Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 12 – Karelian
activists say that the recent suggestion by Russian National Security Council
chief Nikolay Patrushev that Finnish “revanchism” is behind the upsurge in
popular anger and activism in Karelia is absurd and that the real cause lies in
Moscow’s heavy-handed Russification policy as carried out by incumbent republic
head Aleksandr Khudilaynen.
On March 20, Patrushev told a Petrozavodsk
meeting that there had been “an activation of nationalist and revanchist
social-political organizations in Finland and that their influence via a number
of domestic NGOs on the population of Karelia had grown” in recent months (newsru.com/russia/19mar2015/patrushev.html).
Many Moscow media outlets treated
subsequent protests in Karelia about the arrest of two Yabloko activists and
calls for ouster of Khudilaynin and his team as evidence of this. But Karelian
leaders and activists argue that the Finns are not playing the role Patrushev
says they are and that Moscow’s policies are to blame (svoboda.org/content/transcript/26949564.html).
Galina Shirshina, the mayor of
Petrozavodsk who won office by defeating a Kremlin candidate in a free
election, says that she “cannot remember any Finnish revanchist organizations”
but does have good relations with sister cities in Finland and that her
contacts work to the benefit of Karelia and Russia.
The openness that she and her staff
practice, she continues, allows them to provide a context to Finns who might
otherwise have “a negative attitude” toward “what is going on in Russia.
Emiliya
Slabunova, a Yabloko deputy in the Karelian legislative assembly, agrees.
Patrushev’s suggest is “an absolute invention” without any basis in fact. There are simply too few Finns and Karels in
Karelia for anyone to rely on them for the revanchist goals he imputes to
Helsinki. Secession on that basis is
“mathematically impossible.”
She suggests that
the Moscow official made his declaration only “in order to distract the
attention of people from real problems.”
What should be happening is not a witch hunt for “enemies foreign and
domestic” but rather a search for “investors and effective managers” if the
republic and the country are going to get out of the current crisis.
Vadim Shtepa, a
leading activist of the Republic Movement of Karelia, has the same view: “When
real threats do not exist, they are invented” by the security agencies “to give
the impression that their activity is useful.” Given Karelia’s location and
links with Finland, it is a convenient target, he suggests.
He acknowledges
that in Finland there are a small number of groups interested in the
reintegration of Karelia or at least part of it, but Shtepa points out that
they are “marginal” and do not have the support of any political party. The
main reason? It would cost Helsinki enormous sums to do so just as it cost
Western Germany to reintegrate East Germany.
The real source of popular anger in Karelia, according to
Anatoly Grigoryev, the president of the Karelian Congress, is Moscow’s policies
of russification of the population. It has reduced the number of non-Russian language
newspapers and journals, cut their frequency and circulation, and eliminated most
non-Russian television and radio broadcasting.
He says that
Karels, Finns and other minorities have filed numerous appeals with Putin and
others in Moscow, pointing out that the Khudilaynen administration has “inflicted
harm on all those who live in Karelia. It turns out that he is here the main
russifier even though he has a Finnish last name.”
Shirshina says
that another reason things are heating up is that there may be an electoral
challenge to Khudilaynin whose term ends soon. His supporters are using their
administrative resources to isolate the opposition, and the opposition in turn
is responding with demonstrations that they hope will make the Kremlin insist
on his retirement.
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