Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 15 -- The flood of news
stories from a country as large, diverse and strange as the Russian Federation
often appears to be is far too large for anyone to keep up with. But there
needs to be a way to mark those which can’t be discussed in detail but which are
too indicative of broader developments to ignore
Consequently, Windows on Eurasia
will present a selection of 13 of these other and typically neglected stories
at the end of each week. This is the nineteenth such compilation. It is only
suggestive and far from complete – indeed, this week once again, one could have
put out such a listing every day -- but perhaps one or more of these stories
will prove of broader interest.
1.
Putin Equated with
Shiite Saints. Some Syrian Shiia have equated Vladimir Putin
with Shiite saints, yet another way in which the Kremlin leader’s intervention
in Syria may come back to haunt him given that 90 percent of the Muslims in the
world and in Russia are Sunnis (riafan.ru/494574-lev-pustyni-putina-v-sirii-sravnivayut-s-shiitskimi-svyatymi).
2.
‘Human Rights Aren’t
Everything,’ Duma Deputy Says. Ivan Nikitchuk, a KPRF Duma deputy who
has introduced legislation banning any public manifestation of homosexual
relations in Russia, defends his position by saying that “human rights aren’t
everything” (meduza.io/en/feature/2016/01/14/human-rights-aren-t-everything).
3.
Russian Official
Sells Off 50 Kilometers of Highway Pavement. Russia, it is often said, suffers from two
misfortunes: roads and fools. But increasingly they are coming together: News
outlets report that an official in the Komi Republic has sold the pavement of
50 kilometers of highway there and pocketed the profits (bbc.com/news/world-europe-35312492).
4.
Russians Want ‘Day
of Nuclear Arms.’
A group of Russians has proposed another Russian holiday, “the day of nuclear
arms” (m.rg.ru/2016/01/12/den-anons.html).
The Russian government is keeping up with this idea by announcing that it plans
to double ballistic mmissile production in 2016 (echo.msk.ru/news/1691518-echo.html).
5.
For First Time,
Sales of Smart Phones Fall in Russia.
Every day, Russians and those who watch Russia focus on the falling
price of oil and the declining exchange rate for the ruble. It is sometimes
forgotten that related to these figures are others that may have an even more
immediate impact on Russians. Among the plethora of such figures are the following:
Last year, for the first time ever, Russians bought fewer smart phones than the
year before (meduza.io/news/2016/01/14/v-rossii-vpervye-upal-ob-em-prodazh-smartfonov),
the number of Russian businesses fell to “no more than one million” (apn.ru/publications/article34540.htm),
Russia’s trade with China fell by a third last year (rufabula.com/news/2016/01/13/trade-volume),
Russians aren’t buying new cars and so the average age of cars there is now
over ten years (opec.ru/1914070.html),
Muscovites increasingly are again having to pay for apartments using hard currency
rather than rubles (realty.rbc.ru/articles/14/01/2016/562949999136281.shtml),
the duty free shops at Sheremetyevo
airport are closing (macos.livejournal.com/1222017.html),
Moscow’s city government hopes to make money by charging people to use
crosswalks with signals to stop traffic (yurayakunin.livejournal.com/3620781.html),
and schools in Russian regions are now being forced to provide children with
breakfast or lunch but not both (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5693680E3FF34).
6.
Everyone in Russia
Speaks More than One Language – Except Russians. Moscow’s language policies mean that everyone
in Russia speaks more than one language – except for Russians who can speak
only their own (erzia.saransk.ru/arhiv.php?n=5365&nom11=464).
But the situation may be changing: Some Duma deputies want to insist that bill
collectors use the languages of debtors even if it happens to be other than
Russian (nazaccent.ru/content/19021-kollektorov-rossii-zastavyat-govorit-s-dolzhnikami.html),
and just as many non-Russian regions are demanding that Russians study their
languages if they live there, one Russian region Yaroslavl says that when
Russians come there, they must speak the Yaroslavl dialect rather than the
Moscow one (m.progorod76.ru/history/view/86).
7.
Bashkirs Protest
Ufa’s Decision at Moscow’s Insistence to Break with Turksoy. Four of the six
Turkic republics within the Russian Federation have broken their relations with
the Turkish cultural organization Turksoy. Two, Tatarstan and Sakha, have not,
and their resistance is inspiring activists in the others to protest as has now
happened in Bashkortostan (kyk-byre.ru/1912-blagodarya-ministru-kultury-rb-shafikovoy-bashkiry-byli-otrezany-ot-tyurkskogo-kulturnogo-mira.html).
8.
Election Officials
Replace Lawyers with Milkmaids as Election Monitors. To make it easier for the powers that be to
falsify voting, election officials in several regions are replacing the lawyers
who had served as poll watchers with others who have less knowledge of or
experience in challenging whatever officials do (ura.ru/articles/1036266755).
9.
Alaska Should Be
Called ‘Eastern Rus,’ Nationalists Say. The Orthodox Russian nationalist site
Russkaya liniya has published a long list of places in Russia and neighboring countries
that were renamed either in Soviet times or by other states that it says should
have their original names restored. Among them is “Eastern Rus” as the
designator for the US state of Alaska (rusk.ru/st.php?idar=73814). In a
related development, some Russians are now campaigning to put a monument to the
destruction of the native peoples of North American in front of the US embassy
in Moscow (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5696029347A62).
10.
70 Percent of
Muscovites Say They’re Not Against Annexing Buryatia, a Republic that is
Already Part of the Russian Federation. A street survey in the Russian capital
found that 70 percent of Muscovites said they weren’t opposed to annexing
Buryatia, even though that republic is already part of the Russian Federation (ulanmedia.ru/news/byuriatia/01.12.2014/404934/zhiteli-moskvi-viskazalis-za-prisoedinenie-buryatii-k-rossii.html?_utl_t=fb).
11. New Russian Imperial Style to Include Wooden Houses
and Wooden Watches. A group of Russians argue that their country’s
“new imperial style” should feature the gingerbread wooden houses found
throughout that country in tsarist times (evrazia.org/article/2812). In Siberia,
one entrepreneur has taken this idea a step further: he is now producing wristwatches
made entirely of wood (globalsib.com/derevyannye-naruchnye-chasy/).
12.
Israeli Arrested on Russian Train for Reading
Hebrew. An Israeli who was reading a Hebrew-language
book on a Russian train was arrested after overly vigilant Russians assumed
that he must be a foreign agent of one kind or another (echo.msk.ru/news/1691498-echo.html).
13.
Kadyrov Launches a
Real Witch Hunt in Chechnya. Ramzan
Kadyrov has called for going after all extra-systemic opponents of the Putin
regime because they are in his words “traitors to the motherland,” a suggestion
that many have called “a witch hunt.”
But in Chechnya itself, Kadyrov has already launched a real witch hunt
to weed out Chechen officials who supposedly routinely consult witches before
making decisions (asiarussia.ru/news/10676/).
And two more from Ukraine, a country adjoining
Russia:
14. Ukrainian Language Knowledge ‘Most Powerful Defense’
Against Russia. A Ukrainian writer argues that if one
examines where the Moscow-backed militants in the Donbas were able to advance
and where they were stopped, it becomes obvious that “the most powerful defense”
of Ukrainians” Ukraine is the Ukrainian language (apostrophe.com.ua/news/society/culture/2016-01-10/izvestnyiy-pisatel-nazval-samoe-moguchee-orujie-ukraintsev/46547).
15.
Can’t Find Nazis in Ukraine? Use Pictures of
Them from Moscow. A Russian
television story purporting to show the rise of fascists in Ukraine in fact
broadcast pictures of Nazi-oriented Russian March in Moscow (stopfake.org/rossijskij-telekanal-proillyustriroval-natsizm-v-ukraine-fotografiej-russkogo-marsha-v-moskve/).
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