Window on Eurasia: Oil Price Collapse Should Lead Russians to Recall and Act on Stalin’s 1931 Warning, Orenburg Blogger Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, November 29 – The continuing decline in oil prices, a political move by the West against Moscow, should cause Russians to recall Stalin’s warning in 1931 that “we are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries and must catch up within ten years. Either we will do that or they will crush us,” according to an Orenburg blogger.

 

            Russians must recognize that the world has changed, that they must pursue a strategy of mass mobilization, and that they must replace the current elite with one that understands that need and will do what it takes to prevent disaster, Yevgeny Super on the Odnako.org portal (odnako.org/blogs/inache-nas-somnut-etu-elitu-nado-zamenit-mobilizacionnoy/).

 

            Too many people, including prominently Development Minister Aleksey Ulyukayev, think that Russia can escape its current dilemma by liberalization, but such an approach will fail, not only leaving Russia more dependent on the international economic system it cannot control but also depriving Russians of the sense of responsibility for their own fate.

 

            Ulyukayev, Super says, reflects this approach and fears any talk of mobilization “like fire” because it would involve forcing people to “fulfill common tasks,” rather than allow them to continue to avoid “personal responsibility” by pointing to the “’hand of the market’” or the decline in the price of oil.

 

            Russians instead should remember the “historic” words Stalin uttered on February 4, 1931, and launch a similar mobilization program to rebuild and expand Russia’s industrial base.

Such an effort, Super suggests, would allow the country to withstand any foreign challenges just as Stalin’s allowed the USSR to hold out “against the united force of Europe in the Great Fatherland War.”

 

            Indeed, he writes, “what is needed is an immediate mobilization without which there will not be industrialization. A labor, moral and political mobilization. But in the first instance a mobilization of the elite itself because otherwise the people will not have faith and any plans and appeals of the bosses will go down the drain. Together with the country.”

 

            The current elite as typified by Ulyukayev isn’t capable and therefore “it must go” and go one hopes “peacefully and voluntarily.” But to save Russia, go it must.

 

Window on Eurasia: Each of the Nations of Daghestan Ought to Have a Separate Republic, Writer Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, November 29 – Some in Daghestan now think that it is time for each Daghestani nation to have a separate republic rather than continue to live in a single “all-Daghestan ‘collective farm,’” an attitude that may be indicative of what other larger nations are thinking about their status relative to the Russian Federation.

 

            In a Daghestani Internet forum, Murad Abdullayev says that the current multi-national republic has had its day and that “possibly the time has come” for each of its various peoples to form their own republics within the Russian Federation, given their increasing size and increasing conflicts (forum-dag.ru/content/mozhet-dagestan-luchshe-razdelit).

 

            Since the Daghestan ASSR was formed, “the share of the population of [that republic] in Russia has increased by a factor of eight,” and “the current Republic of Daghestan has become a headache for Moscow.” It doesn’t pay its taxes and now owes Moscow more than anyone else except Ukraine, and on its territory, there is a war going on which the leadership change did nothing to stop.

 

            The problem of taxes would be solved if each people had its own republic. “The majority of Avars are too proud to steal and lie; the Darghins are able to divide up their profits, and the Lezgins are law-abiding … Now, [none of them] pays taxes because each thinks that someone else must solve the problem.”

 

            “The Lezgins consider,” Abdullayev writes, “that the Avars must solve the problem because they are ‘in power’ in Daghestan; the Avars think that the Dargins must pay because they live better, but the Dargins respond that the Lezgins are the wealthiest Daghestanis in Russia.”

 

            None of them is prepared to take responsibility for “’the collective farm’” because none of them feels a part of it.  Given that, the writer says, they view Daghestan not as a mother but as an evil stepmother, someone from whom it is almost an act of nobility to take something from to help their own.

 

 

 

Window on Eurasia: Fate of Post-Soviet Space and of Russia Itself at Issue in Ukraine, Kazakh Scholar Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, November 29 – The fate not only of Ukraine but also of the entire post-Soviet space and even the survival of Russia itself as a single unified country is being decided by what is happening in the conflict in southeastern Ukraine, according to Aydos Sarym, a political scientist from Kazakhstan.

 

            He told the UNIAN news agency that what is going on in Ukraine is forcing everyone in the post-Soviet space to make “a moral and political choice” and nowhere is that trend stronger than in Kazakhstan in which reactions to Ukraine have become “a litmus test” of all the divisions, “generational, ethnic and so on,” which exist there.

 

            Moreover, Sarym continued, one should not forget that there are more than three million ethnic Russians and 800,000 ethnic Ukrainians living in Kazakhstan at the present time (unian.net/politics/1014258-kazahskiy-politolog-v-ukraine-reshaetsya-sudba-ne-tolko-ee-samoy-no-i-vsego-postsovetskogo-mira.html).

 

            Many ethnic Ukrainians who earlier had not paid particular attention to their ethnicity are now doing so, he said, and “many Kazakhs are very actively supporting their Ukrainian brothers,” with the country’s social networks increasingly decorated in Ukrainian yellow and blue.

 

            Kazakhs understand that they have “much to learn from Ukrainians, including how not to repeat the tragic and even fatal errors which were made by the Ukrainian authorities over the course of the last year,” especially as Kazakhstan shares 7500 kilometers of borders with Russia, three and half times as many as Ukraine does.

 

            All post-Soviet countries are in the position of “post-colonial and post-Soviet transit,” Sarym said. And given the situation in Russia, the non-Russian countries have only two paths for breaking with the imperial past: armed force as in Georgia and Ukraine or “a peaceful path of imitating integration processes.”

 

            Kazakhstan has chosen the latter, and Ukrainians must understand that what it is doing is using the imitation of integration in order to pursue greater independence. Once they do, they will recognize that the Eurasian Economic Community Vladimir Putin is pushing will have no more success than the CIS.

 

            Kazakhs are very worried that Russia will try to annex part of their country given statements from Moscow dismissing the existence of their historical statehood and the existence of “revanchist and revisionist attitudes” in the Russian media, attitudes that were marginal a year or two ago but now are at the center of Russian politics.

 

            Over the last several years, Kazakhstan has had to put down “several attempts at armed uprisings organized by Russian national Bolsheviks,” he continued. And recently, “Russia in violation of the principles of trust and security adopted within the Shanghai Cooperation Accord without warning conducted exercises dangerously close to the borders of Kazakhstan.”

 

                There are clearly people in Russia who believe that they could carry out “a short victorious war” in Kazakhstan and thus shore up their power in Russia itself. The Kazakhstan military is not in good shape: it is about where the Ukrainian army was a year or 18 months ago. But that is not where the real problem lies.

 

            “Our problem,” Sarym said, “is that the leadership of the country lived for a long time as a prisoner of the illusion that the entire world is hostile to it and that only Russian can guarantee security both for our country and (above all) the ruling regime.”  Today, as a result of Russia’s “paranoid foreign policy” and actions in Ukraine, “those illusions are being dispelled.”

 

            Kazakh analysts suggest there are three parts of Kazakhstan where Moscow might try a Crimean-style annexation: the oblasts of Kostanay, North Kazakhstan and Eastern Kazakhstan, which border Russia and have significant Russian-speaking populations.

 

            But “in the conditions of Kazakhstan, any attempt by Russia to annex the territory of the northern oblasts would lead not to ‘a hybrid war’ restricted to a definite territory but more than that to ethnic cleansings and massive violence through the entire territory of the country.” Thus, for Russia to try it would be “the most complete insanity.”

 

            Tragically, there are some in Moscow who are nonetheless thinking of making such a move.  Kazakhs have lone joked that “what Zhirinovsky says, Putin is thinking,” a reference to the anti-Kazakh and imperial bombast of the former than often has been a leading indicator of what the Kremlin ruler plans.

 

            At present, Sarym said, there is no Russophobia in Kazakhstan, “but the situation in Russia today is such that there they are ready to consider Russophobic anything which does not please them or which does not fit with the understanding of [Moscow’s] ruling elite.”

 

            Ukrainians should take courage from the fact that, despite intense pressure from Moscow, “Kazakhstan does not support the occupation of Crimea and does not recognize the Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine.” Indeed, both of Russia’s “partners” in the new union “have frequently demonstrated” their independence from Moscow on matters Ukrainian.

 

            That pattern, Sarym said, is not going to change.

 

 

 

Window on Eurasia: Mufti Says Russia’s Muslims ‘Inalienable Part’ of Russian World

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, November 29 – Stavropol Mufti Muhammad-haji Rakhimov told the Third Stavropol Forum of the World Russian Popular Assembly that “Russian [rossiiskye] Muslims are an inalienable part of the Russian [russky] world,” a statement at odds with some by other speakers who stressed the Orthodox and ethnic nature of that idea.

 

            The mufti added that “contemporary Russian Muslims are sincere patriots who love their motherland and serve it. For the world community, there are no ‘rossiyane’ [the non-ethnic civic identity Moscow earlier had sought to promote]; everyone calls all of us ‘russkiye’ [a term historically used for ethnic Russians].”

 

            The Muslim leader continued by telling the 1,000 people in attendance that for the Muslims of the Russian Federation, who now form an increasingly large fraction of its population, two factors are “important: a powerful Russia and a strong Orthodoxy” (ruskline.ru/news_rl/2014/11/28/rossijskie_musulmane_yavlyayutsya_neotemlemoj_chastyu_russkogo_mira/).

 

            Those pushing the idea of a Russian world would like to ensure that they have the loyalty of those who are Russian citizens even if they are not Orthodox or ethnic Russians, but they face a serious problem: if they include them, they reduce the Russian world to loyalty to the Russian state alone, perhaps the Kremlin’s goal but certainly not that of many Russian nationalists.

 

            Most speakers at this meeting as at others have sought to avoid the kind of hard and fast definition of the Russian world that would exclude many people, but their efforts to do so have the effect of highlighting the weakness of what is after all the chief ideological component of Vladimir Putin’s rule.

 

            One participant at the Stavropol meeting, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, in his remarks showed just how difficult it is even for those most loyal to the Kremlin to square this circle in ways that do not drain the concept of most of its meaning and thus limit its utility as a mobilizing tool.

 

            Chaplin, a close protégé of Moscow Patriarch Kirill and one of the leading ideologists of the Russian Orthodox Church, reminded the group of Kirill’s statement that Russians have always been guided by five values: faith, justice, solidarity, dignity, and a commitment to state power.

 

            “We have defeated many attacks from the East and from the West, and we will defeat as well those who try to impose on us life according to their alien rules,” Chaplin said. “We will defeat America, not necessarily on the field of battle but on the field of ideas and meaning.” And the reason for that is that “behind us is truth.”

 

            For Russians, he continued, “there are things which are more important than profit, comfort and even earthly life.” And “we have everything needed so that without retreating into isolationism, we can offer to the world a moral order based on our values.” That “order” will be backed by “thinking people” in the West, the Islamic world, China and Latin America.”

 

            Chaplin did not say how those who accept Islam or follow Confucianism or believe in democracy and freedom could support a world order defined by Orthodox Christianity, but it may be that he excludes all those from the category of “thinking people” who he says are coming out in support of Moscow.

 

 

 

 

Window on Eurasia: Moscow Ready to Use Internal Troops against Any Maidan-Like Activity in Russia, Interior Minister Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, November 29 – In words that are clearly intended to intimidate but that may have just the opposite effect by exposing official nervousness, Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev says that Moscow is ready to use its internal troops against any Maidan-like activity in any part of the Russian Federation.

 

            The minister told the military council of the commanders of internal forces that their units are “one of the most powerful instruments for opposing the threat of risings like those which have taken place in Ukraine and in other CIS countries” and that he is “certain” that they can succeed in preventing them (top.rbc.ru/politics/28/11/2014/54783443cbb20f1658f7538b).

 

            According to Kolokoltsev, MVD forces under his command are ready to be moved to any region of the country in which such threats appear, something he said could become necessary because those who threaten Russia from abroad are doing what they can to affect its domestic national security as well.  

 

  At the meeting, he said that the forces had demonstrated their capacities over the course of the last year by inflicting “significant harm” to the militants in the North Caucasus, providing security for the Olympics in Sochi, and protecting important government facilities against terrorist attack.

 

            And he noted that MVD units had detained more than 850,000 Russians for various legal violations, “including almost 7,000 for crimes.”  The larger figure includes those who were arrested and then released for taking part in demonstrations that did not have the approval of the authorities.

 

 

Window on Eurasia: More than 70 Percent of Russians Don’t Have Clear Idea about ‘Russian World’

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, November 28 – Seventy-one percent of Russians in a poll conducted by VTsIOM earlier this week said they had not heard enough about the main ideological theme of the Putin regime, the Russian world, to be able to describe it; and only one Russian in eight was ready to try to provide a definition of that world to pollsters.

 

            In announcing these findings, VTsIOM general director Valery Fedorov said that in his view, “this means that we are at the beginning of this project and not at its end,” although he noted that the same survey had found that 63 percent of Russians believe that the “Russian world” is more likely to exist than not.

 

            The sociologist stressed that the term has a long history: it wasn’t created yesterday or even a decade ago. But for a long time, it was employed only “in a narrow circle of intellectuals, ‘despairing bureaucrats,’ and did not pass” in the population at large. But in the last year, “everything has changed” and people should understand it better.

 

            This is not the only poll result in recent days that is likely to concern the Kremlin. A second poll found that up to 80 percent of Russians say that the “Crimea is Ours” project, itself part of the Russian world idea, has led to a decline in their standard of living (nr2.com.ua/News/world_and_russia/Do-80-rossiyan-doshlo-chto-Krymnash-privel-k-snizheniyu-ih-urovnya-zhizni-85599.html

 

            And a third found that Russians are now focusing far more on the continuing decline in the value of the ruble than they are on the Russian annexation of Crimea (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=54783369C29DC).

 

Window on Eurasia: Foreign Pressure Did Trigger the Maidan – Pressure from Putin

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, November 28 – Most analyses of recent developments in Ukraine start with the Maidan, but it may be more useful for understanding why those have occurred if one considers the actions that led to the Maidan and the extent to which these were both unplanned and counter-productive, according to Mikhail Fishman. 

 

            The Moscow journalist says that the Maidan was “to a great degree provoked from outside,” but “not in the sense in which Vladimir Putin loves to talk about” such color revolutions. Instead, Putin himself was the outside force, and the impact of his actions led Yanukovich to take the decisions which triggered the Maidan.

 

            The Ukrainian president was already a failure before all this happened, Fishman says, but had he not, under pressure from Putin, turned “180 degrees” on the issue of signing an agreement with the EU at the Vilnius summit, “hundreds of thousands of people would not have come out into the street (slon.ru/russia/kak_kreml_priblizil_nachalo_maydana-1189211.xhtml).

 

            “No one knows” exactly what Putin said to Yanukovich at their critical November 9 meeting, Fishman concedes, “but there is the suspicion” that the Ukrainian leader knew what was coming given the harsh words he had been hearing from the Kremlin in the summer and fall of 2013.

 

            Ukrainian and Polish officials have said that even before November, Putin had sought to intimidate Yanukovich with the threat of a Russian annexation of Crimea.  And it is certainly likely that such threats were not delivered on an “extemporaneous” basis but rather part of a general policy.

 

            What is striking, Fishman says, is that just before the summer of 2013, “Russian officials were not excluded Ukraine’s membership in two trade zones at one and the same time,” and that could have been arranged with some careful sleight of hand, especially as the EU was not moving quickly given its insistence on the release of Yuliya Timoshenko.

 

            Given this, “it is very difficult to describe what happened between Moscow and Kyiv from May 2013 onward within the framework of some strict logic,” Fishman says. Instead, one needs to consider an alternative approach, one that focuses on Putin’s personality rather than Russian national interests.

 

             Moscow’s approach was full of contradictions up to that time because Russia’s interests in Ukraine were contradictory, but when Vladimir Putin went to Kyiv, he did so “not as a guest of Yanukovich” as one might have expected but “as “the builder of the Russian world,” something that preceded his change in Moscow’s course.

 

            Pressure on Yanukovich intensified to the point that “by the end of August, anti-Russian attitudes in Kyiv were more like hysteria” than anything else. And then at the end of September, Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s close aide, took charge. It was clear to all that “Putin was on the attack” and would continue to do so.

 

            What was not clear then was his goal.

 

            If Putin wanted to preserve the status quo, his actions included “a change of serious managerial errors” of the kind one has seen Russian leaders make before as in the case with Nicholas I in the lead up to the first Crimean War.  “But possibly,” Fishman argues, what we have seen is “a somewhat different case.”

 

            That is suggested by the fact that the program Putin advanced when he ran for a third term had no real content and that “the main problem consisted in its complete lack of an agenda: to rule is fine but quite boring” if all he was going to do was to continue what he had already put in place.

 

            But that left Putin with no challenge and consequently, Fishman says, the Kremlin leader “decided to take a risk” to prevent his country’s slide back into stagnation and to occupy himself with a kind of adventure.  That possibility, one that reflects Putin’s personality, goes a long way to explain what Putin did regarding Ukraine beginning last summer.

 

            German Chancellor Angela Merkel spent four hours with Putin in Brisbane attempting to find the answer to the question as why Putin had done what he had done. She didn’t get an answer, but the reason for that may not be the one many have suggested: that Putin keeps his cards close to his chest.

 

            The real reason, Fishman says, is that Putin doesn’t have an answer, that “he does not know why he provoked the conflict in Ukraine’s southeast.”  That would fit the facts that suggest Putin had earlier decided to create a crisis somewhere without reflecting in any detail on just what the consequences of any one of them might be.

 

            From the Kremlin leader’s perspective, this is a kind of adventure, one that by definition he has decided he does not know in advance just how things will turn out, a dangerous one to be sure but more interesting perhaps to him than being a president who simply adopts a policy of continuation with no opportunities for creativity.