Despite Hype, Baku and Tehran Still Far from Agreement on Railway Connecting Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan via Iran

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 15 – Rovshan Rustamov, head of Azerbaijan Railways, says he and his Iranian opposite number, Ali Zaqeri Sardrudi, have agreed on the construction of a railway from Azerbaijan proper to the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan via Iranian territory. But experts say they are still far apart on key issues.

            Given warming relations between Baku and Tehran and Armenia’s refusal to open a land corridor via Zengezur (casp-geo.ru/predstaviteli-azerbajdzhana-i-irana-obsudili-mezhparlamentskoe-sotrudnichestvo/), many observers have taken Rustamov’s declaration at face value and seen it as clearing the way for the signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani treaty.

            But Farkhad Mamedov, director of Baku’s South Caucasus Research Center and an advisor to Russia’s Valdai Club, says the two governments are still far apart on key issues that must be resolved before this alternative to the Zengezur corridor could open (vestikavkaza.ru/news/baku-i-tegeran-dogovarivautsa-o-zeleznodoroznom-zangezurskom-koridore.html).

            The three most important are these: first, the two have not agreed on financing; second, they haven’t agreed who will take the lead in building it since Iran doesn’t have railways in the region in question; and third, and perhaps most serious of all, they haven’t agreed whether the route will be the international gage Iran uses or the Soviet Russian gage Azerbaijan does.

            If this route were to be international gage as Iran wants, that would mean that Azerbaijan cargoes would have to transfer from the Russian gage to the Iranian one and then back to the Russian gage in the course of any passage between the two parts of Azerbaijan, something that would make this route far less attractive to Baku.

            For background on what some have called the Arax route, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/11/could-arax-corridor-put-end-to-zengezur.html.

Moscow’s Compatriots Program Attracting Ever Fewer Returnees, Interior Ministry Figures Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 14 – The Russian government program for resettling compatriots who return to their homeland has collapsed by 80 percent since the Crimean Anschluss with the number doing so having fallen from 45,500 in 2015 to 4500 in the first half of 2024, according to official figures from the Russian interior ministry.

             According to Galina Ragozina, an expert with the Resettlement Organizations Forum, Moscow has only itself to blame. The fallout from its war in Ukraine, increasing hostility to immigrants as a whole, and the need for compatriots to take language exams have all pushed the numbers down (ng.ru/politics/2024-10-14/1_9114_migration.html).

            Other experts point to related difficulties. Mikhail Burda, a Moscow scholar who serves as an advisor to the World Russian Popular Assembly, says that many compatriots are afraid to return lest they be forced to serve in the Russian military and be sent to fight in Putin’s war in Ukraine.

            And Aleksey Yesakov, vice president of the Coordination Center for Support of Compatriots Abroad, says that Russians now living in “unfriendly” countries face problems with processing documents and enormous costs of moving from where they are now living back to Russia.

            He urged the government to create a special ombudsman for compatriots who would promote their interests and also for Moscow to reduce or eliminate consular fees for processing them if they apply to return to Russia and must secure translations of official documents proving their status.

Duma Votes to Increase Penalties for Russians who Engage in Armed Uprisings from 20 Years Imprisonment to Life Behind Bars

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 15 – The Duma has passed on first reading a new law that will increase the maximum penalty for those who engage in armed uprisings from 20 years to life if these actions result in deaths or “especially serious consequences.” The minimum penalty for participation in such uprisings remains unchanged at 12 years behind bars.

            Deputies said they had been considering such an increase in penalties since June 2023 when the Wagner revolt happened, but it remains unclear whether the passage of this measure now reflects simply the length of time it has taken the parliamentarians to act or instead highlights growing fears among the powers that be (ehorussia.com/new/node/31705).

            Even if the latter is not the case, the passage of this law may simultaneously frighten many supporters of the regime who will assume that they are likely to become targets or opponents who may assume that this is a sign that the regime is weakening and thus becoming more paranoid.

            That combination of conclusions does not promise well for the future stability of Russia, and thus the passage of this measure may have exactly the opposite impact that its authors and those who support it in the Kremlin hope for.   

Putin’s Call for Restoration of Traditional Values Dangerous Because Such Values are So Varied and at Odds with Existing Social Structures, Grashchenkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 14 – Calls by the Putin regime for the restoration of traditional values are inherently dangerous because the values of the past are so varied that the advocates of one will almost invariably come into conflict with the advocates of another, Ilya Grashchenkov says; and that will force the regime to move back to those of contemporary society.

            Indeed, the president of the Center for the Development of Regional Policy says, there are signs of the emergence of so many different traditions that it won’t be long before the Putin regime or its successor will be compelled to change course (rosbalt.ru/news/2024-10-15/ilya-graschenkov-kakoy-obraz-zhizni-schitat-v-rossii-chelovecheskim-5221743).

            It has turned out that various groups in Russia are seeking to restore various traditions, ranging from blood feuds to playing at being animals, a pattern that has highlighted both the fact that “traditional values” are too varied and that promoting them in general will spark conflicts among them.

            The Putin regime may believe that it can control the situation and impose only one form of traditional values, but that belief is without much foundation if the Kremlin tries to impose values at odds with the social structure of the country as when it seeks to have urban Russians procreate at the same level as rural ones in a country that is 75 percent urban.

            As a result of both these conflicts and these obstacles, Grashchenkov says, Moscow will have to back away from its call for traditional values and move toward ones more in congruence with society as it actually exists and in order to avoid having groups of extremists seize on calls for traditional values to promote ideas at odds with the regime.

 

Neither Russians nor Western Specialists on Russia are Prepared to Face Up to the Reality that Russia is an Empire which Must Be Decolonized, Margolis Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 13 – Russians insist that their country has never been a colonial empire like other empires and thus that therefore it doesn’t need any decolonization and that calls for that are a personal attack on Russian identity, according to Radio Liberty commentator Yekaterina Margolis.

            That attitude unites Russians from the most passionate supporters of Putin to most of his most passionate opponents, she says, but more than that, it infuses the thinking of most but fortunately not all of Western specialists on Russia to this day (svoboda.org/a/razbityy-gorshok-ekaterina-margolis-o-rossiyskom-kolonializme/33153734.html).

            “Western experts on Russia are formed in Slavic departments where this imperial narrative and Russian-centricity were and remain the norm. Professors who sent time in (anti)Soviet Moscow kitchens absorbed the very same Russian views in which the image of Russia as the largest colonial empire was absent in principle,” Margolis says.

            She adds that “of course, there are exceptions: the work of Ewa Thompson, Richard Pipes or the great book, Natasha’s Dance: a Cultural History of Russia by British historian Orlando Figes and his recent The Story of Russia, but they haven’t changed the general situation in Slavic studies of public consciousness.”

            This is the case not least because “Russia invests so much effort and provides support for the myth about its special cultural and historical greatness, its exceptional nature and especially its mysterious quality,” something that precludes both investigations and even questions about Russian imperialism. Decolonization of this knowledge is critical if progress is to be made.

            In support of her arguments, Marolis cites a recent article by Olena Apchel, a Ukrainian theater director and activist who is now fighting in the Ukrainian military against Russian invaders (“Deep Trauma and Intellectual Laziness,” in Ukrainian, at lb.ua/culture/2024/09/20/635574_glibinna_travma_intelektualna.html).

            Russians and Western specialists on Russia feel real discomfort when anyone suggests that Russia is an empire and like all empires must ultimately be decolonized. Instead, they hold onto a vision of Russia as something apart that is not to be subject to the same processes that have taken place elsewhere.

“This lack of a view of equals [among European intellectuals in relation to Ukrainians] obviously has its basis in the imperial past, it clearly shows solidarity with hidden chauvinistic gigantism (lost for the Germans and not lost for the Russians), this view rests on habits, on a long-established Eurocentric view, based on the great fear of a repeat of world war.”

“And this,” Apchel continues, “of course, has as its basis a subconscious resistance to the very idea of ​​​​granting the right to subjectivity to cultures that were colonized in the past … Humanity is only now beginning to realize that it is the responsibility of old empires to study the languages ​​and cultures of countries on the periphery. And not [as now] the other way around.”  

Margolis continues: “Epistemological decolonization is thus relevant not only for Russians, but also in the West … It must go hand in hand with the de-imperialization of the very structure of knowledge about Russia and the analysis of the imperial roots of its culture and history.”

If that doesn’t happen, she argues, “Harvard or Oxford graduates will not only be used in secret by Kremlin propaganda but will themselves contiues to work to maintain Russian imperial dominance.”

There are some signs that this view of Russia is beginning to break down in the West. Perhaps the most important of these, Margolis says, was the April 18 Council of Europe resolution on the decolonization of Russia which declares that Russia is an empire not a federation and that its peoples are being subject to the worst forms of colonial oppression.

But that is only a first step, and far more needs to be done if first specialists on Russia and then the Russians themselves are to end their denial about Russia as an empire and support its victims by supporting its decolonization.   

Putin Allows Memories of Soviet Repression Only on a Regional Basis, Cherkasov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 14 – Putin doesn’t allow any public memories about Soviet repression that tie it to the Moscow leadership, Aleksandr Cherkasov says; he only allows “regional memory,” that is, memories about repressions that happened at the level of federation subjects and that can be dismissed as the mistakes and excesses of lower-ranking officials.

            As a result, the senior official of the Memorial Human Rights organization, says, Russians to this day must speak of repressions as if they were of local or regional origin rather than view them as they in fact were the playing out of orders coming from the center (https://reforum.io/blog/2024/10/14/cherkasov/).

            And that puts memories now of Soviet-era repression in sharp contrast to memories of Soviet losses in war in which no one says “participants of the Great Fatherland War of the Voronezh oblast with Nazi Germany” but in which people do speak about “victims of political repression of Voronezh oblast,” even though the latter too were victims of an all-Soviet crime.

            That allows the current Russian leadership to identify with the earlier Soviet leadership but avoid any responsibility for that earlier leadership that it does not want to assume and thereby opens the way for the Kremlin today to take actions that violate human rights and repress the population much as its predecessors did without restriction, Cherkasov says.

            That is just one of the intriguing observations that the human rights specialist offers. Another is perhaps equally important. Cherkasov says that there was only a narrow window of opportunity for dealing effectively with the crimes of the Soviet past – and that Russia tragically but understandably missed it.

            That window, he suggests, was open only between “approximately August 1991 and December 1992” and not throughout the 1990s and until Putin came to power as many often think. During that brief period, the trial of the CPSU was aborted, and access to KGB archives first opened and then closed – and the KGB leadership was allowed to continue in the FSB.

            According to Cherkasov, Russia missed this window of opportunity in part because of conscious decisions and in part because the country’s democrats had neither the power nor the preparation they would have needed for any other outcome to be possible.  That led to a dangerous compromise.

            That compromise was that “former Chekists were ready to serve the new regime” even though there were no real former ones, and former communists were able to change their identities and serve it as well, something that was possible for them because they did not want to challenge the former Chekists or be challenged themselves.

            And this compromise or more precisely failure happened, the Memorial expert argues, not because Russians were worse than other peoples who had lived under communism but because the KGB from the 1950s through the 1980s had conducted far better “prophylactic” work than their counterparts in other communist countries.

Some Russian Soldiers in Ukraine Turning to Pagan Cults that Celebrate the Use of Force, Alarming Moscow Patriarchate

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 14 – Not surprisingly, some Russian soldiers now fighting in Ukraine have turned to pagan cults that celebrate the use of force, a trend that has alarmed the Moscow Patriarchate that in response has called on its priests to play up the stories of Christian saints who displayed military virtues and play down Christian principles of love and non-violence.

            While Patriarch Kirill’s anger about the spread of paganism not only in the military but in the broader society has attracted bemused attention, his efforts to redefine Christianity by playing up military leaders who became saints at the expense of the fundamental principles of Christianity have not.

            And yet that shift, Profile commentator Anton Skripunov says, may be more important because it is important such militant values into Russian society at large and diminishing the countervailing power of Christian love (profile.ru/society/zagovarivaem-oruzhie-pochemu-voennosluzhashhie-vse-chashhe-vybirajut-yazychestvo-1601877/).

            As a result, paganism is growing throughout Russian society, not by leaps and bounds but steadily as Christianity is being transformed and thus weakened, a development that will be far more difficult to overcome even when Putin and his ilk leave the scene – and a warning to other countries where the principles of the Sermon on the Mount are sacrificed to militant values.