Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 28 – At the end of
Soviet times, it was often observed that one of the things that set the Russian
Federation apart from the non-Russian republics was that those concerned with
human rights issues and those focusing on ethno-national ones like historical
preservation were separate in the case of the Russians but often united among
non-Russians.
That meant not only that the
non-Russian movements could draw on energy from both sets of concerns but also
that the Russian ethno-national trends were often less informed by democratic
and human rights concerns than were those in the non-Russian republics, a
difference that has played out in the post-Soviet national movements since
1991.
In a comment on the Kasparov.ru
portal, Yury Samodurov reports on a meeting two days ago where some 500 people
called for the declaration of Moscow as a historic city and the formation of a
supervisory council that would block the destruction of historical monuments by
the state or developers (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5748570340151).
To his “surprise,” the activist says,
he “met at the meeting only ten acquaintances of which there was not a SINGLE one
[he] knew personally or from television from Solidarity, Parnas, Yabloko,
suppers of Navalny or from the human rights community,” that is, from liberal groups.
That apparently happened, Samodurov continues,
because “activists of these parties weren’t there or weren’t there in any
numbers” since their organizations did not inform their followers that the
meeting was to take place. Instead, the only groups that did were more
conservative ones like Another Russia which actively spread the word.
“It seemed to [him],” he says, “extraordinarily
indicative and strange that the circles of those defending the city and
activists of democratic and human rights organizations almost do not intersect,”
even though at the level of declarations, many in the latter say they are
concerned about the same thing.
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