Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 30 – St. Petersburg
police have arrested Artem Chebotaryev, 36, of the northern capital and charged
him, the leader of a small splinter group called “Free Ingria,” with
exacerbating hatred toward other nations and said that he had in his possession
archival materials on the Nazi SS.
Three things are intriguing about
this apparently minor arrest: First, the authorities say Chebotarev is leader
of a movement committed to the independence of the area around St. Petersburg
but have chosen not to charge him with violating the Russian law on challenging
the territorial integrity of the country, perhaps fearful of attracting more
attention to that issue.
Second, this represents yet another
move by Moscow to repress regionalist movements of all kinds, either by driving
the leaders of such movements into exile as is the case of Vadim Shtepa of
Karelia who is now in Estonia or by frightening Russians who might be
interested in such movements by bringing trumped up charges against some of
their members.
And third, the Russian authorities
by this action have unintentionally increased the attention that the Russian
media are paying not only to the question of Ingria and its future but also to
that of other regions in the Russian Federation. Not only was Chebotaryev’s
arrest covered in major central newspapers but in many Russian news outlets as
well.
Perhaps the most prominent of this
kind of coverage was offered by Stanslav Kovalsky of “Nezavimaya gazeta.”
Writing today, the journalist not only recounts Cherbotaryev’s arrest and the
fact that other Ingria supporters don’t know who he is but also tells a great
deal about the history and current state of that issue (ng.ru/regions/2016-05-30/2_krest.html).
Ingria or Ingermanland, the “Nezavisimaya
gazeta” journalist notes, “is the territory which Peter the Great after victory
in the North War called the Intermanland gubernia and built Petersburg. He says
that the media reports that Chebotaryev supposed is the founder of “a certain
organization ‘Free Ingria’ which dreams of separating Petersburg and Leningrad
from Russia.
The “Ingermanland theme” has been “popular
among some Petersburg residents” for decades, the journalist says. One hotel in
the city bears its name, there is a song club called Ingria, and even “a
cocktail in one of the popular bars” that is called “the Ingria.” Moreover, the
theme is popular online.
“In social networks,” he continues, there
are more than a dozen communities” which focus on this theme. The most popular,
“Ingermanlandia,” has more than 10,000 members. There is also one on the
VKontakte network, with 3600 participants. The latter is the one Chebotaryev
has posted in.
“The common theme for all these
groups,” Kovalsky says, “is not ‘ethnic’ but territorial attachment to Ingria.”
And that sense of regionalism in the northwestern part of the Russian
Federation is far broader and in some sense more intensely held than even among
those who take part in online discussions.
The Ingria flag often appears at
liberal meetings, and the aspirations of the Ingermanlanders with regard to
uniting St. Petersburg and Leningrad oblast and boosting the status of the
region against Moscow are widely shared.
Among popular slogans in the northern capital is “’Stop feeding Moscow!’”
According to
Kovalsky, Chebotaryev has been charged with exacerbating hatred toward
Muscovites. That is a sore point because Russian officials usually equate
Muscovite with Russian but supporters of Ingria and other regions says that “Moskaly”
are not the same thing as Russians and are a political rather than ethnic
group.
(On this point, see the declaration
on the Ingria. Info site from December 2012 in which the regionalists make this
point very clearly, not only to avoid charges of inter-ethnic hostility but
because this view animates their worldview (ingria.info/component/content/article/7-interview/741-2012-12-23-10-14-58).)
Some regionalists
in the northern capital have already decided that they need to disown
Chebotaryev lest they be charged as well. To that extent, the Russian arrest is
working as Moscow intends. But the attention it has attracted to an issue that
is seldom discussed beyond social networks gives the trend a boost – and that
is hardly in Moscow’s interests.
For background on the Ingria
movement and the way it has been energized by Moscow’s actions in Georgia and
Ukraine, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/06/window-on-eurasia-regionalists-in.html,
windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/03/leningrad-governor-attacks-finno-ugric.html,
windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/01/window-on-eurasia-who-are-moskals-and.html,
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