Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 31 – There are “two
worlds” in the North Caucasus with distinctive cultures, one consisting of “the
people of the force structures” whose arbitrariness, corruption and criminality
are promoting the rise of the other, one often characterized by terrorism and
extremism, according to a longtime commentator on that region.
And the only way out, Maksim
Shevchenko, the chief editor of “Kavkazskaya politika,” argues, is for the
federal center to reach out over the heads of the first world to members of the
second who are acting as they are only because the force structures leave them
with no other choice and who have, perhaps surprisingly, a reservoir of
sympathy for Moscow.
Shevchenko made that provocative
argument in a March 14 speech to the Social Council of the North Caucasus
Federal District, the text of which was posted on Friday evening, the logic of
which deserves careful consideration even if both of the “worlds” he is talking
about are likely to reject it at least on first reading (kavpolit.com/kavkaz-dva-mira-dve-kultury/).
He argues that “in the Caucasus
today, two societies exist in parallel – the so-called people of force, who
mask themselves under the term ‘state,’ and all the rest who are resolving the
social, economic, and confessional questions” on their own to the best of their
ability and understanding, sometimes forming Cossack societies and at other
times mountain jamaats.
Such a situation, Shevchenko
suggests, is of course true for “all of Russia.” But “in the Caucasus, with its natural
democratic traditions of popular governance” – traditions Russians had but
largely lost in the 20th century – “this situation leads to the most
serious and tragic consequences.”
The “strong people” are those which
form “the triad of the bureaucracy, the force structures, and the so-called financial
institutions.” They are supplemented by the criminal world whose members have ties
“with all three heads of the neo-imperial eagle” which for some reasons it is
considered appropriate to call the authorities.”
“The system of relations of the
overwhelming majority of these people are based on personal ties which must not
be called simply corruption” because they form a system of administration “which
in principle excludes any forms of the democratic development of society” as a
threat to itself and its members.
To be sure, Shevchenko continues,
not everyone who is a part of these institutions wants to behave in this way, “but
they are forced to support the rules of the game” or face the most serious,
even deadly consequences.
All the rest of the population in the
North Caucasus, he argues, consists of individuals and groups who are simply
trying to arrange their own life “in part not thanks to but in spite of the
so-called organs of state power (the triad and the criminal world).” These
individuals do not oppose the state as such so much as those who rule in its
name.
The inability of these members of
the second world to achieve their goals because of the actions of the people of
force” leads “not simply to distrust in the effectiveness of the institutions
of power but also to their direct denial” or “in the best case” to the ignoring
of what the authorities are trying to do.
North
Caucasians, he writes, “are seeking an alternative to the social and political
schemas which have been discredited by the corrupt power of the triad and the
criminal world.” And in many cases, they are finding these alternative models
of social organization in ethnic or religious traditions.
If one considers the problem from
this perspective, Shevchenko insists, “there is no difference between the
attempts at self-organization of life in the Cossack stanitsas and that of the
mountaineer jamaats” – except that the Cossack leadership is prepared to
cooperate with the triad at the expense of the communities in whose name they
profess to speak.
The jamaats in contrast view the
authorities as illegitimate in principle, but in both cases, “this situation
offers great opportunities to radicals and terrorists of all masks and
nationalities,” from jihadism among the Islamic groups and “radical nationalism”
among the ethnic Russian ones. And that
is dangerous not only ideologically but practically.
Each of the two worlds in the North
Caucasus justifies its existence by pointing to the shortcomings of the other,
Shevchenko says; but there is a way out.
It requires the intervention of the Russian president and his
plenipotentiary representative in the region who must recognize that their “many
ally” is not those who masquerade as the state “but the people who are
attempting to establish their own parallel structures of administration.”
That may not be easy for Putin and
his aide because some of those seeking to establish these structures have
ideologies entirely foreign to the two of them, but it is at least possible,
Shevchenko says, because of the still high level of trust in the federal
authorities among a population that has little good to say about local ones.
Journalists are constantly reporting
on this reality, Shevchenko says, but tragically, “they are being killed and
will continue to be killed” because “the profession of journalist in the
Caucasus is one of the most dangerous.” If Moscow is clever, it will provide protection
to journalists there, even to those who criticize it.
That is because these journalists
and the people they are reporting on are “the allies of those who want the
advancement of the norms of democracy, justice and freedom as written in the
Constitution but neither heard nor seen in the Caucasus.” To the extent the
Kremlin wants those values too, it should look beyond the triad to the people.
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