Paul Goble
Staunton,
August 7 – Russia’s inter-ethnic problems, which have put the country “at the brink
of a social explosion,” are first and foremost the result of Russia’s still unacknowledged
loss of both post-1991 Chechen wars, according to a Russian blogger who points
to four other reinforcing reasons as well.
“It
is perfectly obvious,” the author of the Yuri Blog writes in an extensive post
last week, that Russia is in ever-greater difficulties and that a large part of
this trend revolves around inter-ethnic relations, however much Moscow
officials or experts try to deny or argue otherwise (yuriblog.ru/?p=10331).
Some
Russians are inclined to explain ethnic conflicts by trying to decide whether
there are “good people from the Caucasus” or “bad ones.” But the real question is otherwise, he suggests,
“why is this happening? Why are xenophobia and inter-ethnic hostility spreading
across Russia like a plague?”
The
first cause, the blogger suggests, is what he calls “the victors’ syndrome.” It is time for Russians to stop deceiving themselves
and acknowledge that “Russia lost both Chechen wars.” Russia is paying tribute not Chechnya, and
Chechnya not Russia is determining policy in the region. And those are the two
key measures of what constitutes victory and what defeat.
The
blogger stresses that in such situations, the victors regardless of nationality
inevitably behave with contempt to the vanquished.
The
second cause, he suggests, involved the Caucasian mentality. Again, this is not
a question of whether that mentality is “good or bad,” but whether it is “different.” And the evidence is that the mentality of
people from the Caucasus is different from that of the ethnic Russians.
People
from the Caucasus “respect only force,” and consequently, when they can display
it themselves with impunity, they are inclined to do so. Moreover, he suggests, people from the
Caucasus do not view bribes in the same way. Russians are angry and ashamed
about bribery, but people from the Caucasus simply view it was a normal cost of
doing business.
These
two causes alone, the blogger says, are “completely sufficient” to explain why
inter-ethnic problems are not going to quiet down in Russia but rather grow “in
geometrical progress” not “day by day but by the hour.” But he continues, there
are three other causes which further exacerbate the problem.
The
third cause of the country’s inter-ethnic problems, the blogger continues, is
to be found in the Russian mentality. “The problem is not only in them: the
problem is in us as well,” he says.
Russians have often wanted someone to rule over them, but now they have
a leadership that isn’t interested in doing even that.
Indeed,
he writes, the Russian people are as necessary to the current occupants of the
Kremlin as “an aqualung is to a camel.” Instead of uniting Russians, it is
intent on dividing them and as a result, Russians have landed in a situation
where it is every man “for himself” rather than for the nation.
This
“slavishness,” the blogger continues, has the effect of “provoking” people from
the North Caucasus. Thus, it is the Russians and not the North Caucasians who
are “guilty” of the way in which the North Caucasians treat the Russians. Expecting that to change overnight, he says,
is like “hoping to in a million dollars in a lottery!”
The
fourth cause is the corruption of the Russian police. Even if one could imagine
“for a minute” that Russians and Caucasians could “by some fantastic means find
a common language,” the corruption of those in the force structures is so great
that the problems would not disappear.
Russia
is a world leader in the size of its police per capita, but the way in which
the police are recruited – a perfect example of “negative selection” – means that
the forces of order will produce anything but. The police feel they can do
anything, but they are most interested in using their position to enrich
themselves rather than enforce any particular law.
That
plays to the strengths of the North Caucasians and the weakness of the ethnic
Russians, and there is little chance that will change anytime soon.
And
the fifth cause, the blogger says, lies with the double standards of the
Kremlin itself. “Even [the other four
causes] wouldn’t be fatal” if it weren’t for the problems at the top, for whom “the
Russian people is something extraneous” and with which these leaders do not “connect
the future of their children.”
Vladimir
Putin relies on the corrupt force structures to block any domestic challenge
and relies on the leaders of the Caucasus to whom he pays tribute to provide him
with the votes to win elections -- even with “146 percent” if that is
necessary. But now those two forces are at loggerheads, and the Russian
president is in trouble.
He
can’t continue to rely on the corrupt siloviki who are asking what are we
fighting for, the blogger says, and he can’t rely on the people of the Caucasus
to “defend [him] from the people.” And yet he has to find some way out or his
own position will become untenable as more and more ethnic clashes spread
across the country.
According
to the blogger, even Putin “who has lost a sense of reality” now is beginning
to “understand that things cannot continue as they have up to now.” But he and
his entourage do not really understand the full dimensions of the problem, as
their “playing at a certain ‘Empire’” shows.
The
reason that won’t work, the blogger says, is that “it is not the Caucasus which
is a colony of Russia,” but rather “Russia which already long ago was converted
into a colony of the Caucasus,” a situation which recalls Rome in the fifth
century and which could end in much the same way.
In
this situation, there is only “one way out,” the blogger says, and that is “divorce.” Russia “now must free itself from the
Caucasus” as the only means of saving the country “from the metropolitan center”
which is now not Russia but the Caucasus, however unpleasant it is for Russians
to reflect upon that reality of their losses to the Chechens.
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