Russians in Far East ‘Ethnicizing’ Distinctive Regional Identities, Khabarovsk Scholar Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 30 – Russians in the far eastern portion of the Russian Federation and especially those in small and mid-size cities who have had to make their own way without much government assistance since 1991 are increasingly “ethnicizing” their regional identities, setting themselves against Moscow as “a colonizer,” according to Leonid Blyakher.

            In  the current issue of “Druzhba narodov,” the specialist on culture at the Pacific Ocean State University in Khabarovsk draws those conclusions on the basis both of what he suggests are the underlying trends in the region and of what he found by looking at recent developments in three small cities there (magazines.russ.ru/druzhba/2016/7/transgraniche.html).

            Most of the time Russian commentators discuss the Russian Far East either in terms of the Chinese threat or in terms of population losses, but these have been longstanding issues there rather than something new.  Much more important because much more changeable has been Moscow’s approach to the region.

            That approach has varied in two important ways, both of which have had an impact on identities there, Blyakher says.  On the one hand, Moscow has sometimes viewed the Far East as a defensive outpost and sometimes as a bridge to China and the Pacific region.  And on the other, the center has sometimes sought to impose its will but at other times allowed the region to drift.

            The coming together of these two trends, with Moscow increasingly wanting the region to be a bridge and to follow the center’s directives rather than living on its own as most of its residents have had to do for two decades is leading to what he calls “the ethnicization of regional discourse.”

            He says that his use of the word “ethnicization” is a metaphor intended to capture “a new phenomenon,” one in which the people in the region have developed to varying degrees “a consciousness of their special nature and separateness,” given that they have been living on their own and that Moscow is now trying to reimpose its control, something they view as threatening.

            In the 1990s, some scholars talked about “the Far Eastern Russians” (“dalrossy”) as a distinctive nationality, but he says that this idea did not spread beyond university walls.  (He points to the discussion on this in V.G. Popov’s “Far Eastern Russians as an Ethno-Cultural Type,” Rossiya na pereputye, vyp. 3 (1999).)

            But today, although such academic discussions are less frequent, the phenomenon, at least in small and mid-size cities in the region, has become more real because this “ethnicization,” the product in the first instance of propinquity to China, “is a means of the defense … of local forms of life from outside interference,” including that of Moscow.

            That development has been less prominent in the major cities of the region because there Moscow has been willing to spend enough money to dominate the political scene, but in smaller places where the center has generally allowed things to drift, residents feel themselves ever more different and ever more at odds with an increasingly assertive Moscow.

            “The collapse of the USSR, the economic crisis connected with the destruction of economic ties, and the introduction of ‘economic criteria’ for the regional economy hit the economy of the Far East, which was based on the military-industrial complex, extremely hard,” Blyakher says.

            The old economy simply died out, but what is important is that something new arose in its place, he continues. “The fall of ‘the iron curtain’ … put the Far Eastern region in the position of immediate neighborhood with global centers located in the Asian-Pacific region,” and they, largely on their own, had to cope with how to deal with that globalist challenge.

            The result, again more in smaller cities than in the major ones, was that “instead of the customary conservation and archaization of the region, it for the first time became independently part of the global economic processes.” And “globalization, with all the qualifications … became a means of survival” for people in the region, whatever Moscow thought.

            Now that the center has recovered its self-confidence and power, Moscow is trying to take control of this process from those who initiated it; and not surprisingly, the Khabarovsk scholar says, this has led to resistance among the victors so far and to talk about Moscow’s “’colonization’” of the region and the need to find a way to “’defend it against Moscow.’”

            Given this substrate of economic and political pressure, it is perhaps not surprising, Blyakher observes, that “the Far Easterners ever more strongly lay stress ont eh search for special characteristics which distinguish them from the common mass of ‘Rossiyane.’”  That is all the more so because Moscow’s turn to the East came during the political crisis of 2011-2012.

            In his 9,000-word article, the Khabarovsk scholar argues that “such a drama is breaking out today in the Far East,” and he focuses on three cities – Dalnerechensk in Primorsky kray, Amursk in Khabarovsk kray, and Birobidzhan in the Jewish AD – to show the ways local groups formed first to survive and then to defend themselves against outsiders, including Moscow.

            Blyakher does not say at least in this essay what may be the most important aspect of this development: so far, these local identities have not linked up into a regional one that could challenge Moscow. But it is clear from his argument that if Moscow continues to behave as it is now, that development is entirely possible and. from the center’s perspective, very dangerous.

           

Kyiv Should Not Give Agrément to Moscow’s Proposed Ambassador, Ogryzko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 30 – When one government wants to send a new ambassador to another country, it requests what is called agrément from the government of that country, a process by which the government of the latter has a chance to weigh in on the individual the sending country would like to dispatch.

            That often introduces delays in the appointment of ambassadors, but it has a great advantage in that it not only reinforces the idea that the two governments are dealing with each on at least in principle on the level of equality but also blocks the appointment of individuals whose careers suggest they will be incapable of working with the host government.

            Sometimes governments ignore this requirement of diplomatic life because they have such power over the country to which they are making an appointment that they don’t have to care what the host nation thinks. That was the case with the Soviet regime in naming ambassadors to bloc countries, most of whom were party officials rather than diplomats.

            But sometimes, governments do it in a “hybrid” way. That is, they have their parliaments approve someone as ambassador even before the host country has had the chance to give or withhold agrément.  That is what the Putin regime is trying to do now with regard to an appointment of its ambassador to Kyiv.

            For that reason and many others, former Ukrainian foreign minister Vladimir Ogryzko says in his view Kyiv should refuse to give its blessing because “the presence or absence of an ambassador of Russia in Ukraine will change nothing” and the Kremlin’s candidate is both “strange” and unacceptable (dsnews.ua/politics/vladimir-ogryzko-o-novom-posle-rf-ya-by-ne-daval-babichu-29072016181200).

            Mikhail Babich, the man Moscow wants to send to Kyiv, “has never worked in diplomatic posts,” “Delovaya stolitsa” points out. He served instead in the KGB forces, headed state enterprises in Russian regions and was head of government in Chechnya before Ramzan Kadyrov. For the last five years, he has been plenipotentiary in the Volga Federal District.

            The way in which Moscow is acting clearly is designed to present Kyiv with a fait accompli, but Ogryzko points out that Kyiv doesn’t have to accept this obvious denigration of Ukraine’s status as an independent country.

            What matters more, the Ukrainian diplomat says, is that “in general nothing depends on who is the ambassador of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. Whatever status the diplomatic representation of Russia in Ukraine has, all decisions relative to the relationship between Ukraine and Russia are taken by one man, Vladimir Putin.”

            Thus, he continues, “the presence or absence of a Russian ambassador in Ukraine changes nothing.”  Indeed, Ogryzko says,, “diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation are nonsensical. That country annexed part of Ukraine and has attacked another part … If this depended on me,” he says, “there wouldn’t be diplomatic relations” between Moscow and Kyiv.

            But it is important to remember why Moscow is doing this: it is trying to provoke Kyiv into rejecting its candidate so that the Russian authorities can launch a new propaganda barrage denouncing Ukraine for failing to be cooperative, even though the cooperation they want is one of the victim of aggression with the aggressor.

            Regardless of who the Russian ambassador it,  “the Russian embassy [in Kyiv] has been [and will be] a center of the Russian special services,” who occupy about “60 to 70 percent” of the jobs there.  No diplomat should be talking to these people as if they were diplomats, Ogryzko says.

            This case reflects a deeper problem: “Russia has never considered Ukraine a separate and independent state! Therefore it sends not ambassadors but ‘deciders,’” regardless of their background.  That has to change if things are to move forward in a positive way; agreeing to Moscow’s candidate won’t help that.

Has There Been an ‘Islamization of Radicalism’ Rather than a ‘Radicalization of Islam’?

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 30 – A Russian commentator argues that it may be more useful to speak about “the Islamization of radicalism” rather than about “the radicalization of Islam” as is usually done and to examine more critically the idea that the era into which the world has entered is one characterized by a clash of civilizations defined increasingly in religious terms.

            In a commentary on the Snob.ru portal, Vladimir Malakhov says that all too many people are prepared to accept the idea that what is happening is “a war of religions” and are generally unwilling to consider any criticism of this highly simplified view of what is taking place (snob.ru/profile/30596/blog/111653).

            At the end of the 20^th century, he says, “supporters of the revolutionary transformation of the world grouped themselves under red banners; now at the start of the 21^st, they do so under green ones.” Thus, Malakhov argues, “radical Islamism plays in our days approximately the same role which radical Marxism played in the 1970s.”

            At that point in time, “all kinds of ‘red brigades’ terrorized the Western public because they considered that this was the only way to overthrow capitalism. Now this function has passed to the jihadists, who declare as their enemy not only a specific kind of social order but the entire Western world as such.”

            And because there will always be found people within the West “who want to settle accounts with it, the ranks of the warriors of jihad never will remain without new recruits.” And such radicals will find Islamism because they see it as the embodiment of radicalism even before radical Islam finds them.

            “Today’s terror has largely although not exclusively an Islamist underpinning. But it would be inexact to declare this to be the radicalization of Islam. Rather, one should speak about the Islamization of radicalism,” the latest slogan for those who for their own reasons want to challenge the Western order.

            In support of his argument, Malakhov begins by observing that “religions do not fight with one another.” Instead, “people who make of religion this or that political use do.”  The current upsurge in terrorist acts shows this: many radicals with little justification claim to act in the name of Islam or the Islamic State.

            In considering each case, one cannot be certain just how direct a connection there is between the horrific actions of ISIS in the Middle East and any particular terrorist outburst in the West. Instead, he says, it appears that there are “two parallel processes” going on, both of which deserve to be taken into consideration.

            “On the one hand,” he writes, “the Islamist terrorist underground” is obviously involved in some of these horrific events. But “on the other,” one can see “the self-indoctrination of individuals who for biographic reasons begin to imagine themselves to be soldiers of a global jihad.”

            This phenomenon, he argues, represents “something truly new,” because it means that almost anyone with a highly developed sense of grievance regardless of background may choose to ally himself or herself with Islamism just as many of the same kind of people did with the Red Brigades two generations ago.

            But this “innovation” has another and more serious consequence, Malakhov says. It reduces to “nothing” the ability of nation states to control their own populations even on their own territory because in today’s globalized environment such borders are meaningless for radicals of all stripes.