Dagestani Fetwa Against Niqab Not Obligatory or Likely to Be Followed Even by All Muslims in that North Caucasus Republic

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 4 – When Dagestani Mufti Akhmed Abdullayev announced that he would be issuing a fetwa against women wearing the niqab in the wake of the terrorist actions in Makhachkala and Derbent, many observers assumed that was the end of this issue. But in fact, the mufti’s words have had exactly the opposite effect.

            There are several reasons for this, all of which are now roiling the media in Dagestan and across the Russian Federation:

·       First, a fetwa or legal opinion does not have the force of law either shariat or civil but is only a recommendation, with the chief enforcement mechanism being the individual consciousnesses of Muslims (mk.ru/politics/2024/07/02/popytka-zapretit-nikaby-nachalas-s-dagestana-fetva-vmesto-gosdumy.html).

·       Second, while the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Dagestan is nominally in charge of Muslim affairs, its writ does not run to at least one million believers in that republic and thus won’t be deferred to by most of them (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/401554).

·       And third, while other Muslim hierarchies in the North Caucasus say they will follow the Dagestani action, the Makhachkala decision was reached without consultation or reference to any shariat court decision (kommersant.ru/doc/6806595).

Many Russian commentators would like to see the Russian government adopt a law against the niqab given that the MSDs aren’t going to enforce it. But Moscow may be reluctant to do so because such an action would likely to be resisted by migrant workers from Central Asia and make it more difficult for Russia to attract additions to its workforce.

But even in Dagestan, there seems little appetite for moving in that direction. Not only has the mufti indicated that his ban will be a temporary response to terrorist actions and could be lifted, but Makhachkala has talked about the niqab not being traditional in the republic rather than as something un-Islamic that must be banned.

Beijing and Moscow May Develop Network of Waterways through Russian Far East and Siberia, Vladivostok Scholar Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 3 – Concerned that the US might block the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia in the event of a major conflict between Washington and Beijing, Artyom Lukin says, Moscow and Beijing could focus on the development of waterways in Eurasia to link China to the Northern Sea Route to the West.

            The scholar at the Russian Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok says that such a project, while enormously and certainly for Russia alone prohibitively expensive, would counter any American action and that Russia and China discussed this possibility during Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to China.

            Lukin’s words were first reported by the South China Morning News and have been picked up by Russian outlets (scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3268761/russia-looking-chinas-help-develop-arctic-shipping-route-it-worth-it-beijing and realtribune.ru/rossiya-rasschityvaet-na-pomoshh-kitaya-v-razvitii-severnogo-morskogo-puti/).

            While it seems unlikely that such a project could be completed anytime soon, the mere fact that it is being discusses suggests China’s role within the borders of the Russian Federation may now be set to expand to an unprecedented level, something that will infuriate many Russians, especially those in the Far East.

Kremlin Wants Russians to Pay Less Attention to War in Ukraine, ‘Nezavisimaya Gazeta’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 4 – The results of a new Public Opinion Foundation poll suggesting that Russians are paying less attention to the war in Ukraine are not simply a reflection of war weariness but perhaps more significantly the result of a Kremlin decision to reduce the salience of the war for Russians for its own purposes, the editors of Nezavisimaya Gazeta say.

            On the one hand, they suggest, the Kremlin has few victories to point to and would very much prefer that Russians not focus on the conflict and begin to ask more questions as to why Moscow hasn’t achieved everything that it has promised at one time or another (ng.ru/editorial/2024-07-04/2_9042_red.html).

            And on the other, the editors say, Putin and his team would like Russians to be ready for some radical shift, either involving the end of the war via negotiations or the dramatic expansion of the war to include attacks on other countries and doesn’t want to be constrained in any way by a public focused on the current war.

            This is just one example of polls being used not to measure public opinion but to direct it, Nezavisimaya Gazeta says in a lead article. But it is especially important on issues like war and peace where the Kremlin has a vital interest in making sure that public opinion will follow its lead rather than make choices for itself. 

Despite Pressure, Some Independent Media Managing to Survive in Russian Regions Near the Border

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 3 – After Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian authorities launched a massive campaign to close down or block independent media in regions outside of Moscow (meduza.io/feature/2022/03/05/rossiyskie-vlasti-za-neskolko-dney-razgromili-ves-media-rynok-vot-kak-eto-vyglyadit).

            That effort was so widespread that many concluded that all independent media in the predominantly ethnic Russian regions had disappeared, leaving both residents of these regions and others interested in developments there without this source of what is going on in these places.

            But despite that official effort to destroy independent media in places where those who prepare and disseminate have fewer resources to defend themselves against the power of the state, a few independent media outlets continue to exist, although all are under pressure and many may soon be forced to close down or go into emigration.

            The Okno portal reports on three survivors, the Arctic Observer in Murmansk (murmansk.ru/), Fonar TV in Belgorod (fonar.tv/), and Pskov Gubernia formerly of Pskov and now in Riga (gubernia.media/). The first two function despite harassment and official blandishments by focusing on local issues and the last by moving across the border to Latvia.

            The journalists in all three, many of whom began their careers in the more open 1990s, are truly heroic; but their work deserves attention because they provide glimpses into the lives, concerns and aspirations of the peoples of their regions; and they challenge the view that there is nothing go on worth noticing in the media of predominantly Russian regions outside of Moscow. 

            It is unlikely that independent regional media deep within Russia can survive if Putin remains in power for many more years, but its branches in ports or border areas can either by relying on the more diverse possibilities to get information and support in those places than elsewhere or even moving abroad and relying on freelancers and remaining open sources.

Orthodox in Kazakhstan Seeking Autocephaly Find Half-Way House in Ukrainian Uniate Congregation Subordinate to Rome

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 2 – Even before Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine and the Moscow Patriarchate blessed that action, some churchmen in Kazakhstan hoped to obtain autocephaly for their church. But the war has increased the urgency and number of such calls for independence from the Moscow church.

            (For background on that trend, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/seeking-autocephaly-church-dissident-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/some-orthodox-in-kazakhstan-seek.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/07/orthodox-leaders-in-kazakhstan-now-say.html.)

            The Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople has not yet come out in direct support of this effort, although judging from its actions in Ukraine, Lithuania and elsewhere, Fanar (the name of the region in Istanbul where the headquarters of that church is located) is very much on the side of the Orthodox in Kazakhstan who are pursuing autocephaly.

            But now, according to Father Yakov Vorontsov, one of the leaders of this drive in Kazakhstan, Orthodox believers in that country have found a half-way house in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Almaty where they can worship according to the principles of Orthodoxy but in a community not subordinate to Moscow (sibreal.org/a/smenit-moskvu-na-konstantinopol/33004030.html).

            Moscow is likely to be especially alarmed by this development, one that will reenforce in Russian minds the notion that autocephaly in the former Soviet space is a Ukrainian project and highlight the role of the Vatican in this effort as well, especially among the smaller Orthodox churches in Central Asia.

            That is because in June 2019, Pope Francis set up an Apostolic Administration of Kazakhstan and Central Asia to oversee the activities of the Uniates and a smaller number of other Byzantine rite churches in the five countries of that region (press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2019/06/01/0471/00976.html).

            Consequently, what some Orthodox in Kazakhstan are now doing will exacerbate relations between Moscow and the Vatican and likely prompt Moscow to provide even more support to conservatives in Roman Catholicism who are opposed to Pope Francis and his policies.

 

Three Russians in Four Say There are Enough Orthodox Churches Near Them, VTsIOM Poll Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 2 – Seventy-seven percent of Russians say there are enough Orthodox churches near them, with only eight percent saying there aren’t enough and ten percent saying there are too many, according to a new VTsIOM poll, a view at odds with the Moscow Patriarchate and one that sets the stage for more NIMBY clashes.

            During his 15 years in power, Patriarch Kirill has made the building of new churches the centerpiece of his policies, with the number rising from approximately 14,000 in 2009 to more than 25,000 now; and he has announced plans to build even more in the future (ng.ru/ng_religii/2024-07-02/9_575_church.html).

            But there is less and less support for that approach. In the two capitals, more than one Russian in five says there are already more than enough Russian Orthodox churches. Only in rural areas do more people say there is a need for more churches, 14 percent as compared to four to seven percent in the cities.

            Some supporters of the ROC MP have challenged the poll, arguing that the way the questions were asked distorted how Russians really feel; but others are suggesting that if the Patriarchate really does want to build more churches, it should do so in the villages rather than in the cities and their suburbs.

            Such a shift, if it occurs, would limit the number of clashes between the church and residents. In rural areas, giving land to the church seldom requires that it be taken from other uses including public parks. But focusing on rural areas now would lower the profile of the church; and consequently, Kirill is unlikely to agree.

Environmentalism and Nationalism Re-Enforce One Another, Especially Given Moscow’s Denunciation of the Former as a Manifestation of the Latter, Baranova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 2 – Environmental and national movements re-enforce one another because they are both about problems in a specific place, Vlada Baranova says. That means both that environmental activism is more likely where nationalism already exists and nationalism affects the way in which environmental movements talk about their problems.

            Those interrelationships are widely known and well-documented, the researcher who specializes in the status of minority languages in the Russian Federation says. But there is another reason the relationship between the two is especially fraught in Russia today (posle.media/ekologiya-ili-etnichnost/).

            And it is this: Moscow and regional officials often attack environmentalists as being nothing more than a branch of nationalist movements and deploy their usual repressive measures against them. But such an approach is counterproductive because is strengthens the nationalists and does nothing to keep the environmentalists from continuing their activities.

            “Ecological problems exist in the majority of the regions of Russia,” Baranova says; “and in some of them arise environmental movements and protests. But they do not find such a response everywhere and instead unite people for the resolution of the most varied problems,” including some not obviously connected with nationalism.

            However, “an important factor in the mobilization of ecological moves in the republics is ethnic nationalism in one or another forms. There, it is precisely ecological arguments which refer to our land and our people, something that makes them able to attract more people to their cause.”

            Because environmentalists use such terms, Russian officials at all levels routinely accuse them of being nationalistic and use such charges to suppress them, Baranova continues. Such accusations are “widely used in various republics by force structures to suppress or persecute all who do not agree with the powers that be.”

            But, according to Baranova, “pressure by the authorities using accusations of nationalism and the ethnicization of political or social conflicts is a vicious circle as they only strengthen one another” and weaken the position of the powers that be.

1991 Borders in Post-Soviet Space No Longer ‘Sacred,’ Markedonov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 1 – To avoid a Yugoslavia on the territory of the former USSR, the post-Soviet states in 1991 accepted the administrative borders the Soviet government had imposed as the state borders of their countries, Sergey Markedonov says; but developments in these countries and Russia’s conflict with the West mean these lines are no longer “sacred.”

            Speaking to a youth forum in Yekaterinburg, the MGIMO scholar says that this changed reality must be kept in mind when talking about events in Ukraine. Moscow’s dispute with the West there is not a struggle for “some pieces of territory” but rather a much larger political contest (nakanune.ru/articles/122309/).

            For Russia as for all other countries, Markedonov says, “it is always important and necessary to know what is happening in countries with which yours has a border.” That in turn is “largely a problem of identity: where do we begin and where to we end? Where are our borders?”

            What he calls “the Beloveshchaya borders” were initially accepted by Russians because they expected outsiders to stay out and the new states to behave with respect toward all the ethnic groups, including Russians on their territories. But as the West has intervened more often and these countries have increasingly harsh policies toward minorities, that attitude has changed.

            Indeed, Markedonov says, “we can now say that there has been a collapse of ‘Beloveshchaya nationalism’ and the union republic borders established in Soviet times have ceased to be sacred.” And consequently, there is every possibility that the borders agreed to in 1991 will be changed in the future.

‘If Sense of Civic Unity Disappears, Nothing can Save Russia,’ Russian Government Advisor on Ethnic Issues Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 1 – The existence in the population of a strong sense of identity with the state is “more important than the existence of an army, police borders, or border guards,” Aleksandr Polunov says. And if such an identity disappears, “then nothing will help” keep the state in one piece.”

            Speaking at a Kazan conference on patriotism, the Moscow State University scholar who chairs the experts advisory council at the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs, said that the collapse of the USSR proved that: “When people lost the sense that a single state should exist, no other factors helped preserve the state” (business-gazeta.ru/article/639040).

            While most discussions about the collapse of the USSR and the possible disintegration of the Russian Federation implicitly recognize that reality, few are prepared to be as blunt as Polunov is -- especially at a time when Putin and many others think that coercive power alone will be sufficient to hold things together.

Moscow Celebrating Rise of Anti-Kyiv Partisan Movement in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 1 – On June 29, Russia marked the Day of the Partisans and Underground Workers to commemorate the role such people played in defeating the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II. But this year, the holiday also celebrated the rise of what Russian officials say is powerful pro-Moscow and anti-Kyiv partisan movement in Ukraine today.

            Discussing this development for Vzglyad, Moscow commentator Andrey Rezchikov says that Ukrainians who oppose the Zelensky government have attracted draft centers, railways, and supply dumps far behind the front lines, with attacks on the last especially important for the success of Russian forces (vz.ru/society/2024/6/29/1275375.html).

            He cites the words of Aleksandr Makushin, an expert who is a member of the Russian Military History Society, to the effect that the movement is growing because “society sees that a war to the last Ukrainian is being conducted in the interests of Western countries but not for that of Ukraine.”

            According to the historian, the current underground movement is very different than its World War II predecessor, not only because it is able to make use of the Internet and thus is organized as a series of cells rather than territorially based military units. Another difference is that the Ukrainians supposedly are even harsher in punishing partisans than were the Germans.

            It is uncertain how accurate Rezchikov’s report it, but the fact that he is talking about it at all and that he says Moscow is encouraging the new partisans to go after supply dumps in the first instance strongly suggests that backing such an underground is an increasingly important part of Russian military strategy in Ukraine. 

Moscow’s New Language Policy Document Drops All References to Problems of Non-Russian Languages Contained in 2021 Draft

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 1 – In 2021, the Moscow Institute of Linguistics prepared a draft concept paper on the Russian government’s language policy. That text contained discussions of the problems facing the country’s non-Russian languages. But the approved version released two weeks ago has dropped all such references, sparking criticism by non-Russian activists.

            These changes are one of the clearest signs of just how far in the direction of Russianization and Russification the Putin regime has moved over the last several years and of the fears many non-Russians have that many of their languages are slated for destruction however much Russian officials insist otherwise.

            (The new text itself is available at nevarono.spb.ru/file/Чалганская/РАЗНОЕ_2023-2024/РАСПОРЯЖЕНИЕ_ПРАВИТЕЛЬСТВА_ОБ_УТВЕРЖДЕНИИ_КОНЦЕПЦИИ_ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЙ_ЯЗЫКОВОЙ_ПОЛИТИКИ.pdf. The criticism this policy paper has attracted is surveyed at idelreal.org/a/russkiy-yazyk-stavitsya-vyshe-po-ierarhii-o-novoy-kontseptsii-rossiyskoy-yazykovoy-politiki/33012696.html.)

            Varvara Korkina, a specialist on the indigenous peoples of the North and the Far East denounces this change and says pointedly that the situation for many of the nations she follows is increasingly break given that there is now no indication that the center will do anything to help them preserve their languages (t.me/arctidaio/245).

            Valera Ilinov, the founding editor of Komi Daily, agrees and says that the new document makes it crystal clear that for Putin and his regime, “the Russian language has been elevated to a status higher than all the rest” and that unless the republics resist, something they are not doing yet, the future of their languages will deteriorate further.

            And Daavar Dorzhin, an Oyrat-Kalmyk activist, while insisting that the new document simply reinforces current trends rather than changing the overall direction of Moscow’s language policy, suggests that it will open the way for even more Russianizing and Russifying policies in the republics.

            According to the activist, “Russian language policy for many years does not consider the preservation of indigenous languages as a primary goal and fails to implement even the modest guarantees it appears to offer to those who speak them.” Instead, “everything good that happens” in this language sphere “is possible thanks to private initiatives.”

            But “today,” Dorzhin continues, “when the Russian government persecutes them for ‘extremism,’ ‘separatism,’ and anti-war views, it is hard to believe in positive changes no matter how many declarations Moscow makes about ‘a multinational people … A real turning point will occur only when the regions gain independence.”

 

Young Muslims inside Russia Radicalizing Because of Collapse of Traditional Societies at Home and Problems in Islamic World Abroad, Kurbanov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 1 – Young Muslims in the North Caucasus are becoming increasingly radicalized because of the rapid collapse of the traditional societies in their republics and because of social and economic problems in the Muslim world more generally, according to Ruslan Kurbanov of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

            The Moscow scholar says that young Muslims there blame the Russian state for its role in promoting modernization and are even prepared to “take up arms” against it, and they see the Muslim hierarchies in the Islamic world as having been corrupted by their ties with states and thuds follow radicals (rbc.ru/society/01/07/2024/667e6f809a7947bbc82b9e66

            Expanding on Kurbanov’s points, Mufti Damir Mukhetdinov of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Russia suggests that some of these problems might be limited if it were the case that Russian society had provided greater opportunities for young Muslims to make careers and rise through the social hierarchy.

            But those elevators, military in the case of tsarist times and the communist party in Soviet times, no longer work, Mukhetdinov says. Some of them were destroyed, others were limited in their operation. And recently, he continues, “we haven’t offered anything new” as a replacement. Unless that changes, radicalization of Muslim young people will only continue to grow.

Dagestan Presents a Fundamentally Different -- and Possibly Insoluble -- Challenge to Moscow than Do Other Non-Russian Republics

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 28 – Moscow has long recognized that Dagestan is the most Islamic of the non-Russian republics of the North Caucasus, but it is now having to deal with another fundamental difference between that republic and the others, a difference that its policies toward the others have done little to restrain.

            Elsewhere, Putin’s Kremlin has relied on republic heads to control the situation not only by relying on the use of force but also and even more importantly by controlling the flow of subsidies from Moscow to the population. These republic leaders have built their own power verticals that in many ways resemble the one Putin has built for Russia as a whole.

            But in Dagestan, the ethnic composition of the population has forced both the republic leadership and Moscow to distribute money and thus power to the heads of the component nationalities in a power-sharing arrangement that gives the heads of those communities more power than the republic head.

            Up to now, Moscow has viewed this arrangement as a price worth paying for maintaining stability in a republic where no ethnic group is sufficiently numerous to ensure that it and the republic elite based on it can control the situation. But now the consequences of that approach are coming home to roost.

            On the one hand, the local elites within the republic are making alliances with criminal or radical Islamic groups, as the recent violence in Makhachkala and Derbent showed. And on the other, anyone who seeks to unite Dagestan has little choice but to turn to Islam as the basis for that.

            Moscow does not want to see either situation develop further lest Dagestan spiral into violence or become a bastion of Islamist radicalism. After the recent terrorist incidents, the center has begun to recognize that it faces a different challenge in Dagestan than elsewhere (e.g., versia.ru/kumovstvo-i-blizorukost-doveli-dagestan-do-mezhkonfessionalnogo-krovoprolitiya).

            It isn’t sure what to do except increase repression and conduct a thorough-going purge down to the local elites (kavkazr.com/a/deputatov-i-rayonnyh-glav-proveryat-posle-napadeniya-na-dagestan/33011279.html).  But that won’t solve the fundamental problems of multi-nationality in that republic. Indeed, it may have just the opposite effect.

            In short, Putin’s one-size-fits-all approach to the republics of the North Caucasus is collapsing in Dagestan in ways that are likely to echo in other federal subjects where whatever it does in Makhachkala will be seen as a potential precedent for republic and sub-republic elites, their relations with Moscow and their attitudes toward ethnicity and religion. 

            And that reality too will limit Moscow’s options in Dagestan: it can’t treat it differently without other federal subjects taking note; but if it continues to treat it in the same way, it will find that such an approach will make existing problems there worse and put the center’s control of the eastern North Caucasus very much at risk.

Children of Elites in Non-Russian Republics Radicalizing Because Their Parents Say One Thing in Public and Quite Another in Private, ‘Volya’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 28 – Many in Moscow were surprised by the fact that all the participants in the recent terrorist attacks in Dagestan were children of local elites, but they shouldn’t have been, the Volya telegram channel says. The explanation is simple: these elites now say one thing in public and quite another in private, and their children are taking note of that.

            In the current Russian system, the children of these elites know that their own futures are now severely limited by Moscow’s Russian nationalist attitudes and lack of trust in non-Russians in general. In short, they have “hit a ceiling” and aren’t prepared to accept that as their parents do (mayday.rocks/vse-byli-iz-bogatyh-i-vpolne-vliyatelnyh-dagestanskih-semej/).

            And the attitudes of these children of the current regional elites are being formed by the behavior of their parents, Volya says. “At home, a member of the United Russia Party from Dagestan, Karachay-Cherkessia or Ingushetia can talk about Russian occupiers even though in public, they talk about the civilizing role of Russia in the region.”

            Commenting on this reality, Vadim (Kharun) Sidoorov of Prague’s Charles University observes that “the present Russian authorities prohibit the formation of ethnic and regional parties under the aegis of which the establishment in these regions could consolidate without harm to their own social-psychological requirements” (idelreal.org/a/edinaya-rossiya-ne-vsegda-edinaya-i-ne-vsegda-rossiya-/33011648.html).

            That marks a sharp contrast with other countries where such parties are allowed to exist and even with the Soviet approach in which the CPSU had republic branches and was committed to internationalism instead of “the Russian nationalist” agenda that United Russia now displays (idelreal.org/a/31173814.html).

            Elites in non-Russian republics join United Russia “not from ideological considerations but because that is the only way for them to make political careers in a centralized state,” Sidorov says. But what has happened in Dagestan shows that “the gulf between the personal and family attitudes of certain members of United Russia” is growing and can led to explosions.

            And the more Russian nationalist United Russia becomes, the deeper this gulf will become – yet another way Putin’s “Russian world” is now on course to self-destruct. 

Moscow’s Strategic Targets are Africa and the Arctic not Ukraine and the Baltic, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 28 –Moscow’s long-term strategic goals are revanchist rather than defensive, seek for Russia a larger place in the world than it was allotted at the end of the Cold War, and have as their most important targets not Ukraine and the Baltic countries but the Arctic and Africa, Vladimir Pastukhov says.  

            Moreover, the London-based Russian analyst says, the Kremlin is “confident that the West and the US in particular are on the verge of a severe crisis and possibly a civil war and that Russia’s nuclear missile shield and its authoritarian system gives Russia significant competitive advantages” in its pursuit of these larger goals (t.me/v_pastukhov/1135).

            Unfortunately, the current consensus among Western experts on Russia is at odds with all of these underlying realities, Pastukhov says; and as a result, many of them are misjudging both what Putin is doing now and why and also why “no temporary truce in Ukraine, if it happens, will change the overall offensive vector of Russian foreign policy.

            According to the Russian analyst, Moscow is convinced that it was “deprived” of its proper place in “the post-modern redistribution of zones of influence” and has set as its task the pursuit of “a more equitable redistribution” of those zones. Ukraine and Russia’s other neighbors are only a small part of this, despite the attention they are now getting in Moscow and the West.

            Instead, Pastukhov argues, Moscow is now focusing and will continue to focus on Africa and the Arctic, two regions where power relations remain in flux and where the presence of enormous natural resources will give those who control them a disproportionate influence on political arrangements throughout the rest of the 21^st century.