Window on Eurasia -- New Series

NOTE TO VISITORS

2012-01-27T10:27:00.001-08:00

I have been diagnosed with leukemia, and both the diseaseand the treatment have left me too exhausted to prepare my Windows as frequently asI have in the past. I will continue to issue them as possible, but I fear therewill be gaps especially as the treatment proceeds.

Regards, Paul Goble

Window on Eurasia It’s ‘Too Early’ to Celebrate the Return of Elected Governors, URA.ru Says

2012-01-25T11:01:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 25 – “It is too early to celebrate” President Dmitry Medvedev’sproposal, under pressure from Russian society, to restore gubernatorialelections because he will soon be out of office and because the arrangements heand Vladimir Putin have made mean “the first” such votes would take place “onlyin 2016,” according to the URA.ru news agency.

Accordingto the agency, which often breaks stories before Moscow outlets, officials inthe Urals region have received “explanations from the PresidentialAdministration” that suggest no direct gubernatorial votes will begin before2013 and that many may be appointed long after that (www.ura.ru/content/svrd/24-01-2012/articles/1036257519.html).

Lastweek, Medvedev made his much-ballyhooed proposal to restore gubernatorialelections, albeit with a number of qualifications including in most cases consultationswith the president. Then on Monday, Prime Minister and president-presumptiveVladimir Putin said that there should be a “public” discussion about whether tohave such votes.

“But theentire dispute,” URA.ru continues, “is to put it mildly premature,” given thatthe staff of several regional heads in the Urals have told the agency that “theirleaders are calm and not even preparing for direct elections,” given the focuson the presidential campaign and on Putin’s earlier elimination of votes onthese positions.

AleksandrBurkov, first deputy chairman of the Duma’s federal affairs and localadministration, confirmed the news agency’s conclusions, pointing out that anynew electoral law would certainly be reviewed by the incoming president andincoming government before going into force.

Thatwill be made all the easier by the public discussion Putin has proposed and bythe plans of many governors to ask for a new expression of trust after theMarch 4 elections, as “Kommersant” reported, requests that would likely keepthem in office until 2016, when the current term of the Duma expires.

Moreover,Burkov told URA.ru, “in key regions, governors will be appointed.” Among thosewould be the heads of “all the subjects of the Russian Federation included in theUrals Federal District, except for that of Kurgan oblast” as well as likely inmany other parts of the country.

The JustRussia deputy added that Medvedev’s draft in any case will have to be modified.And the news agency stressed that those who think the election of governors isa done deal may be disappointed, thereby suggesting that this concession topublic opinion may be little more than an electoral ploy rather than a move toreturn to genuine federalism.

Window on Eurasia: Muscovites, Petersburgers Like Slavs, Dislike Central Asians and People from the Caucasus, Poll Finds

2012-01-25T10:24:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 25 – Residents of Russia’s two capitals like ethnic Russians,Belarusians, and Ukrainians but do not care for people from Central Asia andthe Caucasus, according to a new poll, findings that help explain why some ofthe latter appear to have declared themselves to be Russians in the 2010census.

TheAll-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) queries 1200Muscovites and Petersburgers about their attitudes toward variousethno-national groups. Both liked ethnic Russians most, 44 and 52 percentrespectively, then Belarusians, 17 and 14 percent, and then Ukrainians, 15 and11 (www.neva24.ru/a/2012/01/24/zhiteli_stolic_nenavidjat_k/).

Theresidents of the capitals disliked people from the Caucasus most of all, 31percent in Moscow and 28 percent in St. Petersburg, and Tajiks, 23 and 24percent. Muscovites disliked Azerbaijanis next (17 percent) andthen Uzbeks (13 percent); Petersburgers in contrast said they disliked Uzbeks(18 percent) and then Azerbaijanis (11 percent).

Chechens were the fifth most disliked group in bothcapitals, 12 percent in Moscow and 8 percent in St. Petersburg. Muscovites thennamed Georgians (9 percent), Armenians (6 percent), Daghestanis (5 percent),and “Asians in general” and Kyrgyz (4 percent each). Petersburgers said theydidn’t like Asians, Georgians and Daghestanis, 7 percent, 6 percent and 5percent.

Sergey Markov, director of the Moscow Institute ofPolitical Research, said that residents of the capitals had a positive attitudetoward Belarusians and Ukrainians “because they in practice are notdistinguished from other Russians. Caucasians and Central Asians, on the other hand, stand out by behaviormany Russians see as alien.

As a result, parts of these communities, he continued,are organized “into criminal groups and often it is difficult to distinguishbetween criminal communities and diasporas.” That is especially true in thecase of the North Caucasians because they have “the rights of Russiancitizens.” Central Asians are disliked because of their numbers and the viewthat they take jobs away from Russians.

Given these attitudes and given the current politicalseason, it is no surprise that the Russian State Statistics Committee (Rosstat)says that the 2010 census shows that 91.6 percent of the residents of Moscoware in fact ethnic Russians, a claim that has led some to ask “whom are yougoing to believe – statistics or your own eyes?” (www.aif.ru/society/article/48961).

In thecurrent issue of “Argumenty i fakty,” journalist Galina Sheykina explores thereasons that may be behind official claims. First, she provides what the 2002and 2010 censuses show. In 2010, thecensus found 11.5 million residents in Moscow. Some 668,000 did not give theirnationality, many more than the 417,000 who had done so in 2002.

“On theother hand,” Sheikhina continues, “the overwhelmingly number of the restsurveyed, namely 9.9 million, confidently declared that they are [ethnic]Russians,” a figure 1.2 million more than the 2002 census enumerated there.Moreover, the 2010 census found that the numbers of “practically all”nationalities, including Ukrainians, Jews, Tajiks and Azerbaijanis haddeclined.”

NatalyaZubarevich, the director of the regional program of the Independent Instituteof Social Policy, said that there are great doubts about these officialstatistics. First of all, she noted, “it was difficult for census takers towork” because of “the high level of distrust of Muscovites to any surveys andvisits by those they don’t know.”

Second,the social scientist continued, “a definite share” of citizens were “countedtwice” because “hundreds of thousands of people live at a different place thanwhere they are registered. And third,the actual share of the total population surveyed was closer to 70 percent thanto the 90 percent officials claimed, with the percentage lower for non-Russiangroups.

But thereis another factor at work, she suggested, one which may help to boost theclaimed share of ethnic Russians in the population relative to othergroups. “Part of the population callsitself [ethnic] Russians ‘in any case,’ fearing xenophobia in one or another ofits manifestations.”

OlgaAntonova, head of Rosstat’s administration for statistics on population andhealth, provided yet another reason why claims about the ethnic Russian populationin Moscow are highly exaggerated. She told “Argumenty i fakty” that censustakers did not even ask the nationality of those who were “temporarily” in the city.

Gavkhar Dzhurayaev,the head of the Migration and Law Information-Legal Center in Moscow, offeredanother perspective: “Even if censustakers had queried all migrants,” they wouldn’t have gotten much informationbecause the gastarbeiters are generally afraid to tell anyone anything. Thusmost are quite prepared to say “I am a Russian” to end the conversation.

Thereare “a few more than 200,000 legal migrants” in the Russian capital and manymore “illegal” ones. Thus, talk about a reduction in their numbers “does notcorrespond to reality.” Officials and society need real numbers if they are toaddress real problems as opposed to living in a situation where “no statisticsare equal to no problem.”

Window on Eurasia: 750 Republic and Local Governments in Russia Issued Their Own Currencies in the 1990s,

2012-01-24T14:19:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 24 – A major problem in both the USSR and the Russian Federation hasbeen the shortage of cash, the result of government policies which keep themonetarization of the economy “five to ten times less than in developedeconomies,” a situation that reached its apogee in the years immediately afterthe collapse of the Soviet Union.

Oneconsequence of that decline in the 1990s when the rate of monetarization of theeconomy fell to 15 percent, the Tolkovatel blog points out today was theappearance of self-minted currency in 750 republics and cities of the RussianFederation as well as at about 25,000 enterprises (ttolk.ru/?p=9273).

In adetailed post richly illustrated with pictures of some of these notes and coins, the blogexplains that the appearance of such currencies, which took the place of thelack of state-sanctioned cash, had its roots in Soviet times and wasexacerbated by the specific conditions of Boris Yeltsin’s rule.

Afterthe 1917 revolution, many regions and enterprises issued “surrogate banknotes”until these were forbidden by 1935 in the RSFSR and in some Central Asianrepublics in 1941, the blog portal reports. But after that time, Soviet leaderswanted to keep the monetarization of the economy low “because there was not asufficient level of consumer goods and services.”

Indeed,Tolkovatel points out, “whenever the quantity of money in the economy exceededa certain level, it was necessary to extract it from the population” by meansof “monetary reforms” like those which took place in 1947 and 1991,confiscations which made Soviet citizens suspicious of their own statecurrency.

But evenin Soviet times, “this rule had an exception: special currencies were printedfor special people,” prisoners at the bottom and the party-economic elite atthe other. Except for Weimar Germany inthe 1920s, there are virtually no examples of a developed country “which hadthe parallel circulation at one and the same time of several types of legalmoney.”

During perestroika,“the highest monetarization of the economy” in the history of the country occurred,the blog says. By 1991, monetarizationhad reached “73 percent of GDP, one of the highest measures in the world forthat time and even greater than was the case then in the United States.”

This Gorbachev experiment was a failure, the blogsuggests, because of the absence of consumer goods and stock markets meant thatpopulation had nowhere to spend its cash, and as a result, “the economy andafter it the USSR were destroyed.” Consequently, the Russian government carriedout the older policy of keeping the population poor “for the sake of security.”

While the system was in crisis, at the time of “the peakof monetarization,” the first special currencies appeared But in this case, the primary cause was noteconomics but “the separatism of the regions and also the attemps ofenterprises in the general deficit to create their own small internal market ‘fortheir own.’”

But the number of such currencies rose dramatically afterPrime Minister Yegor Gaydar in early 1992 signed a special circular officiallyauthorizing such currencies. Immediately, there appeared the currencies of Tatarstan, Nizhny Novgorodoblast, Khakasia, the Urals Republic and “hundreds of cities and districts,”ultimately involving 750 territories and 25,000 firms.

And that trend was exacerbated by the precipitous declineof the monetarization of the Russian economy from 70 percent in 1990 to between9.8 and 17 percent of GDP between 1992 and 1997. Barter filled some of thisgap, but surrogate currencies played an important role as well, especially topay workers or to make political points, to avoid paying taxes, and to serve,along with foreign currency holdings, as a hedge against rumored monetaryreforms.

Tatarstan’s currency which first appeared in 1990 isperhaps the best known, Tolkovatel suggests, but there were some equallyintriguing efforts. Kaliningrad Governor Leonid Gorbenko launched the “Kaliningradmark,” and Volgograd, which had ordered its currency printed in Italy,circulated what became known as “liras” because the firm had printed the billsin Italian.

There were also special currencies for refugees fromChechnya, the blog continues They were printed by the Committee to Assist ThoseSuffering from Armed Conflicts in the North Caucasus and were supposed tocirculate “’only on the territory of resettlement points and temporary camps.’”

Such currencies began to disappear under Yevgeny Primakov’spremiership, but some, including that of Tatarstan, lasted until 2008. UnderVladimir Putin, the monetarization of the country rose to 40 percent before theeconomic crisis, a figure comparable with many African countries, Tolkovatelsays, but far less than during perestroika.

The blog concludes that no one should think that the eraof such currencies in the Russian Federation is now over forever. If the price of oil should fall to 50-60 USdollars a barrel, such “surrogate” currencies would likely reappear, Tolkovatelsays, providing employment for “several thousand designers and contemporaryartists of the so-called ‘creative class.’”

Window on Eurasia: Daghestan Should Not Remain Part of North Caucasus Federal District, Makhachkala Scholar Says

2012-01-24T12:15:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 24 – Daghestan should not be part of the North Caucasus FederalDistrict, a structure which “by its nature has not and cannot resolve theproblems of the regions” but rather become part of a new federal district whichwould also include adjoining Russian regions on the northern shores of theCaspian, according to a Makhachkala scholar.

Abdul-NasirDibirov, the rector of the Daghestan Institute of Economics and Politics, toldthe Regnum news agency that the North Caucasus Federal District “was creatednot so much as an organic part of the power vertical but as a kind of buffer inadvance of in advance of the 2014 Olympic Games” (www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1491219.html).

Specifically, Dibirov added, that district representedan attempt “to isolate the problematic North Caucasus republics from Krasnodarkray. But Moscow made a mistake by including Daghestan within the districtsborders because that republic “is not only a North Caucasus region but aboveall a Caspian littoral one.”

Indeed,“Daghestan’s future to an ever greater degree was connected not with the NorthCaucasus but with the Caspian,” all the more so, Dibirov said, because “withthe conversion of the Caspian into an international sea,” the republic’s “geopoliticalsituation” and “economic possibilities” will be fundamentally changed.

Accordingto the Makhachkala analyst, “it would be more organic to establish not a NorthCaucasus Federal District but a Caspian Federal District which would includeDaghestan, Kalmykia, Astrakhan oblast and Volgograd oblast,” an arrangement inwhich “the industrial potential of the northern regions would be combined withthe agricultural potential of the south.”

In anycase, Daghestan must “break away” from the problems of the North Caucasus,Dibirov insisted.

Asked byRegnum whether Moscow’s ideas of creating a resort cluster in the NorthCaucasus will “solve the systemic problems” of that reason, the Makhachkalascholar said that “such a project “hardly will be realized in the conditions ofan undeclared civil war,” a place where counter-terrorist operations arefrequently declared.

Instead, Dibirov continued, “one must beginwith the development of what already exists.” Roads need to be constructed sothat private enterprise will develop rural areas and so that rural people willbe able to remain in their villages among people of their own ethnicity andculture but travel to urban regions for employment.

Dibirovsaid that in his opinion, “the elimination of federal districts is hardlylikely to occur.” Gubernatorial elections “will return,” he continued, “but notbecause the powers have any particular love for democracy but rather as theresult of pressure from society.” Indeed, these elections will make Moscow evenmore interested in preserving the federal districts.

Whateveryone needs to understand about the North Caucasus, the Makhachkala scholarargued, is that “in essence” it “has departed from the legal field of Russia.Here laws operate only selectively and are viewed” by the population as simplycovers “for the corrupted powers that be” who are “closely connected with thecriminal world.”

The Russian state does not yet have a well-developed policyfor the North Caucasus, Dibirov said, adding that “the impression has beencreated” that Moscow wants to use threats from there to justify its approach torule, all the more so if Russian leaders want to use nationalism as a source oflegitimacy.

“Today,” Dibirov argued, “we see a power which at onestage attempted to eploid liberalism, at a second stage conservatism, and nowever more is shifting to nationalism, attempting to ride Russian ethnic nationalism.This is a very dangerous policy,” the Makhachkala scholar said, but that is howthings look from Daghestan.

He rejected the suggestion that Moscow had created theNorth Caucasus Federal District not because of the Olympics but on the basis of“historical experience,” Debirov says that the Soviet-era North Caucasus kraywith a capital in Pyatigorsk is generally considered a failure, a view he saidhe shares.

Indeed, even in Soviet times, “the leadership ofDaghestan at all times struggled in order to excape from this kray and tosubordinate itself directly to Moscow.” Once again, that is taking placebecause “the future of Daghestan is tied to the Caspian” more than to thetroubled republics of the North Caucasus.

While Dibirov is only one voice, his remarks areimportant for at least three reasons: First, as he suggested, Moscow is morelikely to retain the federal districts if it gives way on the election ofgovernors. Second, his remarks are a reminder that the borders of these districtsare likely to be the subject of disputes between Moscow and individual federalsubjects.

And third, Dibirov’s comments underscore that thepolicies of Vladimir Putin in the North Caucasus have succeeded only increating the simulacrum of control, one that may make for good propaganda butdoes not solve the problems the region faces or makes it the stable backdropfor the Sochi Olympics that Putin and his supporters argue will be the case.

Window on Eurasia: To Win Votes, Putin Plays the Always Risky Nationality Card

2012-01-23T13:34:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 23 – In a transparent attempt to win votes but one that may backfirenot only among non-Russians but also among many Russians opposed to his authoritarianapproach, Vladimir Putin has published the nationality plank of hispresidential campaign, one that restates and extends ideas he has presented inthe past.

Putin’s 3700-wordessay, which appears today both on his presidential campaign website (http://putin2012.ru/events/95) and asa major article in Moscow’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta” (www.ng.ru/politics/2012-01-23/1_national.html),adopts a stateman-like pose, saying how dangerous it is for politicians to playthe ethnic card and then proceeding to do just htat.

As hehas often done, the Russian prime minister stresses that the ethnic situationin his country is “in principle different” than it is in other countries, withits “nationality and migration problems “directly connected with the destructionof the USSR and in esstence historically greater Russia which was established inits essentials already in the 18^th century.”

“Havingdeclared sovereignty 20 years ago,” Putin continues, “the then-deputies of theRSFSR” in their struggle with “the ‘union center’” put in motion “the processof the construction of ‘national states,’ including even within the RussianFederation itself,” a process that could lead to “collapse and separatism.”

“Withthe disintegration of the country,” he says, “we turned out to be at the edgeand in certain well-know regions even beyond the edge of civil war.” Butfortunately, just as in the case of “the first Russian time of troubles” in theseventeenth century, while the state was “critically weakened, Russia did notdisappear.”

Theethnic Russian people and ethnic Russian culture which defines and maintains “thefabric of this unique civilization,” Putin argues, held things together andeven now are preventing those who would “with their own hands destroy their ownmotherland” by calling for “a mono-ethnic state,” “the shortest path … thedestruction of the Russian people and Russian statehood.”

Moreover,those who today say that it is time to “stop feeding the Caucasus” willeventually say that it is time to “stop feeding Siberia, the Far East, theUrals, and the Moscow region,” Putin adds, repeating the kind of domino effectthat led to the destruction of the Soviet Union.

The[ethnic] Russian people, Putin continues, “is a polyethnic civilization heldtogether by a Russian cultural nucleus.” As such, “the [non-ethnic] Russian experienceof state development is unique. We are amulti-national society,” he says, “but we are a single people,” something thatmust oppose any “germ” of narrow nationalism.

Again ashe has done in the past, Putin notes that “many citizens of the USSR when theywere abroad called themselves [ethnic] Russians” because “in our identity is adifferent cultural code” than others have. “the [ethnic] Russian people is thestate-forming people as is shown by the fact of the existence of Russia. Thegreat mission of the [ethnic] Russians is to unify and support [this]civilization.”

“Such acivilizaitonal identity is based on the preservation of [ethnic] Russian culturaldominants, the bears of which are not only ethnic Russians but all the bears ofthis identity independently of nationality. This cultural code which ahs been subjected in recent times to serioustests” has been preserved.

Fromthis perspective, Putin argues that the Russian Federation needs “a strategy ofnationality policy based on civic patriotism,” one in which “every individualliving in our country must not forget about his faith and ethnicity. But hemust above all be a citizen of Russia and proud of that.”

“No onehas the right to put national and religious differences higher than the laws ofthe state,” Putin says, although he does allow that “the laws of the state mustconsider national and religious differences.” To that end, he calls for a newnationalities agency, even though he was the one who disbanded as unnecessarythe Russian ministry for nationality affairs.

Thepresidential candidate adds that the rights of ethnic Russians must be constantlyprotected from abuse lest some begin to talk about “the national oppression of [ethnic]sRussian” and use that to promote disorder or even to allow some to talk aboutthe rise of “’[ethnic] Russian fascism.’”

Forcemust be used to suppress violence but otherwise dialogue should be maintained,Putin suggests. Only “one thing” is not permissible: There must be no chance “forthe creation of regional parties, including in the national republics” because thatstep “is a direct path to separatism.”

In somedetail, he calls for a toughening of immigration policy and expanded efforts toensure that legal migrants “adapt” to the Russian cultural code, all popularpositions given the number of gastarbeiters in Russian cities. But he uses this proposal to talk aboutsomething else, which potentially has far reaching consequences.

Putinsuggests that to address the migration issue there needs to be “Eurasianintegration” across the former Soviet space, a process that will “strengthenour ‘historic state,’ left to us from our ancestors. A state-civilization whichis capable of organically resolving the task of the integration of variousethnoses and confessions.”

“Forcenturies,” Putin concludes, “we have lived together. Together we won in themost terrible war. And we will lvie together in the future. To those wo want or try to divide us, I willsay only one thing – don’t expect to succeed,” language that probably willgenerate a different reaction in the other post-Soviet states than among hissupporters.

Givenhis place in the Russian political system, Putin’s essay even today hasattracted enormous comment, generally positive but not universally so evenamong ethnic Russians and those who describe themselves as Russiannationalists. Among the most interesting of these comments are www.russ.ru/Mirovaya-povestka/Putinskij-imperskij-nacionalizm-i-regional-nye-partii,actualcomment.ru/theme/2178/, www.polit.ru/article/2012/01/23/putinnat/,

www.specletter.com/obcshestvo/2012-01-23/natsionalnyi-lider-zagovoril-o-natsionalnom.html,echo.msk.ru/blog/oreh/851592-echo/, http://www.rus-obr.ru/lj/16444,and

www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=43878).

But onecomment today from a Kazan Tatar suggests how many of the Russian Federation’sincreasingly numerous non-ethnic Russians are likely to react to Putin’sapproach. In a commentary on ETatar,Robert Bolgarsky politely but firmly disagrees with the Russian politician’sapproach (etatar.ru/top/42022).

Bolgarskybegins by observing that Putin’s “long-awaited article” failed to provideanswers which “it would have been interesting” to find the answers to, amongwhich are Putin’s attitudes toward instruction in non-Russian languages in therepublics of the Russian Federation and to the state of native languages ingeneral.

Instead,the Tatar commentator said, Putin used terms that raise more questions and willlead almost any non-Russian to draw some very negative conclusions about whatthe Russian prime minister and president presumptive believes and where hewants to take the country in the future.

AsBolgarsky notes, Putin talks about “[ethnic] Russian Armenians, [ethnic]Russian Azerbaijanis, [ethnic] Russian Germans, [and ethnic] Russian Tatars.” Just who are “[ethnic] Russian] Tatars,” thecommentator asks, suggesting that Putin for some reason or other has confusedthe terms “Rossiyanin” or non-ethnic Russian with “Russkiye” or ethnic Russian.

“Ask anyTatar who speaks even the slightest amoung of his native language,” Bolgarskycontinues, Having heard the term ‘[ethnic]Russian Tatar,’ he as a minimum will begin to think about what that means becausefrom birth he has not heard such a definition of his nationality.”

“Is thisa Tatar who has converted to Orthodoxy? Or is it a Tatar who has forgotten hisnative language? Or is it a Russified Tatar? There are perhaps a great manypossibilities, but they all mean the loss of national identity, of the Tatarcultural code, if you like, and thus the term ‘[ethnic] Russian Tatar’ isviewed by Tatars themselves in an extremely negative way.”

Putinshould know, the Tatar commentator says, that there are more than 100 languageand ethnic groups who are “indigenous peoples of the federation. These are notjust Russian lands, they are Tatar, Bashkir, Koryak, Yakut and other lands. Butfor some reason, Putin gives to the Russians ‘the great mission to unite.’”

Bolgarskythen says “Permit me not to agree with you, Vladimir Vladimirovich! I am firstof all a Tatar and Muslim who considers Russia as his motherland. I am in noway an ‘[ethnic] Russian Tatar’! I am a [non-ethnic] Russian Tatar,” despitethe fact that the laws of the Russian state don’t allow him or others to learntheir native languages to perfection.

ButBolgarsky concludes that there is one point with which he has to agree withPutin and that is when the prime minister says that anyone “who comes intoregions with other cultures and historical traditions must relate to localcustoms with respect. To the customs of [ethnic] Russians and all other peoplesof Russia.”

Soanyone, including Russian presidential candidates who come to Tatarstan and theMiddle Volga should be good enough to “learn at least 100 words of Tatar” inorder to behave respectfully to the Tatar population. Vladimir Putin, Bolgarsky concludes, has beengood enough to do at least that.

Window on Eurasia: Komi-Permyaks, Victims of Putin’s Regional Amalgamation Plan, Want Autonomy Back

2012-01-23T11:29:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 23 – Komi-Permyak activists are using the Internet to highlight theworsening situation in their region since it became the first small non-Russianfederation subject to be combined with a larger and predominantly ethnicRussian one and to demand that Moscow restore their former status or allow themto become part of the ethnically-related Komi Republic.

A groupof Komi-Permyaks, who feel that they were mistled or even betrayed whenVladimir Putin orchestrated a referendum approving the elimination of theirautonomy and status as a federal subject and inclusion in Perm kray in 2005, havelaunched a “Return Our Autonomy” page on Russia’s V kontakte” network (vkontakte.ru/topic-33845494_25626832)

Thoseposting on this page say that their people have experienced a significant “deteriorationin the standard of living” since they were “swallowed by Perm kray and arguethat the only way forward for their Finno-Ugric nation is to leave thatformation and either be restored as a separate federal subject of become partof the Komi Republic.

TheSoviet government formed the Komi-Permyak autonomous district in 1925, andafter the USSR disintegrated, it became one of the federation subjectsenumerated in the Russian Constitution. But in the name of administrative simplification,then President Vladimir Putin pushed through its amalgamation with Perm onDecember 1, 2005.

TheKomi-Permyaks and activists in several other Finno-Ugric nations in the MiddleVolga have complained since that time that the assistance they were promisedand the benefits they were told would flow from amalgamation have not happenedand that the Komi-Permyaks are worse off than before.

But thisis the first time that local activists have formed what could be described as anascent movement to reverse the amalgamation, and it comes as things appear tobe heating up among the population of the Finno-Ugric and ethnic Russiansubjects in this part of the Russian Federation.

Lastweek, Aleksandr Kalashniko, the head of the FSB administration in the KomiRepublic, told the local paper, “Krasnoye znamya” that the most important taskhis officers now have is “blocking extremism and its most serious form,terrorism” among both Finno-Ugric and Russian populations (www.gumilev-center.ru/?p=9058).

Inaddition to nationalists groups, Kalashnikov complained about the work of Golosand Memorial, two human rights groups that he said were “directed from abroad,often financed by foreign non-governmental foundations, and directed at thetransformation of the political system in Russia,” including by the disruptionof the upcoming presidential elections.

Onegroup the FSB officer did not mention but that seems likely to prove a greaterthreat to public order than these human rights organizations is the newlyorganized Russian nationalist “Ethnopolitical Union -- ‘Russians’” in Syktyvkarwhich promises to protect ethnic Russians from non-Russian oppression (rubsev.ru/2012/01/v-syktyvkare-proshlo-uchreditelnoe-sobranie-etnopoliticheskogo-obedineniya-russkie/).

Window on Eurasia: Economic Crisis behind ‘Winds of Change’ in Post-Soviet States, Analyst Says

2012-01-23T10:59:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 24 – The leaders of the post-Soviet state and in particular those whohave successfully constructed “administered democracies” no longer fear “orange”revolutions, but they are being pushed toward “reforms” of one kind or anotherby the economic crisis and the demonstrations that have already taken place acrossthe Russian Federation.

In today’s“Novyye izvestiya,” Konstantin Nikolayev, Olga Gorbacheva and Elena Antonovaargue that recent weeks, “the former USSR has become an arena of unexpected politicaldevelopments … [as] one after another leader … begins to talk about reforms”that would change “the entire political landscape in these states.”

And whatis especially striking, these three journalists suggest, is that this trend is clearlyin evidence “even there were practically nothing has changed from the moment ofthe disintegration of the USSR” – specifically, Belarus, Kazakhstan, andTurkmenistan (www.newizv.ru/politics/2012-01-23/157889-veter-neizvestnyh-peremen.html).

Moreover,the “Novyye izvestiya” writers continue, this outbreak of “reformistinitiatives in the near abroad looks particularly surprising if one takes intoconsideration that it is occurring at the time of the real triumph of ‘administereddemocracies’ over ‘the orange threat’” that earlier brought change to Georgia,Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

MikhailKhazin,the president of the Neokon Consulting Company, provides an explanation,the journalists say. He suggests that the economic crisis presents “a far morethreatening challenge” to such leaders than any “hypothetical ‘orange’ threat’”to existing arrangements.

“If anindividual lives in a situation in which his material well-being constantlygrows, he will not particularly reflect about who is leading the country. Butwhen incomes fall and the question arises as to whose incomes must be reduced,then people immediately become interested in just how legitimate the authoritiesare.”

TheDecember protests in Moscow and other Russian cities sent a message not onlybecause of what participants in them were saying but even more because thosetaking part were very different than “the ‘orange’ meetings of the times of therevolutions of 2003-2005” and because they came together spontaneously.

Belarusianleader Alyaksandr Lukashenka in a recentspeech drew a specific link between these protests and his suggestion – “forthe first time during his administration,” the journalists point out – of theneed for “political modernization,” whose nature perhaps not surprisingly, hehas not yet been willing to specify.

Lukashenka’sopponents including Anatoly Lebedko of the United Civic Party and AleksandrMilinkevich of the For Freedom Movement thus remain skeptical, with the formersaying that Lukashenka is taking his cue from Moscow but perhaps and the lattersuggesting this may all be nothing more than “a playing at democratization.”

However that may be, the three journalistswrite, the upcoming elections in Belarus may provide an opening: Lukashenkamight permit representation from the opposition to make himself and his regimeappear more legitimate not only among his own hard-pressed population but alsoamong European governments.

Kazakhstanprovides another example, the “Novyye izvestiya” writers say. Indeed, it wasthe leader in this regard with President Nursultan Nazarbayev calling ofchanges at least in part because of the protests in Zhanaozen, demosntratorswhich resembled those in Moscow in one key particular: in both, the protesterswere largely drawn from the angry middle class.

But the most intriguing examples of these “windsof change” may be in Turkmenistan and Moldova. In the former, for the firsttime, several candidates will take part in the presidential election. And in thelatter, precisely because the economic crisis calls for unpopular measures, politiciansare talking about direct election of the country’s president.

How things may develop remains uncertain, thejournalists suggest, and they offer as a concluding remark the observation ofMensk political scientist Vsevolod Shimov that any serious reforms will requirepublic consultations. If that doesn’t happen, than “the probability is great”that things will go wrong, with negative consequences for all.

Window on Eurasia: Local Elections across Russia Give Opposition Chance for Gains, Moscow Paper Suggests

2012-01-19T10:48:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 19 – In addition to the presidential election, Russians in numerouscities including six regional capitals on March 4 will select mayors and citycouncil members, a process that has attracted much less attention but one thatrepresents both “yet another difficult test” for Vladimir Putin’s United Russiaand an opportunity for the political opposition.

In“Novyye izvestiya” yesterday, Yuiya Savina argues that United Russia may do sopoorly in such elections that its officials in Moscow have decided not toadvertise the membership of candidates to municipal assemblies” so as not tocall attention to its decline (www.newizv.ru/politics/2012-01-18/157670-boi-ne-tolko-mestnogo-znachenija.html).

Thejournalist makes her point by surveying some of the key votes. In Omsk, for example, deputies of the citycouncil decided to hold elections to that body simultaneously with those forthe Russian presidency, something the acting mayor, Tatyana Vizhevitova hasstrongly objected to, apparently because it gives other parties “a chance totake power” locally.

At leastsix other cities who have kept the direct election of mayors are likely to havenew chiefs, Savina says. “No surprises”are expected in Astrakhan where United Russia has done well, but in Yaroslavl,there may be a turnover given recent shifts. Moreover, it is clear that UnitedRussia mayors who do poorly “simply cannot continue to work.”

Indeed,Rostislav Turovsky, head of the regional research department of the MoscowCenter of Political Technologies, told the “Novyye izvestiya” writer that thiswasn’t something that the individuals directly involved in were going to get todecide but rather was the result of “a directive from the center.”

Onecommunist deputy in the Yaroslav oblast duma said that combining the electionsmeant that participation would be higher – voters often don’t turn out forlocal races iin Russia as is true elsewhere – and “the situation will thereforebe more objective than if the voting was carried out separately,” as at leastsome in United Russia had wanted.

In someplaces, Savina writes, there won’t be much of a struggle, but in others,including Pskov, Kirov, Nalchik, Ufa, and Gorno-Altaysk, the competition amongcandidates may be intense. Some United Russia candidates in these places willbenefit from stressing their attachment to Vladimir Putin rather than UnitedRussia, but others will suffer from either link.

Ifcandidates do try to distance themselves from United Russia, such a tactic “willnot convince everyone.” As several experts say, many voters who know is linkedwith what party however much and perhaps even especially if candidates try tohide their affiliation or conduct “an underground” campaign.

ValeryKhomyakov, a political scientist, told “Novyye izvestiya” that the efforts of some United Russia candidatesto hide their membership “yet again confirms that the December voting in Moscowwere falsified and that the rating of United Russia’ in [Moscow] was hardly the46 percent that was announced.” Instead, it is “significantly lower.”

Savinaconcludes her article with the observation that “now, the opposition has thechance to get involved in lower-level politics,” now that a link “with UnitedRussia or with the powers that be as such, especially in Moscow,” is no longersomething that will help them. Rather the reverse.

And she quotes Khomyakov assaying that “if the opposition tries to take power at the municipal level …this could be a very good base for the further development of pressure,including on the federal authorities.”

Window on Eurasia: Russian Army Must Block Muftis from Promoting Islam among Soldiers, Military Academy Professor Says

2012-01-19T09:03:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 19 – In the face of a rising percentage of Muslims in the Russian armedforces and of calls for a special handbook for them to be prepared by Muslimleaders, a professor at the Russian military academy must ensure that thetraining of soldiers will “be based only on a scientific worldview,” ratherthan a religiously-inspired one.

Given “growinginter-ethnic tensions” connected with the recent demonstrators, SergeyIvaneyev, who teaches at the All-Forces Academy of the Russian armed services,says in “Voenno-Promyslenny kuriyer,”, “the link between religious and ethnicself-identification” is intensifying throughout Russian society (vpk-news.ru/articles/8548).

Whilemuch of this and especially the opposition between “the Slavic Russianpopulation and Muslims” is both “artificial and provocative,” he continues, noone should ignore this problem or fail to work to prevent its growth,especially in key institutions like the Russian armed forces.

“All ofus must recognize, Ivaneyev writes, “that in Russia, mass religiosity ofcitizens is a potential source of conflict since each religious system as aresult of antagonist social conditions has by its nature a negative and attimes openly hostile attitude toward other religions.”

Suchrelations, he continues, can take on “hypertrophic forms” and affect entirecommunities, something that is “especially evident when leaders of a negativedirection” use the presence of their co-religionists or co-ethnics in militaryunits of various sizes to promote their own interests or to defend their groupsagainst commanders and others

Indeed, such“inter-ethnic conflicts can acquire particularly sharp and fanatic forms” andlead to calls for “a religious war” and for “the complete destruction of itsopponent and of members of all other faiths.” And that danger, Ivaneyevcontinues, is visible in calls for the production of “a special handbook forMuslim draftees” that some muftis want to prepare.

Seven years ago, the Russianmilitary, working with Sheikh Ravil Gaynutdin, prepared a 102-page bookletentitled “Methodological Recommendations to Infantry Officers on Work withMuslim Soldiers.” But despite theshortcomings of that pamphlet, Ivaneyev says, allowing Russian muftis toprepare and disseminate a larger one could exacerbate the situation.

Even the 2005 publication suffered becauseit was written “not on the basis of scientific religious studies but from theposition of a contemporary ‘ideological’ theology and objectively was directedat the strengthening of the position of Islam in society and in the ArmedForces of the Russian Federation and also at the defense of this religion” fromanalysis and criticism.

Any new work, prepared not byscholars but by Muslim religious leaders, he says, would be even moreprovocative, for as the Carnegie Moscow Center scholar A.V. Malashenko has putit, “we observe a lack of correspondence between the Islamic and Russian civilvectors of identity.”

Russia’s force structures, themilitary scholar says, “have dealt well with the tasks of destroying andneutralizing the expansion of Islamism.” But there is a shortcoming in theirwork more generally: “we do not always know about those social-worldviewsources which feed contemporary forms of Islamic extremism, fundamentalism andterrorism.”

And that means there is a real riskthat the spread of the Islamic faith, especially if it takes place on its ownterms, could lead to “anti-social activity” and forms of “Muslim extremism,”which starts with efforts to hold Islam “as the highest model of spiritualculture which [supposedly] corresponds to the interests of the individual andworld society as a whole.”

A directive of the ProcuratorGeneral, Interior Ministry and FSB on December 16, 2008, Ivaneyev says,specified that “extremism under the cover of Islam has spread into a number ofphenomena which are essentially influencing the criminogenic situation inRussia” and that “90 percent” of those involved in terrorism “have direct tiesto Islamist organizations.”

Today, given “the clericalization ofthe army and fleet,” he continues, “the underlying principles of the veryconception of the training of soldiers of the Armed Forces of the RussianFederation are being violated,” and consequently, commanders must work topromote “a scientific world view” and its related “moral norms.”

In this situation, “the importanceof the problem of forming the moral-legal consciousness of Russia’s Muslimsoldiers is growing in particular.”

Those who are to be “convinceddefenders” of Russia, he argues, “must be trained only from the position of asecular worldview” and be ready to act “not according to religious motivations”before God and eternity “but from the conviction of the need to fulfill hiscivic obligations regardless of his personal religious convictions.”

Such an approach, Ivaneyev says, isnecessary “because Russian society is multi-national and poly-confessional.”Allowing Muslim religious leaders to instruct Muslim soldiers on their own couldundermine these various goals, and consequently, the military must insist thatMuslim troops learn not from them but from “the study of the foundations ofscientific Islamic studies.”

Window on Eurasia: Putin Urged to Create Ministry for Demographic Development

2012-01-19T06:40:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 19 – The leader of the Russians Foundation has written to PrimeMinister Vladimir Putin urging him to establish a special ministry fordemographic development to deal with the country’s demographic decline,migration, and support for compatriots living outside of the Russian Federation.

TheMarker.ru news agency reported yesterday that Leonid Shershenev, in a lettersigned by other ethnic Russian leaders, told the premier that “only theestablishment of a new state organ will be able to solve the problems ofemigration and the continuing reduction in the size of the Russian population”(marker.ru/news/512239).

In theletter, Shershenev also said that in his opinion, there was no need to restorethe ministry for nationality affairs which simply “lobbied for the interests of the leaderships ofnational minorities to the harm of the broad strata of the population” and“never even once” discussed the demographic problems of the Russian nation.”

A Ministry forDemographic Development, the foundation head continued, would be different. Itsdepartments would oversee the government’s “demographic policy” and woulddevelop a state “concept” to ensure not only a common approach of all agenciesbut also progress in turning Russia’s demographic situation around

Shershenev is not the first to make thisargument, the news agency reported. Seven years ago, it said, “IgorBeloborodov, the director of the Moscow Institute of Demographic Research, madethe same proposal, and recently, he even posted this idea on the primeminister’s website And deputies fromJust Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party have advanced similar ideas

Beloborodovtold Marker.ru that Russia has “the largest indicator of population decline” ofany country in the world and complained that despite pledges by the country’sleaders to do something about this, “there have not been any administrativeactions for the resolution of the problems.”

As a result, hecontinued, the various agencies involved with population questions do so in anuncoordinated fashion and only as a secondary issue to their primaryresponsibilities.” As a result, one cannot speak of a genuine state policy inthis critical area, a situation that he said “should not be the case.”

“Butnot all experts consider that the creation of a new state agency would solvethe problem of the reduction in the number of Russians,” the news agency says. Some think its creation would only “increase the number of bureaucrats,”without having any impact on the underlying forces at work

ElenaTyuryukanova, a scholar at the Moscow Institute of Social-Economic Problems ofPopulation, for example, opposes creating such a ministry. “In order to come upwith a conception of demographic development, it isn’t necessary to create aministry.” Indeed, Russia already has such a concept paper.” Setting up a newministry wouldn’t change anything.

Window on Eurasia: ‘Liberal’ Weakness has Allowed ‘Aggressive Russian Nationalism’ to Grow, Social Chamber Told

2012-01-18T10:15:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 18 – The Social Chamber yesterday held a discussion on “The NationalistDanger in Russia: The Results of 2011. Trends, Prospects, and Countermeasures,”a session at which many views on that subject were aired and which hasattracted a great deal of attention in the Moscow media.

The mainpresentation was made by Valery Engel, the deputy chairman of “World WithoutNazism, in which he outlined the findings and conclusions of Semyon Charny’sreport on “The Social Bases and manifestations of Nationalistic Attitudes inthe Russian Federation” in 2011 (worldwithoutnazism.wordpress.com/monitor/russia/2011-overview/).

Accordingto Engel, the number of extreme right-wing Russian nationalists itoday is some20 to 24 thousand, but despite their numbers, they are now seeking to have animpact on the country’s power structures and even penetrate them rather thanengage in easily suppressed violent action (www.sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/discussions/2012/01/d23436/).

Heconcluded his pessimistic report by suggesting that “the growth of the aggressiveactivity of nationalistic leaders in Russia is taking place on the backgroundof [and clearly because of] the weakness displayed by the liberal wing” ofRussian public opinion (oprf.ru/press/news/2012/newsitem/16412).

Anotherparticipant, Nikolay Svanidze, the chairman of the Chamber’s Commission onInterethnic Relations and Freedom, suggested that the radical right had alreadybeen successful in penetrating the government and that Dmitry Rogozin, formerRussian ambassador to NATO, is an example of that threat.

He added, “Moskovskie novosti” reports today,that “Russian society may be presented with a choice between Rogozin andAleksey Navalny who is inclined to use ‘the popular resource’ of nationalism,”noting that the radicals view themselves as potential “brides” of whatevergroup will offer them the most (mn.ru/society_ethnic/20120118/309942823.html).

AleksandrVerkhovsky, the director of the SOVA Center, said that his views in largemeasure coincide with those of Engel. He said that the police have been able toreduce thenumber of criminal actions by the extreme nationalists, prompting thelatter to turn to legal political action while maintaining “anti-systemrhetoric.”

He addedthat “at present, Russia cannot completely exclude nationalism from the life ofsociety, but he argued that it is very important that political leaders ensurethat the Russian population understands just what a nation is. Dmitry Medvedevand Vladimir Putin were taking steps in this direction a year ago but sincethen have cut back on this “almost to nothing.”

Verkhovskywas followed by Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the outspoken head of thesocial-relations department of the Moscow Patriarchate. He argued that nationalists have the right tospeak out because “liberal democracy is not a universal recipe” for solving allproblems. Instead, he called for “uniting” Russians against “xenophobia andseparatism.”

TheOrthodox churchman added that “it is necessary to solve the problems that ‘patrioticorganizations’ are raising,” including the lack of definition of the status ofthe ethnic Russian people and “the difficulty of its self-organization” as atraditionally evolved ethno-social community (www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/1962293.html).

VladiirZorin, a former Russian minister for nationality affairs, pointedly asked whyEngel and the others were not talking about migration patterns since “it isevident,” he said, “that precisely the growth of migration pressure in the bigcities is also a cause of the growth of tension” in Russian society (mn.ru/society_ethnic/20120118/309942823.html).

Otherspeakers provided additional perspectives. Aleksandr Sokolov, a member of the SocialChamber, said that “in practice, all opposition forces in Russia are playingthe nationalist card” and that in the current presidential campaign, there islikely to be “an outburst of nationalist rhetoric,” a development he called onVladimir Putin to condemn.

GeorgyFedorov, the president of the Center of Social and Poltiical Research, notedthat it is extremely difficult to “separate out nationalists who are capable ofnegotiation.” But he said liberals musttry, rather than as is often the case “toying” with nationalists as BorisAkunin did recently in his conversation with Navalny.

And finally, political scientistMikhail Tulsky said it is also a mistake to brand everyone in the government orout who can be accused of one or another form of xenophobia to be a member ofsome kind of “party of nationalists.” Failure to distinguish between such people and the real radical rightoverstates the power of the latter (mn.ru/politics/20120117/309942626.html).

Window on Eurasia: Next Phase of Russian Crisis Likely to Arise in Provinces, Expert Says

2012-01-18T07:57:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 18 – Sergey Belanovsky, research director of the Moscow Center ofStrategic Developments which predicted the mass demonstrations at the end of2011, says that the next phase of Russia’s political crisis is likely to takeplace in the provinces, with strikes and uprisings there attracting sympathyand support from the urban middle class.

In aninterview posted on the “Russky zhurnal” portal yesterday, the sociologist saysthat unlike many of his colleagues, he personally “did not expect suchactivity” in Moscow, adding that those thinking about the future need toremember that it is not the case that “all revolutions are made in capital cities”(www.russ.ru/pole/Perspektivy-politicheskogo-krizisa).

Whilemany revolutions are in fact made there, Belanovsky continues, “there isanother type of revolution” which could be “purely conditionally called ‘thepeasant war,’ when on the territory of a large country uprisings break outwhich then come together into a single movement” beyond the capacity of thecentral authorities to cope.

China,of course, has been a “classical” case of such revolutions throughout history,he noted, adding that he considers that “it is completely probable that inRussia all will go namely according to the scenario of a peasant war,” aconclusion he reached on the basis of a number of focus group sessions incentral Russia outside of Moscow.

Participantsin these sessions routinely complain about governors who take care of theircapitals but do little or nothing for the rest of their regions or republics.Such attitudes are likely to grow, Belanovsky says, leading to the outbreak ofstrikes and protests about specific issues beyond the capacity of the regime todeal with.

A majorreason why he expects that pattern of development and why unlike others hebelieved that not everything “will begin in the capital,” the analystcontinues, is that Moscow has been “quiet for quite a long time.” The middleclass there has now woken up, but it is not alone: future events “willintensify both in the capital and in the provinces.”

Askedabout his institute’s suggestion that following parliamentary elections therewould need to be a coalition government and a new prime minister, Belanovskysays that such a figure must be “attractive and sufficiently independent … inany case “not [incumbent President] Dmitry Medvedev.”

Unfortunately,the analyst suggests, there are not a large number of such people around, butthe list might include Igor Sechin and Sergey Ivanov, who might be able toovercome a situation which currently is defined by the “aging” of “brand Putin”and the danger of a new period of stagnation.

Accordingto Belanovsky, there is “no chance” that “brand Putin” can be “rehabilitated.”The only thing that could continue would be “a scenario of conservatism.” Thatis at least possible because “the female electorate… categorically does notwant a revolution. Perhaps, it will be this segment [of the population] thatwill allow the situation to be preserved.”

Putinmay somehow be able to maintain his “brand” even after the March elections, butif he does so, the analyst argues, it will be possible to “make an analogy withthe Brezhnev brand,” although the situation today “is already not what it wasthen.” At that time, the regime was able to maintain “the illusion” of control,but it cannot do so now.

The powerstructures of today and of Putin “in particular” may be able to change theirrhetoric but they “are not in a situation to seriously influence the situationin the country,” he goes on to say. Putin’s practice of combining “threateningrhetoric” with inaction” is “losing its effectiveness and the people are tiredof it.”

Putinwill certainly try to advance a new program much as Soviet leaders did atmeetings of the Communist Party, but people will only react negatively now justas they reacted negatively 30-40 years ago – and for the same reason, theywon’t listen to the message, even if it is reasonable, because they havealready reached a judgment on the messenger.

Clearly,Belanovsky concludes, the protest wave will proceed in a sine curve, with periodsof growth and periods of decline. Inresponse, as it has done already, the powers will make “concessions,” albeitonly “nominal ones.” But such concessions will “provoke and intensify thepressure” against them.

In thissituation, the sociologist says, something will break out “somewhere in theprovinces.” Then, “in Moscow, protest groups will immediately assemble insupport of the regional protests” and send “volunteer emissaries.” The country will thus be united in this waybecause after all “the Internet works.”

Window on Eurasia: A Dagestani Muslim Builds a Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow

2012-01-18T07:56:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 18 – Gadzhi Gadzimusayev, a Daghestani Muslim who has lived in Moscowfor 45 years,, has given 150 million rubles (5 million US dollars) to build aRussian Orthodox Church in Moscow because he “wanted to leave something afterhimself for the good of Muscovites.”

Gadzhimusayevtook this step, Archpriest Sergey Kiselev of the Trinity Church District in theRussian capital told “Vechernyaya Moskva” on Monday , when no OrthodoxChristian appeared ready to do so. Thecornerstone of the new church was laid this week, and the brick church isslated to open this summer (www.vmdaily.ru/showarticle.php?id=339312).

AntonElin, a journalist at that paper, asked Gadzhimusayev “why he had spent moneyon an Orthodox church and not on a mosque.” He responded that although born inDaghestan, he had lived “45 years in Moscow” and that he “wanted to leave afterhimself something for the good” of the city and “a church is better than anyother monument because it will be eternal.”.

Gadzhimusayevadded that he had already contributed to the construction of two other churchesbut that the latest one will be special: “the cupola will be covered with goldand it will be build with red brick.” He said he was following the behavior ofthe Prophet Muhammed who “protected the monastery of St. Catherine” and addedthat in his view, “God is one.”

ArchpriestSergey told the paper that the Orthodox Church had not in this case “seen any[Orthodx] investors so far.” They exist, he suggested, “but there aren’t any ofthem as it were. For our Orthodoxpeople, the Muslims are an example.” And he noted that a Muslim factorydirector on the outskirts of Moscow had recently opened a chapel in the yard ofhis firm.

Whileneither Gadzhimusayev or Sergey mentioned it, there may be other reasons behindthe Daghestani’s investment. On the one hand, such actions almost certainly areintended to overcome tensions between Russians and arrivals from Daghestan andother parts of the North Caucasus.

Andon the other, the unwillingness of Moscow officials to allow the constructionof even a seventh mosque in a city which has more than two million people ofMuslim heritage may mean that anyone who wants to build a religious facilityhas little choice but to contribute to the construction of a church, possiblyin the hopes that Muslims will be able to pray there as well.

Window on Eurasia: Only 30 percent of Region Heads Have Good Chance to Win Elections, Russian Analyst Says

2012-01-17T17:11:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 17 – Only 30 percent of the heads of regions and republics in theRussian Federation have a good chance to win re-election if Russian PresidentDmitry Medvedev’s draft proposal to restore elections at that level of thecountry’s political system is accepted by the Russian State Duma, according toa Moscow expert.

But theprovisions of the final form of such legislation and the ways in which it mightbe subverted by strong central executive power are already sparking discussionsin Moscow about whether Medvedev’s proposal constitutes a genuine return toelectoral democracy in the regions or whether it is a kind of window dressingin advance of the March 4 presidential vote.

If theheads of Russia’s federal subjects again are to be filled by popular vote,Yevgeny Minchenko, the head of the International Institute of PoliticalExpertise, told the Novy region news agency yesterday, “one can expect aserious rotation of the heads of regions” because only 30 of the incumbentswould likely win such votes (www.nr2.ru/moskow/367578.html).

Theothers “have no chance” at all, he suggested. Among those with the leastchances of election are the heads of the republics of Adygeya,Kabardino-Balkaria, Kalmykia, Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Karelia, Komi, NorthOsetia, tyva, Udmurtia, and Chuvashia, an indication of just how unpopulartheir leaders are among the non-Russian nations of the country.

Otherleaders likely to fail in any bid for election would be the heads of theKrasnodar, Transbaikal, Perm, Primorsky and Stavropol kray, and the head ofKhakassia, yet another indication that non-Russians within the RussianFederation who make up sizeable percentages of the population of these subjectsare also ready to vote for change.

Amongregional heads with mid-range chances to win a popular vote, the Moscowpolitical expert said, are the heads of Bahkortostan, Buryatiya, Daghestan,Ingushetia, Mari El, Yakutia, Kamchatka and Krasnoyarsk kray. And mong thosewith “the greatest chance” are the governors of places like Voronezh, Kemerovo,and Kaluga as well as Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov, Tatarstan President RustamMinikhanov and Mordovia head Nikolay Merkushkin.

Then,Minchenko said, there are some special cases. Moscow’s currenthead has “not badchances” to be elected because “Moscow is so constructed that it is complicatedto restore competitive elections:” there are no “specifically Moscow media,”and it is very difficult to conduct a “door to door” campaign since the numbersof voters is so large.

But inhis comments to the news agency, Minchenko said his estimate may not matterbecause the real issue is elsewhere: “Medvedev has come out with a proposal,but [Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin is silent,” raising the question of what isreally going on and whether gubernatorial elections will in fact return.

In anarticle in today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” journalists Aleksey Gorbachev andIvan Rodin explore some of the details of Medvedev’s proposal, details that maybe changed in the course of parliamentary consideration or may be exploited inways that would reduce the significance of the restoration of such votes (www.ng.ru/politics/2012-01-17/1_gubernator.html).

Accordingto Medvedev’s draft, parties could nominate candidates but such candidateswould have to be confirmed in some way or other by the president, possibly aface-saving measure for Putin who did away with gubernatorial voting orpossibly a way to vitiate popular sovereignty altogether. Candidates could alsowin nomination by petition.

The“Nezavisimaya” journalists say that sources in the Kremlin “assure thatconsultations with the president will bear a purely voluntary character,” buton the basis of their past experience, many Russians and indeed many Russianparliamentarians may be deeply suspicious of such claims.

That isall the more so because “before the mass protest actions,” President Medvedevspoke about the return of gubernatorial elections “as an extremely distantperspective,” and several years earlier,he said that “the return of the formersystem of electing governments was not something [Russia] needed even a centuryfrom now.”

Moreover,in July 2011, Putin, the Moscow paper continues, “said that “there is ‘noviolation of the principles of democracy’” involved in the appointment ratherthan election of governors. He added that elections only made the governorscorrupt because they allowed candidates to “manipulate public opinion” and engagein corrupt practices.

Now, asAleksey Makarkin, the deputy general director of the Moscow Center of PoliticalTechnologies, pointed out, “the situation in the country has changed;” andMedvedev at least has changed his tune, although whether he, let alone Putinwho preceded and plans to succeed him have changed their past views remains tobe seen.

Makarkinsuggested that provisions calling for presidential approval of candidates werefrought with difficulties: “If the president will be a dominating figure, thenhis disapproval of a candidate proposed by the parties might be viewed as aninformal veto, but an attempt to block a popular candidate would have anegative impact on the president himself.”

Window on Eurasia: Rural Poverty a ‘Brake’ on Russia’s Development, Commentator Says

2012-01-17T17:10:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 17 – Using international standards, approximately one Russian in fourstill lives in poverty, but the situation is incomparably worse in rural areas,where incomes are on average only about half those of urban residents and whereever fewer people produce their own food rather than relying on storepurchases, a trend that makes this situation even worse.

Indeed,according to an unsigned commentary today on Agronews.ru, rural poverty remainsso bad that it now constitutes “a brake” on Russia’s more general economicdevelopment, reducing food production overall, imposing stiff demographiccosts, and leading to ever more flight from the countryside (www.agronews.ru/news/detail/116882/).

The veryday this week that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was taking credit for thegrowth in real incomes in the population over the last year and promising thatthe country would overcome poverty “by the end of this decade,” the Russian statistical agency Rosstatpublished its quarterly report on “the incomes, spending and consumption” ofrural Russians.

The datathat report provided, the Agronews.ru commentary says, “testify that thevillage [in Russia] remains a broad territory of poverty on the map ofcontemporary Russia, a country which nonetheless occupied a noted place in theworld ratings as to the number of billionaires” in its urban population.”

Percapita incomes in rural Russia, Rosstat said, rose 1700 rubles (55 US dollars)between 2010 and 2011, but “nevertheless, the average per capita earnings of arural resident were 4,000 rubles less than the country-wide average and 6500rubles less than an urban resident had.” Indeed, “80 percent of ruralresidents” had less than the average for Russia as a whole.

Moreover,the Russian government statistical office said, this situation was in factworse because of a deepening of “a serious differentiation of the incomes ofthe rural population.” The poorest tenpercent of rural Russians had earnings of 2634 rubles while the most well-offdecile had income of 26,576 rubles or “ten times more.”

And thissituation is further exacerbated, Agronews.ru noted, by the reality thatcompared with the past, “a major factor of rural well-being – income from workon private gardens” – is with each year losing its importance.” Indeed, atpresent, such earnings are “extremely modest” and constitute only 907 rubles amonth – or about 30 US dollars.

As haslong been true, the statistics show, pay in rural areas “remains the lowestamong all times of economic activity” with the possible exception of textileworkers whose wages have been depressed by “cheap Chinese mass production.” In2011, that meant that the pay rural residents received was “only 53 percent” ofthe urban average.

Widespreadassumptions notwithstanding, the cost of living in rural Russia “is hardly lessthan it is in the city.” Spending on food for rural families now forms 36percent of household spending on food products because rural Russiansincreasingly buy food in stores where prices in reality often are higher forthese things than in cities.

ForRussian poverty in rural areas to be “liquidated” by 2020 as Putin has proposedwill “require a sharp growth in pay in the village. That is something officials understand andhave even tried to achieve in the past, but “for a long time – and despitechanges in agrarian policy – pay in the village remains” where it has been, atabout 50 percent of the country-wide average.

Fiveyears ago, Agronews.ru points out, the World Russian Popular Assembly “notedthat poverty represents the main obstacle on the path to the modernization ofthe country.” And it expressed“particular concern” about “the serious gap in the level of incomes between thecity and the countryside.”

That isbecause such income differentials are leading to “the outflow of the remainingagricultural population to the city, intensifying the abandonment of theRussian countryside, and [meaning that] the village leads in terms of the levelof unemployment.” Five years have pastsince those comments were made, “but there has been very little change.”

Window on Eurasia: Mari Association in Russian Capital Marks Tenth Anniversary

2012-01-17T17:09:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 17 – The Association of Maris in Moscow, a group created to preserveethnic identity among that Finno-Ugric community, promote ties between the Maridiaspora and the Republic of Mari El, and promote media and scholarly attentionto their ethno-national community, has just marked its 10^thanniversary.

TheMariuver portal this week provides a chronology of 45 events that theassociation has either sponsored or taken part of, providing an unusual groupinto one of the many ethnic and regional “zemlyachestvas” in the Russiancapital who are often ignored as anactivity and a source (mariuver.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/zemljach-10/).

As thechronology notes, the Mari Association was established by 55 people living inMoscow and Moscow oblast who were either former residents of Mari El or membersof the Mari and other Finno-Ugric peoples at a meeting in the HungarianCultural Center in the Russian capital.

TheMaris took the lead, the chronology suggests, in organizing links withethno-cultural groups of Mordvins, Udmurts, Karelians, Komis, andIngermanlanders as well as with activists, officials and scholars in the threeFinno-Ugric countries, Estonia, Finland, and Hungary as well as with theRussian media and scholarly community.

OneRussian scholar who has focused on groups like the Mari, Yu. Yerofeyev, wrote abook which former Russian nationalities minister V.A. Mikhailov said providesimportant insights on Russian federalism and ethnic relations by focusing on “thedevelopment of national-cultural autonomies and zemlyachestvas.”

Unfotunately,in the era of Vladimir Putin, the group has been less successful in workingwith Russian officials. The presidentialplenipotentiary for the Middle Volga promised to carry the Mari Association’scritical ideas back to Mari El but “in practice,” he did nothing to the enormousdisappointment of Moscow’s Maris.

But ifthe Mari Association has not had great influence with officials, it has playedan increasingly important role, the chronology suggests, in preparing andplacing articles in the Russian media, print and electronic, and in providing informationabout the Finno-Ugric nationalities more generally.

“For theyears of its existence” and despite all the difficulties related to funding andhousing, “the zemlyachestvo [of the Maris] has become quite widely known inMoscow, the Republic of Mari El, Bashkortostan and in other Russian regions,”its officers say, adding that “they know us in Estonia, Hungary and Finland.”

Window on Eurasia: Kyrgyz Who Fled Afghanistan to Turkey Now Seek Return to Kyrgyzstan

2012-01-16T14:04:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 16 – A group of ethnic Kyrgyz, whose ancestors fled to China because ofSoviet oppression, then to Afghanistan because of Chinese Communist oppression,and finally to Turkey at the time of the Soviet invasion of that country, has nowasked Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atabayev to allow them to resettle in theirancestral homeland.

OnFriday, Kasymbek Shahkir uulu, the leader of the Kyrgyz community in Turkey,travelled to Ankara to meet with visiting Kyrgyzstan President AlazbekAtambayev in order to ask him whether he could assist some of the 600 Kyrgyzfamilies who live near Lake Van and in Istanbul to return to their homeland (kg.akipress.org/news:467581).

Shakhiruulu told the media that “the life of the Kyrgyz who are now living in the Vanregion of Turkey was quite good but that they wanted to resettle in Kyrgyzstanbecause they were concerned about the future of their children andgrandchildren,” who might be subject to assimilation.

IfTurkey’s Kyrgyz do return to Kyrgyzstan, that would complete a remarkableodyssey. The forefathers of this group, who participated in the anti-Sovietbasmachi movement in Central Asia, fled to China in the late 1920s. Then whenthe Chinese Communists established their regime, the Kyrgyz then moved again tothe Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan. invaders, but

Followingthe Soviet invasion in 1979, their leader, Rakhmankul, and many of his people –just over 1100 remain in Afghanistan -- subsequently decided to leave. Initially, they fled to Pakistan and then sought asylum in Alaska,a place they believed was like the Wakhan, but Washington refused theirrequest. And they moved to Turkey in 1982.

Ankarasettled them in the Lake Van area around the village of Ulupamir in order bothto present itself as the defender of all Turkic peoples and to strengthen theTurkic presence in a predominantly Kurdish region. The story of this remarkablepeople was portrayed in the documentary film, “37 Uses for a Dead Sheep: TheStory of the Pamir Kyrgyz.”

Window on Eurasia: Moscow, Regions Destroying Russia’s Nature Reserve System, Greenpeace Says

2012-01-16T14:03:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 16 – Russia’s nature reserves system that was set up just before theFebruary 1917 revolution and once among the best in the world is suffering fromneglect and the encroachment of unrestrained economic development, according toGreenpeace on the occasion of the 95^th anniversary of the country’sfirst national park.

Russia’sfirst national reserve was established on January 11, 1917, during the firstworld war just to the north of Lake Baikal. “Unfortunately,” the ecologicalwatchdog group notes, that park did not survive to see this anniversary becauseof a 2011 decision of Yury Trutnev, Russia’s natural resources minister (www.greenpeace.org/russia/ru/news/10-01-2012-the-end-of-oopt/).

InSeptember of last year, the organization says, Trutnev united the reserve intoa single structure with the Transbaikal National Park, but this move does notsave the preserve bur rather destroys it because the ministry permits “almostany economic activity” on the territory of the national parks, opening the wayto “the rapid end of the Russian reserve system.”

Over thelast few years, Greenpeace says, the Russian authorities “have not developed”the nature preserve system but destroyed it” by “changing borders” of thereserves, “the seizure of territory, illegal use, changes in general legal norms,the driving out of qualified specialists” from the field “and so on.”

One ofthe “hottest of the hot spots” on the nature reserve map of Russia is theCaucasus, the organization says, where Moscow appears to have developed new“methods for a struggle against reserve territories and also against those whodefend them,” all in the name of economic development.

Four ofthe planned five new ski resorts in the region, in which Prime MinisterVladimir Putin has displayed a particular interest, are on the territories inwhole or in part of federal nature preserves. Moreover, the Caucasus has its own “road to nowhere,” one to anon-existent meteorological station.

Thereason for that road, Greenpeace says, has nothing to do with weathermonitoring. Instead, it is “connected with the construction of the latestgovernment residence, ‘Lunnaya polyana,’” and will have serious ecologicalconsequences despite claims by Moscow and regional officials.

PresidentDmitry Medvedev has made this destruction of nature reserves easier with thesigning of a new law on November 30, 2011, which allows the construction of“any touristic and sport facilities onthe biosphere segments of the biosphere nature reserves and also allows for landit them to be rented out. More than 40 biosphere zones are at risk as a result.

Sometimesin order to avoid legal restrictions, Greenpeace says, Moscow officials simplychange the borders of the reserves even though such steps often destroy themost important parts of them and thus violate the spirit if not the exactletter of the law. Among the worst cases of this concerns Gazprom constructionin the Altay region, a step actively opposed by UNESCO.

“Unfortunately,”Greenpeace adds, “in all the recentscandals” connected with Russia’s nature preserves, “the law enforcement organshave been inclined to support ‘the strong of this world’ instead of standing upon the side of the law.” That in itself,the organization says, sends a message that even more violations will betolerated in the future.

And whatis especially disturbing is that the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources isnow purging from its ranks those specialists who want to defend Russia’snatural heritage. Last year, a group ofworker from the Baikal National Park sent a joint letter to President Medvedevcalling on him to protect them in their efforts to enforce the law against thebureaucracy.

But instead of taking up their case,Medvedev’s office turned their appeal over to the very people against whom thesignatories had appealed, and in the months since, “repressions against thosewho signed” the appeal to the president have begun in that national park.Indeed, “practically all” who signed “have either been removed or forced toretract their opinion.”

Lastyear, “despite the claims of federal bureaucrats,” Greenpeace points out, “nota single nature reserve or national park was created,” and many of the existingparks were “destroyed by fires, logging or the seizure of land.” And, the nature defense group says, in many partsof Russia, regional officials are not lagging behind in such destructiveactions.

Window on Eurasia: Tatarstan Ulema Head Equates Islamic Modernists with Wahhabis

2012-01-14T04:01:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton, January 13 – Rustam Batrov,the chairman of the Ulema Council of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) ofthe Republic of Tatarstan, says that that Islamic modernism in the form of thejadids opened the way to widespread atheis there and that, in the words of onecommentator, “the jadids are the same as the Wahhabis who are the same as thegodless ones.”

Batrov’s attack on jadidism, themodernist form of Islam developed in the Middle Volga at the end of the 19^thand beginning of the 20^th centuries, came in the course of hisreview of a play about Mukhlisi Bubi, the first female Kazi in the world whowas shot by Stalin in 1937 because of her work with Muslim women (islam-portal.ru/communication/blog/Batrov/138.php).

But as Tatar historian AydarKhabutdinov points out in a commentary today, Batrov’s “strange equation”reflects the Tatarstan MSD’s increasing tilt, backed by Moscow, toward “therural Kadamist [traditionalist] and Soviet model” of Islam, one that “does notallow the restoration of the urban jadid model” (www.islamrf.ru/news/russia/rusmonitorings/19872/).

“With the dying out of the laststudents of the jadids,” Khabutdinov says, “ever more recedes into the past themodel ofTatar urban development.” In its place is “the so-called ‘shyrygdan’(that is, rural Kadaist) model” whose adoption will “only push away the urbanTatar majority from national-religious tradition.”

That is precisely why theKadamist model is supported by the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian officials,and Russian writers like Roman Silantyev, the Tatar professor says. Such peopledo not want any part of “an attractive model for the teaching of the Tatarlanguage, literature, and history of the Tatars in the predominantlyRussian-language milieu of Tatarstan.”

This veritable campaign againstjadidism and the kind of Islamic modernism that attracts the young far morethan radicalism does, Khabutdinov continues, has won several victories inTatarstan recently, most prominently in the decision of the new mufti, IldusFayzov, to pull his MSD out of the more modernist Council of Muftis of Russia(SMR).

Weakening the SMR has been amajor goal of Silantyev and the Moscow Patriarchate with which he has longenjoyed close ties. And promoting the kadamist, as opposed to the jadid positionshas been taken up as well by Rais Suleyanov, the director of the Volga Centerfor Regional and Ethno-Religious Research of the Russian Institute of StrategicInvestigations.

Clearly, Batrov and hissupporters believe that any increase in the influence of jadidism among theTatars would lead to an increase in the number of convinced Muslims there andthat defeating jadidism will prevent that, a calculation which parallels theone that Soviet anti-religious activists made during the last century.

But as Khabutdinov suggests andas historical experience confirms, attacking modernist Islam may not causepeople in historically Muslim regions to turn from religion. Instead, it willlikely open the way to growth in undergroundradicalism, just as in late Soviet times -- precisely the outcome thoseattacking Islamic modernism say they want to avoid.

Window on Eurasia: No Crisis Exists in Russia But Dangers Abound, Pavlova Says

2012-01-14T02:47:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 13 – Irina Pavlova, one of the most thoughtful observers of the Moscowpolitical scene, says that despite “the euphoria” of those who have taken partin the recent demonstrations, she “does not see in Russia a political crisis;”and for precisely that reason she sees chaos or neo-totalitarianism ahead.

In anessay on the Grani.ru portal, Pavlova argues that “there is no crisis “because“those who have taken part in the meetings have not met even that minimumcondition necessary for putting non-violent pressure on the powers that be”that analysts agree are necessary to move from dictatorship to democracy (grani.ru/opinion/m.194777.html).

InRussia, she points out, the meetings “have stopped,” rather than continued asin Ukraine or Egypt. The “atomization of those protesting” had not beenovercome; instead, it has only deepened” to the point where “literally a war ofall against all has begun.” There is no common strategy, and there is “nounity” on the issue of “the monopoly of power.”

Accordingto Pavlova, the December protests do reflect “the general state of Russiansociety,” that she says is “just as in 1991, pseudo-democratic.” There has beenone major change, however. Twenty years ago, there was support for both “Westerndemocratic ideals and eastern totalitarian habits.” Now, support for the formerhas fallen, while backing for the latter has risen.

Russian society, she continues,”perhaps really has fallen out of love for Vladimir Putin and is dissatisfiedwith its life, although this fact says more about the nature of society itself,in which all of three years ago was observed a diametrically opposed picturewith almost 80 percent being satisfied with their lives.”

But thenand now, the demonstrators put their hopes in “the powers.” “Without Putin butwith the Powers.” Regardless of their place in the political spectrum, left,right or center, “everyone awaits for the moment when the Power will finallydisplay ‘political will,’” something the demonstrators have not yet shown.

“That iswhy, despite the curses directed against ‘the national leader,’ Russia iscondemned to have a new vozhd.” Indeed, Pavlova says, “one thing is clear: thenew turn of historical development of the country dictates the strengthening oftraditional Russian statehood and the enslavement of society with all the consequencesthat flow from that.”

A“democratic” alternative is simply not in view; it isn’t even in its cradle.Instead, few would dispute that “no democratic revolution took place in August1991, although then too everyone was in a euphoric condition. But in thefollowing years, the Russian power only strengthened its position,”subordinating all including “’the new Russians.’”

Thatis because the latter, while becoming rich through the possession of stateproperty never had clear title to it as property owners. As a result, in “anirony of history,” these new Russian wealthy have found themselves in theposition of “servants to the supreme power” rather than a new autonomous class.

Thatallowed “the power corporation, which also became a property owner to put undercontrol not only the force structures but society as well, having made it intothe object of its own manipulations,” Pavlova argues. And that is also true ofthe protesters whose meetings “play into the hands of the Power because they legitimatethe election campaign in the eyes of the West.”

Consequently,she says, “the main question” now is whether the country can escape from a repetitionof the Russian past. Can it avoid both a new “time of troubles” such as the onethat it experienced in 1917 or a new wave of totalitarianism like the one thatengulfed Russia in 1929?

Theoreticallyit can, but still only theoretically, the Russian analyst suggests, because “thereare still no signs that businessmen are capable of challenging the supremepower and demanding from it guarantees of the rights of private property.”Instead, “all of them remain quiet.”

“Noone even is trying to raise the principle question about the review of the resultsof privatization of the beginning of the 1990s and the establishment of honestrules of the gae. No one is trying to establish a normal liberal party. [And]no one is requiring a review of criminal cases and the freeing of thousands ofprisoners who are serving time for economic crimes.”

Insteadof doing that, the businessmen “preparing to buy property abroad, to throwmoney to the wind, and to invest the in football clubs no one needs rather thaninvest the in the development of their own country.” That helps the Kremlin “holdthe in its power by cultivating their guilt complexes.”

Pavlovaargues that “world history does not know any other path of establishingdemocratic procedures and institutes except for the affirmation of the right ofprivate property.” That creates “the basis of the legal state in the West,” andwithout it, there will not be one in Russia anytime soon.

Consequently,to demand in the current circumstances honest elections, elections to apseudo-parliament in which pseudo-parties sit is nonsense, a contradiction interms, not to mention that these demands only help the powers to strengthen thefaçade of imitation democracy that they have thrown up.”

Ifthings are to change, the Grani analyst continues, Russian society which “isinterested in the free development of the country” must turn to thebusinessmen, “enlightening, organizing and educating their civic consciousness,convincing them to come out from under the wind of the powers that be.”

“Anyother path is a path to neo-totalitarianism,” Pavlova continues, “withcomputers, I-phones, I-pads, with a new industrialization, but also with thetraditional supreme power and a new enslavement” of the population.

Window on Eurasia: Less than One Russian in 12 is Middle Class by European Standards, Moscow Sociologists Say

2012-01-13T10:12:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 12 – Only six to eight percent of Russians are members of a genuine middleclass, a group that has provided most of the protest energy in the country inrecent months and one in which so many have placed their hopes for thepolitical modernization of the Russian Federation, according to researchers at the MoscowInstitute of Sociology.

Instead,59 percent of the population, “the silent majority,” are poor, according to abook, “Russian Society as It Is” (in Russian; Moscow: Novy khronograf, 2011,1000 copies), and worse yet the sociologists say, “Russian poverty has notfallen even in the relatively well-off years” (http://ttolk.ru/?p=9100).

Accordingto the “Tolkovatel” report about it which has been picked up by various Moscowoutlets, the Academy of Sciences sociologists divided their mass sample intoten strata. The two lowest, the scholars said, are below the poverty level andtogether formed 16 percent of the population.

Thethird and fourth strata, the book said, include the 43 percent of thepopulation which are “balanced at the edge of poverty.” The researchers continued, “Tolkovatel”stressed, that the fourth strata is the “modal” group in Russia; that is, theone that predominates and brings the total poor of Russia to 59 percent.

Thefifth through the eighth of the strata for an additional 33 percent of thepopulation and thus are “the so-called ‘middle strata of Russian society,” butthe sociologists stressed that if one applies the standards of Westerncountries, the only Russians are who really “middle class” are the six to eightpercent in the ninth and tenth strata.

Thesociologists found that members of the Russian poor tend to be older (47 onaverage) than those in the middle class (42) and the average member of thewealthiest group (33). Moreover, “Tolkovatel” reported, “the greatestconception of poverty among young people is found in worker settlements” where25 percent of the people live at or below the poverty line.

Workersfor the largest share of the poor, accounting for 63 percent of all people inthat category. Office workers form only10 percent of the poor. In this sense, Russia is following a pattern typical ofmany Western countries: most of those in poverty have jobs and thus form thenew “working poor.”

Theauthors of the book, however, stressed that there is one huge differencebetween the situation in Europe and that in Russia. In Europe, surveys show,most people lay responsibility for anyone’s poverty on the individual inquestion; but in Russia, most blame others for such things as non-payment ofwages and insufficient state support.

Accordingto the sociologists, “the basic cause of the appearance of poverty in Russiaconsists of macro-economic factors and the situationof the labor market. But they also pointed to another factor: there is a verylarge share of Russians – some 27 percent --who have higher and incompletehigher education but who are found among the poor.

Inaddition to the size of their residences, Russians in the poorer groups aredistinguished from those in the upper groups by their access to computers onlysix percent of the poor have a computer compared to an average for all Russiansof 19 percent. Specifically, among thepoor only 19 percent use a computer, while 38 percent of the population as awhole does.

Window on Eurasia: Most Officers in Russia’s Force Structures Unhappy with Regime, Security Council-Ordered Poll Finds

2012-01-13T06:39:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 12 – As many as nine out of ten officers in Russia’s force structures are“dissatisfied” with the decisions of the president and prime minister,according to a poll conducted by the country’s Security Council on the eve ofthe upcoming presidential elections and despite being marked “for official useonly” published by “Argumenty i fakty” today.

Thatfigure would not be significantly lowered, the Moscow weekly reported, even ifthe government were to boost the pay and benefits of these officers as somehave proposed, and this pattern, the publication suggested, justifies askingthe question whether “the siloviki are ready for an ‘orange’ revolution” inRussia (www.argumenti.ru/politics/n322/149104).

Thissurvey, “Argumenty i fakty” continued, was conducted in almost all branches ofthe Russian force structures, and the publication suggested that there waslittle good news for the regime in any of them, although the findings clearlydo not necessarily mean that the Kremlin could not on these structures in theevent of serious social and political unrest.

Theweekly reported that employees of the newly formed “police,” despite having hadtheir pay boosted, don’t like the new name. It cited the report as saying that “a general lowering of the moralbasis for service” had been noted and that “no one of the officers queriedsupport the new name.” Instead, they say “it is shameful to serve in thepolice.”

Moreover,the report noted that the process of re-testing employees of the former militiawas being used by “leading cadres to settle accounts with their subordinates”and that much of the intelligence capacity of the Interior Ministry had beenlost following this change given “the departure of experienced specialists.”

Officerssurveyed and the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence arm, said they were “concerned”by the reduction in the status of their service “and the constant reduction inthe number of operations carried out.” Some officers said that “highly placed officials in private conversationsay that our leadership is not interested in our work.”

Officersat the FSB, the successor to the KGB from which Prime Minister Vladimir Putinand many of his associates sprang, were equally upset. According to “Argumenty ifakty,” the survey found that “senior officers” are upset by “the economicinvolvement of certain leaders” in what are at least nominally “privatecommercial structures.”

As faras officers in the Russian armed services are concerned, the poll found that “theoverwhelming majority of officers, despite an increase in their pay, are upsetby the situation with respect to the distribution of housing” and also by “thelack of thought and consistency in the carrying out of reforms” in the armedservices which they say have “weakened” the military.

The newsweekly concluded its report by saying that “it is still unknown whether the[Russian] president and prime minister had yet become acquainted with thissensational document,” one that “Argumenty i fakty” implied should be the causeof serious concern for the regime if the protest movement grows.

Ifindeed the commanders of the Russian force structures are as unhappy with theregime as this report suggests, then that is a reasonable implication. Butthere are at least two reasons why such a reading may be overstated.

On theone hand, the complaints of the officers are not yet about general policies butrather about the Kremlin’s decisions directly concerning them. Consequently, even if the officers are upsetwith those, most of them are probably prepared to follow orders even if pushcomes to shove in clashes between the regime and the Russian population.

And onthe other, the unhappiness the officers exhibit may reflect nothing more than acorporate attempt to extract more resources or a freer hand from the regime inthe run-up to the presidential election, given that Putin is clearly countingon overwhelming support from those in uniform at the time of the vote.

Window on Eurasia: Syria’s Circassians Would ‘Adapt Quickly’ to Life in the North Caucasus, Commentator Says

2012-01-11T13:39:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 11 – Increasing instability in Syria has led to demands that ethnicCircassians living there be allowed to return to their original homeland in theNorth Caucasus. Moscow has not yet taken a decision on this point, but somebloggers and commentators have expressed “skepticism” that any who did returnwould “adapt” to conditions there.

ButNaima Neflyasheva, a blogger for Kavkaz-uzel.ru, points out in a post yesterdaythat “the experience of the repatriation in the 1990s to Adygey andKabardino-Balkaria (to Karachayevo-Cherkessia there were almost no repatriants)says that this is from being the case” (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/blogs/1927/posts/10293).

Shepoints out that “for example in Adygeya there is already a corresponding milieuin the conditions of which adaptation would take place even more quickly.” Thereare both government structures like the Center for the Adaptation ofRepatriants and social groups which “are helping repatriants to fit into thenew milieu.”

Tellingly,there are repatriants from Turkey and Syria already working in theseinstitutions with the necessary linguistic expertise and background to be ableto help. They and others also “cooperate with the Committee on NationalityAffairs, Communication with Compatriots and Media of the Adygey Republic” toprovide necessary documentation.

Moreover,in two local universities, the Adygey State University and the TechnologyUniversity, there are already Circassian students from Syria and Turkey. Thelocal television channel has been cooperating with Circassian satellite televisionin Jordan. And everyone remembers the instructive case of the return ofCircassians from Kosovo in 1998.

In thatyear and with Moscow’s support, the Kosovo Circassians were evacuated fromwar-torn Yugoslavia. The repatriation of these “Kosovars” was “not simple,” Neflyashevasays, largely because of “the lack of understanding [then] of certain localofficials and the cultural distance” between the Circassians abroad and thosein the North Caucasus.

“However,”despite dire warnings at the time, of the “almost 200 Yugoslav Circassians” whocame, only “about 30” subsequently decided to resettle in Germany or Turkey.The rest “created working places” for themselves, very quickly fitting in tothe local culture but more than that making a contribution to their co-ethnics intheir historical homeland.

Thereasons for this are to be found in the character of the returning Circassiansthemselves, the North Caucasian blogger says. On the one hand, she points out, those who returned have been “distinguishedby their law-abidingness and their loyalty toward the state which acceptedthem.

And onthe other, the repatriants did not sit and wait for others to help them. “Theybrought with those work habits which the local Circassians [who had beenprofoundly affected by the Soviet system] still did not have.” And they often were professionals who couldprovide services that would otherwise be unavailable.

Whether Moscow which has chosen to back the current government of Syria will be willing to allow Circassians from there to return home remains to be seen, but suggestions that such people would not “fit in” to the reality of the Circassian community in the North Caucasus do not stand up to examination, Neflyasheva concludes.

Window on Eurasia: Solovey Announces Plans for New Moderate Russian Nationalist Party

2012-01-11T12:45:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 11 – Valery Solovey, a professor at the Moscow State Institute forInternational Relations, says he has assembled a working group to create a newRussian nationalist party that will appeal not just to the 15 percent of theRussian population that supports “hard” nationalist positions but to the 60-70percent that backs a “softer variant.”

In anarticle on Rusplatforma.org today, Solovey says that “the weakening” of thecurrent Kremlin leadership opens the way for the creation of the Russian Partyand that the prospects that “legal obstacles” against such a group “have fallenaway or are about to.” But he says that he is “not certain” that the situationis all that promising (rusplatforma.org/publikacii/node447/).

On theone hand, the MGIMO scholar says, in the Russian Federation, law and thepractice of officials are two very different things, with officials oftenbehaving directly contrary to legislation. But on the other – and this isSolovey’s focus in this article – a major reason for pessimism lies with the Russiannationalists themselves.

“Nationalists,” he continues, “who took part in the massprotests of December 2011 – and it is not important [where in Russia] … -- knowvery well that the traditional order of the day of Russian nationalism does notwin the support of the urban citizens (who are by the way in their overwhelmingmajority are ethnic Russians).

And that is not because Russian nationalists did not havethe chance to speak at these meetings, Solovey says. Rather, many of the slogans they put forwardsuch as giving Russians “the status of the state forming people” have no littlemeaning for most of the demonstrators and the broader set of political andsocial ideas to which they subscribe.

Many Russian nationalists, hesuggests, do not recognize that there are “two means of politicalcommunication: to tell the people what [the nationalists] think is importantand correct, and to speak with the people about what [the people themselvesconsider important and correct.” Instead, most nationalists do the first but ignore the second, thuslimiting the support they get. Thenationalists are accustomed “to speak in the name of the Russian people,Solovey says, “but THE MAIN CONDENT OF THE RUSSIAN QUESTION is not ethnic asthey support but DEMOCRATIC and SOCIAL.” What Russians want “in the firstinstance is freedom and justice;” ethnic problems are “secondary. And this issomething nationalists must recognize.

Moreover, Russians “typicallyconsider ethnic problems through the prism of a sense of justice denied.” This is “the reality,” Solovey continues,whether Russian nationalists “like it or not.” Those nationalists who are upsetby “Jewish masonic activities and the conspiracy of ZOG” can only hope to finda welcoming audience “among patients in psychiatric hospitals.”

Any Russian nationalist who hopes towin more support must speak on behalf of what Russians want “and not on thebasis of his own imaginations about that.” To do so, “freedom and justice” muststand “at the center of the nationalist narrative,” not in a mimicry of “popularslogans” but rather because that is the true Russian nationalist position.

Russian nationalists also need torecognize, he says that “at the same time, precisely free, competitive andhonest elections are the most economical and least problematic path to comingto power. But if the nationalists want to win, then they must cease to be only nationalists and become also (andin the first instance) democrats and defenders of a social state.”

The reasons for that should beobvious: “the fully committed nationalist electorate, ‘the hard nationalists’who are prepared to vote for nationalist candidates always and in allconditions form only 15 percent of the population.” But support among Russiansfor “’soft nationalism’ reaches 60 to 70 percent” – and that is “more thansufficient to win.”

Supporters of “soft nationalism” donot find “open nationalist rhetoric” or even the word “nationalism” acceptable,and consequently, “ethnic demands must be presented only in a democratic andsocial packaging,” something that makes them acceptable to the vital center ofthe political spectrum.

Some nationalists may feel that theywill lose their identity if they take that step, but there is no reason tothink so. First, the ethnic problem “all the same” remains part of theirprogram. Second, “Russian nationalists are the only political force which hasnever been in power” and thus do not have the burdens of the past others do.

And third, Solovey insists, “Russiannationalists also are the only force which is in a position to fulfill all itsproblems.” But despite all this, Russian nationalists need to recognize thatthe messenger is as important as the message, and with regard to leaders at thepresent time, Russian nationalists suffer from a serious shortage.

The only politician on the scene “whois well kknown beyond the borders of nationalism” is Dmitry Rogozin, but evenhis messages reach only a limited audience. “All other politicians of theRussian nationalist stripe are either unknown to the non-nationalist audienceor categorically unacceptable to it.”

To try to address these twinproblems of Russian nationalism and a Russian nationalist messenger, Soloveysays, he is, after “consultations with friends and those who share these views,”heading “a working group to form a new political party,” a step that hesuggests is for him both “natural and inevitable.”

The MGIMO professor points out that he “never was simply a scholar, observeror ‘ideologue,’” as those who know his many activities can attest. But now,because Russia is entering “an era of great change,” he feels compelled todeclare himself “openly and publicly” as a political actor.

The party he hopes to found in 10-12days, will be one that will represent “a new force” in the country, “a party ofthe national majority … which appeals to Russians and to all in Russia who seekfreedom, justice and democracy” and which will be “in the center of thepolitical spectrum” with a chance to win rather than a marginal group condemnedto permanent defeat.

Window on Eurasia: Attacks on Wahhabism Increase Its Attractiveness to Young Believers, Tatarstan Sociologist Says

2012-01-11T09:06:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 11 – “Harsh” official campaigns against Wahhabism and other radical trendsin Islam “are not leading to a positive result” among young Muslims but because“the psychology of a believer is somewhat different,” he or she is likely toconsider that “where there is oppression, there is truth [and] for truth, onemust suffer, according to a Tatarstan sociologist.

That issomething Russian officials need to consider, Yekaterina Khodzhayeva of KazanState University says, and she says she is thus very pleased by “theinitiatives of official religious organizations to propagandize [their versionof Islam] by missionary methods, something used early only by members of sects”(www.e-umma.ru/node/918).

In aninterview with Guzel Maksyutova published in the current issue of “E-Umma,”Khodzhayeva describes the polls and interviews she has conducted among youngpeople in urban and rural areas of Tatarstan over the last decade, includingmost recently in 2009 and 2010 when they surveyed more than a thousand youngresidents of that Middle Volga republic.

A decadeago, she reports, 39 percent of urban and rural youth there identifiedthemselves as Muslims, a figure that rose to 47 percent in the last sampling.Most believers in both cases were Tatars – between 91 and 96 percent; theremainder, she said were “people from mixed marriages and migrants.”

In 2010,Khodzhayeva said, young people were asked “why did you choose this religion?”Sixty-three percent said they did so because “this is the religion of mypeople, 43 said that it was “a family tradition, and 19 percent because it wasa matter of “personal conviction.” (Respondents were allowed to give more thanone answer.)

Thisfinding suggests, she continued, that “there are very few Muslims who consciouslychose to follow the religion.” Thosesurveyed were also asked whether they were believers. “However strange it may seem, about tenpercent of those queries [who said they were Muslims] indicated that they didnot believe in [God].”

Anotherquestion the sociologists asked was for respondents to declare “who” they feltthemselves to be in the first instance. “As at the start of the 2000s so tootoday, among young people only 15 to 16 per thousand declared themselves to beMuslims. This suggests that the level of actualization of religious identity isweak.”

Bycontrast, Khodzhayeva noted, “professional and family identitfications(daughter, mother, doctor and so on) and also ethnic and civic identities (I ama Russian, I am a resident of Tatarstan, I am a Russian) predominate.”

On thebasis of her research, the sociologist told “E-Umma,” she has developed afour-part typology of young Muslims in Tatarstan: first, “nominal Muslims whoare called ‘ethno-Muslims’ in Islamic society, a group that forms about 29percent of young people in the Republic of Tatarstan.

Second,those who observe “only those rites that have social significance. Third, thosewho she says she would call those “drawn to Islam,” who form about 30 percentand who practice a larger number of rites. And fourth, those who strictlyfollow the rules of Islam, a group that number some 25 percent of the total.

Thosewho practice Islam, Khodzhayeva continued, also can be divided according to howthey came to religion, how much access they have had to higher education, andwhich trend in Islam they identify with. “For example,” she says, some young Muslims consider “Wahhabism” only a shibbolethapplied by officials to any group of Muslims the authorities don’t like.

Othersconsider it a real group within Islam, with some “showing sympathy to it” andothers “harshly opposed.” But sympathy for that group or for any other trend inIslam will grow to the extent that officials use harsh measures of any kind againstit because of “the psychology of believers.”

Moreover,Khodzhayeva said, “if we live in a democratic society, then the Muslimcommunist needs to be able to carry on a dialogue with any trends. Harsh pressurein any form against those who think differently will makes heroes out of thosewho hold such positions,” exactly the opposite outcome that officials and moderateswithin the umma want.

Window on Eurasia: Census Results Spark Fears among Maris, Calls for Political Action

2012-01-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 10 – The recent release of nationality data from the 2010 RussianFederation census is prompting the members of ever more groups to reflect onthe situation they now find themselves in and to ask what they should do toimprove their lot and in some cases to ensure the survival of their people.

A leaderof the small Finno-Ugric Mari nation is the latest to do so. Yury Yerofeyev, headof Moscow’s Mari community, pointedly asks whether the situation today provesthat Mikhail Kandaratsky was write a century ago when he wrote that “sad is thepast of the Cheremis [Mari} people, said is its present and still sadder is itsfuture” (finugor.ru/node/22596).

Yerofeyevsays that the new census results mean that one cannot but agree with the Kazanprofessor.given what has happened to the Mari, a group oppressed by tsaristautocracy and one which “for centuries has had imposed on its consciousnesssubmissiveness and a sense of being a second class people and kept from theadministration of its own fate.”

Between the 2002 and 2010 Russian censuses, the Maripeople declined in number by 57,000 people, “falling back to the level theywere at in 1965.” “And in comparison with the demographic boom which cameduring the last years of Soviet power, the Maris became almost 100,000 (15percent) fewer than they were in 1989.”

“What is this?” Yerofeyev asks: “Payment for ‘thehappiness of living in a capitalist paradise’ or the beginning point of thedisappearance of the Cheremis ethnos?” Like other Maris, he wants to know howthis happened, “was it by the mortality of people, assimilation with otherpeoples, the mass exodus of Maris to find work … or a criminally distortedcensus?”

The last factor undoubtedly has played a role, hesuggests, especially because Moscow has an interest in “concealing the trueindicators connected with the decline of the share of the ethnic Russian ethnos”and fears that any reports about which could undermine “social stability”especially in the run-up to the Duma and presidential elections.

“It is clear to all,” given the rising tide of populardistrust for the powers that be, he writes, “that the delays with the releaseof summary data of the census” were the result of political calculations. Thus,“in this sense, the census of 2010 had not so much a social-economic goal” assuch enumerations are supposed to have “as a political one.”

In order to correct the situation, Yerofeyev continues, anInternet site should appear “in the nearest future the entire set of statisticsabout the sizes of each region where there are registered members of ourcommunity” and that this should be done by Mari activists rather than Russianofficials.

That need in turn raises the issue of the reliability ofthe Mari social organization Mary Mer Kanash, a group that remains unregisteredand whose leaders have sought “toprivatize” the Mari people into their own hands by “deceptive means,” as wellas Moscow-imposed officials like the current head of Mari El.

What is needed now is the convention of a genuine popularassembly of Maris from all across the Russian Federation, a group that“undoubtedly will be interested in the level of representation of Maris and otherresidents populating Mari El in the organs of the federal legislative branch,including the State Duma and the Federation Council.”

United Russia and its officials in Mari El, Yerofeyevsays, have eliminated all representation of the Mari nation in theseassemblies, something that “never was in the case in Soviet times or even inthe years of Yeltsin’s rule” and something that leaves the nation feelingsomething less than complete.”

“Such a short-sighted, hypocritical policy of recenttimes serves as a reminder after a century about the past rightless position ofthe Mari people,” the Moscow community leader writes. “The time has come,” hesays,” to say “‘No’ to all who at the federal and regional levels allowthemselves to irresponsibly declare Maris” who speak up “’nationalists.’”

And there are some hopeful signs that the Maris, despitetheir diminished numbers, are beginning to wake up to their possible fate andtake political action. Only 52 percent of them voted for United Russia in theDuma elections, “a real indicator of the declining level of trust of residentsof the republic and above all of the urban population to local bureaucrats.”

This trend, Yerofeyev concludes, “will continue in theMarch 4 vote for president” in large part because “circumstances in the countryare such that the main opponent to the criminal powers that be already are notthe proletariat of the Marxist era but business which is in an objectivecontradiction with the existing system of ineffective economics and bureaucracy.”

Window on Eurasia: Muslims Join Anti-Putin Movement

2012-01-10T08:31:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 10 – Although Kremlin loyalists in the predominantly Muslim republicsof the Russian Federation may by one means or another deliver high vote totalsfor Vladimir Putin in the upcoming elections, some Muslim activists are nowsupporting the anti-Putin movement and have issued a call for others inthe community to do the same.

In today’s“Tatarskaya gazeta,” journalist Khalida Khamidullina notes that “many Muslimsas citizens have not remained on the sidelines at the all-Russian protestsagainst the falsification of elections” and that some of them have now draftedan Islamic Civic Charter (www.tatargazeta.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=233:2012-01-10-10-37-45&catid=4:2010-11-04-15-26-09&Itemid=11).

OnDecember 26, Vadim Sidorov, one of the leaders of the National Organization ofEthnic Russian Muslims (NORM), and his colleagues drafted what they call “theIslamic Civic Charter,” a document that repeats many of the same demands thatthe two major waves of demonstrations against the falsification of electionsand Putin already had.

Specifically,that document makes the following demands: It calls for “the immediateliberatin and full pardon of prisoners of consciences and political prisoners,”the annulment of paragraphs 280 and 282 of the Russian criminal code, theelimination of “all subidivisions of law enforcement organs and specialservices involved with suppressing dissent under the form of the struggle withextremism” (islamhartiya.livejournal.com/415.html).

Inaddition, it calls for the elimination of “lists of prohibited literature andthe practice of banning literature, the annulment of the 1997 law on freedom ofconscience and religious organizations, and the replacement of the current lawon political parties to allow such groups to be formed “on a regional,religious and nationality” basis.

Thecharter also calls for “honest and transparent elections [in Russia] under thecontrol of international organizations and human rights advocates,” “a returnto the principles of real federalism,” including budgetary federalism, and anend to efforts to “solve national and religious questions by the application ofcrude military and police force.”

And itconcludes by demanding “the political resolution of the Caucasus problem bymeans of broad dialogue with social forces and the participation ofauthoritative mediators,” all points that go beyond the specific demands of thecalls for honest elections and an end to Putin’s dominance in Russian politics.

Yesterday,the authors of this charter met with Ilya Ponomaryev, a Just Russia Dumadeputy, to reiterate this points, secure his promise of assistance, to announceplans for a website advancing these goals, and to declare their plans toparticipate in protest meetings on February 4 (islamhartiya.livejournal.com/892.html).

Window on Eurasia: Tajikistan Brings Home Students from Medrassahs Abroad, But Analysts Doubt This Alone Will Stop Islamist Threat

2012-01-10T07:39:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 10 – Dushanbe officials say that over the last year, they have broughthome all but 400 of the roughly 2500 Tajiks who had been studying in Islamicuniversities and medrassahs abroad, but analysts doubt that this measure byitself will prevent the continuing spread of Islamist ideas and organizationsin that Central Asian republic.

AbdurakhimKholikov, chairman of Tajikistan’s Committee on Religious Affairs, saidyesterday that 2080 Tajiks “who had been studying in foreign medrassahsillegally had been returned to their motherland” but some 400 remain abroaddespite Dushanbe’s directive that they come home (www.avesta.tj/sociaty/10745-v-tadzhikistane-razrabotan-mehanizm-otpravki-studentov-v-zarubezhnye-medrese.html).

Theofficial added that “a mechanism for sending those who want to study atreligious academic institutions abroad has been worked out by [Dushanbe],” andsome 300 people have applied for approval. Are present, Kholikov continued,their applications are “at the stage of consideration.”

Thereturn of Tajiks studying abroad – and some estimates have put their number ashigh as 6,000 – followed Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmon’s appeal toparents in August 2010 that they not send their students to study religionabroad lest “young citizens of the republic become extremists or terrorists.”

Of thosewho have returned to far, the Committee on Religious Affairs said, 1219 did sobecause of this appeal, and of the 400 remaining abroad, its officials added,most had gone abroad entirely legally. Many of those who had been abroad arenow studying at Tajikistan’s Islamic Institute (islamsng.com/tjk/news/3817).

(At the same press conference,Kholikov said his committee had tested 3366 imam-khatybs, of whom 106 failed toget official approval to continue to work in the country’s 58 officiallyregistered religious communities.)
But despite these and otherTajik government efforts to rein in Islam and Islamist movements, experts theresay that the threat of Islamism and even “Talibanization” will grow thereunless the government adopts a more enlightened policy, on the allows fordialogue rather than on repression.

In a post yesterday on the blogof independent Tajik historian Kamol Abdullayev, Galim Faskhudinov of Dushanbesurveys the views of various experts about trends in Islam in Tajikistan (kamolkhon.com/, January 9).

Abdullayaev told Faskhudinov that“the Islamization of society as an alternative to the atheism imposed duringthe period of the Soviet Union is proceeding.” Moreover, he adds, this trend is now “not limited to the traditionallyreligious rural districts but step by step is affecting the more secular urbanpopulation.”

Anotherscholar, orientalist Ilkhom Nadziyev, adds that “the level of trust among thepopulation of Tajikistan to the power structures, as research shows, islow. Many of the residents of thecountry consider that religious leaders are less supported by corruption.” As a result, the latter enjoy more trust.

TokhirSattorov, a Tajik political scientist, adds that “the powers that be at firsttried to respond to the religious feelings of the population but then theystopped and turned back. The impression has been created that they do not havethe [necessary] experience] or even that they are worried by their ownunexpected moves earlier.”

Theexpert community Faskhudinov surveyed “do not exclude the growth of Islamicradicalism in Tajikistan as a result of outside efforts. Farrukh Umarov, a specialist on Islam notesthat one of the most powerful movements in Islam seeks to unite all Muslimsinto a single umma, a desire that inevitably clashes with “national cultures.”

TheIslamists, Abdullayev points out, have already issued calls in Tajikistan todrop national names and secular dress, calls that are often seen as moves to “Talibanization.” That trend “begins when they divide ‘good’Muslims from ‘bad and unfaithful’ ones and insist on imposing a strict moral [Islamic]code on society.”

Repressive measures do little good, Abdullayev insists,and he calls for dialogue first among Muslims and then between them and thestate. Such conversations, he suggests, will support liberal trends and the developmentof civil Islam which will be directed at the strengthening of the state andMuslim society” at one and the same time.

And Abdullayev concludes by pointing out that “theradicalization of Islam often creates problems far from religion, including thegrowth of authoritarianism, corruption, and economic difficulties.” If those are not addressed, he says, then “eventhe complete defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan will not stopthe threat of ‘Talibanization’” in Central Asia.

Window on Eurasia: Putin Needs More Support from Smaller Cities to Ensure First-Round Win, Analyst Says

2012-01-09T12:37:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 9 – In order to ensure victory in the first round of the presidentialelections, Vladimir Putin is going to have to boost reported voter turn-out andsupport for himself in Russia’s smaller cities since his backing is about ashigh as possible in the North Caucasus and his support in the major cities islow and falling, according to a Moscow analyst.

Thatmeans that the Russian prime minister will have to gain the support of somevoters who might otherwise support Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and maymean that he will be able to deploy significant administrative resources inplaces where the Moscow media and democracy activists have fewer resources tomonitor the situation.

An articleon the “Tolkovatel’” website yesterday entitled “Could the Major Cities [ofRussia] Defeat Putin in the Elections?” argues that past participation ratesand current polling numbers suggests that voters in the big cities might beable to prevent a Putin win in the first round unless he picks up additionalsupport in smaller Russian cities (ttolk.ru/?p=9042).

Putin,the unsigned article suggests, can count on a stable 23 to 24 million votesfrom the non-Russian republics, members of the military and security services,and the countryside but that he can could on only an additional 7.5 millionvotes from the major cities, for a total that would give him 44-45 percent inthe first round.

Therecent Duma elections show, the article continues, that there are in fact fourdifferent Russias: the Russia of the North Caucasus and the Middle Volga, theRussia of the big cities, the Russia of the countryside and smaller urbanplaces, and personnel in the Russian military and security services.

Europeanand semi-European Russia includes 40 to 42 percent of the population, a number “Tolkovatel”notes that coincides more or less precisely with the number of Russians who usethe Internet The Russia of the countrysideand small cities is slightly larger, 44-45 percent; the non-Russian borderlandsabout 12 to 15 percent; and the uniformed services two.

Most attentionhas focused on the anti-Putin movement in the first Russia, but it is importantto examine the others as well. TheRussian of the national republics, “Tolkovatel” notes, “is characterized byvery high levels of participation (from 80 percent and higher) and also by thewidespread application of administrative resources.”

“Thereis no reason to doubt that in this ‘Russia,’ Vladimir Putin on the whole willgarner not less than 85 percent (from 95 percent in Chechnya to 80 percent inMordvinia) of the vote. That means hewill receive from this group “not less than nine million votes, a figureobtained by multiplying 12-15 million by 0.8 by 0.85.

The “fourthRussia” includes not only the military and security services but also people inpsychiatric hospitals, prisons and the like. “Its number is small” – about 2-3million – but it always generates 85 to 90 percent support for the powers thatbe. Thus, “the prime minister can count on receiving two million of theirvotes.”

TheRussia of the villages and of small and even mid-sized (up to 250,000) cities tendsto have lower participation rates (60-65 percent) but to give a majority towhoever is in power. Recent polls suggest that about 44 percent of this Russiasupport Putin. Using the same formula, that should yield him 12-13 millionvotes.

GivenPutin’s support from these “three” Russias – and “Tolkovatel” suggests thaturban activists won’t be able to cut into it much – then the big cities “mustnot give Putin more than ten million votes (so that the total number of ballotsfor him will not exceed 34-34.5 million or 48-49 percent).”

Giventhat Putin is unlikely to win over residents in the major cities, “Tolkovatel”asks, “what in this case must ‘the Putin command’ do in order to win in thefirst round?” The possibilities ofnon-Russian regions and Russia in uniform are more or less “exhausted,” and Putinmust increase participation and his backing in rural and small town Russia.

Theprime minister and his supporters can get the votes they need by increasingparticipation by five percent and support for Putin by 11 percent, notimpossible tasks if administrative resources are employed or if Putin reachesout to a part of the electorate that has often voted for the Communists.

Window on Eurasia: Is Moscow about to Launch a New Anti-Moonshine Campaign?

2012-01-09T11:58:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 9 – Moscow is seeking to reduce alcohol consumption by raising priceson vodka and other strong spirits, but many Russians are responding as they havein the past to such measures by consuming moonshine. That is reducing taxrevenue and the profits of vodka producers and prompting discussions about thepossible re-imposition of a ban on home brew.

In anarticle published online today warning that in the next twelve months, “15million Russians will stop drinking vodka and down moonshine instead,”“Versiya” investigative journalist Vadim Saranov says that is sparking concernsabout public health, government revenues, and vodka producer profits (versia.ru/articles/2012/jan/09/apparatnye_igry).

Moonshine(”samogon”) has long been a feature of Russian life, but “the last peak ofsamogon production in Russia occurred at the end of the 1980s and the beginningof the 1990s” following Mikhail Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign. Under Sovietlaw, not only the production of samogon but its sale was illegal and subject tofines.

After1991, Russia dropped the prohibition on the production of samogon, but theamount actually produced declined given the increasing availability of variousforms of relatively inexpensive alcohol in the stores. But now with the new taxes, the balancebetween licensed production and moonshine appears set to change, Saranov says.

VadimDrobiz, director of the Center for Research on Federal and Regional AlcoholMarkets, says that according to his calculatins, “the annual consumption ofsamogon [already] amounts to 20 to 25 million decaliters” and that after thetaxes go into effect, the amount will rise from “the current 25 to 150 milliondecaliters” a year.

Theresearcher adds that “these will be not marginal strata of the population” ashas often been the case with moonshine consumption in the past “but ratheramong well-off citizens. It is likelythat there will even appear clubs of samogon lovers, the demand for alcoholmini-factories grow, and so on.” Indeed, he adds, there may be “a realflowering of moonshine culture.”

Butthere will also be an increase in consumption among poorer strata of theRussian population, Saranov observes, because with the new taxes will mean that“samogon will be cheaper than vodka by almost five times.” Thus, “millions [of less well-off Russians]will shift from quality factory vodka” to samogon.

Thereare many reasons for concern. In an article in theSeptember issue of the Academy’s “Narkologiya,” Saranov says, researchersassessed “the potential toxicity of illegal alcoholic drinks in the Moscowoblast. They found that the poisonsfound in samogon there were roughly comparative to the level of such poisonoussubstances in licensed alcohol.

The journalist says he askedYevgeniya Koshkina, head of the narcology research center to comment on thisunexpected finding. She refused, sayingthat “the information [in the article] was for a narrow circle of specialists”and threatening that she would bring charges of “genocide of the Russian peopleif the article about the value of samogon were to appear in the press.”

As Saranov says, Koshkina’s reaction“of course” is understandable because of the risk that increased production oflower-priced samogon could drive up consumption because “according tostatistics, alcohol mortality is more connected the amount drunk than with itsquality.”

But there is another factor that mayplay a role in Moscow’s reaction to a rising tide of samogon consumption: theinfluence of the owners of the vodka manufacturers. Because of their voice,Saranov suggests, “it is not excluded that the demonization of samagon … willsoon be transformed into a task of state importance.”

At the present time, the productionof samogon is not prohibited by law, although its sale still is if it is deemedto fall under the legal provisions against “illegal entrepreneurship.” But the line between production for personaluse and production for sale is not easy to maintain, and recently there havebeen called to ban samogon production as such.

In May of last year, deputies inKaliningrad proposed doing so in a draft law they submitted to the Duma. Thefederal parliament did not respond, but pressure on it to do so from licensedproducers of alcoholic beverages who see samogon as competition and from agovernment concerned about falling tax revenues is likely to grow.

Whether theRussian government would take this step in a political year when such action mightproduce a backlash and whether Moscow could enforce any such measure if it did –given that the Soviet state was never able to stamp out samogon production –however, remain very much open questions.

Window on Eurasia: North Caucasus Land Disputes Intensify Ethnic Conflicts, Scholar Says

2012-01-09T08:19:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 9 – Land disputes in Daghestan and other parts of the North Caucasus notonly arise because of disputes among the various nationalities but also increasinglyspark new and intensified conflicts, as disagreements over who owns or can usewhat land become invested with ethno-national meaning, according toethnographers and other observers.

At ameeting to discuss these issues last month, Akhmed Yarlykanov, a seniorspecialist at the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, noted that “theethnic factor really plays an important role in the development of landconflicts” in the region, with longtime residents angered by the demands ofarrivals (vestikavkaza.ru/articles/politika/confl/48503.html).

That isespecially the case when the arrivals use land for different purposes than theolder residents did, when the claims of the former do not have a legalfoundation, or when the new arrivals occupy so much land that existingsettlements cannot expand because they have been surrounded.

Yetanother problem with the new arrivals, many of whom come from the mountainsinto the lowlands, Yarlykhanov added, is that they no longer move cattle fromthe lowlands to the highlands during the summer but keep them in the valleysyear round. That creates ecological problems and this too “is another reasonfor conflict.”

InDaghestan in particular, the ethnographer said, “a danger exists” that theseconflicts will take on an “ethno-political” character. He noted that “calls tosolve the problem” by separating the Daghestani lowlands from the highlands bysetting up “territorial formations for the residents of the valleys and so on.”

At the same session, Konstantin Kazenin, the deputy chiefeditor of Russia’s Regnum news agency expanded on Yarlykhanov’s remarks. Kazenin suggested that there are now fourmain problems at the intersection of land and ethnicity in the North Caucasus,problems that will only fester if they are not addressed.

First of all, he pointed to “the absence of a legal marketfor agricultural land.” There has been aban on privatization of such land in all republics of the North Caucasus exceptfor Karachay-Cherkessia since 2002 when Moscow allowed the regions to set thedate for the launch of land privatization.

Second, the lack of legal arrangements by the state isleading “to the appearance of alternative legal systems for the use of land.” In Daghestan, for example, two villagecommunities, “ignoring all the complexities of republic legislation,” simplyconcluded between themselves a land accord, “which was signed in a mosque.”

“In this, there was nothing ideological,” Kazenin suggested;“it was simply an attempt to find a simpler system of land relations. But thespontaneous appearance of such a parallel legal world is a problem for thestate.”

Third, Kazenin continued, there are the still-unresolvedissues arising from the Stalin-era deportations of peoples and the subsequentreturn of them from Central Asia and Siberia. The most neuralgic of thesedisputes involved North Osetia’s Prigorodny district, but in many places thereturn of those deported involves both borders and land use patterns.
And fourth, the Moscow editorsuggested, there is “the problem of the ideologization of the problems by theefforts of local scholars and social forces.” Their activities, he said, make “thepossibility of giving land disputes an ethnic content extremely likely,”something that can be very dangerous.

Indeed, Kazenin argued, “sometimes the occasion [for suchactions by scholars and activists] are problems that otherwise would not exist.”For example, the creation of a new district in one republic put grazing landsnot only in another village but in another political unit altogether. And thatin turn led to “the escalation of the dispute.”

Window on Eurasia: Priestly Dissent on the Rise in Russian Orthodox Church, Journalist Says

2012-01-08T06:12:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 8 – The Moscow Patriarchate over the last year has brought its hierarchyinto closer correspondence with the Russian state, sought to extract ever moreresources from its parishes to support this bureaucracy, and faces growingchallenges from priests who see themselves as part of civil society, accordingto a prominent Russian journalist.
In an article in yesterday’s “Yezhednevnyzhurnal,” Svetlana Solodovnik suggests that one of the most importantdevelopments in the Russian Orthodox Church over the past year was the Synod’sdecision in October to replace the church’s two-level hierarchy with a three-levelone (www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=11664).

Untilnow, there was the patriarchate at the center and bishoprics in sees which “moreor less corresponded with the oblasts and subjects of the Russian Federation.”Now there will be the patriarchate, metropolitans at the Federal subject level,and bishops whose sees will be carved out of the metropolitans’ territories.

AsSolodovnik points out, this will mean that “the bureaucratic apparatus [of theChurch] will grow still more significantly” in the future, not only allowingthe current patriarch to install his people in place and impose greaterdiscipline on the hierarchs but also permitting the metropolitans and bishopsto play more influential roles in their contacts with state officials.

Inorder to support this bureaucracy, the Patriarchate is rapidly increasing thesupport local parishes are required to send upwards. One parish reported thatin 1999, it was asked to pay 30,000 rubles a year to the bishops andPatriarchate; last year, it had to pay 400,000, an increase that many priestswith small active congregations find difficult to meet.

Accordingto Solodovnik, “certain provincial priests are already writing tearful lettersto the Patriarchate with requests “for the sake of our children not to speakabout our half destroyed congregations, lower such taxes for the sake ofChrist,” with some of them adding “we have no more strength! We are in a worsesituation that serfs; we are simply petty slaves.”

In partbecause of these new and despite the desire of Patriarch Kirill to strengthendiscipline, this pressure has sparked dissent within the church, with a number ofpriests promoting the ideas of dethroned bishop Diomid and others again talkingabout hierarchs “who in the years of the communist dictatorship cooperated withthe KGB.”

The newdissidents are speaking out against “the harsh power vertical in the Church,” somethingKirill has worked hard to build by emulating the approach of Vladimir Putin inthe Russian state. The patriarch haseven issued orders that priests must get approval from above before “agitatingfor (or against) any party or candidate in the elections.”

But that directive has provedanything but effective, Solodovnik suggests, at least in part because of theInternet. Until recently, Orthodox mediaoutlets did not discuss “any problems of civil society besides the poordemographic situation, alcoholism and abortion.” (Exceptions like Russkayaliniya and Pravda.ru were the exceptions that prove the rule.

But “nowthe situation has begun to change,” the Moscow journalist says. “ElectronicOrthodox media have become much freer. They have begun to take note of theproblems of life surround them and to speak about general problems, not justthose reflecting the corporate interests of the state.”

Articlesand commentaries on these sites often reflect positions at odds not only withthe political establishment but also with the Patriarchal hierarchy. “Youngpriests who feel themselves part of civil society have appeared and are writingabout politics from civic positions and not because they belong to thepoliticized wing of the Orthodox establishment.”

One suchpriest, Father Dmitry Sverdlov not only served as an election observer butdescribed the falsifications which took place in a report for “Pravoslavie imir” (www.pravmir.ru/vybory-kak-eto-bylo-na-samom-dele-chast-1/).Other priests have openly discussed and supported the popular demonstrationsacross the Russian Federation over the past month.

Suchdevelopments, Solodovnik says, that “Orthodox society is step by step becomingpart of the ‘greater’ civil society.” So far, however, she continues, thePatriarchate has sought to block this trend rather than join it because for thehierarchy, “a partnership with the powers is much more important than partnershipwith civil society or put simply with ordinary people.”

Window on Eurasia: Replacing a ‘Bad’ Tsar with a ‘Good’ One By Itself Won’t Save Russia, Shteppa Says

2012-01-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 7 – The December protests highlighted not only the gulf between Russia’surban population with its European values and the country’s longstanding imperialtraditions “based on lifetime power for the tsar or general secretary” but alsothe failure of the protesters to recognize that simply replacing a bad tsarwith a good one won’t same Russia.

Thisgulf has received enormous attention in the Russian media with many hoping thatthe values of the former will overwhelm the latter, but the failure of theprotesters to recognize that simply electing a good president in place of a badone will not by itself prevent a return of the imperial tradition.

But thatfailure, what may happen if it is not overcome and what could to be done toensure that it will are the subject ofan intriguing essay by Russian regional affairs analyst Vadim Shteppa entitled “AnInterregnum or a Federation?” carried yesterday on the “Russky zhurnal” portal(www.russ.ru/Mirovaya-povestka/Mezhducarstvie-ili-federaciya).

“The main distinguishing characteristic of theDecember meetings,” he suggests, was “the sharp contrast between the new ‘urbanclass’” which defines itself in terms of its commitment European values and the imperial tradition of Russianstatehood which is based on lifetime power for the tsar or general secretary.”

Despitethe existence of decorative monarchies in many European states, he continues, “realpower there belongs to regularly replaced governments, but present-day Russiain contrast is again being drawn to autocracy.” Indeed, what is taking placenow recalls what occurred in 1990-91, something that those who want a liberalRussia should be reflecting upon.

Twentyyears ago in Moscow, Shteppa points out, “equally massive demonstrations tookplace” largely consisting of people who assumed that having done away with “theSoviet one-party system,” Russia would “return to the civilized world. But ‘thereturn’ turned out to be entirely different and in places extremely grotesque.”

Inpost-Soviet Russia, a “synthesis of the Soviet and the monarchical” occurred “withtsarist authority of the president, the tricolor, subordinated to the melody ofthe Bolshevik hymn, and religious leaders playing ever more the role of theformer ‘ideological departments’” of Soviet times.

Thecurrent demonstrators appear to be laboring under some similar misconceptions,Shteppa continues. “Many of them now aremuch more concerned about the looming presidential elections,” apparentlyhoping that “the arrival of a good tsar in place of a ‘bad’ one allow Russia toprevent the return of authoritarianism as indeed happened after 1991.

Yetanother failure of the demonstrators, he says, is that they failed to take noteof protests outside the ring road or dismissed them because of their smallsize. But there were many meetings andtheir relatively small size reflects “one of the main consequences of imperialhyper-centralism when many active and educated people leave their own regionsfor Moscow.”

(Moreover,Shteppa points out, many of the participants in the Moscow protests were notnative Muscovites but rather precisely such active and educated citizens fromregions outside of the capital.)

Had theMuscovites taken notice, they would have seen that among the demonstrators inother cities on December 10 and 24 were people carrying “regional flags,including those of Siberia, Ingermanland, Karelia and Kaliningrad (For pictures,see kaliningrad-eu-russian.blogspot.com/2011/12/blog-post_18.html).

This current failure by the Moscow opposition to takenote of these protests recalls that of many in the Soviet capital 20 years ago “whodid not want to notice the Baltic, Belarusian and Ukrainian flags.” This also suggeststhat what is happening now is “the restoration of a certain liberal ‘vertical’which of course will be better than the authoritarian one, but will entail thevery same centralization” and have lead to a repetition of the cycle.

Andthat is the case, the regional affairs writer argues, even though many Russianswill remember “how the liberal Yeltsin ‘vertical’ was converted into theauthoritarian Putin one.” To allow Russia to escape from “’an eternal return ofempire,” Russia needs to focus on “the regionalist transformation of thecountry.”

“In other words,” Shteppa says, “instead of the draftingof a single program ‘for all right now,’ people should concentrate on the resolutionof the problems of their own regions” through the direct election of governorsand mayors, an end to “financial hyper-centralism,” “the free registration ofregional parties” and the like.

Unfortunately, many in Moscow view such calls as thefirst step toward “separatism,” out of a conviction that “normal multi-partydemocracy in various regions will ‘split the country.’” That is absurd as European experience shows –indeed, there strong regional democracy helps preserve existing borders,Shteppa insists -- but it is typical of imperialist thinking.

If Russia had “normal regional self-administration,”there would be no risk of the country falling apart as “ties among the regionsare much stronger than was the case in the USSR.” But if the new oppositionwants freedom only for its federal parties, then “Siberians and Kaliningradersmight ask: why do they need the continuation of this colonial power.

Contrary to what many in Moscow understand, “the greaterthe imperial quality [of the state], the greater will be separatist attitudes.”But if the regions “can make use of their own resources and taxes, freelychoose their heads and parliaments, then the question as to who will win in theMarch elections will completely lose its imperial ‘fatefulness.’”

Window on Eurasia: Barak Obama Wins ‘Poetic Glory’ in Udmurtia

2012-01-07T11:32:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 7 – The Udurt-language literary journal “Invozho” has published atranslation of a poem Barak Obama wrote when he was a student, thus winning theUS president “poetic glory” in that Finno-Ugric republic in the Middle Volgaregion.

PeterZakharov, the editor in chief of that journal, has translated three of Obama’syouthful poems. One of the poems appears in the current issue of “Invozho,” andthe other two are slated to appear in the next. Zakharov says he did so becausethe US president is “a symbol of the new” (mariuver.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/obama-ud/).

It turnsout, the editor continues, that while few have taken notice of Obama’s poetryin the United States or elsewhere, the current president appears to have hadthe makings in his younger years of “a not bad poet” if he had chosen to applyhimself in that area of creativity. And he said that the Udmurt translations ofObama’s poetry were already attracting attention.

“Friendsfrom Finland,” Zakharov said, “were surprised by this brave experience andUkrainian colleagues asked that they be sent the latest number of “Inovozho.”The Udmurt editor adds that he hopes to find and translate more such poems andnot only by Obama but by other world leaders past and present.

Window on Eurasia: Separatist Attitudes on the Rise in Western Kazakhstan, Specialist Says

2012-01-06T17:25:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 6 – The wave of violence in Zhanaozen in Western Kazakhstan over thelast few weeks that has cost at least 16 lives has also led to theintensification of separatist attitudes among the population there, althoughthere is little chance that this region will be able to split away fromKazakhstan anytime soon, according to a specialist on the area.

MaratShibutov, the Kazakhstan representative of the Association of Cross-BorderCooperation, says that separatist feelings have been sparked less by theauthoritarian response of Astana than by the failure of the central Kazakhstangovernment to “consider the interests of regional elites” (www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1485788.html).

He toldthe Regnum news agency today that there were always separatist feelings amongpeople in the region for “one simple reason: the city of Astana at the presenttime is a parasite” which takes far more resources from the regions – and Mangistauoblast is a donor – than it gives back.

That, “togetherwith the isolated situation of the region, the dominance of a single family[from elsewhere in official positions], and the insignificant number ofnon-Kazakhs” means that “separatist attitudes will always be here and can evenstrengthen” if the central authorities continue to treat problems there merelyas ones of control.

Buthowever strong such attitudes become, Shibutov argues, there are four reasonsfor thinking the separatists will never achieve their goal. First, the regiondoes not have enough water on its own; second, it doesn’t produce enough foodto feed its people; third, its oil is exported through other regions; andfifth, the region is “one of the smallest” in Kazakhstan.

Thosefactors may not be enough to prevent more problems, he says, especially becauseoil production in the region is declining and reserves may even run outsometime in the next decade and because Astana appears to believe that onlypeople from outside the region can be counted on to be loyal.

What thecentral Kazakhstan authorities should be doing, Shibutov insists, is promotinglocal people into positions of power in the region itself and including more ofthem in the central bureaucracies of the Kazakhstan state. But so far, Astana shows little interest indoing either, preferring instead to treat a political challenge as a lawenforcement matter.

Window on Eurasia: Half of Daghestan’s Youth Want Salafi-Style Shariat State, Survey Finds

2012-01-06T17:24:00.002-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 6 – Almost “every second” Daghestani between the ages of 14 and 18 wantto see the establishment of shariat law in that North Caucasus republic, with mostof those favoring not simply a shariat court system but shariat governance ofall aspects of life, according to recent polls there.

Thatfinding, Ummanews.com reported yesterday, surprised even the expert communityin what is the most Islamic republic in the Russian Federation, and it suggeststhat Moscow faces an uphill and possibly unwinnable fight in the future toovercome popular resistance to Russian control (ummanews.com/news/last-news/4926-2012-01-05-13-38-47.html).

RuslanGereyev, who heads the monitoring group on youth problems in Daghestan, toldthe Muslim news service that in many parts of the republic, people of all agestake their disputes and report crimes not to the government courts but ratherto shariat courts in the mosques, and that the latter courts hand outsentences, including executions, which enjoy popular support.

Manyyoung people and not just their elders as some have suggested, he continued, “openlydeclare that they live not in an imagined ‘subject of the Russian Federation’but on the territory of the Emirate of the Caucasus,” the anti-Russian Islamistmovement that Moscow has outlawed but been unable to destroy.

Gereyevmakes three additional points, all of which suggest that Moscow’s problems withIslamic resistance in Daghestan and the North Caucasus more generally will onlygrow over time. First, many of the youthful supporters of Salafi-style shariathave raised enough money to be able to study abroad and return to Daghestanarmed with Islamist ideas.

Second,he argues that one of the best recruiters for this movement is none other thanRamzan Kadyrov whose authoritarian Russian loyalist regime in Chechnya offendsmany young people in neighboring republics and makes them more responsive tothe appeals of Salafi or “pure” Islam than they would otherwise be.

Andthird, Gereyev says, the failure of secular officials to provide programs andmessages to young people means that an ideological “vacuum” has been createdamong the young, a vacuum that the supporters of Salafi-style shariat are onlytoo ready and able to fill, actions that have made Daghestan a major center of “pureIslam in the Caucasus.”

Window on Eurasia: One Russian Resident in 25 Didn’t Declare a Nationality in 2010 Census

2012-01-06T17:24:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 6 – One Russian resident in every 25 did not declare membership in oneor another nationality during the course of the 2010 census, an unprecedentedfigure that reflects both the declining importance of such identificationsamong many and the desire of some migrants not to call attention to theirethnic background.

Accordingto an analysis of the census reports published on the Islamrf.ru site, theshare of residents who did not declare membership in one nationality was fourpercent of the total or 5.6 million people, up from 1 percent or 1.5 million in2002. Moreover, 4.1 million did not indicate their citizenship (www.islamrf.ru/news/analytics/politics/19710/).

Althoughthe website suggested that more research was needed on this group, but it isappears that at least in part it includes “migrants, who have obtained Russiancitizenship and who are trying not to advertise their ethnic groups.” As such,it may be nothing more than one “variant” of a path to assimilation.

This isonly one of the findings, the website said, that the detailed results of thecensus suggest for the non-Russian portion of the population living in theMiddle Volga, in the republics of the North Caucasus, and in other parts of theRussian Federation as well.

In theMiddle Volga, the two largest Turkic Muslim nations, the Tatars and theBashkirs, continued to decline in overall numbers, but the census providedother details which may ultimately prove more significant both for the currentrelations between these groups and the Russians and for the evolution of theseIdel-Ural nations in the future.

Thenumber of Tatars fell from 5.55 million in 2002 to 5.31 million in 2010, thefirst such intercensal decline of this nationality in the history of tsarist,Soviet and post-Soviet censuses. More immediately significant, the number ofTatars within the Republic of Tatarstan ceased to grow as rapidly as it had,although their percentage in the population rose slightly.

Thisreflects, IslamRF.ru suggested, that “the return of Tatars” from other parts ofthe former Soviet space had declined, that fertility rates have fallen, andthat the assimilation of younger people raised in mixed marriages to theRussian nationality, especially in industrial centers, has continued toincrease.

TheBashirs saw their numbers decline slightly, from 1.221 million to 1.172 millionbetween the last two censuses, but they maintained their lead over the Tatrs,who increased only very slightly, and Ufa’s recent statements suggests thatthere is little likelihood that the Tatar language and Tatar identity will makeinroads anytime soon.

Accordingto IslamRF.ru, the explanation for the failure of the two larger Turkicnationalities in that region to grow or grow more quickly lies in the refusalof officials in Kazan and Ufa to support Jadidist traditions and hence providea bulwark against the expansion of Russian cultural influence in the growingurban areas.

In theNorth Caucasus, the indigenous nationalities showed a continuing tendency togrow, although at slightly different rates, and that may affect theethno-political balance in multi-ethnic republics like Daghestan. But howeverthat may be, “the North Caucasus Federal District has been becoming ever morenon-Russian.”

Elsewherein the Russian Federation, the census showed that earlier trends for the assimilationof Slavic groups like the Ukrainians and small indigenous ethnic communitiescontinued. But within that pattern, there were some important changes thatactivists and scholars are beginning to point out.

In acomment to Kavkaz-Uzel.ru today, Eldar Idrisov, head of the youth center of theNogay Cultural Center in Astrakhan, noted that the number of Nogays there hadmore than doubled between 2002 and 2010, from 3019 to 7589, a reflection hesaid of increasing ethnic self-identification rather than migration or higherfertility rates alone.

Earlier,in tsarist and Soviet times, the Turkic Nogays were subject to intenseTatarization, but since 1991, they have been able to focus on their ownspecific ethnic identity as a result of groups like Idrisov’s and theappearance of Nogay-language radio and television (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/198834/).

Thatgrowth in ethnic self-awareness among the Nogays, of whom there are more than103,000 now in the Russian Federation, could affect the greater North Caucasus,changing the ethnic balance and possibly leading to new calls, heard at ameeting in the Nogay district of Daghestan in June 2011 for the formation of asingle Nogay Republic.

Such arepublic would have to be carved out of numerous non-Russian republics as wellas predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays. And even if such plans are never realized,they will certainly trigger new ethno-territorial disputes in a region thatremains the most unstable in the country.

Window on Eurasia: Georgia’s Administrative Code Opens the Door to Political Abuse, Human Rights Watch Says

2012-01-05T16:33:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 5 – The Georgian government maintains the appearance of rule of law by exploitingan increasingly defective administrative law code to deny the citizens of thatcountry their basic due process rights, according to a detailed study by theinternational watchdog group Human Rights Watch.

In a41-page report released yesterday, the organization in the words of its author Giorgi Gogia, a senior researcherthere , “documents howGeorgia’s Code of Administrative Offenses, which governs misdemeanors, lacksfull due process and fair trial rights for those accused of offenses under thecode” (The full text is at www.hrw.org/reports/2012/01/04/administrative-error).

Moreover, the reportspecifies that the code, dating from Soviet times, “provides for prisonsentences of up to 90 days for violations, but does not require police toinform defendants of their rights promptly or to provide reasons for theirdetention. Detainees often are not allowed to contact their families.”

And it concludes on the basis ofnumerous interviews that “lawyers have difficulty finding detainees in custody.Trials are often perfunctory. Detainees often serve their sentences infacilities that were not intended for stays longer than 72 hours and where conditionsdo not meet international standards.”

The international human rightsgroup decided to study the Georgia administrative code “after the dispersal ofa protest on the night of May 26 of last year. At that time, about 150 peoplewere detained, many of whom were not allowed to call their families” because thecode does not call for this (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/198807/).

According to Kahka Andzhanaparidze, deputy chairman of theGeorgian parliamentary committee on legal affairs, “a majority” of Georgiansagree with the conclusion of the report and are pressing for the adoption of anentirely new code, something officials have committed themselves to doing buthave not yet completed.

Gogia, the author of the report, says that “it’s in Georgia’sown interests to address the administrative offenses code now” because “if itdoesn’t, “recent rulings of the European Court for Human Rights suggest thatStrasbourg could find “Georgia in violation of the European Convention,” a stepthat would undercut Tbilisi’s efforts to integrate with the West.

“People who are arrested shouldn’t have to wait for [such] areform process to be finished to have their rights respected,” he continues, addingthat while “it is encouraging that the authorities are reforming the outdatedcode … more urgent steps are needed to address the gaps in the law,” lest thepowers that be use the code “to lock up” their opponents.

What makes the report especially compelling is that itsconclusions reflect interviews with lawyers who “have defended dozens ofadministrative detainees, six … who served administrative prison sentences, two… fined by the courts …and senior government officials … nearly all of [them] …detained” because of their “relation to opposition political protests.”

Thismisuse of law for political purposes undermines Georgia’s oft-repeatedcommitment to democracy and the rule of law, and consequently, those whosupport those values can only hope that Andzhaparidze is right that theparliament will come up with a new code “in which many questions will beregulated in a new way.”

Window on Eurasia: Navalny’s Nationality ‘Policy’ Potentially Dangerous, Gontmakher Says

2012-01-04T18:09:00.001-08:00

Window on Eurasia: Navalny’s Nationality ‘Policy’Potentially Dangerous, Gontmakher Says

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 4 – Aleksey Navalny, who hasemerged as a leading opposition figure and possible future candidate, has voicedhis support for views on the relations between ethnic Russians and theincreasing fraction of non-Russians that could put Russia’s progress towarddemocracy and the rule of law at risk, according to a leading Moscow writer.

Writing in his blog today, YevgenyGontmakher, a leader of the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Development and afrequent commentator on Russia’s domestic affairs, notes that on many issuesNavalny remains “a mystery” not so much in terms of biography but rather withregard to his political ideas (echo.msk.ru/blog/gontmaher/845502-echo/).

Nowhereis that more the case than Navalny’s position on ethnic relations, Gontmakhersays, but the prominent lawyer and anti-corruption fighter has said some thingsand indicated that he subscribes to the ideas of others that should give pause notonly his supporters but even Navalny himself.

Inrecent remarks, Navalny indicated that he “supports the idea of the formation[in Russia] of ‘a national state’ as an alternative to ‘constructing out ofRussia a 19^th century-style empire.” Given Russia’s formationthrough conquest and its formal commitment to federalism, it is worth asking,Gontmakher suggests, “what concretely he has in mind?”

Is hecondemning “attempts at restoring an empire? “Attempts at restoring (in one formor another) of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union?” Is he showing “nostalgiafor imperial times which is still characteristic for a significant part of[Russians]? Or does something imperial threaten us in the arrangements ofcontemporary Russia?”

“Precise answers to such questions,”Gontmakher insists, “are extremely important,” but what Navalny has said so farprovides few of them.

Gontamkhernotes that Wikipedia defines a nation state as “a constitutional-legal type ofstate, which means that the latter is a form of the self-determination andorganization of this or that nation on a defined sovereign territory andexpresses the will of this nation.” In its ideal form, “all the citizens ofthis state have a common language, culture and values.”

In Europe today, “there are alarge number of typical national states” which fall within this definition.That is because, the Moscow commentator says, “there is an ethnos which firstof all forms the overwhelming majority of the population and second lives onits own territory from time immemorial,” even if there are some nationalminorities.

Russia, however, does notcorrespond to these “two criteria” primarily “because of the second point. “Tatars and Bashkirs, Chuvash and Mordvins,Chechens and Ingushes, Yakuts and Chukchis live on territories in which not solong ago there were no ethnic Russians at all.” Consequently, the 1993Constitution defined the country as a federation.

“It is possible,” Gontmakhersays, “that it was a mistake to split the truly ethnic Russian (Slavic) landsinto numerous oblasts and krays, and this is a subject for discussion about thefuture arrangement” of the country. “But the presence of national republics anddistricts is the only chance to escape from the imperial arrangement of Russia.”

In this regard, the Moscowsocial scientist continues, the experience of Great Britain is instructive. Thatcountry “freed itself from the imperial path not only by withdrawing fromcolonies but also by the formation on the islands which remained to it of areal federation based on ethnicity (England, Scotland, Wales and NorthernIreland).”

Gontmakher says that recently asenior British foreign ministry officialcorrected him when he spoke of the people of the United Kingdom as “Englishmen.”The diplomat said that he should call them “Britons” instead.

For Russia, other parts of thedefinition of a nation state are relevant. As far as a common language, “thereis no problem,” Gontmakher suggests, because “the Russian language is justlythe only state language throughout its territory.” But with regard to cultureand values, the situation is different, with many groups having their ownunique positions.

According to Navalny, “thesource of power” in Russia and other countries “must be ‘the nation, the citizensof the country and not an elite stratum” seeking global domination. “But aboutwhat nation should we be speaking” in the case of the Russian Federation?Clearly even those members of ethnic minorities are not going to definethemselves as ethnic Russians.

They may be willing to definethemselves as “Rossiyane,” a non-ethnic term, Gontmakher says, but Navalny hassaid he supports the NAROD group’s opposition to that term as a slight onethnic Russians. But such an attitude, Gontmakher says, “is thedirect path tothe splitting up of Russia into ethnic units,” to “a tragedy” like that ofYugoslavia in which “the ethnic Russians would play the role of Serbs.”

By supporting NAROD’s views,Navalny appears to place his faith in the exceptionalism of the ethnicRussians, especially when he specifies that “the Russian people deserves theright to live under democracy.” That isbeyond doubt, but why doesn’t he say anyting about “the remaining 20 percent ofthe population of Russia which belongs to the non-Russians?”

Such silence by Navalny oranyone else, Gontmakher concludes, suggests that “either the others do notdeserve this (and how then could there be a democracy of the European type?) orthat Russians deserve this as ‘a special case,’ something that is a verydangerous idea in a multi-national country.”

The Moscow commentator continuesby saying that he agrees with Navalny that “there are problems and not smallones in interethnic relations in Russia” and that this “concerns of course theethnic Russians as well.” That needs to be said, but if Navalny and others wanta European style democracy in Russia, they need to be inclusive not exclusive.

Failure to do so, especially bythose who hope to be leaders of the Russian Federation, can only point to disastersin the future.

Window on Eurasia: Immigration to Moscow Up but Crimes by Guest Workers Down

2012-01-04T18:07:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 4 – Despite a reduction in the quota for those who want to come toMoscow, the number of guest workers in the Russian capital rose by five percentin 2011, a Moscow expert says, but the number of crimes committed by this groupfell by almost a third from the year before.

Thatdecline, Elena Tyuryuknova, the director of the Moscow Center for MigrationResearch, says, does mark “a turning point” in the often tense relationsbetween Moscow natives and predominantly non-Russian guest workers, but itsuggests that relations between these two groups are improving (www.rosbalt.ru/moscow/2012/01/04/929575.html).

The Moscow expert told Rosbalt thatshe believes government efforts flowing from the draft concept of a statemigration policy – the government is now considering its approval -- haveplayed a major role undercutting Russian nationalists who often blameimmigrants for crime and those non-Russian migrants who sometimes turn toextremist actions as a result.

Tyuryukanova says that the draftconcept “recommends differentiating the levels of administration of labormigration” rather than relying on quotas alone as has been “the singleregulator in the past. What is particularlyimportant, she continues, is that it calls for the elimination of“administrative levers” and hence “arbitrary behavior by officials.”

In addition, she says, the conceptcalls for supporting permanent rather than temporary migration and, while opposingillegal migration, urges “the legalization of those migrants which have livedin Russia for a long time, are fully integrated, but for one reason or anotherhave not yet been able to obtain legal status.”

Another expert with whom Rosbalt’sDarya Mironova spoke, Nikita Mkrtchyan of the Moscow Institute of Demography ofthe Higher School of Economics, suggested that despite the progressTyuryukanova speaks of, the main problem is that “legal migrants are lessprofitable [for business and the state] than are illegal ones.”

Only if employers are punished forusing illegal immigrants can Russia or any other country with large immigrantpopulations hope to improve the situation, Mkrtchyan suggests. Russianofficials, like Olga Kirillova of the Federal Migration Service, say that iswhat they are doing, but the number of cases they cite is still too small tomake a difference.

Last year, Kirillova says, heradministration levied fines of 344 million rubles (11 million US dollars) andforced violators from 2010 to pay an additional 92 million rubles (3 million USdollars), fines that may have affected some individual employers but hardly theeconomy as a whole.

But pressure to do something aboutillegal immigrants may fall if the current decline in the number of crimescommitted by guest workers legal and illegal continues to fall. During thefirst eleven months of 2011, Moscow gastarbeiters committed 8,235 crimes of alltimes, 27.4 percent fewer than over the same period in 2010.

Immigrants to the Russian capitalalso were victims of crime less often in 2011 than in 2010. Some 3500 of themwere victis in 2011, a figure 27 percent less than a year earlier, Rosbaltreported. Both these figures call into question the often emotional charges ofgroups like the Movement Against Illegal Immigration.

Some of this decline, Russianexperts say, reflects official support for the inclusion of guest workers inneighborhood-watch type organizations, but perhaps more of it, they suggest,has come because both Russian and donor countries have worked harder to ensurethat migrants learn Russian, something that makes their interaction with Moscownatives far less troubled.

But another new Moscow policy mayalso be playing a role: all guest workers are now being fingerprinted, arequirement that may make police work easier and at the very least sends amessage to migrants that they will be caught if they violate the law or evenbehave in ways Muscovites don’t like.

Window on Eurasia: New Media, Print and Electronic, Aid Moscow Demonstrations

2012-01-03T15:12:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 3 – Like Russia’s most important human rights organizations, the“traditional opposition mass media” have not proved to be “the most important resourcesof information and mobilization” behind the new wave of demonstrations inMoscow, according to two leading Moscow analysts.

Instead,Andrey Soldatov and Irina Borogan of Agentura.ru wrote in “Yezhednevny zhurnal”last week, the place of these outlets have been by “urban publications directedat the middle class” with news about future meetins appearing on the site ofthe capital journal “Bolshoy gorod” and the entertainment publication “Afisha”(www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=11652).

Facebook,the two experts said, “played its role” in the organization of the meetings aswell, registering participants and organizing the agenda of speakers, butcontrary to expectations, after the meetings, “no constantly active protestgroup on Facebook was created” and hence the kind of discussions familiar fromthe past did not take place.

This shift in the kind of mediaoutlets on which protesters are now relying, Soldatov and Borogan added, hadanother and possibly more important effect: It means that these journals “beganto call active citizens to get involved with small tasks” such as helpingprisoners, invalids and orphans rather than focusing on larger politicalquestions.

The situation with the regime issimilar – the Putin system has not allowed any genuine place for discussion onserious issues to emerge – and “in these conditions,” the two analystssuggested, “the process of the appearance of politicians from the people andthe establishment of new parties could take several years.”

While Soldatov and Borogan downplaythe role of “Ekho Moskvy” as an organizer – they acknowledge its importance asa source of reliable reporting on the demonstratins – that radio station’sInternet editor today reported on the unprecedented spike in visits to thestation’s blogs (echo.msk.ru/blog/mp_echo/845344-echo/).

Thenumber of visits to Ekho Moskvy’s various websites jumped from 60.9 million inNovember 2011, already the highest number up to that point, to 113 million inDecember, almost twice as many. Thenumber of unique visitors rose from 4.7 million to 6.5 million of the sameperiod. And the number of visits to its blogs rose from 15.9 million to 34.6million.

Quiteobviously, as Muscovites became more involved in political action, they turnedto the Internet to keep track of what was taking place, a reflection of theincreasing reliance of those in the Russian capital on real time news sourceswhich have a far lower marginal cost than do traditional print media outlets.

But another aspect of theinterrelationship of the media and the demonstrations concerns the existence ofan information gap between Moscow and the rest of the country, another gulfthat the powers that be clearly hope to use to block challenges to theirpositions but one that some among the opposition believe they now must work toovercome.

In an essay on the Kasparov.ru sitetoday, Nikolay Rozov, a senior scholar the Siberian Division of the RussianAcademy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, says that Muscovites in general and theprotesters in particular need to understand that “not everyone in the remainderof Russia considers them compatriots (www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=4F02E866B9EF9).

Theevents of the last month indicate, Rozov says, that Moscow “in a civic andpolitical plane has woken up sooner and advanced much further than have theprovinces.” And that in turn means that the opposition if it hopes to grow mustreduce the gap “in political and civic self-consciousness between residents ofthe capital and those in the provinces.”

Thatgoal can be achieved and the desired political results obtained as well, hesuggests, if Muscovites devote the necessary effort to providing “a broadaccess as possible to the provinces to the open space of information andcommunications which [Muscovites] already have access to.”

Obviously,Internet outlets maintained in Moscow can play a role in this, Rozov says, but“one must not overrate the level of Internet access in the provinces.” Instead,Muscovites need to compile collections of materials and form alliances withlocal groups of journalists and activists who can then republish them locally.

A placeto start is to work with representatives of the regions in Moscow as studentsor workers, Rozov argues, but Muscovites who support the demonstrations canalso act as if their city is “a microcosm of Russia.” In either case, they needto recognize that “virtual contacts” with the provinces are “insufficient.”They need to meet “off line as well.”

In providing information to provincial groups, theNovosibirsk scholar says, Muscovites must take steps to defend “localpublications and activists from the inevitable pressure on them by the powersand the special services.” Publicity isa key weapon, but those who spread information must know that they will have atleast that defense from the Muscovites.

As more open politics returns to the Russian Federation,some regions are already taking steps on their own. The Siberian outletSibirnet.ru has launched a program called “the Battle of the Cities” toovercome existing news patterns in which people in one place know about it andMoscow but less about neighboring locales (sibirnet.ru/bitvagorodov).

And someregional portals, such as Irkutsk’s Babr.ru, are taking additional steps,including opening branches in various cities – in Babr.ru’s case in Angarsk (angarsk.babr.ru),Chuna (chuna.babr.ru)and Elantsov and Olkhon (olhon.babr.ru).These will report local events as well as regional and national ones on thebasis of Babr.ru’s tape.

Window on Eurasia: Existence of ‘Four [Differeent] Russias’ Complicates Political Struggle, Moscow Analyst Says

2012-01-02T16:22:00.001-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 2 – Recent public demonstrations have called attention to “the verticaldivision” between the powers and the people of the Russian Federation, butaccording to a leading Moscow analyst, an equally important division for boththose in power and those who oppose them may be the existence of “fourRussias,” each very different from the others.

In anarticle in last Friday’s “Vedomosti,” Natalya Zubarevich, the director ofregional programs at Moscow’s Independent Institute of Social Policy, describeseach of these Russias and argues that relations with and among them will play acritical role in political outcomes in the coming year (www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/news/1467059/chetyre_rossii).

The “first Russia” is “a country of large cities.” Itincludes the 12 Russian cities with a million residents or more and two justunder that figure, Perm and Krasnoyarsk. In these 14 live 21 percent of the population – or one in every five.And only in five of them – Ufa, Perm, Omsk, Chelyabinsk, and Volgograd – doSoviet-era industrial enterprises still dominate.

In the others, “a post-industrial transformation” hasoccurred, with this trend somewhat more pronounced in Yekaterinburg,Novosibirsk, and Rostov and somewhat less in the others. As a result, professionals, entrepreneurs,and white collar employees set the weather in this “first Russia.”

Moreover, over the last decade, consumption patterns inall of these cities have approached those of Moscow even though incomes stilllag in many of them. Consequently, it is now appropriate to speech of theemergence of a middle class and to note that this group forms an ever-growingfraction of the population.

This group of cities is a magnete for migrants with “up to80 percent” of all migration consisting of flows to and among them. And if one adds to this Russia the populationof other cities with more than 500,000, then this “Russia” includes 36 percentof the country’s population, some 51 million people.

It is in this Russia that the 35 million domestic usersof the Internet and those who want a more open society are concentrated. Butwhat is most important, Zubarevich argues, is that it is in “the first Russia”that “protest energy arose without being stimulated by a crisis: instead of thereflexes of homo economicus have worked the mechanisms of moral alientation.”

Thus, she writes, “in the case of a new crisis, theimpact on the educated urban stratum will be strong, but mobility and a higherlevel of competitiveness of the residents of major cities will permit them morequickly to adapt to an unfavorable situation.”

The “second Russia” consists of the mid-sized industrialcities of from 20,000 to 500,000 or even 700,000 in the case of Tol’yati. “Far from all mid-sized cities have preservedan industrial specialization in the post-Soviet years,” Zubarevich notes, “butits spirit all the same is strong as is the Soviet way of life of thepopulation.”

Bllue collar and government employees of relatively lowqualification, Zubarevich says, dominate the socio-economic scene. About 25percent of all Russians live in this Russia, an in its “most unstable part,”the company towns, about 10 percent of the total. (Official figures on the number of “mono-cities”are exaggerated, she explains.)

If a new crisis occurs, this “Russia” will experience “thegreatest shock,” with industrial production falling faster than other brancheswhile “the mobility and competitiveness of the population [would be relatively]small.” If the federal budget can maintain subsidies, the regime can controlthe situation, but if not, then there could be a wave of populist protests.

Many of the factories in this “second Russia” should havebeen closed long ago, Zubarevich says, because of low productivity, “but thiswas not done in the [earlier] crisis, and most probably, it will not be done inthe case of another shock. “As 2009showed, the vlasti recognize the danger of a protest by ‘the second Russia’ andthey know how to prevent it.”

The “third Russia,” in which 38 percent of all Russianslive, is “the enormous periphery of the country and consisting of residents ofvillages, settlements, and small cities.” It is, Zubarevich says, linked to “theland” and remains “outside of politics because the calendar of agriculturalwork does not depend on a change of the powers that be.”

Consequently,its “protest potential” is “minimal” even if pensions and pay are delayed, theMoscow expert says.

Finally, she says, there is a “fourth Russia,” consistingof the republics of the North Caucasus and the south of Siberia (Tyva andAltay). Amounting to six percent ofRussia’s population, this Russia has some cities but “almost no industrialones.” And “the agricultural population continues to grow and is still young,although young people are moving to the cities.”

What is important for this Russia as far as Moscow is concernedare stable flows of federal assistance and investment from the federal budget,something Vladimir Putin has pledged to do despite opposition. But the amount of money involved is muchsmaller than many believe, Zubarevich says.

She points out that “the amount of transfer payments[from Moscow] to the republics of the North Caucasus in 2010 consisted of 160billion rubles, 10.7 percent of all transfers to the regions from the federalbudget, and with Tyva and Altay added 12 percent.” The amount the federal budget gave to Moscowfor transportation problems in 2012 was twice as much.

It is clear, Zubarevich concludes, that “sooner or later,‘the first Russia’ will overwhelm” the others and determine political outcomes.What is not certain and what she does not say in this article is whether thiswill happen in 2012 – or whether operating on the others, Vladimir Putin willbe able to return to the Kremlin.

Window on Eurasia: Russia Will Not Survive if Putin Returns to Power, Kazan Analyst Warns

2012-01-02T13:32:00.000-08:00

Paul Goble

Staunton,January 2 – The Russian Federation will not survive if Vladimir Putin is ableto return to the presidency through falsified elections, and Russia’s Muslims --and especially the leaders of the country’s Muslim republics -- have a moralresponsibility to struggle with the evil he and his system represent, accordingto a leading Kazan analyst.

In thecurrent issue of the Tatarstan weekly, “Zvezda Povolzhya,” Zulfiya Kadir arguesthat if Russia has Putin as its president again, then the country has “no future”because it will fall ever further behind the continuations of a moderninterconnected world and find itself “degraded”into a “Stalinist” past.

Demonstrationsby Russia’s population in December against Putin and his system, Kadir writes,were “an SOS” to the international community which “for a long time already hashad enough with Munich speeches [like the ones Putin has delivered and which thatcommunity believe show that Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev who banged hisshow at the UN was a more adequate” man.

Moreover,she continues, these world leaders are furious at Putin for his use of gas andoil as political weapons, for his attempts at “the restoration of the socialistcamp,” and for his “small victorious wars in Georgia’s regions.” These leaders “do not behave that way in theera of globalization,” and they do not accept Putin’s doing so either.

“If[citizens of the Russian Federation] do not want that [their country] again tobe declared ‘the evil empire,’ and if [they] don’t want a new wave of knights who‘will struggle with this evil’ and declare a crusade against this bastion oftotalitarianism,” Kadir argues, then they “must not allow Putin to come topower again.”

In heressay, the Kazan political scientist casts her argument in moral terms. She says that “the struggle with evil must bethe main slogan of the next elections,” especially among Muslim citizens andthe leaders of Muslim republics who portray themselves as fervent believers andsupporters of the faith.

Thisobligation lies especially on the people and leadership of Tatarstan, shecontinues. In the last presidentialpoll, the Kazan leadership forced the Tatars to give 77.8 percent of theirvotes to Putin’s system, an outcome showed the Tatars were “a peasantry withoutfreedom who lacked the freedom of choice.”

Thatvote, of course, was “a shame for Tatarstan,” Kadir suggests. In order to overcome this mistake, the Tatarsneed to deliver “99 percent” of their vote “AGAINST” Putin and what herepresents, even though they can be sure that their votes will be “falsified”by officials who are only interested in keeping their jobs.

ButKadir says that the burden for overcoming the deference of the past lies evenmore heavily on the leaders of the Muslim republics. Noting that the Ingush have appealed theresults of the latest parliamentary election to a shariat court, she warns thatMuslim leaders abroad may issue a fetwa against Muslim republic leaders whoseek to block the will of the people.

If sucha Muslim legal ruling is issued, Kadir points out, they will find themselves “onthe list of the damned.” Their prayers will be “blocked,” their names won’t berecalled in common prayers, they will be prohibited from travelling to Mecca,and they will be designated as munafiq,” that is as “hypocrites.”

Theseare only “the softest measures” that might be visited on Muslim republicleaders, she warns. Consequently, theleaders of Tatarstan and other Muslim republics are going to be forced to make “achoice,” are they Muslims as they like to pretend or are they in fact “UnitedRussia cosmopolitans.”

TheKazan political scientist says she not want to believe that the Tatar people orthe Tatar leaders will make the wrong choice in the upcoming elections, achoice that would involve approving “evil.” That is because the Tatars were “one of the first peoples to declaretheir freedom and independence in the 1990s” and will not tolerate “a return tototalitarianism.”

Kadir’sarticle is significant for three reasons. First, it underscores the increasing tendency of opponents of Putin tocast their struggle in moral rather than simply political terms. Second, itsuggests the increasingly precarious positions Muslim republic leaders findthemselves in.

Andthird, it highlights a reality that Putin and his supporters have sought todeny: His return to the Kremlin would not maintain stability as he and theyclaim but rather would almost certainly spark a new wave of nationalism acrossthe country and possibly reignite drives for republic sovereignty or evenindependence.