Kremlin Not Just Anti-Ingush: It’s Against All Non-Russians and All Russian Regions including Moscow, Sidorov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 11 – Because the Kremlin has so obviously favored Chechnya, many Ingush believe that Vladimir Putin and his entourage are uniquely anti-Ingush; but in fact, Kharun Sidorov says, the Kremlin is not just anti-Ingush, it is against all the non-Russians as well as being against all Russians in the regions and even in Moscow.

            It is certainly true, the Russian convert to Islam says in a commentary for Ingushetia’s 6Portal, that the Kremlin has taken obviously anti-Ingush positions. “But it is just as obvious that it is anti-Daghestani, anti-Tatar, anti-Bashkir” and anti all the other non-Russian republic nationalities (6portal.ru/posts/федеральное-измерение-ингушской-про/).

            This problem, however, is “in no way limited to attacks on the positions of the non-Russian peoples,” Sidorov continues. “Despite its intentional Russification and the imposition on other peoples of the values of ‘the Russian world’ which are alien to them,” it is also approaching ethnic Russians in the regions and in Moscow with policies that are little better.

            The Kremlin’s attitude toward “the regions of Russia, non-Russian and Russian, is sometimes called a Muscovite policy and Muscovite colonialism. This is true because Moscow is the chief metropolitan center of the empire in which its regions are colonies.”  But the Kremlin acts in ways that leave the citizens of the capital “no less without rights than the Ingush.”

            It is thus naïve to hope as some Ingush do that the Kremlin will change its approach to the republic unless and until the powers that be or their replacements change their approach to the country as a whole, Sidorov argues.

            The “pessimistic” conclusion from this is that protests which call only for giving the republic something or returning to it something that Moscow has taken from it, “do not have any prospects. But there is an optimistic conclusion,” Sidorov says, if the Ingush see their struggle as one with all the others, non-Russian and Russian alike, to restore federalism for all.

            At present, one can speak of federalism in Russia only in quotation marks: the country is not a federation but rather a unitary state which “in essence is a colonial empire” run for the benefit of the Kremlin and its immediate entourage and treating as colonies all the regions and peoples of the country.

            Given this situation, it is hardly surprising that regionalists and new federalists, “all those who consider that it is necessary not simply to change a bad president for a good one” but rather democratize and federalize the country are speaking out ever more loudly across the Russian Federation.

              “Objectively,” Sidorov says, “the Ingush protests have been the leader in this regard.”  And they need to take the next step and link up with others seeking democracy and federalism even if this puts them at odds not only with the Kremlin machine but also with some members of “the Russian quasi-opposition.”

             “In particular,” the commentator continues,  “certain xenophobically inclined liberals” confronted by the Ingush demonstrations have “tried in every possible way to discredit them precisely because this expression of the popular will is not “under the control of the opposition in the capital” and appears to get in the way of their plans to replace a bad leader with themselves.

            Ingush, other non-Russians, and Russians in the regions, again including Moscow itself, should not sit still with this because it is “perfectly obvious that the problems of the Ingush like the problems of other regions cannot be resolved in the framework of this colonial system.” Consequently, they must combine to seek its replacement.

            “It is naïve,” Sidorov says, “to continue to believe” that the Kremlin will send a good boss or change its own policy unless it is forced to do so – and the only force that can do that is the combined efforts of Russians and non-Russians alike. If either continues to go it alone, only the Kremlin will win.

            Just how far apart the Kremlin and its representatives in Ingushetia are from the Ingush people has been highlighted in the past few days but two statements, one by Issa Kostoyev, a political advisor to republic head Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov, and a resolution adopted by the Congress of Teips of the Ingush People.

            Kalimatov has refrained from addressing the issues that the opposition raises, but Kostoyev has now done it for him on a TV broadcast. In it, he called on the opposition to stop trying to intimidate the authorities and “repent,” dismissed any need for direct elections of the republic head, and said people must stop organizing and start working (zamanho.com/?p=14939).

            The Council of Teips in its resolution took almost exactly the opposite position. It called for the denunciation of the border accord with Chechnya and the return of land from North Ossetia. It demanded direct elections for the head of the republic, and it urged the release of all political prisoners and an end to persecution (doshdu.com/v-ingushetii-sovet-tejpov-potreboval-otmenit-pogranichnoe-soglashenie-s-chechnej-i-vernut-prigorodnyj-rajon/).

            Meanwhile, the 6Portal reported that Chechen participants at a congress of Caucasus specialists in Tbilisi last week had denounced and sought to disrupt a presentation by an Ingush scholar who pointed to the close and longstanding relations between Ingushetia and Georgia, anathema in Grozny because of Tbilisi’s position on the Chechens (6portal.ru/posts/658/).