Kremlin’s Use of Veterans with Criminal Pasts and PTSD as Teachers in Regular Russian Schools Backfiring

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 18 – Having failed to get even the United Russia Party to agree to push veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine into political office, the Kremlin is now inserting veterans, including many with criminal pasts or suffering from PTSD, as teachers in the early grades of Russian schools, hoping to keep these veterans loyal and to inculcate its version of patriotism.
    The Russian government has even set up a special training center in Moscow to provide such veterans with some training in pedagogy – see vk.com/vershinarus?w=wall-224943658_2%2Fall – but Moscow’s primary interest, Horizontal Russia says is propagandistic (semnasem.org/articles/2024/11/18/cennye-kadry).
    The independent news portal says that the Putin regime believes correctly that the earlier it can inculcate its version of patriotism, the more success it will have in ensuring that the new generation will remain on its side and carry out all the orders that the center gives them. But the system is backfiring, Horizontal Russia continues.
    Many of the veterans inserted in the schools do not behave well and they frighten the children rather than attract them to Putin’s cause. And their parents are outraged that the education of their children is being sacrificed to propaganda and that this propaganda is being carried out by people with few educational credentials and numerous personal problems.
    Educational specialists, the portal says, are recommending that parents who are troubled by this use of veterans of the war in Ukraine as teachers should either shift their children to other schools where such “teachers” have not yet appeared or if necessary homeschool their children so they won’t be put at risk by such teachers.  

After 1,000 Days of Putin’s Expanded Invasion, Ukraine Now Very Much a Real State, Rodnyansky Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 18 – Having resisted the Russian invasion, Ukraine has “won with blood its fight to exist with a free life and its own future,” Aleksandr Rodnyansky says, adding that as a result and exactly opposite to what Putin intended Ukraine over the last 1,000 days “has become a real state, one far from perfect and with thousands of problems but real.”
    As a result, it can be said that Putin has failed and Ukrainians have succeeded, the Ukrainian film maker says, For Putin, Ukrainian statehood has “always been fake,” something he and his band have never really believed in (t.me/alexander_rodnyansky/1900 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/1000-dnej-polnomasshtabnoj-fazy-vojny).
    The Kremlin leader called Ukraine “an anti-Russia project” and expected that the Russian army would be welcomed as “liberators from the oppression of Bandera” and that Russian victory would come quickly with the flight of the Ukrainian government and “the transformation of Ukraine into a version of Belarus.”
    But things didn’t work out as Putin and his ilk expected, Rodnyansky continues. The Ukrainians have resisted, and they will continue to do so, hopefully with the continued assistance of the civilized world. But even if that assistance declines, the Ukrainians will continue to fight to defend their nation and their state.  

After 1000 Days of War, Russia Managed to Expand Its Occupation of Ukraine from Seven to 18 Percent

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 18 – Statistics never tell the whole story about any human activity. That is particularly true about wars given the human suffering they involve. But the numbers in themselves are important, and they provide a framework for discussing the conflict and its total impact.
    That makes the collection of data that the Important Stories portal has assembled from various authoritative sources about Putin’s war in Ukraine worthy of note (istories.media/stories/2024/11/18/1000-dnei-voini-v-tsifrakh/). Among the most important of these are the following:
•    Before Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia occupied seven percent of Ukrainian territory. In 1,000 days of fighting since then, it has expanded its occupation and that now totals 18 percent of Ukraine, a vast swath of that country but far less than Putin promised at the outset.
•    Since February 2022, approximately one million people have been killed or wounded in Ukraine and Russia combined. Most are military personnel, but at least 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed and 26,000 wounded since February 2022 – 12 dead and 26 wounded every day of the war.
•    These losses are putting the demographic future of Ukraine in peril. Because of these losses and flight, Ukraine has lost seven million in areas Kyiv controls in addition to the nearly five million who live in areas under Russian control.
•    Approximately a third of all Ukrainians who remain – 10 million people – now suffer from mental disorders because of the war.
•    Russian forces are intentionally destroying Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, having destroyed or damaged the homes of 3.4 million people and reduce the production of electric power by 70 percent.
•    The war is costing Russia and Russians as well. Almost half of all Russian government revenues now goes to military needs, almost 150,000 Russians have died, and the additional number of wounded means that the irrecoverable losses of the Russian army could be more than 300,000.
•    Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine is now the most frequent cause of death among young Russian men, with every second death among that category having died in the war itself.
•    Increased military spending has sparked inflation and wage increases have not kept up.
•    Russians in Kursk Oblast are suffering following the advance of the Ukrainian army into that portion of the Russian Federation. Nearly 400 have died and more than 130,000 have fled.
•    But one of the most serious costs to Russia of the war lies ahead: Returning veterans are committing more crimes and as the number of former soldiers increases, these crimes will increased as well.
•    And many of those Russians who fled the war to avoid mobilization or because of opposition to the war as such won’t return, inflicting yet another cost on Russia and its people. Those who oppose the war but have remained in Russia have suffered as well from repression of various kinds.

In Rural Russia, ‘Closing Schools is Easy but Re-Opening Them is Hard,’ Residents Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 17 – Closing village schools which often have only a few or even only one pukepil is relatively easy: Under Putin era regulations, any school with fewer than 30 pupils can be closed by fiat; and more than half of the rural schools in existence in 2000 have now been closed.
    Moscow argues that such closures and the consolidation that follows are not only economically justified but are the only way to provide young Russians with more educational opportunities, including Internet connectivity and the opportunity for those in consolidated schools to study a far greater variety of subjects.
    But both the employees of these schools, who often outnumber the students, and the residents of the villages more generally actively oppose such closures because they know that “closing schools is easy but re-opening them is hard” and that if the school shuts down, so too will the village.
    Consequently, they resist. Takiye Dela journalist Ksenisya Shorokhova reports on a school in the Siberian village of Ponomarevka where there is only one pupil left but where seven people are employed to give her an education and where residents hope keeping the school open will mean that their village can recover (takiedela.ru/2024/11/nikuda-my-bez-tebya/).
    They fear that if the school is closed, their village and its way of life will be under a death sentence; and so they are resisting. Local officials are supporting them where they can and apparently taking what steps are open to them to keep the school open so that their village and all its residents will have a future.
    For them, that possibility is far more important than any talk of economic rationality.  

Putin’s Order to Promote Patriotism Repeats Stalin’s ‘Almost Word for Word,’ Kerzhentsev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 16 – Vladimir Putin’s May 2024 directive to use history lessons in the schools to boost patriotism and a willingness to sacrifice one’s life for Russia repeats Stalin’s May 1934 order to do the same thing in the Soviet Union “almost word for word,” according to Boris Kerzhentsev.
    The historian and commentator traces the evolution of Kremlin policy toward history and its use as a propaganda tool in the first decades of Soviet power and then says that the changes Putin has introduced are virtually the same (moscowtimes.ru/2024/11/16/istoriya-v-zakone-kak-gosudarstvo-ispolzuet-proshloe-dlya-podgotovki-pushechnogo-myasa-a147872).
“Like Stalin, Putin’s ‘ideological front’ is rapidly turning into a real military front, on which people fooled by propaganda are dying senselessly. To be sure, foreign agents are not yet mentioned in the text of Putin’s ‘Foundations,’ but this is most likely a matter of time,” Kerzhentsev says.
Indeed, he continues, “some propagandists are already close to, as before, demanding from a high rostrum that ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ be shot ‘like mad dogs,’” as Stalin’s notorious prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky did. And thus one must conclude that despite everything, “for almost a century, nothing has changed in Russia.”
“Using its unlimited resources of violence, control and coercion, the government constantly steals the country's truth about the past, composes its own alternative version of history, and declares it the only true one. And it does so not for the love of writing, but purely for the sake of ensuring the self-preservation of the regime,” Kerzhentsev concludes.

Russian Army which has Looted in Ukraine Now Looting in Russia’s Kursk Oblast as Well, Officials There Compelled to Acknowledge

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – In the early stages of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, there were widespread reports that the Russian invasion force was engaged in the looting of Ukrainian households. Now, the same thing is taking place in portions of Kursk Oblast where Ukrainian troops have never been.
    After ignoring the problem for most of the last three months or even denying it for three months, Russian officials have been compelled to acknowledge it because it is so widespread (zona.media/article/2024/11/15/kursk, zona.media/news/2024/11/14/_sluchai_maroderstva and t.me/kurpepel/834).
    Not only does this highlight the decline in military discipline in a force that is increasingly made up of former convicts who have been pardoned by agreeing to go to fight in Ukraine, but it raises the specter that when such troops do return home, they are far more likely to engage in criminal activities, unconstrained by the fact that they are again among Russians.

Since Start of Expanded War in Ukraine, Russians More Inclined to See Themselves as ‘Masters of Their Own Fate,’ Moscow Institute of Sociology Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 17 – Since Vladimir Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, Russians are more inclined than before to view themselves as “masters of their own fate,” either because they feel that they personally are more in control of what happens to them or because they feel their country is in control of the situation.
    That is one of the findings of new research reported by the Moscow Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences which found that the share of those who felt that way jumped from 48 percent to 62 percent while those holding the opposite opinion fell from 52 percent to 38 percent (ng.ru/economics/2024-11-14/4_9135_sociologists.html).
    The sociologists rooted this shift in the rising standard of living among Russians and declines in the number of poor as people worked more and earned more, but the impact of the war on such attitudes is beyond question, although the balance between the two has tended to shift back as the war proceeds.
    At present, the share of Russians who feel themselves to be masters of their own fate fell to 57 percent in 2024 while the fraction which felt otherwise has risen to 43 percent, an indication that for many economic gains are becoming harder to come by and that the self-confidence they gained from the war is ebbing.

Russian Victims of Crime Can’t Get Compensation Now that Putin has Given Criminals Immunity if They Go to Fight in Ukraine, Experts Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Now that Putin has given criminals immunity if they agree to go to fight in Ukraine, victims of their crimes have been deprived of the opportunity to get compensation for the losses they have suffered, according to two leaders of the Foundation for the Support of Victims of Crime.
    Matvey Goncharov, executive director of that organization, and Aleksandr Koshkin, an expert there, say that Putin’s action not only deprives people of a sense of justice and allows criminals to return to civilian life and commit more crimes but also strips innocent victims of the right to seek recovery for damages (sovsekretno.ru/articles/bezopasnost/polnyy-immunitet/).
    Even though the right to compensation is guaranteed to victims of crime in the Russian Constitution, they say, the powers that be have not seldom supported that right in fact. Now, with the new “get out of jail free” card that Putin has offered the criminals, that constitutional right has largely disappeared.

Jokes about Ethnic Minorities Open the Way to Their Oppression, Tatar Commentator Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – When people and especially political leaders tell jokes about ethnic or other minorities, Ruslan Aysin says, that is part and parcel of a xenophobic campaign and opens the way to the oppression of these groups -- however much those who tell such jokes try to insist that their critics lack a sense of humor.  
    The Kazan Tatar political commentator is reacting  to the case of Russian actress Valeriya Lomakshina who told a joke about the Karelian language but then was compelled to apologize (idelreal.org/a/iz-etogo-vyrastaet-nadmennoe-otnoshenie-k-nerusskim-narodam-ruslan-aysin-pro-shutku-o-nepopulyarnosti-karelskogo-yazyka-na-rossiyskom-tv/33201895.html).
    Lomakshina’s suggestion during a stand up routine in Moscow that the Karelian national theater was the only place on earth where Karelia is spoken and that Karels who attend programs there make sure they can listen to translations because they can’t understand that language outraged many in Karelia and elsewhere.
    Not only were her words untrue, Aysin continues; but they were hurtful both to Karelians and to other national minorities of the Russian Federation who are now under enormous pressure from Moscow to stop using their native languages and shift instead to Russian and who could see that such a joke was intended to add to this pressure.
    The real tragedy, he says, is that many Russians think what Lomakshina said and now feel empowered not only to laugh alongside her but to engage in repressive behavior toward linguistic and other minorities, a problem unfortunately not limited to Russia but certainly widespread there.  

Willingness of Teachers to Wear Foil Hats to Block NATO Rays Shows State of Russian Society under Putin, Sidorov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – For the last week, the Russian media hves been full of stories about a group of teachers who fell for a Belarusian prankster’s joke about how foil hats could bloc NATO rays from destroying their brains and not only made and worse such hats but taught their students how to do so.
    When the prankster presented himself as a United Russia deputy and called on teachers to fashion aluminum foil hats to block NATO, the results exceeded all his expectations, Vadim Sidorov, a Prague-based expert on regional relations in the Russian Federation (idelreal.org/a/shapochki-iz-folgi-kak-vybor-rossiyskogo-obschestva/33202868.html).
    While government media reacted with restraint and many Russians with laughter, those who reflect on what this incident says about Russian society under Putin can only be appalled. Teachers, who in most places are intended to raise a new generation capable of critical thinking, have shown themselves ready to engage in the most “insane and servile” activities.
    Those who do things like putting on foil hats are certainly going to be willing to falsify elections or attack groups of their fellow citizens if they believe that the powers that be want that, Sidorov says; and consequently, teachers who put on foil hats are only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger problem  in Russia: servility and insanity.

Russia Now has Two Million Homeless and Their Ranks are Growing because of War in Ukraine, ‘Shelter’ Group Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Although the Russian government does not release any statistics on homelessness, the Shelter (Nochlezhka) organization, the oldest group in Russia devoted to helping the homeless, says there are now approximately two million homeless in Russia and that their numbers are growing because of the war in Ukraine.
    According to Nochlezhka, the three primary causes of homelessness are low incomes, family problems and the search for work in new places (tochno.st/materials/iz-za-krizisov-v-rossii-vyroslo-cislo-bezdomnyx-no-oficialnoi-statistiki-o-nix-net-my-proanalizirovali-dannye-noclezki-o-tom-kto-i-pocemu-cashhe-vsego-popadaet-na-ulicu).
    Their numbers rose during the pandemic and have risen even more since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine which has left many Russians without sufficient money to pay rent, increased problems within some families, and led others to move from one place to another in hopes of finding better jobs.
    Approximately four out of five are men, some are second generation homeless, and one in ten grew up in an orphanage. But despite public views, fewer homeless are alcoholics or drug abusers than are members of the Russian population as a whole, according to the data collected by Nochlezhka.
    Most of Russia’s homeless survive on the basis of temporary work or help from families rather than from social services provided by the government. Indeed, the group says, the only government service such people, who now form one in every 70 Russians, can rely is the government’s ambulance service.  

For the Sixth Time, Completion of Repairs to Russia’s Most Powerful Submarine Delayed, ‘Izvestiya’ Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Vladimir Putin and following him the Russian and Western media regularly announce the launch of some new ship in the Russian navy and point to it as evidence of Moscow’s growing naval power. But none of these sources focus on another aspect of the situation: the lengthy periods such vessels are not in service because of refitting.
    The case of the Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s only aircraft carrier which now may end its life as a casino or artificial reef, is of course well known. But the problem is far larger than that: many ships in Russia’s navy are sidelined for refitting and repair for extensive periods, often far larger than originally announced.
    That makes an Izvestiya account of the sixth delay in the return to service from refitting and repair of the Admiral Nakhimov, Russia’s largest and most powerful nuclear submarine, both indicative and instructive (iz.ru/1790913/iuliia-gavrilova-maksim-manaev/dobavili-srok-vykhod-admirala-nakhimova-v-more-otlozhen).
    Again and again, Russian officials have announced that the submarine was about to return to service and even announced precise dates, the Moscow newspaper says. But every time, these dates passed and officials had to announce new dates, as well as new cost overruns on this project.  
    To be sure, naval vessels require repair and refitting and are offline significant portions of time in the best of circumstances. But any evaluation of Russian naval power must take into consideration that some of its most ballyhooed ships are not really in service for very long periods and the authorities have no confidence as to when they will in fact return to duty.

Patrushev Calls for Strengthening Russia’s Position on the Caspian

Paul Goble    
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Nikolay Patrushev, former secretary of Russia’s National Security Council and currently head of its Naval Collegium, has called for a significant strengthening of Russia’s defense capacity on the Caspian to counter what he says are threats coming from NATO and Western special services more generally.
    At a meeting in Dagestan, he called for strengthening the FSB’s forces in the region so as to guard Russia’s borders; but his real concerns almost certainly lie elsewhere and are focused on expanding the power of Russia’s Caspian Flotilla and its ability to determine which trade routes operate (casp-geo.ru/nikolaj-patrushev-prizval-usilit-ohranu-rossijskoj-granitsy-na-kaspii/).
    In Soviet times, Moscow treated the Caspian as a Russian lake; but since 1991, the other littoral states have developed their navies to the point that Russia’s position has been challenged (jamestown.org/program/russias-caspian-flotilla-no-longer-only-force-that-matters-there/, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/russia-not-keeping-up-with-naval-build.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/kazakhstan-navy-demonstrates-growing.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/iran-launches-new-flagship-for-its.html and  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/07/azerbaijani-naval-exercises-highlight.html).
    Two years ago, the Russian naval doctrine was updated to include a section calling for the expansion of the Caspian Flotilla (jamestown.org/program/new-russian-naval-doctrine-assigns-expanded-role-to-caspian-flotilla/). Patrushev’s words are a sign that Moscow has not achieved what it wants and that it will devote far more attention to this as funds become available.
    Any such Russian moves have the potential to trigger a new naval competition on the Caspian and complicate the flow of oil and gas as well as other goods in both the east-west and north-south axes.   

Looming Bankruptcies of Russian Regional Air Carriers will Isolate Many Parts of the Country

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 13 – Many cities in the Russian Federation, especially those in the north and east of the Urals are not served by reliable roads or rail connections and thus must depend on air links to tie them to the rest of the country. That makes the potential bankruptcy of some 30 regional carriers into something more serious than a first glance might suggest.
    In countries with a ramified transportation system, problems in one sector are generally solved by shifting to the use of another. But in many places in the Russian Federation, there is no such possibility. And so if one sector, in this case, air travel, suffers a major blow, neither these cities nor Moscow have good substitutes available.
    And what is especially noteworthy is that this problem is being exacerbated by Western sanctions because restrictions on the leasing by Russian carriers of planes from the West and the lack of spare parts because of restrictions on their sale to these carriers appear to be the primary causes of this situation.
    Moscow’s Izvestiya newspaper report that approximately 30 of Russia’s local and regional air carriers now face bankruptcy. These currently carry 26 percent of all domestic passengers in the Russian Federation (iz.ru/1789856/vladimir-gavrilov-stanislav-fedorov/cek-za-bortom-aviakompanii-zaavili-o-riskah-bankrotstv-iz-za-dolgov-za-lizing).
    The Russian government may shift planes from Aeroflot to these routes and even use this crisis to take over the regional carriers. But such a solution would be only a temporary one at best and would most likely impose new burdens on the ability of the national carrier to continue to operate at current levels.  

Russian Political System ‘Unstable’ and People May Turn Overnight on Their Leaders, Zyuganov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – Gennady Zyuganov, longtime head of the KPRF, says that the Russian political system is “unstable” and that “those who are involved in the political system” in Russia are at risk of attack because the people in his country have demonstrated in the past that they can turn from supporters to opponents overnight.
    The KPRF’s fears are undoubtedly shared by many other political figures in the Russian Federation and help to explain why so many of them are afraid to rock the boat even a little lest in doing so they put themselves at risk (agents.media/zyuganov-nazval-politicheskuyu-sistemu-rossii-neustojchivoj-i-predupredil-chto-ona-mozhet-posypatsya/).
    And such fears, likely in most cases far more than the effectiveness of propaganda or repression, go a long way to help to explain why Putin is able to prevent them from acting individually or collectively against him, however much they may disagree with him on this or that policy.

In Disguising North Koreans Fighting in Ukraine as Buryats, Putin Repeating Stalin’s Approach in Korean War, Namsareva Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 14 – To obscure the participation of North Korean troops in his invasion force in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is having the Koreans dress and otherwise present themselves as ethnic Buryats, a nationality from the eastern part of the Russian Federation that has already many men in Ukraine.
    By doing so, Sayana Namsareva, a Buryat scholar at Cambridge says, Putin is repeating what Stalin did in the Korean War, when he ordered ethnic Buryats and other nationalities from Asian portions of the USSR to be dressed up as Chinese in order to conceal Soviet participation in that conflict (themoscowtimes.com/2024/11/14/putin-pulls-from-stalins-playbook-in-sending-north-koreans-disguised-as-buryats-to-ukraine-a86857).
    In reporting this, Mariya Vyushkova, a Buryat activist, argues that both Stalin’s actions in Korea and Putin’s in Ukraine are “two episodes of the same story,” that of “an indigenous minority being exploited in imperial wars by an imperial power. [And] not just using Buryat men as cannot fodder … but also exploiting our name and identity to cover up its true actions.”

Ethnic Ukrainians with Russian Birth Citizenship Facing Increasingly Serious Problems Inside Russia and Abroad, Belyayeva Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Ethnic Ukrainians born in the Russian Federation and who have Russian citizenship from birth face serious problems both in that country and in Western countries if they are able to flee abroad, according to Nina Belyayeva, a representative of the Eastern Slobodzhanshchyna national liberation.
    Inside the Russian Federation, she says, such people many of whom are rapidly recovering their ethnic roots face repressions of various kinds; and when they seek to flee, they face a lack of understanding in the West of their predicament (abn.org.ua/uk/vyzvolni-ruhy/nina-belyayeva-shidna-slobozhanshhyna-cze-ukrayinska-etnichna-zemlya-bilsha-chastyna-yakoyi-nyni-perebuvaye-v-mezhah-rosiyi/).
    Many of those who seek to flee Russian oppression don’t go to Ukraine because of the war and because they lack close relatives there, but when they go to other countries, they often can’t get residence permits or the path to citizenship because of charges that the Russian authorities have brought against them, Belyayeva says.
    Western governments seldom recognize the bind in which these Ukrainians find themselves and are reluctant to offer them permanent residence. Belyayeva says that her group is working to compile a list of Ukrainian activists with Russian citizenship who have been charged with various crimes by the Russian authorities.
    Such a list will help Western countries understand the nature of their predicament and thus become more willing to provide them with asylum of one kind or another. Otherwise there is a great risk that these Ukrainians will be sent back to the Russian Federation because the false conviction that they are Russian citizens first of all.
    There are several million people of Ukrainian heritage in the Russian Federation, most but far from all in regions that the Ukrainians refer to as klins or “wedges.” (On these groups, see see jamestown.org/program/kyiv-raises-stakes-by-expanding-appeals-to-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/ and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-real-wedge-issue-ukrainian-regions-in.html and the sources cited therein.)
    Relatively few of these people are actively identifying as Ukrainians, but enough are to have sparked real concern in Moscow (jamestown.org/program/kremlin-worried-about-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/). It would be a tragedy if Western ignorance about their history and current status meant that the West would become Moscow’s ally in repressing such people.  
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Because of Global Warming, 550 Square Kilometers in South of Russia Now Turning Into Desert Every Year, SFU Scholars Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Russians and others have long focused on the ways in which climate change is warming the Russian north and melting the permafrost there, but they have devoted less attention to the impact of global warming on the south of Russia where this trend is leading to desertification.
    Now, a group of scholars at Russia’s Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don are reporting that the desertification of the Russian south is occurring at the rate of 550 square kilometers each year, threatening not only the environment but the economy and forcing people to leave these areas (akcent.site/novosti/36577).
    Rising temperatures are the primary culprit, the scholars say; and they have already seriously changed the region’s biological diversity and are increasingly having an impact on human life in the region. Tragically, however, regional officials are doing little or nothing beyond denouncing it to counter this trend (astrakhanpost.ru/astraxanskuyu-oblast-atakuet-pustynya/).  
    If that continues and if Moscow does not intervene, the SFU experts suggest, then the negative impact of climate change in the southern portions of the Russian Federation will only have broader and more negative consequences for the country as a whole in the coming years and decades.  

It’s a Disaster for Everyone when, as in Putin’s Russia, Abusers Rise to Power, Nikulin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 14 – Among men, there is a certain share of men who unconsciously feel their own weakness seek to compensate by dominating women in their lives, a terrible crime in its own right but one that becomes even worse when as a result of crises in their societies, such men find themselves in positions of political power, Andrey Nikulin says.
    Then, unable to take on the stronger in society, they search out those who are weaker and do whatever they can to oppress them so as to feel themselves strong, even though what they are doing is of course a manifestation of their own weakness, the liberal Russian blogger says (t.me/HUhmuroeutro/36527 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6735AB34CB8FE).
    In healthy societies, abusers are disdained and punished, Nikulin continues, “but when crises arise in social institutions, it is precisely these people who “because of their cohesion as a group and enormous reserve of destructive energy and aggression periodically begin to dominate.”
    When that happens, he says, “then the time of a search for enemies, totalitarianism, repression, and demonstrative persecution and the limitation of rights of those whom they seek to put on their knees begins,” something such people are able to do either by “taking advantage the stunned apathy of society or by infecting a significant part of it with their destructive ideas.”
    Those given to abuse in small things feel weakness in others and take advantage of it, but there is a real problem: “a significant part of the energy that feeds such aggressors is involved in the banal sublimation of their own failures as men … and when choosing whether to develop and grow or to put pressure on and weaken others,” their choice is preordained.
    That is what is taking place in Russia and of course in some other countries as well; and it is proving a disaster wherever it happens.  

In Putin’s Russia, Unspoken but Very Real Ban on Displaying Ukrainian Colors of Yellow and Blue Together Takes Ever More Absurd Dimensions

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 10 – Since the start of Putin’s expanded invasion of Russia, residents of that country have been detained and then fined if they wear clothes or carry bags that feature both yellow and blue, the two colors of the Ukrainian flag. Now, officials in Moscow’s Kuzminky District have had to change their coat of arms because it had both colors on it.
    Officials in that district explained their action by saying that the two swans also featured on their coat of arms had been “drawn incorrectly” and that what had taken place was nothing more than an effort to correct that (lenta.ru/news/2024/11/05/v-moskovskom-rayone-reshili-smenit-sine-zheltyy-gerb/).
But as Moscow journalist Andrey Kalitin points out, it wasn’t the swans that needed changing  but the colors because the Kremlin can no longer tolerate any display of blue and yellow together lest it appear to be an act in support of Ukraine (t.me/akalitin/526 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6730F86C5C8AE).
The investigative journalist suggests that this is a revival of a medieval practice of banning colors that symbolized the wrong thing as far as those in power were concerned. But he notes that such bans have happened more recently -- including in Hitler’s Germany where the Nazis banned the use of red unless it was shown in combination with white and black.

Moscow Using Increasingly Repressive and Deceptive Means to Fill Ranks of Russian Army in Ukraine

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – Many news outlets have featured stories about how the Russian government is using pardons of prisoners and ever larger bonuses to attract men to serve in the ever-depleting ranks of Putin’s invasion force in Ukraine. But the independent Holod news agency says that Moscow is increasingly using other repressive and deceptive means as well.  
    Among the most widespread of these other means, the agency says on the basis of conversations with those who have been subject to them and groups that seek to protect their rights (holod.media/2024/11/12/rossijskie-vlasti-ispolzuyut-novye-metody-verbovki-na-vojnu/) are the following:

•    Attracting men with false advertisements that promise one kind of work but that after the individuals sign up send them to the front;

•    Threatening former convicts with new charges and prison sentences unless they agree to join the military; and

•    Telling draftees that they will be sent into combat unless they sign up for longer terms of service – and then sending them to the frontlines anyway.

Holod isn’t in a position to say how widespread these practices are, let alone give statistics about them. But these reports do highlight something that many observers have pointed out in recent months: Despite the support of the Russian people for Putin’s war, that support doesn’t extend to volunteering to fight there.

Moscow Plans to Scrap 2003 Arctic Nuclear Clean Up Accord with EU and Norway

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – The Russian government has approved and sent to the Duma a draft law that will denounce the Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Program in the Russian Federation putting to an end Western-supported programs to clean up sites where Soviet officials had dumped nuclear waste in the Arctic.
    That accord, signed by the Russian Federation, the European Union and Norway in 2003, helped clean up nuclear waste in the Arctic and protected Europe from radiation leaks from aging Soviet-era storage containers (interfax-russia.ru/moscow/news/kabmin-podderzhal-denonsaciyu-ramochnogo-soglasheniya-o-mnogostoronney-yaderno-ekologicheskoy-programme).
    But it also had the effect of integrating Russia into international environmental principles and practices. Now, apparently, all progress in that direction has been ended and Russian practices shifted into reverse. As Aleksandr Nikitin of the Bellona Foundation put it, “it’s amazing how in two and a half years you can destroy everything achieved over decades.”
    For background on this problem and an indication of what will now be lost, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/flooding-in-russia-threatens-to-spread.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/05/moscows-immediate-goal-for-arctic.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/11/hundreds-of-abandoned-ships-rusting.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/08/moscow-finally-addressing-its-nuclear.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/delayed-action-mines-under-russia.html.

Tajikistan Follows Uzbekistan in Arranging to Send Migrant Workers to South Korea

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – Tajikistan has now followed Uzbekistan in arranging to send migrant workers to South Korea instead of the Russian Federation, a shift that may have even greater importance to geopolitics in the longer term than the arrival of North Korean troops in the Russian Federation to fight in Putin’s war in Ukraine.
    At the end of last month, Dushanbe and Seoul signed an agreement opening the way for Tajiks to go to South Korea to work and study beginning in 2025 (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2024-11-12--tadzhikistan-stremitsja-perenapravit-trudovyh-migrantov-v-vostochnuju-aziju-76774). Such a flow help compensate for the return of Tajiks from Russia.
    This decision follows several years of discussions between the two national governments, with each having compelling interests: Dushanbe because it needs the payments from migrant workers that have fallen given Russian hostility to such people and Seoul because its population is now set to decline with deaths now exceeding births.
    Both sides are working to develop programs to provide Korean-language training to Tajiks interested in working in South Korea, people who hope to earn as much as 2500 US dollars a month. In this, Tajikistan is following Uzbekistan which already has a similar and larger program for its 100,000 migrants in South Korea (gazeta.uz/ru/2024/02/05/south-korea/).
    If this Tajik program takes off, that could lead to even larger departures of Tajik migrant workers from Russia who will now have somewhere to go where they can earn as much or even more than they did in the Russian Federation. And if other Central Asian countries follow Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Moscow will face mounting labor shortages in key sectors.  

Ulan-Ude’s Promise to Increase Use of Buryat in Republic Schools Welcomed But Sparking Questions on Why It Appears to Be Bucking Russia-Wide Trend

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – At the end of last month, the Buryat education ministry announced that it would shift a quarter of the republic’s schools to Buryat as the language of instruction beginning in 2026. Many activists welcomed the promise, but others questioned whether Ulan-Ude would really do it or was only saying this to calm nationalist and separatist voices.
    Given the Putin regime’s Russianization of public education especially since 2017, many activists in Buryatia and in other non-Russian republics welcomed this exception and even said it showed that republic leaders had far greater freedom of action in this area if they had the will (idelreal.org/a/sto-nachalnyh-shkol-v-buryatii-hotyat-perevesti-na-buryatskiy-yazyk-obucheniya-chto-ob-etom-dumayut-eksperty-i-natsionalnye-aktivisty-/33192054.html).
    But far more expressed skepticism. Many said that Ulan-Ude would never in fact take this step but only promise it, something that in the short term would help the republic government fight nationalist and separatist attitudes and boost the standing of republic head Aleksey Tsydenov.
    Others said it would likely be only a bookkeeping measure given that approximately a quarter of all republic schools are in rural areas where Buryat remains strong but would not touch the major cities where Russian in schools and everyday life is increasingly dominant and Buryat marginalized.
    And some said that for Moscow it hardly mattered which language Buryat children were taught to become fighters for the empire given that they are now cannon fodder for the Kremlin in Putin’s war in Ukraine. If this feint toward the national language helps with recruitment, then it is all to the Kremlin’s good, not the good of the Buryat people.
    But one Russian specialist Vlada Baranova who resigned from the Higher School of Economics in 2022 hopes Buryatia will carry this promise out and that this will inspire others. The possibilities for that are real because under existing law, heads of republics have more room for maneuver in this area than many think. If they don’t act, it is only a question of will.
    “It is difficult to say what was behind the decision to increase the presence of Buryat in the educational system,” the author of Language Policy without Politicians (in Russian; Moscow: 2023) says. “Perhaps it is a PR campaign to improve the standing of an unpopular leader. But if it is implemented, that would be wonderful.”

Western Sanctions haven’t Undermined Putin’s Ability to Wage War Now and Made It More Likely Moscow will Do So in the Future, New Book Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – Western sanctions have not undermined Putin’s ability to wage war now, Sergey Aleksashenko, Vladislav Inozemtsev and Dmitry Nekrasov argue. But they have prompted him to forego technological modernization and instead militarize the Russian economy, thereby making it more likely the Kremlin will continue to wage wars in the future.
    They make that case in a new book, Dictator’s Reliable Rear: Russian Economy at the Time of War (in English; Cyprus, 48 pp., the full text of which is available at https://case-center.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/case-241112-en_fin2_compressed.pdf and summarized at istories.media/opinions/2024/11/13/sumasshedshaya-rossiya-eto-nadolgo/).
    According to the three economists, Western hopes that the war and sanctions “would undermine the Russian economy and make Putin stop have dissipated.” They have put the Russian economy on track to degradation but that will affect Russian policies only long after Putin is gone. They won’t affect his approach or the new Russian militarism.
    Moreover, they say, “the Russian economy has been able to withstand the onslaught of sanctions because it remained market-oriented, the world could not refuse Russian oil, and the West could not isolate Russia on the world stage” and because the technocrats running the economy have been so competent and professional.
    “Russia’s domestic capacity to stimulate demand was clearly underestimated,” and “for the first time since the end of the 17th century, Russia has created a mercenary army with wages paid to soldiers being several times higher than the national average” and with “a boom in household incomes” generally and inflation accepted as the price of all this.
    This is not to say that sanctions haven’t mattered, the three say. But they have mattered in ways that will have an impact not now but in the longer term – and not always in ways that the West will like. Russia’s economy will fall behind the West technologically over time, but Moscow will remain militaristic and work to destroy the international economic system.
    “Over the past century,” the three write, “Western democracies have faced dictatorships twice, once the fascist regimes and then the communist ones. In the first case, the confrontation grew into a global military conflict while in the second, that was avoided by winning the economic competition.”
    But now, they conclude, “the West should not count on a repeat of the second scenario: Russia is still far below the level of military spending the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and it has a market economy,” one that allows it to act with far greater flexibility than its Soviet predecessor did.

Putin Era Like End of USSR but from the Right rather than the Left, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 13 – The Putin era, Vladimir Pastukhov says, resembles the last years of the USSR in terms of its repression but it lacks the cultural elite that within strict bounds created some remarkable things and even more important constituted the group that helped power a cultural flourishing after the Soviet Union passed from the scene.
    This difference, the London-based Russian commentator says, recalls what the heroine of the musical Chicago said: “to the right … it’s the same as to the left but without dinner.” That is, Putinism now is “the same as the USSR albeit without the cultural dinner” because Putinism is like the end of Soviet times but without that “cultural dinner” (t.me/v_pastukhov/1300 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=673448E0BB339).
In contrast with the last decades of the Soviet Union, Putin’s Russia is currently “without ‘An Ordinary Miracle,’ without ‘Garage,’ without ‘Crew’ and even without ‘Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears’ – and that is perhaps the most important thing to know and understand about the Putin era” given what it suggests about the future.
Without such a cultural background, he says, there is little reason to think that Russia will give birth to any flourishing after Putin passes from the scene. If the country shines at all, it will be “only with the reflected light of that old Soviet culture … and when that ghostly light goes out, everything will go out along with it.”

West Repeating Error of 1980s and Overrating Moscow’s Strength and Survivability, Zashev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov.  12 – In the 1980s, Western governments and experts overrated both the strength and likely longevity of the Soviet Union, with many assuming it would survive and perhaps even prosper over at least several decades. Now, Peter Zashev says, their successors are making a similar mistake about Putin’s Russia.
    In fact, the Russian scholar now at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga says, “Putin’s Russia is weak, even very weak,” despite the bluffing Moscow has once again used with such success to convince the West otherwise (moscowtimes.ru/2024/11/12/sploshnoi-blef-i-bravada-rossiya-putina-slaba-ochen-slaba-a147419).
    Now just as at the end of Soviet times, Zashev says, many in the West are failing to see this and making miscalculations as a result. In reality, he continues, “the Putin regime has many weak points, and they are not some Achilles’ heel but rather other parts of the body politic, much larger” and therefore much for likely to kick in sooner than most expect.
    To make his point, Zashev lists four such weak points: the absence of an ideology, Putin’s inability to gain support unless he pays for it, Putin’s constant need to display his strength which in the nature of things ultimately leads to overreaching and defeat, and an economy that looks superficially strong but in fact is riven with problems.
    First of all, he argues, Putin’s Russia “simply doesn’t have an ideology. Instead, it offers a strange, unnatural and rather perverse mixture of Orthodoxy, Stalinism, anti-Americanism, militarism, Sovietism” and much else besides. What is on offer is intended to cover but in fact calls attention to the fact that “no one loves Putin unless they are paid to do so.”
    To conceal that reality, Zashev continues, Putin must constantly show himself to be powerful enough to win everything he gets involved with; but at present, he can’t even defend Kursk Oblast let alone take Kyiv, he can’t defend Russia’s airports or oil dumps and everyone can see that. He will try to create situations in which he can win, but he won’t be able to.
    The reason is the fourth weak point of the Putin system, the economy. It is just treading water now but is falling ever further behind the rest of the world in terms of innovation and modernization.  And that creates a situation in which the entire system can become unbalanced and then collapse.
    Zashev concludes: “The system appears to be working so far, but the example of the USSR should remind us how easily such a system can become unbalanced and what its suddent and rapid destruction this will lead to: – and more than that, that “the end will come much faster than we can imagine.”

Kremlin’s Ship-Building Plans Face Serious Obstacles, Zavyadov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 9 – Pushed by Vladimir Putin and Nikolay Patrushev, Russian shipyards have announced plans to build more than 1700 ships between 2025 and 2037, something that is at least possible, Dmitry Savyadov says, but will require that the Russian government and Russian yards overcome some serious obstacles.
    The specialist on manufacturing and logistics at Moscow’s Plekhanov Economic University says to achieve that goal Russian yards will have to continue to increase the number of ships they launch. In 2022, these yards launched 55; in 2023, 108; and in 2024, 110 (profile.ru/economy/sudovaya-rol-perspektivy-razvitiya-grazhdanskogo-flota-rossii-1615186/).
    But growth over the last three years, Savyadov continues, has been the result of massive infusions of government cash and has not overcome the impact of Western sanctions which mean that the electronic innards of the ships these yards are producing are far behind what Western yards are launching.
    In Soviet times, the USSR had the largest fleet in the world; but that figure has now fallen to less than half; and in the last decades of Soviet power and the first of Russian, shipbuilding in the country didn’t develop and more than two-thirds of the ships delivered to the navy and merchant marine had been built abroad.
    Much has been said, Savyardov says, about the fact that Russian yards are hemmed in because they cannot get electronics and other equipment abroad because of sanctions. But other problems, including corruption and especially the inability of Russian yards to build ships on an assembly-line basis as yards abroad do may reduce the chance they will fulfill Kremlin orders.

Russia Suffering Massive Teacher Shortage, Forcing Schools to Expand Class Size, Reintroduce Second and Even Third Shifts, and Harming Quality of Education

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 11 – Russia is suffering from an increasing shortage of teachers because of low salaries and poor working conditions, new studies find. There are now 250,000 vacancies forcing schools to expand class size, reintroduce second and even third shifts, and harming the quality of education Russian children receive.
    The studies find that these shortages are widespread with schools in three out of four of the country’s federal subjects now unable to fill all teaching positions and many reporting that teachers now employed are hoping to leave if they can find a better job (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/11/11/mne-by-prosto-vyzhit-v-etom-uchebnomu-godu).
    In 2018, Putin promised to end second and third shifts in Russia’s schools and to boost teacher salaries. Salaries have gone up slightly but not kept up with inflation, and “shifts” have been eliminated only by using other words to describe schedules that often mean children in poorer regions in the North Caucasus and the Arctic don’t get home until well after dark.
     This crisis has not received a great deal of attention but it merits more than many other issues that do because if the quality of primary and secondary education falls because of the tactics Russian schools are forced to adopt given the shortage of teachers, it will affect the quality of pupils going onto higher education and into the workforce.  

‘Step by Step, Malgin Says, Kremlin Transforming ‘Foreign Agents into Full-Fledged Enemies of the People’

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 11 – Since it introduced the concept of “foreign agent” in 2012, the Putin regime has “gradually, step by step and little by little” transformed that term from a mostly meaningless by highly offensive word and thus is making those it so designates “full-fledged enemies of the people” without the right to work or even survive, Andrey Malgin says.
    This process is near completion with the Duma set to adopt a law that will deprive those so designated of the right to receive income for creative work and possibly to take up a measure that will confiscate all their property so that the money can go to support Putin’s war in Ukraine (svoboda.org/a/lishentsy-andrey-maljgin-o-zakonah-protiv-vragov-naroda-/33196580.html).
    Had Putin done this all at once, the Radio Liberty commentator says, there might have been international outrage over how the current Kremlin leader is restoring Stalinist norms; but because he has done it bit by bit, most people have failed to recognize just how far he has gone and continues to go.

Patriarch Kirill Says He Doesn’t Oppose Restoration of Death Penalty because Apostles Didn’t Object to It when Romans Crucified Jesus

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 7 – In yet another example of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill’s willingness to engage in mental gymnastics to come out in support of whatever he believes the Kremlin wants, he now says that the apostles didn’t object to the death penalty when the Romans applied it to Jesus so he won’t oppose its restoration in Russia.
    That creative interpretation of the Bible, Aleksandr Soldatov says, is just a small part of the neo-paganism which Kirill has long been associated with, a religion that has little to do with Christianity as it is typically understood but fits perfectly with Putin’s view (t.me/mozhemobyasnit/19287 reposted at poligonmedia.appspot.com/aleksandr-soldatov/ and summarized at charter97.org/ru/news/2024/11/7/617975/).
    According to the specialist on religious life in Russia, Kirill has led his church to completely substitute military patriotic views in place of Christian ones, with the center of his faith “not the Gospels but with an ideology connected with the romanticism of military actions” taken by the Russian state.
    For Kirill and those who follow him, “Jesus no is only one of the gods in the pantheon of the Russian Orthodox Church: on its icons appear the image of Stalin, and the main church of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation features amulets from the computer game Warhammer” rather than the Bible.
    Those who follow the current patriarch including both the priesthood and the laity are told that “in war all means are good” and shown that the church is prepared to support “any mechanism” to promote them “including those which are purely occult” and have nothing to do with Christian traditions, according to the specialist on the Russian Orthodox Church today.
    The teachings of Christ are turned upside down, the researcher says, with Christ’s injunction not to kill being recast as an order to do just that, Soldatov concludes.

From End of World War II until 1980, Kazakhstan’s Capital Alma-Ata had Only One Kazakh Language School

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 8 – Between the end of World War II and 1980, the capital of Kazakhstan had only a single Kazakh language school, a reminder that both Moscow and Kazakh elites were anything but supportive of the Kazakh language and that Kazakhstan was nonetheless able to come back from that situation and promote its national language when that became possible.
    On the occasion of the centenary of this school, Kazakh journalist Bauydzhan Makhanov tells the story of a school that originally served mostly rural people and then only girls but expanded to include both genders and people from Alma-Ata at the end of Soviet times (spik.kz/2056-pochemu-v-sovetskoj-alma-ate-byla-lish-odna-kazahskaja-shkola.html).
    Although Alma Ata was the capital of Kazakhstan, its population was overwhelmingly Russian and not surprisingly most Russian parents wanted their children to study in Russian language schools. The Kazakh population grew rapidly from 8.6 percent in 1959 to 16.5 percent in the 1980s as more Kazakhs moved into the city and sought Kazakh language training.
    A second Kazakh language school was opened only at the start of the 1980s, although by 1989, there were seven, although some of these had instruction in both languages. But even then, they remained a minority: there were 163 schools in Alma Ata but only seven had instruction in Kazakh.
    A major reason there weren’t more was that many members of the Kazakh elite wanted their children to have better life chances and in Soviet times they concluded that this would be achieved better if their children spoke Russian well, something that could be achieved if they went to Russian language schools.
    Only when elite parents concluded otherwise did pressure rise for the opening of more schools, Makhanov says; and consequently, while a great deal of the responsibility for this paucity of Kazakh language schools lies with Moscow, much of it lies with Kazakh elites. Only when they changed their calculations did the languages of the schools change.

Spread of Immigrant Militia Units in Siberian Cities, Some with Help from Their Homelands, Worries Moscow Commentator

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 11 – In various cities in Siberia where there are significant diaspora populations, popular militias whose members include immigrants, some with Russian citizenship but others without, are forming to work with police to enforce laws and keep the peace between these communities and the Russian majority.
    This development, which has largely been taking place below Moscow’s radar screen, is now attracting more attention, Vladislav Maltsev says, because the Russian government itself is entering into agreements with the interior ministry of Kirghizstan to have officers from that Central Asian country come and work with these groups.
    That raises the possibility, the Zavtra commentator says, that something like extraterritorial status is emerging for the migrants, one resembling the foreign concessions in China in the 19th century which undermined that country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity (zavtra.ru/blogs/kirgizskie_gorodovie_i_natcional_nie_druzhini_uzhe_v_nashih_gorodah).
    Maltsev does not provide details on just how widespread either of these phenomena are, but his words will certainly feed into Russian fears that closed diasporas are taking control of the streets in some areas and threaten Russian statehood and the Russian people (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/closed-diasporas-are-seizing-power.html).
    Moreover, his report is likely to stimulate Russian groups to form their own militias and even Russian officials to accept them as valued aides, a development that will set the stage for more violence between the two groups (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/07/moscow-citys-use-of-chechen-shariat.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/09/russian-veterans-returning-from-ukraine.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/north-caucasus-officials-reliance-on.html).

By Its Mistaken Policies, Russia is Once Again Laying a Delayed Action Bomb under the North Caucasus, Servinovsky Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 8 – The Putin regime regularly suggests that Lenin laid a delayed action bomb under the North Caucasus, Vladimir Servinovsky says. But it fails to recognize that the Russian Empire did much the same in the middle of the 19th century and that the Kremlin itself is today doing something similar.
    The photo journalist who has travelled extensively in the North Caucasus says that the bombs Stalin laid under the North Caucasus are well-known because they blew up in the 1990s, but far less well known are the ones tsarist officials inserted there which blew up only a century later (poligonmedia.appspot.com/vladimir-sevrinovskij/).
    The latter include the very different treatment the tsarist government meted out to Sufi leader Khunta-Khadzhy Kishiyev and that it gave to Imam Shamil. In the first case, the tsars exiled and repressed Kishiyev’s followers while in the second, they gave the leader of the North Caucasian revolt an honored retirement.
    As a result, Servinovsky says, the followers of Kishiyiev were radicalized, went underground, and then led revolts a century later, while those who followed Shamil were more loyal to the Russian authorities both in the immediate aftermath of the Caucasian war and for decades thereafter.
    Unfortunately, the journalist continues, Moscow is making similar mistakes now, treating some well to buy their loyalty but repressing or forcing into emigration and thus radicalization and ensuring that their followers will lead a revolt if not immediately than in the coming decades as a result of this new delayed action bomb the Putin regime has put in place.
    In other comments, Servinovsky says that the Salafites are gaining ground in the region, something he says has both positive and negative consequences, with the former being that this movement which is committed to pure Islam is wiping out local and often harmful traditions but the former meaning that when the revolt comes, it will be both Islamist and far more radical.

Putin Says Representatives of Any Nationality Living in Russia have Complete Right to Call Themselves ‘Russkiye’

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 8 – Speaking to the Valdai Club, Vladimir Putin says that representatives of any nationality living in Russia have the complete right to call themselves Russians. He used the word for Russian (russky) that has historically referred only to those who are part of the ethnic Russian nation, yet another move against the non-Russian quarter of the population.
    They will be especially alarmed because this is the latest indication that the Kremlin leader is no longer prepared to accept the identification of rossissky, the Russian word for civic identification with the country, but will ultimately insist on the transition to russky, which is inherently ethnic.  
    Putin’s words (nazaccent.ru/content/43094-vladimir-putin-nazvat-sebya-russkim-mozhet-lyuboj-zhitel-strany-nezavisimo-ot-nacionalnosti/) are the latest step he has made in this direction, one long advocated by some in the Moscow elite and made more central to his declarations and actions since the intensification of conflict with the West.
    (For a discussion of the history of some recent developments in that process, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/05/putin-declares-ethnic-russians-state.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/08/non-russians-must-be-loyal-not-just-to.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/confrontation-with-west-has-led-moscow.html.)
    Many non-Russians will be offended by his words because they will read them as a further attack on the rights their nations had earlier and that Putin has been attacking consistently over the last two decades. But they will be joined in their anger by many ethnic Russians who won’t be pleased they must accept non-Russians who declare themselves Russians as Russkiye.

New Online Database Highlights How Russia Changed During the 20th Century

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 7 – Andrey Markevich, a Moscow economic historian, has overseen the creation of RISTAT, a collection of statistical data about seven aspects of Russian life (population, labor, industrial production, agriculture, services, capital and land) between 1795 and 2002).
    Aleksandr Basov of the To Be Precise portal has mined this database to come up with seven charts that highlight the ways in which Russia changed over the course of the 20th century, just one of the ways RISTAT (ristat.org/) can be used (tochno.st/materials/my-izucili-istoriceskuiu-statistiku-rossii-s-konca-1890-x-godov-vot-sem-grafikov-o-tom-kak-xx-vek-izmenil-stranu).
    His key findings include:
•    The share of the urban population in Russia rose from 12 percent in 1897 to 52 percent in 1959 and 73 percent in 2002.
•    The population of Russia east of the Urals rose by five times but much of this was by compulsion rather than in response to market forces and is now falling as a result.
•    Over the course of the 20th century, birthrates decreased from 52 births per 1,000 population in 1897 to 10 per 1,000 at the end. Death rates fell from 34 per 1,000 at the end of the 19th century to 16 per 1,000 at the end. But deaths rose again after 1959.
•    Women in Russia joined the paid workforce earlier and more rapidly than was the case in the US and Europe. In 1897, 13 percent of Russian women worked outside the home; but by 1959, 63 percent did, and by 2002, 81 percent, almost equal to the 84 percent of men.
•    Literacy rose from 20 percent in 1897 to 93 percent in the 1960s. And the share of Russians with higher education rose as well, from 0.5 percent in 1897 to almost 20 percent at the end of the 20th century.  

Verkhovsky on Sources of Anti-Migrant Worker Effort, Role of ‘Russian Community,’ and Possibility of More Inter-Ethnic Violence

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 5 – Aleksandr Verkhovsky, head of the SOVA human rights center, has given an extensive interview in which he discusses three important issues: the reasons the Putin regime has launched an anti-immigrant campaign, the role of the nationalist “Russian Community,” and the possibility of more inter-ethnic violence in the coming months.
    First of all, the human rights expert says that it is uncertain just why Moscow has launched its anti-immigrant campaign now because as senior leaders admit, the Russian Federation needs their participation in the labor force (cherta.media/interview/ideologicheskie-strashilki-vlasti-i-zhelanie-totalnogo-kontrolya/).
    He suggests that the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack didn’t trigger it because the campaign began before that but says it most likely is the product of the regime’s desire to use this campaign to tighten control and fears among some of its members that immigrants are a threat to Russian identity and national security (e.g., interfax.ru/russia/927458).
    And Verkhovsky indicates that in his view, the entire effort is being driven from above and conducted as a propaganda exercise rather than reflecting any autonomous upsurge in anti-immigrant sentiment among the Russian population as a whole. There is simply no evidence for that.
    Second, with regard to the Russian Community, the SOVA head says that isn’t certain that this is a Kremlin project; but the radical nationalist group is certainly operating according to what the Kremlin wants because its leaders know that if they step out of line, they will be immediately suppressed.
    Verkhovsky says that any organized activity of this kind is a threat both to the population against which the group’s members are likely to adopt ever harsher measures and potentially even to the regime if the group gains traction with a lot of people before the Kremlin cracks down on it.
    And third, despite the violence in Korkino in Chelyabinsk Oblast, he argues that “now the threat of such disorders is much less” than it was in 2013 because the Putin regime has established far tighter control over the population.  But despite that, there are risks of more disorders, especially because the regime has limited the role of NGOs in overcoming them.
    In the past, NGOs rather than the state worked with closed communities like the Roma but now the Roma are refusing to cooperate with NGOs because any such cooperation can get them into trouble. But that means, Verkhovsky says, that the positive steps achieved earlier are now being reversed.  

Putin’s Goal is Not Defeating Ukraine but Inflicting a Humiliating Defeat on the West and Changing the Rules of the Game, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 7 – Any Western leader who believes that he can “settle accounts with Putin by paying him off with pieces of Ukraine is surprisingly naïve,” Vladimir Pastukhov says, “because of Putin, Ukraine is not the goal of this war at all. He doesn’t care about that country but rather seeks to inflict a humiliating defeat on the West” and changing the international order.
    If any Western leader does take part in talks with Putin about Ukraine, the London-based Russian analyst says, then it is already obvious that “this dialogue won’t be about territory” but about something much larger. In this, for Putin, his war in Ukraine is a means rather than an end in itself (echofm.online/programs/pastuhovskie-chetvergi/pastuhovskie-chetvergi-130).
    Any such dialogue, he continues, will instead “be about collective security in the world and the balance of relations” between Russia and the rest of the world. The current rules of the international game give advantages to those countries like the US which are economically and socially strong.
    But those rules are “unfavorable to Russia” because Russia is “an economically and socially weak country, torn apart internally,” Pastukhov continues. But it is “fairly strong militarily, and Putin believes that an excess of military strength can compensate for its lack of economic power.”
    That is what any talks between Russia and the West concerning Ukraine will really be about, and the West needs to be ready for that.

Renaming Drive in Kazakhstan Wrongly More Anti-Russian than Anti-Soviet, Janabergen Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 7 – The current drive to rename cities, towns and streets in Kazakhstan is increasingly anti-Russian rather than anti-Soviet with officials involved in this effort choosing to drop even the names of Russians who helped the Kazakh people while honoring those of ethnic Kazakhs who worked for Moscow against their own nation, Bakhyt Janabergen says/
    The Spike news portal writer says that it is increasingly the case that ethnicity rather than political stance is what matters to those pushing for name changes, something that seriously distorts the history of Kazakhstan (spik.kz/2052-o-pereimenovanijah-v-kazahstane-jetnicheskij-faktor-glavnyj-dlja-onomastov.html).
    Among the numerous examples he gives of this unfortunate pattern is that of Yuri Dombrovsky, an ethnic Russian writer who “unlike numerous embers of the Writers Union of the Kazakh SSR did not bend under the Soviet regime” but instead wrote two, The Keeper of the Antiquities and The Faculty of Unnecessary Things, much valued by Kazakhs and others.
    Dombrovsky lived in Alma-Ata from 1933 to 1956, married an ethnic Kazakk, and was sent to the GULAG twice. According to Janabergen, “it is unlikely that there is another writer who described the capital of Kazakhstan at that time with such skill and love but today no one would suggest honoring him because he was a Russian.
    There is in fact a street named Dombrovsky in that city, the commentator acknowledges, but it doesn’t honor the writer but a Polish revolutionary from 1863 who was in no way connected with the famous author.  Such ethnic “selectivity,” Janabergen continues, needs to be ended, and those who worked for Kazakhstan regardless of nationality must be honored.

New Biography Says Leningrad’s Grigory Romanov Could have Saved USSR

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 6 – Had Grigory Romanov become CPSU leader instead of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Leningrad political figure would have saved the USSR, according to a new biography. But a combination of black PR by Western intelligence services and political maneuvers by Gorbachev cost him and the country that chance.
    The biography, What the Times Required, by Albert Izmaylov, has already gone through two editions and won prizes, seeks to rehabilitate Romanov and does so in ways that suggest he remains very much a valued model for Vladimir Putin, another Leningrad native, as he thinks about the elite he wants to create and leave after him.  
    In a review of the book, Stoletiye writer Vladimir Malyshev says that the book represents an important effort to rehabilitate Romanov, someone whose name was almost banned from any reference besides the most negative since the rise of Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union (stoletie.ru/politika/on_mog_spasti_sssr_975.htm).
    The produce of a peasant family in Petrograd Gubernia, Romanov served as a regular soldier throughout World War II and joined the CPSU only in September 1944. After the war, he finished his education and went to work in the northern capital’s shipyards before turning to party work and rising to become obkom secretary in 1970.
    While in that position, he attracted Leonid Brezhnev’s attention as a potential successor. But he also gained the reputation as someone who repressed dissent, although in fact the new book argues, he only executed orders from Moscow in that regard rather than adopted a particularly hard line of his own.
    But his reputation as a crude hardliner was promoted by Russian liberals and Western intelligence services, the new book says. Most infamously, they circulated the fake news that Romanov had had allowed his daughter to use dinnerware originally belonging to the tsars and that he, she and her guests had smashed it up.
    According to the book, officials at the Hermitage Museum and elsewhere in a position to do say that this claim is completely untrue. It could not have happened, and they suggest that it was put out by Western intelligence services in order to weaken Romanov and open the way for the rise of Gorbachev.
    Izmaylov also says that Gorbachev outplayed Romanov when Chernenko died and the Politburo had to chose a successor. At that moment, Romanov was on vacation in Palanga in Lithuania and Moscow delayed telling him about Chernenko’s death for ten hours. As a result, Romanov did not get back to Moscow before all the decisions were made.
    When Gorbachev got the top party job, he immediately sent Romanov into retirement; and he subsequently refused to allow Romanov any serious work. Had the reverse happened and Romanov rather than Gorbachev become Soviet leader, the book argues, the USSR would have overcome its economic difficulties and survived.

Turkey Plans to Expand Its Influence Abroad Through Mosques

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 6 – When the Soviet Union collapsed, it was commonly assumed that Iran would promote Islamic ideas and that Turkey would push secular ones. But that has never been strictly true as Tehran has pushed a variety of economic initiatives and Turkey, especially in recent years, has sought to promote Islamic ideas.
    That Turkish trend is likely to continue and even expand to judge from a report on the strategic plan of the Turkish government’s Administration for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) for the next four years (nordicmonitor.com/2024/10/turkey-aims-to-influence-millions-abroad-by-utilizing-mosques-and-government-employed-imams/).
    The plan calls for officials at Turkish embassies to work with mosques to promote Turkey’s positions, something that some West European countries are concerned about and that may increasingly dominate Turkey’s soft power efforts in the Turkic republics of the former Soviet space (vpoanalytics.com/sobytiya-i-kommentarii/turtsiya-religioznoe-vedomstvo-diyanet-rasshiryaet-zarubezhnuyu-deyatelnost/).
    That would be completely consistent with the current Turkish government’s plans to promote a Turkish world and give it an increasingly Islamic content (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/ankara-directs-turkish-schools-to-again.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/moscow-analysts-fear-turkic-world-only.html, and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/turkic-world-real-threat-to-russia-and.html).  

Soviet Failure to Demarcate Union Republic Borders Major Source of Tension for Post-Soviet States, Russian Scholars Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov.6 – Moscow not only frequently changed the borders of union republics  (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/05/borders-in-post-soviet-space-were.html) but also failed to demarcate even the borders that it has announced as having been delimited, Russian scholars say.
    Instead, they point out, Soviet officials at all levels treated these borders as more symbolic than real and allowed those living in frontier regions to move back and forth and make use of resources on both sides with little regard to where the borders were said to be. In many cases, local people had little or no idea of where the border actually was.
    That has left the post-Soviet states where these incompletely marked administrative borders have become international borders in a difficult position, with serious conflicts breaking out between the countries involved and governments struggling to demarcate their borders both to eliminate borders as a source of conflict.
    Nowhere has this lack of Soviet demarcation proved more fateful to the successor states than along the 971-kilometer border between Kyrgystan and Tajikistan where there have been “more than 230” clashes in recent decades and a major effort to reach agreement on just where the border lies, according to two Russian specialists (sng.fm/dushanbe/34919-mir-druzhba-granica-pochemu-bishkek-i-dushanbe-godami-ne-mogut-podelit-territorii.html).
    Both Larisa Shashok and Komron Rakhimov of Moscow’s Center for Central Asian Research at the Academy of Sciences say the two countries hope to finalize an agreement on borders early next year, but they point out that a major reason this has taken so long was the lack of demarcation in Soviet times.
    That is an unusual but not unprecedented judgment that is often ignored by students of the region who in most cases are inclined to blame the difficulties the new states have in resolving border problems on their own nationalistic commitments rather than on the failures of the Soviet system.

Putin’s Tyranny Undermining Psychological Health of Russians More Broadly than Many Suspect, Archagov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 5 – Vladimir Putin’s increasingly tyrannical rule is undermining the psychological health of Russia’s population in ways far broader and more insidious than many suspect, that has a variety of often deadly real world consequences and that will be extremely difficult but fortunately not impossible to overcome, Aleksandr Archagov says.
    The Russian clinical psychologist says that Russians are increasingly alive to the ways in which Putin policies are producing PTSD among those most directly affected but that they are as yet less aware of the ways in which there is something similar among the broader population of those who are only witnesses directly or via the media (moscowtimes.ru/2024/11/05/vnimanie-tiraniya-vredit-psihicheskomu-zdorovyu-a146751).
    Psychological research shows, Archagov continues, that people who only observe or hear about tortures and other acts of violence are also affected by them and thus become “a hidden epidemic” that affects many few suspect are victims of tyranny and its reliance on violence of various kinds.
    But that is only one way in which Putin’s tyranny is undermining the psychological health of Russians, he says. The Kremlin leader has “in fact banned any collective actions besides those which the state itself initiatives” and thus promoted the social atomization of the population that in turn leads to alienation and even violence.  
    The Putin regime is also “normalizing violence” in the media, leading ever more Russians to conclude that violence is an appropriate response to anger and thus ensuring that there will be more of it, including abuse within and among social groups much like abuse within some families.
    All these things, plus the aggressive wars that tyrannies like Putin’s are inclined to engage in, mean that “’inner Putins’” are being created within more and more Russians, a psychological trigger that tells people who they should act “in order to survive in the world of the tyrant” and leads many to behave as miniature tyrants in their own spheres.
    “Unfortunately,” Archagov says, “tyranny like violence in the home  rarely stops without the interference of outside forces. But happily nothing makes this something that lasts forever;” and Russians can take steps to resist it, the first and most important being to recognize just what is happening as a result of Putin’s rule.

Some in Both Russia and China Fear Falling Too Far Under the Influence of the Other, Zuyenko Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 5 – The rapprochement of Russia and China over the last two years is especially remarkable, Ivan Zuyenko says, because some in each country fear that there is a serious risk that they might fall too far under the influence of their opposite numbers, a fear that limits just how far this coming together will go.
    The senior researcher at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) says that Russian fears in this regard are well-known but that it is important to keep in mind that “symmetrical” fears exist in China, although he says neither should be overemphasized (profile.ru/columnist/simmetrichnye-strahi-1615652/).
    According to Zuyenko, “perhaps no other relationships with a partner country are criticized as often in Russia as those with Beijing,” criticism rooted in the “disproportions of the size of the economy and population” between Russia and China and the view that “the only possible outcome is that Russia will become dependent on China.”
    But those Russian concerns, although much noted, are less interesting than the fact that Moscow has failed to notice “similar sentiments” in Beijing about the risk that China will inevitably fall too far under Russian influence and that Chinese interests and China as a whole will suffer as a result.
    Such Chinese concerns exist and must be noted, Zuyenko says; but they shouldn’t be overestimated. They don’t reflect the views of China’s top leadership but rather the willingness of that top leadership to allow “a hundred flowers to bloom” in order to suggest that China is “a free country.”
    China will continue to pursue close ties with Russia because the leaders of the two countries are “like-minded people on the world stage and economically complement one another perfectly,” the MGIMO analyst says. At least for the time being, Beijing critics of ties with Russia should be ignored just as Moscow critics of ties with China are.
    At the same time, however, the appearance of an article like Zuyenko’s suggests that some in Moscow are concerned that what are today marginal voices in Beijing could grow in number and volume and want the Russian leadership to be aware of this danger as it navigates the development of this relationship.  

Poland Pursuing Policies that Recall Pre-World War II Prometheanism, Russian Telegram Channel Suggests

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 4 – The Polish government is not only becoming ever more active in the non-Russian countries of the former Soviet space but is promoting policies that encourage those countries to adopt an ever-more negative attitude toward Moscow, according to the Russian nationalist Rybar telegram channel.
    And while Rybar does not mention the term Prometheanism in its article, it seems clear that the authors of this article view what Warsaw is doing now as a direct continuation of what Poland did with regard to the non-Russian republics in the 1920s and 1930s under its policy of Prometheanism (eurasiatoday.ru/polsha-gotovitsya-zajti-v-srednyuyu-aziyu/).
    That policy sought to promote national identities and separatism among the non-Russian republics; and it is becoming mentioned ever more often by nationalists in these countries and by Russian commentators (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/12/revival-of-prometheanism-outrages.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/promethean-ideas-can-prevent.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/04/prometheanism-showed-that-joint.html).
    The Rybar telegram channel focuses on three aspects of what it sees as Poland’s role in promoting the revival of Promethean-type ideas: its recent flurry of diplomatic activity in Central Asia, its moves to treat Central Asia and indeed all non-Russian countries as a group rather than as separate cases, and especially a conference Warsaw held last summer.
    On June 6, the Polish Academy of Sciences hosted representatives from eight former non-Russian republics on Stalin’s deportations of nationalities, an action that organizers said has not received adequate attention and is generally viewed “through the prism of individual national martyrdoms, leading to a kind of rivalry of suffering” rather than a common sense of grievance (https://mieroszewski.pl/aktualnosci/deportacje-w-zwiazku-sowieckim).   
    And the conference organizers argued that this meeting provided “a unique opportunity to take a broader look at the issue of deportation,” something that is acquiring ever greater importance because of Moscow’s ongoing efforts to whitewash Stalinist crimes.  

Another Measure Protecting Russia’s Numerically Small Nations May Be about to Disappear

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 3 – Moscow has long granted special privileges to members of numerically small peoples of the Russian North and Far East who pursue a traditional way of life. Such people are given the right to catch more fish or hunt more animals than are all others, a right that has helped maintain these groups and especially their traditional way of life.
    Many Russians object to such privileges and now a group of Duma deputies and senators are pushing for a law that would extend the same rights to Russians born in these regions or who have lived there at least 35 years (nazaccent.ru/content/43070-zhitelyam-dalnego-vostoka-predlozhili-dat-takie-zhe-prava-kak-u-korennyh-narodov/).
    The deputies see this as simple justice and many observers are likely to view it in the same way, but in fact, if being a member of a numerically small people who pursues a traditional way of life brings no special benefits, many who now do may stop and these numerically small nations will be in trouble.
    Two other outcomes are even more disturbing. On the one hand, if the number of people who can harvest more food and game is expanded in this way, overfishing and overhunting may soon mean that there will not be enough game for either group and that the entire economy of these regions will collapse.
    And on the other, if this proposal is adopted, it is likely to prove yet another tool that Moscow will use to undermine the survival of these and other non-Russian groups which depend on such special privileges to survive in the face of much larger Russian communities who have come into their traditional regions.
    If that should prove to be the case, then what looks like a move toward simple justice will have the most unjust of results.  

If There is a Settlement in Ukraine, Putin will be Compelled to Start a New War, Savvin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 4 – Many commentators have suggested that if Putin succeeds in getting a settlement in Ukraine favorable to Russia, the Kremlin leader will conclude that he has a green light to launch a new military campaign somewhere else. But Dimitry Savvin says that in fact with such a settlement, Putin will be compelled to start a new war.
    The editor of Harbin, a conservative Russian portal based in Riga, says that if the war ends, Moscow will face the enormous task of rebuilding and repopulating the territories in Ukraine that it will annex, something beyond Moscow’s demographic and economic possibilities (t.me/dimitriy_savvin/4713 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6729C1C5BFA24).
    Putin’s inability to do that will become painfully obvious to all, Savvin says; and consequently, the Kremlin leader will move in his “accustomed direction,” that is, he will start a new war somewhere else to distract attention from his own shortcomings and to justify the kind of repression he’ll need to try to make up for those.  

Today’s Anti-Semitic Russian Nationalism Rooted Less in Tsarist Times than in Soviet Ones, Neman Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 4 – Most discussions of extreme right anti-Semitic Russian nationalism point to its origin in the final decades of the tsarist empire, an origin many of today’s Russian nationalists emphasize. But in fact, Veronika Neman says, many of their views come directly from the Soviet period rather than the more distant tsarist past.
    The Russian commentator says that “many of the mythological positions of present-day nationalists were laid down already in Soviet times” and that these rather than the Black Hundreds ideology of the end of the imperial period are the ones that define current thinking on the Russian right (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/11/04/sovetskie-antisemity).
    After tracing the way in which Russian nationalist views rose under Stalin and survived after his death, Neman points out that when the USSR disintegrated, “Soviet party functionaries, including representatives of the Russian Party did not exit the political arena.” Instead, they continued to occupy key positions.
    And “already in the 1990s,” Neman continues, “a new union of ‘anti-Westerners,’ supporters of ‘traditional values,’ and ‘a special path’ for Russia took shape. In the 2000s, with the Chechen wars in the background, xenophobia toward Caucasians grew as did the popularity of Russian nationalism … Today [this] has become the official policy of the country.”
    Many view this as a return to the ideas of the last years of the Russian Empire, but in fact, she writes, the views of Russian nationalists now have far more in common with the Soviet Russianists than with the Black Hundreds. Now as in Soviet times, Jews are viewed as a racial category whereas in the years before 1917, they were looked at as a religion.
    Before the revolution, Russian nationalists had a positive attitude toward Orthodox in other nations and toward Caucasians; but now as during the post-Stalin period in Soviet times, today’s Russian nationalists are hostile to both and support only Russians rather than a larger community.
    A central “myth” of Russian nationalists now is that “the USSR was the lawful successor of the Russian Empire, a state created by and for ethnic Russians. Only ethnic Russians have the right to rule this stae and they must form at a minimum ‘a qualified majority’ in all prestigious spheres.”
    Those views, Neman concludes, resemble far more closely those of the Russian Party in Soviet times than the attitudes of the Black Hundreds of the end of tsardom.

Russian Community Organization and Its Allies Behind Vladimir Oblast Ban on Hijabs

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 3 – In another sign of the growing power of right-wing Russian nationalist groups like “the Russian Community,” “Northern Man,” and “Rokot-Center” in the wake of the Crocus City Hall terrorist action, officials in Vladimir Oblast have acceded to demands from these groups and banned the hijab.
    They have done so, local journalists say, even though Muslims number only 50,000 out of a total population of 1.3 million and even though there have been no significant clashes involving them and the ethnic Russian majority (t.me/dovod3/15577 and kavkazr.com/a/hayp-na-hidzhabe-kak-chechnya-i-dagestan-uchat-islamu-tsentraljnuyu-rossiyu/33186434.html).
    That the regional authorities felt they had to defer to the Russian nationalist groups shows how powerful they have become and how likely it is that many officials in the federal subjects view they as enjoying the favor of the Kremlin. And that in turn means that regional governments may take the same view and the same step despite the absence of problems.
    On the growing power of the Russian Community and other groups like it, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/extremist-russian-community-now-active.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/another-black-hundreds-group-revived-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/closed-diasporas-are-seizing-power.html and jamestown.org/program/russian-community-extremists-becoming-the-black-hundreds-of-today/.   

Russian Foreign Ministry Renames Its European Cooperation Department the Department of European Problems

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 3 – For many years, the Russian foreign ministry had a department for European Cooperation that dealt with ties to the European Union, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, and NATO. But now because of the changed international situation, the ministry has renamed that section the Department of European Problems.
    The head of the department remains the same but as foreign ministry spokesperson Mariya Zakharova pointed out, the new name better reflects the current state of relations between Moscow and these European institutions (vedomosti.ru/politics/news/2024/11/03/1072794-mid-rossii-poyavilsya).
    More important, the change in name institutionalizes those new and more hostile relations and means that unless there is a change back at some future point, Moscow’s approach to European  bodies is likely to remain more hostile for far longer than would otherwise be the case.

Kremlin Needs Migrants Both to Keep Economy Moving and to Give Russians a Way to Relieve Stress that Doesn’t Threaten Regime, Panfilova Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 1 – The Kremlin needs immigrants not just to keep the Russian economy operating but as a convenient and safe target ordinary Russians can vent their anger about many aspects of their lives in ways that relieve their own stress without threatening the interests of the regime, Elena Panfilova says.
    The independent Russian journalist and anti-corruption fighter says that if the first of these needs for more immigrants is obvious, the second of having them as a safe target for the population is less so but beyond doubt is at least equally important to the regime (gorby.media/articles/2024/11/01/chto-delat-s-ponaekhavshimi).
    She draws that conclusion on the basis of conversations in a series of focus groups organized jointly by Novaya Gazeta and the Levada Center whose participants made clear that Russians focus their anger about many things on the migrants and thus relieve tensions in ways that do not bring them into conflict with the Putin regime.
    That doesn’t mean that the powers that be have invented migration as an issue, Panfilova continues, but they are using it because the stress of life in Russia today could lead to an explosion if there was no outlet. Attacking migrants provides precisely such an outlet and thus helps the Kremlin keep anger in the population from building up against itself.

Patrushev Denounces Western Moves on World’s Oceans, Europe’s Internal Waterways, and the Montreux Convention

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 1 – Nikolay Patrushev, former secretary of the Russian Security Council who now heads the Naval Collegium, has denounced Western moves on the world’s oceans and Europe’s internal waterways and regarding the Montreux Convention governing the Turkish straits as anti-Russian and says Moscow will respond (fedpress.ru/news/77/policy/3346147).
    On the one hand, his comments fall within the remit of his new position; but on the other, they are a sign that he continues to play a key role in the formation of Moscow’s foreign policy as Russia’s leading hawk and in many ways may have increased that role since his widely supposed “demotion” to the Naval Collegium.
    Three of Patrushev’s comments are particularly noteworthy. First, he is especially concerned with the use of rivers by the West having overseen the conduct of the Oceans 2024 exercise which despite its name focused on the use of the internal waterways of the Russian Federation.
    A major reason for that focus may be that Russia can put pressure on other countries regarding the military use of transborder rivers like the Danube in particular without having to wait until Moscow can overcome its problems with its blue water navy.
    Second, Patrushev is focused above all on the balance of power in the Black Sea. While that may be little more than a reflection of the fact that he made these remarks at a meeting devoted to that sea, his words suggest that Moscow will now seek to build up its presence there even before it expands elsewhere, to challenge both Ukraine and its Western supporters.
    Such a focus could presage a much more aggressive response to Ukraine’s victories over the Russian navy there than anyone has seen in recent months. If so, naval activity even more than land force movements may define Moscow’s approach in the coming months.
    And third, his reference to the Montreux Convention which governs the use of the Turkish straits speaks to a Russian obsession going back more than a century, one based on fears that the West will advance against Russia via the straits into the Black Sea, something the convention, in force since 1936, makes far less possible.
    Patrushev’s suggestions that the West wants to change Montreux, a kind of code word for the development of a canal that bypasses the Turkish straits, makes it likely that Moscow will step up its pressure on Turkey not to agree to any change in the convention’s limits.

Moscow Attacks Ingushetia’s Batal-Haji Sufi Order, a Group Some have Called ‘a State within a State’ in that North Caucasus Republic

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 2 – Moscow officials have accused four members of Ingushetia’s Batal-Haji Sufi brotherhood of taking part in the March 2022 attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, an action that threatens both to destabilize that North Caucasus republic and worsen relations between Moscow and Chechnya which has defended the order in the past.
    That is because the brotherhood is so large that its members dominate much of the government of the Republic of Ingushetia and because Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov has sought to use some of its members to allow him to dominate Magas (kavkazr.com/a/batalhadzhintsy-iz-ingushetii-stali-figurantami-dela-o-terakte-v-krokuse-/33184799.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/chechnyas-kadyrov-takes-up-cause-of.html).
    The latest Russian accusations are likely to cause the order to close ranks against Moscow, although it is unclear as of this writing whether the Russian government will press these cases in court or quietly pull back from an open break as it did two years ago (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/russian-officials-accuse-influential.html).
    But in either case, Magas officials are certainly going to be angry and on the defensive all the more so because of corruption charges against the brother of the official head of the republic; and Chechnya’s Kadyrov is certain to try to exploit the situation by positioning himself once again as a defender of Islamic institutions.
    As a result, there is a growing risk of serious conflicts both in government offices behind the scenes and in the streets where the Ingush population is already furious at Moscow for its continuing repression of those who led the opposition to yielding 10 percent of the republic to Chechnya in 2018 and their current status as the poorest federal subject in the Federation.