A Disturbing Development: Moscow Journalist Describes Central Asian Nationalists as 'Nazis'

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 3 – Olga Sukkharevskaya, a Moscow journalist of Ukrainian origins, says that Central Asian nationalists are Nazis that closely resemble Ukrainian Nazis and that Russia and the governments of those countries must work together to block the spread of their influence in society and politics.

            What makes her remarks, delivered in the Bishkek capital on March 29 so disturbing is that they appear to be a sign that Moscow is increasingly applying the ideological matrix it has employed in Ukraine to other former Soviet republics and that the Kremlin may act against these countries in the same way it has been doing against Ukraine.

            There are already signs of that possibility with regard to Kazakhstan which has taken the strongest stand against the Ukrainian war of any country in the region (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/04/yesterday-georgia-today-ukraine.html), but now it appears this Russian ideological matrix is being applied to Central Asia as a whole.

            In her Bishkek speech, Sukharevskaya said that “in Central Asia now are being observed the very same trends which occurred in Ukraine in eh 1990s,” although she does add that “for Ukraine, Nazism has a much richer history” than it does among the peoples of Central Asia (stanradar.com/news/full/49086-olga-suharevskaja-my-dolzhny-ljudjam-donosit-svoju-tochku-zrenija-i-ne-pozvoljat-npo-i-natsistam-prodvigat-svoju-povestk.html).

            “Central Asian and Ukrainian Nazis have very similar ideological positions. Above all, this is Russophobia, the persecution of the Russian language, the closing of Russian schools and he ban on Russian culture. Second, it includes the archaization of society, that is an appeal to a real or a mythical past on the basis of religious sectarianism.”

            People in both places are being “driven into some kind of medieval discourse, which does not and should not exist. This falsification is going in all directions,” Sukharevskaya says. Both in Central Asia and Ukraine, officials treat the entire period of their respective participation in the Russian state as one of colonial oppression.

            Further, she says, both places openly falsify the history of the Great Fatherland War. “This was not a victory and this was not our war,” they say. Indeed, in both places, people no longer talk about that conflict as World War II but describe it instead as “’the Soviet-German war’” in which people living in “’the Soviet empire’” were drawn against their will.

            And Sukharevskaya says there is one additional disturbing commonality: “the cult of so-called fighters for freedom and independence.” That has been true in Ukraine for decades. Now in Central Asia, “the very same trend – involving a cult of the Basmachi, the Turkestani legion and others – can be observed.”

            Related to this is talk about a Central Asian “Holodomor,” the Ukrainian word for the famine inflicted on the peasantry during collectivization but one both Ukrainians and increasingly Central Asians use to talk about a supposed “genocide” conducted by Moscow against them, the Moscow journalist says.

            Sukharevskya says it is long past time to fight back. “We must present our point of view to people and not allow NGOs and Nazis to advance their agenda.”