Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 12 -- In the course
of a discussion of a debate among the Muslim leaders of Russia in which he
attacks one who challenges another who calls for unqualified support for
Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr Kobrinsky attacks Mufti Damir Mukhetdinov for his
criticism of the Black Hundreds movement at the end of the imperial period.
Kobrinsky, a history professor at
Moscow State University and the director of the Agency for Ethno-National
Strategy, says that Mukhetdinov remains a prisoner of Soviet historiography as
far as the Black Hundreds are concerned and fails to understand the reasons for
their emergence and their real role (smi24.news/kto-zainteresovan-v-raskole-rossijskoj-ummy/).
The
historian continues: “the Black Hundreds organizations begin to appear in
Russia [only] after the wave of pogroms; and it is commonly known that after
their formation, pogroms took place only in that part of the Russian Empire
which today is occupied by Poland and where where there weren’t any Black
Hundreds organizations.”
According
to Kobrinsky, “investigators still have to give an assessment of the role [of
the Black Hundreds] in the stabilization of the situation in the state.” And he
points out as if an aside that pogroms against Jews continued in Poland long
after the Russian Empire ceased to exist and the Black Hundreds ceased to
operate.
“Black
Hundreds organizations were opponents of Western liberal ideology and their
name traces its roots not to the color mentioned but to the name of the category
of the population which paid taxes directly to the state rather than to the
landowner or the church,” a group that in medieval times had organized
themselves into militias.
“Their
ideology,” he continues, “was the theory of official nationality of Count Uvarov.
Organizations included in the Black Hundreds spoke in support of the official power
from a defensive position and enjoyed well-known support in society, being the
natural enemies of revolutionary organizations who declared a hunt on representatives
of the Black Hundreds.”
Almost
everything Kobrinsky says about the Black Hundreds isn’t true: they existed in
Poland, they were involved in pogroms against Jews in many parts of the Russian
empire, they were recruited in many cases by the state from lumpen elements in
urban areas, and they lacked the sophisticated attitude about nationalism he
suggests they had.
But
what is most troubling is that his obvious support for them and indeed for any
group that supports the state no matter how noxious its ideas and behavior
suggests that there are those in the Russian establishment – he is a professor
at Moscow State University after all – who are now reaching back beyond Stalin
to even more horrific figures in the Russian past.
Not
only does that open the way for still more authoritarian ideas and actions, but
it specifically reflects and may even encourage anti-Semitism, always a default
setting of bigotry for some Russians.
Like the Black Hundreds, such writers and the poisonous attitudes they
display deserve to be condemned by all people of good will, Russian and
non-Russian alike.
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