Paul
Goble
Staunton,
November 16 – The current hysteria in Moscow about separatism is just “the
latest link in a chain” of events intended to allow the Kremlin to have a free
hand in running the country and to stamp out what freedoms Russians still have
left, according to Aleksandr Podrabinek.
The Moscow commentator argues in an
essay entitled “Unfreedom and Independence” that this chain involves the
multiplication of prohibitions concerning “the most varied” and unspecific
things in order to “create a universal system for the suppression of freedom of
speech” in the Russian Federation (grani.ru/opinion/podrabinek/m.221156.html).
By introducing these prohibitions
one by one rather than all at once, Podrabinek suggests, Russians and others get
used to the changes without necessarily understanding where they are headed, a
sharp contrast to the conflict that might arise if the Kremlin sought to impose
them all at once.
While the Moscow blogger does not use
this metaphor, his argument recalls the story of the frog who was put in a pot
full of water that was gradually heated.
At first, the frog felt that he was just in warm water. When it got warmer still, he went to sleep. And when it got hot, he was cooked and dead.
What is striking about this next
link in this chain, Podrabinek says, is that the proposed ban on separatist
propaganda calls for punishments that are not such small “doses.” “Twenty years is more than the authorities give
for murder.” Quite clearly, he says, the
powers that be in Putin’s Russia fear “independent social activity more than
anything else.”
They fear, Podrabinek says, that
people can “get along without them.”
“Local self-administration is
separatism ‘lite,’” he continues. If
people can run their own affairs locally, what do they need with the power
vertical? That is why the reform of local administration was “buried.” That is
why the authority of the regions has been “cut back to the minimum.” Moscow is
willing to send money to the regions in order that the latter be dependent.
According to Podrabinek, there are
two approaches to the issue of separatism: the human and the state. The human one is based on a fundamental
respect for the right of other people to manage their own affairs, even if the
others want to do things in ways that make some uncomfortable.
The state approach is “based on the
desire” for power. “It is more pleasant
to run a big country, to manage a big budget, to come up with big plans, and to
overcome big challenges … The individual in this system is unimportant: he is
only a cog in the big government mechanism, and no community of cogs needs to
be taken into consideration.”
“Both approaches have their
supporters,” Podrabinek says. Separatism
usually emerges where it is difficult “to live in a big family [and] where the
rights of the individual are easily violated.” It is less common in democracies where rights
are respected because people do not feel they need to leave in order to defend
themselves.
The commentator says that he is disturbed
by the reaction to separatism among the “advanced” part of society: Memorial
and “the greater part of the human rights community not only did not support
the demands of Chechnya for sovereignty but tried in every possible way to
avoid even the discussion of this subject.”
“Even liberal publicists write about
separatism with concerning, describing it as “a terrible threat.” But the problem is not in the consequences of
separatism but in the way the process is managed: “Thus, the wise Havel divided
the Czech Republic and Slovakia peacefully, but the stupid Milosevich drowned
the country in blood” to oppose it.
Those who have grown up in imperial
traditions find it difficult to understand that “there is nothing bad in the
desire for an independent life” or that such desires have transformed the map
of the world. In 1900, there were 47
countries; in 1950, there were 75; in 2000, 192; and now, 258, including 195 in
the UN, 19 unrecognized, and the remainder in an uncertain status.
The tendency is clear. No new
territories are being discovered but the number of states is “becoming larger
and nothing terrible is taking place” because of that. There are problems, of
course, but they are “insignificant in comparison” with those involving the
struggle for independence.
Podrabinek concludes that “the
Russian authorities fear separatism like fire.
They need a big country in which people find it difficult to agree among
themselves” and therefore leave to the powers the opportunities to run the
situation without consulting them. But
given how the authorities are doing that now, it is fully understandable why
many want to separate.
Although the Grani commentator does
not talk about this, Moscow’s struggle against separatism not only is
exacerbating the situation where it already exists but may provoke its rise
where it hasn’t. That is because the
authorities, taking the lead from the center, are now identifying as separatism
something that earlier they might have called something else.
In recent days, there have been
reports about separatism among the Khanty and Sakha,, two numerically small
peoples of the North (znak.com/hmao/articles/13-11-20-20/101490.html and minval.az/news/26546)
and even about a Kremlin plan to fight separatism among the Finno-Ugric peoples
as well (izvmor.ru/news/view/17321).
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