Uzbek Leaders Stalin Purged in 1938 Deserved to Be Because of Their Links to Prometheanism, Mendkovich Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 1 – A Russian nationalist commentator says that the Uzbek leaders Stalin purged in 1938 deserved to be because of their links to the Promethee movement, a declaration that both highlights Moscow’s increasingly negative reaction to non-Russian charges against the Soviet dictator and the reach of the Promethee movement into Central Asia.
    In a commentary for the Strategic Culture Foundation portal, Nikita Mendkovich lashes out at Uzbek commentaries declaring the leading victims of Stalin’s purges in that republic to have been “the flower of the nation” and says they deserved to be imprisoned and killed   fondsk.ru/news/2024/11/02/1938-god-repressii-v-uzbekistane-ili-novaya-revolyuciya.html).   
    On the one hand, he insists, the Uzbek party leaders whom Stalin purged were corrupt and needed to be weeded out to block the restoration of a class society in that Central Asian country. And on the other, they were closely linked to the Promethee movement that he says the West established in order to promote the dismemberment of the Soviet Union.
    If Mendkovich’s first argument is an old one – it was first advanced by Soviet propagandists at the time of the Great Terror – his second represents an increasingly important theme in more recent commentaries about those events, one that seeks to link the victims of Stalin’s crimes to Western intelligence services.
    That has long been a staple of Russian commentaries about nationalists in Ukraine and the western republics of the former Soviet Union, but its extension to Central Asia, while not unprecedented, is an increasing focus of the attention of Russian nationalists in Moscow alarmed by growing support for the memory of Stalin’s victims there.
    For background on the Polish Promethean movement, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/04/prometheanism-showed-that-joint.html and the sources cited there; and for the increasingly negative Russian reaction to that movement and its followers in the USSR, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/12/revival-of-prometheanism-outrages.html.

Kremlin Less Interested in Promoting Any One Candidate in Elections Abroad than in Undermining Democracy as Such, Yakhno Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 3 – The Kremlin is far less interested in promoting any particular candidate in elections abroad than it is in undermining public trust in democracy, a system of governance which Putin and his team view as a threat to their power both internationally and at home, according to Olesya Yakhno.
    According to the Ukrainian political scientist, the Kremlin recognizes that democracies help create the kind of solidarity between governments and peoples that dictatorships like Putin cannot hope to achieve and thus can stand up to regimes like his (uatv.ua/rossiya-delaet-stavku-ne-na-konkretnogo-kandidata-na-vyborah-v-ssha-a-na-podryv-doveriya-k-demokratii-yahno/).
    And at the same time, Putin and his team see the discrediting of democracy as essential to maintaining their rule in Russia itself. If Moscow can present democratic systems as ineffective and conflicted, far fewer Russians will be interested in that form of governance for themselves and instead will not oppose what Putin is doing.
    Yakhno’s comments are a useful counterpoint to the efforts of many in the United States and elsewhere to identify which candidate there the Kremlin supports. It is likely that the Putin regime really does have a preference, but promoting that preference is less important in its mind than undermining democracy as such.

Russia Still Likely to Fall Apart but ‘Unfortunately’ Not Because of Parade of Sovereignty by Non-Russian Republics, Kyiv Political Scientist Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 1 – Despite the opposition of the West to the disintegration of the Russian Federation, it is still “very likely to happen,” Oleg Saakyan says, but not along national lines. That pattern while frequently discussed is unlikely. If it were ever going to happen after the demise of the USSR, it would have taken place in the 1990s but now its time has passed.
    Instead, the Kyiv political scientist who co-founded the National Platform for Resilience and Cohesion says, the coming disintegration of the Moscow-centric state is likely to happen because of “the economic egotism” of regional elites and the desire of force structures to have greater freedom of action (uatv.ua/raspolzanie-rossii-ochen-veroyatnyj-stsenarij-no-ne-ot-natsionalnyh-respublik-politolog/).
    Such groups will become more active as Moscow weakens, and it will be they not the non-Russians will take the lead in the dismemberment of the Russian Federation. That is “unfortunate,” he suggests, because such people will be less likely to create new countries with more positive kinds of governance than national republics might.
    In his brief comment, Saakyan does not discuss the possibility that “the egotism” of economic elites and of security forces might form alliances with non-Russian movements; but that is a possibility that his analysis suggests and that is worthy of exploring, especially as most commentaries on the looming demise of the Russian Federation ignore than as well.

Many Russians Face a Cold Winter Ahead – and Also Because of Putin’s War in Ukraine

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Oct. 29 – Ever more reporting has appeared suggesting that Ukrainians face a very cold winter in their homes ahead because of Russian bombing of infrastructure in Ukraine. That is undoubtedly true. But it is also true that many Russians face a cold winter ahead in their homes and also because of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
    The reason is simple: the Russian defense ministry has stepped up its purchases of firewood since Putin began his expanded invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and pushed the price of firewood up by 40 percent or more, putting it beyond the reach of the roughly one-fifth of Russians who rely firewood stoves for heat (newizv.ru/news/2024-10-29/za-10-let-drova-podorozhali-v-10-raz-rost-tsen-biet-po-starikam-i-maloimuschim-434061).
    Those who can no longer afford firewood will likely have to do without, and they will be cold. And it will be increasingly the case that they will connect the dots between the falling temperatures in their homes and Putin’s war – and thus have yet another reason for opposing what the Kremlin dictator is doing.
    What is especially noteworthy is that Russians who rely on firewood for heat are among the most rural and poorest part of the population of the Russian Federation, a group that has been Putin’s most reliable supporter as far as the war is concerned up to now. But they are less likely to remain in his corner if that leaves them and their families very much out in the cold.

‘No Political Repression in Russia Today,’ Presidential Human Rights Council Head Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Oct. 29 – One of the biggest problems those who follow the state of human rights in Putin’s Russia is that those Russian government agencies responsible for reporting about conditions there often are anything but reliable. Indeed, most of them seem committed to misleading rather than informing.
    A new example comes from Valery Fadeyev, head of the Presidential Human Rights Council, who declares that today there are no political repressions at all but only “sanitary methods” that are being applied to those who are working for the West against Russia (interfax.ru/russia/989322 and zona.media/news/2024/10/30/eto_ne_repressii).
“God forbid,” he continues, “that Russians now would feel on their own skin what political repressions are. There were repressions in 1937-1938 when 740,000 people were shot, most of whom were innocent. Even now we don’t know how many priests were shot in the 1920s and 1930s. Those were real repressions.”
Not only are there no repressions now but only carefully targeted moves against enemies of Russia, Fadeyev continues; but “humanization of this spheres is going on without interruption. Twenty-five years ago, we have a million people behind bars; now, we have 300,000. This is an enormous advance.”
    If one accepts Fadeyev’s argument that there are no repressions unless they reach the level of those in Stalin’s Great Terror, then he is of course right; but if one uses almost any other standard, then there are real repressions in Putin’s Russia and they are increasing, even if the prison population is falling as criminals are allowed to gain their freedom by fighting in Ukraine.
 

Russian Authorities have Charged 1500 Dagestanis over Makhachkala Airport Pogrom But Not Yet Found 1500 Others who Took Part, ‘Zona Media’ Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Oct. 29 – A year after a crowd of Dagestanis surrounded a plane from Tel Aviv at the Makhchkala airport and demanded that Jews on board not be allowed off, Russian officials have brought administrative and criminal charges against 1500, haven’t been able to find 1500 others known to have taken part, and continue to blame Ukrainians for the action.
    Those are the key findings of Anna Pavlova of the Zona Media news agency on the first anniversary of the violence at the Makhachkala airport (zona.media/article/2024/10/28/pogrom). What makes her report especially important is that Moscow and Makhchakala have worked hard to limit coverage of these events (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/11/daghestani-officials-order-population.html).
    That effort continues with most trials for those charged with criminal as opposed to administrative offenses taking place outside the borders of that North Caucasus republic and as Russian propagandists have promoted the notion that Russians and Ukrainians, on the one hand, and radical Islamists, on the other, orchestrated the pogrom.
    Pavlova details these charges but also shows that there is far less support for them than Moscow and Makhchakala have claimed. Indeed, perhaps the most important of her findings is the shear size of those who took part in this anti-Jewish action and the inability or unwillingness of officials in that republic to find and bring to trial all those involved.
    That failure may suggest that some in the Dagestani capital are worried that if they arrest even more participants, it will turn out that some of them are family members of senior officials in the region or have ties to Moscow (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/11/anti-semitic-outrages-like-those-in.html).    

80 Percent of Russians Say There are Too Many Immigrants -- But at Even Higher Percentage of Police Do the Same, Survey Finds

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Oct. 29 – Eighty percent of the population of the Russian Federation says there are too many immigrants in Russia, according to a Headhunter poll, a figure 21 percent higher than did so a year ago before the Crocus City Hall attacks took place and anti-immigrant stories became a staple of Russian media.
    Particularly striking was the poll’s finding that 89 percent of police said there were too many immigrants in Russia, a sign that these employees of the government’s force structures are more hostile to immigrants than is the population as a whole (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2024-10-29--80-naselenija-rossii-schitaet-migraciju-chrezmernoj-76502).
    That the siloviki are even more ill-disposed to migrant workers than Russians as a whole suggests that the central powers that be are promoting such attitudes even more than are members of the general public and that police and other force structure employees are giving the answer that their commanders expect them to.
    Other finds of the Headhunter poll of 3,000 Russians, a poll that did not claim to be representative and therefore one whose results should be used with some caution, include the following:
•    58 percent of those surveyed say immigrants are used for work which local residents can’t or don’t want to do.
•    59 percent said companies employ immigrants because they can pay them less.
•    39 percent said they were prepared to do the jobs migrants perform while 28 percent said they were not.
•    62 percent said immigrant workers did Russia more harm than good while only 13 percent said the reverse was the case.

Police in North Caucasus Involved in Carrying Out Honor Killings, UN Told

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Oct. 29 -- In a report to the United Nations on the state of human rights in the Russian Federation, Mariana Katsarova says that police in the North Caucasus are often directly involved in carrying out honor killings or support those who carry them out, despite laws against murders.
    The human rights expert also reports that more than 1,000 Dagestani women every year are subjected to genital mutilation, a horrific practice that Muslim leaders in the region have denounced but that the Russian government does not have a specific law against (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/405072).
    According to Katsarova, the authorities both in Moscow and in the republics of the North Caucasus are making it ever more difficult for activists to report on what is going on, thus concealing many such crimes and allowing the Russian government to claim that the situation is getting better.
    But in fact, she suggests, the situation with regard to both of these crimes may be getting worse, given that Moscow prefers to hide rather than suppress such practices and republic governments or at least their police components see such actions as reflecting national traditions that they want to protect.
    As a result, the number of victims of both these and other crimes linked with national traditions is almost certainly vastly higher than she is able to document, Katsarapova says, something that will change only if there is a concerted international effort to force Moscow to crack down on such crimes and the involvement of police in them.
    For background on this situation and its current state of play, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/oppression-of-north-caucasian-women-now.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/10/moscow-still-ignoring-problem-of-female.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/abuses-in-ingushetia-call-attention-to.html.