Moscow Seeks to Use Babi Yar Against Ukrainians; Ukrainians Want a Memorial to the Victims

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 24 – There are two competing projects for a memorial at Babi Yar, the site of a mass murder of Jews and others during the Nazi occupation. One of these projects, the Russian, is heavily funded by Kremlin allies and seeks to use the memorial to blame Ukrainian anti-Semitism for this crime against humanity.

            The other, less well-funded and lacking even the enthusiastic backing of the current Ukrainian president, is being developed by a group of Ukrainians, Jewish and otherwise. Its purpose is not some information war with Russia but rather a respectful memorial to the victims of this tragedy.

            Josif Zisels, a former Soviet political prisoner and vice president of the Association of Jewish Organizations of Ukraine, is the leader of the latter. In an interview to Galia Ackerman, he discusses his objections to the Russian project (en.desk-russie.eu/2021/09/24/josef-zissels-putin-is-sending-us.html, desk-russie.eu/2021/09/24/josef-zissels-poutine-nous-envoie.html and graniru.org/Politics/World/Europe/Ukraine/m.282647.html).

            “Each people has its own culture and its own politics of memory,” Zisels says. “We consider the Russian project as derivative from the imperial Russian policy of memory, at the center of which is the Great Victory” and in which the Soviet people “which hasn’t existed for 30 years,” is the key player.

            Ukraine doesn’t want anything to do with the notion of a Soviet people, the former dissident says. It wants its memorial to reflect the history of Ukraine and its peoples as one of occupation and the history of anti-Semitism in Ukraine as part and parcel of this larger historical problem.

            The Russian project for Babi Yar ignores the Soviet period entirely and without an understanding of what happened in the 1920s and 1930s in Ukraine, one cannot understand Babi Yar. The Ukrainian project seeks to understand the roots of the problem rather than use the single event for PR, Zisels continues.

            Without an understand of the pre-war period, he argues, one can’t understand why so many Soviet soldiers surrendered to the Germans or why local residents behaved as they did when the Germans came and why some collaborated with the occupiers. “Yes, in all countries, there were collaborationists, but here was a special situation which must be studied.”

            But the Russian narrative ignores all this and thus offers “no explanation why local residents in some cases cooperated with the occupiers … and even took part in repressions against the local population, including Jews.” And because it does not do that, it creates a completely false impression.

            That impression is that “the Holocaust spread not from Germany but from Babi Yar,” an impression that serves Putin’s goal to denigrate the Ukrainians and label them “a nation of anti-Semites.”  The Kremlin leader further wants to suggest that Ukrainians have done nothing about that tragic event, completely ignoring the 35 different memorials that Ukrainians have erected.

            “In the Ukrainian conception,” Zisels says, “there are three main elements.” First, there is a memorial park of 70 hectares on which nothing is to be built. Then, there are two other objects, a Museum of the Victims of Babi Yar and a Ukrainian Museum of the Holocaust. “That in brief is the Ukrainian conception.”

            Unfortunately, the Russian conception is backed by Russian money, and the Ukrainian conception does not have the active support of the current Ukrainian president, despite widespread public support in Ukraine for its program. Hopefully that will change. But it is critical that everyone understand just what is going on about Babi Yar now.

             

A Baker’s Triple Dozen of Other Notable Stories from Russia This Week

Paul Goble

Staunton, Sept. 24 – Below are 39 more stories from Russia this week that deserve to be noted because they shed significant light on Russia, its government and its people, but that I was unable to write up as full-scale Windows: 

1.      Russian ‘Dam’ to Rival Chinese Firewall in Blocking Internet. The Russian government is blocking or seeking to block several hundred websites connected with groups opposed to the Kremlin, and observers say that this “Russian dam” will soon rival the Great Chinese Firewall in preventing citizens from going to sites based abroad (graniru.org/tags/banned/m.282645.html).

2.      Russian Shipbuilders have Plans for New Aircraft Carriers but Kremlin hasn’t Ordered Any. Aleksey Rakhmanov, head of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, says his designers have come up with plans for a new aircraft carrier but that the Kremlin hasn’t made a decision to order one (ria.ru/20210924/rakhmanov-1751452273.html).

3.      Patriarch Kirill Appears to Be in Trouble with His Own Propagandists. Normally ROC MP outlets carry everything Patriarch Kirill says; but in recent weeks, they have been editing or not covering at all many of his presentations, raising questions about his future, church critic Andrey Kurayev says (echo.msk.ru/blog/kuraev_andrey/2908300-echo/).

4.      More than One Prisoner in Five in Four Russian Regions HIV Infected. Russian penal authorities say that in four Russian regions, 20 to 25 percent of those behind bars have HIV and that the share elsewhere is rising (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/09/24/v-chetyrekh-regionakh-rossii-dolia-zakliuchennykh-s-vich-prevyshaet-20-news).

5.      Half of Foreign Students Unable to Return to Russian Universities This Fall. Some 145,000 foreign students out of a total of 316,000 enrolled last year have not been able to return to Russia because of the pandemic (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/09/25/okolo-poloviny-inostrannykh-studentov-ne-smogli-vernutsia-na-uchebu-v-rossiiu-sredi-nikh-900-afgantsev-news).

6.      Some Russians Want to Put Russian Suffixes on All English Loan Words. Some Russians are pressing the government to require that Russian suffixes be put on all loan words from English so that it will be clear that they have been integrated into the Russian language (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/09/24/mozhno-li-vsem-anglitsizmam-pridelat-russkie-suffiksy).

7.      Peskov Says There is No Censorship in Russia but that There are Limits. In a Russian version of a non-denial denial, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insists that there is no censorship in Russia but that there are limits beyond which the government can’t be expected to ignore what is going on (znak.com/2021-09-24/peskov_politicheskaya_cenzura_v_rossii_ne_presleduetsya_no_est_tonkaya_gran).

8.      Russians Increasingly Using Internet for News. Many in the Putin regime have comforted themselves with the assumption that most Russians use the Internet for entertainment, but a new VTsIOM survey finds that Russians are increasingly using the world wide web for news and information that they can’t get from official media (wciom.ru/analytical-reviews/analiticheskii-obzor/mediapotreblenie-i-aktivnost-v-internete).

9.      Bullying Now Follows Religious Lines in Daghestan. Ever more Daghestani pupils who wear a hijab are being subjected to bullying by non-Muslims, a serious problem in the overcrowded schools of that republic which are still running on a three-shift basis (daptar.ru/2021/09/24/hijab-dlya-uchenicy/).

10.  Shipping Up on Northern Sea Route but Only for Parts of It. Moscow has celebrated the fact that this year, more ships have used the Northern Sea Route than ever before. But while the overall number is up, that of ships passing across the entire route is not. Instead, most ships are going only part of the way and delivering to Russian ports. What that means is that the NSR is not yet becoming the east-west passageway Moscow hopes for. Instead, it is being used to develop the Russian North much of which is inaccessible via roads or railways (nsra.ru/ru/rassmotrenie_zayavleniy/perechen_zayavlenii.html).

11.  Tatarstan Now Ranks Third Behind Crimea and Moscow in Number of Political Prisoners. The Memorial human rights organization says that Tatarstan, with 53 political prisoners, now ranks third among Russian regions, behind only occupied Crimea, with 83 and Moscow with 79 (idelreal.org/a/31470466.html).

12.  Critics Call New People Party ‘Liberals for Dictatorship.’ Now that the New People Party has won seats in the Duma, many other Russian opposition figures are calling it the party of “liberals for dictatorship” (rusmonitor.com/czik-poschital-100-protokolov-vse-te-zhe-i-novye-lyudi-no-rasklad-interesnyj.html).

13.  As Russians Tighten Their Belts, They’re Buying Cheaper but More Caloric Foods. Russians facing rising prices and declining incomes are buying cheaper but more caloric foods. As a result, the negative impact of the economic situation on their health is not as obvious but is more profound (profile.ru/society/tuchnaya-bednost-zhiteli-rossii-vse-chashhe-vybirajut-bolee-deshevuju-i-kalorijnuju-pishhu-925473/).

14.  Russians have Less Disposable Income After Fixed Expenses are Paid. The amount of money Russians have to spend after their fixed expenses are covered continues to decline, down five percent between July and August of this year alone (ehorussia.com/new/node/24333).

15.  Khabarovsk Shows What Repression Can Do. A year ago, Khabarovsk was a hotbed of protests, but now, after a year of tightening the screws, Moscow-installed officials there have driven people out of the streets and ensured that the Kremlin rather than the people there are setting the weather ehorussia.com/new/node/24323).

16.  Moscow Now Using Prisoners in Construction Projects in Major Cities. Facing rising anger about immigrant workers, the Russian government is now using prisoners in ever greater numbers at construction sites in major Russian cities (finanz.ru/novosti/aktsii/zaklyuchennykh-fsin-nachali-napravlyat-na-stroyki-v-krupnye-goroda-1030817183).

17.  Russian Government Spending for Siloviki Up 28 Percent. The Russian government is budgeting 28 percent more for the interior ministry, Russian Guard, investigators, security agencies and the prison system over the next three years than it spent during the last three (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/87956).

18.  Crime Up, Cases Closed Down. Crime is rising in Russia but the number of cases, including those of serious crimes, that the authorities have closed is declining (iq.hse.ru/news/484652383.html).

19.  Moscow Upset Minsk Textbooks Don’t Mention Russians as Part of Belarusian Ethnogenesis. Textbooks now being used in Belarusian schools say that the Belarus ethnos was formed between the 13^th and 14^th centuries out of various Slavic tribes, but these books do not mention the ancient Rus. Not surprisingly, given Putin’s insistence that Belarusians are really Russians, some in Moscow are angry (fondsk.ru/news/2021/09/21/drevnerusskaya-narodnost-propuschennoe-zveno-54516.html).

20.  Bust of Zeki Velidi Togan Taken Down in Bashkortostan, Angering Population. Persons unknown in Bashkortostan have removed a bust of the early 20^th century national leader Zeki Velidi Togan, infuriating many across the Middle Volga region (milliard.tatar/news/v-baskirskom-sibae-iscez-s-postamenta-pamyatnik-validi-gorozane-vozmushheny-956).

21.  Russian Men Recall Wanting to Be Cosmonauts or Soldiers; Russian Women, Doctors or Teachers. A new Superjob poll finds that adult Russian men recall that as children they wanted to be cosmonauts or soldiers and that adult Russian women wanted to be doctors or teachers (superjob.ru/research/articles/113073/muzhchiny-v-detstve-mechtali-stat-kosmonavtami-i-voennymi/).

22.  Fear of More Russian Columbines Sparks Proposals to Ban Private Gun Ownership or Expand It to Include Teachers. In a mirror image to what happens whenever there is a mass school shooting in the United States, some Russians are calling for banning private gun ownership while others are pushing to arm teachers so that they can shoot back and protect their pupils. The Cossacks say they should be allowed to patrol the schools, and others say the schools must screen students to identify problem children. All this is likely to come to a head over the next two months as a report on what to do is being prepared for Putin by the end of November (dailystorm.ru/detali/doklad-dlya-putina-spch-v-noyabre-predstavyat-sekretnye-predlozheniya-po-predotvrashcheniyu-kolumbaynov, capost.media/news/obshchestvo/vlasti-vydelyat-bolee-1-6-mlrd-rubley-na-vyyavlenie-potentsialno-opasnykh-uchashchikhsya/, vz.ru/politics/2021/9/21/1120006.html, dailystorm.ru/obschestvo/kazaki-poobeshchali-ostanovit-volnu-kolumbaynov-v-rossii and dailystorm.ru/vlast/zarezat-mozhno-i-sigaretnym-filtrom-vasserman-ne-otkazhetsya-ot-idei-legalizacii-oruzhiya-posle-tragedii-v-permi).

23.  Moscow Blames Internet for Spread of Violence and Vows to Control It. Senior officials in Moscow say that the Internet is to blame for the spread of aggression and violence in Russia and argue that only by blocking such messaging can Russia be stabilized (sobkorr.org/news/61482B51CDF2C.html and graniru.org/blogs/govnomer/entries/282651.html).

24.  In Rural Karelia, Some Villages Didn’t Notice Elections. Saying that officials treat them like an aboriginal population, some in rural parts of Karelia say they didn’t see anything special in the runup to the elections or any attempt to involve them, reducing still further the importance of voting for people there (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/09/22/my-dlia-nikh-periferiia-aborigeny and region.expert/no-elections/).

25.  Smart Voting Did Work in Some Places. Analysis of the recent election shows that smart voting did work, pushing communist candidates ahead of United Russia ones (tomsk.aif.ru/politic/didenko_iz_ldpr_oboshyol_edinorossa_leonteva_na_okruge_v_tomskoy_oblasti).

26.  Muscovites Would Like Robots to Replace Immigrant Workers. Ever more residents of the Russian capital would like to see greater mechanization and even robotization at construction sites so as to reduce the need for more immigrant workers (apn.ru/index.php?newsid=40364).

27.  Court Ban on Raising Chickens Seen Hurting Russian Diets. The Supreme Court has ruled that the government is within its rights to ban raising chickens in areas allotted for gardens. The result will be a significant deterioration in the diet of many Russians (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=61497D3FD5A7D).

28.  Putin’s Cossacks Break into Museum in Search of Gays. A group of registered Cossacks broke into a museum in search of LGBT activists, yet another way in which the Putin regime is using such groups to carry out its dirty work (politsovet.ru/71650-v-ekaterinburge-kazaki-vorvalis-v-muzey-v-poiskah-lgbt.html).

29.  IT will Know It When It Sees It: Moscow to use Info Technology to Fight Pornography and Extremism. Russian officials plan to use information technology to identify and then block extremism and pornography online (politsovet.ru/71652-roskomnadzor-budet-iskat-ekstremizm-i-pornografiyu-s-pomoschyu-iskusstvennogo-intellekta.html).

30.  ROC MP Launches New Journal to Promote Its View of Orthodoxy. The Moscow Patriarchate has launched a new journal, Orthodoxy, to promote its view of that faith and give a boost to its vision of itself as the proper center of Eastern Christendom (religare.ru/2_121112.html).

31.  Patriarch Kirill Says More Orthodox Churches Opening in Russia. According to the leader of the ROC MP, new openings in Russia bring the total of Orthodox churches to 36,878 (stoletie.ru/lenta/patriarkh_kirill_otmetil_uvelichenije_chisla_khramov_russkoj_pravoslavnoj_cerkvi_730.htm).

32.  Lavrov and Shoygu Only Two of Winning Candidates who have Given Up Their Duma Seats to Others. Russia, a country where half of the seats in the legislature are filled by party list, is among those where those who win may never sit in parliament. Instead, they attract votes and then give up their seats to others who wouldn’t have made it in otherwise. Among those who has benefited from this practice this time around is the notorious Marina Butova (ura.news/news/1052506274).

33.  Posters Satirizing Official Ones Featured on Apostrophe. The Internet provides the opportunity for those who want to satirize official posters to do so. The Apostrophe news agency has gathered some of the best of these from the Duma election campaign (apostrophe.ua/news/world/ex-ussr/2021-09-20/sidi-doma-poyavilis-metkie-fotojabyi-na-vyiboryi-v-rossii/244363).

34.  Kadyrov Wins 99 Percent of the Vote in His Race. Demonstrating what managed democracy can attain, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov won over 99 percent of the vote in his race to remain republic leader. Other non-Russian republics, which Russians often refer to as “sultanates,” delivered almost as large majorities for Kremlin favorites (caucasustimes.com/ru/vybory-v-rossii-chempiony-po-javke-nacionalnye-respubliki/ and znak.com/2021-09-20/cik_ramzan_kadyrov_nabral_na_vyborah_99_7_golosov_eto_rekord).

35.  Russians have Another Reason to Favor Electronic Voting – Saving Forests. Many Russians now favor a shift to electronic voting and other former of computer-based record keeping because it will save the country’s forests (kp.ru/daily/28332.5/4477249/).

36.  Aging Putin Leadership Seeks Younger People to Reach Out to Youth. Convinced that only younger people can speak to other younger people, the aging Putin government is promoting younger people to manage initiatives designed to attract support from those under 35 (russian.eurasianet.org/россия-станут-ли-«навигаторы-детства»-посредниками-между-зумерами-и-властью).

37.  Duma Commission Says More than 20 Foreign NGOs Interfered in Russian Voting. The Duma commission on election interference has announced that more than 20 foreign NGOs interfered in Russian voting and that it is seeking to have these groups labelled as “undesirable” (ehorussia.com/new/node/24325).

38.  Russian Parents Divided on Internet Training in Schools. A new VTsIOM survey finds that Russian parents are divided on Internet training being provided in schools. Many support it but others fear it is leading their children to search for undesirable information (wciom.ru/analytical-reviews/analiticheskii-obzor/rossiiskaja-shkola-sovremennye-vyzovy).

39.  More Russians are Coming to Work on Time. Over the last 12 years, the percentage of Russians who come to work on time has risen significantly, an indication that the stress on discipline and order is having a real effect (superjob.ru/research/articles/113066/rossiyane-stali-rezhe-opazdyvat-na-rabotu/).

Covid Infections Soar in Regions, Russia Sets Another Daily Death Toll, but Moscow Sees No Reason for New Lockdown

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 24 – Coronavirus infections are increasing six to seven percent each week in many regions, with officials there closing schools to slow the infection. Today, Russia set another record for daily deaths from covid (828). But despite that Moscow officials continued to insist there is “no basis for a new lockdown” (t.me/stopcoronavirusrussia/5949, regnum.ru/news/society/3379238.html and regnum.ru/news/3380748.html).

            But these same officials say the level of vaccination in Russia will be insufficient to ensure collective immunity (regnum.ru/news/3380766.html). And in what constitutes a kind of admission of failure, one epidemiologist says Russia can best fight the pandemic by a strict mask regime rather than with more shots (capost.media/views/osenniy-vsplesk-koronavirusa-mozhet-oslabit-ne-vaktsinatsiya-a-maski/).

            Meanwhile, in other pandemic-related developments in Russia today,

·         Gamalay Institute officials say they do not expect any breakthrough soon in negotiations with Western countries to approve the Russian vaccine, a view that if true means Moscow will not earn the money from sales abroad that it expected (finanz.ru/novosti/aktsii/razrabotchik-sputnika-v-prizval-ne-zhdat-skorogo-odobreniya-na-zapade-1030822486).

·         Russian officials are expressing outrage that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has restricted the movement of Russians attending its upcoming meeting because they have not received Western vaccines (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/09/24/da-vaktsiny-u-vas-ne-toi-sistemy).

·         But the Egyptian government has accepted for use Russia’s Sputnik-Lite vaccine (sputnikvaccine.com/rus/newsroom/pressreleases/odnokomponentnaya-vaktsina-sputnik-layt-odobrena-v-egipte/).

Is Russian Opposition Going to Pursue a Belarusian Tactic in 2024 Presidential Elections?

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 23 – If the Kremlin decides to hold elections in 2024 and especially if Vladimir Putin runs again, at least some in the Russian opposition are already thinking about finding “a representative of the free part of Russian society” to run against him, much as Belarusians did before the last Belarusian election.

            Because so many leading Russian opponents of Putin are dead, in prison, in emigration or banned from running because of Putin-era laws, the range of choices is not large. But there is a belief that someone who is clearly an opponent of the current president could mobilize the Russian people.

            One making that argument is Ilya Yashin, a Moscow municipal deputy. He argues Belarus has shown “society consolidates around such a candidate” (znak.com/2021-09-23/oppoziciya_ichet_edinogo_kandidata_na_vybory_prezidenta_2024_pervyy_v_spiske_royzman).  And he proposes former Duma deputy and former Yaketerinburg mayor Yevgeny Royzman.

            Royzman for his part says he isn’t prepared to seek the position. But his rejection is hardly Shermanesque. And the discussion is important not because of the possibility that he could be such a unifying candidate but rather than the opposition is talking about the possibility that he or someone else might play that role now, well ahead of the voting.

            With the Duma voting just completed, it is clear that at least some in the opposition are thinking in new ways, and the appearance of what might be called the Belarusian option is a sign that previous ways of doing business may be cast about and a new approach to presidential politics in Russia emerge.

United Russia Won Less than a Third of the Vote and Not the Nearly Half Reported, Shpilkin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 23 – Had there not been massive falsification of the vote in the Duma elections, United Russia would have won only 31 to 33 percent of the vote, not the nearly 50 percent the election commission reported, and would have lost to KPRF in many places but whose percentage of the vote was lowered by official actions, Sergey Shpilkin says.

            The independent analyst says that “more than 13 million” of the votes counted for United Russia are problematic, the result of various machinations by the authorities. That is almost half of the total vote for United Russia and suggests that in reality it won far less (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/09/21/ot-obnuleniia-k-udvoeniiu).

            According to the analyst, one of the features of Russian elections is that no two in a row are carried out with the same set of rules. This time around, there were four major shifts – greater restrictions on who could run, voting over three days rather than one, massive use of electronic voting, and the regime’s harsh response to Navalny’s promotion of “smart voting.”

            Each of these opened new possibilities for fraud, and the Central Election Commission made it easier by removing many of the monitoring cameras that election watchers had relied on to ensure that officials didn’t stuff the ballot boxes or remove and destroy votes that Russians had actually cast.

            The authorities used electronic voting as their avenue of choice to cast votes for their preferred candidates and parties. If this had not happened, United Russia would have received 33 percent, not 50; KPRF, 25 percent instead of 19; and LDPR and Just Russia – for Truth, ten percent each instead of 7.5 percent.”

            The “New People” party would have gotten seven percent rather than five percent, but none of the other parties would have cracked the five-percent barrier. But what is clear, the more people who were identified as voting online, the more support United Russia got – in fact, some 8.5 million more, a statistically improbable outcome.

            Outside of Moscow, this election resembled its predecessors in the sense that there were some regions with little or no falsification, many with some falsification and a few with massive levels of voter fraud. Again, that too played into the hands of United Russian rather than anyone else.

            Such massive falsification not only underscores how unpopular the ruling party is but means that it is absolutely impossible for the rulers to have an accurate picture of what people really think. There is no true data set that the rulers have and don’t release. They rely on what they do – and so they have no idea what the people really want.

            That is the conclusion of “The Forbidden Opinion” telegram channel, which adds that this is part of a  much larger problem, one that will end only when the current regime does if then because the rulers of Russia today simply don’t know what kind of country they are ruling over since they read only their own press releases (t.me/TheForbiddenOpinion/5895).

Moscow Alarmed to Turkmenistan’s New Tilt to Turkey and the West

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 23 – Since 1991, Moscow has had to deal with a Turkmenistan unprepared to ally with Russia but also unwilling to link itself more closely with the West. But now the situation is changing, with Ashgabat retaining its standoffishness to Russia but increasingly willing to cooperate with Turkey and thus with the West.

            Not surprisingly, Russians and those who back increased ties between the post-Soviet states and Moscow are alarmed because Turkmenistan can serve as a bridge for Turkey and the West into Central Asia as a whole, undermining Russian influence in places where until recently it had been strong.

            Aynur Kurmanov, a Central Asian commentator who favors strong ties between the region and Moscow, says that in his view, “Turkmenistan is playing a dangerous game by encouraging the penetration of NATO into the Caspian region and Central Asia” (politobzor.net/show-239954-opasnaja-igra-turkmenii-nato-pronikaet-na-kaspij.html).

            According to the analyst, Ashgabat’s shift in its petroleum exporting strategy away from routes northward through Russia to ones across the Caspian and out via the Baku-Jeyhun corridor is costing Russian a lot. Flows from Turkmenistan via Russia have dropped by 50 percent in recent months.

            Not only does that have a negative impact on the Russian budget, but it intensifies competition between Moscow and Baku over shipping. Ashgabat insists the shift is purely business, but its assurances can’t be relied on for at least two reasons. On the one hand, all such choices are controlled by the country’s leader and are political.

            And on the other, and more seriously, Kurmanov continues, sending oil and gas bypassing Russia hurts Moscow and helps Turkey and its Western backers in their efforts to expand their influence beyond the Caspian into Central Asia.  Ashgabat should start thinking seriously about what this means.

            It is clear to everyone that the rapprochement between Ashgabat and Ankara will ultimately involve NATO in the region given that Turkey is a member and does what the Americans want, Kurmanov says. And keeping the Western alliance out of the Caspian basin is a bedrock principle of all Caspian littoral states.

             Moreover, both China, which wants to dominate pipelines in the region, and Iran, which opposes the expansion of Turkish influence to its north and more generally, are against what Turkmenistan is doing; and they together with Russia are likely to adopt a new and harder line in Ashgabat, possibly inflicting pain in places the Turkmenistan government isn’t expecting.

Tbilisi Rapidly Becoming a Center of Fourth Russian Emigration

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 23 – Tbilisi is rapidly becoming a major center of the fourth Russian emigration, not only because of its relatively low prices and the absence of visa requirements for Russian citizens but also because most Russians and Georgians are convinced the Republic of Georgia will never send them back to Russia against their will.

            That combination of economics and security concerns has defined the paths of all Russian emigrations over the last century. After the Russian revolution and civil war, more than two million fled to Baltic countries, Prague, Berlin, Harbin, the Balkans, and as conditions changed to Paris and New York.

            Then, in what came to be called the second emigration, Russian displaced persons moved from camps in Europe to the United States. And in the third, which consisted primarily of Jews, its participants moved either to Israel or to the United States. Now, with repression in Russia rising, a fourth emigration is taking place.

            It is both similar and different from its predecessors, similar in that its members gravitate toward places where the cost of living is lower and business opportunities greater and different in that many of its members, however opposed they are to the Putin regime, do not want to break all ties with family and friends in Russia and even hope at some point to return.

            The fourth emigration consists of two parts which overlap but are distinctive. One, driven mostly by economic concerns, has focused on Western countries and includes people who go back and forth to the homeland. The second, more political, is looking for refuge from repression at home and a chance to continue their efforts to influence Russia from abroad.

            The first centers of the fourth emigration were in the Baltic countries, each of which now has a sizeable number of political refugees from Russia who continue their activities. But as the cost of living in these three countries has risen, many are now looking for a less expensive alternative. They are finding it in Georgia.

            Pjotr Sauer describes the residents of this new center of Russian life outside of Russia in an article for The Moscow Times (themoscowtimes.com/2021/09/23/as-crackdown-intensifies-russian-emigres-find-refuge-in-georgia-a75120). As he notes, their number is growing and most are quite prepared to talk about their shared opposition to Moscow.

            But at the same time, he says, some don’t want to call attention to themselves because they have friends and relatives at home they don’t want to cause problems for and because they themselves hope that at some point in the future, they too will be able to go back to Russia when it changes direction.

            Moscow is increasingly focusing attention on Tbilisi as a center of Russian life; and several weeks ago, Ren-TV claimed in a program that Western intelligence services were working with the Russian emigres in Georgia (rusmonitor.com/zhurnalisty-izvestij-ren-tv-priehali-v-gruziyu-v-poiskah-emigrirovavshih-rossiyan.html).

            As one Georgia-based Russian told Sauer in explaining his personal reluctance to talk to much, “If they’d seen us playing cards, they would have said we had opened an illegal casino here with American money.”