Paul Goble
Staunton, May 31 – Russians “at one and the same time feel themselves to be the greatest and the most oppressed nation on earth,” a situation that a Moscow commentator says reflects their “uncritical approach to themselves, the powers, and state propaganda” and that is the continuing source of many of their country’s most intractable problems.
In an essay in today’s “Gazeta,” Boris Tumanov explores the origins and the consequences of these “two unchanged and mutually exclusive leitmotifs” of Russian thought and suggests that even “the dialectic” will not help most people to understand why Russians feel the way they do (www.gazeta.ru/comments/2011/05/31_a_3633993.shtml).
“On the one hand,” he begins, the situation in which Russians find themselves in post-Soviet Russia, a country in which they form the overwhelming majority of the population and find themselves subordinate to “Russian state traditions including the mania for geopolitical greatness” allows them to view themselves “without irony” as the “state forming” nation.
And consequently, “when Russians are told in this situation that ‘Russia has risen from its knees,’ Russians for completely understandable reasons conceive this as being exclusively their due.” They ascribe “in a natural way” to “the current powers and to Vladimir Putin personally” the fact that they have begun “to live better and more happily.”
Any effort to cast doubt on this “idyl” or to point up “existing shortcomings” which any objective individual would have to acknowledge Russia, like any other country, has, Tumanov suggests, is considered by Russians to be the work of “born Russophobe who are working in the service of the enemies of Russia.”
But this belief that Russians are “the greatest of nations, the Moscow commentator says, “organically coexists with equally categorical assertions” by the Russians themselves that “Russians are the most oppressed nation in Russia, that Russians are dying out with their birthrate falling and morality growing, with Russians becoming impoverished” and so on.
Unfortunately, while believing these things to be true, most Russians do not have any understanding of whom they should address complaints about these things and “who is the guilty party of all these misfortunes,” even though they should recognize that such responsibility falls “above all on those people who administer” Russia.
That is not something Russians want to do because of their feeling that they are the greatest of nations and that their leaders are the best, and it is not something that intermediate leaders want to do because they recognize that there is little they can do about most of these problems.
But periodically, one or another politician, especially in the run up to elections, suggests that the issue should be addressed. Now that has happened again, Tumanov says, pointing to the proposal from Communist Duma deputy Vladimir Fedotkin to hold a parliamentary discussioin on “the conditions of life and fate of the Russian people.”
Such hearings, of course, Tumanov argues, “will become in fact a recognition of the fact that ten years of ‘stability, flowering, and getting up from one’s knees’ have led the Russian people to such a condition that it is time to reflect about its further fate and immediately improve the conditions of its life.”
The absurdity of this situation will be obvious because “our deputies will be forced to acknowledge the impoverished situation in which Russians, that is in essence, the overwhelming majority of the population are situated,” but they will find it almost impossible to take any real steps.
That is because “the people’s representatives and above all the United Russia party leaders even under torture will not agree to recognize their direct responsibility for the current misfortunes of the Russians and will always be looking for someone else on whom they can place all the blame.”
What is thus likely to happen? Tumanov suggests that there will be declarations about the Russians “as the state forming people” and possibly other “privileges for Russians,” although these too will remain “on paper” lest they spark a new “inter-ethnic catastrophe” among the country’s various ethnic groups.
Even the discussion promises to worsen ethnic relations, Tumanov says, even though the Russians themselves “will remain satisfied for the next two or three years” and then all this “will begin again,” with no end in sight all the more so because many Russians will be all too inclined to see the non-Russians as their oppressors, just as they did in Soviet times.
One of Russia’s greatest problems remains excessive drinking which in turn reduces life expectancy, Tumanov says, “It is necessary to drink less. But this assertion can be true only for those people who recognize their responsibility at a minimum for their own fate and still better for the fate of their society.”
“In other words, for those Russians who do not await from the powers that be instruction about how to love it, what to think and how to conduct onself and which are not seeking the causes of their own lack of well-being in the machinations of mythical ‘internal and external enemies,’” including “the non-Russians.”
Russia’s tragedy, Tumanov suggests, will continue “as long as the unnatural symbiosis between the insane deification of the powers” and the acceptance of existing conditions as beyond anyone’s control” exists among the majority of Russians. That time, unfortunately, is not yet, the commentator concludes.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Turkic Nogays Seek Their Own Ethnic Territory in the North Caucasus
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 31 – Despite the efforts, including the use of police power, by the Daghestani authorities to stop it, the Congress of the Nogays of Russia took place in their eponymous district in Daghestan and demanded that their historical homelands in Stavropol, Daghestan and Chechnya be reunited in a common Nogay motherland.
More than 3,000 people assembled at the stadium in Terkli-Mekteb under slogans like “Our Motherland is the Nogay Steppe,” “Rebirth or Disappearance?” “Our Ancestors were Heroes; Are You?” and “Indifference is Equivalent to Betrayal” and demanded “self-determination within the framework of a single administrative territorial unit.”
Specifically, Kavkaz-Uzel.ru reported, the May 29 meeting called for declaring the RSFSR degree of 1957 “anti-constitutional and anti-people” because that Moscow action left the Nogays divided in three different federal units and without one of their own (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/186275/).
More immediately, the participants demanded that the Russian procuracy examine the Daghestani law on livestock to see if it corresponds to federal legislation. According to that law, “the lands where the Nogays live” and have from time immemorial used for agricultural purposes are being taken from them for industrial development.
And the residents of the Nogay district in Daghestan used this meeteing to call for general popular elections of the head of that district. Elections to the district assembly, which will “then choose the head of the district are expected in the fall,” according to the Kavkaz-Uzel.ru report.
The news agency also reported that “the approach to the stadium where the Congress of the Nogays of Russia took place was blocked and under militia guard,” a reflection of the opposition “a number of representatives of the powers that be had expressed” beforehand (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/186269/).
The opposition of these officials is completely understandable given the challenge that the Nogays represent. Although they number only about 47,000 in the Russian Federation itself, the Turkic-speaking Nogays claim that there are “approximately five million Nogays” living abroad, mostly in Turkey and the Middle East.
That means that like the Circassians who want the formation of a common Circassian Republic and who have support from diaspora communities and like the Turkic-speaking Balkars who have been making demands about greater protection from Moscow in Kabasrdino-Balkaria, the Nogays are in a position to trigger more tension and instability in the North Caucasus.
It is thus likely that some in Makhachkala and Moscow will try to present the Nogays as they have the Circassians and Didos as agents for Georgian or Western interests, but in fact, the Nogays, just like the others, have real grievances which the Russian Federation has so far shown little interest in addressing.
And at the very least, the Nogay demand for the restoration of a single Nogay territory is certain to have a chilling effect on the push by some in the Russian capital to do away with existing ethnic republics by reminding everyone involved that many non-Russians see these institutions as the key to their survival and that some who lack them hope to get them back.
Staunton, May 31 – Despite the efforts, including the use of police power, by the Daghestani authorities to stop it, the Congress of the Nogays of Russia took place in their eponymous district in Daghestan and demanded that their historical homelands in Stavropol, Daghestan and Chechnya be reunited in a common Nogay motherland.
More than 3,000 people assembled at the stadium in Terkli-Mekteb under slogans like “Our Motherland is the Nogay Steppe,” “Rebirth or Disappearance?” “Our Ancestors were Heroes; Are You?” and “Indifference is Equivalent to Betrayal” and demanded “self-determination within the framework of a single administrative territorial unit.”
Specifically, Kavkaz-Uzel.ru reported, the May 29 meeting called for declaring the RSFSR degree of 1957 “anti-constitutional and anti-people” because that Moscow action left the Nogays divided in three different federal units and without one of their own (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/186275/).
More immediately, the participants demanded that the Russian procuracy examine the Daghestani law on livestock to see if it corresponds to federal legislation. According to that law, “the lands where the Nogays live” and have from time immemorial used for agricultural purposes are being taken from them for industrial development.
And the residents of the Nogay district in Daghestan used this meeteing to call for general popular elections of the head of that district. Elections to the district assembly, which will “then choose the head of the district are expected in the fall,” according to the Kavkaz-Uzel.ru report.
The news agency also reported that “the approach to the stadium where the Congress of the Nogays of Russia took place was blocked and under militia guard,” a reflection of the opposition “a number of representatives of the powers that be had expressed” beforehand (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/186269/).
The opposition of these officials is completely understandable given the challenge that the Nogays represent. Although they number only about 47,000 in the Russian Federation itself, the Turkic-speaking Nogays claim that there are “approximately five million Nogays” living abroad, mostly in Turkey and the Middle East.
That means that like the Circassians who want the formation of a common Circassian Republic and who have support from diaspora communities and like the Turkic-speaking Balkars who have been making demands about greater protection from Moscow in Kabasrdino-Balkaria, the Nogays are in a position to trigger more tension and instability in the North Caucasus.
It is thus likely that some in Makhachkala and Moscow will try to present the Nogays as they have the Circassians and Didos as agents for Georgian or Western interests, but in fact, the Nogays, just like the others, have real grievances which the Russian Federation has so far shown little interest in addressing.
And at the very least, the Nogay demand for the restoration of a single Nogay territory is certain to have a chilling effect on the push by some in the Russian capital to do away with existing ethnic republics by reminding everyone involved that many non-Russians see these institutions as the key to their survival and that some who lack them hope to get them back.
Window on Eurasia: Is Siberia Becoming Russia’s Catalonia?
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 31 – Ever since the Olympic Games in Barcelona, the world has grown accustomed to the slogan “Catalonia is not Spain,” a St. Petersburg writer says, and uses an essay in that city’s “Nevskoye vremya” to ask “how great is the probability of hearing something similar about Siberia?”
For a long time, Denis Terentyev says, most political analysts viewed Siberian separatists as “a marginal movement,” one “whose goal is a prior unattainable, and thus quite unlike “the more or less serious” movements in the Caucasus, Tatarstan, and Urals Republic” because “Siberian separate from Russia could not exist” (www.nvspb.ru/stories/sibir-otdelno-45365).
Siberian separatism received a great deal of attention ten to fifteen years ago, Terentyev notes, even though “the movement of independence in Siberia did not arise then” and has not disappeared so. Instead, in recent years, “unique actions of civil disobedience have seized the entire region,” with it becoming the done thing to identify as a Sibirian in the census.
Terentyev suggests that these people are in fact Russians and have identified as such in the past, but he notes that “Irkutsk journalists say that the number of ‘separatists’ is really about 80 to 90 percent” of the population and that now “in local business the first question addressed to a potential partner is whether he is a Siberian or a Muscovite.”
A “Muscovite,” the writer continues, “can be someone from Petersburg, Bryansk or Balashikha – for the locals he is a symbol of ‘the colonial regime.’” The reason for the rise of this new nationality, Terentyev says is “as a reaction to the actions of the center” which have taken the wealth of the region and given far too little back.
In Siberian schools, “teachers tell the children that their native kray is fabulously wealthy, that here are 85 percent of the reserves of Russian natural gas, 60 percent of the oil, 75 percent of the coal and 70 percent of the aluminum.” And they accurately note that “a large part of the earnings [from these sectors] is taken by Moscow.”
One Irkutsk editor told him, Terentyev says, that “the center is beginning to understand the danger of what is taking place.” Its response is what one might expect: Representatives of the center have “had conversations [with him and other editors] about the undesirability of publications on the theme of Siberian separatism.”
The impact of such “conversations” is obvious, that editor said, from the way in which the media there have treated the case of former OMON officer Aleksandr Budnikov, who received a suspended sentence of two years for “extremist” comments posted on the Internet but who now faces four years in prison for seeking to separate Siberia from Russia by force.
The latest charges were filed after Budnikov and “several hundred of like-minded people” decided to seek the recall of their representatives in the Duma and Federation Council, the editor said, because as he said, “these people are not expressing our interests and the Constitution allows us to recall them.”
But Terentyev says, the ban Moscow wants extends far beyond this case. “In the newspapers, it has become not acceptable to write that the history of Siberia even before the Novosibirsk militiaman was full of attempts at self-determination,” and that in 1918, Siberia existed as an independent state albeit for only a short time.
In the nineteenth century, in fact, Anton Chekhov “note3d that Siberians are not like other Russians,” and today,, “as a result of the poor image of Russians in the world, it is more honorable to call oneself a Siberian,” all the more so because Siberians blame Moscow for their problems and see the rise of China with its high rises and paved roads.
On their side of the Sino-Russian border, the residents of Siberia see decaying peasant huts and “even federal highways that are not paved.” Not surprisingly, Terentyev says, “local residents draw the conclusion that Moscow is guilty in everything.” But he concludes that they should remember that “with separation, the problems of Siberia would only deepen.”
However that may be, Siberian activists are continuing to press for greater autonomy or even more. As one comment appended to Terentyev’s essay noted, “Siberians are already prepared to hold a referendum on uniting Siberia with the United States” (ru-ru.facebook.com/#!/home.php?sk=group_112982375434933&ap=1).
And another Siberian activist drew another conclusion. Yes, Siberians look like Russians, and they share many characteristics with them. But they are not engaged in “trading off the Motherland” as Muscovites are because unlike in the capital, “in the provinces it is impossible to do that” (sibirnet.ru/node/84).
Staunton, May 31 – Ever since the Olympic Games in Barcelona, the world has grown accustomed to the slogan “Catalonia is not Spain,” a St. Petersburg writer says, and uses an essay in that city’s “Nevskoye vremya” to ask “how great is the probability of hearing something similar about Siberia?”
For a long time, Denis Terentyev says, most political analysts viewed Siberian separatists as “a marginal movement,” one “whose goal is a prior unattainable, and thus quite unlike “the more or less serious” movements in the Caucasus, Tatarstan, and Urals Republic” because “Siberian separate from Russia could not exist” (www.nvspb.ru/stories/sibir-otdelno-45365).
Siberian separatism received a great deal of attention ten to fifteen years ago, Terentyev notes, even though “the movement of independence in Siberia did not arise then” and has not disappeared so. Instead, in recent years, “unique actions of civil disobedience have seized the entire region,” with it becoming the done thing to identify as a Sibirian in the census.
Terentyev suggests that these people are in fact Russians and have identified as such in the past, but he notes that “Irkutsk journalists say that the number of ‘separatists’ is really about 80 to 90 percent” of the population and that now “in local business the first question addressed to a potential partner is whether he is a Siberian or a Muscovite.”
A “Muscovite,” the writer continues, “can be someone from Petersburg, Bryansk or Balashikha – for the locals he is a symbol of ‘the colonial regime.’” The reason for the rise of this new nationality, Terentyev says is “as a reaction to the actions of the center” which have taken the wealth of the region and given far too little back.
In Siberian schools, “teachers tell the children that their native kray is fabulously wealthy, that here are 85 percent of the reserves of Russian natural gas, 60 percent of the oil, 75 percent of the coal and 70 percent of the aluminum.” And they accurately note that “a large part of the earnings [from these sectors] is taken by Moscow.”
One Irkutsk editor told him, Terentyev says, that “the center is beginning to understand the danger of what is taking place.” Its response is what one might expect: Representatives of the center have “had conversations [with him and other editors] about the undesirability of publications on the theme of Siberian separatism.”
The impact of such “conversations” is obvious, that editor said, from the way in which the media there have treated the case of former OMON officer Aleksandr Budnikov, who received a suspended sentence of two years for “extremist” comments posted on the Internet but who now faces four years in prison for seeking to separate Siberia from Russia by force.
The latest charges were filed after Budnikov and “several hundred of like-minded people” decided to seek the recall of their representatives in the Duma and Federation Council, the editor said, because as he said, “these people are not expressing our interests and the Constitution allows us to recall them.”
But Terentyev says, the ban Moscow wants extends far beyond this case. “In the newspapers, it has become not acceptable to write that the history of Siberia even before the Novosibirsk militiaman was full of attempts at self-determination,” and that in 1918, Siberia existed as an independent state albeit for only a short time.
In the nineteenth century, in fact, Anton Chekhov “note3d that Siberians are not like other Russians,” and today,, “as a result of the poor image of Russians in the world, it is more honorable to call oneself a Siberian,” all the more so because Siberians blame Moscow for their problems and see the rise of China with its high rises and paved roads.
On their side of the Sino-Russian border, the residents of Siberia see decaying peasant huts and “even federal highways that are not paved.” Not surprisingly, Terentyev says, “local residents draw the conclusion that Moscow is guilty in everything.” But he concludes that they should remember that “with separation, the problems of Siberia would only deepen.”
However that may be, Siberian activists are continuing to press for greater autonomy or even more. As one comment appended to Terentyev’s essay noted, “Siberians are already prepared to hold a referendum on uniting Siberia with the United States” (ru-ru.facebook.com/#!/home.php?sk=group_112982375434933&ap=1).
And another Siberian activist drew another conclusion. Yes, Siberians look like Russians, and they share many characteristics with them. But they are not engaged in “trading off the Motherland” as Muscovites are because unlike in the capital, “in the provinces it is impossible to do that” (sibirnet.ru/node/84).
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Gasprinsky, Reformer who Viewed Russia’s Muslims as a Single Nation, Held Up as Model
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 28 – This year marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of Ismail-bey Gasprinsky, the Crimean Tatar leader who sought to unite the Muslims of the Russian Empire on a reformist rather than revolutionary basis in pre-parliamentary times. And some Muslim leaders in the Russian Federation are holding him up as a model for today.
This week, at a Moscow conference on “Ismail Gasprinsky and the Birth of the Unity of Russian Muslims,” academic specialists and Muslim leaders discussed his legacy and argued that Gasprinsky’s ideas can make a significant contribution to “the formation of an all-Russian civic identity” and to “the formation of a legal state” (www.islamrf.ru/news/umma/events/16181/).
Aydar Khabutdinov, a professor at the Kazan branch of the Russian Academy of Jurisprudence, recalled in an article published in advance of the conference that during Soviet times, communist officials did everything they could either to suppress Gasprinsky’s ideas or to blacken his reputation (www.islamrf.ru/news/culture/legacy/15887/).
“Even my generation of 40-year-olds,” Khabutdinov continued, “well remember how the ideas of Gasprinsky about the unity of Russia’s Muslims were denied in the name of regional and tribal divisions” and about how his writings about Koranic justice and legality were simply suppressed altogether.
A major reason for this, the Kazan professor suggested, is that Gasprinsky promoted ideas which represented a serious challenge to the Soviet state. “He taught young people to search and acquire knowledge and to generously devote themselves to the Motherland and the nation,” defining the latter as the Muslim community as a whole.
“Young radicals denounced Gasprinsky for his willingness to work with the powers that be, but [the Crimean Tatar thinker] was convinced that it would be possible to create a better future only by the labor of a free man and not by force” as many of his opponents within the umma and more generally believed.
“Bloody Russian history of the last century went in a different direction” than the one Gasprinsky advocated, Khabutdinov continued. But if the future of Russia and its growing Muslim community are to be better, then it is absolutely necessary to recover and then implement the great reformer’s ideas.
“It was no accident that Ismail-bay Gasprinsky became ‘the father of the epoch’ of the national development of Russia’s Muslims,” the Kazan scholar argues. Born on March 8, 1851, Gasprinsky grew up informed by the liberal ideas which “saved many countries of Europe from revolution.” Unfortunately, Khabutdinov said, “our Motherland was not among them.”
Most of Gasprinsky’s life was spent at a time when there was no parliament in Russia, and consequently, he devoted himself to using the press to advance his ideas. He founded the newspaper “Tercuman” in 1883, “the first stable newspaper in the history of Russia’s Muslims” and an outlet that helped define both the language and ideas of many of them.
His paper was explicitly directed toward “the consolidation around itself of representatives of all groups of the national elite, including the bourgeoisie, the spiritual leadership, the intelligentsia and the nobility,” and “in the absence of the opportunity to form political parties before 1917, it “filled the function of professional politicians and social leaders.”
As Khabutdinov noted, “the idea of the nation was one of the key concepts of the 19th century,” and Gasprinsky “borrowed from the philosophical doctrine of the Slavophiles the idea about ‘nationality as a collective personality having its own special calling” but extended it to argue that all the Muslims of Russia were members of one nation.
By the early years of the 20th century, Gasprinsky had developed a political program for this Turko-Tatar nation, a program that included by “typically bourgeois demands such as political and civic freedoms, a constitutional state and so on as well as legal acts and norms defining it as ‘a millet.’”
In Gasprinsky’s view, the Kazan scholar wrote, this millet would be “a special ethnic structure in the framework of the imperial state, one having a special legal status, a concentration around spiritual assemblies, a nationally-proportional system of the formation of organs of power and so on.” In short, he sought “a single religious autonomy” for the Muslims of Russia.
And he argued that “each nation must be a juridical person, have its own economic institutions (banks, cooperatives, etc.) an autonomous system of education, enlightenment and charitable organizations, and also a political structure,” something that could be achieved by education in a common Turkic language and social efforts rather than revolution.
Gasprinsky, Khabutdinov said, “frequently stressed that the era of medieval khans had passed and that Muslims from subjects of medieval states must be transformed into citizens of a state of Modern Times.” To that end, he called for overcoming “centuries-old fatalism” and a prejudice against re-interpreting the past.
Indeed, in the views of the jadids of that time, Gasprinsky had created their present must as the Tatar thinker Marjani had “returned to the Tatars their past. And when Gasprinsky died in August 1914, Muslims from across the Russian Empire mourned his passing even as Russia headed in a very different direction than the one he wanted.
The question that needs to be addressed today, Khabutdinov concluded, is “will we be able to fulfill the injunctions of ismail-bay and construct a better future for ourselves and for our children?”
Staunton, May 28 – This year marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of Ismail-bey Gasprinsky, the Crimean Tatar leader who sought to unite the Muslims of the Russian Empire on a reformist rather than revolutionary basis in pre-parliamentary times. And some Muslim leaders in the Russian Federation are holding him up as a model for today.
This week, at a Moscow conference on “Ismail Gasprinsky and the Birth of the Unity of Russian Muslims,” academic specialists and Muslim leaders discussed his legacy and argued that Gasprinsky’s ideas can make a significant contribution to “the formation of an all-Russian civic identity” and to “the formation of a legal state” (www.islamrf.ru/news/umma/events/16181/).
Aydar Khabutdinov, a professor at the Kazan branch of the Russian Academy of Jurisprudence, recalled in an article published in advance of the conference that during Soviet times, communist officials did everything they could either to suppress Gasprinsky’s ideas or to blacken his reputation (www.islamrf.ru/news/culture/legacy/15887/).
“Even my generation of 40-year-olds,” Khabutdinov continued, “well remember how the ideas of Gasprinsky about the unity of Russia’s Muslims were denied in the name of regional and tribal divisions” and about how his writings about Koranic justice and legality were simply suppressed altogether.
A major reason for this, the Kazan professor suggested, is that Gasprinsky promoted ideas which represented a serious challenge to the Soviet state. “He taught young people to search and acquire knowledge and to generously devote themselves to the Motherland and the nation,” defining the latter as the Muslim community as a whole.
“Young radicals denounced Gasprinsky for his willingness to work with the powers that be, but [the Crimean Tatar thinker] was convinced that it would be possible to create a better future only by the labor of a free man and not by force” as many of his opponents within the umma and more generally believed.
“Bloody Russian history of the last century went in a different direction” than the one Gasprinsky advocated, Khabutdinov continued. But if the future of Russia and its growing Muslim community are to be better, then it is absolutely necessary to recover and then implement the great reformer’s ideas.
“It was no accident that Ismail-bay Gasprinsky became ‘the father of the epoch’ of the national development of Russia’s Muslims,” the Kazan scholar argues. Born on March 8, 1851, Gasprinsky grew up informed by the liberal ideas which “saved many countries of Europe from revolution.” Unfortunately, Khabutdinov said, “our Motherland was not among them.”
Most of Gasprinsky’s life was spent at a time when there was no parliament in Russia, and consequently, he devoted himself to using the press to advance his ideas. He founded the newspaper “Tercuman” in 1883, “the first stable newspaper in the history of Russia’s Muslims” and an outlet that helped define both the language and ideas of many of them.
His paper was explicitly directed toward “the consolidation around itself of representatives of all groups of the national elite, including the bourgeoisie, the spiritual leadership, the intelligentsia and the nobility,” and “in the absence of the opportunity to form political parties before 1917, it “filled the function of professional politicians and social leaders.”
As Khabutdinov noted, “the idea of the nation was one of the key concepts of the 19th century,” and Gasprinsky “borrowed from the philosophical doctrine of the Slavophiles the idea about ‘nationality as a collective personality having its own special calling” but extended it to argue that all the Muslims of Russia were members of one nation.
By the early years of the 20th century, Gasprinsky had developed a political program for this Turko-Tatar nation, a program that included by “typically bourgeois demands such as political and civic freedoms, a constitutional state and so on as well as legal acts and norms defining it as ‘a millet.’”
In Gasprinsky’s view, the Kazan scholar wrote, this millet would be “a special ethnic structure in the framework of the imperial state, one having a special legal status, a concentration around spiritual assemblies, a nationally-proportional system of the formation of organs of power and so on.” In short, he sought “a single religious autonomy” for the Muslims of Russia.
And he argued that “each nation must be a juridical person, have its own economic institutions (banks, cooperatives, etc.) an autonomous system of education, enlightenment and charitable organizations, and also a political structure,” something that could be achieved by education in a common Turkic language and social efforts rather than revolution.
Gasprinsky, Khabutdinov said, “frequently stressed that the era of medieval khans had passed and that Muslims from subjects of medieval states must be transformed into citizens of a state of Modern Times.” To that end, he called for overcoming “centuries-old fatalism” and a prejudice against re-interpreting the past.
Indeed, in the views of the jadids of that time, Gasprinsky had created their present must as the Tatar thinker Marjani had “returned to the Tatars their past. And when Gasprinsky died in August 1914, Muslims from across the Russian Empire mourned his passing even as Russia headed in a very different direction than the one he wanted.
The question that needs to be addressed today, Khabutdinov concluded, is “will we be able to fulfill the injunctions of ismail-bay and construct a better future for ourselves and for our children?”
Window on Eurasia: Muscovites Live a Decade Longer than Do Russians beyond the Ring Road
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 28 – Muscovites currently live on average nearly ten years longer than do Russians outside the capital, a reflection of differences in education, income and governmental support and yet another way in which residents of the capital city, on whom so many base their assessment of Russia as a whole, are in fact becoming almost another nation.
In an article posted on the “Svobodnaya pressa” portal yesterday, Svetlana Gomzikova points out that residents of the Russian capital and especially the most senior members of the elite have life expectancies equal to those in Switzerland and the US while other Russians have life expectancies typical of the developing world (svpressa.ru/society/article/43699/).
For the Russian Federation as a whole, United Nations statistics say, life expectancy for men is now 58.7 years and for women 71.8 years. These figures are 16 years lower than life expectancy for men in the United States and nine years lower than that for women in the US, and the Russian numbers are lower than all of the former Soviet republics, except Kazakhstan.
But these global Russian figures conceal as much as they reveal, Gomzikova suggests. Men living in Moscow have a life expectancy of 67.3 years, and Russian men living in the Central Administrative District of the Russian capital have a still longer live expectancy, 70.4 years. Women living there can expect to live 78.8 years.
The reason for that, demographers say, is in people there have “a high level of education and income [and] have greater possibilities to concern themselves with health.” Their conclusion, Gomzikova says, is “partially confirmed” by the fact that men in the south and southeastern parts of the capital have live expectancies two to three years less than for the city as a whole.
In addition, the “Svobodnaya pressa” journalist says, there are “significant differences in the mortality of the adult population depending on the level of education and the character of work: the level of mortality among workers and peasants is higher than among those who are engaged in mental work.”
Russian sociologists calculate that “mortality in Russia falls for men by nine percent and for women by seven percent for each additional year of schooling.” And that allows one to conclude, Gomrikova suggests, that “the growth of Russian mortality is the result of the growth of mortality in the less educated strata of the population.”
That has prompted demographers to argue that the Russian authorities now very concerned about demography should focus their efforts not so much on boosting the birth rate than on improving behavior and solving social problems – despite all the difficulties such a shift in approach would entail.
But despite the relatively low life expectancies among Russians, experts like Vladimir Khavinson, the head of the St. Petersburg Institute of Bio-Regulation and Gerontology say, Russia increasingly faces a problem that other countries are having to confront as well: the aging of the population and the increasing share of pensioners relative to workers.
That problem is all the greater in Russia because it has one of the lowest pension ages in the world. Given that the more educated and urbanized population lives longer, that in turn means that less educated workers are going to be forced to support larger numbers of older but more educated Russians, a situation that could generate new political conflicts.
Staunton, May 28 – Muscovites currently live on average nearly ten years longer than do Russians outside the capital, a reflection of differences in education, income and governmental support and yet another way in which residents of the capital city, on whom so many base their assessment of Russia as a whole, are in fact becoming almost another nation.
In an article posted on the “Svobodnaya pressa” portal yesterday, Svetlana Gomzikova points out that residents of the Russian capital and especially the most senior members of the elite have life expectancies equal to those in Switzerland and the US while other Russians have life expectancies typical of the developing world (svpressa.ru/society/article/43699/).
For the Russian Federation as a whole, United Nations statistics say, life expectancy for men is now 58.7 years and for women 71.8 years. These figures are 16 years lower than life expectancy for men in the United States and nine years lower than that for women in the US, and the Russian numbers are lower than all of the former Soviet republics, except Kazakhstan.
But these global Russian figures conceal as much as they reveal, Gomzikova suggests. Men living in Moscow have a life expectancy of 67.3 years, and Russian men living in the Central Administrative District of the Russian capital have a still longer live expectancy, 70.4 years. Women living there can expect to live 78.8 years.
The reason for that, demographers say, is in people there have “a high level of education and income [and] have greater possibilities to concern themselves with health.” Their conclusion, Gomzikova says, is “partially confirmed” by the fact that men in the south and southeastern parts of the capital have live expectancies two to three years less than for the city as a whole.
In addition, the “Svobodnaya pressa” journalist says, there are “significant differences in the mortality of the adult population depending on the level of education and the character of work: the level of mortality among workers and peasants is higher than among those who are engaged in mental work.”
Russian sociologists calculate that “mortality in Russia falls for men by nine percent and for women by seven percent for each additional year of schooling.” And that allows one to conclude, Gomrikova suggests, that “the growth of Russian mortality is the result of the growth of mortality in the less educated strata of the population.”
That has prompted demographers to argue that the Russian authorities now very concerned about demography should focus their efforts not so much on boosting the birth rate than on improving behavior and solving social problems – despite all the difficulties such a shift in approach would entail.
But despite the relatively low life expectancies among Russians, experts like Vladimir Khavinson, the head of the St. Petersburg Institute of Bio-Regulation and Gerontology say, Russia increasingly faces a problem that other countries are having to confront as well: the aging of the population and the increasing share of pensioners relative to workers.
That problem is all the greater in Russia because it has one of the lowest pension ages in the world. Given that the more educated and urbanized population lives longer, that in turn means that less educated workers are going to be forced to support larger numbers of older but more educated Russians, a situation that could generate new political conflicts.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Must Pursue ‘Rossification’ of Immigrants, Expert Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 27 – As many as 40 percent of all immigrant workers in the Russian Federation would like to regularize their status and become full members of the community there, an expert on migration says, but neither the Russian state nor most members of Russian society are prepared to take the steps needed to meet them half way.
In part, this reflects a reaction to demagogic commentaries which have dramatically overstated the size of the problem Russia now faces, Vladimir Mukomel, a sociologist who is part of the Strategy 2020 expert group, but in part, it represents an unwillingness to pursue what he calls “Rossianization” rather than “Russificaiton” (svpressa.ru/society/article/43689/).
In an interview with “Svobodnaya pressa” journalist Kirill Zubkov, Mukomel comments first of all on some of the figures which have prompted Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov and other politicians to call for parliamentary hearings on the influx of people they suggest “do not have Russian memory” and “for whom the Russian land is something alien.”
According to Mukomel, “migration is not a problem with which one must struggle but it also is not a panacea for all problems.” It may solve some problems but only at the cost of creating others. And consequently, any discussion of how to address migration must consider both costs and benefits.
By 2030, he points out, Russia is “threatened by something worse than depopulation.” It is threatened by a decline of more than 12 million people of working age, even as the total decline of the population will be only 2.8 million. That means workers increasingly will have to support more non-workers, mostly the elderly, than in the past.
It is thus not clear, Mukomel says, “on whose account Russian pensions will live, given that the percent that they will form in the population is growing while the percentage of workers is falling.” And that will be even more true in the future, when after 2018, the current relative stabilization of Russia’s population ends and a new and more rapid decline begins.
Putting things in the simplest terms, the sociologist continues, “Russia needs new workers immediately, and Russia needs new citizens over time if Russia wants to have a future for itself.”
Many suggest that the solution is to be found in the mass influx of immigrants, but “migration is not a panacea.” And what is necessary is finding a way that allows for “the adaptation of migrants to Russian society – at least in the case of those migrants who want to settle in Russia and become equal citizens of the country.”
The total number of them, like the total number of migrants in the Russian Federation, is often exaggerated, Mukomel insists. There are about 160,000 who seek permanent residence, while something on the order of four million come for seasonal or temporary work and then return home.
The figures politicians toss about are far too large unless one counts all those now in the Russian Federation who were born elsewhere. “For the post-Soviet space, sucha method of accounting is unacceptable. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of citizens of Russia were born and for a long time lived in the former Soviet republics.
“If one follows the logic” of those who invoke the larger figure, Mukomel says, then one has to include in it such people as “Minister of Internal Affairs Rashid Nurgaliyev, who was born on the territory of what is now independent Kazakhstan. Moreover, the younger daughter of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Ekaterina, who was born in Dresden, also is an immigrant.”
While exact statistics are not available, the expert says, sociologists believe that “on average from 25 to 40 percent of the labor migrants who have come to Russia for work are prepared to be integrated” into Russian society.” In fact, many of them already have done so, although they are not in a position to regularize themselves legally.
The reasons for that, he suggests, lie in “the most complete lack of preparedness of [Russian] state structures” to do so as well as the unfortunate reality that “Russian society itself is not ready for the integration of immigrants,” despite the fact that most come from former Soviet areas and speak Russian.
As a result, Mukomel continues, “words about ‘the lack among those who come of Russian memory’ are also untrue: across the entire post-Soviet space, the Russian language is taught up to now and enjoys, for example in Tajikistan, serious demand” because “everyone understands” that one needs Russian if one is to work in Russia.
In other words, his interviewer says, “one is speaking about a certain variant of Russification?” To which Mukomel replies: “I would prefer the term ‘Rossification.’ In the final analysis, the entire history of Russia is the history of Russification, the integration into Rusian society of immigrant masses.”
“Karamzin, Chaadayev, Dal, even Pushkin,” Mukomel oints out, “are all descendents of migrants,” something that “should not be forgotten.” And as far as suggestions that new arrivals supposedly “will not defend the motherland,” one should remember such figures as Barklay de Tolli, Bagration, Totleben and tens of thousands of others” who nobly fought for it.
Staunton, May 27 – As many as 40 percent of all immigrant workers in the Russian Federation would like to regularize their status and become full members of the community there, an expert on migration says, but neither the Russian state nor most members of Russian society are prepared to take the steps needed to meet them half way.
In part, this reflects a reaction to demagogic commentaries which have dramatically overstated the size of the problem Russia now faces, Vladimir Mukomel, a sociologist who is part of the Strategy 2020 expert group, but in part, it represents an unwillingness to pursue what he calls “Rossianization” rather than “Russificaiton” (svpressa.ru/society/article/43689/).
In an interview with “Svobodnaya pressa” journalist Kirill Zubkov, Mukomel comments first of all on some of the figures which have prompted Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov and other politicians to call for parliamentary hearings on the influx of people they suggest “do not have Russian memory” and “for whom the Russian land is something alien.”
According to Mukomel, “migration is not a problem with which one must struggle but it also is not a panacea for all problems.” It may solve some problems but only at the cost of creating others. And consequently, any discussion of how to address migration must consider both costs and benefits.
By 2030, he points out, Russia is “threatened by something worse than depopulation.” It is threatened by a decline of more than 12 million people of working age, even as the total decline of the population will be only 2.8 million. That means workers increasingly will have to support more non-workers, mostly the elderly, than in the past.
It is thus not clear, Mukomel says, “on whose account Russian pensions will live, given that the percent that they will form in the population is growing while the percentage of workers is falling.” And that will be even more true in the future, when after 2018, the current relative stabilization of Russia’s population ends and a new and more rapid decline begins.
Putting things in the simplest terms, the sociologist continues, “Russia needs new workers immediately, and Russia needs new citizens over time if Russia wants to have a future for itself.”
Many suggest that the solution is to be found in the mass influx of immigrants, but “migration is not a panacea.” And what is necessary is finding a way that allows for “the adaptation of migrants to Russian society – at least in the case of those migrants who want to settle in Russia and become equal citizens of the country.”
The total number of them, like the total number of migrants in the Russian Federation, is often exaggerated, Mukomel insists. There are about 160,000 who seek permanent residence, while something on the order of four million come for seasonal or temporary work and then return home.
The figures politicians toss about are far too large unless one counts all those now in the Russian Federation who were born elsewhere. “For the post-Soviet space, sucha method of accounting is unacceptable. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of citizens of Russia were born and for a long time lived in the former Soviet republics.
“If one follows the logic” of those who invoke the larger figure, Mukomel says, then one has to include in it such people as “Minister of Internal Affairs Rashid Nurgaliyev, who was born on the territory of what is now independent Kazakhstan. Moreover, the younger daughter of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Ekaterina, who was born in Dresden, also is an immigrant.”
While exact statistics are not available, the expert says, sociologists believe that “on average from 25 to 40 percent of the labor migrants who have come to Russia for work are prepared to be integrated” into Russian society.” In fact, many of them already have done so, although they are not in a position to regularize themselves legally.
The reasons for that, he suggests, lie in “the most complete lack of preparedness of [Russian] state structures” to do so as well as the unfortunate reality that “Russian society itself is not ready for the integration of immigrants,” despite the fact that most come from former Soviet areas and speak Russian.
As a result, Mukomel continues, “words about ‘the lack among those who come of Russian memory’ are also untrue: across the entire post-Soviet space, the Russian language is taught up to now and enjoys, for example in Tajikistan, serious demand” because “everyone understands” that one needs Russian if one is to work in Russia.
In other words, his interviewer says, “one is speaking about a certain variant of Russification?” To which Mukomel replies: “I would prefer the term ‘Rossification.’ In the final analysis, the entire history of Russia is the history of Russification, the integration into Rusian society of immigrant masses.”
“Karamzin, Chaadayev, Dal, even Pushkin,” Mukomel oints out, “are all descendents of migrants,” something that “should not be forgotten.” And as far as suggestions that new arrivals supposedly “will not defend the motherland,” one should remember such figures as Barklay de Tolli, Bagration, Totleben and tens of thousands of others” who nobly fought for it.
Window on Eurasia: Russia’s Once Proud River Fleet Near Collapse
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 27 – Russia’s river fleet on which Moscow in the past has relied to move bulk cargo given the shortage of reliable highways and rail lines is near a state of collapse, threatening the country’s economy and, because of the ecological problems its aging ships present, ability to export many things to European markets.
The Russian Federation has more than 100,000 kilometers of internal waterways deep enough for barge and other shipping traffic, but, Vladimir Rechmensky writes in this week’s “Argumenty nedeli,” the use of this network over the last 20 years has only fallen” and now involves less than two percent of all bulk transport (www.argumenti.ru/society/n290/108373).
According to the calculations of the Volga State Academy of Water Transport, shipping bulk cargo by water is 30 to 40 percent cheaper than moving the same amount by railway or highway, but because the amount now being carried is so small a percentage, Rechmensky says, “globally thinking manager-bureaucrats are not turning their attention” to the rivers.
Russia’s river fleet has always faced problems, experts say, because “in the best case,” the rivers are open for traffic only five months a year, meaning that they must make a profit for the entire year based on less than half a year’s operation. In addition, fuel costs have risen dramatically, and the lack of dredging has reduced the size of the available water network.
Because so little new money is going into this sector, Rechmensky continues, most of the ships are not equipped with contemporary geo-positioning systems. Instead of using GLONASS and GPS, as most other shippers now do, Russian captains are forced to navigate using maps which are updated only “once every three years,” a situation that can lead to accidents.
According to academic experts, the “Argumenty nedeli” journalist says, “at present, the state of the water arteries of the country is at the level it was at in the 1940s and 1950s. [They] and those working in this sector look with tears in their eyes at the step by step destruction of a system that was at one time capable of work.”
Except for yachts and high-end tourist vessels, the Russian river transport system is attracting ever less interest and support, and as a result, “the aging of port and hydro-technical arrangements and the river fleet itself is exceeding the rate of its rebuilding,” with many ships now beyond their projected lifespan and most “older than 30 years.”
With enough funding, these aging ships could be kept operational for several more decades, Rechmensky says, giving as an example a ship in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet which was launched in 1913. But if that is the case for domestic shipping, it is not sufficient when those barges try to carry goods to European ports.
Older ships and barges, Rechmensky points out, “do not correspond to the demands of ecological security” that European countries make and consequently they are not welcome in European ports, limiting the ability of Russia to export bulk cargoes in the most cost-efficient way.
To bring Russia’s river fleet up to international standards, the country would have to replace more than 80 percent of its vessels, some 8000 in all. Given current investment patterns, that is unlikely to happen, and as a result, Russia’s river fleet is “slowly but truly degrading” to the detriment of the country.
Staunton, May 27 – Russia’s river fleet on which Moscow in the past has relied to move bulk cargo given the shortage of reliable highways and rail lines is near a state of collapse, threatening the country’s economy and, because of the ecological problems its aging ships present, ability to export many things to European markets.
The Russian Federation has more than 100,000 kilometers of internal waterways deep enough for barge and other shipping traffic, but, Vladimir Rechmensky writes in this week’s “Argumenty nedeli,” the use of this network over the last 20 years has only fallen” and now involves less than two percent of all bulk transport (www.argumenti.ru/society/n290/108373).
According to the calculations of the Volga State Academy of Water Transport, shipping bulk cargo by water is 30 to 40 percent cheaper than moving the same amount by railway or highway, but because the amount now being carried is so small a percentage, Rechmensky says, “globally thinking manager-bureaucrats are not turning their attention” to the rivers.
Russia’s river fleet has always faced problems, experts say, because “in the best case,” the rivers are open for traffic only five months a year, meaning that they must make a profit for the entire year based on less than half a year’s operation. In addition, fuel costs have risen dramatically, and the lack of dredging has reduced the size of the available water network.
Because so little new money is going into this sector, Rechmensky continues, most of the ships are not equipped with contemporary geo-positioning systems. Instead of using GLONASS and GPS, as most other shippers now do, Russian captains are forced to navigate using maps which are updated only “once every three years,” a situation that can lead to accidents.
According to academic experts, the “Argumenty nedeli” journalist says, “at present, the state of the water arteries of the country is at the level it was at in the 1940s and 1950s. [They] and those working in this sector look with tears in their eyes at the step by step destruction of a system that was at one time capable of work.”
Except for yachts and high-end tourist vessels, the Russian river transport system is attracting ever less interest and support, and as a result, “the aging of port and hydro-technical arrangements and the river fleet itself is exceeding the rate of its rebuilding,” with many ships now beyond their projected lifespan and most “older than 30 years.”
With enough funding, these aging ships could be kept operational for several more decades, Rechmensky says, giving as an example a ship in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet which was launched in 1913. But if that is the case for domestic shipping, it is not sufficient when those barges try to carry goods to European ports.
Older ships and barges, Rechmensky points out, “do not correspond to the demands of ecological security” that European countries make and consequently they are not welcome in European ports, limiting the ability of Russia to export bulk cargoes in the most cost-efficient way.
To bring Russia’s river fleet up to international standards, the country would have to replace more than 80 percent of its vessels, some 8000 in all. Given current investment patterns, that is unlikely to happen, and as a result, Russia’s river fleet is “slowly but truly degrading” to the detriment of the country.
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