Last Soviet Dissidents Stand with Today's Opponents of Putin's Fascism, Aleksandr Skobov Says

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – Aleksandr Skobov, one of the last Soviet dissidents alive and unlikely to leave the Russian prison camp where he has been confined since being convicted of “justifying terrorism” has sent a letter to his wife which he clearly sees as his testament and a message to those fighting against Putin’s fascism.

            Novaya Gazeta has now published that letter with an introduction by opposition politician Leonid Gozman who describes Skobov as “not simply a hero but a sainting the direct Biblical sense” and his letter as “a fantastic document” that everyone concerned about Russia must read (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/07/30/podvig-skobova).

            In Gozman’s words, Skobov “avoids pathos and does not say that he has sacrificed his life for his principles although that is the case. He isn’t thinking about his influence on others … but he does want today’s young people who bear the brunt of the regime’s repression know that the Soviet dissidents are standing alongside them.”

            In short, Skobov “wants that his generation – and he is one of the last – is completed its path without betraying itself and wants to preserve his dignity and remain a human being until the last. In fact, he has already achieved that: the Russian powers that be have not destroyed him. He is the victor.”

            The key passages of Skobov’s  letter are as follows”

I belong to the generation of Soviet political dissidents. Despite its small numbers, it became a significant historical phenomenon. It has become a symbol of human resistance to violence. Influenced the international agenda.

And although I have always been a “black sheep” in this generation due to the fact that I myself am “a red,” for me, belonging to it has been the most important thing in life. There were different people in it: good and not so good, strong and weak. It had its own “wrong side”, as in any opposition “get-together” at all times. But its face was represented by large-scale personalities who became the standard of fortitude and morality.

They have all already passed away. There were only a few of us, but now there are only a few left. Our generation is in its historical place for completely natural reasons. And against the background of a new unfolding historical drama, it found herself completely on the sidelines.

They didn't touch us for a long time. They say they will die themselves. Or they will go and live on the interest from the political and moral capital they once acquired (quite deservedly). The blow fell on other people, most of them much younger.

I am skeptical about pretentious phrases about the transfer of traditions and experience. In reality, this mechanism has always worked extremely poorly. Each new generation prefers to fill its own bumps. But I want those young people who took the blow to know: the last Soviet dissidents stood next to them, were with them, shared their path with them.

I don’t know what practical benefit this will bring from the point of view of the tactical and strategic objectives of the moment. I just want this to make someone feel a little warmer. I want my generation to complete their story with this.

Putin and His Elite are ‘Direct Heirs of Gorbachev,’ Shusharin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – Russia did not make the transition to democracy in the 1990s because neither the Russian elites nor the Russian people wanted that, Russian commentator Dmitry Shusharin says. Instead, they were each quite prepared for a return to totalitarianism with a democratic façade much like what Mikhail Gorbachev pushed at the end of Soviet times.

He argues that “the current model of Russian totalitarianism grew out of the 1990s, although the regime seeks to contrast itself with that time.” But in fact, Putin has returned the country from the attempts in the 1990s at real democracy to the façade democracy conceived at the start of perestroika” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=66A7858592B64).

“Whatever progressives may say,” Shusharin suggests, that means that “the current ruling elite are Gorbachev’s heirs, the direct successors of his work. Perestroika was an attempt to renew totalitarianism, to reorganize it on rational principles and to abandon its most archaic features.”

Almost 40 years on, everyone can see that this project was “a success.” Single-party rule has been eliminated, the economy has a market but not a free one, planning is mostly gone, and “the ruling elite has managed to secure itself irreplaceability without repressions” as there are now elections “but not electoral democracy.”

Indeed, Shusharin insists, “the wars with Georgia and Ukraine and the occupation of part of the territory of Moldova are also a direct continuation of Gorbachev’s attempts to save the USSR by force in Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the Baltic countries.” And that isn’t going to change until both the elites and the population change as well.

            But that hasn’t happened: “both the elites and society were and remain equally interested in adapting new institutions, new freedoms and new opportunities to the needs of the totalitarian structures of society and power.” And to overcome that will require not only a re-formatting of the country but new thinking.

            Gorbachev talked about that, but he failed to spark its spread across the elites and society if indeed he was really interested in overcoming totalitarianism and not just erecting a new façade around it, Shusharin suggests.

North Caucasus Officials’ Reliance on Russian Nationalist Groups to Help Militia Intensifying Non-Russian Nationalism in that Region, SOVA Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – Among the most important factors that are leading to the intensification of nationalism among the non-Russian nations in the North Caucasus is the increasing use by officials there are right-wing Russian nationalist groups to help militias maintain order, Vera Alperovich says.

            An expert on nationalist movements, she made that observation in the course of a discussion about the growth of non-Russian nationalisms in the southern part of the Russian Federation that was organized by the Kavkaz-Uzel news service (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/402294).

            She says that this represents a serious change from only a decade ago when the police there and elsewhere were targeting Russian nationalists. Now, the authorities have funded the growth of these groups and are using them as adjuncts to the militia when there are protests or other mass actions.

            These new adjuncts to the police are probably pleased to be playing that role, but their actions, Alperovich suggests, are causing ever more non-Russians to view the governments even in their republics as occupying authorities and that in turn is leading ever more of them to become more nationalistic and hostile to Moscow.

Russians Don’t Yet Hate the State but are Ever More Alienated from It, El Murid Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – Anatoly Nesmiyan, who blogs under the screen name El Murid, says that the Russian population is increasing alienated from the power vertical of the state. That is not yet hatred and doesn’t present an immediate threat because the population isn’t prepared to act on it.

            “Alienation is not about hatred,” he continues; “it is about indifference.” And just as Russians did not care deeply about whether Prigozhin would succeed, they won’t in the future care about the removal of senior officials, up to and including Putin, in the future (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/19714 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=66A7DB09E33E1).

            According to El Murid, Russian nihilism has always had the same root, “the indifference of the powers that be to the people and the indifference of the people about the powers.” But his comments come in reaction to the results of a new poll by the Federal Protection Service about the possible blocking of YouTube in the Russian Federation.

            The FPS reported that its survey had found that “more than 50 percent of those questioned had a negative attitude toward the prohibition of YouTube in the RF, that 70 percent did not understand what the reasons for blocking it could be [but that] 80 percent said they would not actively protest against any ban.”

            “The term FPS survey is in itself incredibly amusing,” El Murid suggests. “It represents the abyss of a decline” that has Putin’s Praetorian Guard “fulfilling a purely civilian function.” But more than that it shows just how disconnected the Russian people have become from the Russian state.

Dissatisfaction in Russian Army May Lead to a Revolution like One in 1917, Kurnosova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – Increasing dissatisfaction in the ranks of the Russian military in Ukraine, along with the growing number of armed units within the Russian Federation not directly subordinate to Moscow and the ever-larger number of guns in private hands may lead to a revolution just as these factors did in 1917, Olga Kurnosova says.

            The head of the secretariat of the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies, Russian elected officials now in emigration, made that point  in an interview she gave to Ukraine’s 24 Channel television station (rosdep.online/olga-kurnosova-volny-nedovolstva-v-armii-mogut-zakonchitsya-revolyucziej/).

            The possibility of such an evolution toward revolution, Kurnosova says, is increased by the way in which the Kremlin has chosen to fill the ranks of the army with “the most lumpen segments of the population” who ae joining up and remaining in the ranks not because of patriotism but because of cash payments.”

            Moreover, again as a result of Kremlin decisions, she continues, “there is a huge number of different armed formations on the territory of the Russian Federation,” many of which “obey not so much the generals in Moscow as local or departmental leaderships.” Kadyrov’s men are only the most noteworthy of these.

            And she adds, there is now “a huge amount of weapons” both in these units and in the population, weapons not aren’t registered and are already behind the increasing violence of the criminal world, just as was the case in the Russian Empire a century ago. If these groups come together and a leadership again comes out of nowhere, a revolutionary situation may emerge.

Other Russian commentators are now drawin similar comparisons. For a discussion of some of their observatiosn, see jamestown.org/program/russian-army-degrading-in-ukraine-threatening-moscow-both-there-and-at-home/.

 

Russia Lacks Teachers of and Much Interest in Eastern Languages and So will Use English in Speaking with Asians, Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – Vladimir Putin talks a lot about Russia’s “turn to the east,” but the country isn’t training enough speakers of eastern languages and so will continue to use English with China, India and other Asian countries because people there are more likely to know that language than to know Russian, Dmitry Zhuravlyov says.

            The general director of the Institute of Regional Problems says that despite talk about English being a language of the past, Russians study it far more often than they do other languages given how important English remains as a means of acquiring information in many areas (svpressa.ru/society/article/423987/)

            That needs to change if Russia is to become more influential in Asia, he suggests. If Russians come to countries there speaking English, it will be viewed by many Asians as just another Western state that they have no more reason to treat as an ally or supporter than any of the others.

            Zhuravlyov also calls attention to another shortcoming of Russian foreign language instruction: Russians aren’t studying the languages of their immediate neighbors, including the languages of those in the former Soviet republics. Instead, Russians expect the latter to know Russian, something that deepens the divide between them.

Mortality Rates Rising Across Russia but Faster in Ethnic Russian Regions than in Non-Russian Ones, Rosstat Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – Declining birthrates in the Russian Federation garner much more attention because Moscow officials believe they can counter that with simple payments, but rising mortality rates get less because addressing them requires broad social, economic and behavioral changes the Putin regime isn’t ready or able to pursue.

            But rising deathrates across the entire Russian Federation, reported by the government’s own statistical agency, may force a change. According to Rosstat, the number of deaths has risen dramatically, with that figure up more than 15 percent over the last year in Vologda, theAltai, Sakha, Vladimir, Ivanovo, Kaliningrad, Kostroma, Tver and Yaroslavl.

            Even in the capitals, deaths are up with increases of 15.9 percent in Petersburg and 13 percent in Moscow (fontanka.ru/2024/04/20/73487489/). Notably, deaths did not rise by a similar amount in non-Russian areas, a pattern that some independent demographers say reflects lower levels of alcohol consumption (svpressa.ru/health/article/424145/)

            It also highlights something else: Despite the fact that Moscow has drawn soldiers for Putin’s war in Ukraine disproportionately from non-Russian areas and that these soldiers almost certainly have suffered more casualties, that has not been sufficient to push their overall death rates up as fast as those in predominantly ethnic Russian regions have risen.

           And that in turn means that in combination with higher birthrates among non-Russians generally and Muslim nations in particular than among ethnic Russians, the share of the ethnic Russians in the population of the Russian Federation will continue to decline and quite likely at an ever-accelerating rate. 

Moscow’s Re-Routing of Trans-Siberian to Bypass Kazakhstan Highlights Larger Problem

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – In Soviet times, Moscow built highways and railways without always taking into account the borders of the union republics. As a result, many routes from one place in a republic passed through another republic before reaching their destinations in the one from which they started.

            Nowhere has that problem been greater than in the border regions of the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan, and the sorting out of this problem, under discussions since 1991, has prompted Moscow to announce its plans for the construction of a new rail route that will allow the Trans-Siberian railway to bypass Kazakhstan (vpoanalytics.com/sobytiya-i-kommentarii/transsib-ukhodit-iz-kazakhstana/).

            That decision will save the Russian side the money it now pays Kazakhstan to use the rail lines. But it is being taken because for all the talk about a possible rapprochement  between Moscow and Astana, most of the expert community expect that sanctions will continue and relations will only deteriorate (19rusinfo.ru/politika/66134-kitaj-pridet-i-vsjo-zaberjot-rossiya-stroit-dorogu-v-obkhod-kazakhstana).

            Construction of the new route is slated to begin this year and be completed by next, but the history of delays in rail

An Important Compilation of Oft-Neglected Sources for the Study of Stalinism

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 27 – One of the greatest disappointments for those of us who were trained and spent much of our careers studying the USSR has been that many of the lacunae of Soviet history that could have been filled with information released with the coming of glasnost and the more open media environment in the first years of post-Soviet Russia.

            And that disappointment has only been intensified by the growing sense among many that with Putin’s increasing repression, those questions about the past somehow will never be answered. But that is a mistake: new sources are appearing, albeit in sometimes unexpected places, and because materials published from the 1990s until 2022 have yet to be exploited fully.

            An example of the former is a new article on the SibReal portal devoted to the largely unknown history of Stalin’s moves against nationalists and regionalists in southern Siberia beginning in 1934 with the suppression of the Union of Siberian Turks who wanted a republic there and World War II (sibreal.org/a/kak-v-1930-e-repressirovali-shortsev/33039971.html).

            The article is important not only for the nationalities involved, many of whom do not know their history and for students of those ethnic groups but also for all those who still seek to trace how Stalin built his system from the periphery where his actions were often ignored to the center.

            And that article contains a link to the second kind of source, first by calling attention to an article that gives remarkable data on the repression of non-Russians in Siberia in the 1930s (nkvd.tomsk.ru/content/editor/DOCUMENTS/Statyi/UjmanowWN/Ujmanov-V-N-K-voprosu-o-nacionalnom-sostave-repressirovannyh-na-territorii-Zapadnoj-Sibiri.pdf) and then by pointing to an even more important guide to information about that period.

            That is a bibliography with texts attached of materials on Stalinist repressions of articles and books published in Russia over the last several decades mostly in regional and local outlets that has been compiled by Memorial and the Tomsk regional studies museum (nkvd.tomsk.ru/researches/publication/sciarticles/).

            The range of coverage of the materials included is so great that no one who wants to better understand what happened in Russia not only under Stalin but after him can afford not to go through the dozens of articles included. 

Ukraine’s Population in Best Case to Decline to Fewer than 33 Million by 2033, Kyiv Demographer Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 27 – Ella Libanova, head of the Kyiv Institute for Demography and Social Research, says that Ukraine will never again have the 52 million people it had at the end of Soviet times and that “according to the most optimistic variant,” its population will be no more than 33 million in 2033.

            As dire as her prediction is (rbc.ru/economics/13/07/2024/6692bce69a7947f58e702788), it pales in comparison with a new UN report that says the population of Ukraine in the borders of 1991 will likely decline to 15.3 million by the end of the century (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2024-07-28--demograficheskaja-katastrofa-ukrainy-74715).

            Even if Kyiv succeeds in securing the return of all those who had left the country following Putin’s expanded invasion, Libanova says that “the contraction of the population all the same will decline” and Ukraine will be forced to seek to attract migrant workers to man its workforce.

            Russian outlets like Rhythm of Eurasia scoff at her comments, arguing that scholars in Kyiv know that Ukraine will never regain its 1991 borders and that it will never attract more than a small proportion of those who have left. As a result, they say, the demographic prospects of Ukraine are horrific and will leave the country incapable of maintaining itself.

Five Numerically Small Languages in RF on Brink of Extinction, Shor Activist Tells UN Conference

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 27 – Vladislav Tannagashev, a Shor activist, told the UN’s Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples meeting in Geneva earlier this month that the languages of five numerically small peoples in the Russian Federation are spoken by fewer than 60 people each and are on the brink of disappearing.

            These include the Aleut with 19 speakers of the titular language, Itelmen with 56 speakers, Orochi with three, Chuvan with 56, and En with 36, he says. Unless radical steps are taken, those languages will soon disappear (rosdep.online/vladislav-tannagashev-vlasti-rf-ugnetayut-korennye-narody-prikryvayas-demagogiej-o-borbe-s-kolonializmom/).

            Those figures come from the 2020/2021 Russian census, but the real situation is far worse than that, Tannagashev continues, for three reasons. First, there are many other languages with only a few more speakers. Second, the Russian government despite claims to the contrary is not providing the necessary support in schools and in official institutions.

            And third, Moscow is working hard to conceal what is taking place by blocking the participation of representatives of these minorities from attending meetings like the one he spoke do.ha Several were in fact prevented from speaking in Geneva because of Russian pressure on the organizers.

            In addition, Tannagashev said, the minority nationalities and their languages suffer from the fact that most representatives of what is called the Russian democratic opposition have taken positions on the minority nationalities that are not strongly dissimilar from those of the Kremlin, further limiting the possibility that their languages will survive.

Moscow Officials Now Saying What Used to Land Far Right Activists in Prison, Kulayeva Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 27 – Even more disturbing than the rise of extreme right Russian nationalist activism over the last few years has been the fact that Moscow officials are now saying exactly what used to land those who held those views time in Russian jails and prisons, language that is attracting ever more people to act in the same way, Stefaniya Kulayeva says.

            The expert at the Memorial Anti-Discrimination Center says that poll and after poll shows that xenophobia has increased since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine and that ever more Russians feel free to manifest their hatred for immigrants and minorities (svoboda.org/a/russkiy-marsh-v-korenovske/33050775.html).

            Because senior Russian government officials are now saying what only far right activists said in the past, ever more both of them and in the population at large feel they can act out their views with impunity and even that what they are doing is precisely what the Kremlin itself actually wants.

            If this trend continues, Kulayeva suggests, the authorities may very well lose control of the situation. Some of them are even aware of that danger, but despite that, far right Russian nationalism and extremism is continuing to intensify and spread, trends that at the very least point to more violence and the rise of anti-Russian attitudes among minority groups. 

Putin Regime Often Seeks to Take Over Opposition Groups Rather than Just Suppress Them

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 27 – Given the Putin regime’s attacks on various opposition groups, many assume that the destruction of the latter is the only goal the Kremlin is pursuing. But in fact, Putin has often chosen to take over groups so that their past reputation helps him to sow confusion in the ranks of these groups and of their supporters.

            The Russian leader has done so with Circassian groups and even with some internet portals, and he has recently achieved a similar goal in the case of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) which has been changed “from a nation-based change agent to a weapon of state-controlled propaganda.”

            That is the conclusion of a detailed 20-page report by two former RAIPON leaders that has been released by the International Committee of Indigenous Peoples of Russia about this Russian practice (indigenous-russia.com/archives/38572), one that is far more dangerous than the complete destruction of a group.

            It deserves far more attention than it is likely to receive both as a study of what Moscow is up to in the Russian North and as an indication of what it is likely to be doing elsewhere as the Russian powers that be moves to undermine growing opposition to Moscow’s repression and aggression.

Renaming Moscow’s Europe Square Eurasian Prompts Russians to Joke that Rurik Came Not from Scandinavia but from North Korea

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 27 – Many of the steps the Putin regime takes are tragicomic, containing as they do elements worthy of laughter and others deserving tears, Leonid Gozman says. The regime’s decision to rename Moscow’s Europe Square Eurasian but not to change the name of the Eurasian shopping center or the Kyiv railroad station on it, at least not yet, is one of them.

            The Russian opposition politician now living abroad says that such inconsistency is endemic to the Putin regime which claims to be conservative but in fact is destructive of the past as well as the present but in ways that provoke laughter as well as tears (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/07/26/pokhititeli-ploshchadi-evropy).

            While most commentaries about the name change have focused on its tragic significance, Gozman calls attention to the fact that this decision has already sparked “a mass of jokes.” He cites two in particular. According to one, Rurik, the traditional founder of the Russian state, it suggests, came not from the European north.

            And according to the other, the new name will require Russians to learn that “the Tatars defended Rus from aggression emanating from Europe.” Such jokes, he continues, show that Russians know they are Europeans whatever Putin says and that he is fighting an uphill battle in trying to insist otherwise, one that he and his successors will inevitably lose.

Fertility Rate among RF Women Fell to 1.41 in 2023, Far Below Replacement Level and Lowest since 1999

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 27 – The fertility rate among women in the Russian Federation – the number of children per woman over a lifetime – fell to 1.41 in 2023, well below the level of 2.2 that would maintain the current level of population, the lowest since 1999, and a significant decline since the high during that period of 1.78 in 2015.

            In reporting these figures to a Moscow meeting of the Festival of New Media, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov describe them as “a catastrophe” (t.me/mnm_masterskaya/3145, rbc.ru/society/26/07/2024/66a3443c9a7947168745ad16  and kasparov.ru/material.php?id=66A3584AA7489).

            Part of the reason for this decline is the number of women in the prime child-bearing cohorts as a result of low birthrates 20 to 30 years ago. While the fertility rate of 1.41 reflects the births women from 15 to 50 have, most births come from the generation of women that is now extremely small.

            But this low fertility rate is likely to continue not only in the near term but into the more distant future, as Russians urbanize and choose to have fewer children and as low birthrates now echo in the future just as the low birthrates during World War II long have echoed in Soviet and Russian realities.

            But such contractions in the fertility rate mean that Russia will find it more difficult to man the economy or field an army and will be more rather than less dependent on immigrant workers, a group that the Putin government is now seeking to restrict rather than allow to continue to expand.

            And there is an even more disturbing consequence of this low fertility rate if as there is every reason to believe past patterns continue to hold: the summary fertility rate is only as high as it is because Muslim nationalities in the Russian Federation still have higher fertility rates than do ethnic Russians.

            That means that over time, the share of ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation will continue to decline, a trend that will make it ever more difficult for the Kremlin to promote Putin’s ideas about a Russian world even within Russian borders and mean that any expansion of those borders will send the percentage of Russians under Moscow’s control plunging even more.

Ukrainian War More than Heat Explains Blackouts and Brownouts in Russia’s South

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 25 – Abnormally high temperatures in Russia/s South undoubtedly are playing a role in the brownouts and blackouts the region has suffered, but an even more important factor is impact of Putin’s war in Ukraine, according to Russian experts and politicians.

            That conflict has led to a sharp increase in the consumption of energy by plants in the military-industrial sector of the Russian economy, and rising electricity use as a result of Russia’s turn to the east where the distances that must be traversed are far greater than those to Europe (istories.media/stories/2024/07/25/pochemu-yuzhnie-regioni-rossii-ostalis-bez-sveta/).

            In the face of mounting protests about power shortages, the Kremlin had insisted that high temperatures are to blame, lest Russians focus on these factors or on the failure of the Russian government to modernize its electrical grid so that the system can handle increased demand.

            The Putin regime has been cutting back spending on modernizing of the power system and other parts of infrastructure for some time and not just since February 2022; but it has reduced support for such projects since that time and so that is yet another reason why Putin’s war in Ukraine more than anything else is behind power shortages.

Kremlin Doesn’t Fear Its Army But Does Fear Use of Russian Army by Political Emigration and Foreign Powers, Soldatov and Borogan Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 25 – Intelligence agencies focus on threats and thus tend to the paranoid, but Russia’s, which now dominate the Kremlin, are more so than most because of the distorted history they have accepted about the origins of the Russian revolution, according to Andrey Soldatov and Irina Borogan.

            Instead of seeing the coming of the collapse of tsardom and the disintegration of the Russian Empire as the result of war, the two researchers who specialize on Russia’s intelligence services say, Russian spies focus instead on the role of foreign governments and émigré groups like the Bolsheviks (sakharov.world/soldatov-borogan-chego-boyatsya-russkie-speczsluzhby/).

            In the three other empires that died after 1918, Soldatov and Borogan write, governments, peoples and even intelligence agencies recognize the role of World War I as central to what happened and thus are less inclined to focus on conspiracies organized by emigres and foreign countries.

            But in Russia, the situation is different. There the sudden collapse of the empire is viewed as the work of exactly those groups rather than the product of the strains that a prolonged conflict can put on domestic institutions and cause them to be overwhelmed to the point of self-destruction.

            One consequence of this, the two say, is obsessive interest in émigré groups and the actions of foreign governments regarding Russia. But another is insufficient attention to problems arising in various domestic institutions, including first and foremost the Russian military.

            According to Soldatov and Borogan, Russian leaders today, “like their Soviet predecessors are convinced that the Russian army and intelligence services are incapable of carrying out a conspiracy of their own against the regime” because “they lack the initiative” necessary for such a step.

            Their views were confirmed, in their opinion, by “the absolute passivity of the Rostov FSB Directorate and the central apparatus of the FSB during the Prigozhin rebellion.” But the Kremlin is very much alive to the possibility that “people in uniform can be used by external forces – the political emigration, Ukraine and the West.”

            Soldatov and Borogan consider threats arising from such use to be “quite serious and therefore will fight them with all their might.”

Moscow Declares Two Ukraine Wedge Movements inside Russian Borders Extremist

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 25 – Moscow has now declared two movements in Ukrainian regions within the Russian Federation extremist – the Crimson Wedge for an Independent Kuban and My Fatherland of the Green Wedge, a sign that these groups are becoming ever more active and that Moscow’s fears about them are intensifying.

            Within the list of the 55 groups Moscow now has declared extremist (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/moscow-labels-55-groups-it-says-are.html), two of the most important are movements in ethnic Ukrainian regions inside the borders of the Russian Federation.

            In January 2023, Nikolay Patrushev, then secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, expressed alarm about Ukrainian activism in the Far East (jamestown.org/program/kremlin-worried-about-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/); and other Russian officials and commentator have denounced Ukrainian activism in the Kuban (jamestown.org/program/the-kuban-a-real-wedge-between-russia-and-ukraine/).

            Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, have said that Kyiv will devote more attention to these groups, although leaders of them have complained that up to now, the Ukrainian authorities have only done enough to anger the Russians but not help the wedges (jamestown.org/program/kyiv-raises-stakes-by-expanding-appeals-to-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/ and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/06/kyiv-must-devote-more-attention-to.html).

            Dmitry Dorovskikh, a cofounder of the Crimson Wedge movement, says Moscow’s latest move will not cause his group to change its focus or activities (kavkazr.com/a/dvizhenie-za-nezavisimostj-krasnodarskogo-kraya-zapretili-na-territorii-rossii/33051622.html). But it is possible that it will lead Kyiv to do more, elevating the importance of the wedges still further.

            For background on all the Ukrainian “wedges” within the current borders of the Russian Federation, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-real-wedge-issue-ukrainian-regions-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/08/kyiv-takes-up-cause-of-ukrainian-far.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/06/window-on-eurasia-zelenyi-klin-isnt.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-real-wedge-issue-ukrainian-regions-in.html and afterempire.info/2017/09/08/zeleni-klin/.

 

In Soviet Times, Russians Accepted Isolation from Outside World as Natural – and will Do So Again, Panyushkin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 25 – Many find it impossible to imagine that Russians will accept the kind of isolation from the outside world that the Putin regime is now insisting on, Valery Panyushkin says; but they forget that for decades of Soviet power, they accepted that isolation and even considered it entirely natural.

            That was and is the case, the Russian journalist says, even when they did enjoy the brief period after 1991 when Russia opened up to the world and they could both experience other cultures and even visit other countries (moscowtimes.ru/2024/07/24/vi-priviknete-samoizolyatsiya-rossii-skoro-perestanet-shokirovat-a137622).

            For decades, the Russians as a Soviet people “lived in isolation and that seemed normal. They lived as if besides themselves there was not one else in the world, only faceless enemies. They seriously believed that the steam engine was invented by Polzunov not Watt, that radio was invented by Popov not Marconi and that Bloomberg’s symptom was discovered by Shchetkin.”

            Such people were even cut off from the Russians who left their country because “they had not need for them.” After all, “literary critics it turned out could live without Nabokov.” And consequently, “when the final isolation does arrive, [Russians] won’t notice it, just as the North Koreans don’t notice it now.”

Moscow Labels 55 Groups It Says are Part of ‘Anti-Russian Separatist Movement’ Extremist in New Attack on Regionalist and Ethnic Movements

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jul 25 – Earlier this year, Moscow declared the non-existent Anti-Russian Separatist Movement extremist (https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/russian-justice-ministry-calls-for.html); and now it has declared 55 other groups, most of which do exist, extremist as well and thus subject to intensified harassment and persecution.

            This justice ministry action (minjust.gov.ru/ru/documents/7822/) is clearly intended to give content to Moscow’s claims that an Anti-Russian Separatist Movement actually exists and then use it to mobilize the population and the authorities against the supposed manifestations of a single enemy of Russia.

            On the new list are groups like the Free Buryatia Foundation, the Free Ingria Movement, the World Chechen Congress and the Crimson Wedge movement in the Kuban (themoscowtimes.com/2024/07/26/moscow-labels-dozens-of-indigenous-groups-free-russia-foundation-as-extremist-a85833 and kavkazr.com/a/dvizhenie-za-nezavisimostj-krasnodarskogo-kraya-zapretili-na-territorii-rossii/33051622.html).

            Many of the leaders of these groups said the charges were nonsense and that they would both challenge in court the identification of their groups as extremist and continue to operate as they have up to now. But this sweeping action suggests that the Putin regime is now going to devote more attention to groups that it clearly sees as a growing threat.

 

Circassian Leaders from Across North Caucasus Call on Putin to End Threat to Survival of Shapsugs

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 25 – The Shapsugs, a small subgroup of Circassians, first came to broad international attention in the lead up to the 2014 Olympics in Sochi not only because that was the site of the expulsion of them and the ancestor of the Shapsugs from Russia in 1864 but also because the games themselves led to the displacement of that group from their homes.

            In the decade since, the Shapsugs have been subject to increasing pressure from the authorities who are trampling on their community in order to expand the ethnic Russian presence in that region. They have protests and their protests have attracted the support of Circassians elsewhere in the North Caucasus and in the diaspora as well.

            Now, 13 leaders of Circassian groups in Adygeya, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachay-Cherkessia, three republics into which the Circassian nation has been divided by the Soviet and now Russian authorities, have appealed to Putin to end the threat from the Krasnodar authorities to the survival of the Shapsugs.

            The full text of the appeal is available at zapravakbr.ru/index.php/30-uncategorised/1932-regionalnymi-vlastyami-krasnodarskogo-kraya-osoznanno-sozdayutsya-nevynosimye-usloviya-shapsugam-v-mestakh-ikh-istoricheskogo-prozhivaniya-chto-predstavlyaet-ugrozu-samomu-sushchestvovaniyu-malochislennogo).

            The authors of the appeal say that unless Putin intervenes to stop the Krasnodar authorities from excluding the members of this community from the areas they have traditionally used for beekeeping and other agricultural activities, the future of the Shapsugs, who now number fewer than 2,000 in the Russian census, is bleak.

            There is no question that what the Krasnodar authorities are doing does threaten the survival of this numerically small group, one that should be protected by existing laws governing how such groups are to be treated. But in fact there are far more Shapsugs than the 2021 Russian census reports.

            On the one hand, some Shapsugs reidentified as Circassians in that enumeration response to calls to all Circassian groups to do so; and on the other, there are large numbers of Shapsugs abroad who have been blocked by the Russian authorities from returning to their ancestral homeland in the North Caucasus.

            Like the Krasnodar authorities, Putin almost certainly will not give the Shapsugs what they want; but this appeal may trigger a new round of Circassian activism not only in the Sochi region but more generally – and that in turn may presage a new crackdown by Moscow and regional Russian officials on Circassians as a whole.

‘Disintegration of Soviet Union Began Long Before Perestroika and Efforts to Restore It Began Long Before It Fell Apart,’ Shusharin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 25 – The new wave of attention to the 1990s can only be welcomed, Dmitry Shusharin says; but so far, it has failed to lead many to understand that “the disintegration of the Soviet Union began long before perestroika and efforts to restore it began long before it fell apart” and have continued with little interruption since that time.

            The Russian commentator now living in Germany says that the disintegration of the USSR began and Moscow’s efforts to counter it began at least in 1986 when Moscow inserted an ethnic Russian as party leader there and the people of that republic took to the streets to protest (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=66A22B9B847CA).

            No one should have been surprised by this pattern, Shusharin suggests, because it was a repetition or better continuation of what happened in what Russians call “the civil war” at the dawn of Bolshevik times. That conflict in fact was in fact “the first war for the restoration and much more cruel than under the autocracy unification of the empire.”

            “The war of the Red Army in Ukraine, the Baltic countries, Poland and the Trans-Caucasus was not a civil war,” he continues. “This was the aggression of the RSFSR against new national states and the war in Central Asia … was a direct continuation of the wars of Skobelev and the suppression of the Turkestan uprising of 1916.”

            According to Shusharin, what happened at the end of Gorbachev’s times and afterwards was an unchanged continuation of this, an effort by the Russians to suppress and Russify all the non-Russians and rule them ever more tightly from Moscow. Consequently, what has happened since February 2022 should not have surprised anyone.

            Another aspect of this must be recognized as well, Shusharin says. Moscow’s “aggressive policy toward Georgia and Moldova, the support of separatists there, and the non-recognition of the sovereignty of the former union republics all took place already in 1992” and not as a result of the coming to power of Vladimir Putin.

            Yeltsin accomplished something remarkable in destroying the USSR, but neither he nor those around him “proposed any new concept for the development of Russia and Russians in this new state. They didn’t pay any attention to those issues at all,” and neither did almost all of the intellectual elite.

            “As a result,” Shusharin says, “policies toward the former Soviet republics began to be formulated not according to the national interests of Russia which were never defined but by the claims of various business groups dominated by the security agencies,” and that has led to a repetition of the history of the early Soviet period.

            At a time when “no one in Russia was seeking to put in place a full-fledged democratic state,” the allies of the state that did emerge “were not the builders of new states but the leaders of criminal separatist formations within them.” And that has continued to this day, Shusharin argues.

            Putin “hasn’t come up with anything new if one looks back to that past and more distantly: he has simply “continued what Yeltsin began in in Abkhazia, Transnistria, Tajikistan and elsewhere in the early 1990s.” Tragically, “the world is adapting to this” as Moscow seeks to reintegrate “piece by piece” while the world “hopes to buy off” the anything but new empire.

Moscow has Charged 9,000 Russians with Extremist Crimes over Last Decade, Draft Anti-Extremism Strategy Document Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 24 – The Russian interior ministry has posted online a draft project of a new Strategy for Countering Extremism. A replacement for the 2019 measure, the draft focuses on Ukraine, migrants, and foreign use of ethnic and religious groups to destabilize the Russian Federation.

            To a large extent, the new draft simply sums up what Putin officials have been saying over the last several years, but it does provide statistics that highlight just how sweeping Moscow’s counter-extremism program has become. (For a summary and discussion of the new draft, see sova-center.ru/misuse/news/lawmaking/2024/07/d50188/.)

            Over the last ten years, the draft says, “Russian law enforcement organs” have identified and brought charges against Russians for extremist behavior. They have brought criminal charges against 9,000 people. (The difference between these two figures likely reflects the fact that some have been charged with more than one crime.)

            Moreover, SOVA says the document shows, Russian courts have banned more than 70 organizations and identified more than 170 foreign structures as “undesirable.” The authorities have also declared “more than 3,000” texts “extremist” and thus to be excluded from circulation in the Russian Federation.

To ‘Normalize Being at War,’ Kremlin Plans to Re-Establish Soviet-Style Control over Russia’s Cultural Life, ‘Dossier’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 24 – Having first worked to suppress opposition to the war in Ukraine and then sought to heroize Russians fighting there, the Kremlin has now decided to make the war a normal part of the life– and to do that, it has concluded it must revive Soviet-style control over the arts and demand complete obedience by those getting state funds, the Dossier Center says.

            According to the center’s investigative journalists, Sergey Novikov, the had of the Presidential Administration office for social programs, reached that conclusion at the end of 2023 as the war lengthened and has been authorized to put his ideas into practice in the arts sphere (dossier.center/svo-culture/).

            Novikov, a longtime ally of Sergey Kiriyenko has been called “a hunter of ideological enemies” (https://meduza.io/feature/2024/07/08/ohotnik-na-ideologicheskih-vragov), who has long been responsible for compiling “black lists” of artists who fail to hew to the Kremlin line about the war and other issues.

            But now, Dossier says, he is pursuing a much large goal – “the introduction of the Putin war in Ukraine into the lives of Russians” so that that war and war in general will become part of their lives and thus be viewed by them as inevitable and natural rather than something out of the ordinary that might be changed.

            The only way to achieve that, the investigative journalists say Novikov has concluded is to restore the system of carrots and sticks that the Soviet government used to ensure that its messages were repeated by writers and other artists to the population. The Putin regime has taken some steps in that direction, but now Novikov promises to take additional ones.

Duma Votes to Put Justice Beyond the Reach of Poorer Russians

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 23 – The Duma has approved a measure that will significantly raise the cost of almost all court filings both initial and appeals, effectively putting any hope for justice from that quarter beyond the reach of the poorer segments of the population of the Russian Federation.

            The new measure, likely to become law, raises the amount of money anyone turning to the courts must pay, by as much as 15 times, an amount that will be beyond the means of many Russians to pay (istories.media/news/2024/07/23/vlasti-vveli-novii-obrok-dlya-grazhdan-poshlini-v-sudakh-povisyat-v-10-15-raz/).

            That means that ordinary Russians won’t be able to bring suits in court to protect their rights and property or to appeal decisions against them, although the amounts are not so great – the largest of these new fees – 900,000 rubles (nine thousand US dollars) – is not so great that Russia’s better off citizens won’t be able to pay.

            The measure thus represents yet another example of the way in which the Putin regime is creating a social and political system in which there are two classes of people – the wealthy allies of the Kremlin who are able to enjoy at least some of the rights ostensibly guaranteed by the constitution and everyone else who lacks that possibility.

Just as after 1945, Russia Likely to Become More Repressive after War Ends, Malgin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 24 – Many Russians expect that when Putin’s war in Ukraine ends, they will face a crime wave, declining incomes, and an economy incapable of making the transition to peacetime needs, Andrey Malgin says; but they have not focused on an even more ugly prospect:  that their country will become even more repressive, just as happened in 1945.

            Because of government propaganda, the Russian commentator says, “the level of hatred” among Russians “towards the external enemy is extremely high.” But if the war ends, the government will tell its people that Russia “has achieved its goals” (moscowtimes.ru/2024/07/24/repressii-v-rossii-kak-neizbezhnoe-prodolzhenie-voini-a137559).

            “But the level of hatred [among the Russian people] will not go away,” Malgin says. Instead, it will begin to focus on other and domestic targets – and the government will have its own reasons for ensuring that happens lest popular discontent be directed instead against the powers that be.

            Indeed, the government has already “begun to prepare” for this reality and is “increasingly drawing the attention of the population to internal enemies,” targets that represent “an inexhaustible source of evil” because the government can portray almost anyone inside the country except itself as an enemy.

            As a result, Malgin concludes, “the end of the war, no matter how it ends, will hit the country with a level of repression it has not seen for decades” because “for the authorities this will be the only way to direct hostility” away from the people in power towards others and allow those in power to remain there.

            At the end of World War II, many Soviet citizens expected that after the war, the Kremlin would reward them for their efforts in fighting the Germans. Now, many Russians believe that once the war ends, things will get better at home. Malgin’s article is a useful reminder that just the reverse may happen again. 

Duma Proposal Sets Stage for Broad Attack on National Autonomies in Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 24 – Mikhail Matveyev, the KPRF deputy who is deputy chair of the Duma Committee on Regional Policy and Local Self-Administration, has proposed replacing the term “national-cultural autonomy” with the term “national-cultural union” and allowing the government to ban any of these groups which received financing from abroad.

            Not only would the passage of this proposal represent a serious downgrading in the only formal status that more than 200 ethnic communities across the Russian Federation but it would give the state an additional whip hand over them by allowing Moscow to ban them almost at will (sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/news/legal/2024/07/d50194/).

            The likely trigger for this proposal, however, is not so much a broad attack on national autonomies as such but rather to block calls by some Central Asian diasporas who want to form them in regions near Moscow (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/russians-alarmed-by-calls-for-tajik.html).

            In the current overheated atmosphere concerning immigrants, this proposal is likely to pass for that reason alone; but if this measure does become law, the Kremlin almost certainly will employ it to further restrict or even bad the only corporate bodies ethnic communities have if they are not located within a non-Russian republic of the same nationality. 

            For background on the national cultural autonomies that arose in the 1990s and have had a checkered history since then, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/11/russias-national-cultural-autonomies.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/russification-and-assimilation-of-non.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/12/national-cultural-autonomies-failing-to.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/11/russias-national-cultural-autonomies.html.

Putin’s War in Ukraine has Divided Russian Protestants and Reduced Change that They will be Added to ‘Traditional’ Religions There, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 23 – Russia’s 1.5 million Protestants are as divided about Putin’s war in Ukraine; but because of the nature of Protestantism, pastors and bishops of Protestant denominations have generally tread lightly either in their support of the war or their opposition lest they be removed by those who elected them, the Horizontal Russia news portal says.

            But both that caution and the long tradition of close contacts between Russian Protestants and their co-believers in Ukraine have angered the Kremlin and undermined the chances which seemed very good before 2014 for Protestantism to become the fifth “traditional” religion in Russia (semnasem.org/articles/2024/07/24/mezhdu-propagandoj-i-pisaniem-kak-vojna-v-ukraine-izmenila-zhizn-rossijskih-protestantov).

            That is no small thing because Russia’s Protestants who don’t identify as such unless they are active in the faith form roughly the same number as Russian Orthodox Christians who attend church and follow church rules. Thus, what the war has done has likely blocked any chance that Protestants will enjoy the state support and protection that the four traditional faiths do.

            And in some regions, such as Siberia and the Far East, where Protestants are especially numerous – and it is estimated that they now form as many as 10,000 congregations across the country – that means that large numbers of Christians are likely to be subject to increasing persecution by the Putin regime.

Kazakhstan Becomes More Kazakh and Less Russian as Ethnic Russians Continue to Leave and Kazakhs to Return Home, Statistics Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 23 – Despite the influx of ethnic Russians after Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine and the decision of ethnic Russians already there not to move to Russia in wartime, the departure of ethnic Russians has now resumed at roughly the same rate and the influx of Kazakhs has continued as well.

            As a result, the slight uptick in the share of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan’s population in 2023 has been replaced by the pattern of earlier years, with the Russian share of the population continuing to decline and the Kazakh share again increasing, Aleksandr Shustov says (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2024-07-24--ottok-russkih-iz-kazahstana-rezko-sokratila-svo-74637).

            To make his case, the Russian analyst cites data from the Kazakhstan government as well as from the Russian embassy in Astana. In 2022, 16,000 ethnic Russians left Kazakhstan, while 4,400 arrived. That meant that the ethnic Russian share of that Central Asian country’s population fell by almost 11,700 even as the war began.

            In that year, he continues, Kazakhs continued to return home far more often than to leave, with 7200 registering their return and only 1400 departing, for a positive increase of 7200, further shifting the ethnic balance which has been moving against the ethnic Russians since the 1980s.

            In 2023, the situation changed, with the exodus of Russians falling “almost six times,” Shustov says. Specifically, the outflow of ethnic Russians fell sharply, with 10,100 leaving the country but 8100 entering it, meaning that the number of Russians there fell by only 2,000 (stat.gov.kz/ru/industries/social-statistics/demography/publications/157454/).

            Ethnic Kazakhs, however, continued to arrive, with some 10,000 returning in 2023; and because only 1100 left, that meant that the Kazakh share of Kazakhstan’s population increased by 8800, further increasing their majority. They form almost 75 percent of the population, while Russians who once held a majority are down to less than 14 percent.

           A large number of Russian "relocaters" did come to Kazakhstan but many of them returned or went on to other countries rather than register as permanent residents. As a result, they have not been counted by Astana in its summary data on migration in and out of the country.

            Russian flight occurred in all regions of Kazakhstan except the three Western oblasts and the capitals. In those there was an increase in the number of ethnic Russians, Shustov says, but only an “insignificant” one that likely reflects the arrival of Russians leaving Russia because of the war.

            Figures from the first quarter of 2024 suggest that Russian flight has accelerated and the return of Kazakhs has continued, he says. During those three months, 608,000 more Russians left than arrived; and 3500 more Kazakhs arrived than left (stat.gov.kz/ru/industries/social-statistics/demography/publications/158501/).

 

Nearly a Quarter Fewer Immigrant Workers Arrived in Russia in 2023 than in 2022, Rosstat Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 22 – In 2023, Rosstat, the Russian government’s statistical agency, says, 560,400 migrant workers arrived in Russia, 23 percent fewer than in 2022. It is likely that the number arriving in 2024 will be even smaller given the increasing hostility of Russians to migrants and the declining number of businesses that feel compelled to defend them.

            The Rosstat figures are available at rosstat.gov.ru/compendium/document/13283. They are discussed in most detail at rbc.ru/economics/22/07/2024/669a2afd9a7947271d418486. And because the debate about what Russia should do about immigration, they are certain to inform and even enflame discussions in the days ahead.

            Among Rosstat’s key findings are the following:

·       Nearly a third of all immigrants came from Tajikistan (31 percent), with ten percent from Kygyzstan, and nine percent each from Ukraine, Armenia, and Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan was the country of origin for four percent, and the other Central Asian country, Turkmenistan, accounted for half of that.

·       More than half (55 percent) were men; and 76 percent were of working age, with the largest age cohort between 20 and 24.

·       Most have middle education; few have higher educations and even fewer have no education at all.

·       80 percent of migrant workers want to live in cities rather than rural areas. The top three regions are Moscow Oblast, Tyumen Oblast and the Kanty-Mansiisk AD. They account for 57 percent of all migrants who arrived in 2023.

Regions and Republics Now Facing Crises with Their Own Trash Crises, Not Just from Moscow’s Sending Trash to Them from Major Cities

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 22 – For almost a decade, the Russian government’s efforts to cope with the mounting trash problems of that country’s major cities have sparked protests in regions and republics that they are being swamped. The most significant but hardly the only such protest was in Shiyes.

            But it is not just the major Russian cities that are producing more trash than they are equipped to process. Many of the federal subjects are also generating more trash than they can deal with, something that is likely to trigger a new wave of protests in those areas which are the hardest hit (versia.ru/pochemu-v-regionax-nekomu-vyvozit-musor).

            According to a new survey, the federal subjects most in trouble are in order the Altai Kray, Vologda Oblast, Kabardino-Balkaria, Krasnoyarsk Kray, Magadan, Novgorod, and Novosibirsk Oblasts, the Altay Republic, Buryatia, Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Tyva, Tomsk and Chelyabinsk Oblasts.

            These are among the poorest federal subjects, and officials there, pressed to meet other demands, have not made the investment needed to keep up with the ever-increasing amount of trash their residents are generating. If protests do break out, they will likely now be directed not just at Moscow as was the case in Shiyes but at Moscow and the federal subject leaders.

            The Kremlin may welcome this because it could allow it to deflect objections to its plans to send more trash from Moscow and St. Petersburg to poorer  regions, but any benefit the Putin regime may get from this is likely to be short-lived because NIMBY attitudes are certain to be reenforced rather than reduced by having two targets for complaint.   

Russia is “a Slavic-Turkic State,’ Altai Conference Participants Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 21 – The Altai State University hosted a forum on the Slavic-Turkic World on the Space of Greater Altai July 18-20. Its participants stressed that “Russia is a Slavic-Turkic state” and urged that Moscow declare the Turks “a state-forming” people along with the Russians to strengthen ties at home and links to the broader Turkic world.

            The Turkic peoples now form eight percent of the population of the Russian Federation, the participants observed, and their numbers and share are rapidly increasing because they have higher birthrates than the Slavs and more Turks from abroad are taking Russian citizenship (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2024-07-23--bolshoj-altaj-i-evrazijskoe-edinstvo-74615).

            Consequently, as Russia turns to the east, it should recognize the Turkic peoples collectively as a state-forming group, something that will help Russia at home and abroad and make it clear to all that the Altai in Russia is the true homeland and proper focus of Turks around the world.

            Three things about this are noteworthy: First, it is a rare example of talking about groups broader than nations as playing a state-forming role. Second, it re-enforces the Eurasianist idea that Russia is not just Russian but Turkic as well. And third, it signals that at least some in Russia want to challenge Turkey for the right to be considered the center of the Turkic world.

Despite Repression and Lack of Moscow Media Attention, Russians Continue to Protest – and Sometimes Succeed in Forcing Change

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 21 – Since the beginning of July, Russians have taken part in protest actions across the country, the editors of Kholod Media say. Most of these actions have been small, far from Moscow and about local issues, all reasons why they have in most cases failed to attract the attention of central media. But remarkably some have succeeded in forcing change (holod.media/2024/07/22/10-protestnyh-akczij-o-kotoryh-vy-mogli-ne-znat/).

            Perhaps the most intriguing of these unreported protest actions took place in Perm on July 17. Then a group of more than 250 people calling themselves “Russians Against Islamization” assembled to demand that officials block the construction of a mosque there (activatica.org/content/663af95c-8c50-4708-8e2d-e099320cf755/zhiteli-permi-vyshli-na-miting-protiv-stroitelstva-mecheti, t.me/perm36/14085 and t.me/horizontal_russia/38311).

            Meanwhile, on July 4, in Nizhnevartovsk in the Khanty-Mansi AD, 50 people came out to protest plans to build a Russian Orthodox church in a residential district there (t.me/horizontal_russia/38047). Participants said they weren’t against a new church but only its location near their housing (https://muksun.fm/news/2024-07-04/tserkvi-tut-ne-mesto-v-nizhnevartovske-lyudi-vyshli-na-miting-protiv-stroitelstva-hrama-5129702).

            Earlier, on July 7, 300 residents of Ulan Ude in Buryatia assembled to protest the plans of officials to build a new “super” prison colony there, something that would involve the destruction of more than 160 hectares of land (t.me/Baikal_People/6196,   t.me/Baikal_People/6213 and t.me/rusnews/38283).

            And on July 14, villagers in Ulyanovsk Oblast organized a demonstation to protest against the erection of fences in a local woods, something that they said would deprive them of the opportunity to walk there as has long been their custom (t.me/horizontal_russia/38215 and ulpressa.ru/2024/07/20/zhiteli-sela-smorodino-pozhalovalis-na-ograzhdenie-lesa-chastnoj-firmoj/).

            Attracting more attention and forcing officials to respond have been protests about power outages in Dagestan, Krasnodar, Anapa, and Rostov (t.me/rusnews/56831,  t.me/rusnews/56717, t.me/horizontal_russia/31793,  t.me/horizontal_russia/38374,  t.me/horizontal_russia/38386 and vk.com/my_bataysk?w=wall-64588835_285988&ysclid=lytz0es2t0651751676

            And finally, there were at least two protests against increases in the price for communal services, one in Syktyvkar in the Komi Republic and another in Biysk in the Altai. In both, participants called on their fellow citizens to stop voting for capitalists and in the Komi republic for the governor to resign (t.me/horizontal_russia/37906,  t.me/horizontal_russia/37906, vk.com/wall-140177262_24221  and vk.com/wall-140177262_24258).

            In short, Russia is not quite as quiet as Putin likes to present it and as all too many in the capital and in the West prefer to believe. 

Aliyev Pledges to Support Independence Movements in French Colonies, as Activists from Them Assemble in Baku to Form United Front

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 21 – In the latest sign of the deterioration of relations between Baku and Paris, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has pledged to do everything in his power to promote the independence of France’s last remaining colonies, as activists from them assemble in Baku to form a united front to achieve that end.

            Earlier this year, France blamed Azerbaijan and Russia for supporting pro-independence protests in New Caledonia; and Paris recalled its ambassador from Baku for consultations in protest (m.lenta.ru/news/2024/07/21/prezident-azerbaydzhana-poobeschal-podderzhivat-borbu-frantsuzskoy-polinezii-za-nezavisimost/).

            Now the  Baku Initiative Group (BIG) formed at the end of 2023 has assembled representatives of these colonies in the Azerbaijani capital to form an International Front for the Liberation of the Last French Colonies (https://www.rt.com/news/601288-french-overseas-territories-liberation-front and azertag.az/ru/xeber/v_baku_prohodit_sezd_dvizhenii_za_nezavisimost_kolonizirovannyh_franciei_territorii_video-3100234).

            Paris and pro-French groups in these colonies have denounced the move, but it likely signals plans by Moscow to promote instability in these places and the readiness of Baku to cooperate in such an effort. How far either will go is uncertain, but this is a classic example of how Moscow is using others to try to undermine the Western powers. 

Moscow Furious Yerevan Delaying the Opening of Russian Consulate in Syunik/Zengezur

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 22 – Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Mariya Zakharova has expressed Moscow’s displeasure that Yerevan, having agreed in November 2022 to the opening of a Russian consulate in Kapan, the capital of Armenia’s Syunik Oblast and allowed an advance party to begin work in September 2023 is dragging its feet about the opening of the consulate.

            The issue is especially sensitive because Kapan is located at the eastern end of what Azerbaijanis refer to as the Zengezur corridor, which was supposed to be reopened to traffic, and because Iran already has a consulate there and Turkey is talking about opening one (svpressa.ru/politic/article/423442/).

            Russia has a consulate general in Gyumri, next to its military base; but Armenia has a far larger diplomatic presence in the Russian Federation: consulates in St. Petersburg and Rostov, diplomatic offices in Novosibirsk and Vladikavkaz and six honorary consuls as well. Consequently, Moscow feels well within its rights to press its case on Kapkan.

            But because Yerevan has been distancing itself from Russia, the Armenian authorities have apparently decided not to open a Russian consulate in Kapkan in the near future; and their decision, has made this issue of a consulate whose presence affects not only Armenia but Iran and Azerbaijan an extremely sensitive geopolitical one.

            Moscow is thus trying to force the issue, the Svobodnaya Presssa commentary says, confident that it will eventually get its way especially given that the West very much wants the Syunik/Zengezur corridor to open and might even see a Russian presence as making that more likely and a useful balance to the spread of Iranian influence.