Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 30 – Russian
officials have told Rashit Akhmetov, the publisher of the independent newspaper
“Zvezda Povolzhya” that he must stop publishing “extremist” articles or face
the closure of that paper. But Akhmetov has told RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service
that if his paper is closed, he will simply open another one.
In his interview, Akhmetov said that
the article Moscow didn’t like was published several months ago, and it is
strange that it took “so long” for officials to take notice of it. The whole is “murky,” and it appears that “a
certain directive” must have come down from Moscow above to move against the
independent paper (www.azatliq.org/content/article/24811273.html).
“If the officials issue another warning”
to him, the publisher said, “they can simply close ‘Zvezda Povolzhya’ down. If
that happens, however, I will launch another publication to be called
‘Tatarskaya Pravda’ or ‘Tatarskaya Svoboda.’ We have a lot of readers;
perhaps we can move completely online” – the paper is already available on the
web at zvezdapovolzhya.ru
Akhmetov acknowledged that the articles
he has published are justified because “many problems remain unnoticed these
days; they are just not discussed in the official media. In such a situation, it is very important to
provide a venue for all views on any particular problem” rather than seek to
impose a single line.
Despite what the Kremlin appears to
believe, the Tatarstan publisher continued, “failure to discuss such problems
could lead to inter-ethnic conflicts.”
Thus, the goal of “Zvezda Povolzhya” is “to provide space for all
viewpoints – Tatars, Russian nationalists, communists, liberals, pro-government
types – all can express their views on our pages.”
“That is the essence of a free press,”
Akhmetov said, and “we are not going to back down.”
Unfortunately, he continued, recent
events show that there is “a fear of criticism,” and he noted that pressure on
him “coincide with attacks on the Tatarstan law calling for a transition to the
Latin script.” In fact, Akhmedov said,
this is no “coincidence.” As
dissatisfaction among the population grows, Moscow tries to “silence it with
such primitive measures.”
Akhmedov expanded on his argument in
a leading article in “Zvezda Povolzhya” on Friday. Entitling it “A Foretaste,”
the publisher argued that Vladimir Putin’s plan to suppress the non-Russian
republics puts the Russian Federation on a most dangerous course, one that
could lead to the end of the country (zvezdapovolzhya.ru/obshestvo/predchuvstvie-28-12-2012.html).
At his recent press conference, Putin responded to a
question from Tatarstan journalist Dina Gazaliyeva about the possibility of
“liquidating” the republics. (“Of course, both the question and the response
were prepared in advance,” Akhmetov notes.) And Putin’s response shows how “the
algorithm of gubernizatia” has been defined.
Putin
said that “if the republics themselves made such a request about a decision of
their own legislative organ or after the holding of a referendum, then such
decisions were possible.” But “what
republic will go first in such a voluntary ‘parade of gubernizatsias’? One can
only guess.”
What
one can be certain of, Akhmetov says, is that the such a drive to do away with
the republics will result in a rise in inter-ethnic tensions, provoke “the
growth of protest attitudes among the national movements in the republics, and
then lead to the disintegration of Russia.” Given that, such a proposal cannot
be understood “from the point of view of good sense.
But
“the liquidation of the republics is an idee fixe of the Moscow leadership
[because] it has a paranoid fear of possible separatism.” But Putin and those
around him are promoting an idea that will lead to precisely what they say they
most fear and oppose.
“Putin has said,” Akhmetov continues, “that
the collapse of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the
century.” But that collapse, whatever
Putin believes “was not an accident.” It was “an iron necessity, and Yeltsin’s
contribution was that this disintegration occurred peacefully.”
The
USSR could have suffered the same fate as Yugoslavia, the Tatarstan publisher
says, because “socialism as a totalitarian system over a short period drove
into the underground with the help of repression all inter-ethnic and
inter-religious contradictions,” and they failing re-emerged “having built up
their enormous destructive potential.”
Today,
Akhmetov continues, “the slogan ‘Russia for the [ethnic] Russians is being used
for the growth of patriotic attitudes and the ideological ‘cementing’ of ‘the
state-forming people.’” But given that
“more than 50 percent of the country consists of mixed families … this slogan
is extraordinarily dangerous for the Russian Federation.”
“In
the 21st century, Russia cannot exist except as a federation;
otherwise, it will break apart as a result of the growth of internal tensions.”
The slogan “Russia for the Russians” will break apart the Russian state
“machine” and is “just as unrealizable and unnatural as the slogan ‘Russia for
Men Only’ with a demand for resettling all women beyond [its] borders.”
Putin’s
approach to the republics reflects his KGB background and the conviction that
“all problems can be solved” by repression. That is what another KGB officer in
power,Yuri Andropov, thought, and “many strange things in Putin’s behavior are
explicable by the professional hyper-suspiciousness of KGB operatives.”
Akhmetov
argues that “the special services in principle are not capable of carrying out
processes of economic modernization or even more the democratization of
society; the function of the special services is protection and security … They
seek to minimize the risks” by choking off information and being “suspicious of
everything and everything.”
They
seek to keep control over everything, and thus it is obvious, Akhmetov says,
that “the Brezhnev style of administration as all the same objectively for
acceptable for the USSR than the Andropov style which could give birth only to
short spasmatic breakthroughs and then inevitably lead to major systemic
mistakes.”
Putin’s
plan to “liquidate” the republics is “the result of the professional
inclination of the force structures toward decisions which are simple or which
appear simple. No person, no problem, Stalin said. No republics, no problems,”
Putin appears to believe. But things
won’t end there either in terms of repression or disintegration.
Stalin
“in his paranoia planned to resettle even the Ukrainians to Siberia. He didn’t
trust them.” But one has the impression that “Stalin experienced a mystical
fear of the Tatars and that was hardly accidental.” Perhaps “it means that
there is in the Tatar people an internal mystical energy, which will yet show
itself in the history of humanity,” Akhmetov concludes.
Akhmetov’s
article has already attracted numerous posts on the “Zvezda Povolzhya” site. Two
are especially suggestive. One writer
notes that “the conversion of the non-Russian peoples into ‘manure for the
flowering of the Russian people,’ as Petr Stolypin put it, is a typical Russian
nationality policy.”
“In
the framework of a Russian state, the natural fate of the Tatars and other
non-Russians peoples is to be the object of assimilation and colonial
exploitation. The only salvation is to be found in the struggle for
national independence; there are no other [acceptable] variants.”
A
second writer recalled that Sergey Shakhray had noted that Andropov “gave the
order to prepare a plan for the liquidation of the republics in the USSR. He was concerned by the survival of the
national elites. [But] in the USSR at that time, the [ethnic] Russians formed
less than fifty percent of the population.”
Andropov’s
plan was prepared over the course of four months, but “with the coming to power
of Chernenko, it was put off. Putin
[today] is simply reviving the Andropov plan.” But it would be well for everyone
to remember that “had this plan begun to be realized, the USSR would have
fallen apart ten years earlier than it did.”
NOTE:
I would like to thank Rim Gilfanov, director of RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service, for
providing me with the translation of his service’s interview with Akhmetov.
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