Paul Goble
Staunton, June 1 – “Up to 10,000” young people from the North Caucasus are studying or have studied Islam abroad where they have received “doubtful ideological positions,” the Russian presidential plenipotentiary for the region says, and officials are working on a program to re-adapt them to life inside the Russian Federation.
In an interview in today’s “Vedomosti,” Aleksandr Khloponin says that Moscow “cannot prevent” people from travelling abroad given that “Russia has a visa-free regime with many countries.” But officials must make sure that they do not bring back and spread harmful ideas (www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article/261264/programma_po_vosstanovleniyu_chechni_vypolnena_aleksandr).
“According to our estimates,” Khloponin adds, there are “from 1000 to 10,000 of our youth studying or who have studied on the territories of countries” where they “can receive” potentially harmful ideas. Among these countries, “in particular” he continues, are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey.
“In this connection, we now are developing a program of adaptation of young men who are returning from there. This task has been given to the Ministry of Regional Affairs, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Federal Migration Service.” And before the end of the year, there is to be created “a data base” on who had studied what and where.
According to Khloponin, “it is natural that an individual who spends five years in a country where the the laws of shariat operate has an absolutely different understanding of life. We will help this individual. He should not give up his convictions, but he must understand that it is necessary to live according to the rules of the country to which he has returned.”
If the returnee does not change his views, Khloponin continues, “we will think about how to control his further activity. This individual must not work in the educational sector with children or conduct enlightenment activity in mosques. We will work with the Muslim spiritual administrations: they must exercise control within the limits of their competence.”
Asked whether such actions do not violate human rights, Khloponin responded that those who suggest that should consider the problems he faces and recognize that “there is nothing illegal in our actions, we are only proposing a program of adaptation. Ifg you want to work in a private company, fine, no one will interfere.”
Most of Khloponin’s interview was devoted to other issues, to his insistence that the basic task of restoring the Chechen Republic has been “in practice” achieved and that his current challenge is “to develop the economy of this and all other Caucasus republics” in order to find jobs for 400,000 unemployed young men.
Most of his remarks on those issues repeat what he has said before. But Khloponin makes four other comments that deserve attention. First, he downplayed the role of foreigners in financing the militants, saying “why should anyone seek money from Western foundations when it is possible to force local entrepreneuers to pay tribute and obtain a great deal more money?”
Second, he insists, it is now time to end the assignment of positions on the basis of ethnicity. “In order to preserve or not destroy” a shaky peace, he said, Russian officials, including himself, have been willing to “close our eyes” to this practice, one htat “all healthy thinking people” understand is “a survival of the past.” It must be ended gradually.
Third, Khloponin says, he faces a serious challenge to ensure that “in the formation of [party] lists for the upcoming elections, there are not included people who are close to the criminal structures or band formations.” As far as United Russia is concerned, he suggests, the Peoples Front will play a key role in that.
And fourth, he concludes, his being both a plenipotentiary representative of the president and a vice prime minister helps him do his work more effectively. Consequently, Khloponin suggests that in his opinion, it would be well to think about arranging things in the same way in other federal districts.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Kirill Seeks to Tighten Control over Church by Dividing Up Existing Bishoprics
Paul Goble
Staunton, June 1 – Patriarch Kirill is continuing to divide up the existing bishoprics within the Russian Orthodox Church in order to strengthen his control of local parishes, some of whom have gone their own way in the much larger sees inherited from the Soviet past, according to a leading Moscow specialist on religious affairs.
In a comment reported by “Kommersant,” Roman Lunkin, the director of the Moscow Institute of Religion and Law, says that Patriarch Kirill’s decision to form new eparchates, in the North Caucasus earlier this year and across the former Soviet space this week is intended to “strengthen” the patriarchate’s powers in localities (www.kommersant.ru/doc/1650916).
In the larger sees which have now been divided, Lunkin continues, “the parishes often live on their own because the ruling hierarch cannot physically follow what is taking place in all of them.” Consequently, the formation of the new bishoprics will increase the powers of the bishops over parishes and of the patriarch over the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole.
Moreover, because all the new bishops are “people devoted to [Kirill],” Lunkin suggests, this increase in their number will reduce the chance for the formation of any serious opposition group within the church and mean that Kirill will have a power vertical within the church equivalent to the one Vladimir Putin built in the Russian political system.
As Pavel Korobov of “Kommersant” ponts out, “the restructuring of the territorial-administrative structure of the Russian Orthodox Church began … in March … when the Synod took a decision to create several new bishoprics in the North Caucasus” in place of the two – centered in Stavropol and Baku – that had supervised parishes in that region.
This week, Kirill and the Synod took the following additional steps in this direction. First, they divided the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in Estonia into two parts, creating a new bishop for Narva and environs and removing this heavily ethnic Russian region from the control of Metropolitan Kornilii of Tallinn and All Estonia.
Second, the patriarch and his advisors divided what had been the Mordovian and Saransk bishopric into two new “church-territorial units, the Krasnoslobodskaya and Ardatskaya bishoprics.” Third, they reorganized the Tobolsk-Tyiumen bishopric, removing from its supervision the territory of Khanty-Mansiisk AO and the Yamarlo-Nenets AO, and forming two new bishoprics, the Khanty-Mansiisk and Sugurtskaya and the Salekhard and Novo-Urengoy.
And fourth, Kirill and the Synod restructured the Krasnoyarskaya and Yeniseyskaya bishopric, forming in its place a Yenisey and Norilsk bishopric and a Krasnoyarsk and Achinsk bishopric. As a result of these changes, the ROC of the Moscow Patriarchate now has 164 bishoprics to supervise some 30,000 parishes, many beyond the borders of Russia itself.
In announcing these changes, Vladimir Vigilyansky, press spokesman for Patriarch Kirill, noted that “in Greece, there is a bishop in every city, but we have a structure inherited from Soviet times when one city of a bishopric was separated from another by a thousand kilometers and when parishioners did not who was their ruling hierarch.”
“The reduction in the size of the bishoprics,” he continued, “will improve administration.” Moreover, by increasing the number of bishoprics and bringing their borders into closer correspondence with those of the state, the ROC may be in an even better position to influence politics.
But such explanation may not be the whole story or even the most important part of it. On the one hand, Lidiya Orlova writes in today’s “NG-Religii,” the church has no shortage of bishops but also no shortage of ambitious priests, many of whom “carry a marshal’s baton” in their cassocks (religion.ng.ru/events/2011-06-01/3_arhierei.html).
And on the other, as Kirill himself a most experienced church apparatchik certainly knows from his own life in Soviet times, there are few better ways to make the power of Moscow beyond challenge than by dividing up larger units on the Russian periphery that might at some point constitute a challenge and staffing the new smaller units with loyalist.
Staunton, June 1 – Patriarch Kirill is continuing to divide up the existing bishoprics within the Russian Orthodox Church in order to strengthen his control of local parishes, some of whom have gone their own way in the much larger sees inherited from the Soviet past, according to a leading Moscow specialist on religious affairs.
In a comment reported by “Kommersant,” Roman Lunkin, the director of the Moscow Institute of Religion and Law, says that Patriarch Kirill’s decision to form new eparchates, in the North Caucasus earlier this year and across the former Soviet space this week is intended to “strengthen” the patriarchate’s powers in localities (www.kommersant.ru/doc/1650916).
In the larger sees which have now been divided, Lunkin continues, “the parishes often live on their own because the ruling hierarch cannot physically follow what is taking place in all of them.” Consequently, the formation of the new bishoprics will increase the powers of the bishops over parishes and of the patriarch over the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole.
Moreover, because all the new bishops are “people devoted to [Kirill],” Lunkin suggests, this increase in their number will reduce the chance for the formation of any serious opposition group within the church and mean that Kirill will have a power vertical within the church equivalent to the one Vladimir Putin built in the Russian political system.
As Pavel Korobov of “Kommersant” ponts out, “the restructuring of the territorial-administrative structure of the Russian Orthodox Church began … in March … when the Synod took a decision to create several new bishoprics in the North Caucasus” in place of the two – centered in Stavropol and Baku – that had supervised parishes in that region.
This week, Kirill and the Synod took the following additional steps in this direction. First, they divided the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in Estonia into two parts, creating a new bishop for Narva and environs and removing this heavily ethnic Russian region from the control of Metropolitan Kornilii of Tallinn and All Estonia.
Second, the patriarch and his advisors divided what had been the Mordovian and Saransk bishopric into two new “church-territorial units, the Krasnoslobodskaya and Ardatskaya bishoprics.” Third, they reorganized the Tobolsk-Tyiumen bishopric, removing from its supervision the territory of Khanty-Mansiisk AO and the Yamarlo-Nenets AO, and forming two new bishoprics, the Khanty-Mansiisk and Sugurtskaya and the Salekhard and Novo-Urengoy.
And fourth, Kirill and the Synod restructured the Krasnoyarskaya and Yeniseyskaya bishopric, forming in its place a Yenisey and Norilsk bishopric and a Krasnoyarsk and Achinsk bishopric. As a result of these changes, the ROC of the Moscow Patriarchate now has 164 bishoprics to supervise some 30,000 parishes, many beyond the borders of Russia itself.
In announcing these changes, Vladimir Vigilyansky, press spokesman for Patriarch Kirill, noted that “in Greece, there is a bishop in every city, but we have a structure inherited from Soviet times when one city of a bishopric was separated from another by a thousand kilometers and when parishioners did not who was their ruling hierarch.”
“The reduction in the size of the bishoprics,” he continued, “will improve administration.” Moreover, by increasing the number of bishoprics and bringing their borders into closer correspondence with those of the state, the ROC may be in an even better position to influence politics.
But such explanation may not be the whole story or even the most important part of it. On the one hand, Lidiya Orlova writes in today’s “NG-Religii,” the church has no shortage of bishops but also no shortage of ambitious priests, many of whom “carry a marshal’s baton” in their cassocks (religion.ng.ru/events/2011-06-01/3_arhierei.html).
And on the other, as Kirill himself a most experienced church apparatchik certainly knows from his own life in Soviet times, there are few better ways to make the power of Moscow beyond challenge than by dividing up larger units on the Russian periphery that might at some point constitute a challenge and staffing the new smaller units with loyalist.
Window on Eurasia: 21st Century to be ‘Century of the Majority,’ Tishkov Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, June 1 – “If the 20th century was the century of minorities,” the director of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology says, “the 21st century will be the century of the majority in the sense of recognizing its interests, demands and rights,” a view likely to please Russian nationalists even as it frightens national minorities in that country.
In a comment posted on the “Russky zhurnal” portal, Valery Tishkov, often the object of attack by Russian nationalists, argues that this is the case because “either at the level of the state or at the level of particular regions within countries, minorities turn out to be in a situation of the ruling majority” (www.russ.ru/Mirovaya-povestka/XXI-vek-priznaet-prava-bol-shinstva).
“All contemporary states,” Tishkov points out, “have a complex ethnic, religious and racial composition,” and consequently, “all contemporary nations display a cultural complexity.” Of course, “that was the case earlier but it wasn’t recognized” because it was assumed that all members of such nations were the same.
“Only with the development of democracy and with the acquisition of a voice of the so-called silent groups of minorities” did it turn out, Tishkov said, that various “territorial, cultural and historical identities” existed within the nation. And this sense of variety was exacerbated by the arrival of immigrant groups.
The experience of various European countries shows that “a particular challenge became not eethnic migration but migration connected with a different religious culture.” Indeed, Tishkov says, “it was more difficult to adapt or integrate not so much people different by language, tradition, phenotype or skin color as by membership in a different religion.”
This religious “barrier,” the Russian ethnographer argues, “is much more different to overcome” because “people almost never shift from one religion to another, and Islam in general harshly punishes and does not accept the possibility of departure let alone a transfer to another religion.”
This difficulty, Tishkov argues, has generated a certain “panic” with many commentators even suggesting that “the policy of multiculturalism is to blame, that it was a mistake and so on,” a view that has contributed to “the activation of conservative, ultra-right forces and political parties.”
The countries where this has happened most clearly are “the countries of Euro-Atlantic civilization, inclusing Eastern Europe and the territory of the former USSR in certain parts of which democracy has existed already for a long time.” But it is particularly obvious where democracy is in the process of development.
As there become “greater possibilities to insist on their rights in the frameworks of various international conventions, declarations, and chargers about the rights of minorities or about the rights of citizens which belong to ethnic, racial or religious minorities,” members of these groups will not surprisingly make use of them.
This pattern of development, Tishkov says, is “connected not only with political democratization but also with economic development,” especially since economic development has attracted immigration flows. “Countries which do not accept migrants have not been characterized by particular success in their development.”
At the same time, of course, immigration brings with it certain “political, social or emotional-ideological risks,” all the more so because “it is rarely acknowledged by politicians that [most countries, including Russia] have benefited more from immigration than they have lost.”
Integrating immigrants is a challenge, Tishkov says. “The formula, e pluribus unum, is used in many countries,” and “many democracies are constructed on the formula of unity in multiplicity, but sometimes doubt is cast on this formula and in opposition to it appears the idea that it is necessary to make all the same even to the point of forming a mono-culture.”
“But this is unreal,” he continues, and suggests that “democracy must be build on the recognition of diversity, of the rights, demands and interests of people and citizens which are connected with their culture and with their ethnic or religion origin” even as “a common civic solidarity must be affirmed.”
In the case of the Russian Federation, Tishkov says, “one is speaking in this case about a [non-ethnic] Russia identity, about an all-Russian patriotism. Here the formula is not ‘ether-or’ (either you are an [ethnic] Russian or a [non-ethnic] Russian; or you are a Chechen or you are a [non-ethnic] Russian, but ‘both-and.’”
“And this must be reflected not only in administrative-government arrangements but also in questions of access to power,” Tishkov says. “It must not be the case that one group, the bears of one nationality declare themselves a state-forming ethnos or people and usurp in their favor all power.”
Officialdom must reflect “the composition of the population of the country,” albeit “there must not be quotas,” the ethnographer says. And he suggests that this century will be a century of majorities because “either at the level of the state or in particular regions,” minorities will be majorities and thus will be interested in defending majoritarian principles.
Moreover, Tishkov says, “minorities [at the present time] have international protection, they are able to organize themselves, to advance themselves and to make demands up to the level of international Strasbourg Courts” and thus it is no longer the case that majorities always “outvote” minorities.
If Tishkov is correct and the 21st century will be “the century of the majority,” that could present even more threats to existing states that “the century of minorities” did because many minorities will want to make sure that they are majorities and thus seek the formation of their own states rather than integration into existing ones.
Staunton, June 1 – “If the 20th century was the century of minorities,” the director of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology says, “the 21st century will be the century of the majority in the sense of recognizing its interests, demands and rights,” a view likely to please Russian nationalists even as it frightens national minorities in that country.
In a comment posted on the “Russky zhurnal” portal, Valery Tishkov, often the object of attack by Russian nationalists, argues that this is the case because “either at the level of the state or at the level of particular regions within countries, minorities turn out to be in a situation of the ruling majority” (www.russ.ru/Mirovaya-povestka/XXI-vek-priznaet-prava-bol-shinstva).
“All contemporary states,” Tishkov points out, “have a complex ethnic, religious and racial composition,” and consequently, “all contemporary nations display a cultural complexity.” Of course, “that was the case earlier but it wasn’t recognized” because it was assumed that all members of such nations were the same.
“Only with the development of democracy and with the acquisition of a voice of the so-called silent groups of minorities” did it turn out, Tishkov said, that various “territorial, cultural and historical identities” existed within the nation. And this sense of variety was exacerbated by the arrival of immigrant groups.
The experience of various European countries shows that “a particular challenge became not eethnic migration but migration connected with a different religious culture.” Indeed, Tishkov says, “it was more difficult to adapt or integrate not so much people different by language, tradition, phenotype or skin color as by membership in a different religion.”
This religious “barrier,” the Russian ethnographer argues, “is much more different to overcome” because “people almost never shift from one religion to another, and Islam in general harshly punishes and does not accept the possibility of departure let alone a transfer to another religion.”
This difficulty, Tishkov argues, has generated a certain “panic” with many commentators even suggesting that “the policy of multiculturalism is to blame, that it was a mistake and so on,” a view that has contributed to “the activation of conservative, ultra-right forces and political parties.”
The countries where this has happened most clearly are “the countries of Euro-Atlantic civilization, inclusing Eastern Europe and the territory of the former USSR in certain parts of which democracy has existed already for a long time.” But it is particularly obvious where democracy is in the process of development.
As there become “greater possibilities to insist on their rights in the frameworks of various international conventions, declarations, and chargers about the rights of minorities or about the rights of citizens which belong to ethnic, racial or religious minorities,” members of these groups will not surprisingly make use of them.
This pattern of development, Tishkov says, is “connected not only with political democratization but also with economic development,” especially since economic development has attracted immigration flows. “Countries which do not accept migrants have not been characterized by particular success in their development.”
At the same time, of course, immigration brings with it certain “political, social or emotional-ideological risks,” all the more so because “it is rarely acknowledged by politicians that [most countries, including Russia] have benefited more from immigration than they have lost.”
Integrating immigrants is a challenge, Tishkov says. “The formula, e pluribus unum, is used in many countries,” and “many democracies are constructed on the formula of unity in multiplicity, but sometimes doubt is cast on this formula and in opposition to it appears the idea that it is necessary to make all the same even to the point of forming a mono-culture.”
“But this is unreal,” he continues, and suggests that “democracy must be build on the recognition of diversity, of the rights, demands and interests of people and citizens which are connected with their culture and with their ethnic or religion origin” even as “a common civic solidarity must be affirmed.”
In the case of the Russian Federation, Tishkov says, “one is speaking in this case about a [non-ethnic] Russia identity, about an all-Russian patriotism. Here the formula is not ‘ether-or’ (either you are an [ethnic] Russian or a [non-ethnic] Russian; or you are a Chechen or you are a [non-ethnic] Russian, but ‘both-and.’”
“And this must be reflected not only in administrative-government arrangements but also in questions of access to power,” Tishkov says. “It must not be the case that one group, the bears of one nationality declare themselves a state-forming ethnos or people and usurp in their favor all power.”
Officialdom must reflect “the composition of the population of the country,” albeit “there must not be quotas,” the ethnographer says. And he suggests that this century will be a century of majorities because “either at the level of the state or in particular regions,” minorities will be majorities and thus will be interested in defending majoritarian principles.
Moreover, Tishkov says, “minorities [at the present time] have international protection, they are able to organize themselves, to advance themselves and to make demands up to the level of international Strasbourg Courts” and thus it is no longer the case that majorities always “outvote” minorities.
If Tishkov is correct and the 21st century will be “the century of the majority,” that could present even more threats to existing states that “the century of minorities” did because many minorities will want to make sure that they are majorities and thus seek the formation of their own states rather than integration into existing ones.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Russians See Themselves as Both ‘the Greatest and the Most Oppressed of Nations,’ Moscow Commentator Says
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.
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.
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?”
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