Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 30 – “Russia is very
poorly administered,” Avraam Shmulyevich says. “Horizontal ties are practically
non-existent, and vertical ones are very poor.”
As a result, such systems can last a long time but then disappear
overnight because any weakening of the vertical ties means there is little to
hold the country together.
That is what was the case in 1917
and again in 1991, the Israeli specialist on the North Caucasus says; and as a
result, “the Russian Federation could fall apart in three days.” Because that is so, the regions and republics
are increasingly having to think about how they will cope and what they will do
in that event (afterempire.info/2019/05/30/hronika-imperii/).
Because of his expertise, Shmulyevich
develops this point by discussing the Caucasus. He suggests that “over the post-Soviet
years, the Caucasus has been transformed into an ordinary colony,” one that is
costly and difficult for the center to administer. Moscow lacks the skills to
do so. As a result, it is “the source of turbulence for the entire Russian Federation.”
“Mentally,” the analyst says, the
North Caucasus has “already distanced itself from Russia and Russia from it.
Therefore, Moscow most likely in the coming years will simply throw off it as ballast”
holding Russia back much as the West European colonial powers let their
colonies go in the 1950s and 1960s.
The question arises, however, “will
this be a good thing for the Caucasus and for the world?” Could it take the
form of normal nation states? Of dictatorships like Chechnya already is? Or a
region of Islamist terrorism and radicalism?
Or could it consist of all these things competing among themselves and
drawing in outside powers?
According to Shmulyevich, “the Circassians
are the only people of the caucaus among whom there is an ideological system
that can serve as an alternative to Islam … the ideology of Khabze.” But within the divided Circassian nation,
that ideology is now locked in a competition with Islamism.
“Any people which exists under a
colonial yoke degrades,” the Israeli analyst says. “The North Caucasus and all
its peoples have lived in three empires” and as a result various “unhealthy
phenomena” have emerged. But these phenomena have not completely destroyed the
underlying cultures of these peoples.
Many of them have healthy elements
within them, Shmulyevich says. One mustn’t
feel that everything is bad but rather work to help the health elements defeat
the unhealthy ones. “There are all kinds
of possibilities to do this, and that requires in the first instance to
remember that the first source of all the problems is that the Caucasus became
a Russian colony.”
“Anti-colonial revolutions both in
European colonies and in the Russian Empire in the 19th and 20th
centuries were headed by members of the intelligentsia and businessmen who went
to study and make careers and money in the metropolitan center and abroad and
then returned to their Motherlands.”
For centuries, he continues, “the
Caucasus peoples have suffered many catastrophes, attacks and conquests. Russian
colonial rule is only one of them.” Russia has been and remains “a
disintegrating factor,” and there is no reason to think that the region will
recover quickly or easily from its occupation.
One may certainly quibble with Shmulyevich
about varius aspects of the situation in the North Caucasus, but his insight on the relationship
between vertical and horizontal ties is fundamental and should become the basis
of analysis of the Russian situation not only by Western observers but by participants
of all kinds within the Russian Federation.
Unless Russia develops more
horizontal ties among its regions, any weakening of the vertical ones between
the regions and the center will inevitably call the territorial integrity of the
country into question. Those who think that vertical ties will be enough have
been proved wrong before and are quite likely to be proved wrong again.
No comments:
Post a Comment