Etkind Sees a Dangerous Continuity in American ‘Russian Studies’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 26 – Aleksandr Etkind, a Russian cultural historian at Vienna’s Central European University, sees a dangerous and even self-defeating continuity in “Russian studies” in the United States since the end of World War II and one threatening to extend into the future as well.

            He makes this point by offering what he calls on his Facebook page “a brief history of American ‘Russian studies’” as that discipline responded or failed to respond to changes in the USSR, Russia and the post-Soviet world (echofm.online/opinions/kratkaya-istoriya-amerikanskoj-nauki-o-rossii).

            In the 1950s, during the Cold War, America’s Russianists said that “the people are wonderful, the Kremlin is to blame for everything, we will hold back, and no change is needed.”

            In the 1980s, at the time of perestroika, these US specialists said that “let them be angry but we won’t give them any money” and expressed hopes that the USSR would not break apart, again insisting “we will hold back and no change is needed.”

            In the 1990s, with the collapse of the USSR, many of these specialist said that this was “a pity,” but added that “let’s give them money and we’ll make some for ourselves.” But again underlying that, “we will hold back and no change is needed.”

            In the 2000s, many of these people said that it was “too bad” that they couldn’t earn money,” arguing that “’Russia is a normal country’” and insisting that “America is to blame for everything.” And then adding as always “we will hold back and no change is needed.

            In the 2010s, they said “it will be a pity if Russia doesn’t disintegrate; but then these specialists added “we must restrain ourselves and no change is needed.”

            In the 2020s, many of these experts expressed the wish that Ukraine not win, arguing that the current Russian regime is “no worse than others” and that things were “so good there when I was young … We will hold back and no change is needed.”

            And in the 2030s, Etkind predicts, these same people will be forced to acknowledge that Russia as broken up, although that is too bad because “it was the norm.” And they will again say: “let’s give them money and we’ll make money for ourselves,” adding only that “we will hold back and no change is needed.”

Small Business in Russia Suffering from Oligarchs ‘No Less’ than Wage Earners, Novichkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 25 – Russians are so used to thinking almost in Marxist terms about the clash between workers and capitalists that they are failing to notice that in Russia today, small businessmen are suffering from the actions of the oligarchs “no less” than are wage earners, according to economist Nikolay Novichkov.

            The Just Russia Duma deputy argues that it is critically important “not to confuse the capitalist and the entrepreneur,” given that the former seeks ties with the government and state capitalism while the latter seeks competition and the development of the market (mk.ru/economics/2026/02/25/predprinimateli-protiv-kapitalistov-kak-zashhitit-ot-oligarkhov-malyy-biznes.html).

            Novichkov points to the political divisions that this difference produced at the end of imperial Russia, and he cites the words of Chinese communist reformer Deng Xiaoping to the effect that “socialism is a market and competition while capitalism is monopolies and oligopolies.”

            In Russia today, “the role of small and mid-sized entrepreneurship in society is colossal,” the deputy says, involving some 25 million people and paying a large share of taxes. But the oligarchs work with the state against small business and nowhere more successfully than keeping other Russians from recognizing that small business suffers from the oligarchs as much as they.

            Unfortunately, Novichkov says, unlike in 1917 when the SRs did so, there is no Russian political party representing small business and the workers who benefit from that stratum of the economy; and consequently, the oligarchs combined with the state have almost a free hand to set the economic course in Putin’s Russia.

Draft Duma Law Bans All Face Coverings in Public – Except for Siloviki and Members of Russian Community

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 24 – A group of 20 KPRF deputies has introduced a draft law that would ban the wearing of wearing niqabs, balaclavas, and any other head coverings that prevent facial recognition but exempts from that restriction siloviki and members of the Russian Community organization that often works with the police.

            The proposal (rtvi.com/news/protiv-nikabonosczev-v-gosdumu-vnesli-zakonoproekt-o-zaprete-nosheniya-masok-na-ulicze/) is the latest Moscow effort to ban niqabs worn by many of Russia’s Muslim women, but its ban on all other head coverings by others while exempting the police and the Russian Community is certainly the more important.

             On the one hand, many Russians given the cold climate in which they live regularly wear balaclavas and won’t be happy about the adoption of such a ban; but on the other, those concerned about human rights and especially those of dissenters and minority groups will be alarmed, especially by the exemption for the Russian Community.

            That is because the Russian Community, which poses as a defender of the Russian legal system, often violates the law in doing so; and this new proposal even if it is not adopted – and the absence of United Russia backing makes that outcome likely – is a signal that the powers that be are quite interested in using masked men without official IDs to intimidate Russians.

            As such, what the KPRF deputies are proposing represents yet another step down in the direction of bully boy tactics against the opponents of the Kremlin and the further degradation of any pretense that the Russian Federation under Putin is a law-based state – even if the powers are using “laws” to achieve that end. 

Chechen Language Dying Out Despite Official Promises and Pompous Celebrations, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 24 – Ramzan Kadyrov has demanded that every Chechen know how to speak Chechen well and said that he will dismiss any official who can’t do so; and his government constantly stages pompous celebrations of the Chechen language at which officials dress in national dress and use Chechen words.

            But teachers in the republic and experts there and elsewhere say that none of this is preventing the rapid disappearance of Chechen as the language of the population and its replacement by Russian (kavkazr.com/a/mezhdu-ukazami-i-realjnostjyu-kak-ischezaet-chechenskiy-yazyk/33684085.html).

            Ever fewer children in kindergartens and schools in the republic speak Chechen, teachers there say; and experts suggest that this is not just because Russian is more widely used by their parents than is Chechen but because of a conscious policy of Russianization of the republic’s population, something that no celebrations suggesting otherwise can do anything to stop.

            Except for the very oldest Chechens, many Chechen adults can’t speak their national language well, according to informal surveys conducted on the streets of Grozny; and therefore the transmission of the language from one generation to another has been interrupted (facebook.com/reel/1549040205640316 and facebook.com/reel/223671560187621).

            Mikail Eldiyev, a philologist who lives in Norway, says that in view the decline of the use of Chechen reflects a conscious Moscow policy which seeks to convince Chechens and other non-Russians that their languages are useless and that Russian alone is the language they need to live and work in if they are to have a better future.

            At the same time, he says that he doesn’t consider the situation to be hopeless. The republic still has laws on the book supporting Chechen to which people there can appeal, and the situation among Chechens in the diaspora, while not without problems, is far better than in their homeland.

Siberia’s ‘Economically Accessible Resources’ Aren’t that Large, Verkhoturov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 26 – Those who talk about “Siberia’s plentiful resources” are engaged in “wishful thinking,” Dmitry Verkhoturov says, because while the geologically located resources there are in fact great, those that are “economically accessible “aren’t that large, already are being intensively exploited and include primarily energy resources like coal, oil and gas.”

            Most people who talk about Siberia confuse the two, the economic journalist says; but in fact, they are very different things, with geological resources including many things that no one can access because they are too deep or process because they are too far from any infrastructure that could allow them to reach markets (sibmix.com/?doc=20000).

            A clear example of an economic resource, Verkoturov says, is the Borodinsky open pit coal mine. It produces 24.8 million tons a year and has an estimated reserve of 650 million tons. Not only has it been explored in detail but it is connected to the rest of the world by roads and railways.

            An equally clear example of a geological resource is the Tunguska coal basin. It is estimated to contain as much a five trillion tons of coal, but this coal lies beneath 2000 meters of lava; there is no road, railway, or even reliable river pathway to reach them meaning that this enormous reserve can’t be used unless all those things are built.

            Given that Siberia’s boosters often include the latter with the former, many may be surprised to learn that the region’s “economically viable resources aren’t all that extensive;” and they aren’t likely to become so anytime soon as building the infrastructure to reach them is prohibitively expensive and difficult.

            “If we count the 50-kilometer strips on either side of the railroads where transport infrastructure exists or could be built relatively quickly – and there are approximately 13,000 km of railroads in the Siberian Federal District, then the area containing more or less economically reachable resources amounts to only 1.3 million square kilometers.”

            That is slightly less than 30 percent of the total area of the Siberian FD,” Verkhoturov says; and “the rest of the district’s resources are purely geological and economically inaccessible.” Everyone involved must recognize that “Siberia’s resource wealth exists only in the geological sense; but it isn’t yet possible to exploit it” – and likely won’t for decades.

Family Members of Russian Combat Victims Need Psychological Help Too, Adding to the Burdens on Russian Society and State, ‘Vyorstka’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 23 – The number of Russians who will need psychological help as a result of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine is larger than a significant fraction of the 700,000 veterans and includes the wives, mothers, family members and even friends of the more than 200,000 Russian soldiers who have died and the even greater number of those who have been injured.

            The total of those with psychological problems as a result of the war is already overwhelming the ability of the Russian medical system to cope and is likely to swamp it entirely in the coming months if and when the war ends, Vyorstka journalist Anna Ryzkkova says (verstka.media/zheny-i-materi-pogibshih-voennyh-nuzhdayutsya-v-psihologicheskoi-pomoshhi).

            Veterans groups, sometimes with the support of the government and sometimes independently, are trying to fill the gap; but they lack the resources to do so, Ryzhkova says; and the result is untold human suffering as she recounts on the basis of interviews with family members of the direct victims of Putin’s war among Russian forces.

            Such people rarely get the attention that veterans with PTSD do; but their numbers are so large and growing that they constitute a social and ultimately political problem even greater than the military one alone, yet another example of the collateral damage that Putin and his war have inflicted on the Russian Federation.

Many of 80,000 Russian Policemen who Left Their Positions in 2025 Joining Private Security Companies, Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 22 – That the Russian police force has been losing officers rapidly because of low pay, poor working conditions and problematic management has long been widely recognized (jamestown.org/war-against-ukraine-leaving-russian-police-state-without-enough-police/).

            But despite the resignation of some 80,000 officers last year, relatively little attention has gone to what new jobs they are taking, except for the widespread assumption that many of them are using their skills in the Russian army in Ukraine given how much higher pay there is (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/01/low-pay-attitudes-of-commanders-why.html).

            Now, however, independent Moscow expert Pashkin says that a large share of police who have quite are instead joining private security companies where they can do many of the same jobs they were doing but for higher pay and better benefits and without the risks of police work (svpressa.ru/society/article/503493/).

            What they are not doing, at least not in large numbers, is joining criminal gangs, he says. His interlocutors say that Russian gangsters are very strict about that now. “They don’t hire police officers because it is supposedly considered bad manners” for any gang leader to employ those who used to work against them.  

             That represents yet another privatization of state functions and the state monopoly on violence, a trend that could in the future prove very dangerous if the numbers of police in Russia continue to fall relative to the number of private firms who are armed and might under certain circumstances challenge them.