Some Russian Museums Not Changing Exhibits Lest They Be Forced to Carry Propaganda

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 16 – Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine has hit museums in the Russian Federation hard. Long-planned foreign exhibits have been cancelled, and the Kremlin has insisted that Russian museums carry more propaganda about the war. But some curators have come up with a strategy to resist, although it is costing them dearly as well.

            That strategy is to avoid changing existing exhibits because official pressure to introduce propaganda messages is greatest at a time when an exhibit ends and another must replace it. By extending current exhibitions, museums can avoid having propaganda forced upon them – but only at the cost of Soviet-style stagnation when museums seldom changed their exhibits.

            In a new article for The Insider, journalist Irina Kordonskaya surveys how various museums are falling victim to Kremlin pressure while others continue to resist, often using such delaying tactics, and how this combination is changing the face of museum life in the Russian Federation and leading to a new stagnation in the museum life (theins.ru/obshestvo/271312).

            In government museums, censorship is spreading rapidly; but pressure on other museums continues to grow. And it is even possible that the strategy of not changing exhibits in order not to be forced to insert propaganda may prompt the Kremlin to adopt new more invasive ways of forcing the museums to become its propaganda vehicles.

Environmental Issues May Soon Affect Armenian-Azerbaijani Border Dispute

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 16 – Armenian and Azerbaijani officials have been making progress in the delimitation of the state border between them, despite the difficulties left over from Soviet times and the opposition of many in Armenians to any concession of territories Yerevan has controlled to Azerbaijan.

            But even if the two countries do agree on a line, that will not be the end of border questions because the activities of one on its side of the border involving the exploitation of natural resources or the flow of transborder rivers will affect the other and lead to new conflicts if they can’t reach agreement on the handling of such things and compensation for losses.

            The publication in Baku of a new map showing the way in which Yerevan has concentrated extractive industries along the Azerbaijani border and made use of water that would otherwise have flowed into Azerbaijan suggests that disputes about these issues will soon take center stage in talks between Baku and Yerevan.

            Prepared by Azerbaijani cartographer Mugabil Bayramov and released by the Cartographers of Azerbaijan in Azerbaijani, English and Armenian, the map underscores just how explosive these issues are likely to become (vestikavkaza.ru/news/azerbajdzanskie-kartografy-ulicili-armeniu-vo-vredonosnoj-gornoj-dobyce.html).

            According to Vestnik Kavkaza, the map clearly shows that “the authorities of Armenia have intentionally concentrated mining operations along the transborder rivers flowing into Azerbaijani territory and thus damaged the environment of the neighboring country by the contamination of those waters.”

            The internet outlet goes on to say that “this is particularly the case on the border of the Eastern Zengezur economic district of Azerbaijan,” already a sensitive area because of Azerbaijani interest in restoring transportation and communication links to Nakhichevan, the non-contiguous portion of the country separated by Armenia’s Syunik Oblast.

            Although Azerbaijani experts doubt that serious progress can be made regarding both Armenian compensation for environmental damage to Azerbaijan or a change in Armenian policy regarding the border region until after a peace treaty is concluded, their words suggest that this issue could easily delay the signing of any treaty even if the border itself is delimited.

Murder Rate in Russia Highest in Europe and Far Higher than Moscow Admits or Reports, ‘To Be Precise’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 16 – The number of murders per 100,000 population is far higher in Russia than it is elsewhere in Europe, Anastasiya Kokourova and Yegor Shkurko say. That is true if one relies only on official statistics, but these statistics for various reasons seriously understate just how many murders Russians are carrying out.

            The problems begin, the To Be Precise investigators say, with the law defining murder that is used by Moscow to report how many murders have taken place (tochno.st/materials/v-rossii-samyi-vysokii-v-evrope-uroven-ubiistv-kak-v-anglii-v-xvii-veke-no-nazvat-tocnoe-cislo-pogibsix-pocti-nevozmozno-a-statistika-ocen-zaputannaia-issledovanie-esli-byt-tocnym).

            That law defines as murder only deaths that are the result of premeditated actions. When someone dies after being beaten by another either as a result of alcohol or drug consumption or simply rage, those actions will be tried under other articles of the criminal code and not counted as murders.

            Other factors reducing the number of murders include cases when the police can’t establish what happened and coroners are not permitted to say that physical harm they uncover was caused by someone, when the acts occur within the family and the police don’t get involved, and when officials engage in outright falsification of the data to make themselves look good

            As a result. Kokourova and Shkuro say, the number of murders committed in the Russian Federation each year is many times larger than the eight to ten thousand Moscow likes to claim and reports to international bodies like the UN. Still worse, that number is rising, not falling, as officials typically claim.

            In their article, the two journalists report many intriguing statistics; but perhaps the most interesting is this: Murder rates for Russia as a whole are high, but “Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the republics of the North Caucasus are no more dangerous than European countries with the number of murders there not exceeding 2.5 per 100,000” (tochno.st/materials/invalidnost-v-ingusetii-ubiistva-v-cecne-i-neformalnye-doxody-v-dagestane-razbiraem-glavnye-anomalii-v-statistike-severnogo-kavkaza).

By Making Almost Everything a Question of Security, Putin has Opened the Way to Dictatorship and War, Kazantsev-Vaisman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 16 – Since coming to office in 2000, Vladimir Putin has made almost everything a question of national security and used that to destroy all the institutions that had restrained him and opened the way to dictatorship and war, according to Andrey Kazantsev-Waisman.

            The Russian political scientist who lives in Israel draws on the work of British scholar Barry Buzan and his Danish colleague Ole Wæver in the 1990s on what they called “the securitization” of politics (sakharov.world/kazantsev-vaisman-ugrozy-vsyudu-kak-stremlenie-k-bezopasnosti-privelo-rossiyu-k-diktature-i-vojne/).

            Kazantsev-Waisman argues that “securitization is the favorite method of authoritarian regimes” because “with its help, they neutralize the democratic and legal limitations which had existed in societies” justifying such steps because of what they are able to convince many are existential threats to the country.

            Putin has proceeded further in this direction than most, presenting first Chechnya and then all the federal subjects as threatening to disintegrate the country unless Moscow restored control, then presenting the increasing independence of former Soviet states as the same, and finally blaming the West as such.

            Two factors worked in Putin’s favor, the political scientist says: high oil prices which gave him the resources to act without regard to others and a parallel securitization of American policy after September 11, a development that limited Western criticism and in some cases brought him Western understanding and support.

            But this approach can prove self-destructive, Kazantsev-Waisman says. “The more extraordinary measures are taken in its name, the greater the fears in society.” As a result, “the state of total security in a paradoxical way is transformed into a state of total insecurity” with all political action necessarily and in an ever intensifying way becoming “a special operation.”

 

Putin will Never Name a Successor, El Murid Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 16 – Commentators have been examining the recent rash of appointments to the government and the Presidential Administration for an indication as to who is likely to emerge as Putin’s successor. But as long as Putin is alive, Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid says, the Kremlin leader will never name anyone as his successor.

            Putin knows better than anyone else that were he to do so, an alternative power center would emerge and he would be significantly weakened and possibly overthrown, El Murid says. He got burned with Dmitry Medvedev a decade ago and will not risk anything similar again (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/18405 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=66443FD1A87F4).

            Only after Putin’s death will there be any open competition for power, and then, the commentator continues, “everything will happen not as planned but in a form full of content, up to and including full-fledged combat operations.” But until then, the appearance of competition will remain just that, a specter that will dissolve whenever it suits Putin.

            According to El Murid, “the Byzantine model of governance, which has taken shape in Russia as the autocratic despotism of one person, completely excludes the transfer of any real power while the despot is still alive.” That is because if he begins to lose power, “no one will give even a kopeck for his life and position” – and he knows that “better than anyone.”

Moscow-Beijing Alliance Directed Not Only Against the West but Against Russia East of the Urals, ‘Region.Expert’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 16 – Not surprisingly, commentators have focused on the ways in which Moscow’s burgeoning alliance with China is directed against the West; but they should also focus on the fact that this “alliance of dictators” is in fact directed “against the interests of the residents of the Far Eastern regions of the Russian Federation,” the Region.Expert portal says.

            According to the Tallinn-based regionalist site, “the Far East for a long time has been converted by Moscow into a raw material colony for ‘friendly’ China but China not only pays for raw materials from there but helps fill the treasury of the Russian government in Moscow at the region’s expense (region.expert/beijing-moscow/).

            And in order to support China’s goals in Russian areas east of the Urals, Moscow has suppressed the only avenues people there had to oppose them. Thus, in 2021, 90 percent of Khabarovsk voters rejected a Beijing plan to build a chemical plant in their region (dw.com/ru/kak-zhiteli-v-habarovskom-krae-pobedili-kitajskogo-gazovogo-giganta/a-57080437).

            But Moscow to curry favor with China and also to extend its authoritarian control responded by liquidating local self-administration and the right of local communities to hold referenda on plans like the Chinese. As a result, Beijing can build and Moscow can profit from the construction of such plants without local people being able to block such projects.

Moscow Should Draw on History of the Komintern to Overthrow Existing World Order, Naryshkin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 16 – Sergey Naryshkin, head of the SVR, says that Russia should draw on the experience of the Communist International (Komintern), a Soviet-led union of communist parties between 1919 and 1943, to unite and strengthen all those in favor of overthrowing the existing world order that was created and remains dominated by Western countries.

            Speaking to a roundtable devoted to the history of the Komintern, the Russian spy chief says that “today, when Russia stands at the avant-garde of the global change in the world order, extremely useful practical lessons can be derived from the experience of the Communist International” (ehorussia.com/new/node/30938).

            Naryshkin added that memories of the Komintern are “carefully preserved” in the countries of the former Soviet bloc and throughout the world because of that organization’s leadership in the fight against Nazism, against which that organization played an important role in gathering intelligence revealing Hitler’s true aims.

            Created by Lenin as an organization linking together the world’s communist parties, the Komintern was formally abolished in May 1943 at the insistence of Moscow’s Western allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. But in shuttering the group, Moscow did not give up its control over the communist movement around the world.

            How far Moscow could go in this direction or even if it would want to are open questions given that while traditionalists around the world share some values, many of their traditions set them at odds, something very different from the originally monolithic world communist movement of the 1920s and 1930s.

            But the very fact that Naryshkin is raising this possibility shows just how influential those who believe Moscow must recast its current struggle from being a fight between Russia and the West into one between supporters of traditionalism and backers of globalism have become (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/05/moscow-benefits-because-real-division.html).

            And his words also suggest that Moscow at least would likely view its allies in such a cause to be potential espionage assets, something that would make a revived Komintern attractive to a spy chief like Naryshkin but would likely reduce the attractiveness of such an idea both in the Kremlin and among traditionalists elsewhere.