Window on Eurasia -- New Series
Time 2021-10-18 13:03:02Web Name: Window on Eurasia -- New Series
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Staunton, Oct. 11 The conflictsbetween Ingushetia and Chechnya and between Armenia and Azerbaijan led Moscowto expand the number of questions in the census about languages so that the Russianauthorities will be in a better position to prevent or manage conflicts in thefuture, according to Dmitry Oreshkin.
The political scientist whospecializes on the North Caucasus points out that the final text of the censusregarding language features three questions rather than one: Do you knowRussian and do you use it in your daily life? What other languages do youknow and use in your daily life? and Which language is your native one?(kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/369117/).
Focusing on language provides abetter way of determining what nationality people are. It was used in the 1897census as a marker for ethnicity. In recent years, some peoples in the RussianFederation confuse ethnos and nation, and by asking about language, the censuswill allow for a more accurate assessment of what an individuals nationalityis.
(Oreshkin doesnt say, but this language-centricapproach has another consequence: it means that the Russian state will tend toignore ethnic groups who may now speak Russian or another language not theirown even if these groups are passionate about their ethnic identity rather thanthe salvation of their traditional languages.)
According to Oreshkin, Moscow hasinserted these questions about language because it wants to know how manyIngush and Chechens or other nationalities are in major cities given that oftensuch people declare themselves to be Russian by nationality but in fact retaintheir traditional ethnicity.
Margarita Lyange, head of the Guildof Inter-Ethnic Journalism, says these additional questions have another purpose:they allow the authorities to determine what languages target audiences in factspeak and adjust Russian media and propaganda accordingly.
And Aleksey Gunya of the Instituteof Geography, however, says that in his view all this is about an effort on thepart of the authorities to stress the role of the Russian language, somethingPutin appears to care more about than even the ethno-national composition ofthe population of the country.
In the North Caucasus, issues ofethnic membership are especially fraught. The various Circassian peoples arebeing encouraged by ethnic activists to identify as a single Circassian people.But Shamsudin Neguch, one of their number, says local officials are quietlybut insistently opposing the idea.
Especially local officials but alsoMoscow are frightened by the prospect of a Kabardino-Balkaria, in which suddenlydisappear the Kabards and appear the Circassians. This is their logic. Thisis something that they cannot completely control and that means it is apotential threat.
In Daghestan, the situation is justthe reverse. There local officials want micro-nationalities to assimilate toone of the four or five major nationalities, while Moscow and most demographersare opposed. And in Astrakhan Oblast, many people who formerly describedthemselves as Tatars or Kazakhs appear set to declare themselves Nogays.
No comments: Creationism Now Being Promoted Over Evolution by Theology Instructors at Irkutsk State UniversityPaul Goble
Staunton,Oct. 7 Instructors at Irkutsk StateUniversitys theology department are currently promoting creationism as analternative to evolution and spreading their views throughout the entirehistory faculty because these courses are available not just to futurespecialists on religion but also to all student sin that faculty.
Coursesin theology are fine, Babr journalist Aelita Khlebnikova says; butrecently, church instructors have very insistently propagandized views on awide range of issues, which are very far from their themes. Among these is theissue of creationism and Darwinian evolution (babr24.com/irk/?IDE=219995).
Scholarsand critics of creationism in general are not opponents of religion and theidea of the existence of God. They only protest against the idea thatcreationism be taught and considered as a genuine scientific theory because itis impossible to verify and falsify are other scientific hypotheses andtheories, the journalist says.
Fora state university to allow creationism to be taught as an alternative tocreationism is thus wrong and should be stopped. If it isnt, Khlebnikova says,Irkutsk State University will slip further down the rankings of the countryshigher educational institutions. And many will ask whether there are realforces at work pushing for a return to the Middle Ages.
Facultymembers at Irkutsk State University are likely to decide they need to leave tofocus on science rather than religion, and in our higher educationalinstitutions, the journalist concludes, students will be tested about the collapseof the theory of evolution, exactly the opposite of what should have in astate-supported secular academic institution.
No comments: For Russia, Qarabagh about Far More than Playing Armenia and Azerbaijan Against One Another, Materik Site Says
PaulGoble
Staunton, Oct. 11 It is acommonplace that from Stalin onward, Qarabagh has been a means for keeping Armeniaand Azerbaijan at loggerheads so that Russia can play the dominant role in theSouth Caucasus. But a new Russian analysis suggests, it is more than that andhas become a small space for the solution of big problems.
That unsigned article on the Materikportal undoubtedly reflects the views of that sites chief editor, KonstantinZatulin, who is also director of the Institute of the CIS Countries and aninfluential commentator on Russian relations with the former Soviet republics (materik.ru/analitika/nagornyy-karabakh-i-russkiy-proekt-so/).
It is no accident, the articlesays, that the Persians said that he who controls Qarabagh controls the entireCaucasus. But in fact, it asserts, the control of Qarabagh determines farmore, including the possibility of restoring something like the Soviet Union acrossthe entire former Soviet space.
And that explains why what happensin Qarabagh is so important to Russia which has larger goals than just playingdivide and rule in the South Caucasus. If Moscow controls Qarabagh, it canblock ties between Central Asia and the West, it can limit Georgian andUkrainian expansion to the East, and it can use Qarabagh as the basis for a newunion.
That will be possible, the articlesays, not only by adding it to the other breakaway states like South Ossetia,Abkhazia, Transdniestria, and the Donbass to an imperial arrangement that maybe designated Union 2.0, but also by offering with clever diplomacy andmilitary power good reasons for Armenia and/or Azerbaijan to return to Moscowsumbrella.
Orchestrating all this, the Materikportal article says, wont be easy. But Qarabagh makes the prospect of such astate realistic; and it is thus why Qarabagh and the issue of who controls itare far more important to Russia than most analysts in Moscow or the Westassume. It is the place where the empire can be reborn or where its secondbirth can be stopped.
No comments: Only When Russian Generation that Rose to Power in 1990s Passes from the Scene Will Russia Develop, Dugin SaysPaulGoble
Staunton, Oct. 11 Only when thegeneration that rose to power and wealth in the 1990s passes from the scene, anevent that in the nature of things cannot be too far in the future, will Russiahave the chance to develop in new ways because the current generation in poweris incapable of replicating itself in the next generation, Aleksandr Duginsays.
The influential Eurasianist writersays that the experiences of the 1990s when people felt hopelessness, anger andpoverty and concluded that any means were justified in overcoming such feelingsformed the current Russian elite but also condemned Russia to a catastropheunder its rule (geopolitica.ru/article/rossiyskaya-elita-neizbezhnost-katastrofy).
The current elite is somethingpathological, and its typical figures are those who emerged from the corruptbureaucracy and the criminal world and were often agents of influence for the West,Dugin argues. With the rise of Putin, much was changed, he says, but theelite remained what it had been.
This elite could not change itselfand didnt want to, he continues. Having achieved power, it simply wanted tokeep everything in place, although of course some members wanted to take whatother members of the elite had or steal more from the population, given thatnone of them were constrained by any moral principles.
Today, it is clear to almost everyone,Dugin says, that with such an elite, Russia is condemned. It has exhausted allits resources and social lifts that might have renewed it have been blocked.Consequently, it will stand its ground until mortality forces it to cede powerto others.
According to the Eurasianist, itwould have been natural in such a situation to transfer power and the resourcesthey had gathered to their direct physical descendants. But here we encounter aproblem: the habits thanks to which the existing ruling group broke through topower are impossible to transfer.
The children of the elite grew up inentirely different circumstances and typically have very different values,values so different that it even happens that their parents view them aspotential traitors to the existing order of things just as the elite viewsanyone who challenges its primacy, Dugin writes.
At the same time, the children of theRussian elite are overwhelmingly psycho-social cripples. Most often, they arenot capable even of preserving the wealth and position seized by their fatherslet alone develop the system in such a way that Russia would have any chance ofprogress.
The children are paralyzed; theylack the will to power their fathers had. And so they cant succeed as aclass. But because the parental generation is the way it is, there is no oneelse; and that means that when the members of that earlier generation do infact die, there will not be anyone ready to take their place.
While the generation of the 1990sis alive, Dugin suggests, there wont be any future. Eveerything will beginonly when this troubled wave disappears into oblivion. Then it is possible butof course not inevitable that new people will come to power who will be capableof leading Russia into the future.
No comments: Passing of Safiullin Raises Question: Will a New Generation of Tatar Nationalists Emerge?PaulGoble
Staunton, Oct. 11 One of the wisestobservations one of my professors of Russian history ever made was to point outthat the Silver Age in Russia would eventually have ended even if there had notbeen a Bolshevik revolution. The brilliant pleiade of writers and thinkers thatemerged at that time would likely have been unable to reproduce itself forlong.
The same observation holds for thefounding generation in the United States and the most remarkable eras in manycountries, but now the question about continuity in such movements is occurringwith particular force among non-Russian nationalists as the generation that ledthe charge for greater freedom and even independence 30 years ago passes fromthe scene.
As the members of that generationwhich made use of perestroika to advance the interests of their nations dieoff, ever more people are asking whether a new generation can emerge and, if so,how and when. In many cases, there is real pessimism; but there are grounds foroptimism as well.
One figure from the glory days ofTatar nationalism, Fandas Safiullin, has just died; and at his funeral in Kazanmany recalled his remark shortly before his death: I am leaving, but thenation will remain. What will become of it? Will the young replace us? or willthere be a new period of a void (business-gazeta.ru/article/525331).
For most of his professional life,Safiullin, who died at 85, was a professional soldier in the Soviet army. Afterretiring as a colonel in 1988, he became a deputy in the Tatar ASSR supremeSoviet and worked hard to defend the republic and the interests of its titularnation against Moscow and against indifference.
His name will always be part ofTatar history because on August 30, 1990, he read out the declaration of statesovereignty of Tatarstan in the republic Supreme Soviet, a document he helpeddraft. And after that time, he consistently served as a representative of hisnation in Moscow and at home.
In 1999, he briefly became presidentof the All-Tatar Social Center (VTOTs), but gave up that position when he waselected to the Russian State Duma. There he also fought for Tatarstan and itsright to use the Latin script. He didnt win out, but he didnt give up. Andthat inspired many, speakers at his funeral said.
Many praised him for his involvementwith the Tatar national movement and some said that in many ways he was theonly professional politician in the broad sense of the word that Tatarstanhas ever had. Academician Indus Tagirov said that he has not left us butremains for however long the Tatar nation lives, he will live.
And because the Tatar nation iseternal, [Safiullin] will never disappear. The question hanging in the air iswhether he will be a lonely figure from the past or one of a new generation ofTatar nationalists who will continue the fight that he devoted so much of hislife to
No comments: No Massive Public Support in Russia for Isolationism Especially among the Young, Nezavisimaya Gazeta SaysPaulGoble
Staunton, Oct. 11 According to anew VTsIOM poll, only 19 percent of Russians say they favor having Russiandistance itself from the West; and among young people whose entire conscious lifehas been lived under Vladimir Putin who favors such an approach, the share iseven lower, 11 percent, the editors of Nezavsimaya gazeta point out.
In a leading article, they say thatthis shows there is no mass demand for isolationism in Russia. Instead, thepopulation appears to be more open and liberal than the countrys leadership,with only the elderly who remember Soviet tropes lining up behind an isolationistagenda (ng.ru/editorial/2021-10-11/2_8274_editorial.html).
That overall position, the editorsof the independent newspaper say, is striking enough. But what is especiallyinstructive about the situation Russia finds itself in is the attitude of youngpeople who have grown up not in Soviet times or the 1990s but more recentlywhen the dominant political discourse of the Kremlin has been anti-Western.
Despite having grown up with thatmessage, the editors continue, young Russians are not demanding a continuationof that policy. Instead, they are open to change. They have become accustomedto open borders and the free exchange of opinions. And they are not preparedto sacrifice all that and return to the realities of the Cold War.
Having released the genie ofisolationism from the bottle, the paper argues, the authorities are notreacting to the attitudes in society. They are relying on the resentment ofthe older generation which is passing from the scene rather than on the hopesof the rising generation which is coming to form an increasing share of thepopulation.
This is not how modern states function.Instead, it is the policy of a traditionalist government and a traditionalistsociety in which people suppose that young people will grow up, with timebecome more conservative, and will accept the values and attitudes of those whoare older.
That may be the case for manyvalues, but there is little reason to think that it will be the dominant trendamong young people about foreign relations as they age.
No comments: Current Pandemic Wave in Russia Hitting Regions Harder than CapitalsPaulGoble
Staunton, Oct. 11 While the numbersare larger in Moscow and St. Petersburg because the populations there arebigger, the current wave of the pandemic is hitting the regions harder both inper capita terms and also in terms of the resources officials have to combat it(vz.ru/society/2021/10/11/1123518.html).
The regions are scrambling to try tocope, imposing restrictions ranging from a ban on kissing in some places to theuse of QR codes as covid passports to school closings or distance learning topartial full lockdowns (regnum.ru/news/3394902.html,znak.com/2021-10-11/v_leningradskoy_oblasti_vveli_kovidnye_pasportaand regnum.ru/news/society/3394205.html).
This diversity of response iscreating problems for Russian business whose leaders say they dont know how tocope with such a variety of often conflicting rules, something that becameinevitable when the Kremlin punted responsibility to regional heads for dealingwith the pandemic (regnum.ru/news/3394782.html).
For Russia as a whole, officialstoday reported registering 29,409 new cases of infection and 957 new deathsfrom the coronavirus over the last 24 hours as the pandemic continues tointensify across the country (t.me/stopcoronavirusrussia/6102).
The Kremlin blamed the rising tollon the impermissibly low level of vaccination, but it continued to oppose anykind of mandate for Russians to get their shots or even a proposal to finethose who refuse to be vaccinated against the coronavirus (regnum.ru/news/3394714.html and regnum.ru/news/3395042.html).
But Vladimir Putin did issue anothercall for international cooperation to combat the pandemic (regnum.ru/news/3394457.html).
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