Bashkir Nationalists Worked with Navalny, Systemic Opposition Candidates During Campaign

Paul Goble

Staunton, March 31 – The Russian presidential election did not change the occupant of the Kremlin, but there are indications that the campaign itself may have changed the arrangement of players on the political board, prompting some groups to combine with others and driving still a third from politics altogether.

One of the most intriguing developments in this regard is evidence from Bashkortostan that some Bashkir nationalists have found it possible to work with both Aleksey Navalny and the candidates of some of the systemic opposition parties and that this experience may carry over to this fall’s elections to the regional parliament.

While many Russian analysts are dismissive that such ties can prove lasting, Moscow almost certainly is concerned even by the possibility because the most powerful national movements at the end of the Soviet period were in those republics where the two groups cooperated.

Both then and in the years since, Moscow has done what it can to play these two groups against one another in order to weaken both and to ensure that the center will remain the arbiter of political outcomes so that the nationalists will not gain the support of liberals and communists and the latter will not gain the energy of the nationalists.

That Moscow is concerned about what has been happening in Bashkortostan is suggested by Regnum journalist Yekaterina Nekrasova who points out that the multi-national republic “is considered a unique ‘mirror’ reflecting the cultural and ethnic multiplicity of all Russia and also a region where there is occurring constructive dialogue among representatives of different ethnic groups” (regnum.ru/news/polit/2398374.html).

She suggests that most of the public nationalist groups in Bashkortostan are controlled by the authorities in Ufa or Moscow or both.  And most of them, Nekrasova continues, exist only on paper and are unknown to the vast majority of the population. But their actions nevertheless can have an impact on political life.

And Nekrasova admits as much by entitling one of the sections of her article, “the fusion of Bashkir nationalists and the liberal opposition” in which she describes the cooperation of various Bashkir nationalist groups with Aleksey Navvalny and Kseniya Sobchak. In a following section, she says, these same nationalist groups also reached agreement with the KPRF.

The new Congress of the Bashskir People “quickly found common language with the liberal opposition of the republic. Both sides easily ‘sacrificed their principles,’ with the liberal forgetting that they were against nationalism and chauvinism and the Bashkir nationalists that they had proclaimed traditional family values.”

“What united such contradictory movements?” Nekrasova asks. “There is one answer: a rejection of the Russian World and of the Russian state and its structures. This was most clearly manifest in the presidential elections of 2018,” and it may become even more important in the upcoming elections, not necessarily affecting outcomes but in changing discussions and tone.

Russians Still Far from Recognizing that Crimea May be Theirs but Regime Isn’t, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 31 – Vladimir Pastukhov, a Russian historian based in London, says that he is not inclined to overestimate the political importance of the protests that have broken out over the Kemerovo tragedy or the problems of trash disposal in Moscow oblast because Russians’ consciousness remains split between the social and the political.

            That is, he said on the “Personally Yours” program of Ekho Moskvy yesterday, Russians are “today prepared for social and humanitarian protests against injustice” but they are not “ready to draw far-reaching political conclusions” or combine with others (echo.msk.ru/programs/personalnovash/2173542-echo/

                “Sooner or later,” of course, “some spark will appear and these two consciousnesses will be combined into one.” But there is no reason to think that “this will occur soon or that the spark will jump from the fire in Kemerovo,” Pastukhov continues. For the two to come together will require “some special event.”

            Members of “’the Putin majority’” are engaged in protests in Kemerovo and Volokolamsk, but these are not risings “against the system.” Rather they are extremely specific in their targets and even explicitly non-political in their manner and goals. And “like peasant uprisings, they will for a very long time remain local,” isolated and thus not a threat for the regime.

            Pastukhov says that he was most surprised by the fact that an official in Kemerovo appealed to Putin as “’comrade president,’” an indication of how out of date such people are. They are clearly living in the past and can’t even imagine the nature of the world in which people are living today.

            There are two distinct kinds of reasons behind the Kemerovo fire, the Russian historian continues. On the one hand, people everywhere try to save money and cut corners, especially if they can get officials to go along with them. But on the other, the Putin regime and especially those at the top bear responsibility for what has happened.

            That is because the regime has “tried to create ‘the ninth wonder of the world,’ a special Russian-style legal order in which a small group of people can do anything they want and violate any law and in which everyone else must live strictly according to the law.”  That isn’t possible because those below will inevitably be infected by the attitudes of those above them.

            There is yet another aspect to this, Pastukhov continues. Over the last 18 months, the Kremlin has tried to reconstruct the Russian system. “It has been trying to introduce ‘Stalinism without Stalinism,’ that is, it has continued to be absolutely loyal to its favorites.” But at the same time, it wants to be “merciless” in its attacks on everyday corruption.

            That isn’t sustainable either, the historian says. But its shortcomings are most in evidence at a time of crisis like the one following the Kemerovo fire. Putin’s system is based on  “hypocrisy” because “that is one of the system-forming elements of the Russian mentality” on which he can rely.

            One must understand, Pastukhov says, that “people are tied to the television not because they believe it … They are because there exists an algorithm of loyal behavior which has been set in stone by centuries of adaptation” to the Russian powers first under serfdom and then under the demands of the Soviet state.

            But Russians experience what people in the West call “’a panic attack’” when the gap between what the television shows them and what they see with their own eyes.  Unfortunately, neither most Russians nor Putin and his team are yet capable of viewing themselves from the outside and so they have not developed “the critical consciousness” others have.

            That shortcoming, Pastukhov says, limits their ability to organize and Putin’s ability to respond to changing circumstances and change direction. Putin came to power with his own agenda, but now he is trapped by those he has installed around him, limiting his ability to deal with how much has changed. 

            In sum, the historian argues, Putin “is a hostage of this stratum; and he cannot pursue any other course beside the one which this stratum finds suitable to itself.” Only when large numbers of this stratum change their views will he change; and “from that point we are still quite far removed.”

            Turning to foreign policy, Pastukhov says that the threat of global war is now greater than at any point in the last 60 years but that “only part” of the reasons for that “are connected with Russia, including having an elite that relies on force and bluffs to get its way with other governments and to maintain itself in power.

            But there is a third reason which is the most worrisome of all, the Russian historian says; and it is this: US President Donald Trump has far more power than his Russian counterpart, but he shares with Putin the mentality of a risk taker and “adventurist.”  Moreover, both leaders believe that there is no other acceptable position besides their own.

            That is a recipe for disaster; and it is compounded by the fact that Western countries are far from united when it comes to Russia. Liberals there support democracy and “therefore they don’t accept the policies of the Kremlin.” But business leaders and some in the bureaucracy view Putin “simply as a hero and an ideal.

            “Some of these simply want to make money – they are the majority,” Pastukhov says.  Some simply want to avoid getting involved in anything they don’t believe will directly affect them personally. And some see in Putin and his system the kind of leader and arrangements they would like in their own countries.

Like Smoke after Kemerovo Fire, ‘Hatred is Hanging in the Air’ over Russia, Yakovenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 30 – Vladimir Putin and his regime feel the hatred of Russians toward themselves as a result of their powerlessness and towards “the powers” hanging in the air after the Kemerovo fire, and the regime is doing what it can to divert that hatred away from the regime and even into channels the regime won’t be threatened by, Igor Yakovenko says.

            That is why Putin and Tuleyev did not appear before the crowd that assembled at the site of the fire and that is why the government-controlled media have tried to give Russians some objects they can direct their hatred and anger at, even if those proposed objects are patently absurd (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5ABD2F17AF61A).

                Some pro-Kremlin talking heads first blamed bloggers for spreading fear, drawing an explicit analogy between them and “diversionary groups” in the rear of the Red Army in World War II or suggesting that such people were taking their revenge on Russians for the recent overwhelming re-election of Putin.

            Hatred, of course, “requires a living object,” and Kremlin talk show hosts sought to bring in those they could then attack. But many refused to take the bait and so the pro-Putin propagandists had to deploy their big gun, director Nikita Mikhalkov, who set the tone for many others.

            Mikhalkov insisted that the Kemerovo fire would never have happened but for the destruction of ideology in the course of “the wild 1990s” and the rise of people who display their “godlessness” by blaming the fire on the authorities and calling for their overthrow as when they shout “’Down with the power of the Chekists!’”

            The Kremlin has good reason to be concerned. According to a new poll conducted by VTsIOM, 60 percent of Russian surveyed consider that the authorities bear responsibility for the fire, although slightly more – 68 percent – say the mall’s owners are chiefly responsible (rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5abded9f9a794777d7782a44?from=main).

                Consequently, however hard the authorities work, they may not be able to deflect anger and hatred against themselves. Even more, they may not be able – or possibly may not even try – to deflect hatred against groups like the Jews that some Russians have traditionally blamed for their problems.

            Today, Rabbi Aleksandr Boroda, the head of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FEOR), appealed to the authorities to take action against those who are blaming the Jews for the Kemerovo tragedy and thus spreading this particularly horrific form of an ancient hatred (interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=69550).

                Boroda said that “there are negative consequences” that will arise from the unrestricted spread of such xenophobic messages. “People have begun to be afraid to go to synagogue,” he added; and some, the rabbi concluded, there are some who “fear even that there will be pogroms.”