post-Soviet republics who are inclined toward authoritarianism,” focus on improving the standard of human life, create firm ties “with the civil societies of the post-Soviet republics, and create its own analogues to the Euroregions with the CIS countries.
Sharifov does not hold out much hope that anyone in Moscow will take these steps anytime soon, but he suggests that if the leadership does not take them, the power vertical won’t save the country and Russia will fall further and further behind the rest of the world which is moving toward federalism and democracy domestically and internationally.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Japanese Nuclear Disaster to Have Chernobyl-Like Consequences, Nikitin Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 21 – Responding to claims by a former Russian nuclear power minister that only the telephone is a safer technology than nuclear power plants, Aleksandr Nikitin of the Bellona Ecological Defense Center says that the Japanese nuclear disaster is certain to have Chernobyl-like consequences.
On the one hand, those with financial interests in the construction and operation of such plants will continue to deny the dangers they represent, the longtime environmental activist says. And on the other, the people living near such plants will in the case of accidents suffer in ways that will be hard to count.
Last week, Ekho Moskvy featured an interview with Yevgeny Adamov, former Russian nuclear power minister (www.echo.msk.ru/programs/klinch/757462-echo). His claims about the safety of this industry were so hyperbolic that the Bellona organization asked Aleksandr Nikitin to comment on them (www.bellona.ru/articles_ru/articles_2011/Nikitin-Adamov).
The former nuclear power minister asserted that “of all technical objects from the point of view of life of people and harm for health, the least harm comes from nuclear energy. Only the telephone is more secure,” a view that Nikitin dismissed as completely false both when accidents occur and especially long afterwards.
Harm from nuclear accidents, Nikitin said, involves “not only the number of dead and suffering at the time when incidents occur but also the influence these incidents will have on future generations of people and on the natural environment.” Chernobyl is still having a negative impact on both, and analysts have no way of measuring this in advance.
Nikitin also dismissed Adamov’s assertion that the incident in Japan shows that “atomic energy is the most secure” and that “not one individual” will lose his life now or in the future as a result of the accident. That is simply not the case, Nikitin countered, noting that the radiation will remain in the area for many decades harming people and the environment.
And Nikitin said that Adamov’s arguments about the increasing number of technical means to protect against nuclear accidents in fact undercut themselves. “With the growing number of technical means guaranteeing security,” the Bellona expert continues, “the reliability of the system as a whole falls” because it depends on each and every one of them.
Nikitin also dismisses Adamov’s arguments that nuclear power will be demanded by countries “because it is more secure than other technologies and more ecological than they.” That is not the case, and the former Soviet naval captain turned ecological investigator provides examples.
And the Bellona expert notes the recent decisions of Germany, China and “even Nicaragua” to use other forms of energy. More are likely to follow, he says, because the Japanese events will represent a shock to the atomic power industry equal to that which occurred after Chernobyl.
But however that may be, Moscow is continuing to promote the exploitation and building of atomic energy plants not only insider the Russian Federation but in Turkey and Belarus. As Bellona’s Andrey Ozharovsky notes, “the powers that be in Russia are ignoring the lessons of the catastrophe” in Japan because there is so much profit to be made.
Indeed, Orzharovsky says, it appears that the current Russian leaders will “recognize the danger of atomic energy” only if there is an accident within the Russian Federation, a tragedy that their own blind self-confidence in this form of power tragically makes more rather than less likely (www.bellona.ru/articles_ru/articles_2011/Putin-Medvedev-Lobby).
Staunton, March 21 – Responding to claims by a former Russian nuclear power minister that only the telephone is a safer technology than nuclear power plants, Aleksandr Nikitin of the Bellona Ecological Defense Center says that the Japanese nuclear disaster is certain to have Chernobyl-like consequences.
On the one hand, those with financial interests in the construction and operation of such plants will continue to deny the dangers they represent, the longtime environmental activist says. And on the other, the people living near such plants will in the case of accidents suffer in ways that will be hard to count.
Last week, Ekho Moskvy featured an interview with Yevgeny Adamov, former Russian nuclear power minister (www.echo.msk.ru/programs/klinch/757462-echo). His claims about the safety of this industry were so hyperbolic that the Bellona organization asked Aleksandr Nikitin to comment on them (www.bellona.ru/articles_ru/articles_2011/Nikitin-Adamov).
The former nuclear power minister asserted that “of all technical objects from the point of view of life of people and harm for health, the least harm comes from nuclear energy. Only the telephone is more secure,” a view that Nikitin dismissed as completely false both when accidents occur and especially long afterwards.
Harm from nuclear accidents, Nikitin said, involves “not only the number of dead and suffering at the time when incidents occur but also the influence these incidents will have on future generations of people and on the natural environment.” Chernobyl is still having a negative impact on both, and analysts have no way of measuring this in advance.
Nikitin also dismissed Adamov’s assertion that the incident in Japan shows that “atomic energy is the most secure” and that “not one individual” will lose his life now or in the future as a result of the accident. That is simply not the case, Nikitin countered, noting that the radiation will remain in the area for many decades harming people and the environment.
And Nikitin said that Adamov’s arguments about the increasing number of technical means to protect against nuclear accidents in fact undercut themselves. “With the growing number of technical means guaranteeing security,” the Bellona expert continues, “the reliability of the system as a whole falls” because it depends on each and every one of them.
Nikitin also dismisses Adamov’s arguments that nuclear power will be demanded by countries “because it is more secure than other technologies and more ecological than they.” That is not the case, and the former Soviet naval captain turned ecological investigator provides examples.
And the Bellona expert notes the recent decisions of Germany, China and “even Nicaragua” to use other forms of energy. More are likely to follow, he says, because the Japanese events will represent a shock to the atomic power industry equal to that which occurred after Chernobyl.
But however that may be, Moscow is continuing to promote the exploitation and building of atomic energy plants not only insider the Russian Federation but in Turkey and Belarus. As Bellona’s Andrey Ozharovsky notes, “the powers that be in Russia are ignoring the lessons of the catastrophe” in Japan because there is so much profit to be made.
Indeed, Orzharovsky says, it appears that the current Russian leaders will “recognize the danger of atomic energy” only if there is an accident within the Russian Federation, a tragedy that their own blind self-confidence in this form of power tragically makes more rather than less likely (www.bellona.ru/articles_ru/articles_2011/Putin-Medvedev-Lobby).
Window on Eurasia: National Districts of Russian North, Born in Violence, Now Face a Sad End, Local Writer Suggests
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 21 – Moscow’s drive to amalgamate the autonomous districts that some of the numerically small peoples of the Russian North have has prompted one writer there to recall that these peoples actively and violently resisted Soviet ethnic engineering in the 1920s and 1930s, an implicit warning that at least some of them might mount a similar resistance now.
Writing in ”Nyar”yana vynder,” a newspaper in the Nenets Autonomous District, Irina Khanzerova notes that Yamalo-Nenets and Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous districts last year marked their 80th anniversaries, often with tears because “no one knows” whether they will have the chance to celebrate any future ones (nvinder.ru/?t=sm&d=11&m=0003&y=2011&n=9).
And precisely because of these doubts about the future, she writes, people are again reflecting “about the past and -- what is the main thing -- the future of the Northern autonomies” as these small and isolated communities seek to answer the question “what is the dawning day preparing for us?”
Describing her article as being about “a path from the past into the past,” Khanzerova notes at after 1917, the Soviet authorities created national districts in order to “ease the task of administration” by a profess of divide and rule and thus assist the communists in their efforts to do away with the traditional way of life of the peoples of the North.
But this “process of ‘dividing up,’” the Nenets journalist continues, “did not take place without resistance despite what we are told. Across the territories of the numerically small peoples broke out a wave of uprisings,” as the various peoples attempted to defend their way of life against the outsiders.
Consequently, Khanzerova argues, “no one today has the right to assert that the establishment of national districts in the near Arctic tundra took place quietly and happily and that the peoples living on the borderlands of a great state only awaited the coming of the new power.” Instead, “the new ‘happy autonomy’ was built on the bones of our grandfathers.”
She surveys the history of resistance in four of these districts: the Khanty-Mansiisk AO which was created in 1930 and still exists, the Evenk AO which was created in 1932 and disbanded in 2007, the Dolgan-Nenets AO which existed from 1931 to 2007, and the Chukotka AO which was established in 1930 but faces an uncertain future.
In the Khanty and Mansi areas, the population, who were earlier called Ostyaks, did not accept Soviet power, and the Mansi writer Yeremey Aypin notes that “in the folklore of the Siberian peoples in the 1920s appeared many legends and stories celebrating the former taiga life” as “better and freer” than the one the Soviets imposed.
In 1934, Khanzerova recounts, the Ob Khanty refused to meet their labor norms. Their children were seized and confined in Soviet orphanages, and many disappeared into the taiga. But in one district town, the NKVD surrounded and shot “approximately 300 people,” apparently a small fraction of the total number of executions there.
Soviet efforts to create an Event district took almost a decade because of local resistance. After Moscow called for that, a group of 60 Evenks seized the port of Ayan, thereby acquiring “a large quantity” of arms. And they were forced out only when the GPU dispatched one of its most notorious punitive detachments.
In 1932, a rising took place in Chumikan, After its defeat and in protest against Soviet efforts to regulate their lives, a group of Evenks left the RSFSR for China. Those who remained were subsequently shot as Chinese “spies.” Today, Khanzerova notes, “there are some 30,000 Evenks” in the Chinese district of Hingan.
When Soviet power arrived in the Taymyr, it immediately set about creating the GULAG. After an ethnographer talked about the shamans as “brakes” on the development of the Soviet system, “the ‘builders of a new world’ arrested all shamans and their assistance” and had them shot. Later 500 of their supporters were sent into the GULAG as punishment.
Chukotka, because of its enormous size and small population, was not subjected to full Sovietization until somewhat later. As a result, resistance took place not so much in the 1920s as in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1949, for example, Khanzerova writes, there was an uprising among the Chukchi but it was quickly suppressed.
To prevent a repetition, the Soviets carried out another form of ethnic engineering: they introduced detachments of Ukrainians, Jews, Belarusians and ethnic Russians from Novgorod and Pskov oblasts to overwhelm the local population, reducing it to a minority on its own land from time immemorial.
Thus, Khanzerova concludes, “nowhere in the northern expanses of Russia did the establishment of autonomous national districts take place peacefully and without blood.” Instead, that experiment organized by Moscow cost these peoples dearly. Now that Moscow is making new plans, few expect things to be different.
“Just how long the last of the Mohicans -- the Nenets AO, the Yamano-Nenets AO, the Khanty-Mansiisk AO, and the Chukotka AO -- will remain is something that today only the supreme power can say,” the Nenets writer says. “And its position [on this question] unfortunately is well known to us.”
Staunton, March 21 – Moscow’s drive to amalgamate the autonomous districts that some of the numerically small peoples of the Russian North have has prompted one writer there to recall that these peoples actively and violently resisted Soviet ethnic engineering in the 1920s and 1930s, an implicit warning that at least some of them might mount a similar resistance now.
Writing in ”Nyar”yana vynder,” a newspaper in the Nenets Autonomous District, Irina Khanzerova notes that Yamalo-Nenets and Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous districts last year marked their 80th anniversaries, often with tears because “no one knows” whether they will have the chance to celebrate any future ones (nvinder.ru/?t=sm&d=11&m=0003&y=2011&n=9).
And precisely because of these doubts about the future, she writes, people are again reflecting “about the past and -- what is the main thing -- the future of the Northern autonomies” as these small and isolated communities seek to answer the question “what is the dawning day preparing for us?”
Describing her article as being about “a path from the past into the past,” Khanzerova notes at after 1917, the Soviet authorities created national districts in order to “ease the task of administration” by a profess of divide and rule and thus assist the communists in their efforts to do away with the traditional way of life of the peoples of the North.
But this “process of ‘dividing up,’” the Nenets journalist continues, “did not take place without resistance despite what we are told. Across the territories of the numerically small peoples broke out a wave of uprisings,” as the various peoples attempted to defend their way of life against the outsiders.
Consequently, Khanzerova argues, “no one today has the right to assert that the establishment of national districts in the near Arctic tundra took place quietly and happily and that the peoples living on the borderlands of a great state only awaited the coming of the new power.” Instead, “the new ‘happy autonomy’ was built on the bones of our grandfathers.”
She surveys the history of resistance in four of these districts: the Khanty-Mansiisk AO which was created in 1930 and still exists, the Evenk AO which was created in 1932 and disbanded in 2007, the Dolgan-Nenets AO which existed from 1931 to 2007, and the Chukotka AO which was established in 1930 but faces an uncertain future.
In the Khanty and Mansi areas, the population, who were earlier called Ostyaks, did not accept Soviet power, and the Mansi writer Yeremey Aypin notes that “in the folklore of the Siberian peoples in the 1920s appeared many legends and stories celebrating the former taiga life” as “better and freer” than the one the Soviets imposed.
In 1934, Khanzerova recounts, the Ob Khanty refused to meet their labor norms. Their children were seized and confined in Soviet orphanages, and many disappeared into the taiga. But in one district town, the NKVD surrounded and shot “approximately 300 people,” apparently a small fraction of the total number of executions there.
Soviet efforts to create an Event district took almost a decade because of local resistance. After Moscow called for that, a group of 60 Evenks seized the port of Ayan, thereby acquiring “a large quantity” of arms. And they were forced out only when the GPU dispatched one of its most notorious punitive detachments.
In 1932, a rising took place in Chumikan, After its defeat and in protest against Soviet efforts to regulate their lives, a group of Evenks left the RSFSR for China. Those who remained were subsequently shot as Chinese “spies.” Today, Khanzerova notes, “there are some 30,000 Evenks” in the Chinese district of Hingan.
When Soviet power arrived in the Taymyr, it immediately set about creating the GULAG. After an ethnographer talked about the shamans as “brakes” on the development of the Soviet system, “the ‘builders of a new world’ arrested all shamans and their assistance” and had them shot. Later 500 of their supporters were sent into the GULAG as punishment.
Chukotka, because of its enormous size and small population, was not subjected to full Sovietization until somewhat later. As a result, resistance took place not so much in the 1920s as in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1949, for example, Khanzerova writes, there was an uprising among the Chukchi but it was quickly suppressed.
To prevent a repetition, the Soviets carried out another form of ethnic engineering: they introduced detachments of Ukrainians, Jews, Belarusians and ethnic Russians from Novgorod and Pskov oblasts to overwhelm the local population, reducing it to a minority on its own land from time immemorial.
Thus, Khanzerova concludes, “nowhere in the northern expanses of Russia did the establishment of autonomous national districts take place peacefully and without blood.” Instead, that experiment organized by Moscow cost these peoples dearly. Now that Moscow is making new plans, few expect things to be different.
“Just how long the last of the Mohicans -- the Nenets AO, the Yamano-Nenets AO, the Khanty-Mansiisk AO, and the Chukotka AO -- will remain is something that today only the supreme power can say,” the Nenets writer says. “And its position [on this question] unfortunately is well known to us.”
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