Paul Goble
Vienna, August 8 – The violence between Russian and Georgian forces in South Ossetia both reflects and is likely to intensify an even more widespread and thus dangerous phenomenon across the region – the rise of “a new wave of radicalization” in the various ethnic communities there, itself the product of corruption, on the one hand, and public anomie, on the other.
On Wednesday, “Novaya gazeta” published an interview with Ruslan Aushev, the former president of Ingushetia (www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/57/02.html). Because the situation there is so dire – one Moscow analyst described it as “almost a civil war” (nvo.ng.ru/wars/2008-08-08/2_ingushetia.html) – few focused on the broader implications of Aushev’s remarks.
But the outbreak of fighting in South Ossetia and the likelihood that various actors – Moscow-backed regimes and radical opposition groups alike – will try to exploit the rapidly-evolving situation in the region to advance their various agendas, with the “extremist undergrounds” according to most observers having the greatest chance of success.
That analysts should have focused on the implications of Aushev’s remarks for Ingushetia is not surprising. On the one hand, levels of unemployment, corruption and violence are so high that its people have been driven to despair, gathering more than 100,000 signatures calling on Moscow to dismiss Murat Zyazikov as republic head and bring back Aushev.
And on the other, Aushev, himself a disciplined and decorated Russian officer, focused his remarks on those conditions and on why his return there could help resolve the problems rather than on the broader issues affecting not only Ingushetia, perhaps the most troubled now of the North Caucasus republics, but also the other non-Russian territories in the region.
But the events of the last few hours suggest that Aushev’s more general comments deserve far more attention. “No one wants to understand,” he told “Novaya gazeta,” “that the situation in the Caucasus has changed. This is a new wave of radicalization,” one involving young people who “no longer believe anyone.”
The young people, he continued, “see no justice around them. You want a position, pay; you want to be given medical treatment, show the money; you want to study, again give money. You go to the imam – and he is ready to read out any sermon you like, if you pay.” And that is true right up through the muftiates, Aushev says.
The young people tell such Muslim leaders that they do not believe them. “What kind of faith?” and “What kind of purity of religion” are you offering, they ask. And not finding anyone to believe in, they are “heading into the mountains. That’s true in Chechnya, in Ingushetia, in Karachay-Cherkessia” and Daghestan, too.
People in Moscow say if only we kill the right person, then “everything will quiet down.” But “Basayev is gone, Gelayev is gone, and Maskhadov is gone. And despite that nothing has been stopped.” Those who think they can address the problem by force alone, Aushev argued, are deceiving no one but themselves.
Obviously, the conflicts there may ebb and flow – weather is one factor, Aushev said, and the arrival of winter will calm things down, but thinking that this points to a resolution of the problems in the region is dangerously naïve. “In the Caucasus, there exists the strongest underground,” and it won’t go away by the application of force alone.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Window on Eurasia: Diomid Tapping into ‘Orthodoxy of Despair’ of Rural Russians
Paul Goble
Vienna, August 8 – Bishop Diomid represents a growing threat not only to the Moscow Patriarchate but to the Russian state as a whole because his statements and actions tap into and draw upon the hopelessness and anger many rural Russians feel about their fate, according to a specialist on religious affairs in Volgograd.
In the new issue of “NG-Religii,” Andrei Serenko argues that Diomid has become the symbol of “the Orthodox-fundamentalist form of social protest” characteristic of traditional Russian society, a kind of action that is completely different from and typically not understood by opposition movements in the cities (religion.ng.ru/events/2008-08-06/100_diomid.html).
“Unlike the ‘educated opposition’ of the major cities” which defines itself in secular and immediately political terms, Serenko says, “’the accursed lumpen proletariat’ from the rural depths of Russia seeks comfort in a flight from the evils of the world into a uniquely understood and apocalyptic ‘Orthodoxy of the Despairing.”
This kind of Orthodoxy is very different from that on offer by the Moscow Patriarchate which “professes social optimism and the principle of cooperation with any secular power” because “the Orthodoxy of the Despairing” “expresses the interests of those who already have no future.”
That in turn leads many in the cities to dismiss their feelings, but that is a mistake. Because today “according to the assessment of Bishop Diomid himself, there are approximately 20 million such people:” residents of ethnic Russian regions that progress has passed by and villagers who are watching the world around them die.
Such people “are no longer interested in the protest rhetoric of the communists or of Zhirinovsky,” the “NG-Religii” commentator says. “Their protest is directed already not against the policy of the powers that be but against this world, which ‘lies in evil’ and in which” the state, politics and parties are all “hated by them” because “they do not have a future.”
The Orthodox of the Despairing thus represent not a movement within politics but a direct threat to the political system as such, a difference that means they are not only typically misunderstood but secular analysts but also represent a kind of unexploded mine that could threaten if not in fact reorder Russian social and political arrangements.
In the 1990s, some of the urban parties tried to tap into this anger in order to gain electoral support. Sometimes they succeeded but more often the urban groups found that they did not have a common language with the rural people and turned away from them, a shift made all the easier by the changes in Russian politics under Vladimir Putin.
And until very recently, the “apocalyptic aspirations of the Orthodox marginals did not threaten the peace of the Russian authorities,” largely because the Orthodox of the Despairing lacked a unifying ideology and a unifying leader. But now such an individual has potentially emerged in the person of Diomid.
Whether Diomid can in fact assume that role or whether he can be contained and then dismissed as only another “pawn” in higher church politics is likely to be determined over the next few weeks. This week, he returned to the capital of his disputed see, and on September 2, the Patriarchate will take up his case.
A commentary posted on the Polit.ru portal yesterday provides yet another insight into Diomid and his role. In it, Matvey Popov points out that what the Chukotka bishop has been doing over the last few months could have been predicted seven years ago had anyone in Moscow or elsewhere been paying attention (www.polit.ru/event/2008/08/07/diomid.html).
In 2001, shortly after being named bishop of Anadyr and Chukotka, Diomid published a book entitled “Metropolitan Arsenii (Matseyevich). An Historical-Religious Essay” in which he described the life of an 18th century Orthodox bishop who attempted to defend church property against Catherine the Great and died in prison as a result.
Arsenii, who was canonized only in 2000, is interesting enough as an historical figure, Popov says, but Diomid’s Arsenii is even more interesting because the bishop treats him as a totally committed “defender of ancient traditions, a battler on behalf of the Russian people, and an enraged opponent of other religions.”
Diomid clearly views Arsenii as a model, Popov argues, pointing out that the bishop invoked Arsenii six months ago to justify his own actions. That almost certainly means that Diomid will not back down, that the Patriarchate cannot, and that there will be a deep and possibly incurable split within the church and within Russian society more generally.
UPDATE: Details on the Moscow Patriarchate's actions in its words "to restore order" in Bishop Diomid's see are available at pravostok.ru/ru/main_theme/?id=819&theme=123.
Vienna, August 8 – Bishop Diomid represents a growing threat not only to the Moscow Patriarchate but to the Russian state as a whole because his statements and actions tap into and draw upon the hopelessness and anger many rural Russians feel about their fate, according to a specialist on religious affairs in Volgograd.
In the new issue of “NG-Religii,” Andrei Serenko argues that Diomid has become the symbol of “the Orthodox-fundamentalist form of social protest” characteristic of traditional Russian society, a kind of action that is completely different from and typically not understood by opposition movements in the cities (religion.ng.ru/events/2008-08-06/100_diomid.html).
“Unlike the ‘educated opposition’ of the major cities” which defines itself in secular and immediately political terms, Serenko says, “’the accursed lumpen proletariat’ from the rural depths of Russia seeks comfort in a flight from the evils of the world into a uniquely understood and apocalyptic ‘Orthodoxy of the Despairing.”
This kind of Orthodoxy is very different from that on offer by the Moscow Patriarchate which “professes social optimism and the principle of cooperation with any secular power” because “the Orthodoxy of the Despairing” “expresses the interests of those who already have no future.”
That in turn leads many in the cities to dismiss their feelings, but that is a mistake. Because today “according to the assessment of Bishop Diomid himself, there are approximately 20 million such people:” residents of ethnic Russian regions that progress has passed by and villagers who are watching the world around them die.
Such people “are no longer interested in the protest rhetoric of the communists or of Zhirinovsky,” the “NG-Religii” commentator says. “Their protest is directed already not against the policy of the powers that be but against this world, which ‘lies in evil’ and in which” the state, politics and parties are all “hated by them” because “they do not have a future.”
The Orthodox of the Despairing thus represent not a movement within politics but a direct threat to the political system as such, a difference that means they are not only typically misunderstood but secular analysts but also represent a kind of unexploded mine that could threaten if not in fact reorder Russian social and political arrangements.
In the 1990s, some of the urban parties tried to tap into this anger in order to gain electoral support. Sometimes they succeeded but more often the urban groups found that they did not have a common language with the rural people and turned away from them, a shift made all the easier by the changes in Russian politics under Vladimir Putin.
And until very recently, the “apocalyptic aspirations of the Orthodox marginals did not threaten the peace of the Russian authorities,” largely because the Orthodox of the Despairing lacked a unifying ideology and a unifying leader. But now such an individual has potentially emerged in the person of Diomid.
Whether Diomid can in fact assume that role or whether he can be contained and then dismissed as only another “pawn” in higher church politics is likely to be determined over the next few weeks. This week, he returned to the capital of his disputed see, and on September 2, the Patriarchate will take up his case.
A commentary posted on the Polit.ru portal yesterday provides yet another insight into Diomid and his role. In it, Matvey Popov points out that what the Chukotka bishop has been doing over the last few months could have been predicted seven years ago had anyone in Moscow or elsewhere been paying attention (www.polit.ru/event/2008/08/07/diomid.html).
In 2001, shortly after being named bishop of Anadyr and Chukotka, Diomid published a book entitled “Metropolitan Arsenii (Matseyevich). An Historical-Religious Essay” in which he described the life of an 18th century Orthodox bishop who attempted to defend church property against Catherine the Great and died in prison as a result.
Arsenii, who was canonized only in 2000, is interesting enough as an historical figure, Popov says, but Diomid’s Arsenii is even more interesting because the bishop treats him as a totally committed “defender of ancient traditions, a battler on behalf of the Russian people, and an enraged opponent of other religions.”
Diomid clearly views Arsenii as a model, Popov argues, pointing out that the bishop invoked Arsenii six months ago to justify his own actions. That almost certainly means that Diomid will not back down, that the Patriarchate cannot, and that there will be a deep and possibly incurable split within the church and within Russian society more generally.
UPDATE: Details on the Moscow Patriarchate's actions in its words "to restore order" in Bishop Diomid's see are available at pravostok.ru/ru/main_theme/?id=819&theme=123.
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