Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 12 – Despite claims
by Russian officials that the situation in Stavropol is stable or even
improving, a “Moskovsky Komsomolets” journalist says, conversations with ethnic
Russians there show that the kray is rapidly becoming Russia’s “Kosovo” as a
result of massive in-migration of people from the republics of the North
Caucasus.
Igor Karmazin said in an article
published yesterday that “inter-ethnic peace” exists “only on paper” and that “the
region has become a new zone of instability” in the southern rim of the Russian
Federation (mk.ru/social/article/2013/04/11/839978-stavropole-prevraschaetsya-v-kosovo-konfliktyi-russkih-i-migrantov.html).
Having just visited the region, the
journalist continued, he concludes that Stavropol is “the most ordinary region
of the country but it borders on the most unusual, Daghestan, Chechnya, and
Ingushetia, where everything is anomalous – birthrates, crime, and support from
Moscow.”
Because the indigenous Russian
population is suffering as a result, Karmazin noted, people from there are “voting
with their feet” and fleeing the region. And because of that and the influx of
non-Russians, “it is possible to say that five to ten years from now, the
region will have an entirely different face.”
What is especially striking to any
visitor, the journalist recounted is “the paradox” in which longtime residents
can barely make ends meet with those “coming from the non-Russian republics are
flourishing,” the result of the fact that the latter often don’t pay taxes and
have corrupt relations with the local authorities.
Yevgeny Boyarsky, a local activist
of the Novaya Sila movement, told the Moscow journalist that he sees direct
parallels between what happened in his native Chechnya 25 years ago and what is
happening in Stavropol kray now: non-Russians are taking over and Russians are
fleeing.”
Exacerbating this situation,
Karmazin continued, is the far greater support that Moscow is giving to
non-Russian areas and the indifference of officials local and federal to the
sad state of the Russian community, including open denials that attacks against
it are not ethnically motivated.
Yury Yefimov, a demographer at the
Stavropol State Agricultural University, told the “Moskovsky komsomolets”
journalist that “Stavropol really can become a Russian Kosovo.” The Russian population is falling because of
low birthrates and departures, while the non-Russian is growing because of
higher fertility rates and arrivals.
Twenty years ago, there was “a flood”
of ethnic Russians into Stavropol from the North Caucasus republics, Yefimov
said, but that supply “has exhausted itself,” and many of those who arrived
earlier have now left, creating a dangerous situation in the eastern regions of
the kray where the non-Russians are approaching or even exceeding 50 percent of
the population.
According to Yefimov, however, the
main conflict in Stavropol is neither ethnic, between Russians and non-Russians,
or religious, between Christians and Muslims. Many indigenous non-Russians such
as the Nogays and Turkmens are suffering as well. Instead, the clash is between
the indigenous population and the new arrivals.
Local officials and especially
Cossack leaders are very much aware of this and blame the Russian state for
allowing this to happen. Aleksandr
Perepelitsyn, the local ataman, said that “the main problem consists in the
fact that [his] village] has been forgotten by the state.” There is no work and
no market for agricultural products.
He noted that his daughter is a
pupil in the third grade. There are 24 students in her class. Right now, it is
divided 50-50 between the children of longtime residents of the kray and
children of the new arrivals from the North Caucasus republics. Unfortunately, things are “changing” and not “for
the better for the local side.”
But the Cossack ataman said he would
hold on at least for now because “like the captain of a ship, I will be the last
to leave.”
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