Window on Eurasia: 90th Anniversary of Siberia’s Declaration of Independence Recalled

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 18 – Ninety years ago this week, Siberia declared its independence from Russia, an event that Moscow officials much like their Soviet predecessors have sought to minimize but one that many Siberian regionalists today celebrate as a source of pride in their enormous land and point to as a model for their own actions in the future.
In an extensive article posted on the Irkutsk-based Babr.ru news portal yesterday that has already attracted dozens of enthusiastic comments, Dmitry Tayevskiy, an analyst who both tracks and supports Siberian regionalism, describes some of the reasons why July 17 is now a special day for those who share his views (babr.ru/?pt=news&event=v1&IDE=46658).
In 1818, exactly a century before Siberia declared its independence in the wake of the collapse of the Russian state after the October revolution, Nikolai Novikov, a publisher and journalist, pointed to the uniqueness of Siberia – it had never known serfdom or tight imperial control – and argued that Siberia should eventually be an independent country.
Remarkably, Tayevskiy says, St. Petersburg did not take his proposals seriously, writing them off as “the inventions of Siberian bureaucrats” who wanted more power for themselves. But almost a half century later, in 1865, the Imperial government uncovered what it said was “a conspiracy of Siberian separatists” who wanted to create a country modeled on the United States.
The subsequent trial of Grigoriy Potanin, Nikolai Yadrintsev, and Afanasiy Shchapov, however, did not have the effect St. Petersburg hoped for. Instead of wiping out Siberian regionalism -- or oblastnichestvo as it is called in Russian -- the trial, Tayevskiy says, it had the effect of promoting its further spread and development.
People living beyond the Urals recalled ever more frequently that “Siberia was conquered by force by Imperial Russia, that de facto it was a colony and de jure was not an inalienable part of the Russian empire.” The only link in fact was through the person of the Russian emperor who also had the title of Siberian tsar.
Consequently, when Nicholas II abdicated and his brother Mikhail refused to take the throne, Tayevskiy says, “Siberia lost any basis for remaining in this unity and received the right de facto for exit from the Russian Empire alongside Poland, Finland and other parts” of that country.
Over the next months, residents of all the major cities of Siberia held meetings to discuss the future of their land. They agreed that it must be democratic and live under the white-green colors of the Siberian flag but were split between those who wanted a confederation analogous to the United States and those who wanted a confederation with the Soviets.
By mid-1918, most of Siberia had been cleared of Bolsheviks, and on June 17, a Provisional Siberian Government issued to the world “a declaration on the state independence of Siberia,” establishing Omsk as the capital of the new country and democracy as the basis of its political system.
“Unfortunately,” Tayevskiy continues, the Siberian government did not have the chance to realize its goals. “The ideal variant would have been the immediate separation from Bolshevik Russia and the declaration of an independent confederation.” But regrettably, “the Siberian government was drawn into the Russian civil war on the side of the whites.”
And when the Siberian government was subsumed by the dictatorship of Admiral Kolchak, “who was little interested in Siberian independence” but very much concerned with satisfying the Entente powers, “this ended sadly for Siberia” which thereby missed an historic chance to become a state like Poland or Finland.
If during “the extremely difficult (for the Bolsheviks) summer of 1918, the Siberian government had proposed to Moscow peace [and] neutrality” in exchange for “the independence of Siberia,” Tayevskiy says, “the proposal would have been accepted,” freeing the Bolsheviks from the weight of empire and giving them “a friendly political and economic partner.”
But that didn’t happen, Tayevskiy notes, and the “fault” as so often happens lay in “the lack of that political will about which we continue to speak so much about even in our days. Even today “the separation of Siberia on peaceful and legal foundations is a question of political will.”
That is because, the Irkutsk analyst says, “the contemporary Kremlin regime has neither the forces nor the desire to support and develop this territory. Contemporary Siberia is worse off than a colony since in exchange for the wealth [Russia takes away], Siberians now receive only poverty, illnesses, and the absence of any perspectives for the future.”

Window on Eurasia: Orthodox Schism Threatens Moscow Patriarchate, Kremlin

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 18 – Embattled Orthodox Bishop Diomid yesterday anathematized Patriarch Aleksii II, Metropolitan Kirill and their supporters, an action that not only threatens to deepen the split within the Russian Orthodox Church but to affect that denomination’s relationship with the Russian state and thus undermine Kremlin policies both within Russia and abroad.
Given that the stakes involved in this conflict are so high, the Patriarchate and its government supporters have launched a campaign to portray Diomid as an obscurantist and tool of “dark forces” and to suppress his movement rather than to take seriously his calls for greater accountability within the church and greater independence for the church relative to the state.
But because Diomid speaks for millions of Russian Orthodox believers, because he enjoys at least some support within the church’s hierarchy and even the government, and because canon law gives bishops enormous power, such efforts by the Patriarchate and its Kremlin backers could quickly prove counterproductive, spreading rather than suppressing his ideas.
Diomid, who was stripped of his position by the Patriarchate on June 28 but has refused to repent, yesterday declared anathema Aleksii, Kirill, and all others in the Orthodox hierarchy who slavishly follow the dictates of the state, ignore canon law, and who promote ecumenical ties with other churches (www.interfax-religion.ru/orthodoxy/?act=news&div=25521).
Repeating his argument that he personally has nothing to repent of and saying that he is not ready to leave his 20 million supporters to be destroyed by “false democracy,” the bishop said that his actions were not those of a schismatic but rather a defender of the faith. Certain “dark forces” are trying to present the situation otherwise, he suggested.
Among those apparently are the Patriarchate itself whose hierarchs quickly dismissed Diomid’s position as “nonsense” (www.apn.ru/news/article20370.htm) and outspoken Deacon Andrei Kurayev who cast doubt on Diomid’s ability to draft such a document on his own, suggesting it might have been prepared “in New York” (www.politcom.ru/article.php?id=6527).
(An intriguing counterpoint to this is a suggestion that the fight between Diomid and the Patriarchate in fact reflects a conflict between more conservative church leaders who have been linked to Vladimir Putin and several more liberal ones who are known to be close to Dmitry Medvedev (www.argumenti.ru/publications/7261).)
Similar comments, which seek to portray Diomid as someone completely out of touch with modern life and the needs of the Russian state rather than as someone who is attempting to defend what he sees as the canonical principles and requirements of Orthodoxy as a distinctive religious community.
Why is this dispute within Russian Orthodoxy so important not only to those within the church but to the Russian state as such? There are at least three reasons. First, because canon law allows a bishop to appoint others, Diomid’s independent stance threatens the “power vertical” within the church that the Patriarchate and the Russian state have cultivated.
On the one hand, his ability to challenge the Patriarchate both via the Internet and through the use of some of the oldest religious tactics known, including seizing liturgical materials (forum.msk.ru/material/news/501418.html), mean that he will spark a discussion the results of which are unclear to all involved.
And on the other, Diomid’s actions will make it more difficult for the Kremlin to continue to use the Patriarchate as its unquestioning handmaiden in the pursuit of Russian government policies abroad, something that will deprive Moscow of a tool it has regularly deployed.
Second, however quickly and brutally the Patriarchate and the Kremlin act against him – and both are likely to do so -- Diomid is unlikely to be the last independent-minded bishop to appear – indeed Deacon Kurayev suggested that it was little short of “a miracle” that there had not been more questioning bishops already in the post-1991 environment.
Consequently, it is entirely possible that other bishops will now enter the fray, not only further weakening the hierarchy of the Patriarchal church but reviving the intellectual life within the church that was largely shut down by the Soviets and that until now had not revived after the collapse of the USSR.
That could make Orthodoxy more dynamic, more attractive, and even more powerful – qualities that could make its relationship to Russian society and the Russian state far different than they are today and far more problematic for those who would like to see the church continue in its bureaucratic subservience.
And third – and this may be the most immediate reason why this church dispute will matter to others – Diomid’s actions could help promote the development of autocephalous churches in Ukraine and Belarus and thus shift the balance within Orthodoxy away from Moscow toward Constantinople.
In declaring Aleksii II anathema, Diomid also declared the bishopric of Minsk a “widowed” see, thus at least in principle opening the way for him to appoint his own man there. If that were to happen, the Belarusian church would be autocephalous in all but name, at least from the point of view of the Patriarchate.
And there are indications that the Ukrainians might invite the dissident bishop to the upcoming celebration of the 1020th anniversary of the baptism of Kyivan Rus’, thus elevating his status relative to Aleksii and putting both churchmen in a position to speak with the Universal Patriarch of Constantinople, who is slated to come as well.
That arrangement – and political analysts in Kyiv and Moscow say it is now under active consideration (forum.msk.ru/material/news/501379.html) – could contribute to a shift in the administrative allegiance of Orthodox in Ukraine and to a shift in power from Moscow to Constantinople within Orthodoxy more generally.

UPDATE for July 20 – Babr.ru provides the full text of Bishop Diomid’s declaration, one that contains an extensive analysis of the situation within the Moscow Patriarchate as the basis for his decision to anathematize its leaders (babr.ru/?pt=news&event=v1&IDE=46685).

Window on Eurasia: Why Moscow Won’t Be Punished For Murdering Litvinenko

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 18 – Moscow is likely to go unpunished for its “liquidation” of Aleksandr Litvinenko in London because democratic governments seldom have been able to identify “an adequate response to liquidations carried out by foreign special services on their territories,” according to a leading Russian specialist on intelligence operations.
Still more unfortunately, writes Andrei Soldatov in an article published in “Yezhednevniy zhurnal” this week, such “illegitimate political murders almost always become the occasion for bargaining” between the state that organized the murder and the country on whose territory the murder took place (www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=8220).
Soldatov’s article was a response to an earlier one in the same paper by Yuliya Latynina who argued that the British government will never stop pursuing Litvinenko’s murderers in Moscow and that London will not engage in any “bargaining” over this case because it is “one of those things” that democracies don’t engage in such activities (http://ej.ru/?a=note&ID=8210).
To make his case, Soldatov discusses what happened in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s when the French SDECE operating under the code name “The Red Hand” carried out a series of murders and bombings in the Federal Republic. Paris took these actions, Soldatov says, in order to force Bonn to restrict the flow of arms to Algeria.
The German response, as German officials admit and various scholars attest, was to do exactly what the French government wanted, tightening restrictions on the flow of guns to the Algerian resistance lest Franco-German trade and economic comity be compromised by taking any tougher action.
Soldatov acknowledges that the Germans did respond harshly when two KGB officers acknowledged after defecting that they had been sent west to kill two anti-Soviet activists, but he argues that this reaction was a product of the Cold War and that any comparisons with it or with the Markov affair in London (which Latynina invokes) are thus inappropriate.
A second example the Moscow researcher sites concerns the Spanish government’s liquidation of Basque activists in France. Some 27 ETA members were killed there between 1983 and 1987, and Madrid had what it felt was a compelling reason to take this step: French support for the ETA.
The Spanish wanted France to declare ETA a terrorist organization. And that is just what happened when Paris saw that these murders were causing many tourists to decide not to visit the south of France because of the violence. Moreover, Paris shifted its position in another way and backed Spanish entrance into the World Trade Organization.
But “of course,” Soldatov says, these two cases “do not exhaust such applications of state terror:” Operatives of the current Iranian government have killed officials of the shah’s regime, without that provoking sanctions. And Israel “has avoided sanctions for the murders of Palestinians on the territories of third countries.”
And even before the Litvinenko case, Moscow not only had engaged in such practices but in 2006 had taken the remarkable step of passing a public law permitting “the destruction of people on the territories of third countries” if these people were engaged in fighting against or weakening the Russian state.
In 2004, as court records prove, Moscow operatives killed Chechen leader Yandarbiyev in Qatar. In 2006-07, Moscow operatives killed or kidnapped 12 Chechens in Azerbaijan. And in August 2007, it appears but has not yet been proven that Russian operatives shot an Islamist operative in Abkhazia.
What is striking in all these cases, Soldatov says, is the following: the governments involved “refused to give a principled response to the actions of foreign special services on their territories” or even acted in ways directly or indirectly that as was the case with Germany and France earlier that corresponded to the interests of those who sent such murderers in.
Indeed, the Russian commentator continues, he can remember “only one example when in such a situation the government responded on principle.” Italy and especially prosecutors in Milan “raised a storm of protest when CIA operatives in 2003 secretly seized and carried off Imam Abu Omar, to whom Rome had offered political asylum in 1997.
Given that record, Soldatov says, what will the British do if they conclude as some officials in London have that “the Russian government is behind the murder of Litvinenko?” More specifically, how could the British government or any other governments in fact “bring the powers that be in Russia to account?”
Except for a few articles in the press and “unofficial declarations of nameless representatives” of the British special services, British reaction has been restrained – and ultimately, as Soldatov notes in a “post script” to his article, the British prime minister has backed away even from that.
Eventually, the Moscow commentator said, “investigative journalists British and Russian will manage to shed light on who organized the murder of Litvinenko” just as journalists did in the Markov and ETA cases. But it will be journalists rather than the governments that will do so. That the latter might, Soldatov said, is not something for which he holds out any hope.