Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 6 – Residents of
Nyukhcha, a Pomor village in Karelia, recognizing that when Moscow says
“optimization,” it means “liquidation,” have successfully stood up to
Petrozvodsk’s plans to shut down the local school in the name of saving money
and ship off its remaining pupils to a residential facility elsewhere.
Residents, many of whom declared
themselves to be Pomors in the last census despite Russian efforts to downplay
that identity as distinct from Russian, collected 50,000 signatures against the
closure of the school and staged protest meetings despite warnings from
officials that such assemblies were a violation of the law (region.expert/pomory-karelia).
Despite this threat of legal action,
officials backed down and announced three days ago that the Nyukhcha school
will remain in operation. But local
people no longer trust the officials and say they will keep up their protests
and take other actions to ensure that their local school won’t be “optimized”
out of existence.
“We know that
‘optimization’ is a euphemism for ‘liquidation,’” local activist Konstantin
Popova says. “We do not want to be liquidated!” If anyone is to be “optimized,”
he said, let it be the officials in the republic education. Most of them do no
useful work. “Optimize” them and thus save the schools and the people.”
He continued: “We will not allow
them to reduce and optimize us! We have been living here 500 years and intend
to continue to live here.” He and others are taking additional steps to ensure
that is so: A few weeks ago, residents created an 11-member council to promote
the development of the village.”
“In fact,” Valery Potashov says,
“the appearance [of this body] has become the first step toward the restoration
of local self-administration which was liquidated six years ago. Then the old
Pomor village lost is administrative independence. Now, everything will depend
on whether the residents take the next step” and demand self-administration for
Karelia as a whole.
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