Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 19 – The
reappearance of popular militias or “druzhinniki” as they are known in Russia
is creating problems in many places because of questions about their financing,
subordination to the regular police force, and the ways in which these informal
organizations may be used by regional officials or Moscow against the
population.
Not surprisingly, many in the
Russian Federation and especially in non-Rusians areas where many of the
druzhinniki are Cossacks, with whom Russians in
general and non-Russians in particular have anything but happy
relationships, have opposed their formation
out of fear as to how the druzhinniki will be used.
Such popular militias emerged more
or less spontaneously at the start of the Soviet era but were suppressed after
the Bolsheviks won the Civil War. Then they appeared again in Leningrad in
1955-1957 before their use was approved by Moscow for the Soviet Union as a
whole in 1959.
Between then and the end of Soviet
times, they spread rapidly; and in 1984, there were more than 280,000
druzhinniki units in which some 13 million people participated. On a daily
basis at that time, as many as 400,000 were deployed by the authorities. They were disbanded in 1991 following the
Russian government’s ban on the CPSU and the dissolving of the Komsomol.
In April 2014, the Russian
parliament adopted a new law “on the participation of citizens in the
preservation of public order” which called for the restoration of the
druzhinniki to “defend the life, health, honor and dignity of the individual,
property, [as well as] the interests of society and the state.”
Immediately, many suspected that
such druzhinniki might be used for anything but the defense of the rights of
the individual and instead for the protection of the state and its officials
against any challenge and that these groups because they are not formally part
of the state would allow the regime deniability if things went wrong.
In a commentary on the CaucasusTimes
portal, Maykop journalist Marina Asheva describes how things have proceeded in
the Republic of Adygeya, one of the 36 regions where druzhinniki have been
organized where there are already some 81 people enrolled in seven “people’s
druzhinniki” organizations (caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=21519).
The
republic authorities say, she reports, that the druzhinniki will be used to
maintain public order during mass demonstrations and that to that end, groups
of them will be organized in every population point of the republic. But despite such declarations, “it is not
clear” just what these groups will do, who is financing them, and what their
relations are to the authorities.
Many
Adygeys fear that the druzhinniki will be used to repress them, especially
since many of those who have joined or want to join the groups are not Adygeys
but rather Cossacks or ethnic Russians.
And they say that the republic authorities may see the druzhinniki as
allies who will keep the current officials protected.
Adygey
(Circassian) activist Zaur Dzeukozhev says that there is no need for such
groups given that there exist “numerous law enforcement” bodies already. He
added that it is unlikely that any Adygeys will take part in them, something
that leaves the titular nationality of the republic in potentially serious trouble.
The Caucasus Times
journalist says that she has learned “from sources in the government” that the
druzhinniki will be doing more than maintaining order at demonstrations and
patrolling the streets. They have been charged, she says, with “collecting information
about civic activists,” including information from online social networks.
That,
she says, has convinced many Adygeys
that the druzhinniki are not intended to help protect them but only to
protect the interests of Moscow and its representatives in the republic, an
attitude that if widespread may point to trouble ahead anywhere the powers that
be choose to deploy these deniable formations.
No comments:
Post a Comment