Russia Doesn’t Have a Shortage of People: It has a Shortage of Skilled Positions and People Trained for Them, Krupnov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 4 – Russia does not have a shortage of people as most of the discussions of migration and the need to boost the birthrate assume but rather a shortage of jobs that require high levels of skill and sufficient personnel with the training to fill them, according to Moscow demographer Yury Krupnov.
    In short, the senior scholar at the Moscow Institute of Demography, Migration and Regional Development says, Russia like much of the Soviet economy before it has a Third World kind of economy in which many are employed in make work jobs because they lack skills and thus can’t earn the money needed to a middle class life (svpressa.ru/society/article/445006/).
    Only about a third of Russia’s 75 million jobs require high levels of skill and get the pay that such jobs bring. Two-thirds are jobs that are basically unskilled and could easily be done away with, Krupnov says. For example, the millions of unskilled who guard the displays or elevators in department stores.
    Moreover, the demographer continues, “compared to Soviet times, the number of officials per 1,000 people has doubled,” a number that isn’t justified by the skills or training such people have and that holds the economy down and leads the occupants of these positions to assume they need more immigrants and babies to justify their positions.
    According to Krupnov, Russia’s “shortage of personnel is not the result of a lack of people but rather of the lack of promising areas of employment,” where those who occupy these jobs are highly skilled and well paid and thus in a position to live “decently” rather than scraping by.
    Moreover, he continues, “to put it simply, we do not have a shortage of personnel but a shortage of jobs which in the terminology of the International Labor Organization provide decent work.” Russia has too few such jobs and thus remains mired in a Third World kind of economy. Moving to a modern one is what the country should be focusing on.
Of course, Russia needs an adequate migration policy and an adequate demographic policy; but talk about getting more people alone which is what the discussions about these two have been reduced to prevents Moscow from addressing the problem of creating real jobs and training people to fill them.

Bashkirs Burn Flag of Pre-1917 Russian Empire under which Some Russian Troops have Been Fighting in Ukraine

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 4 – A scandal has broken out in Bashkortostan where a group of Bashkirs has burned the flag of the Russian Empire after young people in emulation of veterans of the Ukrainian war returned and declared that they and other Russian troops were fighting under that banner there.
    Details about this are still fragmentary and the republic authorities have not yet reacted although the group of Russians who flew the flag have apologized and said they would use a banner incorporating both the Russian flag and the Bashkortostan flag in the future (echofm.online/stories/v-bashkortostane-ne-utihayut-strasti-vokrug-flaga-rossijskoj-imperii).
    It is likely that the Russians involved were members of or associated with the Russian Community, a Russian nationalist group that has frequently used symbols from imperial Russia and has not been shy about displaying them and helping authorities suppress non-Russian groups (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/extremist-russian-community-now-active.html,  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/another-black-hundreds-group-revived-in.html and jamestown.org/program/russian-community-extremists-becoming-the-black-hundreds-of-today/).
    But the readiness of Bashkirs, currently being subject to the largest trial of protesters in the contemporary Russian Federation, to respond by burning the Russian imperial flag reflects both growing tensions in that republic and the way in which even the appearance of symbols of Russian imperialism can trigger clashes.  

Moscow’s Plans for North-South Transit Corridor Face Five Serious Problems, Russian Analysts Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 4 – Twenty-five years ago, with great hopes, Russia, India and Iran signed with great fanfare an agreement to open a north-south intermodal transportation corridor between Russia in the north and the Indian Ocean in the south. But progress has been slow and is unlikely to accelerate anytime soon, Russian analysts say on this anniversary.
    They point to five key problems, some of which can be solved by changes in the international environment and the lifting of sanctions against Russia and Iran but many of which will take many years to overcome even if such a change opens the way for more international investment in the project (casp-geo.ru/mtk-sever-yug-chetvert-veka-borby-za-marshrut-i-vzglyad-v-budushhee/).
    These five problems include:
•    Sanctions and the geopolitical tensions that have produced them,
•    Unresolved differences among the three signatories on routes and development,
•    The lack of infrastructure or its lack of correspondence among the trade systems of the countries involved,
•    The absence of a single tariff policy and of the harmonization of procedures at borders, and
•    Growing concerns about the environmental impact of the development of this transit route.
All these need to be kept in mind in assessing Russian and Iranian claims about progress on one of Putin’s favorite projects.  

Pay Advantage of Russian Men over Russian Women has Increased since Putin’s War in Ukraine Began, ‘Vyorstka’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 4 – In almost all spheres, Russian men have been paid more than Russian women for the same work; but after this gender imbalance had narrowed in recent decades, it has risen again since the start of Vladimir Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, the Vyorstka news agency reports on the basis of Russian government statistics.
    It analysis of Rosstat figures shows that this is not just an artefact of the Russian government’s bonuses to men who join the military but also to changes in the Russian economy and to the aggressive masculinity of the Putin regime that places more value on the work of men than on that of women (verstka.media/razryv-mezhdu-zarplatami-muzhchin-i-zhenshhin-na-rukovodyashhih-dolzhnostyah-v-rossii-dostig-491-eto-rekord-s-2005-goda).
    Among the many example Vyorstka gives, the following is particularly striking in that regard: Russian women occupying managerial and leadership positions now make only 45 percent of what men in those positions do. In 2021, women received 47 percent of what men were paid.
    Vyorstka doesn’t speculate about the broader implications of this trend, but it may help to explain why Russian women are less supportive of both Putin and Putin’s war.  

Under Putin, Talk about the Past ‘New Opium for the People,’ Pakhalyuk Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 4 – Moscow’s use of the past is transforming history into “a new opium for the people, called upon to ease the pain of changes and to create the sense that ‘the new normal’ is not that new, Konstantin Pakhalyuk says. To encourage that sense and prevent Russians from asking questions, the Kremlin offers a history that is tautological, boring and lacking in ideas.
    The historian, who is now listed by the Russian government as “a foreign agent,” says from the Kremlin’s point of view, these characteristics are an advantage in that they encourage people not to focus too much on the specifics of the past but rather to accept without much reflection the official version (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/01/04/pobedim-otlakiruiut).
    Pakhalyuk says there are three core principles in the construction of such a history: First, the government hopes to continue to play on the cult of victory; second, it wants to promote imperial and Russian ethno-national values; and third it seeks to link the ideas of victory and sacrifice and to promote the idea that only the state can protect Russians from injustice.
    To that end, Kremlin propagandists have stepped up talk about “the genocide of the Soviet people” so as to convince Russians that throughout history, the Russians themselves have been “the chief victims, something that means that there cannot be any moral doubts” about what they have done or are doing.
    All these principles help define how Moscow treats the current war in Ukraine, a conflict which “has not so much acquired its own face as become part of existing commemorative traditions.” That should surprise no one because for the Kremlin “history is the language of the powers that be and not of the people.”

Moscow’s Moves Against Immigrants Violate Russian Constitution and Open the War to Apartheid, El Murid Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 2 – The Russian government’s latest moves against immigrants violate the 1993 Constitution, destroy a common legal space in the country, and thus open the way to apartheid in which citizens will be divided into different groups that will be treated differently as a result, according to Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid.
    “When the constitution was adopted,” he writes, “it was assumed that it would apply throughout the entire territory of Russia down to its last square centimeter and not applied only to some list of approved groups located there” (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/22692 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6777BE2888BE2).
    According to El Murid, it was never intended that such norms “would work for some but not at all for others. But in fact, today, there is no longer any legal space in Russia; there are simply certain norms designed to legitimize violence and the rejection of basic legal principles,” which increasingly lead to the violation of the constitution.
    Many may not be alarmed by this apartheid system because it doesn’t appear to apply to them, the commentator continues. But with the adoption of this new principle, it soon may be and thus they will find themselves in as Pastor Niemoeller moment in which there will be no one left to defend them.  

Putin Demanding of Ukraine Now What Stalin Demanded of Baltic Countries Before Annexing Them Completely, ‘Continuation Follows’ Portal Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 2 – Moscow is doing something now that it has done before, the Continuation Follows portal says. The Putin regime is demanding from Ukraine almost exactly what Stalin demanded from the Baltic countries in 1939 and 1940 before moving to annex them completely.
    Like Stalin with the Baltic countries 85 years ago, Putin is demanding that Ukraine adopt a friendly attitude toward Russia, that it not enter into any military-political blocs that Moscow opposes, and that it accept the presence on Ukrainian territory of a limited contingent of Russian forces (prosleduet.media/details/occupation-of-the-baltic-countries/).
    One of the reasons few want to talk about such parallels is that less than a year after Stalin made these demands and the isolated Baltic governments felt compelled to accept them, the Soviet dictator moved to annex the three leading to an occupation that lasted until the Soviet Union collapsed a half century later.
    Four years ago, Putin published in the National Interest an article about how World War II began and openly stated that the Baltic countries were absorbed into the USSR not by force but “on the basis of a treaty agreed to by the elected leaders,” an action he insisted “corresponded to international law at that time” (nationalinterest.org/print/feature/vladimir-putin-real-lessons-75th-anniversary-world-war-ii-162982).
    What is tragic is that Putin is following Stalin’s playbook step by step, and the Western democracies instead of recognizing this as the opening round of a new world war are pushing Ukraine to come to an agreement with the instigator. At least in 1940, the US and some Western countries adopted a non-recognition policy.
    One can only wonder whether they would be willing to do the same if Putin takes even more steps along the path Stalin trod. The likely answer is anything but encouraging.   

Eight of Ten Top Rated Higher Educational Institutions in Russia are in Moscow

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 2 – Eight of the top ten rated higher educational institutions in the Russian Federation are in Moscow, according to the latest biennial RAEKH survey, yet another indication of the extreme centralization of the Russian Federation as far as the training of new elites are concerned.
    Moscow State University far outdistances all the others, and only two are beyond the ring road – St. Petersburg State University which ranks third and Yekaterinburg’s Urals Federal University which ranks eighth (newizv.ru/news/2025-01-02/nazvany-luchshie-vuzy-rossii-kakie-universitety-stali-kuznitsey-elity-434515).
    And even below the top ten, the extreme centralism of the Russian system is obvious: Of the 74 higher schools mentioned in the survey, 31 were in Moscow, and 13 more in St. Petersburg. Only 31 institutions listed were in other federal subjects of the Russian Federation, and they were found in just 20 of these, less than a quarter of all such territories.
    This pattern will continue to re-enforce the Moscow-centric nature of Russian elites well into the future and mean that then as often in the past any challenges to the centrist nature of the Russian states will emerge in Moscow or at most there and in St. Petersburg rather than in universities in the regions and republics.

Moscow’s High Interest Rates and Anti-Migrant Moves Slowing Growth in Trade with China Dramatically, Usov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 2 – Bilateral trade between Russia and China grew only 2.1 percent during the first 11 months of 2024, down from an increase of 26.7 percent during the corresponding period in 2023, a decline that reflects Moscow’s use of high interest rates to fight inflation and its anti-immigrant stance, according to Pavel Usov.
    The Belarusian economist in Warsaw says other factors, including sanctions, played a role but that high interest rates have Russia less attractive to investors than China itself where rates are far lower and Russian attacks on migrants have made it less attractive for Chinese to work (eastrussia.ru/material/do-kitaya-daleko-i-blizko-perspektivy-i-riski-biznes-partnerstva/).
    Usov’s report highlights the interconnected nature of Moscow’s policies and the way in which its pursuit of some is putting its relationship with China at risk, at least in the coming year or two. It helps explain why the Kremlin has defended migrants in recent weeks and opposed further interest rate increases. But for domestic reasons, it can’t afford to do either for long.  
    And that combination leaves Putin in an increasingly difficult position, one in which his pursuit of one set of economic and political goals will undercut his ability to achieve others.

Moscow Losing Another Battle in Alphabet Wars – This Time in Mongolia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 2 – The Mongolian education ministry has ordered that from now on all official documents in that country will use the national script alongside the Cyrillic alphabet, a change that will further distance Ulan Bator from Moscow and promote closer ties between Mongolia and Mongolian-language speakers in Russia and China.
    The ministry took this step in conformity with the provisions of a 2015 alphabet reform law that had already led to the introduction of the traditional national script in the country’s schools and educational institutions (tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/22813283,  asiarussia.ru/news/44241/ and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/01/ulan-bator-makes-study-of-old-mongolian.html).
    And its move represents yet another slap in the face to Vladimir Putin who has made the maintenance of the Cyrillic alphabet in countries that were once part of the Soviet empire, as well as making it easier for Mongols, Buryats, and Uyghurs living in Mongolia, the Russian Federation and China to interact with one another.
    The classical Mongol vertical writing system was created by Chingiz Khan and was used by Mongols, Buryats and Kalmyks both in Mongolia and the USSR until 1930s. At that time, the Soviet authorities replaced that alphabet first with one based on Latin script and then with one based on Cyrillic.
    The Old Mongolia script as it came to be called remained and remains to this day the second state script in the Chinese Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia; and Beijing’s willingness to support it may be one of the reasons why Russian commentators are not expressing outrage about this latest loss in the alphabet wars.
    But now that Mongolia has made this change, demands for a return to traditional alphabets in Buryatia, Kalmykia and Mongols living in the Russian Federation are likely to increase as some are already doing (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/11/buryats-increasingly-studying-ancient.html).
    And that in turn will spark more concerns in Moscow about the possible revival of pan-Mongolism among them, a trend that has increasingly agitated experts and officials in the Russian capital over the last several years (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/moscow-again-fighting-pan-mongolism.html).

Putin Orders Educational Ministry to Drop Key Reference to ‘Native’ Languages

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 2 – In yet another move against non-Russians in the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin has ordered his educational ministry to change the name of the curriculum module about language from “native language and/or state language” to “language of the people of the Russian Federation and/or state language of the republic of the Russian Federation.”
    This may seem on first glance a small thing, but it is likely to cast an enormous shadow on the future (kremlin.ru/acts/assignments/orders/76077 and nazaccent.ru/content/43353-vladimir-putin-poruchil-sozdat-edinuyu-linejku-uchebnikov-po-russkomu-i-drugim-yazykam-narodov-rossii/).
    This dropping the reference to “native” detaches languages from the ethnic communities which speak them and makes it easier for Moscow to insist that these languages are not theirs from time immemorial but those of the republic in which they are spoken, reducing still further the possibilities of those who don’t have a republic or live within its borders.
    The fact that Putin made this announcement at a time when the Russian Federation is in the midst of its mid-winter holiday suggests that the Kremlin is aware of how unhappy many non-Russians will be about this change and decided to take this step at time when most residents of that country are focused on celebrations rather than government actions.

Putin’s Invasion has Led to ‘Almost Complete Disappearance’ of Differences between Eastern and Western Ukraine about West and Russia, Kyiv Sociologist Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 1 – “The only positive consequence of the war is the near-complete disappearance of regional differences [of opinion] in Ukraine,” Volodymyr Paniotto says. “In  2021, there was strong regional differentiation on most issues, now these differences have practically disappeared.
    But in place of these much commented upon regional differences, the director of Kyiv’s International Institute of Sociology says, now grounds for social stratification have emerged, including most prominently differences among those who are refugees in Europe, those who didn’t move, and those in the occupied territories” (meduza.io/feature/2025/01/01/kak-tretiy-god-voyny-izmenil-ukrainu-i-chto-zhdet-stranu-v-2025-m).
    In addition, Paniotto made the following additional comments on changes in Ukrainian society over the last year:
•    Fewer Ukrainians have died in each year since Putin’s expanded invasion began in 2022 than did from the coronavirus pandemic in 2021.
•    Two-thirds of the six million Ukrainians who have moved abroad won’t return to Ukraine even if there is peace, but many of them will retain their Ukrainian passports.
•    Ukrainians continue to use the Russian language but they have dramatically increased their opposition to instruction in Russian in their country’s schools. In 2019, only eight percent favored ending instruction in Russian; by the end of 2023, that share had risen to 52 percent.
•    Ukrainians have been ready to negotiate an end to the war since it began. As of last fall, a third of them said they would be prepared to give up some territories, but there is no talk about recognizing these territories in the course of negotiations as part of Russia.

Putin’s ‘Consensual Democracy’ Quite Adequate for ‘Totally Passive’ Society, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 31 – Vladimir Putin was chosen to be Yeltsin’s successor because he shared the disappointment Russian elites had in both democracy and the idea of the rule of law and recognized that he and they could rule the country without the direct participation of the population that commitment to those ideas would require, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.
    At the end of 1999, the Russian commentator continues, “the masters of the country” installed Putin and introduced in place of electoral democracy a “consensual” form (moscowtimes.ru/2024/12/31/soglasitelnaya-demokratiya-ili-glubokoe-ponimanie-rossiiskogo-obschestva-a151736).
    According to Inozemtsev, “consensual democracy is most likely a unique Russian invention, a modernization of the Soviet system in the spirit of the 21st century. In it, a narrow circle of the ruling nomenklatura makes a personnel choice” and then this choice is “confirmed during a national or regional plebiscite.”
    Putting this new system in place took “almost two decades,” the commentator continues; but it moved the country “from the imitation of democratic processes within the framework of a single political course toward an increasingly open rejection of all those who disagree with a policy of terror against ‘enemies of the people,’” just as the Soviet system did.
    But consensual democracy differs from its predecessor in two important ways. On the one hand, it did not involve a complete denial of basic freedoms and rights; and on the other, it “remains a democracy since elections are not eliminated or reduced to voting for a single candidate as was the case in communist times.”
    What matters most, Inozemtsev argues is that consensual democracy is “a form of political regime which is adequate to an absolutely passive society, one fully weighted down by its own problems and not wishing to interfere in political processes.” Russians haven’t acted and won’t act as Belarusians and Ukrainians have to the results of such elections.
    “Of course,” the commentator acknowledges, “such a system is unstable and transient; but it is unstable and transient in exactly the same way that the Soviet system was: it can quickly fall apart but only if the impulse in that direction is given by its creators and beneficiaries” rather than by the population or in any other situation.”
    That justifies the following conclusion, Inozemtsev says. “Those who a quarter of a century ago thought about how to keep a not yet fully privatized country under their stable control found the optimal solution, one based on a fairly deep understanding of the Russian people and how much indifference those in power can count on.”
    This understanding of those who installed Putin was “significantly deeper than that of all the representatives of the Russian opposition … who hoped that the people would rise to their defense.” In fact, as the longevity of the Putin regime shows, “Russian society was and remains only ‘an appendage to power,” something that the responses of Russians to Putin’s war confirms.  

By Calling for a State Register of Languages, Putin Sets the Stage for New Moves against Non-Russian Nations

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 1 – More than any of his Russian or Soviet predecessors, Vladimir Putin clearly believes that the language someone speaks defines his nationality and thus his moves against non-Russian languages both among indigenous peoples and against immigrants is part of a larger campaign against these nations as such.
    He has now taken the next step in this process by ordering the Russian government to compile a state register of the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation by May 1, 2025 (vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2025/01/01/1084699-putin-poruchil-sozdat-gosreestr-yazikov-narodov-rossii).
    As there does not appear to be any place in Putin’s mind for people who speak one language but identify as members of another nation, he is likely to use this new register to insist that members of non-Russian groups are in fact Russians in an increasingly ethnic and not just political sense.
    Not only does this approach ignore the reality that there are many people who for one reason or another identify as members of a nation even though they do not speak its titular language and thus to further downgrade the importance of such identities and boost that of languages.
    Given Putin’s Russianizing and Russifying policies, this represents a new and broader attack on non-Russians and sets the stage for both a radical simplification of Russian census data and even of the administrative-territorial map of the Russian Federation in that Putin is likely to use this as the basis for new move against the continued existence of the non-Russian republics.

By 2025, Soviet Leaders Said USSR would have a Base on the Moon, a Bridge to Alaska, and Thousands of Robotic Factories

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 1 – Before their country disintegrated, Soviet leaders routinely predicted a miraculous future for it. Most of those prognostications have been forgotten as has the regime that made them, but what Moscow told its people it would achieve by the middle of the third decade of the 21st century remains important.
    On the one hand, the Soviet leadership’s predictions that it would have by then a base on the moon, a bridge to Alaska and robots operating factories show that Moscow before 1991 was focused on the future not on the past, a very different approach than Putin’s Russia today (mk.ru/politics/2025/01/01/gosudarstvennyy-internet-baza-na-lune-most-na-alyasku-chto-planiroval-sssr-k-2025-godu.html).
    And on the other, such predictions which in almost no case ever came close to being fulfilled help to explain the cynicism of Russians about what Putin and his team predict. They have a long history of being promised the moon, literally, without the Kremlin being able to deliver.

Moscow Boasts about Bridges to China and North Korea but Fails to Build Roads Leading to Them or Train Enough Logistics Experts

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 30 – The week doesn’t go by that one or another Moscow media outlet boasts about highway and rail bridges Russia is opening between itself, on the one hand, and China and North Korea, on the other. But Russian experts concede that these bridges aren’t being used as much as they could be because of the absence of road and rail networks leading to them.
    On the Russian side of these two borders, Moscow has failed to build sufficient highways or rail lines to handle the traffic that the Russian government hopes for and boasts of. As a result, it is now struggling to catch up; but it is unclear whether any crash program will achieve a breakthrough soon (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2024-12-30--mosty-druzhby-rossijanam-stanovitsja-vse-legche-ezdit-v-kitaj-i-kndr-77713).
    But even if Moscow does manage to build more highways and rail lines leading up to these border crossings, it faces another problem which likely means they won’t be as effective at linking these countries together as the Kremlin hopes. At present, it can’t fill 20 percent of number of logistics specialists it needs to make such networks operational.
    These two factors – the lack of adequate infrastructure and the shortage of a sufficient number of specialists – have combined, Russian experts say, to create the kind of bottleneck that will severely limit the value of the much-ballyhooed bridges that Moscow and its neighbors are building.

Russians Outside of Moscow Identify Very Different Stories as Important than Do Muscovites

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 31 – Not surprisingly, in any large country, people in one part of it identify as the most important stories a very different list than do people in other parts. In Russia, this divide is less among the regions than it is between the regions and Moscow, whose residents and rulers set the weather as far as most people are concerned.
    That makes a list of stories the readers of the NeMoskva portal selected as the most important for them particularly significant because it shows that many beyond the ring road have a very different image of what has been going on over the last twelve months than do people in the capital and those who rely on them (nemoskva.net/2024/12/31/oglyanemsya-na-2024-j/).
    It is not based on anything like a representative sample: readers of the portal wrote in with their choices. But it is a useful correction to the end-of-year lists that are now filling up the Russian and Western media about what Russians consider important. Most of them reflect what Muscovites may but not what other Russians do.
The list as reported and described by NeMoskva includes:
•    Turning point of the year: invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the Kursk region
•    Line of the year: farewell to Alexei Navalny in Moscow
•    Protest of the year: street protests in Baymak, Bashkortostan   
•    Aggravation of the year: terrorist attacks in Moscow and Dagestan and conflicts on ethnic grounds in different regions of Russia
•    Disasters of the year: floods and forest fires across the country
•    Solidarity of the year: “Day of Unity of Ingushetia”  
•    Breakthroughs of the year: pipes and dams are breaking all over the country
•    Disasters of the year: the crash of a plane flying to Chechnya and tankers in the Kerch Strait
•    Spit of the year: closure of a center for children with disabilities in Kemerovo Novokuznetsk
•    Resignations of the year: fall of governors in the regions
•    Flashbacks of the year: the return of cards in Kaliningrad and the remains of a murdered journalist in St. Petersburg
•    Attempt of the year: installation and demolition of pillars in memory of those repressed in Tomsk
•    Clash of the year: the dismissal of a teacher from Khabarovsk for dancing in heels - and speeches in his defense
•    Surprise of the year: acquittal of a Buryat human rights activist
•    Trip of the year: Siberian circumnavigation

Arnold Rüütel, ‘a Washington for Estonia,’ Dead at Age of 96

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 1 – Yesterday, at the age of 96, Arnold Rüütel passed away, He served as a senior official in the Estonian SSR during the occupation and later, in a variety of roles, including president of the Estonian Republic, played a key role in helping his country recover its rightful place in the world as part of the West.
    In reporting his death, Postimees noted that he had “not a few supporters and ill-wishers,” with many in both camps focusing only on one aspect of his public activities and ignoring the others (rus.postimees.ee/8161935/bolshaya-galereya-umer-eks-prezident-arnold-ryuytel-tyazheloves-i-dolgozhitel-estonskoy-politiki).
    Many Estonians, especially in the emigration, could never forgive him for statements issued in his name attacking them and defending the Soviet Union; while many others, never forgave him for his role in ending the occupation of Estonia and leading his country into NATO and the European Union.
    That divide has prevented many from seeing him as a man in full.  But that is changing and I believe will continue to change.  Almost a decade ago, I was asked to write a comment about his life for a book Peeter Ernits put together (Viimane Rüütel (Tallinn, 2017). I entitled my submission “A Washington for Estonia.”
    In it, I pointed out that it typically takes three kinds of people to make a successful national revolution, the philosophers who explain why it is necessary, the firebrands who lead the people to make it possible, and the members of the ancien regime who recognize the justice of the pursuit of revolutionary goals and make their institutionalization possible.
    Not surprisingly, in the US and almost all other cases, the philosophers and the firebrands get the better press at least initially. Their stories are more unambiguous and easier to tell, and they dominate the initial histories of the revolution. But over time, it becomes obvious that it is often officials who rose in the old regime but changed sides who are the more important.
    Arnold Rüütel was neither a philosopher nor a firebrand and so he has often been more criticized and less appreciated that those who were one or the other or even in some cases both. But with time, his role as a bridge who made the passage from the old to the new possible is being recognized. I believe that trend will continue.
    For more than 30 years, I have been proud to count myself his admirer and friend. I will miss him; and I believe that as time passes, ever more people will come to recognize just how enormous his contribution was however contradictory it has sometimes been presented..