Paul Goble
Vienna, November 14 – In exchange for declarations of undying loyalty from non-Russian leaders in the North Caucasus, Moscow has been sending the governments there ever more money even though these regimes act pretty much as they want and do almost nothing to make their territories safe for ethnic Russians.
In a commentary posted on the APN.ru website yesterday, Vladimir Tor points out that between 2002 and 2006, Moscow sent to Chechnya alone some 30.6 billion rubles (1.25 billion U.S. dollars) for reconstruction and to create the illusion of peace and stability there (http://www.apn.ru/column/print18341.htm).
But that level of funding, enormous relative to Moscow’s subventions to other parts of the Russian Federation is not enough for the Chechens: In July, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov asked Russian President Vladimit Putin to send 168.8 billion rubles (6.6 billion U.S. dollars) over the next four years.
Elsewhere, Tor continues, the situation is the same or even worse. Moscow now provides 60.68 percent of the budget of the Adygei Republic, 67.16 percent of the one in Karachai-Cherkesia, 67.38 percent of the one in Kabardino-Balkaria, and 89.24 percent in Ingushetia, currently the most unstable of all.
In most cases, the Moscow commentator suggests, Moscow is not able to track effectively just where all these Russian tax dollars are going. But one measure of their lack of any real impact on the situation is the inability or unwillingness of these regimes to prevent ethnic Russians who have been living there from flight.
Between the 1989 and 2002 censuses, he continues, the percent of ethnic Russians in the populations of the autonomous republics across the North Caucasus fell from 26 percent – a little over one in four – to only 15 percent – or one in six – and in some places the departure of ethnic Russians was even greater.
In Karachai-Cherkesia, the percentage of ethnic Russians fell from 42 to 34 percent over this period; in Kabardino-Balkara, from 32 to 25 percent, in North Osetia-Alania from 30 to 23 percent, in Daghestan from 10 to five percent; in Chechnya from 25 to four percent; and in Ingushetia from 10 percent to one percent.
And since 2002, these declines have continued, Tor insists, despite Moscow’s claims that the situation there is stabilizing, its enormous investments in the region, and its playing up of what the Russian government says are the commitments of the leaders there to do everything they can to keep ethnic Russians from leaving.
All this should lead the citizens of Russians to draw the following conclusion, Tor argues. “In recent years, the relations of the Kremlin with the Caucasus are based on the following [and in this Moscow analyst’s opinion completely false and unacceptable] principle.”
“You live as you like,” Moscow says. “You live according to your own customs and laws. We in turn will send you bags of gold and won’t ask how it distributed.” All Moscow asks is that “you agree not to revolt against this arrangement and recognize our padi-shah as the wisest of the most powerful” of rulers.
Such arrangements benefit both those in the Kremlin who want to proclaim victory in the North Caucasus and ask only for sufficient calm to distract attention from the continuing problems there, and those in the North Caucasus, who know a good thing when they see it and believe that Moscow is helping them build statehood.
But it does not benefit either the ethnic Russians who have been forced to flee from places they had lived and worked for many years, Tor points out. And it does not benefit the Russian citizen who taxes go to support the North Caucasian elites rather than to meet their own needs.
Indeed, this Moscow commentator says, it is high time to “stop feeding [this North Caucasus] crocodile.” Continuing to do so won’t work: indeed, he suggests it may only end with the Russian people having subsidized a new group of states that won’t stay in Russia even if they are given enormous bribes.
Nonetheless, Tor clearly does not expect this situation to change anytime soon. As in other areas, the Kremlin is ignoring the interests of Russian taxpayers. But those taxpayers themselves bear some of the responsibility for the continuation, even expansion of this unconscionable situation.
Many of them, the Moscow commentator argues, are all too willing to be lulled by repeated Kremlin claims that at the present time, as the result of the wise policies of their rulers, “in the Russian Federation everything is stable!” and that “the residents of the Moskva-bad aul” can thus “sleep peacefully.”
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Risks Undermining Russian Federation by Recognizing Karabakh, Tatarstan Deputy Tells Azerbaijanis
Paul Goble
Vienna, November 14 –By recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Osetia or Transdniestria as independent, as many in Moscow are now urging, the Russian government would undermine the territorial integrity of its own country, a senior member of Tatarstan’s parliament told a Baku newspaper.
In a special section of last Sunday’s Zerkalo newspaper devoted to Tatarstan, Razil’ Valeyev, who chairs the nationality affairs committee of the Tatarstan parliament, said that “If Karabakh is torn away from Azerbaijan, then the Tatars will begin to think about independence from Russia” (http://www.zerkalo.az/print.php?id=26348).
“We are not stupid,” he continued, and any move by the Russian government in this regard would lead his fellow Tatars to ask themselves: “If this is possible for the Abkhaz, Osetins, Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh or the Russians of Transdniestria, then why is it forbidden to US TATARS?”
Moreover, he continued, the Tatars, who represent the second largest nationality in the Russian Federation are hardly likely to be alone in this. The Bashkirs, the Chechens and the Yakuts almost certainly would draw similar conclusions and make similar plans, he suggested.
Thus, Valeyev said, Moscow’s current policies in this area, policies that reflect the unfortunate reality that “Russia in no way is able to move away from its imperial ambitions, its unwise striving to be the largest, to run everything and everyone in order that everything and everyone are subordinate only to it.”
Most outside commentators, of course, have suggested that recent suggestions that Moscow might recognize the independence of Karabakh and the West are either intended to counter Western plans to support an independent Kosovo or to exploit differences in the post-Soviet space to Russia’s advantage.
But Valeyev and many of the other Tatars whose comments appeared in this Baku newspaper focused on the imperial nature of Russian policy – another Tatar commented that “the suppression of the sovereignty of Tatarstan reflects the revival of imperial consciousness” in Moscow (http://www.zerkalo.az/print.php?id=26347).
Valeyev backed up his argument on this point by suggesting just how independence-minded his fellow Tatars are, despite the pressure that Moscow under President Vladimir Putin has imposed on them in an effort to get them to conform to all-Russian standards.
To strengthen his case that the Tatars remain committed to ultimate independence, Valeyev called attention to three things that are clearly important to him and his co-ethnics but are not developments that most more cautious Tatarstan political leaders like President Mintimir Shaimiyev routinely point to.
First of all, Valeyev noted that despite Moscow’s pressure to conform, “we did not remove the provision from Tatarstan’s Constitution which specifies that the president of Tatarstan is to be elected by a direct vote of the people.” Instead, and in a way that recalls actions by the Baltic nations in 1990, “we only suspended it for the time being.”
Second, the Tatar deputy indicated that he and his colleagues “sincerely want and are striving in order that Tatarstan will acquire a full-fledged parliament, like the Milli Mejlis of Azerbaijan,” a goal that may seem far off now but that could be achieved more quickly if Moscow makes additional mistakes in this area.
And third, Valeyev noted that he and his colleagues are working to build the kind of alliances with others that will help Tatarstan achieve these goals when the times are right, alliances like the one he and his colleagues appear to be seeking by means of these interviews with a newspaper in the capital of an independent Turkic state.
Obviously both the Tatars and the Azerbaijanis hope to gain from this, the former by keeping up the pressure on Moscow in order to give them more freedom of action and the possibility of independence some day and the latter by warning Moscow that its moves in this area of foreign affairs could backfire on the Russian government at home.
Neither side is likely to achieve all that it hopes from these ties, but the fact that both are seeking them highlights an important reality of post-Soviet politics: ties across international borders often intersect with those inside individual countries and complicate the lives of policy making in both spheres.
Vienna, November 14 –By recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Osetia or Transdniestria as independent, as many in Moscow are now urging, the Russian government would undermine the territorial integrity of its own country, a senior member of Tatarstan’s parliament told a Baku newspaper.
In a special section of last Sunday’s Zerkalo newspaper devoted to Tatarstan, Razil’ Valeyev, who chairs the nationality affairs committee of the Tatarstan parliament, said that “If Karabakh is torn away from Azerbaijan, then the Tatars will begin to think about independence from Russia” (http://www.zerkalo.az/print.php?id=26348).
“We are not stupid,” he continued, and any move by the Russian government in this regard would lead his fellow Tatars to ask themselves: “If this is possible for the Abkhaz, Osetins, Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh or the Russians of Transdniestria, then why is it forbidden to US TATARS?”
Moreover, he continued, the Tatars, who represent the second largest nationality in the Russian Federation are hardly likely to be alone in this. The Bashkirs, the Chechens and the Yakuts almost certainly would draw similar conclusions and make similar plans, he suggested.
Thus, Valeyev said, Moscow’s current policies in this area, policies that reflect the unfortunate reality that “Russia in no way is able to move away from its imperial ambitions, its unwise striving to be the largest, to run everything and everyone in order that everything and everyone are subordinate only to it.”
Most outside commentators, of course, have suggested that recent suggestions that Moscow might recognize the independence of Karabakh and the West are either intended to counter Western plans to support an independent Kosovo or to exploit differences in the post-Soviet space to Russia’s advantage.
But Valeyev and many of the other Tatars whose comments appeared in this Baku newspaper focused on the imperial nature of Russian policy – another Tatar commented that “the suppression of the sovereignty of Tatarstan reflects the revival of imperial consciousness” in Moscow (http://www.zerkalo.az/print.php?id=26347).
Valeyev backed up his argument on this point by suggesting just how independence-minded his fellow Tatars are, despite the pressure that Moscow under President Vladimir Putin has imposed on them in an effort to get them to conform to all-Russian standards.
To strengthen his case that the Tatars remain committed to ultimate independence, Valeyev called attention to three things that are clearly important to him and his co-ethnics but are not developments that most more cautious Tatarstan political leaders like President Mintimir Shaimiyev routinely point to.
First of all, Valeyev noted that despite Moscow’s pressure to conform, “we did not remove the provision from Tatarstan’s Constitution which specifies that the president of Tatarstan is to be elected by a direct vote of the people.” Instead, and in a way that recalls actions by the Baltic nations in 1990, “we only suspended it for the time being.”
Second, the Tatar deputy indicated that he and his colleagues “sincerely want and are striving in order that Tatarstan will acquire a full-fledged parliament, like the Milli Mejlis of Azerbaijan,” a goal that may seem far off now but that could be achieved more quickly if Moscow makes additional mistakes in this area.
And third, Valeyev noted that he and his colleagues are working to build the kind of alliances with others that will help Tatarstan achieve these goals when the times are right, alliances like the one he and his colleagues appear to be seeking by means of these interviews with a newspaper in the capital of an independent Turkic state.
Obviously both the Tatars and the Azerbaijanis hope to gain from this, the former by keeping up the pressure on Moscow in order to give them more freedom of action and the possibility of independence some day and the latter by warning Moscow that its moves in this area of foreign affairs could backfire on the Russian government at home.
Neither side is likely to achieve all that it hopes from these ties, but the fact that both are seeking them highlights an important reality of post-Soviet politics: ties across international borders often intersect with those inside individual countries and complicate the lives of policy making in both spheres.
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