The Harsher the Putin Regime Becomes, the More Likely Russians will Rise Against It, ‘Russian Partisan’ Telegram Channel Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 4 – One of the most widely accepted Kremlin claims about the Soviet past is that no one rose against Stalin, the Russian Partisan telegram channel says; but in fact, it was precisely Stalin’s attack on the peasantry and the population in the early 1930s that triggered what can only be called Russia’s “second civil war.”
    Only when the Soviet regime softened under Khrushchev and Brezhnev did such risings largely disappear, the telegram channel says. And that has an important lesson for today: the more Stalinist the Putin regime becomes, the more likely Russians will ultimately rise against it (t.me/rospartizan/2841 reposted at  kasparov.ru/material.php?id=67508FB44D6DB).
    There were hundreds of peasant uprisings when Stalin sought to collectivize the peasantry, and these not only involved approximately 500,000 people but also forced the Soviet regime to use regular army units against them, something contemporary sources acknowledged because they could not hide it but that many now forget.
    The widespread notion that the Russian people will bow to those in power regardless of what those rulers do has led even many dissidents to downplay the possibility of revolt. When Solzhenitsyn suggested that Russians hurried to bow down to the Bolsheviks after 1917, that was widely accepted but sparked outrage among those who knew better.
    Perhaps the most famous of the rejections of Solzhenitsyn’s contention came from Yuri Srechinsky, the deputy editor of New York’s Novoye russkoye slovo, who published a pamphlet arguing that Russians resisted and rose in revolt against the Bolsheviks as much or even more than other nations in the empire.
His booklet, How We Submitted? The Price of October (in Russian), deserves to be better known (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/06/a-century-of-russian-revolts-against.html), as does the point he and the Russian Partisans telegram channel makes.

Moonshine Production So Widespread and Costing Moscow So Much Money that Russian Government is Using Satellites to Track It

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 3 – The Russian interior ministry is now using satellites to identify where illegal alcohol – what the Russians call samogon – is being produced in the hopes of closing down such production so that those who want to drink will have to consume registered and highly taxed alcoholic beverages.
    Even before the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, such illegal alcohol constituted roughly a third of the total market; and the fact that it was not taxed cost the state as much as 80 billion rubles (800 million US dollars) every year. Since that time, Moscow has raised taxes on alcohol, more Russians have turned to illegal sources, and the government’s losses have soared.
    In the hopes of clawing back that money so that it can go for spending on Putin’s campaign in Ukraine, the finance ministry has announced that the interior ministry will now be using satellites to try to identify where such samogon is being produced (pnp.ru/social/za-palenoy-vodkoy-nachali-sledit-iz-kosmosa.html).

Tatarstan Calls for Allowing All Federal Subjects to Have Their Own Academies of Sciences

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 3 – Tatarstan’s State Council has called on the Russian Duma to amend the 1996 education act and allow all federal subjects to have the right to form their own academies of sciences, yet another move by Kazan to defend the remnants of federalism in the Russian Federation and to give both republics and regions more authority.
    Taking advantage of the right of its government to make proposals to the Duma for laws or amendments to existing laws that could affect the entire country, the State Council has quietly proposed a move with potentially far-reaching consequences (kommersant.ru/doc/7344750 and milliard.tatar/news/tatarstan-predlozil-regionam-sozdavat-svoi-akademii-nauk-6582).
    Tatarstan has its own academy of sciences but neither most other autonomous republics nor oblasts and krays do. Instead, Moscow has created regional centers of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Dagestan, KBR, Karelia, Kola, Samara, St.Petersburg, Troitsk and Ufa. (In at least two cases (Tatarstan and Bashkortostan), these exist alongside republic academies.)
    It is likely that Kazan has made this proposal not only to promote the authority of other federal subjects but to protect its own republic academy of sciences which otherwise might be under pressure to close as part of Putin’s “optimization” program to save money on educational and other functions so as to have it available for war.  

Paganism Spreading among Combatants on Both Sides in Putin’s War in Ukraine, Moscow Expert Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 2 – It is an ancient observation that there are no atheists in the trenches, but it is a new one that combatants in Putin’s war in Ukraine are turning to paganism rather than more conventional religions, an observation offered by Roman Shizhensky, a specialist on religious affairs at the Russian Academy of Economics and State Service.
    Three months ago, Patriarch Kirill complained about that development among Russian soldiers, declaring that Russian soldiers with little experience in the church were listening to pagan missionaries (tass.ru/obschestvo/21944567). Now, an academic specialist is offering more details and about soldiers on both sides of the front (apn.ru/index.php?newsid=46855).
    In the course of an extensive interview, Shizhensky provides not only his judgments about the origins of this phenomenon, which he places primarily in the desire of people to identify with national rather than supernational faiths, but also a guide to recent Russian scholarship about paganism.

Almost 40 Percent of More than 1,000 Russian LGBTs Attacked were Killed, Memorial Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 2 – According to the Memorial human rights center, 405 of the 1052 victims of anti-LGBT violence in the Russian Federation were killed, a reminder of the increasingly violent nature of such actions in Putin’s Russia and the dangers ahead as more and more groups are listed as enemies of the regime.
    The Memorial report is available at memorialcenter.org/analytics/gomofobnaya-pravovaya-politika-v-rossii. It has been summarized and discussed by the SOVA Information Center at sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/news/xeno-opinion/2024/12/d50735/ as well as at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=674EC2A2590AC).
    Such mortality figures are unprecedented and show that those Russians now prepared to act on their own on the basis of government propaganda have the willingness and ability not just to harm but to kill, a trend that will likely increase still further when guns from Putin’s war in Ukraine flood back into the Russian Federation.
    On that likelihood, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/organized-crime-has-risen-in-russia.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/06/returning-veterans-with-criminal-pasts.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/illegal-arms-sales-possession-and-use.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/11/duma-deputies-seek-to-loosen-russian.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/guns-from-putins-war-in-ukraine-leading.html.

Escapes from Russian Prisons and Camps Increasingly Common, Mostly Because Guards are Corrupt, ‘Sovershenno Sekretno’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 2 – Despite the fact that breaking out of jail is a serious crime in and of itself and despite the introduction of video cameras to watch prisoners, escapes from Russian prisons and camps have become increasingly common, with at least five major ones so far in 2024, Sovershenno Sekretno journalist Aglaya Ostraya says.
    Most of those who do escape are able to do so because of corruption among the guards, she says; and most of those who do so are more or less rapidly caught. But despite that prisoners for one reason or another continue to try to leave extending a longstanding Russian tradition of jailbreaks (sovsekretno.ru/articles/bezopasnost/anatomiya-pobega/).
    And unless the authorities are able to suppress corruption among Russian jailors, Ostraya suggests, there is no reason to think that the current upward trend in jailbreaks will not continue.  

Water Dispute between Kazakhstan and China Intensifying

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 2 – Kazakhstan and China have been negotiating on regulating the flow of transborder rivers so that Lake Balkhash and other reservoirs in Kazakhstan do not dry up, but new reports suggest that they remain far apart with Kazakhstan experiencing falling water levels in key areas as China uses the water for the development of Xinjiang.
Russian analysts are “unanimous,” Moscow commentator Aleksey Baliyev says, that China’s withdrawal of water from the trans-border rivers … are a serious threat to the continued existence not only of Lake Balkhash” but other major Kazakhstan lakes and reservoirs as well (vpoanalytics.com/sobytiya-i-kommentarii/kitay-kazakhstan-problema-raspredeleniya-vodnykh-resursov-daleka-ot-razresheniya/).
And that in turn will exacerbate Kazakhstan’s relations with Russia and Tajikistan, both of which are talking about selling water to China rather than sending it to Kazakhstan and other water-short Central Asian countries (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/05/moscow-talking-to-beijing-about.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/07/tajikistan-to-sell-water-to-china.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/kazakhstan-should-blame-china-not.html).
Up to now, this has been a problem that the governments involved have sought to play down but now the Kazakhstan authorities may have no choice but to make it a central issue in their relations with neighbors or face serious water shortages for agriculture, industry and human consumption.
(For background on this long-running dispute, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/01/window-on-eurasia-china-said-killing.html,  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/11/window-on-eurasia-lake-balkhash-may.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/08/china-taking-ever-more-water-from-ili.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/kazakhstans-lake-balkhash-may-soon-die.html.)

To Cope with Enormous Shortage of Police in Russian Cities and Villages, Moscow Now Using Militiamen from Kyrgyzstan

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 1 – Russian interior ministry officials over the last several months have been complaining about the serious shortage of police officers in Russian cities and villages (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/11/russia-facing-increasingly-serious.html). Now, they have come up with a solution: they’re importing militiamen from Kyrgyzstan to fill the gaps.
    Moscow clearly hopes that these officers will help to maintain law and order in an increasingly difficult situation where ever more Russian police are choosing to take the enormous bonuses and go to fight in Ukraine (sibreal.org/a/mvd-davno-golodaet-pochemu-v-rossiyu-priglashayut-politseyskih-iz-kirgizii/33216851.html).
    But there are at least two reasons why such hopes may be misplaced. On the one hand, such Kyrgyz policemen will be viewed as outsiders and even janissaries especially at a time when anti-migrant themes dominate the Russian media. And on the other, their use highlights something Moscow doesn’t want advertised: the weakness of the state in this most basic of areas.

For Putin, Contemporary Russian Nation was Born Not in 1991 but in 1945, Sokolov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 2 – Russian historian Nikita Sokolov argues that “the main propaganda construction of Putin’s Russia consists in the idea that Russian society was born in 1945” rather than in 1991, according to Vadim Stepanov in a review of the revival of propaganda in Russia after the start of the first and especially the second Chechen war.
    Summarizing Sokolev’s thinking, Stepanov says that “it is extremely important for any civil society to recognize the moment o fits founding. The French have the Day of the Taking of the Bastille, the Americans, the war for independence, and the USSR, the Great October Socialist Revolution” (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/12/02/ot-chechni-do-velikoi-pobedy).
    “After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the authorities of the Russian Federation had to choose a new date,” Stepanov says and then continues with the following quotation from Sokolov himself:
     “The obvious moment of the founding of the new Russia should have been August 1991. Rusian citizens independently and without any help or pressure came out into the streets and said ‘No, we do not want to be Soviet anymore … we want to live freely in conditions of the market and democracy. But such a choice would put human rights at the forefront as well as the values of the individual and his or her freedom and the ability to make decisions. And that did not play at all into the hands of the fellow KGB officers who came to power together with Putin.”
    Consequently, Putin and his team reached back to 1968 when the Brezhnev regime organized the first victory parade and put out a narrative to justify it and made May 9 not a memorial date but a celebratory one, as Lev Rubenshteyn subsequently recalled (meduza.io/feature/2023/01/07/iz-vremen-sssr-sovet-mogu-dat-prostoy-ne-nado-boyatsya).
    The Great Victory has become the core of Putin’s ideological construction, Sokolov says, to which has been added only the idea of sovereign democracy as developed by Vladislav Surkov. The historian explains:
    “We seem to have a democracy but out own now with the abolition of gubernatorial elections and the absence of a free press. And this is our tradition binding. From here have come a stream of talk about how Russia has always been a besieged fortress, especially in history textbooks where there is Stalin, the leader of Victory and the head of the well-functioning soviet system, but there is absolutely no Len-Lease.
    “Since the mid-2000s, the majority of state propaganda narratives have been built around these two ideological constructs: the great victory and sovereign democracy. Even in the first month of the covid pandemic, pro-government media tried to blame the West for the disease. And the slogan ‘we can repeat’ acquired a popular and sad significance in the Russian-Ukrainian war.”

Russian Women Increasingly Pushing Husbands and Even Ex-Husbands to Join Russian Army as Bonuses Rise, Studies Find

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 2 – According to a survey conducted by the Greetings. You’re a Foreign Agent telegram channel, increases in the amount of bonuses offered to those who join the Russia army to fight in Ukraine have won the Kremlin an important ally in its effort to fill the depleted ranks of its army there: Russian women.
    The survey found that ever more Russian women have become interested in pushing their husbands or even their ex-husbands (from whom they receive alimony) to join the military because of the large and increasing bonuses that Moscow and the regions are offering those who sign up (t.me/privetinoagent/653; discussed at holod.media/2024/12/02/sposob-otpravit-muzhej/).
    The telegram channel reached this conclusion on the basis of examining how many people asked the question “how to send a husband to war” on the Yandex news portal. In the second half of 2023, about 200 such queries were registered each month. Now, the number of such questions has risen to “approximately 5,000 monthly.”
    Beginning in October when the size of bonuses exploded, Russian women also began to ask “how to send an ex-husband to war,” the telegram channel reported, a finding also noted by researchers at the Scythe portal (kosa.media/2024/12/rossiyanki-stali-chashhe-iskat-kak-otpravit-muzhej-i-byvshih-na-vojnu/).

Buddhist Cossacks Appear to Be Making a Comeback in Buryatia, with Ulan Ude's Support

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 30 – Many in Moscow and the West assume to this day that all Cossacks are Russian Orthodox in religion and Russian-speaking as far as language is conerned, but in fact, many have been and some remain followers of Islam, Judaism and Buddhism and speak other languages (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/10/not-all-of-russias-cossacks-are.html).
    In trying to mobilize the Cossacks for its own purposes, the Putin regime has sometimes tried to wipe out these attachments and at other times has made concessions to them because most Cossacks regardless of faith and language are quite prepared to fight for Russia against enemies foreign and domestic.
    Moscow has been relatively tolerant of Buddhist Cossacks in Kalmykia, a republic that adjoins the North Caucasus (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/09/kalmyk-cossack-leaders-must-now-receive.html); but it has been less so to Buddhist Cossacks in Buryatia in the Russian Far East.
    Now that may be about to change, as Moscow needs more soldiers for its war in Ukraine, the Russian authorities appear to be ready to look to those who are ready to serve regardless of their religion and even language. That is giving both “registered” Cossacks who are part of Putin’s regime and genuine, unregistered ones a chance.
    Not surprisingly, reporting about this is scarce. But the Buryat government is proudly reporting that its Cossack community has been named the second best among those regions with a smaller number of Cossacks relative to population (egov-buryatia.ru/press_center/news/detail.php?ID=185817 and asiarussia.ru/news/43680/).
    Ulan Ude reports that there are now 21 Cossack stanitsas in the republic, 14 of which are part of the Transbaikal Cossack host that is recognized by and supported by Moscow and seven of which are not part of that body and presumably more traditional and likely, in this case,  more Buddhist.
    Significantly, Buryat officials say they are supporting both, an indication that Moscow’s manpower demands related to Putin’s war in Ukraine are giving Cossacks less affected by the center’s procrustean approach to the Cossack tradition. And what that means is this: in the short term, Moscow benefits; but in the longer term, it may find itself the loser.  

Ever More Russian Women Being Sent to Prison for Political Crimes and Then Mistreated, OVD-Info Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 1 – Since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, ever more Russian women have been convicted on trumped-up political charges and sent to prison where they are routinely mistreated by guards and other officials, according to experts at the OVD-Info monitoring organization.
    More than half of all women sentenced to prison following conviction for political charges since 2012 have been sentenced since February 2022, 412 of 735, the monitoring group says (rfi.fr/ru/россия/20241201-в-россии-десятки-женщин-политзаключенных-за-что-их-отправляют-за-решетку-каково-им-приходится-в-системе-фсин).
    In contrast to men’s places of imprisonment, those were women are held are controlled exclusively by prison officials rather than power being shared between the guards and groups of ordinary prisoners. On the one hand, that means that direct physical abuse is less; but on the other, it means that the guards are exclusively responsible for the level of mistreatment.
    According to OVD-Info, women prisoners in Russia suffer from all the other kinds of mistreatment that their male counterparts do; but in addition, they suffer because in most cases, the guards refuse to adjust their schedules or provide medicines and supplies that women specifically need.
    That seldom gets much attention, the experts say; but it is a violation of the rights of women prisoners in Russia and should be exposed and condemned by those who track the state of the incarcerated in Russia today.  

Kremlin Warns Regional Officials Russians will Remain Divided after War in Ukraine Ends

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 1 – Officials of the Presidential Administration have told deputy governors who are responsible for domestic affairs and propaganda that Russians will remain divided when the war in Ukraine ends and that they must prepare for that in order to boost support for whatever Putin arranges.
    At a recent meeting, PA officials told the deputy governors that the war in Ukraine is coming and that while its outcome “should be regarded in society as a victory,” the reality is that “different social groups already perceive this differently: for ‘angry patriots,’ it means one thing; for ‘liberals,’ it means something completely different” (kommersant.ru/doc/7344159).
    As a result, the PA officials said, the deputy governors must “focus on ‘the quiet majority,’ which will be satisfied with the achievement of the goals outlined by the president – de-Nazification and demilitarization of Ukraine – as well as the preservation of new territories for Russia. And this majority must be preserved and expanded.”
    These declarations are significant for three reasons. First, they are a rare acknowledgement by Kremlin officials that the war is viewed differently by different groups of Russians who include both those committed to an expanded war that will achieve all of the initial goals Putin outlined and those who want an end to the conflict even if sacrifices have to be made.
    Second, these statements suggest that the Kremlin expects at least the hot phase of the conflict to end soon and wants to make sure that its representatives in the federal subjects are prepared to take action lest these current divisions deepen once some settlement, admittedly partial, is ready to be announced.
    And third, they indicate that the war is going to continue to divide Russian society even after the guns go silent at least for a time and that those divisions are something that the Presidential Administration hopes it can overcome by relying on the silent majority who will support anything Putin does.  

Russia Opens what It Calls ‘Second Trans-Siberian’ Railway to Take Pressure Off Its Namesake

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 30 – Two weeks ago, Russia opened a 531-kilometer rail link between BAM and the Pacific coast, thus completing a project Moscow has called “the second Trans-Siberian railway” and taking the pressure off its namesake with regard to trade between European Russia and the Pacific rim.
    Moscow has been talking about constructing such a link and a new port to handle its ties to the Pacific since the 1950s, but the current push to construct both began only four years ago – and the port itself remains as yet unfinished (fondsk.ru/news/2024/11/30/vtoromu-transsibu-pora-prirastat-severo-sibirskoy-magistralyu.html).
    But Russian sources are already viewing this route as ensuring expanded trade in coal and other minerals with China and other Asian countries and giving Russia new capacity and redundancy in trade with the east and thus supporting Vladimir Putin’s much-ballyhooed turn to the east (vostok.today/52048-pervyj-sostav-s-uglem-proehal-po-tihookeanskoj-zheleznoj-doroge.html).
    What they are not yet talking about at least in public are two other consequences of this new railway, one domestic and the other international, that may ultimately prove more economically and even politically significant.
    On the one hand, this railway almost certainly will lead to the expansion of extractive industry in the Sakha Republic, boosting that region’s  economy and also linking it with Asia more directly and thus reducing its almost total dependence on Moscow, something that could lead to more demands there for radical autonomy or even independence.
    And on the other, it gives Moscow a railway to the Pacific much further north from the Chinese border than the Trans-Siberian, thus ensuring that Moscow would have a fallback position in the event of some future Chinese move into Russian territory.  

What’s Needed Now: A Calm Conversation about Whether World would be Better Off without Russian Federation and What is Needed for That to Happen, Chernyshov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 30 – No one should be surprised that Moscow is persecuting those who openly call for the demise of the Russian Federation, Sergey Chernyshov says; but at least equally surprising is the failure of opposition leaders and the media “are categorically refusing to talk about the liquidation of the Russian Federation in its current form.”
    Such a conversation is “extremely necessary,” the Radio Liberty analyst says; because “if it is shown that a world without Russia in its current form would be better than the world with it, then why should we cling to this political formation?” (sibreal.org/a/kak-rasselit-barak-rossiyskaya-federatsiya-istorik-sergey-chernyshov-o-razumnom-separatizme/33219637.html).
    Of course, it is the case that “a conversation about the liquidation of the Russian Federation is extremely difficult to begin, as difficult of beginning a conversation about sex in a Puritanical family.” And thus it is not surprising “but true” that in Russian history, “there has never been a single significant political force that has raised the issue of dividing the country.”
    “Even the numerous ‘national movements’ which arose in the 19th century across the entire empire in fact raised the question not about the liquidation of a single  country but about its ‘reformatting,’” Chernyshov says. And those who have wanted to do that have first wanted to seize power in the center.
    There is an entirely understandable reason for that: “outdated countries have been effectively liquidated only in one case when this has happened at the behest of the supreme central power which has then acted decisively and effectively in this field,” the historian continues.
    “The British empire was liquidated in the British parliament in London and not in the jungles of Africa,” Chernyshov points out; and “the USSR fell apart not because three nationalist politicians assembled in Beloveshchaya and signed something there but because a fourth politician in Moscow agreed with them.”
    That needs to be recognized as must be recognized something else, he argues: until that condition is met, the population will overwhelmingly talk about reforming the country of which they are a part rather than seeking to go their own way. The latter option is almost always the choice of local elites with their own calculations.
    Such elites will succeed initially if they have an ally in Moscow, but they will succeed over time only if they are able to give their peoples a better life, one that others will envy. If the first doesn’t arise, dissolution is unlikely; if the second doesn’t happen, there will always be those who will want to restore the past, Chernyshov concludes.

Having Ramped Up Anti-Immigrant Passions, Kremlin Appears to have Decided It Must Reverse Course, Persyev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 30 – After the Crocus City Hall incident and in an effort to distract attention from problems arising from Putin’s war in Ukraine, the Kremlin decided to ramp up anti-immigrant passions in the population, a campaign that has worked exceedingly well and led to various governmental moves against them.
    But as the war drags on and labor shortages intensify, Meduza observer Andrey Pertsev says, the very same people appear to have concluded “they may have gone too far” and as a result, they’re  “backpedaling … and attempting to reshape public attitudes” in the opposite direction (meduza.io/feature/2024/11/29/rossiyskie-vlasti-posle-terakta-v-krokuse-sdelaem-zhizn-migrantov-nevynosimoy-administratsiya-prezidenta-seychas-kazhetsya-my-proschitalis).
    Certain sectors in cities like taxis have been hit particularly hard by restrictions on immigrants, but rural Russia has been hit across the board because so many of its men, taking advantage of bonuses, have gone to fight in Ukraine and either not returned or returned with injuries that prevent them from working.
    These problems have been compounded by combat losses more generally in the Russian army and by Moscow’s need to dispatch more Russians to impose control on portions of Ukraine that the Russian military has managed to force the Ukrainian authorities out of, Pertsev continues.
    He says that t his has forced the Kremlin to conclude that its anti-immigrant campaign has entailed far more significant costs than it had expected and that “scaling back anti-immigration initiatives and softening the rhetoric would be prudent.” Some officials have backed off, but others are continuing to push a hard anti-immigrant line.
    Pertsev suggests that one of the clearest signs that the Kremlin will soon change direction and issue the kind of statements Russian officials and propagandists won’t ignore is the statement of Kremlin ally Duma deputy Olet Matveychev, who has declared that criticism of immigrants is a Western plot designed to “tear apart the Russian people from within.”
    But whether the Kremlin will find it as easy to turn off the anti-immigrant effort as it was to launch it very much remains an open question, the commentator suggests.  

Anti-War Activists in Tallinn Pioneer Way to Expand Public Attention to Political Prisoners in Russia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 30 – A small group of volunteers in the Estonian capital has come up with a new way to expand attention in the West to the plight of political prisoners in the Russian Federation by producing one-minute-long videos about each one and then posting them on social media.
    Many people in the West don’t know much about Russian political prisoners, Nata Lyubavskaya, the leader of the “Let’s Help Political Prisoners” project (novayagazeta.ee/articles/2024/11/29/khotim-pokazyvat-bezumie-etoi-repressivnoi-mashiny-aktivisty-iz-tallinna-sozdali-proekt-pomogaem-politzekam).
    They don’t read the increasingly infrequent stories about them, preferring instead to watch videos on their cellphones or laptops. To reach them, she says, her group of nine volunteers now produces short videos about the ones they know about and post them on social media.
    Among the places where their work can be see are facebook.com/HelpPolitzek/, instagram.com/help_politzek/ and tiktok.com/@helppolitzek. The group cooperates closely with other human rights organizations such as Memorial and hopes that others concerned with the fate of people in Russia will copy and thus extend the work of “Let’s Help Political Prisoners.”

After Korkino Pogrom, Hostility toward and Repression of Roma Communities Spreading across Russia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 29 – Following the violence in Korkino earlier this fall, hostility among Russians toward Roma communities across Russia has intensified and repression of these communities has increased as well, threatening both new outbreaks of clashes between Roma and Russians and worsening relations between Russians and other minorities as well.
    The Korkino events attracted enormous coverage at the time, but since then, the Roma issue has largely disappeared from the Russian media, despite warnings that it was a harbinger of worsening relations between Roma and Russians and even other ethnic groups (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/roma-pogroms-in-chelyabinsk-make.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/11/verkhovsky-on-sources-of-anti-migrant.html).
    Now that media neglect has been in part compensated by a detailed story by the Horizontal Russia portal about Roma in Leningrad Oblast which shows that Russian hostility to and official mistreatment of members of that nationality intensified after Korkino and shows no sign of dissipating anytime soon (semnasem.org/articles/2024/11/29/vse-dorogi-vedut-k-roma).
    The Roma, the name now commonly given to the gypsies, number between 200,000, the figure given by the last more or less reliable Russian census in 2010 but a clear undercount, and one million, the figure members of the community believe but that likely is at least slightly exaggerated.
    Consequently, if this trend continues and spreads, and in the Russia of Vladimir Putin, that is entirely likely, more clashes between Roma and Russians are likely; and there is a great danger that such violence will spread to conflicts between Russians and other ethnic minorities as well.

Moscow Claims It’s Winning Battle with HIV/AIDS But Statistics Suggest Otherwise, ‘To Be Precise’ Portal Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 28 – Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said this week that HIV infections in Russia had reached “an historical minimum” (kommersant.ru/doc/7326840); but figures suggest that his optimism is misplaced and that the situation is far worse than officials acknowledge, even as they stop publishing the kind of data that would allow a real assessment.
    That is the conclusion Kseniya Babikhina, an investigator for the To Be Precise news portal, offers in a detailed new article (tochno.st/materials/minzdrav-uvelicil-biudzet-na-lecenie-vic-na-tret-no-prakticeski-zakryl-dannye-o-cisle-liudei-s-takim-diagnozom-glavnoe-o-situacii-s-vic-v-rossii).
    Although some Russian government agencies continue to publish figures about HIV/AIDS, the health ministry this year appears to have stopped, something that makes it impossible to know exactly how many Russians are now suffering from this disease and what share of those with it are receiving treatment.
    Moreover, independent researchers have found that in the last several years, fewer and fewer people in high risk groups are being tested at all, something that suggests the claims officials like Murashko are making can’t be taken seriously as large numbers of people with the disease aren’t being identified as such.
    Indeed, international assessments now suggest that half of all new cases of HIV in Europe are in Russia, a conclusion that suggests that the numbers of HIV/AIDS cases in that country are far higher than Moscow acknowledges (thelancet.com/journals/lanhiv/article/PIIS2352-3018(24)00212-1/fulltext).

Tatarstan Leader Again Takes Lead in Defending Federalism in Russia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 28 – In the 1990s, Mintimir Shaymiyev, the then-president of Tatarstan, was the republic leader most frequently associated with the defense of federalism in Russia. Given Putin’s centralizing rule, his successor, Rustam Minnikhanov, has been less forthright. But now he too, in what may be a harbinger of a sea change in Kazan, is again defending federalism.
    Admittedly, there is a big difference. Shaymiyev was on the offensive, seeking greater autonomy and power not only for himself but also for the leaders of other republics and regions, while Minnikhanov has been on the defensive and has now dug in on an issue that is far less significant in its likely consequences – the fate of local slef-government.
    But having yielded on so many points, Minnikhanov is now fighting in the trenches to block Moscow from destroying local self-government as the Kremlin and Duma appear set to do and giving in the course of it a full-throated defense of the reasons Russia needs to become a real federal state and not just one in name only.
    Minnikhanov and the federal subjects are likely to lose on this issue as well, even though they have managed to delay Moscow’s destruction of local self-government for two years since the early days of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine given the Kremlin’s transparent concern that such a move could destabilize the country, a fear it apparently no longer has.
    However, the current Tatarstan leader, who now has the title rais rather than president, offers a two-pronged defense of federalism that others may pick up and that may challenge the Kremlin in the future, even if Moscow does steamroller the federal subjects on this issue as seems likely in the coming month.
    On the one hand, Minnikhanov makes the point in a message to Moscow that Russia is too diverse to be “governed by one template.” He admits “that there have been and will be some changes; we need to treat this normally and don’t mind.” But “our territories are different” and must make their own choices (ng.ru/politics/2024-11-28/1_9145_destabilization.html).
    And on the other, regional governments in fact need the advantages that local self-government offers: “Over the years, we have formed a layer of authoritative people” at the local level. “Are we going to lose them now? Who are they bothering? Are there no other problems the country should be addressing” especially as they’re a key link between the people and the power.
    Again, while Moscow almost certainly will push the new law through, it has already made a concession that suggests it takes such objections more seriously than many assume is possible under Putin. As drafted, the new law will give federal subjects ten years to make this change, an unusually long time to  adapt to something Putin wants.  

Infrastructure Inherited from Soviet Times Now Falling Apart More Rapidly than It is Being Repaired, Leading to Ever More Technogenic Disasters

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 28 – Moscow officials concede that technogenic disasters in Russia are happening at an ever-increasing rate primarily because so much of Russia’s infrastructure is left over from Soviet times and those responsible for its upkeep aren’t fixing it as fast as it is falling apart, according to an investigation by the Continuation Follows portal.
    Unless the Russian government changes course radically and soon, this means that the current record levels of elevator accidents, dam collapses, airplane accidents and other such disasters will continue to grow and at an ever-increasing rate, the portal’s findings suggest (prosleduet.media/details/utility-breakdowns/).
    The Continuation Follows portal notes that between 2018 and 2023, there were more than 330 elevator disasters which claimed 129 lives, the most widely publicized of these infrastructure disasters but hardly the most frequent. In only two months at the end of 2023 and the first of 2024, there were “at a minimum” 557 building collapses with more deaths as well.
    Indeed, the portal says, when winter begins and puts additional strains on housing and planes, accidents increase. This has sparked a bigger reflection among Russians: The country, their leader says, is ready for war; but it is never ready for winter even though the first doesn’t come that often and the latter comes ever year.
    Experts inside the government and out say that the reason things are heading south is that the country isn’t repairing the aging Soviet-era infrastructure which must be fixed or even replaced. According to one study, 58 percent of the pipes require replacement, but they are now being replaced at a rate so low that the total needing replacement is growing.
    The portal notes that similar problems exist in all of the infrastructure of the country and points out that those who built these facilities in Soviet times warned that even the best of their work would have to be replaced in 25 to 50 years. That time has now arrived, but the Kremlin acts as if it can ignore this reality. After all, it has other priorities, above all the war in Ukraine.   

Circassians have a Chance to Lead the Coming Parade of Exits from the Muscovite State

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 29 – Below is a speech I delivered online to the Second International Conference on Independent Circassia on Nov. 23. A video of this speech is available at youtu.be/AG8f94YS164?si=B_VxbzzCnfVD1-fz, and I want to thank Adel Bashqawi for producing a text version of it (justicefornorthcaucasus.info/?p=1251685433).  
I reproduce the text here with my own title for readers of Window on Eurasia:
Circassia’s Prospects for Recovering Independence have Never Been Better
A year ago, I had the opportunity to speak at an earlier conference of the ICIC, and I am honored and extremely pleased to have the chance to return and speak with you again. Although I know far less about Circassians and the Circassian cause than most of you, I can present the perspective of a sympathetic and supportive outsider, which is what I plan to do this morning.
As I said a year ago, I am—and remain—quite sure that Circassia is on the path to being restored. I believe this will happen within a decade or less, its independence will be recognized, and we will celebrate an enormous Circassian victory after so many years of struggle. However, at that time, I also cautioned that the final steps toward achieving these goals may prove to be the most difficult. The events of the ensuing months have only reinforced my confidence in both my prediction of Circassian independence and the immense challenges that lie ahead due to Moscow’s reactions. Ironically, while Moscow’s responses have made the outcome more likely, they have also complicated the path forward.
I believe the Circassian community will overcome these challenges only by confronting them directly and making full use of the resources at their disposal. Today, I would like to revisit some of what I said last year and provide an update in light of changes in the international environment. The strategies Circassians need to employ to achieve their goals have evolved in fundamental ways, and these changes must be recognized.
Five Key Considerations for the Circassian Cause
As I stated a year ago, Circassians and their supporters must keep five crucial considerations in mind as they pursue their goals. These points highlight both the resources available to Circassians and the difficulties in using them effectively, particularly in the face of Moscow’s likely escalation of its police powers, diplomatic efforts, security services, and propaganda aimed at discrediting the Circassian cause.
1. The Unique Strength of the Circassian Nation
Circassians are uniquely positioned among non-Russian peoples within the current borders of the Russian Federation. They have a large and increasingly assertive ethnic population in their homeland and an even larger, nationally conscious diaspora. In fact, the Circassians have the largest diaspora of any people within Russia’s borders. Moreover, many Circassians, including some of you here today, have learned to leverage social media to unite their homeland and diaspora communities. This creates a powerful dynamic: actions in one part of the Circassian nation strengthen the other, and Moscow’s moves against one lead to new losses for Russia elsewhere.
2. Ukraine as a Strategic Ally
Never before has the Circassian nation had as important an ally as it does now in Ukraine. Kyiv recognizes Circassians as natural allies in their shared struggle against Russian imperialism. The deeper Russia becomes embroiled in its war of aggression, the more Ukraine can be counted on to support the Circassian cause. If someone had predicted in 2020 that the Ukrainian parliament would endorse Circassia, it would have seemed unimaginable. Now, it’s only a matter of time before we see stronger declarations of support.
3. The International Shift in Perception
The international community is increasingly recognizing a truth they were once reluctant to admit: Putin embodies the problem, but the Russian Federation’s existence as an imperial state is an enduring threat to world peace. For true stability, Russia must be dismantled. The Circassians, along with other unrecognized or submerged peoples, stand to benefit from this geopolitical shift. The collapse of Russia’s centralized administration offers Circassians an unprecedented opportunity to reclaim their independence.
4. Alliances Within Russia
Circassians also have potential allies within the Russian Federation, including ethnic Russians outside Moscow’s power structure. These regionalists and non-Muscovite Russians also suffer under the centralized “Muscovite yoke” and increasingly see Circassians as a leading force for post-imperial transformation. Much like the Baltic nations’ role at the end of Soviet times, Circassians are poised to play a leadership role in shaping a post-Russian reality.
5. Moscow’s Institutional Weakness
In Soviet and early post-Soviet times, Moscow’s institutions were stronger, making it harder for Circassians to achieve their goals. Now, Putin’s systematic destruction of these institutions has backfired. This collapse makes the prospect of a radically new political order more likely, benefiting peoples like the Circassians. Recognizing this moment’s significance is critical.
Avoiding Self-Defeating Attitudes
Despite these opportunities, there are risks. Some may view the challenges as insurmountable and retreat into inaction, while others might assume victory is inevitable and fail to act decisively. Both attitudes are dangerous. Inaction forfeits today’s advantages, while complacency allows Moscow to claim undeserved victories. Circassians must act carefully, thoughtfully, and urgently. They must adapt to the shifting international environment and focus their efforts where they will have the greatest impact.
Focus on Europe and Turkey
Circassians must recognize that the future of their cause is now more dependent on Europe and Turkey than on the United States. While it is painful for me as an American to admit, Europe—along with Ankara—will play a more decisive role in shaping the region’s future. Circassians should focus their diplomatic and advocacy efforts on Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and Ankara while continuing to engage with Kyiv and their fraternal peoples within Russia.
Leveraging the Diaspora
The Circassian diaspora remains a unique and invaluable resource. To maximize its impact, Circassians need a centralized, multilingual internet portal to provide daily updates on developments in Circassia. Such a platform, accessible in Turkish, Circassian, Arabic, English, French, German, and Ukrainian, would ensure the global community stays informed. This information flow is critical for building and maintaining international support.
Unity Without Uniformity
Circassians must remain united while accepting that unity does not require unanimity. Agreeing on core principles is essential, but diversity of opinion is healthy and necessary. Moscow’s security services are adept at exploiting divisions, so Circassians must be vigilant against attempts to sow discord.
Preparing for Moscow’s Escalation
Finally, as Circassians approach their goal of reviving their state, they must anticipate increased aggression from Moscow. The collapse of the Russian Empire this time will be more radical and may even lead to Russia’s dissolution. This prospect terrifies Moscow, making its reaction likely to be more violent and subversive. Circassians must counter this with accurate, timely information to rally international support and prevent Russian narratives from dominating the discourse.
Conclusion
In closing, I want to thank the organizers for allowing me, a supportive outsider, to participate in this important gathering. I look forward to the day when the International Conference on Independent Circassia (ICIC) can hold such conferences not in foreign capitals, but in a revived and flourishing Circassian state. God willing, I hope to join you all there in celebration.
Thank you.

When Putin Called Kazakhstan ‘a Russian-Speaking Land,’ Tokayev Responded by Speaking Kazakh

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 28 – When Vladimir Putin came to Astan to take part in the summit of the Organization for the Collective Security Treaty, the Russian leader called Kazakhstan “a Russian-speaking land.” His Kazakhstan counterpart, Kasym-Jomart Tokayev, who spoke next responded in Kazakh, forcing Putin and his entourage to seek translations.
    In many respects, Tokayev’s response was emblematic of Putin’s failure in Kazakhstan, a failure that Russian commentators have acknowledged by suggesting that the Russian leader did not get want he wanted and that his meetings with Central Asian leaders were less than a success (novgaz.com/index.php/2-news/3828-путин-обещал-всех-прикрыть).
    In fact, as Viktoriya Andreyeva, one of these writers put it, “Putin’s visit to Kazakhstan demonstrated that Moscow is losing control over even its closest allies. Tokayev by his open gestures gave him to understand that Kazakhstan no longer intends to be a silent partner” but will speak with its own voice (rusmonitor.com/kazahstan-protiv-rossii-diplomaticheskaya-igra-na-vysshem-urovne.html).
    “For Russia,” she observes, such a signal is one more reminder that the era of the unqualified influence of Moscow on the post-Soviet space is coming to an end,” exactly the opposite of what Putin hoped for when he began his expanded war in Ukraine almost three years ago.

Part of Liberal Russian Opposition Now Ready to Cooperate Closely with Regionalist and Nationalist Groups

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 28 – Most liberal Russian opposition, whose members overwhelmingly come from Moscow but now live abroad, typically want little or nothing to do with their regionalist counterparts, let alone nationalist groups which aspire to independence from Moscow for their nations.
    On the one hand, this division means that the liberal Russian in most cases to cooperate with regionalists and nationalists not only takes Muscovite positions which are in many cases almost indistinguishable from those of the Kremlin but loses the opportunity to draw on the energy of opposition groups beyond the ring road.
And on the other, it means that regionalists and nationalists, having failed to win acceptance from the Russian liberals, often are excluded by governments in the West from the kind of contacts and support officials in these governments are prepared to extend to the liberals (e.g., windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/munich-security-conference-invites.html).
    (For background on this problem and occasional efforts in recent years to overcome it, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/russian-and-non-russian-opposition.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/12/russian-liberals-unwillingness-to-drop.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/07/russian-liberals-and-non-russian.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/09/russian-opposition-and-regionalists.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/russian-liberal-opposition-moves-closer.html).
    And on the other, regionalists and nationalists having failed to win acceptance from the Russian liberals often are excluded by governments in the West from the kind of contacts and support officials in these governments are prepared to extend to the liberals (e.g., https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/munich-security-conference-invites.html).
    Now,  one of the most prominent liberal Russian opposition structures, the Congress of Peoples Deputies of Russia, appears set to expand cooperation with h regionalist and nationalist forces (idelreal.org/a/ilya-ponomaryov-sobiraet-svoy-maydan-udastsya-li-soyuz-horoshih-russkih-s-natsionalno-osvoboditelnymi-dvizheniyami/33217982.html).
    Ilya Ponomaryov, whose brainchild the Congress is, has proposed creating a new consultative body that would include not only Russian liberals and regionalists but also nationalist groups that have declared as their goal the achievement of state independence from Moscow.
    His proposal which remains to be fleshed out and about which there is far from complete agreement even among his allies – they’ve already rejected his call to label the group “a maidan” -- will be taken up by the Congress at its next meeting in December. But his ideas are certainly music to the ears of regionalist and national liberation groups.
    Ponomaryov says that for his part, he and his allies don’t want to promote the disintegration of Russia but that “on the other hand, regions and national republics which want to become independent” should have such an opportunity “because we are talking about a new country in the future, a Russian Republic.
    Now and in the immediate future, the liberal Russian opposition leader continues, “the congress and the national liberation movements” can work together as “equal partners,” especially as there is much common ground for action and many problems about the future to be discussed.
    According to Ponomaryov, the republics most likely to leave are Chechnya and Sakha. What will happen in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan is far from clear, and “the most complicated region” in this regard is Dagestan.  He added that liberal Russians simply don’t know whom the people will support in many places – and it is their voice which must be heard and followed.

Russia Facing an Increasingly Serious Shortage of Policemen, Interior Ministry Officials Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 29 – Putin’s Russia may be a police state; but it is now facing what may be for some an unexpected problem: an ever-larger shortage of policemen. Three years ago, it had 90,000 unfilled slots; now, that number has almost doubled to 152,000, nearly one in five of all officers on the force.
    The reasons for this shortfall are not far to seek. Many men who might have become policemen have joined the army and are fighting in Putin’s war in Ukraine; and others are put off by the low pay police in Russia receive and are taking jobs elsewhere in the economy (rosbalt.ru/news/2024-11-29/peterburgu-ne-hvataet-lyudey-v-pogonah-5263030).
    Low pay is a particular source of problems because now “even migrants,” interior ministry officials say, are paid less than the police; and unless the government increases the salaries it pays its police, the regime may have no one to serve as its first line of defense against crime and the threat of mass protests.  

Russian Women have Used More than Two Million ‘Morning After’ Abortion Pills in 2024

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 28 – As the Russian government has imposed ever greater limitations on access to abortions, Russian women have turned to the use of “morning after” pills to deal with unwanted pregnancy. So far this year, the DSM Group which tracks phamaceuticals, says they have used some two million of these pills.
    That continues a trend, the researchers say. Between 2019 and 2023, Russian women bought a total of 11 million such pills, with the numbers rising during the covid pandemic and at the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine in February 2022 (newizv.ru/news/2024-11-28/god-semi-govorite-rossiyanki-udvoili-traty-na-ekstrennuyu-kontratseptsiyu-434675).
    The Russian authorities have restricted access to these pills by increasingly requiring prescriptions for their purchase, but they have not imposed in countrywide and many women are still able to purchase these pills without the approval of a doctor. According to DSM, they have spent almost eight billion rubles (80 million US dollars) over the last five years.
    The widespread use of such medications shows that many Russians are not willing to respond positively to the Kremlin’s call to boost the birthrate and even have found a means to prevent pregnancies without having to go to hospitals or other medical facilities to get abortions. And at the very least, this will further complicate the Kremlin’s desire to boost the birthrate.  

Nearly a Third of All Russians Now Over the Age of 55, the Highest Share Ever

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 28 – According to the Russian labor ministry, 30 percent of Russians are now over 55, the highest share in the history of the country and one that means that the demographic “burden” pensioners place on those of working age is increasing as well, with there now being 471 pensioners to every 1,000 workers, a figure up from 413 only eight years ago.
    This aging of the Russian population, however, is the product less of improved healthcare and living conditions for the older cohorts than of the decline in the number of births (moscowtimes.ru/2024/11/27/dolya-rossiyan-starshe-55-let-dostigla-maksimuma-vsovremennoi-istorii-rossii-a148825 and moscowtimes.ru/2024/11/28/vrossii-predlozhili-schitat-molodezhyu-lyudei-do60-let-a149006).
    In response to these new figures, Veronika Skvortsova, head of the Federal Medical-Biological Agency, has proposed changing the Russian law which currently defines young people as those under 35 to one that suggests Russians are young until 60, far older than the WHO says (ria.ru/20241128/molodost-1986224254.html).
    That may make for good propaganda, but it will do little to address the very real problems of an aging Russian population.    

Putin Regime has Taken Steps to Boost Birthrate but Very Little to Help Families after Children are Born, Russian Expert Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton,, Nov. 27 – A Russian demographer speaking anonymously says that the Putin regime has taken a variety of steps to boost the birthrate, including its latest moves to rate governors on the basis of how much they do, but at the same time, Moscow has done very little to help families after the children are born.
    As a result, the demographer says, Russians can see that having a child may bring them one-time payments but put additional financial burdens on them over the longer term – and so decide not to have children in the first place despite the bonuses the Putin regime is urging (verstka.media/kak-regiony-budut-povyshat-rozhdayemost-po-trebovaniyu-kremlya).
    That situation is compounded, he and others say, by the fact that many regions lack the money to provide birth bonuses – only seven have done so up to now – and Moscow’s promised assistance has yet to come through. As a result, many governors are reviving Soviet propaganda methods like the celebration of “hero mothers” to try to boost the birthrate and save their jobs.
    Those methods are unlikely to boost the birthrate or save the jobs of the governors involved. Only a massive commitment to improve the lives of families over long periods of time could do that, and Putin has neither the money nor the interest in doing that. Instead, he will continue to spend on his wars and face ever greater problems in finding enough soldiers.

In Cooperation with Kazakhstan, Russia to Open Kazakh-Language Schools in Astrakhan, Orenburg and Tomsk Oblasts

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 27 – At a time when Moscow is closing schools where instruction is in the non-Russian languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation, the governments of the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan have agreed to open Kazakh-language schools in three Russian oblasts – Astrakhan, Orenburg, and Tomsk – where there are sizeable Kazakh populations.
    In exchange, the two have agreed to the opening of new Russian-language schools in the southern regions of Kazakhstan, an area that is overwhelmingly Kazakh but at least in urban areas also overwhelmingly Russian speaking (eurasiatoday.ru/kazahskie-shkoly-v-rossii-novaya-initsiativa-ukreplyaet-kulturnye-svyazi/).
    The most significant impact of this plan is likely to be in Orenburg, the one-time capital of Kazakhstan, the land bridge between that country and the Turkic and Finno-Ugric republics and a place where the ethnic balance is shifting against the Russians (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/orenburg-corridor-arose-because-kazakhs.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/tatars-stress-turkic-and-muslim.html, jamestown.org/program/the-orenburg-corridor-and-the-future-of-the-middle-volga/, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/tatars-and-bashkirs-must-recover.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/representatives-of-middle-volga-nations.html).
    But there is another possible consequence of this plan that cannot be ignored, although it is less likely in the short term; and that is this: Other countries bordering the Russian Federation which have significant diasporas inside the current borders of that country could seek a similar arrangement, moves that would help to promote the survival of non-Russian peoples there.

One Million Migrant Workers Left Russia in First Nine Months of 2024, Expert Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 27 – Approximately one million migrant workers left Russia during the first three quarters of 2024, the result of restrictions Russian officials have imposed on them, according to Andrey Kladov, an expert on migration who heads the Migrant Services Platform. Some sectors of the Russian economy are already suffering and more will if this continues.
    Kladov says that the departure of migrant workers, most to the Central Asian countries of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is already obvious to the naked eye, with employers now advertising many jobs that migrant workers had filled in the past. Employers have responded by boosting the pay and other benefits they offer.
    According to the specialist on migration, the average monthly wage offered to immigrants rose from 105,000 rubles (1050 US dollars) to 150,000 rubles (1500 US dollars) over this period, but that was not enough to hold immigrants who now must be offered housing and other  benefits in order to keep them from returning to their own countries. 

    Russian officials claim that the total number of migrant workers has not fallen because those departed have been replaced by those arriving, and Kladov in his remarks is not clear as to whether he is speaking about a net decline or simply the number of those who have left. His words about an emerging labor shortage, however, suggest, he is speaking about the former rather than the latter. 

Ruble’s Collapse Now Leading Russians to Remember 1990s and Thus Depriving Putin of His ‘Last Line of Defense,’ Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 27 – For Russians, “the main argument” in favor of Putin is that the Kremlin leader rescued them from the disasters of the 1990s, but the collapse of the ruble exchange rate in recent days has caused many of them to remember that period and thus is depriving him of his “last line of defense,” Abbas Gallyamov says.
    According to the former Putin speechwriter and now Putin critic, “this is already the third shock of this type.” The first is the war in Ukraine and the second is a crime wave sparked by returning veterans (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/6675 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/poslednij-rubezh-oborony).
    More significant is the fact that while the ruble declined earlier at the start of the war, this time around, the war itself has not eclipsed the fall in the value of the ruble as far as most Russians are concerned. That means that now as compared to early 2022, the Russian people are drawing comparisons with the 1990s and Putin is losing their trust as a result.

Unlike Other Post-Soviet States, Russia has Avoided a Wave of Renaming Because It is ‘More Stable,’ Yelovsky Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 27 – Renaming cities or even streets in Russia attracts a great deal of attention, but in fact it has been and will remain relatively rare there in contrast to other post-Soviet state because Russia is “more stable” than the others and changing names doesn’t normally happen unless large groups of people are mobilized, Dmitry Yelovsky says.
    The current plans to rename Rostov-na-Donu and Tutayev are attracting attention, the communications expert says, but they should be seen as efforts by local officials to boost the brands their cities want rather than anything broader, and efforts to rename Volgograd aren’t going anywhere fast (club-rf.ru/76/detail/7501).
Consequently, Yelovsky suggests, there are unlikely to be many such efforts in the future because unlike in the immediate post-Soviet period, the Russian Federation is relatively stable and neither the government nor the population is obsessed with renaming or is ready to pay the price of change.
    Despite his suggest, there are efforts in many places to eliminate Soviet names from streets, many of which are supported by the Russian Orthodox Church. Among the most prominent are some in Kirov which some want to use as a springboard to bring back that city’s tsarist-era name Vyatka (rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=119179).

Only a Revolution from Above Can Save Russia from Crashing into the Scylla of Revolution and the Charybdis of a Post-Revolutionary Dictatorship, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 27 – History strongly suggests that a revolution is possible in Russia but also that any such revolution would be followed by a post-revolutionary dictatorship as “a side effect,” Vladimir Pastukhov says, adding that he has “no confidence” Russia has “enough historical time left for a smooth exit from another dictatorship.”
    Consequently, to have any kind of positive future at all, the London-based Russian analyst says, the country “will have to pass between the Scylla of revolution and the Charybdis of a post-revolutionary dictatorship,” something that succeeds only in legends and myths (t.me/v_pastukhov/1310 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/rossiya-mezhdu-sczilloj-revolyuczii-i-haribdoj-diktatury).
    The only chance for Russia to make this passage successfully, Pastukhov continues, would arise in the even of “a revolution from above,” one that might take place if cooperation could be established “between that part of the Putin elite ripe for change and that part of the anti-Putin counter-elite that is ripe for compromise.”
    Such cooperation, “even for a short period, could smooth out the corners of the post-revolutionary dictatorship and make the descent from the current peak of post-communist neo-totalitarianism smoother,” although any such arrangement would still be marked by tragedies, although much smaller ones than any other arrangement.
    Such a scenario is possible but unlikely not least of which because it would represent “essentially a second attempt at Gorbachev’s perestroika, Pastukhov concludes. But “it would be the most desirable and promising in terms of the pace of the transformation of Russian society into something at least remotely resembling a law-based state.”

Russians Again Making Plans for the Longer Term, VTsIOM Poll Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – After Vladimir Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the percentage of Russians who said they were making long-term plans for the future dropped from 64 percent to 49 percent; but now, having absorbed that shock, the share doing so has risen again to 57 percent, according to a new VTsIOM poll.
    Over the past year, the polling agency which is closely affiliated with the Kremlin, said that those who say they are avoiding making longer term plans because of instability in the country had fallen from 21 percent to seven percent, although the share saying they live only day to day went up from 19 percent to 25 percent (actualcomment.ru/rossiyane-vozvrashchayutsya-k-dolgosrochnomu-planirovaniyu-2411251243.html).
The survey also found that 67 percent say they are now able to achieve their plans while  58 percent say that such outcomes depend “above all” on themselves and that 54 percent say they now expect their children to have better lives than they do. What the survey did not determine is whether Russians have reduced their expectations about themselves or about these prospects.  
Thinking longer term and believing that what happens in their own lives depends on the first instance what they do means that Russians have factored in the war in Ukraine in terms of its impact on them, something the Kremlin no doubt welcomes, and are even thinking about a Russia after Putin departs the scene, something the powers that be almost certainly don’t.

Moscow Planning to Eliminate Journalism Faculties in Russian Universities

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – Dmitry Afanasyev, the Russian deputy minister for science and higher education, has told the Duma that the Russian government plans to eliminate separate journalism faculties in Russian universities and instead train those who are planning to work in the media in philology faculties.
    He argued that “journalism is not a science and therefore doesn’t need a separate faculty” and that in any case, the lines between various professional categories are becoming less sharp than they were as the explanation for this decision of the Russian government (nakanune.ru/articles/122859/).
    But the plan faces opposition from journalists and those who teach journalism. Vitaly Tretyakov, dean of the television faculty at Moscow State University, says that any such unification of the disciplines would harm journalism which has developed its own theories and methods.
    Neither side in this debate which is only now beginning is saying the obvious: the Putin regime has long had problems with journalists, has suppressed most independent outlets and driven many journalists out of their profession and even out of the country, and is now taking steps to destroy its professional training centers in order to better control such people.

‘Stalin’s Mistake’ on the Carpathian Rusins Echoes to This Day, Khavich Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – When Soviet forces drove the Germans out of Transcarpathia, the Rusins, who had been under Czechoslovak rule, declared they did not want to become part of Ukraine but instead sought to become either a separate Soviet union republic or part of the RSFSR in much the same way that Kaliningrad subsequently became.
    But Stalin blocked this and insisted that the Rusins and their land be absorbed into the Ukrainian SSR. This was “Stalin’s mistake,” Oleg Khavich, a pro-Moscow specialist on the western portions of Ukraine, argues in a Regnum commentary (regnum.ru/article/3931507). On Khavich’s background, see my.ua/persons/oleg-khavich.
    Khavich’s article is noteworthy both because suggesting that Stalin made mistakes is now a rarity among pro-Moscow writers and because current Russian discussions about a future partition of Ukraine again involve the Rusins, just as they have in the past (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/04/moscow-again-focusing-on-rusins-of.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/03/russia-must-partition-ukraine-to-ensure.html).
    What is especially disturbing about this commentator’s observations is that he concludes his article by observing that Stalin’s “mistake” has become ever more costly to Russia because the Rusin issue has not yet been resolved, “at least up to now.”

Despite Its Claims, Putin Regime has Nothing in Common with Genuine Conservatism, Sapozhnikov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – For more than a decade, Vladimir Putin has regularly proclaimed that he is a supporter of conservatism, but his approach has nothing in common with genuine conservatism and has been accepted only because internationally conservatism has been defined not in its classical sense but as an anti-liberal ideology, Andrey Sapozhnikov says.
    The Novaya Gazeta commentator argues that Putin’s abuse of conservatism has happened because Russia after 1991 did not initially focus on what it was descended from but on how it wanted to change and then got a leader, Putin, who did not want any additional changes because they would threaten his power (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/11/25/ne-pravye-nepravye).
    When the Russian Federation emerged as a separate country in 1991, Sapozhnikov says, “the issue of its relationship with the past was not a priority concern of the authorities.” Instead, they focused on building something new but using both the methods and often the personalities of the old regime – and any talk about that pastiche could have produced real problems.
    Genuine conservatism, which favors a small state and great respect for the diversity of the population, thus had no basis for developing. The new Russian authorities did not want the state to be limited, and they had little or no respect for the diversity of the population with its varied traditions, the commentator says.
    In actual fact, Sapozhnikov continues, “the Kremlin in principle never considered the territory under its control as a space of habits and traditions worthy of being preserved, defended or subject to coordination.” Instead, it continued to view the population as something it had the right and power to modify at its will, hardly a conservative position.
    Putin’s rise to power did not change this. Instead, he first acted as a continuer of Yeltsin’s approach at home and to the West, but only after his return to power following the Medvedev interregnum, did he begin to talk about traditional values as the core of his ideas, an approach that “was not conservative but defensive.”
    Then, following his expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin began developing his conservative image “for export,” something that was possible because conservatism in the West had changed beyond recognition, from support for a limited state and respect for popular values and traditions to anti-liberalism as such.
    Indeed, Sapozhnikov says, Putin invokes the term conservative in the same way many of its current adepts in the West do as a synonym for opposition to liberal ideas rather than as a political doctrine in its own right. That has brought him a certain success, but it has nothing in common with genuine conservatism, the commentator concludes.

Putin Regime Increasingly Using Stalinist Tactic of Taking as Hostages Family Members of Its Opponents, Pavlov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – In the first years of Putin’s rule, Russian security services occasionally made use of the Stalinist tactic of taking as hostages family members of their opponents; but in the last several, Ivan Pavlov says, this practice has become so widespread as to be almost routine.
    So far, the Russian lawyer says, the Putin regime has sought to intimidate this or that individual into silence or cooperation rather than to frighten the entire society as Stalin did with his jailing of relatives of those it judged to be “enemies of the people.” But there is a great danger that Putin’s moves could grow into that (theins.ru/opinions/ivan-pavlov/276418).
    Pavlov suggests Russia “still has a chance to avoid a repetition of the blackest pages of its history, at least if the current regime quite quickly comes to an end.” Anything short of that, including exposure of the crimes the Putin regime is committing, is unlikely to force the Chekist leader to change his ways.  
    To make his case that this practice has a long history in the Soviet Union and Russia and that it is expanding again under Putin, the Russian lawyer points to a number of cases involving the arrest of wives of prominent dissidents like Leonid Gozman and the arrest of those that the regime hopes to exchange with the West for its own agents.
    Some of the cases are well-known in the West including the arrest of the brother of Aleksey Navalny but many have taken place without the kind of attention that might dissuade at least some in the Russian power structures from using a technique most often associated with international terrorists than with governments.
    Unfortunately, as Pavlov documents, the Putin regime is now acting in this regard the same way as such terrorist groups do and is better classified as a terrorist organization than a state like any other.  

Keeping Russia in One Piece will Involve Bloody Wars; Allowing Its Peoples to Go Their Own Way Won’t, Pskov Republic Center Head Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – A major reason opponents of the pursuit of independence by regional and national groups within the current borders of the Russian Federation will inevitably entail  bloody wars, while keeping all of them under Moscow’s rule will ensure peace. But that is exactly the opposite of what is the case, Artyom Tarasov says.
    In reality, the head of the new Pskov Regional Center says, Moscow has launched bloody wars against the Chechens and Georgians in the past and Ukrainians now and will continue to do so as part of its effort to maintain the Kremlin’s power (idelreal.org/a/aktivisty-zayavili-o-sozdanii-pskovskogo-respublikanskogo-tsentra-/33213246.html and facebook.com/groups/661124300699950/permalink/3714332012045815).
    Tarasov made that comment when he announced in Warsaw earlier this week the formation of the Pskov Regional Center which seeks independence for its people, the revival of their language which is close to Belarusian and the development of close ties with the West and which has already demonstrated the ability to reach peaceful agreements with regional groups to its north and south.  
    The announcement of the formation of the Center in Warsaw and Tarasov’s words about what is really the source of bloody conflicts won support from a variety of regional and ethnic movements whose leaders are now forced to live and work abroad, including the Ingermanlanders and Smolensk Regional Center.  
    That Pskov should want to escape from Muscovite rule should come as no surprise. It is one of the poorest federal subjects with the life expectancy of its population being only 50 – and the difference between that rate and life expectancies in neighboring Latvia and Estonia being one of the largest in the world (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/10/life-expectancy-in-many-russian-regions.html).    
    Because of these characteristics of the Pskov population and the insights of the leader of the Pskov Regional Center, it would thus be a mistake to dismiss this formation as just another child of what is often the hothouse of émigré groups. But of course, only the future will tell whether the Pskov movement will take off or Moscow will use bloody means to block it.

Kremlin Destroying Environment and Environmental Movement Russia’s Green Think Tank Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – On the pretext of supporting Russian business in response to Western sanctions, the Kremlin has largely eliminated government oversight designed to protect the environment and is working to crush the last remnants of the independent environmental activist community, according to Russia’s Green Think Tank organization.
    The result is that “Russia’s militarized economy is now ruining the environment and that “the situation will likely deteriorate further regardless of the war’s outcome” because the Putin regime shows no signs of being willing to restore the regulations it has scrapped or allow the environmental movement to recover (theins.ru/politika/276364).
    The consequences for Russia and Russians are increasingly horrific, the Green Think Tank says; but they are also serious for other countries and peoples because the consequences of Moscow’s approach are spreading into other countries because environmental contamination is no respecter of national borders.
    As a result, the group says, what Russia is doing to the environment must become a matter of concern to governments and peoples in other countries before it is too late and the consequences Russians are already suffering from spread to them as well.

Push for Family Values Opening the Way for Full-Blown Fascism in Russia, Kordochkin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – The Putin regime’s push for family values is not only about ensuring that Russia will have enough manpower to fight more wars or to legitimate the Kremlin by distracting people from its failures at home and abroad but most seriously about opening the way to “the hell” of full-blown fascism in Russia, Archpriest Andrey Kordrochkin says.
    The Spain-based Russian Orthodox priest who has been banned from conducting services by the Moscow Patriarchate for his opposition to Putin’s war in Ukraine says that the Putin regime has very different goals than the ones it trumpets in its current campaign for “traditional values” (theins.ru/opinions/andrei-kordochkin/276320).
    It isn’t just to ensure that Russians will have more children so that Putin will have more soldiers but rather so that Russians will have a new domestic enemy at a time when the war in Ukraine is headed toward its third anniversary and so that they will see Putin’s power as sacred and go along with his efforts to impose fascism on Russia.  
    Those latter goals, as Umberto Eco’s well-known list of the 14 markers of fascism show, are vastly more important and more dangerous than even the horrific and immoral attacks on homosexuality or childfree beliefs especially in a country where life expectancy remains low by international standards and broken families are the norm.
    If the Putin regime were really interested in promoting strong families, it would be acting very differently than it is, Kordorchkin says, and Russians would know far more about Putin’s family life. Indeed, he says, Putin likely ordered the death of opposition figure Aleksey Navalny precisely because he had a strong family and Putin couldn’t stand the comparison with himself.

Putin’s Push to Standardize Russian History Textbooks Speeds Up – and Experts See Trouble Ahead

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 22 – Having mandated a single permitted Russian history textbook for grades 10 and 11 this year, the Putin regime plans to do the same thing for grades five through nine next fall, a standardization that the Kremlin hopes will help it shape the next generation but a move that critics say won’t have the impact Moscow expects.
    There are a variety of reasons for that conclusion, educational specialists surveyed by Novyye Izvestiya say, among which the most prominent is the following: most students don’t read the textbooks but rather rely on the lectures of teachers who will continue to push their own ideas (newizv.ru/news/2024-11-22/kak-vo-vremena-sssr-v-shkolah-vvodyat-edinyy-uchebnik-istorii-pedagogi-protiv-434546).
    But over time, this standardization of textbooks will reduce the ideas teachers will draw on, leading to more uniformity, and make it more difficult for them and their students to keep up with the latest historical research. Indeed, these critics suggest, that may be the unspoken intention of the Kremlin which wants a single version of Russian history.
    However that may be, many expect parents, pupils and teachers to like the new system because it will help those who have to take school-leaving examinations pass them even if it makes it even more likely that Russia’s schools will increasingly teach for the test rather than anything else.

Joining Russian Army to Fight in Ukraine Allowing Some Russian Men to Evade Paying Court-Ordered Alimony

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – Yet another group of victims of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine has emerged inside the Russian Federation: ex-wives who now find that their former husbands are typically able to evade paying court-ordered alimony and related child support if they join the Russian military to fight in Ukraine.
    The precise number is unknown, but there are currently some two million Russians who have been awarded alimony payments. And when women who have not received them have gone to court, they have failed in most cases, perhaps especially in cases where the former husband is now in the military (sibreal.org/a/resheno-s-svoshnikov-ne-vzyskivat-kak-sbezhat-ot-alimentov-na-voynu/33205567.html).
    Lawyers for these women say that the military command is uncooperative in many cases and certainly does not adjust the alimony payments when the incomes of the men jump as a result of the bonuses that those who agree to fight for Putin in Ukraine receive not only initially but for the length of their service.
    This situation is creating serious hardships for the former wives and the children involved, and this human tragedy is likely to have demographic consequences as well. Many Russian women may decide that it is too big a risk to give birth if their husbands can leave them, volunteer for the army, and then evade paying alimony.  

Creeping Annexation? Moscow Expands Use Border Regions to Increase Its Influence in Neighboring Belarusian Ones

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – Vladimir Putin has taken another page from Stalin’s playbook and is using the western border regions of the Russian Federation to expand Moscow’s influence in neighboring Belarusian ones, weakening Minsk and raising questions about the Kremlin’s intentions not only with regard to annexing Belarus but using it to attack Ukraine.
    According to two new reports (rubaltic.ru/article/ekonomika-i-biznes/20241123-regiony-belarusi-i-rossii-uglublyayut-ekonomicheskoe-vzaimodeystvie/ and eurasia.expert/regiony-belarusi-i-rossii-ukreplyayut-gorizontalnye-svyazi/), Moscow has quietly expanded this effort over the last several months.
    Using border regions to promote larger policy goals has been a long-standing Russian and before that Soviet strategy (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/09/russian-governors-playing-increasing.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/12/cross-border-trade-means-for-russia-to.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/06/moscow-expanding-its-influence-in.html).
    But the situation with regard to such regional cooperation in the Russian-Belarusian case now inevitably raises questions about Moscow’s intentions -- especially in the wake of Putin’s war in Ukraine, one that the Kremlin invoked as a casus belli earlier transfers of what it claims as Russian territories, including Crimea and the Donbass, to Ukraine.
    That is all the more so because as one Moscow writer has pointed out, “the most significant land gift from the RSRSR under Stalin” to another republic did not involve transfer of control of territory from Russia to Ukraine but land from Russia to Belarus (russian7.ru/post/kakie-territorii-stalin-prisoedinil/).
    Between 1924 and 1926, the Soviet government transferred from the RSFSR to Belarus, almost all of Vitebsk, Mogilyev and Gomel oblasts, moves far larger than the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine and that increased the size of the Belarusian SSR by three times (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/07/stalin-frequently-modified-russias.html).

Afghan Islamists Attack Chinese Nationals in Tajikistan

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – For the first time, Afghan militants connected with the Islamic State have attacked Chinese citizens in Tajikistan following a declaration that such attacks are in response to Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang and represent the beginning of “an anti-Chinese jihad,” Andrey Serenko says.
    The attack took place on Nov. 18 near the Afghan-Tajik border where Chinese specialists are helping the Tajiks to develop a gold mine, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta journalist says. According to Tajik officials, one Chinese worker was killed and four wounded; according to unofficial reports, these numbers were far higher (ng.ru/kartblansh/2024-11-24/3_9141_kb.html).
    Serenko says that the Islamists came into Tajikistan from Afghanistan and then returned there, a sign that “to put it mildly, there are very serious shortcomings in the protection of the state border” between the two countries. He doesn’t mention that Russian forces play a key role in protecting that border and have clearly failed in this case.    
    This is not the first time that Afghan militants have crossed the border and attacked Chinese citizens, but it is the first time that a group identifying itself with the Islamic State and promising to launch a jihad against China has done so, something that raises the stakes of what has just happened.
    China already has a significant security presence in Tajikistan, both in direct support of Dushanbe and in the form of PMCs. Up to now, it has shared responsibility for security there with Russia; but this latest attack could easily tip that balance and lead to an expanded Chinese presence along the Afghan border.
    For background on those possibilities, which could prove explosive, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/08/chinese-private-military-companies-now.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/10/china-increasing-its-military-presence.html and jamestown.org/program/russia-china-dividing-responsibilities-in-tajikistan-is-conflict-possible/.

Most Russians Resemble Putin in Their Basic Dispositions and Thus Support His War, Eidman Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – When Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022, few Russians were on his side; but now the majority is, not so much because of propaganda or fear, but because most Russians share Putin’s basic dispositions and thus are in their own situations little Putins, Igor Eidman says.
    The Russian commentator who now lives in exile in Berlin argues that most Russians share Putin’s “imperial ambitions, his cruelty, national arrogance, xenophobia and homophobia, patriarchal sexism, and masculine authoritarianism” and thus have come to back the war “as a natural continuation of all this” (t.me/igoreidman/1858 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/takie-kak-putin).
    When he was still living in Russia, Eidman continues, he “constantly encountered people like Putin, cruel authoritarians full of imperial arrogance, Muscovite, national or other. There have always been almost 100 percent of such people in the security forces,” but they exist far more widely than that.
    “I have met many Putins in completely different environments” – as physical education teachers, factory workers or even university instructors, “Putins as bandits and Putins as government officials.” And thus he concludes that “the average Russian man is most often a Putin as well.”
    Eidman concludes with a confession that strengthens his argument: “I myself was partly a Putin, when morally I found myself on the side of the empire during the First Chechen war, and even now I understand that I have not yet completely squeezed the Putin out of myself.”

Many Russians Terrified about What Will Happen when Veterans of War in Ukraine Return Home, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – While some Russians are undoubtedly eagerly awaiting their return of men from the war in Ukraine, others are terrified about what these veterans will do, given that some of these veterans are former criminals and others hardened by the war may create havoc or even kill people when they come back, Alla Leonova says.
    In a 3500-word article, the Novosibirsk journalist for the Horizontal Russia news portal describes the crimes, including murder, returning Russian veterans have already inflicted on that city’s residents and the fears others there have about the future (semnasem.org/articles/2024/11/22/ves-dom-boitsya-chto-on-vernetsya-s-vojny).
    These stories give a face to the statistics the Vyorstka news agency recently released showing that returning Russian veterans have been involved in the murder of almost 500 people at home since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine (verstka.media/veterany-svo-ubili-i-pokalechili-v-rossii-pochti-500-chelovek).
    Such fears do not mean that these Russians want the war to continue, but they suggest that as the number of veterans returning home does increase, hostility to them as a group is likely to increase, putting the Putin regime’s effort to cast the veterans as the future elite of the country on a collision course with the attitudes of the Russian people.

OVD-Info Launches 'Repression Dashboard' to Fight Growing Western Apathy and Fatigue over Negative Stories on Russia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 21 – OVD-Info which for 13 years has gathered information on repression in Russia has now launched what it calls the Criminal Repression Dashboard to make such data more widely available for analysis and to fight what its activists call growing Western apathy about negative information coming out of Putin’s Russia.
    The new data source is available at repression.info/criminal/ and these reasons for its launch are discussed by its organizers who have long run a 24-hour hotline for Russians targeted by the Putin regime and who have been arrested or otherwise threatened at meduza.io/en/feature/2024/11/21/political-persecution-in-russia-by-the-numbers.
    One can only welcome the appearance of this new tool but only regret both the work that OCD-Info has had to do and the fact that it has had to set up such a tool because it must deal with an international community increasingly indifferent to the increasingly vicious behavior of the Russian authorities.  

84 Percent of Russian Men who Kill Their Wives were Drunk at the Time, Court Data Show

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 22 – Even though the Russian government decriminalized family violence in 2017, Russian courts are still called upon to adjudicate the most serious cases, including murder, although in most cases, the courts hand down sentences at the lower end of the range established by law, according to a study by the Vyorstka news portal.  
    But perhaps most striking was its finding that in the first half of 2024, 84 percent of Russian men convicted of killing their wives were drunk at the time of the murders, according to Russian court data (verstka.media/kalendar-domashnego-nasiliya and sibreal.org/a/bolshinstvo-ubiystv-zhenschin-v-rossii-sovershayut-pyanye-muzhchiny/33210631.html).
    In many countries, alcohol use lies behind murders and especially those within families; but the Russian figure is especially high – and the role of alcohol in family violence there is likely even higher if one considers all the acts of violence by Russian men against Russian women.

Nearly Half of All Ethnic Kazakhs who have Returned to Kazakhstan Since 1991 Come from China

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 22 – Since Kazakhstan gained independence in 1991, 1,144,900 ethnic Kazakhs who had been living abroad have returned to that country. Nearly half of them (45.9 percent) come from China, another 39.2 percent from Uzbekistan, and the remainder from other former Central Asian republics and the Russian Federation.  
    More than half are of working age, and only 9.4 percent are pensioners, according to the Kazakhstan Ministry of Labor and Social Defense of the Population. A fifth have higher educations, but three percent have no education at all (zakon.kz/obshestvo/6457606-kazakhstan-prinyal-11-mln-etnicheskikh-kazakhov-s-1991-goda.html).    
    Most came in the 1990s when they were known as oralmany, and the influx has slowed to about 10,000 annually in recent years; but discussions about them remain lively because the history of their departure from Kazakh lands and their role in both those countries and the Kazakhstan to which they have returned is enormous.
    Many of those who had been living abroad are descendants of those who fled during the troubled early years of Soviet power and especially during the sedentarization and collectivization campaigns at the end of the 1920s and the early 1930s that most Kazakhs now count as an act of Muscovite genocide against their nation.
    Kazakhstan has an extensive program of support for such people, who are referred to as kandasy, including providing them with the funds to purchase property and adapt to conditions there (zakon.kz/pravo/6455073-prisvoenie-statusa-bezhentsa-v-kazakhstane-obnovleny-pravila.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-in-name-kazakhstans-oralman.html).

Circassians Should Create a Worldwide Parliament to Improve Cooperation among Themselves and with Other Groups, Circassian Activist Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 23 -- Marianne Sheru, a representative of the US-based Cherkess Center, called on Circassians around the world to create a World Circassian Parliament in order to improve cooperation among themselves, raise their profile internationally, and improve cooperation with other nations and governments.  
    The activist proposed that at a meeting of the International Council of Independent Circassia (ICIC) in Istnabul (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid033ZSi2EBvroCUDayLvxRh11NuyraeD4ZqN9C5zetNBr4Wkk3FA7epuZvsKjXMNV2Zl&id=100081589465202).
    She suggested that such a parliament should come into existence following the creation first of a coordination council of Circassian organizations and activists and then the convention of a new world congress of Circassians so that members of that nation will not only remember their past but take the necessary steps to build their future.
    Three aspects of Sheru’s proposals are worth noting. First, what she suggests is an obvious way to help overcome the attacks on the Circassians that Moscow has launched so as to keep them divided and thus less influential both in the homeland and diaspora and among other nations.
    Second, it represents a new effort by Circassians to reach out to others in the course of their effort to seek independence for their nation, a reaching out that indicates the Circassians more than many other groups views cooperation with others as a guarantee of success in that effort.
    And third – and this is especially important – it brings the often-divided Circassians into line with Russian deputies and a series of non-Russian émigré organizations in forming umbrella groups like a congress in the first instance and governments in exile in the second that may represent the next phase of the drive for independence by such groups.  

Non-Russians Must Overcome ‘Internalized Colonialism,’ Shabashevich Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 22 – Non-Russians within the current borders of the Russian Federation face many problems, but one of the most serious is “internalized colonialism” when members of these groups “adopt the views of representatives of the majority, even if they actually contain prejudices directed against you and people like you,” Dor Shabashevich says.
    The Russian-Israeli sociolinguist gives as an example of this phenomenon when “a Kazakh from an aul near Astraskhan moved to the city, began to interact with ‘fashionable guys’ and at some point declares that he would never date a Kazakh woman” because “they are all stupid collective farmers” (semnasem.org/articles/2024/11/15/zachem-uchit-sohranyat-i-prodvigat-yazyki-korennyh-narodov-otvechaet-sociolingvist).
    And non-Russians say such things even if they speak their own national language or view it as part of their identity, Shabashevich says. Such “internalized colonialism” is a threat to the survival of their languages and thus their nations and should be fought by all those who want these things to survive. But to do so, everyone must first recognize that this problem exists.  

Liberalism Now Defeated in Russia and the US ‘Unfortunately’ will Return and Possibly in the Form of a ‘Liberal Monarchy,’ Surkov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 20 – Vladislav Surkov, sometimes referred to as “Putin’s brain” and a commentator with enormous influence in the Kremlin, says that liberalism has now suffered a crushing defeat in the US just as it did in Russia two decades ago but that “unfortunately” it may return from unexpected directions and in the unexpected form of “a liberal monarchy.”
    In a new essay entitled “The Sexual Counter-Revolution and Liberalism,” Surkov argues that liberalism lost its way and instead of dealing with “real problems” switched “instead to far-fetched and noisy conversations about sex” and insisted that everyone accept that there are multiple genders and not just two (actualcomment.ru/seksualnaya-kontrrevolyutsiya-i-liberalizm-2411201547.html).
    This “latest attempt at a sexual revolution failed miserably,” he says; and “the counter-revolution, thank God, is triumphant. The attack of perverts and paragenders has been repelled.” But the reason for the defeat of this idea is more important because it carries with it a message for the future.
    According to Surkov, “liberalism degenerated into libertinism for one simple reason: freedom itself has ceased to be valuable.” It used to be a privilege but “under conditions of ass democracy … to be free means to be like everyone else. That’s boring, and there is a temptation to live without freedom given the possibility that this will be more fun.”
    “And by the way,” the commentator says, “it will be.”
    “Previous generations paid for American freedom with blood and sweat,” he continues. “The current one got it for free as a matter of course. As a result, freedom itself is something ordinary and no one cares about it. Having achieved its original goals, it has ceased to be one” itself and those who promote it have lost their face.
    What happened first in Russia in 2003 and now in the US, Surkov argues, is this. Because liberals advanced meaningless goals, they were defeated. But that isn’t the end of history that some may imagine because “sooner or later,” liberalism will “unfortunately” return, although it may not look like anything today’s liberals would recognize or claim.
    The liberalism of the future may come from China or from the Arab world, he suggests. And such liberal regimes “do not necessarily have to be democratic. Locke for one actually suggested that democracy was harmful to freedom; and a monarchy is useful instead.” Indeed, if there is such a thing as “illiberal democracy, then there can be a “liberal non-democracy.”
    Consequently, there is good reason to fear the return of liberalism in the West and in Russia; and those who oppose such liberalism need to recognize that possibility and do what they can to fight against it.
    Surkov’s words are in many respects playful and over the top, but they are worthy of note precisely because they likely reflect the way in which the current master of the Kremlin views the situation and how he is likely to present to others of the currently victorious anti-liberal coalitions elsewhere.