Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 3 – Developments
in Tatarstan and the way they are being reported in the Russian media raise the
most troubling of questions: Who is trying to destabilize that Middle Volga
republic and toward what ends? None of
the answers that have been suggested so far are reassuring.
The most disturbing are suggestions that,
as RISI’s Rais Suleymanov has long insisted, “Tatarstan is being transformed
into Chechnya” (http://haqqin.az/news/13683)
and that, in the words of the Society of Russian Culture of Tatarstan, “the
Wahhabis have declared war on Orthodoxy” (regnum.ru/news/fd-volga/1739212.html).
But others reports
are almost as distressing: Tatarstan’s economic situation is deteriorating,
prompting questions about its leaders (regnum.ru/news/polit/1739774.html), and the situation with regard to ethnic Russian
institutions there is so dire that the Cossacks have promised to guard churches
(http://www.kp.ru/online/news/1600109/).
Because
Tatarstan has a long history of inter-religious and inter-ethnic concord, both
government officials and religious leaders moved quickly to try to quiet the
situation. The authorities opened
criminal cases, labelled the attacks terrorism, and offered rewards for
information about the culprits (interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=53091 and ng.ru/regions/2013-12-02/1_kazan.html).
And
the two most senior religious leaders of Tatarstan, Metropolitan Anastasii of
the Russian Orthodox Church see and Mufti Samigullin of the republic Muslim
Spiritual Directorate (MSD) issued a joint statement denouncing the attacks as “a
provocation” intended to undermine religious and ethnic accord (interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=53636).
But instead of
calming the situation, these actions had just the opposite effect, at least
among the ethnic Russian community leadership and the Moscow media. Aleksandr Salagayev, the head of the Society
of Russian Culture of Tatarstan, complained about “the passivity” of the civil
authorities and the failure of the Orthodox metropolitan to take a harder line.
Moreover and perhaps particularly
important as a sign of what may be coming, Gleb Potnov of “Nezavisimaya gazeta”
has played up these complaints, selecting out of Salagayev’s statement the most
radical formulation of the Russian’s complaints (Cf. ng.ru/regions/2013-12-02/1_kazan.html
and regnum.ru/news/fd-volga/1739212.html).
And
the Moscow media has also featured reports about the plans of the Volga Cossack
Voiska to defend Orthodox churches in Tatarstan, especially so that Tatars,
historically Muslim, may convert to Orthodoxy (kp.ru/online/news/1600109/
and nazaccent.ru/content/9889-pravoslavnye-cerkvi-tatarstana-budut-ohranyat-kazaki.html).
Many
Russians are likely to take away from such reports the notion that Islamist
extremists are now on the attack in the Middle Volga, that neither the
Tatarstan authorities nor the local Orthodox hierarch are doing enough to stop
them, and that, as a result, both political and religious institutions in
Moscow need to intervene, possibly
changing both in Kazan.
What
will happen next is unclear, but one can only agree that the best description
of the recent attacks on Orthodox churches in Tatarstan is, as the Orthodox
Christian and Muslim leaders say, “a provocation.” What many will be waiting to see is the
answer to the questions: a provocation by whom? And to what ends?
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