Paul Goble
Fairfax, March 30 – Moscow prosecutors have refused a call by Russian human rights activists to ban as extremist the notorious anti-Semitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a work that inspired Adolf Hitler and that now is attracting a large audience in Russia, a country that “is proud it defeated fascism.”
Responding to a call by the For Human Rights Movement for banning this openly anti-Semitic work, the prosecutors explained their decision not to do so by referring to a “psycho-linguistic” analysis conducted by the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (www.vestnikcivitas.ru/pbls/1354).
According to the prosecutors, the Institute’s analysis concluded that “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” “has critical historical-educaitonal and political-enlightenment importance. Information about calls to action against other nationalities and religious groups is lacking in the book.”
In reporting what he called “this shameful event for Russia,” Vadim Belotserkovsky said that the decision of the prosecutors not to find this forgery extremist “testifies to the success” of organized fascism in Russia and especially to the continuing impact on official thinking of the December 11 Manezh Square protests.
“For the first time in the history of [Russia],” he writes, “skinheads at the walls of the Kremlin and alongside the grave of the unknown soldier should ‘Zieg Heil,’ gave Nazi solutes and beat passersby who appeared to be ‘non-Russian types.’ From 5,000 to 10,000 young fascists assembled on that day in the Manezh Square.”
Belotserkovsky focuses his essay on when and why what he calls “organized fascism” emerged in Russia. He dates the emergence of this phenomenon to late 1981 when the Soviet authorities fearful that the ideas of cooperative socialism being put forward by the Polish Solidarity movement might spread to the Soviet Union and undermine their power.
On November 18th of that year, KGB head Yury Andropov who would soon succeed Leonid Brezhnev as CPSU leader gave an interview to the BBC in which he said thzat “deeply alien to us is this treatment of self-administration which draws toward anarcho-syndicalism, to the splitting apart of society into independent and competing corporations, toward democracy without discipline, to an understanding of rights without responsibilities.”
The Soviet media did not publish this interview or provide any reliable information on what Solidarity wanted. Instead, its outlets talked about Solidarity as a conspiracy of the CIA and the Zionists and sought to divide Solidarity by promoting the Grunwald Group which called for a truly Polish approach.
At approximately the same time, the Pamyat’ Patriotic Society was set up in Russia which spoke out against the role of Jews in the USSR. In all likelihood, Belotserkovsky says, both the Grunwald Group and Pamyat were the offspring of ideas hatched in the CPSU Central Committee apparatus.
After Solidarity was suppressed, Pamyat went into a period of quiescence but “in this way in 1981 in Soviet Russia was established the first fascist organization” in the USSR. And it continued to be kept as a possible ally of the powers in the event that a serious working class movement should emerge and spark a revolution in Russia.
“But alas,” Belotserkovsky says, “such a revolution did not take place in Russia.” Worse, the leader of post-Soviet Russia was a member of the old nomenklatura, Boris Yeltsin. And consequently, it is not surprising that “already being the head of Moscow, [Yeltsin] invided to the Moscow City Soviet the leaders of Pamyat.
As Yeltsin’s supporters note, the future president condemned the Pamyat people for their “anti-party slogans.” But Belotserkovsky says, Yeltsin did not say anything about their “anti-Semitic slogans.” He subsequently made use of Pamyat against his opponents and allowed or sponsored the emergence of the even more radical group, Russian National Unity (RNE).
Yeltsin’s war against Chechnya, Belotserkovsky continues, by its cruelty and viciousness trained an entire generation of young men who were willing to listen to fascist sloganeering and in some cases to engage in fascist-style racist violence and murder. And not surprisingly, Pamyat figured in these organizations and was on the Manezh Square.
Pamyat, Russia’s first fascist organization, Belotserkovsky says, was created to oppose Polish solidarist ideas. Now, it is being employed by the powers that be because of their fears that Russia is withering away because of falling population. But the powers will learn that “fascism will not help them” in this area.
Instead, its appearance reflects “the agony” that Russia has already entered into and intensifies that development, trends that themselves are the product of “the fear of the powers before progress,” just as the fear of social progress in Western Europe led to the rise of fascism 90 years ago. Europe has moved on, but “Russia is marching in the same place.”
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Puts Kozak in Charge of Nationality Policy While Keeping Him as Overseer of Sochi Olympics
Paul Goble
Fairfax, March 30 – The Russian government has put Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak in charge of the conduct of nationality policy in addition to his responsibilities for overseeing the preparation of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, a combination that highlights Moscow’s growing concerns about Circassian criticism of this venue.
In a commentary on Politcom.ru yesterday, Roksana Burntaseva argues that Kozak is well-qualified to oversee nationality policy through a state commission but that he may be most useful to Moscow in the context of what many are now calling “the Circassian question” regarding the Olympiad in Sochi (www.politcom.ru/11672.html).
“Several Circassian organizations have accused the federal powers that be and the organizers of the Olympiad of ignoring the historic possession of the lands of Greater Sochi by Circassian tribes,” populations who were expelled from the Russian Empire in 1864 with so much many lives lost that some have labeled that event a genocide.
With Kozak’s new position, he can “if this will be necessary” serve as “a counter-argument for the International Olympic Committee and other interested sides” should it prove to be the case that “the conflict around the Circassian question will receive further development.” Indeed, Kozak’s new post will thus have “positive” results “from a political point of view.”
That is all the more likely to be the most important reason behind his appointment given that “it is obvious that the appointment of a single individual even someone with experience of working with national minorities will hardly be able to help resolve ‘the nationality question’ in Russia to a significant degree.”
Such an appointment became a near certainty, Moscow media outlets say, after President Dmitry Medvedev at a recent State Council meeting rejected calls for restoring a Ministry for Nationality Affairs such as existed between 1994 and 2001 but agreed that there was a need to have someone coordinate policy in this area (vz.ru/politics/2011/3/28/479327.html).
Kozak has great experience in this area not only as a result of his earlier work in the Presidential Administration on local and regional affairs but also because of his service between 2004 and 2007 as Presidential plenipotentiary for the Southern Federal District which at that time included all of the troubled North Caucasus republics.
Valery Tishkov, who served as nationalities minister in the 1990s before Vladimir Putin disbanded the ministry and transferred its functions to the interior ministry, the foreign ministry, and the ministry of economic development, told “Vzglyad” that Kozak’s success will “depend” on who will serve on the nationalities commission he will oversee.
That is all the more so, Tishkov continued, because Kozak, like other vice premiers, is overwhelmed with work and thus will have to rely heavily on the commission and its staff if he is to be effective. If the commission consists of serious people, Tishkov suggested, the prospects for real progress exist. If not, then it is likely that little will be accomplished.
Fairfax, March 30 – The Russian government has put Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak in charge of the conduct of nationality policy in addition to his responsibilities for overseeing the preparation of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, a combination that highlights Moscow’s growing concerns about Circassian criticism of this venue.
In a commentary on Politcom.ru yesterday, Roksana Burntaseva argues that Kozak is well-qualified to oversee nationality policy through a state commission but that he may be most useful to Moscow in the context of what many are now calling “the Circassian question” regarding the Olympiad in Sochi (www.politcom.ru/11672.html).
“Several Circassian organizations have accused the federal powers that be and the organizers of the Olympiad of ignoring the historic possession of the lands of Greater Sochi by Circassian tribes,” populations who were expelled from the Russian Empire in 1864 with so much many lives lost that some have labeled that event a genocide.
With Kozak’s new position, he can “if this will be necessary” serve as “a counter-argument for the International Olympic Committee and other interested sides” should it prove to be the case that “the conflict around the Circassian question will receive further development.” Indeed, Kozak’s new post will thus have “positive” results “from a political point of view.”
That is all the more likely to be the most important reason behind his appointment given that “it is obvious that the appointment of a single individual even someone with experience of working with national minorities will hardly be able to help resolve ‘the nationality question’ in Russia to a significant degree.”
Such an appointment became a near certainty, Moscow media outlets say, after President Dmitry Medvedev at a recent State Council meeting rejected calls for restoring a Ministry for Nationality Affairs such as existed between 1994 and 2001 but agreed that there was a need to have someone coordinate policy in this area (vz.ru/politics/2011/3/28/479327.html).
Kozak has great experience in this area not only as a result of his earlier work in the Presidential Administration on local and regional affairs but also because of his service between 2004 and 2007 as Presidential plenipotentiary for the Southern Federal District which at that time included all of the troubled North Caucasus republics.
Valery Tishkov, who served as nationalities minister in the 1990s before Vladimir Putin disbanded the ministry and transferred its functions to the interior ministry, the foreign ministry, and the ministry of economic development, told “Vzglyad” that Kozak’s success will “depend” on who will serve on the nationalities commission he will oversee.
That is all the more so, Tishkov continued, because Kozak, like other vice premiers, is overwhelmed with work and thus will have to rely heavily on the commission and its staff if he is to be effective. If the commission consists of serious people, Tishkov suggested, the prospects for real progress exist. If not, then it is likely that little will be accomplished.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Planning to Abolish Non-Russian Republics, Pavlova Says
Paul Goble
Fairfax, March 30 – Under the cover of the international effort against Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, the leaders of the ruling United Russia Party are planning to abolish the non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation and to create a unitary state far more severe in its constraints than even the one Stalin established in the USSR, according to Irina Pavlova.
But this effort which is explicitly intended to prevent the disintegration of the Russian Federation, the Grani.ru commentator continues, will put in place a delayed action political “mine” even more powerful and dangerous than the one that Stalin put in place and that led to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 (www.grani.ru/opinion/m.187367.html).
And consequently, unless the security services maintain their current all-powerful position, she argues, the country is likely not only to disintegrate at some point in the future but to do so not in a peaceful manner as was the case with the USSR but rather accompanied by a violent “civil war.”
That risk will undoubtedly be invoked by the security agencies and their political supporters as yet another reason why the regime cannot afford to loosen up or liberalize in any way, but the policies that will flow from that argument will have negative political and economic consequences for the Russian population even before the entire system ultimately collapses.
“It is now already clear,” Pavlova begins, “that the military operation of the Western coalition forces against Libyan dictator Qaddafi will have tragic consequences for Russian liberalism and democracy” and that Moscow will now seek “further centralization and popular subordination in the name of the greatness of power and defense against a foreign enemy.”
And “all this is taking place,” the Grani-ru commentator suggests, “under noise about differences in the tandem, about the reformation of the Right Task Party, and about expert reports concerning the democratization of the Russian political system. And under the sound of public approval.,
At the beginning of March, she points out, Abudl-Khakim Sultygov, United Russia’s coordinator for nationality policy, said in an interview (svpressa.ru/society/article/39660) what he and other United Russia people had three years earlier outlined in a document posted on the Kreml.org portal (http://www.kreml.org/opinions/164932766).
According to Sultygov, Russia needs to be “a unitary state,” a notion that politicians like Vladimir Zhirinovsky have long promoted. But “in this case, this idea is being offered by “a functionary of the party of power, responsible in its leadership for nationality policy,” and thus carried far more weight.
Sultygov suggested, Pavlova recalls, that the non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation should “thinkabout giving up their republic status,’since “any discussion about doing away with national republics fromabove” would be viewed as “provocative” or worse. The only way it could work, Sultygov argued, is thus “from below.”
An even last August points the way. On August 12, 2010, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov declared that “in a single state there must be only one president, and in the subjects, the first persons could be called the heads of the republics” or something else, an idea that has now become a Russian law.
“The ideological predecessor of Mr.Sultygov,” Pavlova continues, “is Comrade Stalin who is respected by the [current] Russian elite. “Stalin’s project of unifying the Soviet republics” had them becoming autonomies within the Russian Federation rather than a union of republics, “as Lenin had insisted.”
“As a result of the political and personal clashes of 1922-1923, Stalin formally agreed with Lenin’s criticizes and replaced the Russian Federation with the Soviet Union, but the essence [of Stalin’s ideas] remained unchanged.” As a result, the Soviet Union “was not a federation … but a unitary state formation, albeit with the formal right of republics to separate.”
“Hoping to prevent the scenario of the disintegration of the Soviet Union fromcoming true in contemporary Russia,” Pavlova argues, “Sultygov [in fact] goes further than Stalin. He proposes that he republics refuse even formal autonomous status and be considered only as territorial units of a single state, the Russian Federation.”
To that end and fearful of a repetition of the Manezh Square events, Sultygov also copies Stalin in the way he proceeds by offering extraordinary praise to the [ethnic] Russian people. He says that “Russia is the Russian Republic and the Constitution of the country is the [ethnic] Russian Constitution.”
(On the APN.ru site this week, there is a remarkable survey of Stalin’s and the Soviet elite’s development of the idea of ethnic Russian supremacy in a nominally multi-ethnic class-based state. See www.apn.ru/publications/article23929.htm.)
In sum, Pavlova writes, “if Stalin proclaimed the [ethnic] Russian people the synonym of the Soviet … then today the [ethnic] Russian people is proclaimed the synonym of the [non-ethnic] Russian people.”
Sultygov, the Grani commentator continues, “has presented to society a model of Russia of the not distance future, a unitary state more severe than the Soviet Union.” Creation of such a state “in order to prevent its disintegration will inevitably require fromt eh current power elite still more centralization.”
One of the consequences of this, Pavlova says, is that “real inter-ethnic problems which exist in the country will be driven into the underground.” And in response to that, Moscow will make even more sweeping the terms of the anti-extremist article in the Russian legal code and play up the role of the [ethnic] Russian nation still further.
Clearly, Sultygov’s beau ideal of state construction is what Ramzan Kadyrov has achieved in Chechnya. “He is certain,” Pavlova writes, “that abroad, present-day Chechnya is seen as ‘a Russian miracle,” thus repeating some of the arguments commentator Yulia Latynina has made in this regard.
Pavlova concludes by recalling that at the dawn of the Soviet period, with a powerful party apparatus already in place, “Stalin laid a delayed action mine [under his system,] a mine which exploded in 1991” when the Soviet Union “fell apart into 15 independent countries” in what was a “relatively peaceful” way and “strictly according to their [Soviet] borders.”
The current leadership in Moscow with this policy is burying “an even more powerful mine” under the political system. “If the power vertical of the security services disappears ... the consequence will be a large-scale civil war.” And consequently, those who are taking these steps clearly believe that they will be in power “forever.”
Fairfax, March 30 – Under the cover of the international effort against Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, the leaders of the ruling United Russia Party are planning to abolish the non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation and to create a unitary state far more severe in its constraints than even the one Stalin established in the USSR, according to Irina Pavlova.
But this effort which is explicitly intended to prevent the disintegration of the Russian Federation, the Grani.ru commentator continues, will put in place a delayed action political “mine” even more powerful and dangerous than the one that Stalin put in place and that led to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 (www.grani.ru/opinion/m.187367.html).
And consequently, unless the security services maintain their current all-powerful position, she argues, the country is likely not only to disintegrate at some point in the future but to do so not in a peaceful manner as was the case with the USSR but rather accompanied by a violent “civil war.”
That risk will undoubtedly be invoked by the security agencies and their political supporters as yet another reason why the regime cannot afford to loosen up or liberalize in any way, but the policies that will flow from that argument will have negative political and economic consequences for the Russian population even before the entire system ultimately collapses.
“It is now already clear,” Pavlova begins, “that the military operation of the Western coalition forces against Libyan dictator Qaddafi will have tragic consequences for Russian liberalism and democracy” and that Moscow will now seek “further centralization and popular subordination in the name of the greatness of power and defense against a foreign enemy.”
And “all this is taking place,” the Grani-ru commentator suggests, “under noise about differences in the tandem, about the reformation of the Right Task Party, and about expert reports concerning the democratization of the Russian political system. And under the sound of public approval.,
At the beginning of March, she points out, Abudl-Khakim Sultygov, United Russia’s coordinator for nationality policy, said in an interview (svpressa.ru/society/article/39660) what he and other United Russia people had three years earlier outlined in a document posted on the Kreml.org portal (http://www.kreml.org/opinions/164932766).
According to Sultygov, Russia needs to be “a unitary state,” a notion that politicians like Vladimir Zhirinovsky have long promoted. But “in this case, this idea is being offered by “a functionary of the party of power, responsible in its leadership for nationality policy,” and thus carried far more weight.
Sultygov suggested, Pavlova recalls, that the non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation should “thinkabout giving up their republic status,’since “any discussion about doing away with national republics fromabove” would be viewed as “provocative” or worse. The only way it could work, Sultygov argued, is thus “from below.”
An even last August points the way. On August 12, 2010, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov declared that “in a single state there must be only one president, and in the subjects, the first persons could be called the heads of the republics” or something else, an idea that has now become a Russian law.
“The ideological predecessor of Mr.Sultygov,” Pavlova continues, “is Comrade Stalin who is respected by the [current] Russian elite. “Stalin’s project of unifying the Soviet republics” had them becoming autonomies within the Russian Federation rather than a union of republics, “as Lenin had insisted.”
“As a result of the political and personal clashes of 1922-1923, Stalin formally agreed with Lenin’s criticizes and replaced the Russian Federation with the Soviet Union, but the essence [of Stalin’s ideas] remained unchanged.” As a result, the Soviet Union “was not a federation … but a unitary state formation, albeit with the formal right of republics to separate.”
“Hoping to prevent the scenario of the disintegration of the Soviet Union fromcoming true in contemporary Russia,” Pavlova argues, “Sultygov [in fact] goes further than Stalin. He proposes that he republics refuse even formal autonomous status and be considered only as territorial units of a single state, the Russian Federation.”
To that end and fearful of a repetition of the Manezh Square events, Sultygov also copies Stalin in the way he proceeds by offering extraordinary praise to the [ethnic] Russian people. He says that “Russia is the Russian Republic and the Constitution of the country is the [ethnic] Russian Constitution.”
(On the APN.ru site this week, there is a remarkable survey of Stalin’s and the Soviet elite’s development of the idea of ethnic Russian supremacy in a nominally multi-ethnic class-based state. See www.apn.ru/publications/article23929.htm.)
In sum, Pavlova writes, “if Stalin proclaimed the [ethnic] Russian people the synonym of the Soviet … then today the [ethnic] Russian people is proclaimed the synonym of the [non-ethnic] Russian people.”
Sultygov, the Grani commentator continues, “has presented to society a model of Russia of the not distance future, a unitary state more severe than the Soviet Union.” Creation of such a state “in order to prevent its disintegration will inevitably require fromt eh current power elite still more centralization.”
One of the consequences of this, Pavlova says, is that “real inter-ethnic problems which exist in the country will be driven into the underground.” And in response to that, Moscow will make even more sweeping the terms of the anti-extremist article in the Russian legal code and play up the role of the [ethnic] Russian nation still further.
Clearly, Sultygov’s beau ideal of state construction is what Ramzan Kadyrov has achieved in Chechnya. “He is certain,” Pavlova writes, “that abroad, present-day Chechnya is seen as ‘a Russian miracle,” thus repeating some of the arguments commentator Yulia Latynina has made in this regard.
Pavlova concludes by recalling that at the dawn of the Soviet period, with a powerful party apparatus already in place, “Stalin laid a delayed action mine [under his system,] a mine which exploded in 1991” when the Soviet Union “fell apart into 15 independent countries” in what was a “relatively peaceful” way and “strictly according to their [Soviet] borders.”
The current leadership in Moscow with this policy is burying “an even more powerful mine” under the political system. “If the power vertical of the security services disappears ... the consequence will be a large-scale civil war.” And consequently, those who are taking these steps clearly believe that they will be in power “forever.”
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Preliminary Results from 2010 Census Highlight Russia’s Problems
Paul Goble
Fairfax, March 29 – Preliminary results from the 2010 Russian census highlight some of that country’s most serious underlying problems and thus appear likely to be the subject of intense discussion and debate not only among commentators but also in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.
The results released yesterday show a continuing decline in the total Russian population, a hollowing out of much of the country, an increase in the gender imbalance Russia has suffered since World War II, and, what is especially disturbing to many Russians, a shift in the ethnic balance of the population as a result of differential birthrates and immigration.
And those trends -- which some observers are already suggesting may be even worse than the official figures show -- help explain why some Russian leaders wanted to put off the census or at least reports of its findings until after the 2012 presidential elections lest the census data call attention to the failures of Moscow’s policies over the last decade.
Yesterday, “Rossiiskaya gazeta” published preliminary results for the 2010 Russian census (www.nr2.ru/rus/325729.html). Even this small sample has sparked widespread discussion as well as reignited suspicions in many quarters that this census like the one in 2002 was distorted by massive falsifications of various kinds.
The three most striking features of these data were first, the overall decline in the population, some 2.2 million or 1.6 percent, since 2002; the worsening of the gender imbalance in the country because of super-high mortality rates among working age men, and the relative decline in the ethnic Russian share of the population, even though ethnic data were not released.
On the one hand, as many commentators noted, non-Russian regions grew while predominantly ethnic Russian ones declined in size, further hollowing out the ethnic Russian core of the country and raising questions in the minds of some about the future of the Russian nation and hence of the Russian state.
And on the other, as other writers noted, the decline in the size of the total population would have been far greater had it not been compensated for by a massive influx of immigrants, few of whom have been ethnic Russians (in contrast to the situation in the 1990s) and many of whom are increasingly culturally and linguistically different from Russians.
Liberal opposition figure Boris Nemtsov was among those who pointed to all these things. He suggested in a comment to Novy region that “citizens of Russia are disappearing at a speed of about 500,000 a year. That is, the total loss [for the intercensal period was at least] five million” (www.nr2.ru/moskow/325874.html).
These population trends, Nemtsov said, “mean one thing:” neither the country nor the state “has a future.” What must be done, he said, is “to reorient resources awy from the special services and the enrichment [of the few] toward health care and a healthy way of life” and to stand the economic policy in the country in order to create a middle class.”
Making those changes requires a change in the country’s leadership, he said. “under the current regime, the withering away [of the nation and hence of Russia’s future] will continue.”
Coming from a different perspective, Moscow commentator Mikhail Delyagin agreed, although he put it somewhat differently. According to him, the withering away of Russia has been stopped at least in official statistics but only at the cost of a change in the ethnic composition of the country (forum-msk.org/material/economic/5842854.html).
According to Delyagin, increasingly social and economic conflicts may soon take the form in Russia “if not of national then of ethno-cultural” ones, and if that proves to be the case, he argued, “this will mark a colossal step toward the degradation and archaization of all of Russian society.”
Fairfax, March 29 – Preliminary results from the 2010 Russian census highlight some of that country’s most serious underlying problems and thus appear likely to be the subject of intense discussion and debate not only among commentators but also in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.
The results released yesterday show a continuing decline in the total Russian population, a hollowing out of much of the country, an increase in the gender imbalance Russia has suffered since World War II, and, what is especially disturbing to many Russians, a shift in the ethnic balance of the population as a result of differential birthrates and immigration.
And those trends -- which some observers are already suggesting may be even worse than the official figures show -- help explain why some Russian leaders wanted to put off the census or at least reports of its findings until after the 2012 presidential elections lest the census data call attention to the failures of Moscow’s policies over the last decade.
Yesterday, “Rossiiskaya gazeta” published preliminary results for the 2010 Russian census (www.nr2.ru/rus/325729.html). Even this small sample has sparked widespread discussion as well as reignited suspicions in many quarters that this census like the one in 2002 was distorted by massive falsifications of various kinds.
The three most striking features of these data were first, the overall decline in the population, some 2.2 million or 1.6 percent, since 2002; the worsening of the gender imbalance in the country because of super-high mortality rates among working age men, and the relative decline in the ethnic Russian share of the population, even though ethnic data were not released.
On the one hand, as many commentators noted, non-Russian regions grew while predominantly ethnic Russian ones declined in size, further hollowing out the ethnic Russian core of the country and raising questions in the minds of some about the future of the Russian nation and hence of the Russian state.
And on the other, as other writers noted, the decline in the size of the total population would have been far greater had it not been compensated for by a massive influx of immigrants, few of whom have been ethnic Russians (in contrast to the situation in the 1990s) and many of whom are increasingly culturally and linguistically different from Russians.
Liberal opposition figure Boris Nemtsov was among those who pointed to all these things. He suggested in a comment to Novy region that “citizens of Russia are disappearing at a speed of about 500,000 a year. That is, the total loss [for the intercensal period was at least] five million” (www.nr2.ru/moskow/325874.html).
These population trends, Nemtsov said, “mean one thing:” neither the country nor the state “has a future.” What must be done, he said, is “to reorient resources awy from the special services and the enrichment [of the few] toward health care and a healthy way of life” and to stand the economic policy in the country in order to create a middle class.”
Making those changes requires a change in the country’s leadership, he said. “under the current regime, the withering away [of the nation and hence of Russia’s future] will continue.”
Coming from a different perspective, Moscow commentator Mikhail Delyagin agreed, although he put it somewhat differently. According to him, the withering away of Russia has been stopped at least in official statistics but only at the cost of a change in the ethnic composition of the country (forum-msk.org/material/economic/5842854.html).
According to Delyagin, increasingly social and economic conflicts may soon take the form in Russia “if not of national then of ethno-cultural” ones, and if that proves to be the case, he argued, “this will mark a colossal step toward the degradation and archaization of all of Russian society.”
Window on Eurasia: Forty Percent of Tajiks Now Have Trouble Getting Safe Drinking Water
Paul Goble
Fairfax, March 29 – Just how serious water problems have become in post-Soviet Central Asia both because of longstanding trends and the current drought is underscored by a report that two out of every five of the residents of Tajikistan, one of only two countries in the region with a water surplus, are now facing difficulties in getting water that is safe to drink.
Moreover, officials at the Tajik state agency responsible for supplying water to the population told CA-News last week, the situation in that 7.5 million-strong republic is even worse in some rural districts, a development that is certain to lead to more outbreaks of disease and spark new political problems (www.centrasia.ru/news.php?st=1300778160).
“Despite an excess of water resources,” a Dushanbe official said, “a difficult situation has arisen in supplying drinking water to the population has developed,” one in which almost three out of every four residents is forced to rely on inadequate water distribution facilities or lack them altogether.
The greater part of the water distribution system in Tajikistan was built 40 to 60 years ago and has not been adequately maintained or updated. As a result, “more than 50 percent” of it is not in working order, with all but a tiny fraction of the remainder at risk of failing in the near future.
According to Tajik officials, the situation is especially bad in rural areas where a shortage of funds and “the liquidation of administrative structures which early were responsible” for maintaining the system has left no one in charge and created a situation where what water and sewage facilities there are “do not correspond to sanitary norms.”
“With the transition to mark relations,” one official says, “the budget for the construction of public works, including water systems, was sharply reduced.” As a result, planned construction was either cancelled or spread over a longer period of time. Now, to bring things up to standard would “require colossal means” and the assistance of foreign governments.
Since 2008, Dushanbe has been attempting to rectify the situation as part of a 12-year-program, but even if that program is successful, it will reduce the share of Tajiks who lack access to potable only from 40 percent to 20 percent, meaning that more than two million people there will still not have safe drinking water.
What makes this lack of potable water so striking is that in the glaciers and lakes of Tajikistan are more than 800 billion cubic meters of fresh water, the source of more than 55 percent of all the water resources of Central Asia, of which Tajikistan historically has taken only 15 percent of the total.
If Tajikistan is forced to take more out of this flow in order to deal with its own water crisis, that will have consequences for downstream countries like Uzbekistan with which Tajikistan does not have good relations even now. And thus water could become the cause of new conflicts, possibly involving the use of military force, between the two.
That water can play that role in international affairs is suggested by yet another report last week: Because of a serious drought, Beijing is now buying land abroad in order to ensure that its farmers will be able to feed the still-growing Chinese population, water-driven purchases that could spark additional conflicts as well (www.ng.ru/world/2011-03-22/1_china.html).
Fairfax, March 29 – Just how serious water problems have become in post-Soviet Central Asia both because of longstanding trends and the current drought is underscored by a report that two out of every five of the residents of Tajikistan, one of only two countries in the region with a water surplus, are now facing difficulties in getting water that is safe to drink.
Moreover, officials at the Tajik state agency responsible for supplying water to the population told CA-News last week, the situation in that 7.5 million-strong republic is even worse in some rural districts, a development that is certain to lead to more outbreaks of disease and spark new political problems (www.centrasia.ru/news.php?st=1300778160).
“Despite an excess of water resources,” a Dushanbe official said, “a difficult situation has arisen in supplying drinking water to the population has developed,” one in which almost three out of every four residents is forced to rely on inadequate water distribution facilities or lack them altogether.
The greater part of the water distribution system in Tajikistan was built 40 to 60 years ago and has not been adequately maintained or updated. As a result, “more than 50 percent” of it is not in working order, with all but a tiny fraction of the remainder at risk of failing in the near future.
According to Tajik officials, the situation is especially bad in rural areas where a shortage of funds and “the liquidation of administrative structures which early were responsible” for maintaining the system has left no one in charge and created a situation where what water and sewage facilities there are “do not correspond to sanitary norms.”
“With the transition to mark relations,” one official says, “the budget for the construction of public works, including water systems, was sharply reduced.” As a result, planned construction was either cancelled or spread over a longer period of time. Now, to bring things up to standard would “require colossal means” and the assistance of foreign governments.
Since 2008, Dushanbe has been attempting to rectify the situation as part of a 12-year-program, but even if that program is successful, it will reduce the share of Tajiks who lack access to potable only from 40 percent to 20 percent, meaning that more than two million people there will still not have safe drinking water.
What makes this lack of potable water so striking is that in the glaciers and lakes of Tajikistan are more than 800 billion cubic meters of fresh water, the source of more than 55 percent of all the water resources of Central Asia, of which Tajikistan historically has taken only 15 percent of the total.
If Tajikistan is forced to take more out of this flow in order to deal with its own water crisis, that will have consequences for downstream countries like Uzbekistan with which Tajikistan does not have good relations even now. And thus water could become the cause of new conflicts, possibly involving the use of military force, between the two.
That water can play that role in international affairs is suggested by yet another report last week: Because of a serious drought, Beijing is now buying land abroad in order to ensure that its farmers will be able to feed the still-growing Chinese population, water-driven purchases that could spark additional conflicts as well (www.ng.ru/world/2011-03-22/1_china.html).
Window on Eurasia: Ingush Now Trust Yevkurov Less than They Do Zyazikov, Poll Shows
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 29 – Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, a professional soldier with a reputation for incorruptibility, who many viewed as the savior of the North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia, is now trusted less by the population there than his discredited predecessor as Ingushetia head, Murat Zyazikov, according to an independent poll.
That survey, conducted by the independent “Dosh” journal, is the latest blow to the hopes of many in Moscow and the region that someone like Yevkurov could establish order there and puts additional pressure on the center to allow these republics to choose their own leaders rather than have them imposed from above (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/182925/).
Some 1500 residents of Nazran and other Ingushetia cities and villages were asked: “Whom do you trust more: Ruslan Aushev, Murat Zyazivok, or Yunus-Bek Yevkurov?” 81.8 percent of those responding named Aushev, 9.5 percent identified Zyazikov but “only 8.7 percent” said they trusted Yevkurov the most.
Israpil Shovkhalov, the editor of “Dosh,” said that what surprised him and his colleagues was “not the high level of trust for the first president Aushev. It has long been known that he is the most popular Ingush politicial. What was surprising was the sharp and almost crushing decline of trust to the present head of Ingushetia,” especially relative to the hated Zyazikov.
When Yevkurov replaced Zyazikov, Shovkhalov said, “his willingness to meet with the people, his accessibility and openness, his opposition to corruption in a literal sense delighted people,” especially in contrast to Zyazikov who was widely suspected of organizing the killing of some of his opponents.
“But how then could it happen,” the “Dosh” editor, asked, “that after less than half-way through the presidential term of the third leader of the youngest Russian republic, [the incumbent] has lost the trust of the majority of his [former] backers?”
Olga Allenova, a special correspondent for “Kommersant,” told Kavkaz-uzel.ru that the Ingushetians may have had too great expectations for Yevkurov and are now not surprisingly disappointed. He arrived as “the new, ‘Medvedev’ candidate and everyone thought well now he will put everything in order, deal with corruption” and everything else.
But many of those problems have been beyond his powers to correct. In addition, many in Ingushetia are furious at Yevkurov for “surrendering” the Prigorodny district to the Osetians, Allenova said, forgetting that he took that step under pressure from Moscow and in order to remove one of the neuralgic situations in the area.
According to the “Kommersant” journalist, however, Yevkurov’s chief failure and hence the explanation for his low rating lies elsewhere, in his inability to deal with corruption endemic to the republic. “But,” she writes, “corruption turned out to be stronger [than he] because the roots of Caucasian corruption are in Moscow and not in the Caucasus.”
According to Olga Bobrova of “Novaya gazeta,” Yevkurov initially benefitted from comparisons with his despised predecessor, but soon it because obvious that he could not end many of the same problems, including violence and kidnappings, that had brought opprobrium on Zyazikov’s head. And then the people turned against him.
Moreover, she added, Yevkurov turned out to be “not free from the vertical” of Vladimir Putin and therefore found out rather quickly that he could not fulfill the promises he made to the people if those promises ran against the interests of those above him in Moscow. That too sapped his authority.
In recent days, Yevkurov appears to be reducing his standing with the population still further. Four days ago, “Kommersant” reported that he had openly justified the use of force against a peaceful demonstration by the Ingush opposition, a statement that has cost him additional support (www.kommersant.ru/Doc-y/1607389).
Staunton, March 29 – Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, a professional soldier with a reputation for incorruptibility, who many viewed as the savior of the North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia, is now trusted less by the population there than his discredited predecessor as Ingushetia head, Murat Zyazikov, according to an independent poll.
That survey, conducted by the independent “Dosh” journal, is the latest blow to the hopes of many in Moscow and the region that someone like Yevkurov could establish order there and puts additional pressure on the center to allow these republics to choose their own leaders rather than have them imposed from above (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/182925/).
Some 1500 residents of Nazran and other Ingushetia cities and villages were asked: “Whom do you trust more: Ruslan Aushev, Murat Zyazivok, or Yunus-Bek Yevkurov?” 81.8 percent of those responding named Aushev, 9.5 percent identified Zyazikov but “only 8.7 percent” said they trusted Yevkurov the most.
Israpil Shovkhalov, the editor of “Dosh,” said that what surprised him and his colleagues was “not the high level of trust for the first president Aushev. It has long been known that he is the most popular Ingush politicial. What was surprising was the sharp and almost crushing decline of trust to the present head of Ingushetia,” especially relative to the hated Zyazikov.
When Yevkurov replaced Zyazikov, Shovkhalov said, “his willingness to meet with the people, his accessibility and openness, his opposition to corruption in a literal sense delighted people,” especially in contrast to Zyazikov who was widely suspected of organizing the killing of some of his opponents.
“But how then could it happen,” the “Dosh” editor, asked, “that after less than half-way through the presidential term of the third leader of the youngest Russian republic, [the incumbent] has lost the trust of the majority of his [former] backers?”
Olga Allenova, a special correspondent for “Kommersant,” told Kavkaz-uzel.ru that the Ingushetians may have had too great expectations for Yevkurov and are now not surprisingly disappointed. He arrived as “the new, ‘Medvedev’ candidate and everyone thought well now he will put everything in order, deal with corruption” and everything else.
But many of those problems have been beyond his powers to correct. In addition, many in Ingushetia are furious at Yevkurov for “surrendering” the Prigorodny district to the Osetians, Allenova said, forgetting that he took that step under pressure from Moscow and in order to remove one of the neuralgic situations in the area.
According to the “Kommersant” journalist, however, Yevkurov’s chief failure and hence the explanation for his low rating lies elsewhere, in his inability to deal with corruption endemic to the republic. “But,” she writes, “corruption turned out to be stronger [than he] because the roots of Caucasian corruption are in Moscow and not in the Caucasus.”
According to Olga Bobrova of “Novaya gazeta,” Yevkurov initially benefitted from comparisons with his despised predecessor, but soon it because obvious that he could not end many of the same problems, including violence and kidnappings, that had brought opprobrium on Zyazikov’s head. And then the people turned against him.
Moreover, she added, Yevkurov turned out to be “not free from the vertical” of Vladimir Putin and therefore found out rather quickly that he could not fulfill the promises he made to the people if those promises ran against the interests of those above him in Moscow. That too sapped his authority.
In recent days, Yevkurov appears to be reducing his standing with the population still further. Four days ago, “Kommersant” reported that he had openly justified the use of force against a peaceful demonstration by the Ingush opposition, a statement that has cost him additional support (www.kommersant.ru/Doc-y/1607389).
Monday, March 28, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Gainutdin Says Moscow Not Muslims to Blame for Islamophobia
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 28 – Ravil Gainutdin, the head of the Union of Muftis of Russia (SMR), says that “today, a much greater threat to the unity of [Russia] comes not from the Caucasus but out of Moscow where at the walls of the Kremlin, at the grave of the Unknown Soldier, thousands of young people under Nazi symbols shout ‘Down with the Caucasus!’”
Gainutdin’s charge, made in a speech to the All-Russian Muslim Conference on Thursday and in an interview with “Novyye izvestiya,” not only over overwhelmed his hopes to use this meeting to promote Muslim unity but also sparked a sharp rejoinder from Kremlin officials, thereby highlighting both divisions within Islam and between Muslims and Moscow.
In his speech, the SMRhead said that he wanted “with the help of Allah to develop a consolidated position of the Muslim community of Russia on the most serious problems of the development of our country,” problems that he said could only be solved by clearly facing up to them (www.muslim.ru/1/cont/33/35/2324.htm).
“The first and most essential threat for all the citizens of our country, not excluding the Muslims” Gainutdin began, “must be acknowledged to be the sharp intensification of xenophobia and chauvinism in Russian society,” and in particular, “the rapid growth of Islamophobia” among Russians.
This “ugly manifestion of intolerance,” the Muslim leader continued, has a long history and specific sources. To a large extent, he said, “the mass media” have played and are playing a negative role, “disseminating false information about Isdlam” and spreading “distrust and hatred among Russians of various nationalities and faiths.”
“Today, when we turn to many Russian media outlets,” Gainutdin said, “we are forced to cite the words of the Most High who said in the Koran ‘Why do you tell lies and conceal the truth when you have already known it?”
Related to this problem, the SMR leader argued, is the “unceasing” banning of “the best models of Muslim spiritual literature by provincial Russian courts.” Recently one of them banned the hadith of the Prophet, an action that shows the way in which anti-extremism legislation is now being used by Russian officials to attack Islam as such.
Other problems connected with this include “the proposals of a number of experts and religious activists” to prevent any graduate of foreign universities fromworking in Russia. This “absurd” idea is directed in the first instance against Muslims receiving training abroad but it will affect everyone – and to Russia’s detriment, Gainutdin said.
Many Russians want to blame Muslims and Islam for the rise in xenophobia, the Moscow mufti said, but this is completely wrong as recent events have shown. “After the bloody terrorist acts in Moscow and the events in the Manezh Square, our society has found itself between two fires,” which threaten to engulf it.
“On the one hand, terrorism and extremism, and on the other, neo-Nazism and chauvinism,” Gainutdin argued. And he concluded: “Today a much greater threat to the unity of the country comes not from the Caucasus but from Moscow,” all the more so because “Muslims are the first target of the terrorists both in the Caucasus and in Russian cities.”
To counter this situation, Gainutdin proposed improving ties with other faiths, ensuring the secular nature of the Russian state and preventing Islam from being politicized, and improving the management of and cooperation among Russia’s Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs),
Gainutdin expanded upon these arguments in an interview with Aleksandr Kolesnichenko of “Novyye izvestiya” (http://www.newizv.ru/razdel/2011-03-25/3/), an interview published to coincide with the Muslim Conference that the Moscow newspaper headlined “The Threat to the Unity of the Country Comes from Moscow.”
Asked why it is that “precisely in the Muslim republics of war a war is going on, one in which [some] are fighting for the creation of an Islamic khalifate,” the SMR leader said that it is not the case that “all who go into the mountains and conduct their anti-government activity under [this slogan].” Many, he said, do so because of the failings of the government itself.
“I was in the North Caucasus, I met with ordinary Muslims and Muslim leaders and I received a clear answer: none of them wants the distintegration of Russia. Russia is out common country, which grew not only from Kievan Rus but also fromt eh Golden Horde and the Imamate of Shamil, the free communities of the Caucasus and the Volga-Siberia khanates,” he said.
“Today,” Gainutdin said, “in the North Caucasus, our brothers and sisters want to live in a great strong sstate where the rights and freedoms of every citizen are respected.” Unfortunately, today that is threatened, not so much by the actions of the few who engage in terrorist acts but from the attitudes of Russians about Muslims.
Consequently, Gainutdin concluded, “a much greater threat to the unity of the country comes not from the Caucasus but from Moscow” itself.
Typically, when a Muslim leader in Russia makes a statement with which the authorities disagree, the latter leave it to people like Roman Silantyev, a specialist on Islam whose opposition to most Muslim leaders and close ties to the Moscow Patriarchate have made him notorious in some quarters, to answer.
But this time, the Kremlin clearly decided more was needed,and Aleksey Grishin, the chief advisor of the Presidential Administration, weighed in with a sharp attack on the argument Gainutdin had made, dismissing it as an effort to explain away the problems of Russia’s Muslim community (www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=dujour&div=374).
According to Grishin, “very often, particularly recently, individual Muslim leadcers try to justify their inactive and inability to solve basic problems of the umma by references to the supposed existence of Islamophobia” in Russian society and particularly among Russian officials.
“This theme is very convenient as well to the enemies of Russia beyond the borders of the Russian Federation,” the Presidential aide continued.
Grishin then pointed out that “the term ‘Islamophobia’ means not opposition to Islam, as many mistakenly use it, but rather fear before Islam.” But whatever “fear” Russians feel about Islam is the result of “bloody terrorist acts which “unfortunately [have taken place] under the green banners of Islam.”
The people who commimt them, of course, Grishin continued, “are not Muslims because they are criminally using Islam for their own purposes,” and it is against that misuse of religion that “we must direct the basic strike in the struggle with Islamophobia. People are afraid of Islam because of [that].”
It is completely inappropriate to charge the Russian state with Islamophobia, the Kremlin official said. “In what other country can one see a 70 times growth in the number of mosques over the last 20 years!” Or seen the growth in the number of Islamic educational institutions from zero to 95?
And much of this growth has taken place with the active support, including financial assistance, of the Russian state, Grishin said. But “how hav e Muslim religious public organizations responded? With legal nihilism. Despite numerous warnings, they are systematically failing to obey the laws of the Russian Federation.”
Moreover, “when the state begins to struggle for the observation of law, the theme of persecution of Muslims again arises, Grishin said (www.regions.ru/news/2347224/). What should be happening instead, he argued, is that Muslims should focus on their own problems rather than blaming everyone else.
Various nominally Muslim structures have been created with false documentation, Grishin said, including media outlets “which openly stir up national and religious hostility.” Muslims should focus on struggling with them. “There was a portal called Islam.ru which among the people everyone called Islam.vru [Islam Lies].”
Fortunately, after having been closed, it will reopen under new leadership and with new ideas, the Kremlin aide continued.
But in his most widely cited comment, Grishin noted that much of the money given by the state to Muslim organizations is being used “ineffectively” or even criminally. “We have reports about mosques purchasing toilets for 42,000 rubles (1400 US dollars).” The Kremlin aide said he would like to have a look at such facilities.
Staunton, March 28 – Ravil Gainutdin, the head of the Union of Muftis of Russia (SMR), says that “today, a much greater threat to the unity of [Russia] comes not from the Caucasus but out of Moscow where at the walls of the Kremlin, at the grave of the Unknown Soldier, thousands of young people under Nazi symbols shout ‘Down with the Caucasus!’”
Gainutdin’s charge, made in a speech to the All-Russian Muslim Conference on Thursday and in an interview with “Novyye izvestiya,” not only over overwhelmed his hopes to use this meeting to promote Muslim unity but also sparked a sharp rejoinder from Kremlin officials, thereby highlighting both divisions within Islam and between Muslims and Moscow.
In his speech, the SMRhead said that he wanted “with the help of Allah to develop a consolidated position of the Muslim community of Russia on the most serious problems of the development of our country,” problems that he said could only be solved by clearly facing up to them (www.muslim.ru/1/cont/33/35/2324.htm).
“The first and most essential threat for all the citizens of our country, not excluding the Muslims” Gainutdin began, “must be acknowledged to be the sharp intensification of xenophobia and chauvinism in Russian society,” and in particular, “the rapid growth of Islamophobia” among Russians.
This “ugly manifestion of intolerance,” the Muslim leader continued, has a long history and specific sources. To a large extent, he said, “the mass media” have played and are playing a negative role, “disseminating false information about Isdlam” and spreading “distrust and hatred among Russians of various nationalities and faiths.”
“Today, when we turn to many Russian media outlets,” Gainutdin said, “we are forced to cite the words of the Most High who said in the Koran ‘Why do you tell lies and conceal the truth when you have already known it?”
Related to this problem, the SMR leader argued, is the “unceasing” banning of “the best models of Muslim spiritual literature by provincial Russian courts.” Recently one of them banned the hadith of the Prophet, an action that shows the way in which anti-extremism legislation is now being used by Russian officials to attack Islam as such.
Other problems connected with this include “the proposals of a number of experts and religious activists” to prevent any graduate of foreign universities fromworking in Russia. This “absurd” idea is directed in the first instance against Muslims receiving training abroad but it will affect everyone – and to Russia’s detriment, Gainutdin said.
Many Russians want to blame Muslims and Islam for the rise in xenophobia, the Moscow mufti said, but this is completely wrong as recent events have shown. “After the bloody terrorist acts in Moscow and the events in the Manezh Square, our society has found itself between two fires,” which threaten to engulf it.
“On the one hand, terrorism and extremism, and on the other, neo-Nazism and chauvinism,” Gainutdin argued. And he concluded: “Today a much greater threat to the unity of the country comes not from the Caucasus but from Moscow,” all the more so because “Muslims are the first target of the terrorists both in the Caucasus and in Russian cities.”
To counter this situation, Gainutdin proposed improving ties with other faiths, ensuring the secular nature of the Russian state and preventing Islam from being politicized, and improving the management of and cooperation among Russia’s Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs),
Gainutdin expanded upon these arguments in an interview with Aleksandr Kolesnichenko of “Novyye izvestiya” (http://www.newizv.ru/razdel/2011-03-25/3/), an interview published to coincide with the Muslim Conference that the Moscow newspaper headlined “The Threat to the Unity of the Country Comes from Moscow.”
Asked why it is that “precisely in the Muslim republics of war a war is going on, one in which [some] are fighting for the creation of an Islamic khalifate,” the SMR leader said that it is not the case that “all who go into the mountains and conduct their anti-government activity under [this slogan].” Many, he said, do so because of the failings of the government itself.
“I was in the North Caucasus, I met with ordinary Muslims and Muslim leaders and I received a clear answer: none of them wants the distintegration of Russia. Russia is out common country, which grew not only from Kievan Rus but also fromt eh Golden Horde and the Imamate of Shamil, the free communities of the Caucasus and the Volga-Siberia khanates,” he said.
“Today,” Gainutdin said, “in the North Caucasus, our brothers and sisters want to live in a great strong sstate where the rights and freedoms of every citizen are respected.” Unfortunately, today that is threatened, not so much by the actions of the few who engage in terrorist acts but from the attitudes of Russians about Muslims.
Consequently, Gainutdin concluded, “a much greater threat to the unity of the country comes not from the Caucasus but from Moscow” itself.
Typically, when a Muslim leader in Russia makes a statement with which the authorities disagree, the latter leave it to people like Roman Silantyev, a specialist on Islam whose opposition to most Muslim leaders and close ties to the Moscow Patriarchate have made him notorious in some quarters, to answer.
But this time, the Kremlin clearly decided more was needed,and Aleksey Grishin, the chief advisor of the Presidential Administration, weighed in with a sharp attack on the argument Gainutdin had made, dismissing it as an effort to explain away the problems of Russia’s Muslim community (www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=dujour&div=374).
According to Grishin, “very often, particularly recently, individual Muslim leadcers try to justify their inactive and inability to solve basic problems of the umma by references to the supposed existence of Islamophobia” in Russian society and particularly among Russian officials.
“This theme is very convenient as well to the enemies of Russia beyond the borders of the Russian Federation,” the Presidential aide continued.
Grishin then pointed out that “the term ‘Islamophobia’ means not opposition to Islam, as many mistakenly use it, but rather fear before Islam.” But whatever “fear” Russians feel about Islam is the result of “bloody terrorist acts which “unfortunately [have taken place] under the green banners of Islam.”
The people who commimt them, of course, Grishin continued, “are not Muslims because they are criminally using Islam for their own purposes,” and it is against that misuse of religion that “we must direct the basic strike in the struggle with Islamophobia. People are afraid of Islam because of [that].”
It is completely inappropriate to charge the Russian state with Islamophobia, the Kremlin official said. “In what other country can one see a 70 times growth in the number of mosques over the last 20 years!” Or seen the growth in the number of Islamic educational institutions from zero to 95?
And much of this growth has taken place with the active support, including financial assistance, of the Russian state, Grishin said. But “how hav e Muslim religious public organizations responded? With legal nihilism. Despite numerous warnings, they are systematically failing to obey the laws of the Russian Federation.”
Moreover, “when the state begins to struggle for the observation of law, the theme of persecution of Muslims again arises, Grishin said (www.regions.ru/news/2347224/). What should be happening instead, he argued, is that Muslims should focus on their own problems rather than blaming everyone else.
Various nominally Muslim structures have been created with false documentation, Grishin said, including media outlets “which openly stir up national and religious hostility.” Muslims should focus on struggling with them. “There was a portal called Islam.ru which among the people everyone called Islam.vru [Islam Lies].”
Fortunately, after having been closed, it will reopen under new leadership and with new ideas, the Kremlin aide continued.
But in his most widely cited comment, Grishin noted that much of the money given by the state to Muslim organizations is being used “ineffectively” or even criminally. “We have reports about mosques purchasing toilets for 42,000 rubles (1400 US dollars).” The Kremlin aide said he would like to have a look at such facilities.
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