Paul Goble
Staunton, April 17 – Given the role of the Internet and social media in the spread of popular revolts in many countries, there has been a great deal of speculation about how these new media are developing in places like Chechnya, but most of the commentary on such issues has come from outsiders rather than direct participants.
The current issue of the Daghestani online newspaper, “Nastoyashcheye vremya,” provides a welcome exception with its publication of information supplied anonymously by a Chechen blogger about how the Internet with its blogs and social media is developing in his republic (gazeta-nv.ru/content/view/5875/109/).
The paper’s Bagdat Tumalayev who writes frequently about new media in the Caucasus but relatively seldom about developments in that sector in Chechnya reports that “a Chechen blogger who wishes to remain anonymous has decided to talk about the state of affairs with regard to the Internet in his native region.”
The Chechen blogger’s desire for anonymity, Tumalayev says, “is understandable even though today this region has become stable” because “it isn’t especially comfortable for anyone living in Chechnya itself to write about this openly.” But the Daghestani journalist continues, “judging [from his text], the Internet in Chechnya is developing in a not bad way!”
Moreover, he continues, conditions are being created for its future growth. Vaynakh-Telecon, the leading Internet provide in Grozny, has recently “significantly lowered [its] prices.” Now, Chechens who want to go online can do so at a speed of 1mb/second for only 1200 rubles (40 US dollars) a month.
Among the most popular sites in Chechnya are Chechen-republic.com, Checheninfor.ru, and Chechnyafree.ru, a project of the Golos Rossii radio station. A social network for Vaynakhs, waynahi.ru, has arisen and offers itself as “a national social network for Chechnya and Ingushetia,” although the paper says “it is difficult to speak about how well known it is.”
But social networks are growing. There are already 211,000 Chechen residents registerd on the Russian social network, Odnoklassniki.ru, and there are 26,000 Grozny residents who use the Vkontakte.ru service. Also important in this regard, the Chechen blogger relates, is the Internet forum, vchechne.ru, where there are discussions about all kinds of issues.
The Grozni.org site carries photographs of the Chechen capital today, while Grozny.vrcal.com has photos from before the first Chechen campaign. Current news about the city is available on grozny-inform.ru, the Chechen blogger says, without indicating what he thinks of the content of that outlet.
Other interesting cites the blogger refers to include moct.org, the site of the graduates of the Grozny Oil Institute, fc-terek.ru, terek-grozny.ru,and Chechen sport.com which follow sports clubs. Also important are chechenasso.ru, which features news on Chechen communities outside of Chechnya, garikish.com and gakish.livejournal.com, which discuss social issues.
Ratings of these and other Chechen sites is available at chechentop.ru. There are also “several dozen” Chechen bloggers. The most widely read of these sites are the blog of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, ya_kadyrov.livejournal.com and that of Chechen journalist Timur Aliyev, timur_aliyev.livejournal.com.
Other blogs of note include the diary of Murat Mamirgov, the editor of Islamtv.ru, at mamirgov.livejournal.com, the blog of Arslan Khasavov, a Chechen writer of Daghestani origin, ubl.livejournal.com, and the blog of Leko Gudayev, the webmaster of the Checheninfor site, leko007.livejournal.com.
According to the anonymous Chechen blogger, the Chechen government is actively supporting these bloggers by giving them gifts and prizes as part of what it calls “The Golden Site of CHENET.” He does not say whether such arrangements are intended to ensure that the government knows what is going on, but that possibility cannot be excluded.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Russian Campaign against Muslim Moderates Strengthens Islamist Extremists, Commentators Say
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 18 – Those Russians who oppose the modernization and integration of Russia’s Muslims into the political and social life of their country are unwittingly providing support to the Islamist radicals who argue that “there is no chance for normal legal work for the development of Islam” in Russia, two Muslim commentators say.
Indeed, Ruslan Kurbanov and Rinat Mukhametov argue in a lengthy article on the “Russky zhurnal” portal, this ongoing campaign against those within the Russian umma who want to modernize Islam represents “a serious threat to the common state interests of security and development” (www.russ.ru/pole/Islamskaya-modernizaciya-i-ee-vragi).
The occasion for their article, Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, is “the unceasing media-administrative campaign against the Union of Muftis of Russia [SMR]and its leader [Ravil Gainutdin]” and the fact that this campaign is “a clear testimony to the sharpening of the situation in the social-religious life of the country.”
They say that there are now “serious concerns that influential forces would like to exclude even the potential possibility of the enlivening and even more productive activity of domestic Muslims not to speak about some sort of more serious steps such as attempts at the unification” of the Russian umma.
“No one is obligated to love Islam and Muslims,” they continue, but such efforts, “which are trying to tie down the Russian umma hand and foot represent a serious threat” to Russia, and it is not surprising, they point out that “all this is being carefully observed by the imamate ‘forest,’” a reference to the militants in the North Caucasus and elsewhere.
Unlike Talgat Tajuddin of the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD), Ismail Berdiyevof the Coordinating Center of Muslims of the North Caucasus, and Mukhammad Rakhimov of the Russian Association of Islamic Accord (RAIS), Gainutdin and his SMR have attracted negative comment precisely because of their support for Muslim modernization.
The SMR, in contrast to the three other umbrella MSDs, “has been attempting to lead young people along the path of what is called ‘constructive Jihad,’ of legal Islamic social, cultural, media, intellectual and other types of activity,” Kurbanov and Mukkhametov say, “and this for various reasons does not please a large number of people.”
Much of Gainutdin’s program remains “the level of declaration,” they note, “but this positive example of the possibility of the normal peaceful development of Islam, the modernization and integration of the Muslim intelligentsia and young people” is attracting the interest “of all Muslim Russia.”
That is because Gainutdin and his SMR represent the possibility that Muslims in Russia will be able to “establish real and effective mechanisms and models of adaptation of Islam within the framework of contemporary Russian statehood,” something “without which, the solution of the problem of extremism is impossible.”
“Islamophobes” – and these are “completely definite forces with political and financial interests,” the two writers continue, “do not see a future for Islam in Russia.” Some of them believe that Islam should not be part of a Russian nation state, and others argue that Islam should be reduced in influence so that Russian can become “part of the Western world.”
But both the one and the other, Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, “however suprising this may appear, are in agreement with the so-called ‘forest brothers’ in the Caucasus and with all those who sympathize with them [because] they too do not see Islam and Muslims as an inalienable part of Russia and Russian identity.”
The attacks on Gainutdin and the SMR, the two Muslim writers say, reflects a faulty logic, one that if applied to the Russian Orthodox Church would require everyone to blame Patriarch Kirill for the actions of the skinheads and serial murders of non-Russians. “We do not think that a discussion at this level is useful for the Russian state.”
Kurbanov and Mukhametov devote most of their article to a discussion of the history of Russian attitudes toward Islam and Muslim organizations, and they demonstrate that both in the pre-1917 period and now, Islamophobes opposed any modernization of Islam and promoted both the spread of Orthodox Christianity and Russification.
But in contrast to the sophistication of the pre-revolutionary leaders of this approach, the current Islamophobes are destroying their own case by promoting discredited leaders within Islam, leader who, Kurbanov and Mukhametov says, are “not cable of influencing Muslims the muftis of which they consider themselves to be,” in the hopes of destroying the umma.
The government-assisted rise of such leaders, they say, represents “a big gift to ‘the forest,’” one that the Caucasus Emirate “could not have imagined on its own.” The propagandists of that group treat what the Islamophobes are doing in Russia as evidence of the rightness of the struggle against Moscow.
“In ‘kafir’ Russia,” the Emirate’s propagandists say, “Leaders are imposed on Muslims who have lost any authority as a result of their declarations and activity; consequently, the development of Islam is blocked; and that in turn means that ‘our task is right’ and that ‘we will win.’”
In this way, and despite the failure of many to understand what is going on, Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, “the attack on the modernization of Muslim institutions is an attack on the security” of the country as a whole, all the more so because “without modernization [of the country],” Russia will not be able to respond to the challenges of the 21st century.
Those who oppose modernization generally and in the Muslim umma “are only playing into the hands of those who want that Russian Muslims do not feel themselves masters in their own land and of those … would like to remove the ‘Muslim’ bricks from the building of the single state and thus make possible the destruction of our entire common home.”
Russia’s Islamophobes oppose the consolidation of the umma on a platform of modernization, the two writers argue, and believe that the difficulties within the Islamic community there are not “problems of growth” but systemic and that “Islam always will be a factor of destabilization and a headache” for Russia.
These opponents of Muslims “advise the bureaucrats that it is necessary to continue the course on the step by step elimination of Islam – not ‘Islamism’ and ‘Wahhabism’ but Islam as such.” And to that end, they urge that “the official Islamic institutions in Russia remain at the level of Soviet times.”
But such an approach entails some really tragic consequences, Kurbanov and Mukhametov argue. It means that those really interested in Islam will be forced to go into “semi-legal or even illegal” places, that the official leaders will remain “illiterate and reactionary,” and that Islam n Russia will again be reduced to “rituals” rather than “faith.”
“In fact,” they say, what Islamophobes like Roman Silantyev are calling for would represent “a return to the pre-Catherine policy toward Islam, the core idea of which was Christianization by any means, including the use of force,” an approach that will in the present circumstances lead to an explosion.
That is because “the formation of the umma and the Islamic awakening in Russia are an irreversible process,” the two Muslim writers say. “The point of no-return has been passed.” The modernizers understand this and want to ensure that the rebirth of Islam takes place within Russia, while “the Islamophobes and ‘the forest brothers’ want this not to happen.”
“For different reasons, the one and the other do not want to see Islam within Russia.” But “sooner or later, a normal working system of interrelationships with Muslims will have to be developed. Those who have any doubts about this should carefully study the results of the last census of the population.”
“In order to avoid problems,” Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, “it would be better to do this sooner rather than later. The state, the Russian people, the Union of Muftis and ‘the modernizers’ have an interest in doing it sooner. The Islamophobes and ‘the forest’ want it to happen as late as possible or better still not at all.”
Staunton, April 18 – Those Russians who oppose the modernization and integration of Russia’s Muslims into the political and social life of their country are unwittingly providing support to the Islamist radicals who argue that “there is no chance for normal legal work for the development of Islam” in Russia, two Muslim commentators say.
Indeed, Ruslan Kurbanov and Rinat Mukhametov argue in a lengthy article on the “Russky zhurnal” portal, this ongoing campaign against those within the Russian umma who want to modernize Islam represents “a serious threat to the common state interests of security and development” (www.russ.ru/pole/Islamskaya-modernizaciya-i-ee-vragi).
The occasion for their article, Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, is “the unceasing media-administrative campaign against the Union of Muftis of Russia [SMR]and its leader [Ravil Gainutdin]” and the fact that this campaign is “a clear testimony to the sharpening of the situation in the social-religious life of the country.”
They say that there are now “serious concerns that influential forces would like to exclude even the potential possibility of the enlivening and even more productive activity of domestic Muslims not to speak about some sort of more serious steps such as attempts at the unification” of the Russian umma.
“No one is obligated to love Islam and Muslims,” they continue, but such efforts, “which are trying to tie down the Russian umma hand and foot represent a serious threat” to Russia, and it is not surprising, they point out that “all this is being carefully observed by the imamate ‘forest,’” a reference to the militants in the North Caucasus and elsewhere.
Unlike Talgat Tajuddin of the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD), Ismail Berdiyevof the Coordinating Center of Muslims of the North Caucasus, and Mukhammad Rakhimov of the Russian Association of Islamic Accord (RAIS), Gainutdin and his SMR have attracted negative comment precisely because of their support for Muslim modernization.
The SMR, in contrast to the three other umbrella MSDs, “has been attempting to lead young people along the path of what is called ‘constructive Jihad,’ of legal Islamic social, cultural, media, intellectual and other types of activity,” Kurbanov and Mukkhametov say, “and this for various reasons does not please a large number of people.”
Much of Gainutdin’s program remains “the level of declaration,” they note, “but this positive example of the possibility of the normal peaceful development of Islam, the modernization and integration of the Muslim intelligentsia and young people” is attracting the interest “of all Muslim Russia.”
That is because Gainutdin and his SMR represent the possibility that Muslims in Russia will be able to “establish real and effective mechanisms and models of adaptation of Islam within the framework of contemporary Russian statehood,” something “without which, the solution of the problem of extremism is impossible.”
“Islamophobes” – and these are “completely definite forces with political and financial interests,” the two writers continue, “do not see a future for Islam in Russia.” Some of them believe that Islam should not be part of a Russian nation state, and others argue that Islam should be reduced in influence so that Russian can become “part of the Western world.”
But both the one and the other, Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, “however suprising this may appear, are in agreement with the so-called ‘forest brothers’ in the Caucasus and with all those who sympathize with them [because] they too do not see Islam and Muslims as an inalienable part of Russia and Russian identity.”
The attacks on Gainutdin and the SMR, the two Muslim writers say, reflects a faulty logic, one that if applied to the Russian Orthodox Church would require everyone to blame Patriarch Kirill for the actions of the skinheads and serial murders of non-Russians. “We do not think that a discussion at this level is useful for the Russian state.”
Kurbanov and Mukhametov devote most of their article to a discussion of the history of Russian attitudes toward Islam and Muslim organizations, and they demonstrate that both in the pre-1917 period and now, Islamophobes opposed any modernization of Islam and promoted both the spread of Orthodox Christianity and Russification.
But in contrast to the sophistication of the pre-revolutionary leaders of this approach, the current Islamophobes are destroying their own case by promoting discredited leaders within Islam, leader who, Kurbanov and Mukhametov says, are “not cable of influencing Muslims the muftis of which they consider themselves to be,” in the hopes of destroying the umma.
The government-assisted rise of such leaders, they say, represents “a big gift to ‘the forest,’” one that the Caucasus Emirate “could not have imagined on its own.” The propagandists of that group treat what the Islamophobes are doing in Russia as evidence of the rightness of the struggle against Moscow.
“In ‘kafir’ Russia,” the Emirate’s propagandists say, “Leaders are imposed on Muslims who have lost any authority as a result of their declarations and activity; consequently, the development of Islam is blocked; and that in turn means that ‘our task is right’ and that ‘we will win.’”
In this way, and despite the failure of many to understand what is going on, Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, “the attack on the modernization of Muslim institutions is an attack on the security” of the country as a whole, all the more so because “without modernization [of the country],” Russia will not be able to respond to the challenges of the 21st century.
Those who oppose modernization generally and in the Muslim umma “are only playing into the hands of those who want that Russian Muslims do not feel themselves masters in their own land and of those … would like to remove the ‘Muslim’ bricks from the building of the single state and thus make possible the destruction of our entire common home.”
Russia’s Islamophobes oppose the consolidation of the umma on a platform of modernization, the two writers argue, and believe that the difficulties within the Islamic community there are not “problems of growth” but systemic and that “Islam always will be a factor of destabilization and a headache” for Russia.
These opponents of Muslims “advise the bureaucrats that it is necessary to continue the course on the step by step elimination of Islam – not ‘Islamism’ and ‘Wahhabism’ but Islam as such.” And to that end, they urge that “the official Islamic institutions in Russia remain at the level of Soviet times.”
But such an approach entails some really tragic consequences, Kurbanov and Mukhametov argue. It means that those really interested in Islam will be forced to go into “semi-legal or even illegal” places, that the official leaders will remain “illiterate and reactionary,” and that Islam n Russia will again be reduced to “rituals” rather than “faith.”
“In fact,” they say, what Islamophobes like Roman Silantyev are calling for would represent “a return to the pre-Catherine policy toward Islam, the core idea of which was Christianization by any means, including the use of force,” an approach that will in the present circumstances lead to an explosion.
That is because “the formation of the umma and the Islamic awakening in Russia are an irreversible process,” the two Muslim writers say. “The point of no-return has been passed.” The modernizers understand this and want to ensure that the rebirth of Islam takes place within Russia, while “the Islamophobes and ‘the forest brothers’ want this not to happen.”
“For different reasons, the one and the other do not want to see Islam within Russia.” But “sooner or later, a normal working system of interrelationships with Muslims will have to be developed. Those who have any doubts about this should carefully study the results of the last census of the population.”
“In order to avoid problems,” Kurbanov and Mukhametov say, “it would be better to do this sooner rather than later. The state, the Russian people, the Union of Muftis and ‘the modernizers’ have an interest in doing it sooner. The Islamophobes and ‘the forest’ want it to happen as late as possible or better still not at all.”
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Seeks to Reduce Concentrations of Muslim Soldiers in Military Units
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 18 – Concerned about the impact on draft resistance and military readiness of clashes between ethnic Russians and soldiers from the North Caucasus, the Russian defense ministry has cut the size of the draft quota for at least some North Caucasus republics and is working to prevent the concentration of North Caucasian soldiers in any military unit.
A meeting of the defense ministry’s public council last Thursday concluded that problems between soldiers from the North Caucasus and those from elsewhere reflect broader problems in the society, including the failure of the educational system to promote tolerance (www.trud.ru/article/15-04-2011/261742_prizyvnikam_iz_dagestana_objavili_dembel.html).
And as a long term solution, participants at that session, “Trud” reported, believe that the solution to such problems in the military will be the creation of a cadre of professional sergeants. But because the Russian military needs approximately 100,000 of them and is producing only about 500 a year, that solution will not be available anytime soon.
Consequently, as the Moscow paper reported, “the generals without advertising this have already found a solution to the problems by reducing the size of the draft from the Caucasus by an order of magnitude” and by working to ensure that draftees from that region will not be concentrated in particular units.
At the meeting, Nikita Mikhalkov, the well-known film director, sharply critized “not the defense ministry but the education ministry for the fact that it was not involved in the moral training of the younger generation and even, in his words had eliminated the use of the term moral training.”
He and other participants agreed that the military thus must rely on its own resources to address inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions and that “the main figure in the harmonization of inter-ethnic relations must be the sergeant who will spend all the time in the barracks and will know all the nuances in the behavior of his subordinates.”
But as Anatoly Tsyganok, the head of the Moscow Center of Military Prognostication, pointed out, the Russian military is producing too few sergeants to make a difference. At the current rate, he told the paper, it will be more than 200 years before there will be the number needed to make a difference.
Consequently, Russian commanders are seeking to reduce the presence of North Caucasians in the ranks. As Andrey Doroniin, the former deputy commander of the Moscow Military District noted, there exist “simpler means” of preventing such conflicts: North Caucasian soldiers “must not be concentrated in one place.”
And yet another means, “Trud” reported, is to reduce draft calls in the North Caucasus. “According to the information of the military commissariat of Daghetan, this year only 400 people will be called to service, compared to 4,000” who were drafted from the republic in the recent past.
This short-term “solution” entails at least two serious problems, however. On the one hand, it will make it more difficult for the military to fill the ranks because an ever-growing share of the draft-age cohort consists of people from the Muslim republics in general and the North Caucasus in particular.
Military commissariats in predominantly ethnic Russian regions will have to use ever more force to meet their quotas, and Russian parents and potential draftees will see themselves as paying a higher “tax” than those in non-Russian areas, exacerbating Russian nationalist attitudes toward non-Russians in Russian cities and toward non-Russian regions as a whole.
And on the other, any reduction in draft quotas in the North Caucasus will increase the rate of unemployment there, complicating Moscow’s efforts to overcome the problems that have contributed to a seemingly unending flow of young men into the forests to fight against the Russian regime.
Moreover, and this may be the most serious consequence of this unannounced policy, the decision to draft fewer non-Russians because of the problems they supposedly cause will lead ever more of them to view both the Russian military and Russia itself as being just as much an alien occupier as the Islamist militants insist that the two are.
Staunton, April 18 – Concerned about the impact on draft resistance and military readiness of clashes between ethnic Russians and soldiers from the North Caucasus, the Russian defense ministry has cut the size of the draft quota for at least some North Caucasus republics and is working to prevent the concentration of North Caucasian soldiers in any military unit.
A meeting of the defense ministry’s public council last Thursday concluded that problems between soldiers from the North Caucasus and those from elsewhere reflect broader problems in the society, including the failure of the educational system to promote tolerance (www.trud.ru/article/15-04-2011/261742_prizyvnikam_iz_dagestana_objavili_dembel.html).
And as a long term solution, participants at that session, “Trud” reported, believe that the solution to such problems in the military will be the creation of a cadre of professional sergeants. But because the Russian military needs approximately 100,000 of them and is producing only about 500 a year, that solution will not be available anytime soon.
Consequently, as the Moscow paper reported, “the generals without advertising this have already found a solution to the problems by reducing the size of the draft from the Caucasus by an order of magnitude” and by working to ensure that draftees from that region will not be concentrated in particular units.
At the meeting, Nikita Mikhalkov, the well-known film director, sharply critized “not the defense ministry but the education ministry for the fact that it was not involved in the moral training of the younger generation and even, in his words had eliminated the use of the term moral training.”
He and other participants agreed that the military thus must rely on its own resources to address inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions and that “the main figure in the harmonization of inter-ethnic relations must be the sergeant who will spend all the time in the barracks and will know all the nuances in the behavior of his subordinates.”
But as Anatoly Tsyganok, the head of the Moscow Center of Military Prognostication, pointed out, the Russian military is producing too few sergeants to make a difference. At the current rate, he told the paper, it will be more than 200 years before there will be the number needed to make a difference.
Consequently, Russian commanders are seeking to reduce the presence of North Caucasians in the ranks. As Andrey Doroniin, the former deputy commander of the Moscow Military District noted, there exist “simpler means” of preventing such conflicts: North Caucasian soldiers “must not be concentrated in one place.”
And yet another means, “Trud” reported, is to reduce draft calls in the North Caucasus. “According to the information of the military commissariat of Daghetan, this year only 400 people will be called to service, compared to 4,000” who were drafted from the republic in the recent past.
This short-term “solution” entails at least two serious problems, however. On the one hand, it will make it more difficult for the military to fill the ranks because an ever-growing share of the draft-age cohort consists of people from the Muslim republics in general and the North Caucasus in particular.
Military commissariats in predominantly ethnic Russian regions will have to use ever more force to meet their quotas, and Russian parents and potential draftees will see themselves as paying a higher “tax” than those in non-Russian areas, exacerbating Russian nationalist attitudes toward non-Russians in Russian cities and toward non-Russian regions as a whole.
And on the other, any reduction in draft quotas in the North Caucasus will increase the rate of unemployment there, complicating Moscow’s efforts to overcome the problems that have contributed to a seemingly unending flow of young men into the forests to fight against the Russian regime.
Moreover, and this may be the most serious consequence of this unannounced policy, the decision to draft fewer non-Russians because of the problems they supposedly cause will lead ever more of them to view both the Russian military and Russia itself as being just as much an alien occupier as the Islamist militants insist that the two are.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Patriarchate Official Says Muslim Crescents Could be Put on Coats of Arms of Russia’s Muslim Regions and Republics
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 15 – Religious leaders, heraldry experts, and other commentators have rejected Mufti Talgat Tajuddin’s call for putting a cresent on the coat of arms of Russia, but a senior official in the Moscow Patriarchate has opened the way for more controversy by suggesting a Muslim crescent could be put on the coats of arms of Muslim republics and regions.
That is because the suggestion of Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the Patriarchate’s Department for Relations between Church and Society, could open the floodgates by demands from Muslims in various parts of Russia for just such representation and create a checkerboard of Muslim regions as opposed to non-Muslim ones.
And the symbolism of such an obvious division – and it would certainly change over time – would undercut efforts by Moscow to overcome inter-religious hostility and promote a common national identity and could reignite calls by some Muslim leaders to create Muslim political parties, something not now allowed by Russian law, to press for crescents.
In a statement to the media today, Chaplin, who is a close protégé of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, spoke out against Tajuddin’s proposal to put a Muslim crescent on on of the equals on the coast of arms of Russia, arguing that such a change was unnecessary given the tradition the current shield with crosses reflects (www.nr2.ru/society/328369.html).
“That historical form of the Russian coat of arms,” Chaplin said, “which has existed already for many centuries is historically justified. Islam is a local phenomenon for Russia [as] it is distributed as the dominating religion in particular regions. On the coats of arms of these regions may be both crescents and other Islamic symbols.”
“But on the Russian coat of arms, a cross has been present on the crowns over many centuries,” the Patriarchate official continued, adding that in his view “it is not necessary to change anything” at least for this symbol of the Russian Federation and its centuries-old traditions.
Chaplin’s remarks came in reaction to a proposal Talgat Tajuddin, who has occasionally styled himself as the “Mufti of Holy Russia” and head of the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD), made in the course of an interview published in “Moskovskiye novosti” earlier today (mn.ru/newspaper_freetime/20110415/301066658.html).
Tajuddin, who has a reputation for flamboyance, told the paper’s Elena Suponina that he had sent his proposal to replkace on of the crosses on the Russian coat of arms with a Muslim crescent moon to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and had discussed it with President Dmitry Medvedev.
As the mufti pointed out, “the Russian coat of arms is a two-headed equal. All three crowns of this eagle – two on the head and one inbetween above them are marked with crosses. But in Russia there live 20 million Muslims. This is 18 percent of the population, and we are Russian Muslims, not from Saudi Arabia … Africa or the moon.”
“Our ancestors have lived here for millennia. By the will of the Most High we are united in a state. And a neighbor is equal to a brother. We are a constituent part of a single state. But then, where must a Muslim carry his passport on which the coat of arms is reproduced? In his left pocket, of course, near the heart!”
Prior to 1917, Tajuddin continued, “Muslims in the army gave their oath on the Koran. There were regimental mullahs andimams. They were assigned by spiritual administrations. During the war with Turkey, our ancestors did nto consider they were fighting against Muslims: they were defending their motherland, great Russia.”
“Recall the heroism of the Bashkir cavalry in 1812,” Tajuddin said; “they went into attack first. And in 1945, for example, my grandfather advanced to Berlin.”
“In Russia has been achieved a synthesis of a kind that never was in Europe or America,” the mufti continued. Here met East and West. In order that this patriotism not disappear among our children and grandchildren, we humbly ask to introduce certain changes in the coat o farms of our common land.”
Specially, he said, “we ask that one head of the eagle be crowned with a crescent moon and the other with an Orthodox cross. And that crown which is in the middle be both. Then not one enemy will be able to use the religious factor to harm the unity and integrity of our fatherland.”
In response, Russia’s master of heralds rejected this idea (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=40352) as did many Muslims (echo.msk.ru/news/766358-echo.html), Jews (www.argumenti.ru/society/2011/04/102414), and representatives of the human rights community (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=40350).
That united front of rejection makes Chaplin’s remark all the more curious – and at least potentially all the more dangerous, even though it may be walked back by other Orthodox hierarchs or used by them to suggest that the Moscow Patriarchate is, on this issue at least, more liberal and tolerant than many suspect.
Staunton, April 15 – Religious leaders, heraldry experts, and other commentators have rejected Mufti Talgat Tajuddin’s call for putting a cresent on the coat of arms of Russia, but a senior official in the Moscow Patriarchate has opened the way for more controversy by suggesting a Muslim crescent could be put on the coats of arms of Muslim republics and regions.
That is because the suggestion of Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the Patriarchate’s Department for Relations between Church and Society, could open the floodgates by demands from Muslims in various parts of Russia for just such representation and create a checkerboard of Muslim regions as opposed to non-Muslim ones.
And the symbolism of such an obvious division – and it would certainly change over time – would undercut efforts by Moscow to overcome inter-religious hostility and promote a common national identity and could reignite calls by some Muslim leaders to create Muslim political parties, something not now allowed by Russian law, to press for crescents.
In a statement to the media today, Chaplin, who is a close protégé of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, spoke out against Tajuddin’s proposal to put a Muslim crescent on on of the equals on the coast of arms of Russia, arguing that such a change was unnecessary given the tradition the current shield with crosses reflects (www.nr2.ru/society/328369.html).
“That historical form of the Russian coat of arms,” Chaplin said, “which has existed already for many centuries is historically justified. Islam is a local phenomenon for Russia [as] it is distributed as the dominating religion in particular regions. On the coats of arms of these regions may be both crescents and other Islamic symbols.”
“But on the Russian coat of arms, a cross has been present on the crowns over many centuries,” the Patriarchate official continued, adding that in his view “it is not necessary to change anything” at least for this symbol of the Russian Federation and its centuries-old traditions.
Chaplin’s remarks came in reaction to a proposal Talgat Tajuddin, who has occasionally styled himself as the “Mufti of Holy Russia” and head of the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD), made in the course of an interview published in “Moskovskiye novosti” earlier today (mn.ru/newspaper_freetime/20110415/301066658.html).
Tajuddin, who has a reputation for flamboyance, told the paper’s Elena Suponina that he had sent his proposal to replkace on of the crosses on the Russian coat of arms with a Muslim crescent moon to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and had discussed it with President Dmitry Medvedev.
As the mufti pointed out, “the Russian coat of arms is a two-headed equal. All three crowns of this eagle – two on the head and one inbetween above them are marked with crosses. But in Russia there live 20 million Muslims. This is 18 percent of the population, and we are Russian Muslims, not from Saudi Arabia … Africa or the moon.”
“Our ancestors have lived here for millennia. By the will of the Most High we are united in a state. And a neighbor is equal to a brother. We are a constituent part of a single state. But then, where must a Muslim carry his passport on which the coat of arms is reproduced? In his left pocket, of course, near the heart!”
Prior to 1917, Tajuddin continued, “Muslims in the army gave their oath on the Koran. There were regimental mullahs andimams. They were assigned by spiritual administrations. During the war with Turkey, our ancestors did nto consider they were fighting against Muslims: they were defending their motherland, great Russia.”
“Recall the heroism of the Bashkir cavalry in 1812,” Tajuddin said; “they went into attack first. And in 1945, for example, my grandfather advanced to Berlin.”
“In Russia has been achieved a synthesis of a kind that never was in Europe or America,” the mufti continued. Here met East and West. In order that this patriotism not disappear among our children and grandchildren, we humbly ask to introduce certain changes in the coat o farms of our common land.”
Specially, he said, “we ask that one head of the eagle be crowned with a crescent moon and the other with an Orthodox cross. And that crown which is in the middle be both. Then not one enemy will be able to use the religious factor to harm the unity and integrity of our fatherland.”
In response, Russia’s master of heralds rejected this idea (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=40352) as did many Muslims (echo.msk.ru/news/766358-echo.html), Jews (www.argumenti.ru/society/2011/04/102414), and representatives of the human rights community (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=40350).
That united front of rejection makes Chaplin’s remark all the more curious – and at least potentially all the more dangerous, even though it may be walked back by other Orthodox hierarchs or used by them to suggest that the Moscow Patriarchate is, on this issue at least, more liberal and tolerant than many suspect.
Window on Eurasia: Absent Modernization, Russia Faces Massive Brain Drain and Exodus of Business, Kremlin Advisor Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 15 – If modernization does not take place over the next few years, a senior Kremlin advisor says, Russia will suffer a massive “brain drain” and the departure of much of its businesses, the largest to the West and the small and mid-sized to Kazakhstan, leaving it an “uninteresting” bridge between China and Europe.
But despite that prospect, Aleksandr Auzan, a member of the Presidential commission on modernization and technological development of the economy of Russia, concludes sadly, the possibility that Russia will choose to modernize is relatively small, a reflection of short-term thinking and confusion between inertia and stability (www.nr2.ru/chel/328413.html).
Auzan, a professor at Moscow State University, says that this brain drain is already starting: “half of his students, elite specialists, are leaving to work abroad and not even thinking about returning.” In their wake “business is departing, big business toward the West and small and mid-sized toward Kazakhstan.”
In this case, the economist says, Russia will have a future like the one described in Vladimir Sorokin’s novels: It will be a country “across which will pass a 15-lane highway between China and Europe.” That won’t be a complete tragedy, he adds, but Russia will “simply be a country of little interest,” one from which all talented people will leave.”
Moreover, in the absence of modernization, “if Russia begins to improve the quality of education, then even more specialists will leave.” If they are to be retained, then there need to be places of interest for them. “The oil pipeline doesn’t need smart and qualified people,” or at least “it needs few of them. And this is the tragedy of the country.”
“Who must change the country?” Auzan asks rhetorically. “The majority of citizens,” he points out, “do not want any modernization; a minority wants it but doesn’t believe in it,” with “all pointing to stability as the achievement of the Putin era.” But economists like himself, Auzan continues, don’t see this stability as firm or long-lasting.
“There are undoubted results,” he concedes. In the first five years of this century, Auzan notes, Russians experienced a 11-12 percent growth in their incomes. “But now they aren’t: inflation is eating everything quite quickly.” As a result, “the economy of the country is becoming ever worse.”
“It is worse than at the start of the 2000s,” Auzan says, “because it is still more completely based on raw materials exports … We are ever weaker in an international sense [and] we are slowly-slowly sinking.” Indeed, World Bank experts now say that “Russia is the weakest of the developing countries.”
What success Moscow has had in maintaining stability, the economic advisor says, is based on “a miracle of not very divine origin.” Indeed, he says, “for this [stabilitiy] it was necessary to conclude a pact with the devil.” Such a pact can by inertia work for five to 20 years, but then “problems will begin and very rapidly.”
Auzan says that countries which have successfully passed through the process of modernization have had several specific characteristics. They have seen “a growth in the values of self-realization over the values of survival, an orientation to results rather than process, a growth in individualism, that is, a willingness to act despite what others say.”
“But the chief one,” he says, “in countries which have successfully passed through modernization, the distance of the powers [from the population] has fallen. That is, people begin to relate to the state as something not distant from themselves but toward which they have a relationship and in which they can get involved.”
Auzan suggests that “the chances for modernization in Russia in generally are not very high at present.” Because of high oil prices, “we are condemned to stagnation” because modernization does not begin when people feel they are doing well but rather when they conclude that they are not.
Moreover, he says, “Russia is not ready for modernization and for technological leaps and a storm of innovations.” For that to be the case, there would need to be what “already exists in a number of developed countries: effective laws, judges, patents and the like. Everything which does not exist in Russia.”
For Russia to modernize, even when a commitment to doing so finally emerges as a result of a recognition of the threats ahead, Auzan says will require “not less than 20 years” because as many forget, “modernization is a process that is economic in its outcome but socio-cultural in its content. Therefore, it is a lengthy one.”
Staunton, April 15 – If modernization does not take place over the next few years, a senior Kremlin advisor says, Russia will suffer a massive “brain drain” and the departure of much of its businesses, the largest to the West and the small and mid-sized to Kazakhstan, leaving it an “uninteresting” bridge between China and Europe.
But despite that prospect, Aleksandr Auzan, a member of the Presidential commission on modernization and technological development of the economy of Russia, concludes sadly, the possibility that Russia will choose to modernize is relatively small, a reflection of short-term thinking and confusion between inertia and stability (www.nr2.ru/chel/328413.html).
Auzan, a professor at Moscow State University, says that this brain drain is already starting: “half of his students, elite specialists, are leaving to work abroad and not even thinking about returning.” In their wake “business is departing, big business toward the West and small and mid-sized toward Kazakhstan.”
In this case, the economist says, Russia will have a future like the one described in Vladimir Sorokin’s novels: It will be a country “across which will pass a 15-lane highway between China and Europe.” That won’t be a complete tragedy, he adds, but Russia will “simply be a country of little interest,” one from which all talented people will leave.”
Moreover, in the absence of modernization, “if Russia begins to improve the quality of education, then even more specialists will leave.” If they are to be retained, then there need to be places of interest for them. “The oil pipeline doesn’t need smart and qualified people,” or at least “it needs few of them. And this is the tragedy of the country.”
“Who must change the country?” Auzan asks rhetorically. “The majority of citizens,” he points out, “do not want any modernization; a minority wants it but doesn’t believe in it,” with “all pointing to stability as the achievement of the Putin era.” But economists like himself, Auzan continues, don’t see this stability as firm or long-lasting.
“There are undoubted results,” he concedes. In the first five years of this century, Auzan notes, Russians experienced a 11-12 percent growth in their incomes. “But now they aren’t: inflation is eating everything quite quickly.” As a result, “the economy of the country is becoming ever worse.”
“It is worse than at the start of the 2000s,” Auzan says, “because it is still more completely based on raw materials exports … We are ever weaker in an international sense [and] we are slowly-slowly sinking.” Indeed, World Bank experts now say that “Russia is the weakest of the developing countries.”
What success Moscow has had in maintaining stability, the economic advisor says, is based on “a miracle of not very divine origin.” Indeed, he says, “for this [stabilitiy] it was necessary to conclude a pact with the devil.” Such a pact can by inertia work for five to 20 years, but then “problems will begin and very rapidly.”
Auzan says that countries which have successfully passed through the process of modernization have had several specific characteristics. They have seen “a growth in the values of self-realization over the values of survival, an orientation to results rather than process, a growth in individualism, that is, a willingness to act despite what others say.”
“But the chief one,” he says, “in countries which have successfully passed through modernization, the distance of the powers [from the population] has fallen. That is, people begin to relate to the state as something not distant from themselves but toward which they have a relationship and in which they can get involved.”
Auzan suggests that “the chances for modernization in Russia in generally are not very high at present.” Because of high oil prices, “we are condemned to stagnation” because modernization does not begin when people feel they are doing well but rather when they conclude that they are not.
Moreover, he says, “Russia is not ready for modernization and for technological leaps and a storm of innovations.” For that to be the case, there would need to be what “already exists in a number of developed countries: effective laws, judges, patents and the like. Everything which does not exist in Russia.”
For Russia to modernize, even when a commitment to doing so finally emerges as a result of a recognition of the threats ahead, Auzan says will require “not less than 20 years” because as many forget, “modernization is a process that is economic in its outcome but socio-cultural in its content. Therefore, it is a lengthy one.”
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Chinese Organized Crime Said a Threat to Moscow-Bejing Ties
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 14 – The arrest in Moscow earlier this week of a Chinese gang member who was holding other Chinese citizens as hostages called attention to the presence of Chinese organized crime in the Russian Federation, a phenomenon that is now so large that one commentator has suggested it threatens warming ties between Moscow and Bejing.
On Wednesday, Moscow media reported that the Moscow militia had detained a Chinese citizen who was holding at gun point several of his compatriots hostage, including at least one who was reportedly owed a large sum of money to a Chinese organized crime family (top.rbc.ru/incidents/12/04/2011/574906.shtml).
Before storming the apartment where the hostages were located, the Russian militia attempted to negotiate their release. Then, they called a Chinese embassy officer to the scene, and a decision was taken to seize the gun man by force. The Chinese special services said that the man under arrest is a representative of “one of the Chinese organized criminal groups.”
The existence of ethnically based organized criminal groups in the Russian Federation, including those consisting of ethnic Chinese, is hardly news. But over the last several years, they have become increasingly brazen and heavily involved not just in shakedowns like the one just mentioned but also in bilateral trade between Russia and China.
In a report on the Fondsk.ru portal, Nikolay Yershov suggests that the growth of such criminal activity since the early years of the last decade and “especially in the last two to three years” has accelerated to the point that it is undermining what had been warming bilateral economic and political ties (www.fondsk.ru/news/2011/04/07/kitajskie-opg-ugroza-razvitiju-ekonomicheskih-svjazej-rossii-s-knr.html).
Russian law enforcement agencies say, Yershov reports, that that such crime has become a particular problem “in foreign trade with China.” Much of it involves “complete financial schemes and technical cleverness, the use of contemporary Internet technology, electronic payment systems, and a deep knowledge of financial monitoring and exchange procedures.”
The most important reason for “the increased attention of Chinese organized criminal groups to Russian business,” the journalist continues, are “favorable economic conditions and a stable and high interest by entrepreneurs from the Russian Federation in doing business with China.”
Among the largest Chinese criminal groups involved in such activities, officials say, is the Tientsin-Hebei grouping, “which is based in the cities of Tientsin and Shitsiajuan and has ‘branches’ in Beijing, Harbin and Guandung Province. It specializes in extracting money from Russian companies by securing advances greater than the purchase price of the goods to be sold.
This family does so by sending false prices via the Internet, securing the money and then disappearing. Among the sectors most affected by this particular crime are chemical products, but logistics, consulting and management activities are also involved, Yerzhov says. This Chinese crime family also is involved in fraudulent export contracts for Chinese raw materials.
Some of the firms involved in these activities remain under the control of Chinese organized crime for lengthy periods of time, but they too disband very quickly whenever the authorities in either China or Russia begin to look into what they are doing, although they hide behind various false front companies and often escape attention.
A relatively new area of Chinese organized criminal group activity involves the stock and exchange markets. Russians are offered a chance to invest from 500,000 US dollars up and then paid dividends for only a few months before the Chinese criminals declare that the investment has collapsed in value. They then disappear.
“Regrettably,” Yershov says, “the wave of crimes toward Russian participants in the foreign economic activity of China has not generated the necessary reaction from the side of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security,” a body whose initials translated into Russia is the wonderfully named MOB.
Moreover, he continues, the MOB’s “territorial subdivisions” in Tientsin and elsewhere “for reasons that are not understandable refuse to accept declarations and appeals from Russian and foreign citizens” regarding such activities. Some MOB officials say that they won’t get involved unless losses exceed 300,000 yuan – about 45,000 US dollars.
The activities of the Chinese organized criminal groups are inflicting “serious harm to the develop0ment of economic ties between the two countries. [Consequently,] the Chinese sides ignoring of facts of crimes threatens to undermine the reputation of Chinese business both in the Russian business community and in the international arena.”
Staunton, April 14 – The arrest in Moscow earlier this week of a Chinese gang member who was holding other Chinese citizens as hostages called attention to the presence of Chinese organized crime in the Russian Federation, a phenomenon that is now so large that one commentator has suggested it threatens warming ties between Moscow and Bejing.
On Wednesday, Moscow media reported that the Moscow militia had detained a Chinese citizen who was holding at gun point several of his compatriots hostage, including at least one who was reportedly owed a large sum of money to a Chinese organized crime family (top.rbc.ru/incidents/12/04/2011/574906.shtml).
Before storming the apartment where the hostages were located, the Russian militia attempted to negotiate their release. Then, they called a Chinese embassy officer to the scene, and a decision was taken to seize the gun man by force. The Chinese special services said that the man under arrest is a representative of “one of the Chinese organized criminal groups.”
The existence of ethnically based organized criminal groups in the Russian Federation, including those consisting of ethnic Chinese, is hardly news. But over the last several years, they have become increasingly brazen and heavily involved not just in shakedowns like the one just mentioned but also in bilateral trade between Russia and China.
In a report on the Fondsk.ru portal, Nikolay Yershov suggests that the growth of such criminal activity since the early years of the last decade and “especially in the last two to three years” has accelerated to the point that it is undermining what had been warming bilateral economic and political ties (www.fondsk.ru/news/2011/04/07/kitajskie-opg-ugroza-razvitiju-ekonomicheskih-svjazej-rossii-s-knr.html).
Russian law enforcement agencies say, Yershov reports, that that such crime has become a particular problem “in foreign trade with China.” Much of it involves “complete financial schemes and technical cleverness, the use of contemporary Internet technology, electronic payment systems, and a deep knowledge of financial monitoring and exchange procedures.”
The most important reason for “the increased attention of Chinese organized criminal groups to Russian business,” the journalist continues, are “favorable economic conditions and a stable and high interest by entrepreneurs from the Russian Federation in doing business with China.”
Among the largest Chinese criminal groups involved in such activities, officials say, is the Tientsin-Hebei grouping, “which is based in the cities of Tientsin and Shitsiajuan and has ‘branches’ in Beijing, Harbin and Guandung Province. It specializes in extracting money from Russian companies by securing advances greater than the purchase price of the goods to be sold.
This family does so by sending false prices via the Internet, securing the money and then disappearing. Among the sectors most affected by this particular crime are chemical products, but logistics, consulting and management activities are also involved, Yerzhov says. This Chinese crime family also is involved in fraudulent export contracts for Chinese raw materials.
Some of the firms involved in these activities remain under the control of Chinese organized crime for lengthy periods of time, but they too disband very quickly whenever the authorities in either China or Russia begin to look into what they are doing, although they hide behind various false front companies and often escape attention.
A relatively new area of Chinese organized criminal group activity involves the stock and exchange markets. Russians are offered a chance to invest from 500,000 US dollars up and then paid dividends for only a few months before the Chinese criminals declare that the investment has collapsed in value. They then disappear.
“Regrettably,” Yershov says, “the wave of crimes toward Russian participants in the foreign economic activity of China has not generated the necessary reaction from the side of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security,” a body whose initials translated into Russia is the wonderfully named MOB.
Moreover, he continues, the MOB’s “territorial subdivisions” in Tientsin and elsewhere “for reasons that are not understandable refuse to accept declarations and appeals from Russian and foreign citizens” regarding such activities. Some MOB officials say that they won’t get involved unless losses exceed 300,000 yuan – about 45,000 US dollars.
The activities of the Chinese organized criminal groups are inflicting “serious harm to the develop0ment of economic ties between the two countries. [Consequently,] the Chinese sides ignoring of facts of crimes threatens to undermine the reputation of Chinese business both in the Russian business community and in the international arena.”
Window on Eurasia: Census Didn’t 'Create' Siberians, Rosstat Head Says on His Blog
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 14 – Whatever some in the media or the population may think, Aleksandr Surinov, the head of the Russian State Statistics Committee says, the recent 2010 census did not create any new nationalities such as the Siberians but only held up a mirror to the identities the residents of the Russian Federation currently have.
Surinov, who has been under intense criticism since his statement that those who identified as Siberians should be allowed to declare that as their nationality and that the census would record that fact, has now posted on his blog (www.a-surinov.livejournal.com) a denial that this has created or promoted such an identity.
The press service of the All-Russian Census has picked that post up in a release entitled “The Census is Not Creating a Nationality” which decries “the incorrect assessment of the list of answers of citizens on the question of [their] nationality” and in particular the supposed “appearance of a new nationality, ‘Siberian’” (globalsib.com/10185/).
The census press service did not reproduce all of Surinov’s arguments, but the Globalsib.com portal has and they are given below:
“Some consider that the 2010 census has made the discovery that the population of Russia has declined. This is very strange since all our assessments of the population over the course of the last eight years have given the very same picture. Some others doubt the results since they were not personally counted. And some are arguing about ‘the Siberians.’”
“About the last question,” Surinov said, “I want to say the following. In the census of the population, Rosstat and all the census takers are OBLIGATED to follow the Constitution and other laws of the Russian Federation. Therefore, in the census forms answers to the question ABOUT NATIONALITY are written down STRICTLY ACCORDING TO THE WORDS of the individual questioned. NO ONE has the right to prompt people for an answer on this point, to show doubts about any answer or to insist on a particular answer. If it were otherwise, and complaints suggest that this happened but rapidly, then we census takers will correct ourselves and do apologize. To assess the actions of people we do not have the right, and this is correct. An individual may not have a single drop of Russian blood but be raised in Russian traditions and Russian culture. And he may call himself a Russian if he wants. Or he can refuse to answer this question.”
“Statistical workers must assemble information, process it, and present it to the user in order that he in the first instance can correctly interpret it. And we shall see how will be interpreted the population of Siberians, Pomors, Russians and others by ethnographers. Science does not stand without moving, and there are many scientific schools. Today may be one interpretation, and tomorrow another. But the main thing is that all users have equal access to information and this means equal opportunities for interpretation.”
“For the conduct of the 2010 census, the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences developed a list of possible variants of answers of the population for coding the answers to the question on the census form about nationality by taking into account the self-designations which appeared during the 2002 census. There were more than 1800 such self-designations. But how many nationalities are there in the Russian Federation?”
“This enumeration is needed exclusively for the machine processing of the materials of the 2010 All-Russian Census and the organization of its results on the question of nationality. Each position in this list has its own code number. In this list, a new self-designation may appear on the basis of the results of the last census. Thus, in the 2010 census appeared the Bulgars.”
“In many countries,” Surinov continued, “questions about nationality are not given. And they live no worse than ours. Rosstat will publish the results about the numbers of individuals counted in the census according to their self-designations. But tables about questions of census forms will be published by nationalities. The algorithms of the transition from self-designation to nationality have been worked out by the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Rosstat does not aspire to do this. This is not our task.”
“Now, preparations for the machine processing of the materials of the census are going at full speed. Soon we will begin to process them. I hope our internal resources will be sufficient and we will put out the results according to our plans. Then we can talk about the Siberians. How many of them there are, where they are, and where they live. About unisex and polygamist marriages. [And] about populations of gnomes, elves, and other curiosities.”
In reporting this blogpost, which itself appears likely to give rise to further debate – although possibly shifting its focus from Rosstat to the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology and its oft-criticized director Valery Tishkov, Globalsib.com also queried experts there and elsewhere about the lists of nationalities.
Officials at the Institute pointed out that the list of names developed by its scholars was “not handed out to the census takers” and is needed, as Surinov said, “only for the processing of materials of the 2010 census and the reporting of results on the nationality composition” and other “demographic and social-economic characteristics of the peoples” of Russia.
Vladimir Zorin, deputy director of the Institute, said that “such a new nationality as ‘Siberians’ could not appear as a result of the census.” Censuses by themselves are not the basis for “creating or destroying a nationality. The task of the census is simply to record accurately the answers, and that is all.”
Meanwhile, however, Leokadia Drobrizheva, the head of the Center for Research on Inter-Ethnic Relations of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (who earlier worked at the Institute of Ethnology), focused on the causes of the appearance of “the Siberians.”
She suggested that there could be several, including “fear about unification and a seeking to distinguish oneself among others, an expression of protest attitudes, and evidence of the development in Russia of regional identities.” But she too said that “the chance of the appearance of a new nationality as a result of the census was ‘not realistic because there are no objective scientific bases for this.’”
Those who identify as Siberians are unlikely to be satisfied with any of this. Some Siberian activists have already complained to Surinov that many census takers refused to write down their self-designations as Siberians accurately or even insisted that “there are no Siberians” and that census takers have been “prohibited” from writing “Siberian” in the form.
Surinov has dismissed their complains and called on those making them to provide specific instances, but neither his response nor his latest post nor the press release from the census appears likely to calm debate on the issue of Siberian identity and hence on the future meaning of Russianness and of Russia itself.
Staunton, April 14 – Whatever some in the media or the population may think, Aleksandr Surinov, the head of the Russian State Statistics Committee says, the recent 2010 census did not create any new nationalities such as the Siberians but only held up a mirror to the identities the residents of the Russian Federation currently have.
Surinov, who has been under intense criticism since his statement that those who identified as Siberians should be allowed to declare that as their nationality and that the census would record that fact, has now posted on his blog (www.a-surinov.livejournal.com) a denial that this has created or promoted such an identity.
The press service of the All-Russian Census has picked that post up in a release entitled “The Census is Not Creating a Nationality” which decries “the incorrect assessment of the list of answers of citizens on the question of [their] nationality” and in particular the supposed “appearance of a new nationality, ‘Siberian’” (globalsib.com/10185/).
The census press service did not reproduce all of Surinov’s arguments, but the Globalsib.com portal has and they are given below:
“Some consider that the 2010 census has made the discovery that the population of Russia has declined. This is very strange since all our assessments of the population over the course of the last eight years have given the very same picture. Some others doubt the results since they were not personally counted. And some are arguing about ‘the Siberians.’”
“About the last question,” Surinov said, “I want to say the following. In the census of the population, Rosstat and all the census takers are OBLIGATED to follow the Constitution and other laws of the Russian Federation. Therefore, in the census forms answers to the question ABOUT NATIONALITY are written down STRICTLY ACCORDING TO THE WORDS of the individual questioned. NO ONE has the right to prompt people for an answer on this point, to show doubts about any answer or to insist on a particular answer. If it were otherwise, and complaints suggest that this happened but rapidly, then we census takers will correct ourselves and do apologize. To assess the actions of people we do not have the right, and this is correct. An individual may not have a single drop of Russian blood but be raised in Russian traditions and Russian culture. And he may call himself a Russian if he wants. Or he can refuse to answer this question.”
“Statistical workers must assemble information, process it, and present it to the user in order that he in the first instance can correctly interpret it. And we shall see how will be interpreted the population of Siberians, Pomors, Russians and others by ethnographers. Science does not stand without moving, and there are many scientific schools. Today may be one interpretation, and tomorrow another. But the main thing is that all users have equal access to information and this means equal opportunities for interpretation.”
“For the conduct of the 2010 census, the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences developed a list of possible variants of answers of the population for coding the answers to the question on the census form about nationality by taking into account the self-designations which appeared during the 2002 census. There were more than 1800 such self-designations. But how many nationalities are there in the Russian Federation?”
“This enumeration is needed exclusively for the machine processing of the materials of the 2010 All-Russian Census and the organization of its results on the question of nationality. Each position in this list has its own code number. In this list, a new self-designation may appear on the basis of the results of the last census. Thus, in the 2010 census appeared the Bulgars.”
“In many countries,” Surinov continued, “questions about nationality are not given. And they live no worse than ours. Rosstat will publish the results about the numbers of individuals counted in the census according to their self-designations. But tables about questions of census forms will be published by nationalities. The algorithms of the transition from self-designation to nationality have been worked out by the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Rosstat does not aspire to do this. This is not our task.”
“Now, preparations for the machine processing of the materials of the census are going at full speed. Soon we will begin to process them. I hope our internal resources will be sufficient and we will put out the results according to our plans. Then we can talk about the Siberians. How many of them there are, where they are, and where they live. About unisex and polygamist marriages. [And] about populations of gnomes, elves, and other curiosities.”
In reporting this blogpost, which itself appears likely to give rise to further debate – although possibly shifting its focus from Rosstat to the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology and its oft-criticized director Valery Tishkov, Globalsib.com also queried experts there and elsewhere about the lists of nationalities.
Officials at the Institute pointed out that the list of names developed by its scholars was “not handed out to the census takers” and is needed, as Surinov said, “only for the processing of materials of the 2010 census and the reporting of results on the nationality composition” and other “demographic and social-economic characteristics of the peoples” of Russia.
Vladimir Zorin, deputy director of the Institute, said that “such a new nationality as ‘Siberians’ could not appear as a result of the census.” Censuses by themselves are not the basis for “creating or destroying a nationality. The task of the census is simply to record accurately the answers, and that is all.”
Meanwhile, however, Leokadia Drobrizheva, the head of the Center for Research on Inter-Ethnic Relations of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (who earlier worked at the Institute of Ethnology), focused on the causes of the appearance of “the Siberians.”
She suggested that there could be several, including “fear about unification and a seeking to distinguish oneself among others, an expression of protest attitudes, and evidence of the development in Russia of regional identities.” But she too said that “the chance of the appearance of a new nationality as a result of the census was ‘not realistic because there are no objective scientific bases for this.’”
Those who identify as Siberians are unlikely to be satisfied with any of this. Some Siberian activists have already complained to Surinov that many census takers refused to write down their self-designations as Siberians accurately or even insisted that “there are no Siberians” and that census takers have been “prohibited” from writing “Siberian” in the form.
Surinov has dismissed their complains and called on those making them to provide specific instances, but neither his response nor his latest post nor the press release from the census appears likely to calm debate on the issue of Siberian identity and hence on the future meaning of Russianness and of Russia itself.
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