Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 5 -- Khakassia, a
small Turkic republic adjoining Krasnoyarsk Kray with an overwhelmingly ethnic
Russian population, rarely attracts attention except when it is rumored to be
on Vladimir Putin’s list of non-Russian republics to be amalgamated with
Russian ones or when there is an accident or prison violence there.
But two developments, one at the end
of August and the second yesterday, have brought that republic to the center of
Russian attention, not so much because they are unique to Khakassia but rather
because Khakassia, so long out of public view, has developed extreme forms of
problems that are true for most of the Russian Federation.
On the one hand, on August 22, the
Russian Procurator General has brought charges against an official of the Khakass
natural resources ministry for illegally cutting down 100 million rubles (1.6 million US dollars) worth
of cedar, an action that highlights the fusion of state and business and has
led some to conclude that the impression in Khakassia is “that there is no
state left” (For the indictment, see genproc.gov.ru/smi/news/genproc/news-1680664/;
for the background and fallout of this case, see sibreal.org/a/30142395.html).
And
on the other, yesterday, Valery Shtygashev, the head of the Supreme Soviet of
Khakassia, publicly denounced the way in which Moscow has allowed major
businesses to escape taxation while starving the republic government by not
providing it even with the funds it says it will (council.gov.ru/events/multimedia/video/ and 19rus.info/index.php/vlast-i-politika/item/111306-vladimir-shtygashev-vystupil-v-sovete-federatsii-malo-ne-pokazalos).
After
detailing just how cozy business and the state are and how that allows business
to escape paying the taxes it owes, Shtygashev said everyone must obey the law
and serve the fatherland. But now all too often, “no one fulfills the laws
which are adopted in the Russian Federation fully and in the interests of the
state.”
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