Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 14 -- The flood of news stories from a country as large,
diverse and strange as the Russian Federation often appears to be is far too
large for anyone to keep up with. But there needs to be a way to mark those
which can’t be discussed in detail but which are too indicative of broader
developments to ignore.
Consequently, Windows on Eurasia presents a selection of 13 of these
other and typically neglected stories at the end of each week. This is the 53rd
such compilation. It is only suggestive and far from complete – indeed, once
again, one could have put out such a listing every day -- but perhaps one or
more of these stories will prove of broader interest.
1.
Putin Offers New
Lies for Old.
Many in the West were so excited by Vladimir Putin’s acknowledgement at long
last that he sent Russian troops into Ukraine, something he and his regime have
long denied, that they failed to notice that his admission included another
lie, that the Ukrainians made him do it by mistreating Russians (echo.msk.ru/blog/boris_vis/1854908-echo/
and charter97.org/ru/news/2016/10/13/227089/).
This pattern has become so common – Putin is now doing the same thing in Syria –
that perhaps it should be given the name of “the Putin perplex,” because it
achieves exactly what he wants, sowing confusion among his opponents.
2.
Is Putin Choosing
a Hot War Because He Can’t Afford a Cold One? Wars, hot or cold, are expensive, and leaders
enter them at great risk to themselves if they lack the resources to carry them
out. According to some analysts, Putin
doesn’t have the resources for a cold war and so may be considering a hot one
where he still has nuclear weapons (nv.ua/opinion/panfilov/kreml-ne-vyderzhit-holodnoj-vojny-240684.html and censoru.net/13741-u-nas-net-deneg-no-zato-est-dobrota-i-yadernaya-bomba.html). He and his government have lost support from the population (vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2016/10/13/660744-doverie-vlastnim-institutam#/galleries/140737492966888/normal/1). He is internationally isolated – only six of 252
world leaders sent him birthday greetings (vp.donetsk.ua/ukraina-mir/novosti-v-mire/19545-putin-poterpel-polnyj-krakh-iz-252-stran-mira-rossijskogo-prezidenta-s-dnem-rozhdeniya-pozdravili-lish-6-gosudarstv). His government has been forced to cut back in
subsidizing the media that deliver his propaganda (rufabula.com/news/2016/10/13/propaganda-expenses).
And he may have decided that promoting the notion of a hot war is his least bad
alternative (rufabula.com/author/ilya-lazarenko/1374). But as others have pointed out, he doesn’t
have the resources for a hot war either (ixtc.org/2016/10/blog-aliny-vituhnovskoy-rossiya-obrechena-na-politicheskuyu-smert/#more-11636).
3.
Some Russians
Putin to Rule Forever – and He’s Trying to Arrange That. A group of Russian nationalist activists has
called for the Russian constitution to be changed so that Vladimir Putin will
remain president for life (rosbalt.ru/piter/2016/10/12/1557856.html). For his part, Putin seems to be doing what he
can to arrange that, criminalizing any criticism of his rule (vedomosti.ru/newspaper/articles/2016/10/13/660708-kritika-vlasti),
planning to put a million Russians under government surveillance (themoscowtimes.com/news/1-million-russians-to-be-put-under-surveillance-in-2016-activists-55667),
and promoting both Stalinist music and the Soviet flag (rufabula.com/news/2016/10/08/sralin-music
and apn.ru/index.php?newsid=35550).
4.
14 Million
Russians Drop Out of Middle Class as a Result of Current Crisis. Because of the current
crisis caused by the collapse in oil prices and the imposition of sanctions as
a result of Putin’s aggression, 14 million Russians who had been members of the
middle class have now fallen into poverty (charter97.org/ru/news/2016/10/11/226770/).
The problem for the population is even wider than that: according to new data, 40
percent of all Russians saw their standard of living decline over the past
three months alone (rosbalt.ru/russia/2016/10/11/1557626.html). A quarter of all Russians no cannot pay their
utility bills (rosbalt.ru/russia/2016/10/13/1558413.html),
and more than 600,000 are at risk of personnel bankruptcy (http://bankir.ru/novosti/20160915/kolichestvo-potentsialnykh-bankrotov-prevysilo-620-tysyach-cheloveka-10121269/). Adding insult to injury, Moscow is not promising any
real improvement for at least three years (svpressa.ru/economy/article/158092/), and an increasing number of Russians have
concluded that the Kremlin is ignoring the problems that they face (ng.ru/economics/2016-10-10/4_fiasko.html).
5.
Doctors Tell
Russians: ‘If You’re Sick, Go to Church and Light a Candle.’ Medicines and medical care are in increasingly
short supply – and the government has cut spending on health care by 33 percent
for next year (novayagazeta.ru/news/2016/10/13/125716-pravitelstvo-sokratit-rashody-na-zdravoohranenie-v-2017-godu-na-33)
– that some Russian doctors are now telling their patients that if they get
sick, they shouldn’t turn to the medical profession but rather go to church and
light a candle (msn.com/приморские-медики-вместо-укола-от-бешенства-посоветовали-поставить-свечку/ar-BBxh2K3). Meanwhile, officials reported this week that
as many as 40 percent of the medicines being used in Moscow are fake or
adulterated and do not work as intended (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2016/10/10/70117-tabletki-pod-naperstkami),
that Russians have no legal protection against medical testing that may harm
their lives (forum-msk.org/material/news/12342211.html),
and that Russia’s burgeoning prison population is now a breeding ground for
many serious illnesses (ng.ru/politics/2016-10-10/3_prisons.html). This week, Moscow declared a group fighting
HIV/AIDS a foreign agent (echo.msk.ru/news/1854390-echo.html)
but it did allow the importation of western condoms again (rbc.ru/business/10/10/2016/57fb668a9a7947836e78e427?from=main).
One sector where the authorities seem to be spending more is on punitive
psychiatry because it is useful to the powers that be in their struggle with
political opponents (zona.media/article/2016/11/10/agora-psychiatry-report).
6.
Russian Force
Structures in North Caucasus Said Inflating Number of Militants to Justify
Bigger Budgets for Themselves. Experts says that the siloviki have taken
to inflating the number of militants they face in order to justify bigger
budgets for their own institutions (onkavkaz.com/articles/3058-u-silovikov-na-kavkaze-ostryi-deficit-lesa-chtoby-opravdat-svoyu-chislennost-oni-vydavlivayut-m.html).
There is evidence that the Daghestani authorities are assisting in this process
(kavpolit.com/articles/bespredelnyj_profuchet-28717/). All this is part of an even larger problem.
While the Russian authorities say that interethnic relations in Russia have
been improving, they report more convictions for extremist crimes, the result
of new laws and administrative and political needs (nazaccent.ru/content/22071-v-yanao-vyroslo-chislo-ekstremistskih-prestuplenij.html).
7.
Fights over
Memorials Increasingly Divisive.
Russians have often fought their political battles by talking about the
past rather than the present. Now, they are fighting about the future by
engaging in conflicts over the statues and memorials that they want in their
cities. Today the statue of Ivan the
Terrible went up in Oryol (echo.msk.ru/news/1855612-echo.html)
even as officials in St. Petersburg took down the memorial to Marshal
Mannerheim and moved it to a museum in Tsarskoye selo (echo.msk.ru/news/1855614-echo.html). Russian commentators denounced Mannerheim as “a
white guard” even as some of them praised Ivan the Terrible as “the most humane
leader of the Europe of his times” (pandoraopen.ru/2016-10-12/ivan-groznyj-byl-odnim-iz-samyx-gumannyx-pravitelej-evropy-razoblachaem-mify/comment-page-1/).
Meanwhile, a statue to the Tsarevich Aleksey who was murdered by the Bolsheviks
has gone up in Yalta (ruskline.ru/news_rl/2016/10/07/pamyatnik_est_bezmolvnyj_propovednik/), and an effigy of Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been “hanged”
in front of the GULAG museum in Moscow (nr2.lt/News/world_and_russia/Kommunisty-povesili-Solzhenicyna-na-vorotah-muzeya-GULAGa-v-Moskve--124024.html). The statue
wars are not only setting one group of Russians against another but dividing
ethnic Russians from non-Russians, with cases of vandalism of statues in memory
of non-Russian heroes being vandalized (idelreal.org/a/28045248.html),
and some non-Russians demanding statues of their national heroes given that the
Russians seem to be able to put up almost anyone they want (turkist.org/2016/10/suumbike-kazan-history.html
and business-gazeta.ru/article/325110).
8.
Emigration Poses
Double Threat to Moscow. Emigration from Russia is not only much greater than
Moscow admits, but it contains a double threat to the country, Russian
commentators say. The brain drain it represents undermines the ability of the country
to develop in the future (themoscowtimes.com/news/russias-brain-drain-worse-than-previously-believed-report-55635)
and the current emigration may come to play the same role the Russian
emigration did at the end of the tsarist period and help mobilize Russians at
home against the Kremlin (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=57FD2A93BC850).
9.
Trump’s Remarks
about Women Said Viewed by Many Russians as ‘Normal.’ While an overwhelming majority of Americans
have expressed shock and anger about Donald Trump’s remarks about how he thinks
women should be treated, most Russians accept the words of Republican candidate
for US president as entirely normal, at least judging by their own experience
in Russia, one commentator says (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=57FB19BEB24DD). Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov’s reference to Trump’s words will do nothing to change
their view (spektr.press/video/lavrov-obnaruzhil-slishkom-mnogo-kisok-v-amerikanskoj-predvybornoj-gonke/)
nor will the discovery that the Russian city dubbed the most hospitable
features numerous advertisements for bordellos (qha.com.ua/ru/obschestvo/tsentr-sevastopolya-zavalen-reklamoi-bordelei/166464/
and ng.ru/regions/2016-10-12/6_stavropol.html).
10.
Two Plus Two Doesn’t
Equal Four in Russian Schools Anymore. Parents of pupils in one school have
discovered that the correct answer to a mathematics problem their children were
asked to solve was not the one the teachers wanted because it was not “patriotic”
enough, yet another indication of the increasingly Orwellian world of Putin’s
Russia (meduza.io/shapito/2016/10/11/na-shkolnoy-olimpiade-vernyy-otvet-okazalsya-matematicheski-nepravilnym-zato-patriotichnym). Commentators are also upset that some school
textbooks still fail to show Russia’s politically “correct” borders in Crimea
and elsewhere (msn.com/ru-ru/news/russia/в-географическом-атласе-для-восьмого-класса-обнаружили-нарушение-границ/ar-BBxhiC5).
11.
Nannies Replacing
Grandmothers as Childcare Providers, Breaking Cultural Transmission Belt. In some Russian
families, mothers are turning to nannies rather than grandmothers for
childcare, a shift that disrupts the transmission of cultural values from one generation
to another, according to a new study (iq.hse.ru/news/193114093.html).
12.
Russian Post
Office Puts Up Sign in Braille – and Then Covers It with Plate Glass. A Russian post office has tried to become
more user friendly for its blind customers by putting up a sign in Braille, but
then, in an exemplar of the problem Viktor Chernomyrdin highlighted years ago,
it has vitiated the utility of this sign by covering it with plate glass so
that the blind cannot read it (meduza.io/shapito/2016/10/09/na-otdelenie-pochty-rossii-povesili-tablichku-s-raspisaniem-raboty-na-shrifte-braylya-pod-steklo).
13.
Photo of Drunk
Siberian Family Goes Viral. A picture of a family in Siberian lying drunk amidst
piles of trash has gone viral on the Runet.
Those photographed say they did nothing wrong – they weren’t shown
drinking or having sex in public – and therefore no one should be offended or
even taking notice of their activities (themoscowtimes.com/news/family-in-siberia-scores-internet-infamy-thanks-to-google-streetview-55708).
And six more from
countries around the Russian Federation:
1.
Dalai Lama
Condemns Russian Aggression in Ukraine. The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists
has now condemned Moscow’s actions in Ukraine as aggression, thus putting him
ahead of some Western leaders who contort their language in order to avoid calling
those actions by their proper name (charter97.org/ru/news/2016/10/11/226789/).
2. Is Kyiv about to Get Creative on CIS Exit and
Citizenship? One Ukrainian analyst has suggested that
Ukraine should not simply leave the CIS but work to organize an anti-Moscow
alliance of post-Soviet states (nv.ua/opinion/danylyshyn/kak-nam-razvalit-sng-243424.html),
and another has suggested that Ukraine should follow the model of the Baltic
countries and have both citizens and non-citizens among its population
especially if Moscow’s agents in the Donbass continue to hand out passports to
people under its control (politolog.net/analytics/ukraina-dolzhna-projti-put-stran-baltii-grazhdane-i-ne-grazhdane-bloger/).
3.
Border
Dispute between Belarus and Ukraine Heating Up. Belarus and Ukraine have not yet resolved all
the issues involved in the demarcation of their border, thus opening the
possibility that the issue can be trotted out when needed to make a broader
political point (belaruspartisan.org/politic/358541/).
4.
Belarusian Foreign
Minister Says Greatest Threat to Minsk Not NATO but Dependence on Moscow. Speaking in
Poland, Minsk’s top diplomat said that the greatest threat his country now
faces comes not from NATO but rather from continuing to be too dependent on
Moscow and thus constrained in its actions (newsland.com/community/2042/content/mid-belorussii-opasnost-ne-v-nato-a-v-silnoi-zavisimosti-ot-rossii/5503663).
5.
Tashkent Mosque
Named for Late Uzbek Leader. There is now
an Islam Karimov mosque in the Uzbek capital, just one more sign of the
personality cult that continues and is being promoted by his successors as a
way of building their own authority (islamsng.com/uzb/news/11402).
6.
Bishkek Insists on
Censoring Film about 1916 to Avoid Offending Russia. The Kyrgyzstan
government has demanded that independent film makers drop several scenes in
their movie about the 1916 rising in Central Asia against Russia lest they
offend the current Russian government (turkist.org/2016/10/urkun-film-kyrgyzstan-censorship.html).
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