Protestant Sects Preparing New Color Revolutions in Post-Soviet States, Orthodox Site Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 18 – The authorities in the post-Soviet states have long recognized the role of Western-backed NGOs in promoting disruptive change and even color revolutions, according to a commentary on a Russian Orthodox site. But they have been slow to recognize that Protestant sects are playing an equally important role in undermining state and society.

 

            Not only are sectarian groups more difficult to track than NGOs – they remain unregistered, change their meeting places frequently, and recruit one by one  – in some places, such as South Osetia, the Third Rome portal says, they now “outnumber the KGB, however anecdotal that sounds” (3rm.info/publications/56979-zapadnye-sekty-usilili-podryvnuyu-deyatelnost-vdol-granic-rossii.html).

 

            But in the view of this Orthodox site, such groups are closely connected with politics and in many cases have been dispatched by the US or by Ukraine for the purpose of destabilizing Russia and its neighbors. Consequently, they must be a matter of far greater concern than they are now if the threat of instability and color revolutions is to be countered.

 

            The Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian authorities have always had a very negative attitude toward Protestant denominations, but this article suggests that support for repressing them is growing and that Moscow not only will come down harder on these groups within its borders but push other former Soviet states to do the same.

 

            The portal sites a variety of cases, including the recent detention of 12 foreign Protestant missionaries in Kyrgystan. Five of the 12 were Americans; the remainder were from Ukraine, Canada, Brazil, Sweden and South Korea. The group was focused on ethnic Uzbeks rather than Kyrgyz, apparently out of a belief that this could trigger a new round of nationality conflicts.

 

            A few days after this, the portal says, the Osh militia arrested a second group of Protestant “missionaries,” whose ranks included a Russian, two Englishmen, and three Ukrainians. Significantly, it adds, “both the first and the second group arrived in Kyrgyzstan from Ukraine.”

 

            The Third Rome portal says that “if the activity of NGOs is quite easy to follow and check, including their sources of funds, then the work of sectarian structures as a rule is much more secret.” NGOs by their nature work in public, while Protestant missionaries can operate well below the radar screens of the police and security agencies.

 

            That of course makes the sectarians especially valuable agents for hostile foreign powers like the United States and Ukraine, the portal says.

 

            And it says that while the subversive work of Protestant sectarians is clearly in evidence in Ukraine, “neo-Protestant and certain quasi-Eastern sects in recent years have become extremely active throughout the entire post-Soviet space.” Even in Muslim Central Asia, it notes, actions by Seventh Day Adventists and Pentecostals has been “extraordinary.”

 

            In the Caucasus, the Third Rome portal continues, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Salvation Army have been especially active now that, thanks to Mikhail Saakashvili’s policies in Georgia, they have a base for operations. In addition, it says, the Mormon church has become more active, including in particular in South Osetia.

 

            There, at present, the portal says, the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Pentecostals have created “an abnormal religious disproportion,” one that threatens the republic with a revolution: there are up to 5,000 adepts of these groups in that republic, an enormous number given that the total population of South Osetia is no more than 30-40,000.

 

            Certain sectarians “even occupy major government positions” in South Osetia, “including in the force structures, despite the fact that their religious doctrines prohibit them from taking part in military conflicts,” the portal says.

 

            The South Osetian authorities are having a difficult time controlling the situation, the Orthodox site says, “the Jehovah’s Witnesses are not registered as a religious community and consequently, one cannot prohibit that which doesn’t legally exist.” As a result, these groups are growing and their membership now exceeds that of the local security service.

 

            Up to now, the portal concedes, “there have not been noted any direct attempts from these sects to influence the political or social life of the republic, but the situation itself is extraordinarily explosive, all the more so because all the leading centers of the sectarians are located on the territory of Georgia” and because Osetins have been afraid to talk about them.

 

 

On This May 18, We Must All Become Crimean Tatars

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 18 – Adolf Hitler reportedly was confident he’d get away with killing the Jews because “no one talks about the Armenians anymore.”  Tragically, Vladimir Putin now is even more confident he’ll get away with his “hyphenated” genocide of the Crimean Tatars because few are willing even to raise the issue of his Anschluss of the Ukrainian peninsula and his continuing attacks on the Crimean Tatar nation.

 

            The reason for Putin’s confidence is obvious: when Western leaders do talk about Crimea and the Crimean Tatars – and they do so ever more rarely -- they make declarations that even they know they will not maintain: they’ve said they won’t end sanctions on Moscow until Russia returns Crimea to Ukraine. But pressed by their own businesses and believing they “need” Moscow for other tasks, they will eventually lift those sanctions regardless of what Russia does.

 

            Indeed, the Kremlin leader clearly views the recent embarrassing visits of German, French, and American leaders to him not as an indication that he must change course but rather as confirmation that what he has been doing in Crimea and Ukraine more generally is working. Thus, he sees no reason not to continue the policies that he has pursued up to now.

 

            On this the 71^st anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of nearly a quarter of a million Crimean Tatars, an action that led to the deaths of more than 100,000 and clearly constitutes an act of genocide, and at a time when Putin’s own actions are extending that crime against humanity, it is time to think about what to do next and how we might get there.

 

            On this date, which the Russian occupation authorities are doing everything they can to play down, we all are or should be Crimean Tatars, as the Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies entitled a new video, lest we betray our values and fall into the trap that Pastor Niemoeller described so elegantly long ago (youtube.com/watch?v=JdeNd0La7dE&feature=youtu.be).

 

            There is an obvious and relatively easy way out, but it is one that no Western leader yet has had the vision or courage to pursue: the adoption of a non-recognition policy regarding Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and its continuing and even expanding repression of the peoples of that Ukrainian land, first and foremost the Crimean Tatars.

           

            The model for what Western countries can and should do for Crimea is what the United States did in 1940 in response to Stalin’s occupation of the three Baltic countries: a declaration based on the 1930 Stimson Doctrine that the US would never recognize changes in borders achieved by force alone and that worked effectively for more than 50 years.

 

            Why was it effective? Because it was tightly drawn, put in place for the long term, and did not preclude an evolution in relations between Washington and Moscow on other issues. The US and the USSR could and did sign agreements on other issues, but despite that, the US did not do away with its non-recognition policy – and many other Western countries followed its lead.

 

            That policy meant that the US maintained relations with the diplomats who represented the pre-occupation governments, did not allow senior US officials to visit the occupied countries, and required that all maps issued by the US government specify that Soviet claims to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were not recognized as legitimate by Washington.

 

            And further it meant that ultimately the three Baltic peoples were encouraged to seek the end of the occupation and the recovery of their rightful independence, a process that took half a century – far longer than the apparent time horizons of current Western leaders – but one that meant that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are now again full members of the Western community.   

 

            Can the West be persuaded to live up to its principles with regard to Crimea and the Crimean Tatars? In the current environment, that is a far harder task. But the Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies has shown the way in a film clip posted on Youtube in advance of this sad anniversary (youtube.com/watch?v=JdeNd0La7dE&feature=youtu.be).

 

                Building on the “I am Charlie” movement that emerged following the vicious Islamist attacks on a French satirical journal, the Crimean Institute has suggested that today “we are all Crimean Tatars” or at least must be if we are to avoid the trap Pastor Niemoeller described so elegantly so long ago.

 

            Today, Putin is coming for the Crimean Tatars and the Ukrainians. Tomorrow, if no one says anything, he will come for others and ultimately for us.  Speaking out against his crimes against humanity and crimes against the international system is thus in our own self-interest as well as that of ordinary morality. A non-recognition policy must be part of that effort.

Internet Ushering In a New Middle Ages in Russia and Elsewhere, Klishin Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 17 – It is comforting for many in the West to assume that what is taking place in Russia is something unique and far from them, but in fact, Ilya Klishin, the editor of the “Dozhd” site argues, what is happening in Russia as the result of Internet is happening elsewhere as well but is obscured by the inertia of institutions more deeply rooted in other countries.

 

            In a commentary on the Colta.ru portal last week, Klishin issues “a cry of despair” at the way in which the new communications technologies have devalued judgment and reason and thus destroyed the ability of many to distinguish between scholarship and astrology and thus opened the way for “a new dark ages” (colta.ru/articles/media/7254).

 

            Klishin begins by observing that the two competing concepts of the end of the 20^th century – Francis Fukayama’s “end of history” notion and Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” model, although they appeared mutually exclusive, in fact reflected the entrance of the world into a new era.

 

            “History in the form which we had known came to an end; the clash of all against all began,” he writes.  But the wrong forces have been blamed for this: it was not the religious fanaticism of ISIS, the North Korean or Iranian bomb, or “even the Weimar revanchism of Russia.”

 

            These were “all symptoms; the cause lay elsewhere,” Klishin writes. That becomes obvious if one returns to the ideas of the two. Fukuyama argued that history had ended because there was no antithesis to oppose the thesis of democracy and capitalism and thus any developments would reflect “the archaic survivals of weakly developed societies.”

 

            Because of the absence of another phase of the Hegelian dialectic, the Moscow commentator suggests, people became interested “only in their way of life,” including televisions, cars, supermarkets, clothes and more recently the Internet.

 

            “In the course of 30 years, within the memory of a single generation, we experienced a revolution comparable not so much with the invention of the steam engine as with the fall of the Roman Empire,” Klishin says.

 

             Today, we know from our school history textbooks that Rome fell in 476, but we also know that Boethius, who was born four years after that, did not talk about it. If one reads his “Consolations of Philosophy,” one might conclude that the empire was continuing, even though Rome was experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe and his grandchildren became barbarians.

 

            We should recognize, Klishin says, that people today “just like Boethius are blindly convincing ourselves that the civilization of the Enlightenment intended to produce a bright future is alive while in our forums – Internet forums to be sure – have long been grazing herds of swine.”

 

            “We are accustomed to view the Internet and the social networks and gadgets connected with it as self-evident goods and testimonials of the latest triumph of our technology.  There was photography, the plane and the atom. Now there is the I-phone. Each year something new: this as it were is part of the logic of progress.”

 

            The idea of progress, born only in the mid-eighteenth century, led people to conclude that “the development of technology is progress and progress is a good thing.”  But that “simplified logic did not consider one possibility: when the development of technology by itself destroys the social system based on faith in progress.”

 

            But that is exactly what the Internet has done and is doing.  By making information so available and its cost so low, the Internet and related technologies have destroyed the traditional distinctions between scholarship and charlatanism and between education and emotional outbursts.

 

            That in turn has destroyed the traditional hierarchies of knowledge and means that “nothing has any meaning any longer, except for smilies and likes,” and as a result, the medieval wildness has overwhelmed logic, education and rational discourse, Klishin argues.

 

            This is perhaps most obvious in Russia, but “what is happening in Russia now is not unique. It is simply that in Western countries institutions are more deeply rooted and thus continue to function by inertia,” much as Roman consuls and senators continued to act even though Rome had fallen.

 

            Because Russia was not able to find itself “after the disintegration of the USSR, “the new global obscurantism flourished a little earlier” than elsewhere, but only a little and only different in degree not in kind.

 

            “What is to be done?” Klishin asks in the classic Russian question. One could “consciously limit the emission of information” and thus raise its value and meaning and perhaps promote the “digital detoxification” for a time. But taking that step, he says, “clearly would be the last cry of despair before the new Dark Ages.”

 

            “It is possible,” he concludes, “that already our grandchildren having rechristened themselves will communicate with one another with smilies while observing the execution of an elderly teacher who offended the city astrologer or the feelings of believers. It is not so important which.”

 

 

‘The Chief Distinction of Traditional Islam is Loyalty to the Russian State,’ Suleymanov Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 17 – Russian ideologues have often celebrated and called for the promotion of what they call “traditional” Islam as against other trends within the faith, but they have rarely provided a clear definition given the diversity within Islam and the likelihood that any definition would end by offending and thus radicalizing some.

 

            But now Rais Suleymanov, a controversial specialist on Islam in the Middle Volga who works at the Russian Institute of National Strategy, has provided just such a definition, and it is clear that “traditional” Islam is just another term for Muslims who are “loyal to the Russian state” and don’t seek any change in its political system.

 

            The chief implication of such a definition, of course, is that anyone who is not identified by people like Suleymanov as a traditional Muslim is therefore politically disloyal and is appropriately the target of the force structures of the Russian state, a view that could lead to alienation among and a crackdown against many of Russia’s Muslims.

 

            In an interview to Yana Amelina for Kavkazgeoclub.ru this past week, Suleymanov offers the following definition: “Traditional Islam for Russian Muslims,” he says, “is that form of Islam which historeically was accepted by one or another indigenous peoles of Russia, teaches peaceful coexistence with people of other religions, is loyal to the Russian state and does not have as its goal the change of [Russia’s] political arrangements” (kavkazgeoclub.ru/content/v-halifat-manit-ideya).

 

            Just in case anyone missed the point, Amelina summed up Suleymanov’s ideas in the first sentence of her write-up of his remarks: “The chief distinguishing feature of traditional Islam is in loyalty to the Russian state,” and the main characteristic of all other and thus “non-traditional” Islam involves protest against it.

 

            In the course of a wide-ranging interview in which he repeated his past attacks on Tatarstan and its political leadership, Suleymanov made a number of other points which point to the way in which he believes his definition of traditional Islam should be used by the Russian authorities. Among the most important are the following:

 

• “The struggle with the popularity of religious radicalism must be conducted by a combination of force methods and propagandistic ones,” including the use of the Internet, in order to show Muslims that the radicals are dangerous and come to a bad end.
   
• Non-traditional Islam attracts many less for its theological positions than because it is a protest movement.
   
• “The only example in Russia where traditional Islam has achieved in practice a complete victory over Wahhabism is Chechnya under the Kadyrovs father and son. They recognized,” Suleymanov says, that force alone wouldn’t work but that one must advance an ideological point of view.  As a result, of course, “Ramzan Kadyrov de facto has imposed shariat law on Chechnya."
   
• The Russian Orthodox Church must oppose radical Islamism not only by refusing to deal with Muslim Spiritual Directorates that are controlled by the radicals but also by bringing into the church members of ethnic groups who are traditionally Orthodox lest their members be attracted to Islamist radicalism as some neophytes have.
   
• In Tatarstan, Suleymanov says, “Islamic fundamentalism has gradually replaced civic national separatism.”  That can be countered by promoting Russian language and boosting the Kryashens who, if they are counted as a separate nation, will deprive the Tatars of a majority in that republic.   
   

New Moscow Textbooks Must Stress Existence of ‘Great Russian Aryan Race,’ Nikonov Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 17 – Debates about how close Vladimir Putin’s regime approximates fascism or Nazism are intensifying, with some pointing to the enormous similarities between his Russia and the Italy of Mussolini and the Germany of Hitler and others arguing that there is still a great deal that sets them apart.

 

            Both sides of this argument have some evidence, but with each passing month it seems some of the uglier features not only of fascism but of National Socialism. The latest and in some ways the most frightening is the argument advanced by United Russia Duma deputy Vyacheslav Nikonov that Russian children must be taught about “the Great Russian Aryan Race.”

 

                No one who lived through or has studied the horrors that concept brought to Europe in the middle of the 20^th century can fail to be concerned about such a notion, and consequently it is important to focus on exactly what he is calling for (argumentua.com/novosti/v-rossii-deputaty-zayavili-o-velikoi-russkoi-ariiskoi-rase, duma.gov.ru/news/273/646438/ and grani.ru/blogs/funnycouple/entries/227530.html).

 

            “It is always necessary to remember in which country you live and work and to know its traditions,” Nikonov says. “Our Fatherland has a great past. A branch of the Aryan tribes descended from the Carpathian mountains and peaceably settled the Great Russian lowlands and Siberia … reached the Pacific Ocean, founded Fort Ross [in what is now the US state of California], contributed to the greatest cultures of Byzantium, Europe, and Asia, and defeated the most horrific enemy of humanity, Nazism.”

 

            “If we divide all humanity into three groups: the founders of culture, the bearers of culture, and the destroyers of culture, then representatives of the first two groups will be if you will only Aryans. Namely the Aryans laid the foundation and walls so to speak of all human creations. Other peoples put their mark only on the external forms and colors.”

 

            This is an example of a particularly noxious form of ignorant and vicious racism, and while there is still a long distance between Nikonov’s words and Hitler’s camps, such notions must be exposed and denounced because history shows that they can open the way for ever more vicious treatment of other peoples. 

 

 

 

Even if Putin is Tried in the Hague as He Should Be, Russia will Remain a Threat to Europe, Grigoryants Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 16 – Vladimir Putin should be arrested for war crimes and tried by an international tribunal in the Hague, Sergey Grigoryants says; but even if that happens, Russia will remain a threat to Europe until it undergoes fundamental changes – and such changes will happen only much later than they will in Ukraine.

 

            Grigoryants, who attracted international attention as a Soviet dissident and for his insistence in 1999 and 2000 that Putin’s rise to power represented “the revenge of the KGB,” now heads a Russian Coalition in support of the International Court where he hopes Putin will ultimately be tried and found guilty.

 

            In the course of a wide-ranging interview with Roman Chernyshev of Kyiv’s Liga.net portal that was posted online yesterday, Grigoryants discusses why he has consistently held this view of Putin and Russia and what he expects for Putin, for the Russian Federation and Ukraine, and for Moscow’s relations with Europe  (news.liga.net/interview/politics/5783802-grigoryants_rossiya_i_posle_putina_ostanetsya_opasnoy_dlya_evropy.htm).

 

            Grigoryants begins by pointing to the horrific impression that the multiple Victory Day parades, not only in Moscow but the 26 others across Russia made on him, one of a country of international isolation, “constantly growing aggression and even more paranoia,” trends that do not augur well for the future.

 

            All of this, he suggests, is a reflection of the kind of regime Russia has and the way in which its actions in Ukraine have called attention to its nature. Grigoryants notes that while many were happy about the Crimea Anschluss, he wrote then that “no one wanted to recognize the main thing: in terms of its consequences for Russia, Crimea is a second Afghanistan.”

 

            Crimea by law is “the territory of Ukraine, and one must not violate laws,” Grigoryants says, and he points out that he believes that even though “Sevastopol is a genuinely Russian city” and even though his own grandfather died in its defense during World War II.  But that is no basis for illegal actions.

 

            Because of what he has done, Putin must be arrested and sent to the Hague where he should be held responsible for his war crimes.

 

            In response to a question concerning his attitude toward Boris Nemtsov – Grigoryants is perhaps the only leading opposition figure who has opposed his deification – the former Soviet dissident argues that Nemtsov did many good things but that “it is important that Russian society remember who helped bring Putin to power.”

 

             Among those who did so, he says, are the members of “the liberal and democratic elite of that time,” including liberal media outlets like NTV and Ekho Moskvy, who showed themselves then totally unconcerned with the fact that by their uncritical support for Putin initially,they laid the groundwork for the danger facing them now.

 

            Unfortunately, even now, many in Russia do not want to know the truth about the past or to learn from earlier mmistakes. “Too large a part of it is linked to that past and thus the danger of the unending repetition of all the same tragic mistakes remainstoday just as great as it was in 1992.”

 

            As the great French scholar of Russia, Alan Besancon, once remarked, “Russia uses every breathing space for the creating of a new stage of dictatorship and aggression.”

 

            Grigoryants points out that he has been warning since the 1990s that the KGB would be coming to power. “Everyone laughted and said that there isn’t any KGB anymore. People abroad also laughed. And now it seems to them that the main thing is to get rid of Putin” and all will be well.

 

            But getting rid of any particular leader is not enough as past experience shows, Grigoryants continues. “Even after Putin Russia will remain a danger for Europe and the entire world if we do not learn the lessons of the past” and if Russians and others don’t recognize that some of those saying the right things now bear responsibility for what is happening now.

 

            To be sure, he says, “Nemtsov has written a remarkable and correct report” about Ukraine, “but if he along with his company had not helped bring Putin and the KGB to power, today there would not have been a war.” However, “15 years ago, Nemtsov, Chubais, Khakamda, Volodin, Berezovsky and Kasyanov were sincerely convinced that a strong power would defense them and they would be able to keep it under control.”

 

            If Putin is overthrown, something similar could happen unless lessons are learned and fundamental changes are made, Grigoryants argues.  “Arter Putin, we could again get someone who will convincingly speak about democracy, but the entire system inside will remain just what it was. Putin is far from alone and from from being the dictator many imagine: he is a link of a single KGB chain.”

                   

            That chain goes way back, he continues. “Anatoly Sobchak was Kryuchkov’s man and Kryuchkov was the head of the KGB then. If the putsch had succeeded, then Sobchak would have becoe president of Russia, installed by Kryuchkov inplace of Gorbachev. And behind Sobchak would have been standing Putin.”

 

            Given Putin’s KGB qualities, no one can trust him, and no world leader does, Grigoryants says. They talk to him not as a partner but because they are “forced to speak with the Kremlin” in the hopes that “a small war in Europe will not grow over into a larger one,” something Putin is quite prepared to launch in order to maintain his “image as a victor.”

 

            Given how dangerous Putin’s course is, it is not unthinkable that someone in his entourage will “help Putin leave this life,” as it appears may have happened with Andropov too, Grigoryants says.  Indeed, it is more likely because in contrast to his Soviet predecessors, Putin is defending not just his power but his life.

 

            A revolution, on the other hand, is currently “impossible” in Russia. Its people are “exhausted and befuddled,” and consequently, Putin doesn’t need to fear that as much as he needs to fear a palace coup. But if one happens, that is not likely to change the reality of Russian power even if it changes its image for a time.

 

            Grigoryants says that in the future, Russia could easily break up and be left within borders of medieval Muscovy; but he argues that this won’t be the result of protests but rather the actions of local elites who will cease to be loyal to Moscow as soon as Moscow ceases to provide them with the assistance they need.

 

            As for Ukraine, the Russian dissident says, it faces a difficult fight with Russia, but there is reason for optimism because Ukraine has made the choice to become a European country, something Russia has not yet done. And consequently, Ukraine will become one far sooner than Russia: indeed, in the best case, it will show Russia the way.

Putin’s Federal Districts in Their Current Form Have Outlived Their Usefulness, Russian Experts Say

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 16 – Vladimir Putin’s creation of federal districts 15 years ago at the start of his first presidential term may have been useful to him and the Russian Federation at the time, but some Russian experts say these institutions have outlived whatever utility they may have had and should be radically reformed or simply scrapped.

 

            According to URA.ru commentator Konstantin Dzhultayev, those who say the federal districts and the presidential plenipotentiaries who head them should be scrapped are becoming increasingly vocal and even those who defend the institution acknowledge that it should be reformed on the basis of a new law defining their role (ura.ru/articles/1036264786).

 

            Leonid Davydov, an expert at the Russian Foundation for the Development of Civil Society, says that the federal districts may have been useful to Moscow although it is less clear how much good they have done for the regions. “At least,” he says, they “haven’t spoiled anything.”

 

            He says that over the past 15 years, the federal districts “have been converted into mega-regions connected by economic threads alone, and their capitals have become business magnets.” That may not have been obvious to those in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but in Yekaterinburg and Novorsibirsk, this change has been significant in terms of investment and spending.

 

            According to Moscow commentator Konstantin Kalachev, the utility of the federal districts and presidential plenipotentiaries was especially great for Moscow initially because they became “instruments of the federal center” for restricting the freedom of action of regional governors and suppressing “any manifestations of regional separatism.”

 

            Aleksey Zudin, an expert at the Moscow Institute of Social-Economic and Political Research, says they played an even more important role: they allowed Putin to develop “direct ties with mass groups of Russian voters without having to involve the active mediation of the elites.”  That became “the basis for the formation” of his current high ratings.

 

            In Zudin’s view, these institutions “gave the chief of state the opportunity to appeal to Russian society and thus became a real source of presidential authority and allowed it to be strengthened.”

 

            After the elimination of direct elections for governors, however, the role of the federal districts declined, Kalachev says, although he concedes that they remain “the eyes and ears” of the president in many places and notes that they can be a place for negotiations if for one reason or another the governors do not have close ties with the Kremlin.

 

            If gubernatorial elections are restored, he argues, the role of the federal districts and the presidential plenipotentiaries will grow again. And Moscow is likely to view the tensions between the plenipotentiaries and the governors as a good thing, the kind of competition that allows the center to rule the country.

 

            Nonetheless, the experts say in the words of Dzhultayev that “the future of the institution of plenipotentiary representatives remains cloudy.” Many have pushed for its dismantling, and now Davydov for example says that Moscow would find it far easier to manage the situation using federal inspectors rather than plenipotentiaries to run the regions.

 

            But even those who thing the plenipotentiaries have outlived their usefulness do not expect them to be scrapped. Not only would that be a slap at Putin but the cost of these institutions – about three billion rubles (60 million US dollars) – is so small that keeping them around in case of need is not a major burden.

 

            What is needed, they say, is a new federal law defining their role and boosting their responsibilities for fighting corruption and supervising development projects that are too large for any one region to handle on its own – although the experts remain unclear as to how the federal districts will interact with the rise of the new regional ministries.