Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 4 – Russians east
of the Urals have long complained that officials have sold off their forests to
the Chinese (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/06/new-russian-film-asks-has-entire.html),
but ever more of them say that China is acquiring the lumber not as a result of
official malfeasance but rather because of the actions of illegal Russian
loggers.
No local resident doubts, Denis Bevz
of Radio Liberty’s SibReal portal says, that China is the ultimate beneficiary and
that it works hand in glove with Russian criminal groups to illegally harvest
the forests of Siberia and the Russian Far East (sibreal.org/a/29503922.html),
but people there now see some Russians other than officials as most
complicitous.
This shift in the objects of blame
has two significant consequences. On the one hand, it opens the way for Russian
officials to launch a campaign against illegal Russian logging, a step that
would be extremely popular. And on the other, it means that anger at China has
now been linked together with anger at Russian criminality.
Of course, there is not a completely
clear division between Russian officialdom which is in this sector often
extremely corrupt and organized Russian criminal gangs; but it is striking that
for the first time, Russians are blaming Russians and not just Chinese for the
devastation of the region, a development that may defuse some anti-Chinese
feeling there.
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