Paul Goble
Staunton, November 6 – Russians outside the major cities are undergoing a process of lumpenization, of the loss of all social ties, that is as serious as the destruction of the peasantry of the 1930s and threatens the country’s future development, according to Natalya Narotchnitskaya, head of the Moscow-supported Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris.
In an interview in “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” Narochnitskaya painted a picture of Russia in tones that are even darker than those employed by people she routinely denounces as Russophobes in order to warn her readers that “Russia simply will not survive another revolution” (kp.ru/daily/24583.4/752496/).
Narochnitskaya begins by arguing that it is a mistake to think of Russia as a single homogenous space. “Siberia, the Kuban, Moscow and the Caucasus,” she says, “are different epochs, different cultures, and even different civilizations! We are living at one and the same time in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.”
Moreover, she continues, Russians and those who rule over them have to deal simultaneously with “the problems of the palaces and the problems of the huts, with advanced science and high culture, and archaic systems and an appalling lack of culture.” And that is “an enormous task for any power.”
“You cannot apply one and the same economic doctrines across the entire country.” But at the same time, she argues, you cannot ignore what people expect, and over history, Russians have assumed that just such an approach is necessary and that it is the only basis for overcoming national problems.
These divisions, Narochnitskaya continues, have been intensified, even exacerbated by the radical income differentiation thatpost-Soviet development has promoted. And she insists that the division between the richest and the poorest there is “not 20 times” as many say but rather “100 to 150 times,” a ratio that is hardly “divine.”
And that in turn has been compounded by the increasing acceptance of the notion that in economics, it is always the individual who makes progress rather than the state. “That is not the case,” she says, arguing that such ideas are a reflection of the characteristic of the Russian “educated” who think that it is a matter of “good tone” to always criticize the state.
But Narochnitskaya’s sharpest words concern the decay of Russian social life outside the major cities. “In the rural areas,” she says, “what is taking place is not simply the impoverishment but the lumpenization o fhte nation! The destruction of industry however backward it was is the de-industrialization of the country.”
She argues that “there cannot be any modernization if we lose out working habits,” suggesting that “by its social and cultural consequences for the nation, lumpenization is a catastrophe equal to the destruction of the Russian peasantry in the 1930s” by Stalin through collectivization.
Prior to 1917, Russian peasants had been poor but they had “preserved their social connections, psychology and the worldview of a definite stratum which reproduced itself while preserving society as a whole. But a lumpen is someone who has fallen out of his stratum and does not have any attachment to it.”
“This is a very dangerous social phenomenon. Such a worker will not struggle for his rights” because that is not what he is about. Instead, he will, especially as a result of the “unceasing propaganda of hedonism” to which Russians have been subjected assume that he deserves what he does not have and that he can take it even if it does not belong to him.
That danger can be seen if one travels only a short distance from Moscow. If one takes a highway out of the capital for only 100 kilometers and then turns off on a side road, after only about “five kilometers, a medieval world begins.” But it is a medieval world with television whose advertisements suggest that a good life is only a short distance away.
Many people think that the entire West is hedonistic, Narochnitskaya continues, and that this is the way of the future. But “this is the biggest misconception,” she insists. “Don’t forget that the Puritans with their religious relationship to the fulfillment of their debts build America. The relationship to work in the West in general is very serious.”
As she has done in the past, Narochnitskaya also sharply criticizes both the Russian opposition for its own radicalism and running after the West and the image of the West that many Russians have as a place where there are no problems and where miracles are achieved without work.
Such thinking, she suggests, leads Russians to vacillate between an apathetic acceptance that nothing can be done, a cynicism about the ability of anyone to do anything about problems, and a belief that the best way to achieve their goals is all at once by a revolutionary act rather than by reforms.
In conclusions, Narochnitskaya cites Trubetskoy’s observation that “we don’t need reforms, we need everything or nothing” as an example of this attitude and then warns that whatever may have been true in the past, Russia now, as a result of the lumpenization of so much of the population, “simply won’t survive another revolution.”
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Lenin Lives in Russian Writing Only to Die Again, Moscow Critic Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, November 6 – Russians continue to argue about Stalin and other Communist leaders, but in such debates, Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, has been left largely “somewhere on the side,” a reflection of the often unrecognized fact that he, unlike the others, plays a variety of roles for the current generation, according to a Moscow scholar.
That may be changing, Aleksandr Chantsev argues in the current “Neprikosnovennyy zapas,” given that his works are now being republished and an entire virtual community devoted to his memory has emerged, and consequently, it is time to consider the actual role Lenin continues to play in the lives of Russians (magazines.russ.ru/nz/2010/4/ch16.html.
Unlike those who want Lenin out of the mausoleum and are angry that more than 70 percent of all Lenin monuments in the Russian Federation remain in place 20 years after the end of the Soviet Union (www.pravmir.ru/lenin-navsegda/), Chantsev, a philologist, considers the imagery of Lenin found in literary works as a key to understanding his role in Russian life now.
As far as the Soviet system is concerned, Chantsev begins, “everything is clear – we don’t want it, but they are reviving it.” That sense, he continues, leads to debates about Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Trotsky, but somehow “Lenin turns out to be left somewhere on the side,” historically distant, preserved in amber, “half-condemned but half rehabilitated.”
What is striking, the critic notes, is that Lenin has become an object onto which have many displaced many things which are far from the original meaning of the man and his historical role. “The main thing” turns out to be “images of childhood,” not just because of Bonch-Bruyevich’s stories but also because people now associate Lenin with their early years.
The literary record of the last 20 years suggest that “behind all these ‘Leninist subjects’ stands special relations with the object. The motives are clear: they have a more psychological basis: the denial of communist ideals in the Soviet period, the ridiculing of the former idol in the first years of perestroika and then … one of the symbols of the denial of current Russian reality.
In reality, Chantsev argues, “Lenin here is important not in and of himself; he is much more significant for what he embodies – and it is from this the continuing presence of his image arises. This is intensified still further by the formulaic images of Lenin created in the Soviet period which are used by contemporary authors for [his] desconstruction.”
And that is terribly important, Chantsev suggests because “after 70 years of defenseless existence under the pressure of official idiologisms, Russian writing with the help of these measures is undertaking an attempt at a late vaccination against the virus of Lenin – and it is not for nothing that in texts [about him] there are so many references to illness.”
Consequently, while Lenin still lives in Russian writing and consciousness, his existence is a “strange” one, somewhere “between life and death.” He plays the role of Osiris, of someone who dies in order to be reborn only to die again. And however angry many may be about his re-appearance, such a pattern is intended to ensure that his like will not come again.
“Unlike the image of Stalin … in our days,” Chantsev says, “when at spiritual séances out of the past are called forth terrible heroes of myths … on should not be surprised by such a frequent appearance of Lenin” or fail to understand that his return is required in such forums in order that it not happen in real life.
Lenin must “yet again be reborn in order that, having finally died, he can leave his meta-historical mausoleum and move from the status of ‘the most living of all living’ into the form of an ordinary historical personage.” And because that is the requirement, Chantsev concludes, “in the immediate future, Lenin will appear yet again in many books, films, and songs.”
Staunton, November 6 – Russians continue to argue about Stalin and other Communist leaders, but in such debates, Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, has been left largely “somewhere on the side,” a reflection of the often unrecognized fact that he, unlike the others, plays a variety of roles for the current generation, according to a Moscow scholar.
That may be changing, Aleksandr Chantsev argues in the current “Neprikosnovennyy zapas,” given that his works are now being republished and an entire virtual community devoted to his memory has emerged, and consequently, it is time to consider the actual role Lenin continues to play in the lives of Russians (magazines.russ.ru/nz/2010/4/ch16.html.
Unlike those who want Lenin out of the mausoleum and are angry that more than 70 percent of all Lenin monuments in the Russian Federation remain in place 20 years after the end of the Soviet Union (www.pravmir.ru/lenin-navsegda/), Chantsev, a philologist, considers the imagery of Lenin found in literary works as a key to understanding his role in Russian life now.
As far as the Soviet system is concerned, Chantsev begins, “everything is clear – we don’t want it, but they are reviving it.” That sense, he continues, leads to debates about Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Trotsky, but somehow “Lenin turns out to be left somewhere on the side,” historically distant, preserved in amber, “half-condemned but half rehabilitated.”
What is striking, the critic notes, is that Lenin has become an object onto which have many displaced many things which are far from the original meaning of the man and his historical role. “The main thing” turns out to be “images of childhood,” not just because of Bonch-Bruyevich’s stories but also because people now associate Lenin with their early years.
The literary record of the last 20 years suggest that “behind all these ‘Leninist subjects’ stands special relations with the object. The motives are clear: they have a more psychological basis: the denial of communist ideals in the Soviet period, the ridiculing of the former idol in the first years of perestroika and then … one of the symbols of the denial of current Russian reality.
In reality, Chantsev argues, “Lenin here is important not in and of himself; he is much more significant for what he embodies – and it is from this the continuing presence of his image arises. This is intensified still further by the formulaic images of Lenin created in the Soviet period which are used by contemporary authors for [his] desconstruction.”
And that is terribly important, Chantsev suggests because “after 70 years of defenseless existence under the pressure of official idiologisms, Russian writing with the help of these measures is undertaking an attempt at a late vaccination against the virus of Lenin – and it is not for nothing that in texts [about him] there are so many references to illness.”
Consequently, while Lenin still lives in Russian writing and consciousness, his existence is a “strange” one, somewhere “between life and death.” He plays the role of Osiris, of someone who dies in order to be reborn only to die again. And however angry many may be about his re-appearance, such a pattern is intended to ensure that his like will not come again.
“Unlike the image of Stalin … in our days,” Chantsev says, “when at spiritual séances out of the past are called forth terrible heroes of myths … on should not be surprised by such a frequent appearance of Lenin” or fail to understand that his return is required in such forums in order that it not happen in real life.
Lenin must “yet again be reborn in order that, having finally died, he can leave his meta-historical mausoleum and move from the status of ‘the most living of all living’ into the form of an ordinary historical personage.” And because that is the requirement, Chantsev concludes, “in the immediate future, Lenin will appear yet again in many books, films, and songs.”
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Should Rely on Cossacks in North Caucasus, Khloponin Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, November 4 – Aleksandr Khloponin, the Presidential Plenipotentiary for the North Caucasus Federal District, said last week that his “first task” must be to support and rely on the Cossack revival as part of Moscow’s effort to return ethnic Russians to that troubled part of the country.
And while, as Sergey Markedonov makes clear in a new analysis, the Cossack movement of today is best described as “neo-Cossackry,” the history of tensions between the indigenous peoples of that region and the Cossacks who were the shock troops of Russian expansion there makes this a problematic, even dangerous tactic (www.politcom.ru/10977.html).
Khloponin’s plans make Markedonov’s analysis especially timely given that the neo-Cossacks he described are more Russian nationalist and likely to prove more hostile to the non-Russian nationalities of the North Caucasus than were the Cossacks who moved south into that region in the 18th and 19th centuries.
As Markedonov, currently a visiting scholar at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, makes clear, the new Cossacks are not so much a continuation of the older groups but rather a new phenomenon altogether, one that draws on Cossack ideas but that lacks the corporate sense and social conditions in which the pre-1917 Cossacks existed.
The neo-Cossack movement emerged in the early 1990s, Markedonov says, as “a reaction to the growth of ethnic nationalism in the North Caucasus republics under conditions of the crisis and disintegration of the USSR.” As a result, the Kuban and Terek “neo-Cossacks” began “to play the role of a certain counterweight to the ethnocracies being formed there.”
Markedonov details the struggle of revived Cossack units with the non-Russian republics in that region during the early 1990s, struggles that sometimes resulted in violent clashes and deaths, featured calls for the establishment or re-establishment of Cossack territories from imperial times, but ultimately led to no real changes.
Initially, ethnic Russians in the North Caucasus supported the idea of creating a Cossack Republic, with “almost 65 percent” in one poll backing that idea. Several Cossack communities proclaimed such republics, but the Russian authorities were unprepared to support them, preferring instead to rely where possible on the leaders of existing republics.
Although there was a brief uptick in local interest in the creation of a special Cossack territory, the so-called Terek Oblast, at the start of Moscow’s military efforts in Chechnya in 1994 and 1999, no such “’second Transdniestria’” was formed, in large measure because of the rapid outflow of the ethnic Russian population from the North Caucasus.
Over the course of the last decade, Markedonov continues, “the neo-Cossacks as a political project” have more or less disappeared as an issue. One measure of that is that their center has become Stavropol kray which historically was never a center of Cossack activity but rather of “peasant colonization.”
And indicative of this decline in their political prospects, the Moscow analyst say, has been “a change of the political language” that their leaders have employed. “The language of demands [that was common in the early 1990s] has been completely replaced by the language of requests for permission.”
Markedonov suggests that among the other causes for the decline of the Cossack project in the region was the inability of the Cossacks to find “strategic or even tactical allies,” even though some were available because most of their leaders “put ‘purity of blood’ above pragmatism,” costing them support from groups like the Nogays.
At the same time, by the 1990s, “the Russians and Cossacks had ceased to be considered ‘elder brothers’” by the non-Russians. And the Cossacks never learned to use the language of human rights and thus were condemned to be viewed as “revaunchist” and as something “not about the future but about the past.”
Moreover, Markedonov continues, it quickly became apparent that “the process of the Sovietization of the Cossack Russian population of the North Caucasus had been much deeper than among the ‘titular’ ethnic groups,” something that limited their ability to restore the past or even build on it by uniting either with ethnic Russians or with others.
But perhaps most important, the Russian analyst says, “the neo-Cossacks of the North Caucasus did not receive the necessary ‘signals’ from the center.” Moscow was not interested in fully integrating the region into Russian lands, preferring instead to work with when possible the non-Russian ethnocratic regimes.
And that had another consequence: it became obvious to many in the Russian capital that “many leaders of ‘the Cossack project’ were ready to struggle not against the principles of ethnocracy as such but only against ethnocracies that were not ‘theirs.’” Consequently, supporting the Cossacks would create a new problem rather than solve an old one.
It is possible that Khloponin’s remarks represent a shift, but Markedonov suggests that is probably not the case. “Under conditions when North Caucasus policy has been reduced to slogans and toasts, it is not surprising that instead of systemic analysis,” Russian officials like him are saying “the Cossacks will confidently write their own history in the 21st century.”
But at least some Cossacks may see those words as just the signal they have not received in the past, and that could create serious problems in the region -- even if it is not “the signal” that anyone, including Khloponin, thought he was sending by his rather incautious remarks during a Cossack meeting last week.
Staunton, November 4 – Aleksandr Khloponin, the Presidential Plenipotentiary for the North Caucasus Federal District, said last week that his “first task” must be to support and rely on the Cossack revival as part of Moscow’s effort to return ethnic Russians to that troubled part of the country.
And while, as Sergey Markedonov makes clear in a new analysis, the Cossack movement of today is best described as “neo-Cossackry,” the history of tensions between the indigenous peoples of that region and the Cossacks who were the shock troops of Russian expansion there makes this a problematic, even dangerous tactic (www.politcom.ru/10977.html).
Khloponin’s plans make Markedonov’s analysis especially timely given that the neo-Cossacks he described are more Russian nationalist and likely to prove more hostile to the non-Russian nationalities of the North Caucasus than were the Cossacks who moved south into that region in the 18th and 19th centuries.
As Markedonov, currently a visiting scholar at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, makes clear, the new Cossacks are not so much a continuation of the older groups but rather a new phenomenon altogether, one that draws on Cossack ideas but that lacks the corporate sense and social conditions in which the pre-1917 Cossacks existed.
The neo-Cossack movement emerged in the early 1990s, Markedonov says, as “a reaction to the growth of ethnic nationalism in the North Caucasus republics under conditions of the crisis and disintegration of the USSR.” As a result, the Kuban and Terek “neo-Cossacks” began “to play the role of a certain counterweight to the ethnocracies being formed there.”
Markedonov details the struggle of revived Cossack units with the non-Russian republics in that region during the early 1990s, struggles that sometimes resulted in violent clashes and deaths, featured calls for the establishment or re-establishment of Cossack territories from imperial times, but ultimately led to no real changes.
Initially, ethnic Russians in the North Caucasus supported the idea of creating a Cossack Republic, with “almost 65 percent” in one poll backing that idea. Several Cossack communities proclaimed such republics, but the Russian authorities were unprepared to support them, preferring instead to rely where possible on the leaders of existing republics.
Although there was a brief uptick in local interest in the creation of a special Cossack territory, the so-called Terek Oblast, at the start of Moscow’s military efforts in Chechnya in 1994 and 1999, no such “’second Transdniestria’” was formed, in large measure because of the rapid outflow of the ethnic Russian population from the North Caucasus.
Over the course of the last decade, Markedonov continues, “the neo-Cossacks as a political project” have more or less disappeared as an issue. One measure of that is that their center has become Stavropol kray which historically was never a center of Cossack activity but rather of “peasant colonization.”
And indicative of this decline in their political prospects, the Moscow analyst say, has been “a change of the political language” that their leaders have employed. “The language of demands [that was common in the early 1990s] has been completely replaced by the language of requests for permission.”
Markedonov suggests that among the other causes for the decline of the Cossack project in the region was the inability of the Cossacks to find “strategic or even tactical allies,” even though some were available because most of their leaders “put ‘purity of blood’ above pragmatism,” costing them support from groups like the Nogays.
At the same time, by the 1990s, “the Russians and Cossacks had ceased to be considered ‘elder brothers’” by the non-Russians. And the Cossacks never learned to use the language of human rights and thus were condemned to be viewed as “revaunchist” and as something “not about the future but about the past.”
Moreover, Markedonov continues, it quickly became apparent that “the process of the Sovietization of the Cossack Russian population of the North Caucasus had been much deeper than among the ‘titular’ ethnic groups,” something that limited their ability to restore the past or even build on it by uniting either with ethnic Russians or with others.
But perhaps most important, the Russian analyst says, “the neo-Cossacks of the North Caucasus did not receive the necessary ‘signals’ from the center.” Moscow was not interested in fully integrating the region into Russian lands, preferring instead to work with when possible the non-Russian ethnocratic regimes.
And that had another consequence: it became obvious to many in the Russian capital that “many leaders of ‘the Cossack project’ were ready to struggle not against the principles of ethnocracy as such but only against ethnocracies that were not ‘theirs.’” Consequently, supporting the Cossacks would create a new problem rather than solve an old one.
It is possible that Khloponin’s remarks represent a shift, but Markedonov suggests that is probably not the case. “Under conditions when North Caucasus policy has been reduced to slogans and toasts, it is not surprising that instead of systemic analysis,” Russian officials like him are saying “the Cossacks will confidently write their own history in the 21st century.”
But at least some Cossacks may see those words as just the signal they have not received in the past, and that could create serious problems in the region -- even if it is not “the signal” that anyone, including Khloponin, thought he was sending by his rather incautious remarks during a Cossack meeting last week.
Window on Eurasia: Russians Fear ‘Fifth Column’ of Jihadi Terrorists among Gastarbeiters
Paul Goble
Staunton, November 4 – Moscow is seeking to impose tighter control over labor migration from CIS countries in general and Tajikistan in particular not only to ensure that Russian laws are obeyed but also to prevent the arrival of Jihadi terrorists within that flow who could form “a fifth column” inside the Russian Federation.
Such an approach, commentator Dmitry Pankratov argues, is “more than justified since under the mask of labor migrants an enormous number of people have come to Russia who are not involved with construction … but with the creation on the territory of another state of individual cells of Islamic groups of an extremist type.”
Moreover, he continues, international experience shows that in an increasing number of cases around the world, those who commit terrorist acts of various kinds in one country received training in another state and then arrived in their target country under the cover of migrants or other “legitimate” activities (www.paruskg.info/2010/11/03/34809#more-34809).
In his article, Pankratov describes the activities on one Tajik Jihadist who moved to Tyumen, recruited other Tajiks there to his ideas and financed his activities with the sale of illegal drugs. But he implies that the case he describes is typical rather than exceptional and that Jihadist elements can be found elsewhere among Gastarbeiter in other Russian cities.
How widespread this phenomenon has become is impossible to know, but this report and others like it – including one on the recruitment of suicide bombers by Islamist radicals in Tajikistan (www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=6787) -- will further exacerbate Russian suspicions about and xenophobic attitudes toward the growing migrant population.
That presents the Russian powers that be with a serious problem. On the one hand, the Russian economy needs immigrant labor given the country’s declining population. Moreover, Moscow wants to maintain good relations with and hence influence in Muslim countries, both those from which the migrants come and others further afield.
And on the other, there appear to be some in the Russian capital who are prepared to play up such ethnic tensions not only to distract attention of social class problems but also out of the belief that the anti-immigrant sentiment now sweeping through Western Europe provides Russia with the perfect occasion to crack down on immigrants itself.
In recent weeks, Russian courts have ordered the disbanding of the organization of Tajik immigrant workers in the Russian Federation, the number of clashes between migrants and Russians appear to have increased, and anti-immigrant groups like the Movement Against Illegal Immigraiton (DPNI) have stepped up their activities.
The onset of colder weather across Russia will likely limit the growth of such phenomena in the next few months, with many migrants returning home or staying out of sight and with Russians in turn focusing on coping with the weather rather than with whatever threats they believe immigrant workers from Muslim countries pose.
But Pankratov’s article and the many others like it in the Russian media suggest that Russian society may be moving toward an explosion early next spring, an explosion in which the powers that be will either have to enforce the Constitution and laws against their own citizens or side with the anger and fears of the latter against the migrant workers.
Beyond any doubt, Moscow as have governments elsewhere will try to find a middle course, cracking down on illegal immigrants and saying that it will defend legal ones. But that position is likely to prove increasingly difficult to sustain given generalized fears among Russians that Gastarbeiters as a group are the sources of terrorism and drugs.
Staunton, November 4 – Moscow is seeking to impose tighter control over labor migration from CIS countries in general and Tajikistan in particular not only to ensure that Russian laws are obeyed but also to prevent the arrival of Jihadi terrorists within that flow who could form “a fifth column” inside the Russian Federation.
Such an approach, commentator Dmitry Pankratov argues, is “more than justified since under the mask of labor migrants an enormous number of people have come to Russia who are not involved with construction … but with the creation on the territory of another state of individual cells of Islamic groups of an extremist type.”
Moreover, he continues, international experience shows that in an increasing number of cases around the world, those who commit terrorist acts of various kinds in one country received training in another state and then arrived in their target country under the cover of migrants or other “legitimate” activities (www.paruskg.info/2010/11/03/34809#more-34809).
In his article, Pankratov describes the activities on one Tajik Jihadist who moved to Tyumen, recruited other Tajiks there to his ideas and financed his activities with the sale of illegal drugs. But he implies that the case he describes is typical rather than exceptional and that Jihadist elements can be found elsewhere among Gastarbeiter in other Russian cities.
How widespread this phenomenon has become is impossible to know, but this report and others like it – including one on the recruitment of suicide bombers by Islamist radicals in Tajikistan (www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=6787) -- will further exacerbate Russian suspicions about and xenophobic attitudes toward the growing migrant population.
That presents the Russian powers that be with a serious problem. On the one hand, the Russian economy needs immigrant labor given the country’s declining population. Moreover, Moscow wants to maintain good relations with and hence influence in Muslim countries, both those from which the migrants come and others further afield.
And on the other, there appear to be some in the Russian capital who are prepared to play up such ethnic tensions not only to distract attention of social class problems but also out of the belief that the anti-immigrant sentiment now sweeping through Western Europe provides Russia with the perfect occasion to crack down on immigrants itself.
In recent weeks, Russian courts have ordered the disbanding of the organization of Tajik immigrant workers in the Russian Federation, the number of clashes between migrants and Russians appear to have increased, and anti-immigrant groups like the Movement Against Illegal Immigraiton (DPNI) have stepped up their activities.
The onset of colder weather across Russia will likely limit the growth of such phenomena in the next few months, with many migrants returning home or staying out of sight and with Russians in turn focusing on coping with the weather rather than with whatever threats they believe immigrant workers from Muslim countries pose.
But Pankratov’s article and the many others like it in the Russian media suggest that Russian society may be moving toward an explosion early next spring, an explosion in which the powers that be will either have to enforce the Constitution and laws against their own citizens or side with the anger and fears of the latter against the migrant workers.
Beyond any doubt, Moscow as have governments elsewhere will try to find a middle course, cracking down on illegal immigrants and saying that it will defend legal ones. But that position is likely to prove increasingly difficult to sustain given generalized fears among Russians that Gastarbeiters as a group are the sources of terrorism and drugs.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Russians Divided on Whether Religious Groups Promote Social Concord
Paul Goble
Staunton, November 3 – In advance of the Day of Popular Unity tomorrow, a poll conducted by the SuperJob agency found that slightly more than a third of the Russian people say that religious groups cannot contribute to social concord, slightly under a third say that religious groups can, and just over a quarter saying they found it difficult to respond.
In the issue of “NG-Religii” published today, Lidiya Orlova, a journalist for that publication, described the poll which her weekly magazine had commissioned and its findings which call into question some of the more extravagant claims of the Russian Orthodox Church in this regard (religion.ng.ru/society/2010-11-03/2_relig_organisation.html).
At the request of “NG-Religii,” Superjob asked 3,000 Russian adults across the country two questions: “Can religious organizations make possible civic concord in Russia?” and “Are religious organizations making possible civic concord in Russia [now]?” Neither set of answers provide support for the claims of either Patriarch Kirill or President Dmitry Medvedev.
In response to the first question, 38 percent of the respondents said that the religious groups could not play such a role, 34 percent said that they could, and 28 percent said they found it difficult to answer. Younger and middle income groups were the most negative, older and wealthier ones the most positive, and older and poorer ones the most unsure.
In response to the second question, Orlova said, the results were similar. Forty-three percent of the respondents said that religious groups were not currently playing that role, 27 percent felt that religious groups were, and 30 percent were unsure, with the results varying among age and income groups in roughly the same way.
More interesting perhaps than these global figures were the specific comments of some of those with whom SuperJob spoke. One 39-year-old manager from Moscow suggested that the Church should deal with its own business and not try to impose “its dogmas” on anyone else. And he said that the growing influence of the Church in public life was for him unacceptable.
Another respondent, a 39-year-old tax and bookkeeping consultant from St. Petersburg said that “our religious organizations are capable only of blackening the reputations of one another and nothing more,” a negative assessment that reflects the often sharply critical coverage of religious groups in publications like “NG-Religii” and Interfax-Religion.
As far as the possibility of a religious role in promoting civic accord is concerned, several comments from those surveyed are potentially even more interesting. A 28-year-old Moscow lawyer said that it was difficult to say what “civic accord” would be given that in the Russian context, “the very word ‘citizenship’” remains undefined.
And a 25-year-old resident of Toliatti suggested that religion could do little to remedy the basic divide in Russian society between the rich and the poor. “We have a very clear border between [these two groups},” he said, and “religion is not bringing them together or uniting them” in any way. “Those who are full don’t think about the hungry.”
Among those who saw a positive role for religion in this regard, most said that “only the Russian Orthodox Church could promote the strengthening of civic accord in the country.” According to one 44-year-old from St. Petersburg, “Besides the Russian Orthodox Church, unfortunately, I don’t know of other religious organizations which could do that.”
But some of those polls “denied such a possibility from religious organizations,” Orlova reported. One 33-year-old manager from Moscow said that sometimes religious organizations are the cause of civic conflict rather than promoters of accord. And another suggested that religious institutions “and especially the Russian Orthodox Church” are “the cause of all misfortunes.”
Overwhelmingly, it appears from Orlova’s article, the Russians surveyed appear to believe that in a secular and increasingly multi-confessional state, religious groups must be allowed to practice without interference from the state but at the same time that they must avoid interfering in the activities of the state.
Staunton, November 3 – In advance of the Day of Popular Unity tomorrow, a poll conducted by the SuperJob agency found that slightly more than a third of the Russian people say that religious groups cannot contribute to social concord, slightly under a third say that religious groups can, and just over a quarter saying they found it difficult to respond.
In the issue of “NG-Religii” published today, Lidiya Orlova, a journalist for that publication, described the poll which her weekly magazine had commissioned and its findings which call into question some of the more extravagant claims of the Russian Orthodox Church in this regard (religion.ng.ru/society/2010-11-03/2_relig_organisation.html).
At the request of “NG-Religii,” Superjob asked 3,000 Russian adults across the country two questions: “Can religious organizations make possible civic concord in Russia?” and “Are religious organizations making possible civic concord in Russia [now]?” Neither set of answers provide support for the claims of either Patriarch Kirill or President Dmitry Medvedev.
In response to the first question, 38 percent of the respondents said that the religious groups could not play such a role, 34 percent said that they could, and 28 percent said they found it difficult to answer. Younger and middle income groups were the most negative, older and wealthier ones the most positive, and older and poorer ones the most unsure.
In response to the second question, Orlova said, the results were similar. Forty-three percent of the respondents said that religious groups were not currently playing that role, 27 percent felt that religious groups were, and 30 percent were unsure, with the results varying among age and income groups in roughly the same way.
More interesting perhaps than these global figures were the specific comments of some of those with whom SuperJob spoke. One 39-year-old manager from Moscow suggested that the Church should deal with its own business and not try to impose “its dogmas” on anyone else. And he said that the growing influence of the Church in public life was for him unacceptable.
Another respondent, a 39-year-old tax and bookkeeping consultant from St. Petersburg said that “our religious organizations are capable only of blackening the reputations of one another and nothing more,” a negative assessment that reflects the often sharply critical coverage of religious groups in publications like “NG-Religii” and Interfax-Religion.
As far as the possibility of a religious role in promoting civic accord is concerned, several comments from those surveyed are potentially even more interesting. A 28-year-old Moscow lawyer said that it was difficult to say what “civic accord” would be given that in the Russian context, “the very word ‘citizenship’” remains undefined.
And a 25-year-old resident of Toliatti suggested that religion could do little to remedy the basic divide in Russian society between the rich and the poor. “We have a very clear border between [these two groups},” he said, and “religion is not bringing them together or uniting them” in any way. “Those who are full don’t think about the hungry.”
Among those who saw a positive role for religion in this regard, most said that “only the Russian Orthodox Church could promote the strengthening of civic accord in the country.” According to one 44-year-old from St. Petersburg, “Besides the Russian Orthodox Church, unfortunately, I don’t know of other religious organizations which could do that.”
But some of those polls “denied such a possibility from religious organizations,” Orlova reported. One 33-year-old manager from Moscow said that sometimes religious organizations are the cause of civic conflict rather than promoters of accord. And another suggested that religious institutions “and especially the Russian Orthodox Church” are “the cause of all misfortunes.”
Overwhelmingly, it appears from Orlova’s article, the Russians surveyed appear to believe that in a secular and increasingly multi-confessional state, religious groups must be allowed to practice without interference from the state but at the same time that they must avoid interfering in the activities of the state.
Window on Eurasia: Belarus Becoming More Belarusian, Mensk Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, November 3 – Like the Russian Federation, Belarus has experienced a decline in its overall population during the last two decades, but unlike its eastern neighbor, the percentage of the titular nationality has risen because of sharp declines in the numbers of ethnic Russians and of most other minorities registered there.
This announcement is important for three reasons. First, it comes on a day when Russian media are reporting that the overall population of that country has declined and that the share of non-Russian groups there is rising, especially Muslim groups in the North Caucasus and migrants from Central Asia.
Second, it calls into question the widespread assumption in both the Russian Federation and the West that Belarusian national identity is not a very real thing. Were those views true, the numbers Mensk is reporting this week would likely be very different, with the share of ethnic Russians remaining higher than it has.
And third, the sharp decline in the number of ethnic Russians reduces the utility of this group for Moscow as a lever it can use against Alyaksandr Lukashenka. With the ethnic Russians forming an ever smaller share of the Belarusian population, those promoting the idea that these two nations are really one face an increasingly uphill task.
These three factors making the timing of this announcement thus a very political one, all the more so since the Belarusian census agency noted that in the conduct of its enumeration, the nationality of residents was recorded on the basis of their declarations, something many in Russia have good reason to doubt has been true in their own country.
Yesterday, the Belarusian National Statistical Committee said that the October 2009 census had found that the number of ethnic Russians there had declined from 11.3 percent to 8.3 percent of the total, an absolute decline of some 356,000 people, some of whom left, others died, and others re-identified (telegraf.by/2010/11/chislo-russkix-v-belarusi-sokratilos--na-tret.html).
The next largest ethnic minorities in Belarus are now the Poles with three percent of the population, the Ukrainians with 1.7 percent, followed by smaller groups of Armenians,Tatars, Azerbaijanis and Lithuanians. As a result, the Belarusians now constitute 83.7 percent of the country’s population, 2.5 percent more than a decade ago.
Most of the other traditional indigenous nationalities, the statistical agency said, have experienced a decline as well, with the number of Jews falling by more than half, the number of Ukrainian s by a third, and the number of Roma by 29 percent. As a result, the percent of residents of Belarusians declaring themselves to be Belarusians has risen.
But the number of non-traditional nationalities resident there had increased dramatically, at least in part because their numbers then and now are still extremely small. Compared to 1999, the number of Chinese living in Belarus had increased by “more than 20 times, the number of Arabs by 2.7 percent, and the number of Turkmens by 2.3 times.
Belarus as a whole is thus becoming more ethnically homogeneous, a sorting out of nationalities that is typical of former Soviet republics except for the Russian Federation, which is moving in the other direction, but the nationality mix varies considerably across the country. In Brest and Mensk oblasts, for example, Armenians form one of the larger minorities.
Staunton, November 3 – Like the Russian Federation, Belarus has experienced a decline in its overall population during the last two decades, but unlike its eastern neighbor, the percentage of the titular nationality has risen because of sharp declines in the numbers of ethnic Russians and of most other minorities registered there.
This announcement is important for three reasons. First, it comes on a day when Russian media are reporting that the overall population of that country has declined and that the share of non-Russian groups there is rising, especially Muslim groups in the North Caucasus and migrants from Central Asia.
Second, it calls into question the widespread assumption in both the Russian Federation and the West that Belarusian national identity is not a very real thing. Were those views true, the numbers Mensk is reporting this week would likely be very different, with the share of ethnic Russians remaining higher than it has.
And third, the sharp decline in the number of ethnic Russians reduces the utility of this group for Moscow as a lever it can use against Alyaksandr Lukashenka. With the ethnic Russians forming an ever smaller share of the Belarusian population, those promoting the idea that these two nations are really one face an increasingly uphill task.
These three factors making the timing of this announcement thus a very political one, all the more so since the Belarusian census agency noted that in the conduct of its enumeration, the nationality of residents was recorded on the basis of their declarations, something many in Russia have good reason to doubt has been true in their own country.
Yesterday, the Belarusian National Statistical Committee said that the October 2009 census had found that the number of ethnic Russians there had declined from 11.3 percent to 8.3 percent of the total, an absolute decline of some 356,000 people, some of whom left, others died, and others re-identified (telegraf.by/2010/11/chislo-russkix-v-belarusi-sokratilos--na-tret.html).
The next largest ethnic minorities in Belarus are now the Poles with three percent of the population, the Ukrainians with 1.7 percent, followed by smaller groups of Armenians,Tatars, Azerbaijanis and Lithuanians. As a result, the Belarusians now constitute 83.7 percent of the country’s population, 2.5 percent more than a decade ago.
Most of the other traditional indigenous nationalities, the statistical agency said, have experienced a decline as well, with the number of Jews falling by more than half, the number of Ukrainian s by a third, and the number of Roma by 29 percent. As a result, the percent of residents of Belarusians declaring themselves to be Belarusians has risen.
But the number of non-traditional nationalities resident there had increased dramatically, at least in part because their numbers then and now are still extremely small. Compared to 1999, the number of Chinese living in Belarus had increased by “more than 20 times, the number of Arabs by 2.7 percent, and the number of Turkmens by 2.3 times.
Belarus as a whole is thus becoming more ethnically homogeneous, a sorting out of nationalities that is typical of former Soviet republics except for the Russian Federation, which is moving in the other direction, but the nationality mix varies considerably across the country. In Brest and Mensk oblasts, for example, Armenians form one of the larger minorities.
Window on Eurasia: Can Translating Erotica Save a Finno-Ugric Nation in the Middle Volga?
Paul Goble
Staunton, November 3 – Given Moscow’s cuts in non-Russian language instruction and declining interest among many younger non-Russians in retaining their national languages, an Udmurt editor has come up with an unusual strategy: He is translating the Kamasutra into Udmurt in the hopes of attracting a new generation of readers to that language.
In an interview with “Moya Udmurtia” television last week, Pyotr Zakharov, the chief editor of the Udmurt-language journal “Invozho,” said that at a time when readers of the national language are “becoming fewer and fewer” and “interest in a small local language is being lost,” projects like this one are absolutely necessary (www.myudm.ru/node/8610).
The translation of the famous Indian encyclopedia of love will first appear on the website of his journal later this month, he said, and then be published as a richly illustrated separate book, in a few copies to start but more if there is demand, all in the aid “of preserving interest in the native language” of the Udmurts.
The editor then told the Susanin News Agency that he and his colleagues in fact had begun work on translations of erotic texts in the 1990s but had then turned to other tasks. Now the fate of the Udmurt language and hence of the Udmurt nation hangs in the balance, and so he had resumed work on the Kamasutra (susanin.udm.ru/news/2010/10/28/279366).
The translation has not been easy, he continued, because “the book must have its own unrepeatable national coloration,” even as it “corresponds to the general idea of the original Indian variant.” At present, he said, he is involved in editing the translation, making sure that the Udmurt words about anatomy and about attitudes toward various aspects of love are correct.
“The creation of an Udmurt sex handbook must ensure the preservation and popularization of the [Udmurt] language,” Zakharov said, arguing that “if there is a Tibetan ‘Kamasutra’ and an Indian one, then there must be an Udmurt one as well.” And he said he will ensure that one does appear.
At one level, of course, this effort by an Udmurt editor qualifies as a humorous anecdote given the size of the Udmurt nation and the improbable nature of the translation of such a work into its language. But at another level, it reflects a far more serious problem, one that many smaller nations inside the Russian Federation now face.
On the one hand, both because of Russian state policy and the pressures of globalization, these languages are in many cases declining, often unable to keep enough young people interested to ensure that they will remain widely used in the next generation. (On that problem see www.raipon.info/index.php/component/article/1-novosti/1329-zhil-takoj-narod-kogdato.)
And on the other hand, there is a risk that some efforts to preserve these languages end by reducing them to small isolated niches or turning them into a laughing matter, much as some translations of obscure works by émigrés in Soviet times – one thinks of the Belarusian translation of the complete works of Plato, for example – did then.
But there may be another side to this story: Zakharov is using the most modern forms of communication – the Internet and TV --to promote his translation of a book many young Udmurts may want to read, and there is the precedent that languages and peoples that were a joke for some turned out to have a better future than even those supporting them dared hope.
Staunton, November 3 – Given Moscow’s cuts in non-Russian language instruction and declining interest among many younger non-Russians in retaining their national languages, an Udmurt editor has come up with an unusual strategy: He is translating the Kamasutra into Udmurt in the hopes of attracting a new generation of readers to that language.
In an interview with “Moya Udmurtia” television last week, Pyotr Zakharov, the chief editor of the Udmurt-language journal “Invozho,” said that at a time when readers of the national language are “becoming fewer and fewer” and “interest in a small local language is being lost,” projects like this one are absolutely necessary (www.myudm.ru/node/8610).
The translation of the famous Indian encyclopedia of love will first appear on the website of his journal later this month, he said, and then be published as a richly illustrated separate book, in a few copies to start but more if there is demand, all in the aid “of preserving interest in the native language” of the Udmurts.
The editor then told the Susanin News Agency that he and his colleagues in fact had begun work on translations of erotic texts in the 1990s but had then turned to other tasks. Now the fate of the Udmurt language and hence of the Udmurt nation hangs in the balance, and so he had resumed work on the Kamasutra (susanin.udm.ru/news/2010/10/28/279366).
The translation has not been easy, he continued, because “the book must have its own unrepeatable national coloration,” even as it “corresponds to the general idea of the original Indian variant.” At present, he said, he is involved in editing the translation, making sure that the Udmurt words about anatomy and about attitudes toward various aspects of love are correct.
“The creation of an Udmurt sex handbook must ensure the preservation and popularization of the [Udmurt] language,” Zakharov said, arguing that “if there is a Tibetan ‘Kamasutra’ and an Indian one, then there must be an Udmurt one as well.” And he said he will ensure that one does appear.
At one level, of course, this effort by an Udmurt editor qualifies as a humorous anecdote given the size of the Udmurt nation and the improbable nature of the translation of such a work into its language. But at another level, it reflects a far more serious problem, one that many smaller nations inside the Russian Federation now face.
On the one hand, both because of Russian state policy and the pressures of globalization, these languages are in many cases declining, often unable to keep enough young people interested to ensure that they will remain widely used in the next generation. (On that problem see www.raipon.info/index.php/component/article/1-novosti/1329-zhil-takoj-narod-kogdato.)
And on the other hand, there is a risk that some efforts to preserve these languages end by reducing them to small isolated niches or turning them into a laughing matter, much as some translations of obscure works by émigrés in Soviet times – one thinks of the Belarusian translation of the complete works of Plato, for example – did then.
But there may be another side to this story: Zakharov is using the most modern forms of communication – the Internet and TV --to promote his translation of a book many young Udmurts may want to read, and there is the precedent that languages and peoples that were a joke for some turned out to have a better future than even those supporting them dared hope.
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