Window on Eurasia: Kremlin Can't Decide Whether Russia is Heir to the Soviet Union or to Imperial Russia, Inozemtsev Says

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 7 – As this week’s holidays show, the Kremlin suffers from an “unhealthy” divided consciousness, unwilling to commit to defining the country as heir to the Soviet Union or heir to Imperial Russia and thus sending out mixed messages that are contrary to the country’s interests, according to Vladislav Inozemtsev, head of the Civic Force Party.

            In today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” Inozemtsev traces the varied celebrations of November 7 after 1991 and the appearance of the alternative holiday of November 4 but argues that this history reflects the unwillingness or inability of the Putin regime to choose between the Russian Federation’s two very different pasts (www.ng.ru/politics/2012-11-07/2_soznanie.html).

            The first post-Soviet and “democratic” power in Russia regularly declared “its intention” to distance itself from and repent of those things that the Bolsheviks had done, the activist continues.  However, that regime has been succeeded by a regime of “former KGB officers” who have to try to ignore this past altogether.

           

            That change of focus helps to explain the  appearance of November 4 as a special holiday, but the timing of its introduction, three days after Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, reflected the new Russian rulers desire to send a message that “any revolution is bad and even terrible, and any resistance to the selfish intentions of the West good and hopeful.”

            The new holiday also clearly was intended, Inozemtsev insists, to send a message about “the unity of the people with its elected autocrat and the founding of a new dynasty.”

            But far more interesting has been the attitude of Russia’s new rulers to November 7 and also “to the entire Soviet inheritance.” They are closely connected with that past, having been members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and even having written “dissertations and scientific works on the role of the CPSU.”

             Indeed, Inozemtsev points out, Vladimir Putin has “more than once reiterated that the disintegration of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20^th century” and that the period of Brezhnevite ‘stagnation’ [can be best] characterized as a time of the successful development” of the country.

            And how often have Putin and his colleagues recalled Stalin, identifying him as the creator of a great state and “’a super-effective manager,’” the activist continues.  “Only D. Medvedev mentions about the reverse side of this ‘effectiveness.’” And the Putin regime has showed itself prepared to have the population but not the elite live like in Soviet times.

            But there is a problem with all of this, Inozemtsev says. “The USSR was and until the end of its days remained a product of the October Revolution.  Its successes of the 1930s and then of the 1930s are owed above all to the fact that [that revolution] destroyed former hierarchies and liberated the enormous forces and talents of the people.”

            The revolution demonstrated in addition that “elites are not eternal and can be effectively replaced by others no less professional and that it is relatively easy to find an alternative to any failing regime.”  This “Soviet lesson” is not one that Russia’s current rulers for self-evident reasons want to teach the population, Inozemtsev notes.

             As a result, he continue, “in recent years, practically each step of the Russian powers is characterized by an unhealthy (let us call it that) divided consciousness.” On the one hand, “it speaks about the continuation of the pre-revolutionary Russian traditions; but on the other, it speaks about “the Soviet experience and its positive aspects.”

            Moreover, “at one and the same time, [the regime] recalls Stalin and Brezhnev but condemn any and all revolutions and even more their ‘export.’” Ivan Ilin has been reburied in Russia, but “the Kremlin wall remains a place of burial of the most terrible persecutors of their own people.”

            “All this,” Inozemtsev says, “speaks of a complete loss of a political orientation, about the absence of any ideology besides the banal striving to hold onto power, about the inability (and lack of desire) to construct clear and understandable vectors of development for the country and society.”

            “It is time for the Russian powers that be to define who they are, to specify whether they consider themselves the heirs of Soviet or Imperial Russia.”  If that happens, Inozemtsev suggests, “much will become far clearer both to the powers and be and to the people” over whom they rule.

                On anniversaries of events like the Bolshevik revolution, both the powers and the people should draw certain “lessons of history even if some of these are not very acceptable” to one or another.  First of all, Inozemtsev says, everyone needs to recognize that “all new passionate societies arise as a result of revolutions uprising and radical changes of the direction of social development.

            Second, he argues, “the people have the right to revolt against a government that is oppressing it.  And third – and this he suggests everyone needs to particularly remember – “revolutions involve force, blood and cruelty” even if those who won subsequently try to present things differently.

            From these three lessons, Inozemtsev concludes, the following proposition follows: “to oppose revolutions is senseless: the active minority which provokes them will always find supporters, the passive majority which supports the powers that be will not come together for the defense of the government.”

            It is of course possible to delay revolutions or make them softer.  But “for that, the powers must not ‘feed the fires of revolution’” by their actions, but rather they must move ahead of where the population is heading. “However, few have the intelligence and the will to do that” successfully.

Window on Eurasia: Kremlin Wants New, More ‘Politically Correct’ Terms for Migrants and Ethnic Minorities

Paul Goble

            Stauton, November 6 – Experts working on the Presidential Council for Inter-Ethnic Relations want to drop the use of terms like “internal migrants,” “native peoples,” and “national minorities” and use instead “more consolidating terms, “Izvestiya” reported today, citing sources on that body.

            According to that paper’s Denis Medvedev, the sources say that experts on that body believe that it is would be “correct to find ‘more consolidating’ replacements” for such terms because each of the existing terms is often used in a manner offensive to those so described thus exacerbates conflicts rather than helps overcome them (izvestia.ru/news/539012).

            “In the first instance,” the sources said, the Presidential Council would like to do away with the term “’internal migrant’ when applied to those [non-ethnic] Russians who come to work from one region of the country to another.” Such people should be labeled with the emotionally neutral term, “’mobile citizens.’”

            Experts at the Council would also like to do away with terms like “’native people’” and “’national minority’” because each implies a relationship between the members of those categories and others whose families may have lived in the same region for centuries and thus each can trigger conflicts.

            The Presidential Council sources said that the Russian Constitution speaks about “’the multi-national people’ but not ‘the national majority’ or ‘a mono-national country.’”  The language used by officials should reflect that reality and thus create “a consolidating” element to adapt our citizens who arrive” from elsewhere in the country.

            Aslambek Paskachev, who heads the Council’s Commission on Migration Issues, notes that it is a matter of world practice to speak of “’internal’” and “’external’” migrants, but this can have unfortunate consequences. “Our society equates the word ‘migrant’ with the word ‘alien,’” he continued.  And he called for describing such people as “mobile citizen[s] of Russia.”

            None of these terminological sleights of verbal hand has yet been agreed to, according to Anatoly Fomenko, the deputy head of the Federal Migration Service, who pointed out that “the question is not in the term itself but in what is needed to solve the problem.  Naturally, if something is going to be changed, it must be approached very carefully.”

            Aleksey Zhuravlyev, head of the Congerss of [Ethnic] Russian Communities, was more outspoken in opposing such ideas: “I do not see in all this a big problem,” he said, “and I don’t know who it could offend.” Instead, the authorities should focus on the following realities: immigrants from abroad “are much better prepared to become part of Russian society than are internal ones.”

            Not mentioned in “Izvestiya” but certain to become an issue in the future is the attitude of people now labeled “indigenous” populations.  Moscow is signatory to many international accords which use that term, and dispensing with it, if indeed the authorities could enforce such a ban, could create problems for those communities.

            And in addition, whatever the Presidential Council comes up with to replace “ethnic minorities,” both ethnic Russians in the country as a whole and members of the titular nationalities in the non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation would quickly invest that term with connotations of their own.

           

Window on Eurasia: Domodedovo Republic Activist Views Russia as ‘Already Dying in 1917’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 6 – Yevgeny Arkhipov, a lawyer who is one of the leaders of the Domodedovo Republic movement, says that his region’s effort to become a Russian Democratic Republic is less “a project” than is Russia, “a state institution which was dying already in 1917” and which none of the “artificial” projects offered for its revival can be successful.

            The Domodedovo movement, which attracted media attention last month, began as a protest of a Moscow suburb against the construction of a toll road through its territory and the privatization of its natural resources by Moscow oligarchs, but Arkhipov’s comments to “Inache.net” suggest it is undergoing radicalization (www.inache.net/post/728).

            And while Arkhipov’s suggestion that his Moscow suburb will pursue independence if the Russian authorities do not respect the rights of its residents is more radical than most in Russia’s regions would support, his line of argument is worth noting because it likely parallels those of other activists within the nominally ethnic Russian community in the regions.

            Vadim Shtepa, who interviewed Arkhipov, observes that “may well assess the views of Arkhipov with irony.” But he suggests that “it is useful to remember another historical example – when the defenders of the British Empire and the American ‘separatists’ spoke a common language” even though their peoples already had become “completely different.”

            Various alternative proposals for saving the Russian Federation are now on offer, Arkhipov points out. But none of them will work. The construction of “an [ethnic] Russian national state based on Eurasianism and a unique nation” is indistinguishable from Putin’s projects and won’t work.

            That is because such a project could work, the activist says, “only I on the territory of Russia were to be formed a single nation. But few on the territory of Russia are ready to say they belong to the nation of ‘the Rossiyane’.”  Indeed, Arkhipov continues, “the majority is so negative” about that word that speaking about “any unity of the nation” is not appropriate.

            Another proposal now on offer, he continues is to declare the ethnic Russians a “state forming nation” and to specify that “Russia must become an exclusively [ethnic] Russian state. This idea is just as utopian as the idea about ‘Rossiyane.’”  Most Russians call themselves Russian only by habit and do not invest the word “’[ethnic] Russian with any civilized meaning.”

            According to Arkhipov, they are “ready to become Siberians, Uraltsy, Primors or dream of leaving and becoming Americans or Australians.”

             “Muscovite Russia makes claims to Russian history, culture and tradition,” the Domodedovo activist says, “but by what right is it doing this?  In essence, [people today] are encountering a theft of history and an attempt at the theft of culture and tradition.  The only result is a mutant, a Horde-Style two-headed eagle.”

            How can “the successor of the Horde” pretend to be the continuation of Kyiv, “the mother of Russian cities, to whose history and culture Moscow has no relationship?” And he goes on to say that there is an interesting fact from history that is now often forgotten: Until Catherine II ordered them to change, Muscovites themselves did not call themselves Russians.

             As the Mongol Horde weakened, “the power of its provinces including Moscow grew,” and Moscow used the cruelty it had learned to conquer and suppress neighboring territories, to destroy “the independence of the North” and to wipe out its “national identity.”  But that is far from the end of the story, Arkhipov insists.

            “The process of the rebirth of the identity of the nation has taken place frequently in the history of many peoples,” he notes, pointing to the example of the Jewish people “who did not have statehood in the course of 2000 years or the Kurds who are still undering this process, or for example, the [ethnic] Russians.”

            “Twenty years ago, for the first time after 800 years of occupation, Rus was report in it own independent state” – Ukraine. “Kyiv remans the capital of Rus,oriented for [ethnic Russians],, the source of culture and tradition and Byzantine Christianity,” as the true successor of Rus rather than a byproduct.

            As far as the territory of present day “Rossiya” is concerned, “then military Horde-style behavior and Eurasianism havehistorically “cleansed it so much there here remain only rare enclaves of Rus,” who exist “more as an exception” than as the rule.  And Arkhipov suggested that the Domodedovo republic is one of them.

            In short, the Domodedovo leader says, Moscow is not “the third Rome” it typically claims to be, but “’the third Karakorum,” because the current Russian state is the successor of the Golden Horde.

            Asked by Stepa whether “the public is prepared to share the national historical motivation of [Domodedovo’s] protest, as one by Ancient Rus’ against the Golden Horde,” and as a protest against occupation, Arkhipov argues that it is precisely these broader understandings that help power specific protests like the ones that have begun in his region.

            Arkhipov continues by observing that “Russian federalism little interests [the people of Domodedovo] since we are speaking about Rus, about [ethnic] Russian lands, culture and traditions.”  That is because “we do not consider ourselves Rossiyane but rather view ourselves as [ethnic] Russians.”

            “Even at the level of translation, we are ‘Russkii,’ but not ‘Russian.’”  We are completely different peoples, we have different paths of development. Great Russian, imperial ambitions are alien to use [ad] we see the Russian Democratic Republic as a European State, based on respect for human rights and the adoption of European values and standards.”

            Arkhipov said his movement plans to hold a referendum between May 15 and June 15, 2012, on the idea of a Russian Democratic Republic.  The local authorities have no legitimacy, he said, and the willingness of the people of Domodedovo to continue to be part of the Russian Federation will depend on whether Moscow observes their rights.

Window on Eurasia: Putin is Redefining ‘People’ in a Corporatist Sense, Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 4 – National Unity Day, a holiday whose specific content had been far from obvious in the past, is “acquiring meaning” because Vladimir Putin now in his third term as president is using it to redefine the nature of “the people,” according to a Moscow commentator.

            In the past, “the people was simply a synonym for the population of [the country],” Aleksandr Morozov writes. “But in its new sense it includes [only] those who swear loyalty to the third term of Putin.” Those who don’t – and this is not about loyalty to the Constitution or the state but to Putin -- are not part of  “the people.”

            Russian “courts do not take up for consideration declarations [by those not included in ‘the people’] about any violations. They are not recognized as defense witnesses in judicial cases. If they have some point of view, they are simply dismissed by ritual assertions that this view comes from outside and from the geopolitical enemies of the state.”

            This concept of “the people,” Morozov says, is “’exclusive,’ that is, it has as its goal ‘the exclusion’ and thus symbolic destruction or segregation of specific social groups.”  (slon.ru/russia/pochemu_my_vmesto_dnya_konstitutsii_prazdnuem_den_narodnogo_edinstva_-847062.xhtml).

            First to be subject to this process of exclusion, the Slon.ru commentator continues, have been “’the liberals’ and ‘the left.’ Then representatives of ‘degenerative art.’ Then disloyal members of the priesthood. Then persons who do not lead a healthy way of life. And then the last in line, representatives of the university corporation.”

            Such exclusions do not mean everyone who falls into one or another category is truly outside the people because “all this ‘exclusion’ is realized rhetorically. It is not required that it lead to any mass murders or deportations.  This rhetorical machine thus is not created  to justify ideologically repression.”

            The goal of the introduction of this definition of “the people” and its celebration at holidays like National Unity Day is “quite different: it corresponds to the task of an anthropological revolution, that is, its declared goal is ‘the creation of another man,’ distinguished in principle from ‘the old man.’”

            According to the Slon.ru writer, “the transformation of people into ‘the people’ of a corporative state takes approximately a decade.” The division of the population into “the people” and others can lead to the worst sorts of repression, “but usually everything is somewhat softer” and takes the form of a three-level society.

            At the bottom are “the cast offs, the ‘former’ people.”  In the middle is “the people.’” And at the top is “a special elite, ‘an order.’” Such social arrangements are “very attractive” to many people. “At a minimum, 12 countries during the interwar period developed corporative states resting on the basis of “the people.”

            One of the most important functions of this concept, Morozov argues, is that it forces a kind of conformity even on the intelligent who find themselves forced to ask before taking any action “are we ‘the people’?”

National Unity Day is central to this process in Russia because it celebrates not the anniversary of the establishment of independence or a constitution but rather “the day when ‘the people’ expelled from itself ‘the non-people.’” Republics and constitutions don’t matter; instead, “the very construct of ‘the people’ is because in its name the system can take any actions” at all.

This arrangement is so “inspiring” that it now finds supporters everywhere” and hardly just in Russia. “In all countries there are to be found people who recall the arrangement of life of their peoples between the two world wars as a model worthy of repetition. In some lands, there are more of such people; in others, less.

“Let us raise our bottles,” Morozov says, because with Putin we have entered into the period of “the formation of the concept of ‘the people.’” His efforts in this regard are “successfully proceeding.” Even some religious are using “the expression ‘enemy of the state’” in their public commentaries.

Window on Eurasia: Only a New Role for Siberia Can Stir Russia from Its Current Lethargy, Region’s Politicians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 3 – Siberia must shift from the colonial to a global paradigm of development if both that enormous region east of the Urals is to prosper and to stir the Russian Federation as a whole from its “lethargy” of the last 15 years, according to three leading politicians from there.

            In yesterday’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” Vladislav Inozemtsev, chairman of the Civic Force Party, Ilya Ponomaryev, a Just Russia deputy in the sixth Duma, and Vladimir Ryzhkov, a deputy of the first five Dumas, argue that a failure to end Siberia’s colonial status within Russia will be fateful for more than just itself (www.ng.ru/ideas/2012-11-02/5_siberia.html).

            “For all four centuries of its contemporary history,” they write, “Siberia has developed as a classic colony.” In this, the three argue, it has “much in common with the history of the United States, another great European colony.”  But then they pointedly ask: why has the US and especially its West coast developed so much more rapidly than Siberia?

            They dismiss “the most traditional answer” – Siberia’s climate held it back – and argue instead, as Siberian regionalists have over the past 150 years, that “Siberia did not repeat the success of ‘the Wild West’ above all because its development remained harshly subordinate to the tasks of the development of the Russian and then the Soviet economy as a single whole.”

            Because of that different approach by the central governments, “California in our day has a regional GDP that exceeds the GDP of the entire Russian Federation,” while “Siberia has one that is 1.5 times smaller than that of Belgium.”  That situation, they argue, “not only can but very quickly must change.”

            Some have suggested that “the colonial character of the exploitation” of Siberia has been destroyed, but that is not the case, the three says. Instead, the development of the region’s natural resources and the wealth that comes from it has taken place according to “the principles of a mobilization type of development” and remains in the hands of Moscow.    

            That was exacerbated in Soviet times, they suggest, because Moscow had tense relations with the three most “natural” trading partners of Siberia in the East – China, South Korea and Japan. That began to change with perestroika, “but it could not even partially compensate the consequences of the crisis which had begun” in Soviet times.

            That left post-Soviet Siberia a raw materials-supplying colony. Moreover, “the process of de-industrialization led as a result to the strengthening of [this] raw materials paradigm of the development of Siberia.”  As a result, its people began to leave, and “those who remained concentrated themselves in major cities.”

            The “dominating trend” in the first decade of the 1^st century “became the strengthening of the state, but even this did not give Siberia any serious competitive advantages.” Most investments went to European Russia.  But the “main problem for Siberia” was that “the budget vertical” set up by Vladimir Putin led to “an unprecedented centralization of financial resources.”

            Over the last 15 years, “the share of the budgets of Siberian regions in the budgetary system of Russia has contracted almost by a factor of two.”  What will come , the three Siberian politicians are, quite clearly depends on developments in three areas: economic, social and geo-political.

            First, economics.  “It is time for the center to share with the regions,” rather than have all the profits go to Moscow and abroad.  If that happens, then there will be no reason that Siberia cannot grow and even more important no reason that the Russian Federation as a whole will shift from a raw materials supplier to the world to a diverse and modernized economy.

            Second, social policy.  It isn’t Siberia’s climate but “the lack of a well-thought-out social policy” that precludes its development.  Siberia can become successful “only by entering on the path of industrialization and new scientific-technological development – and here China turns ut to be our competitor.”

           

            Therefore, and this is the third, geopolitical factor, “the basic allies of Russia for the conquest and development of Siberia must become South Korea, Japan and the United States.” Siberia can obtain the resources it needs if it retains more of the wealth its raw materials generate, but “the source of technology for conducting industrialization and creating new innovative centers can be foreign investors from Korea, Japan and the United States.

            “Siberia must position itself,” they continue, as ‘Europe in Asia,’ as a bridge which unites not Russia and China but Europe and America.” That is how the first Russian explorers of the region viewed it, and that is how Siberians and Russians should view this enormous region once again.

            Only by such a rethinking of Siberia’s role, by considering it not a colony as now but as a geopolitical bridge will allow “all of Russia to awake from the lethargic sleep of the last 15 years.”  Only in Siberia can “a new [non-ethnic] Russian identity be formed.  An identity adequate to the world and to the contemporary challenges.”

            And they conclude that this identity at its base will be “European and its direction global and cosmopolitan. Unless it changes today, unless it demands from the rest of the country more rights, Siberia will lose the possibility of changing Russia” and “will not be able to overcome [Russia’s] colonial relationship to the most worthy of its constituent parts.”