Kazan Officials have Liquidated VTOTs to Show Moscow How Loyal They Are, Zakiyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 12 – On June 10, the Supreme Court of Tatarstan liquidated the All-Tatarstan Social Center which Moscow had earlier declared an extremist organization. According to Farit Zakiyev, its president who is now in emigration, it was Kazan rather than Moscow which took this second decision.

            The reason for this unfortunate decision, he suggests, is that the Tatarstan authorities wanted to show Moscow just how loyal they are by exceeding even what the center desired just as they have so often done in the past, most infamously during Stalin’s Great Terror (idelreal.org/a/31897463.html).

            In 1937, Zakiyev recalls, Moscow gave the order for Kazan to shoot 500 people. But the servile officials in Tatarstan “shot 2,000,” most of them Tatars. That is they did even more than the center desired. Today, Moscow wants VTOTs marginalized; but Kazan to demonstrate that it is ready to overfulfill the plan liquidated it.

            Of course, neither Moscow’s desires nor Kazan’s decision can keep VTOTs and others like it from operating abroad and organizing things at home via the Internet, Zakiyev says. And that is what he says he and his group will do as they wait for the political climate at home to change.

            As for himself and his group, he wants to expand contacts with organizations and activists representing the peoples of the Middle Volga and with others in the Baltic countries, Ukraine and the Caucasus who have experience in pursuing their national goals. And he hopes to return to Kazan this fall to take part in a national commemoration.

            Zakiyev’s plans are interesting, but his comparison of the situation now with that of 1937 is more noteworthy because it explains a frightening political reality. Again as under Stalin, officials are exceeding even what Moscow wants as a means of demonstrating their loyalty and reliability, a pattern that points to truly dark days ahead.

            Not only will such officials take actions that go beyond what Moscow has initially demanded. More dangerously, their actions will become the new baseline for future actions by the center that will go far further than it initially intended as the Kremlin sees what the traffic will bear and becomes ever more repressive.