Window on Eurasia: ‘From the First,’ Russian Security Agencies Have Controlled Neo-Cossack Movement, Analyst Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 10 – Since its emergence at the end of perestroika, the neo-Cossack movement in Russia appears to have “been under the direct control” first of the KGB and then the FSB, a pattern that gives special meaning to Vladimir Putin’s promulgation of a state policy for the development of the Cossacks over the next decade, according to a Russian analyst.

            In an article for the Lenta.ru news agency, Dmitry Kovalyev says that Putin’s action has its roots in the developments of the years 1989-1990. “Apparently, from the very first years, the Cossack movement was under the direct control of the KGB-FSB” and for the most intriguing of reasons (http://www.lenta.ru/articles/2012/11/07/cossacks/).

            According to Kovalyev, the reason Soviet and then Russian security agencies did so was because “up to now ‘Cossackiya,’ an old dream of emgre nationalists, figures in the American law about captive nations, Public Law 86-90, Captive Nations Week Resolution,” and therefore the Cossack activists deserved close watching lest they mount another secessionist challenge.

            This outcome reflects the complicated history of the Cossacks as a people or social stratum and the emergence of “two Cossackries” in post-Soviet Russia, the one rooted in the history of the 11 Cossack voiskas of Imperial Russia and the other – often called “masked” –which has arisen in Russian cities since 1989.

            During the Russian Civil War, Kovalyev observes, Cossack leaders inevitably clashed with the Soviet system, but even then, this clash took two forms. On the one hand, most Cossack leaders backed the White Russian movement, but on the other, a certain number of Cossacks wanted to create what they called “a Finland in the Don.”

            Both projects failed, but they represented a sufficient challenge to the new Soviet government, that Moscow conducted some of its more intense repressions against the Cossack, repressions that the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described as “one of the firt genocides on the Earth.”

            Some Cossack leaders went into emigration where they were viewed with deep suspicion not only because of their own uncritical support of the tsarist order before 1917 but also because a few of them coopered with the Germans against the Soviets during World War II. At the end of the war, they were seized by the Soviet army and then executed.

            Descendents of the traditional Cossack communities continue to exist in Russia, Kovalyev notes, but most of them are deeply conservative and show more interest in maintaining their communal traditions rather than in pursuing a political agenda or cooperating with the new Russian government as their forefathers had done with the tsars.

            There are even a few of them in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities, Kovalyev continues, but there is a second group of Cossacks, which emerged as a result of “the unbelieavable perturbations” of the early 1990s and which gave birth to “the pseudo-patriotic and pseudo-Cossack movements” which have attracted occasional media attention.

            “No small role in their appearance,” Kovalyev says, “was played by the mass of those leaving military service as a result of the downsizing of the army.  Accustomed to uniforms, obedience, and wearing shoulderboards, [many of] these people quickly shifted over into the Cossacks.” They are now grouped under “the so-called Central Cossack Voiska.”

            At least some of these neo-Cossacks, the Lenta.ru journalist continues, seek to “work with state structures [like the Presidential Council for the Affairs of the Cossacks, now headed by Aleksandr Beglov] and the Russian Orthodox Church which has created a Synod Committee for Cooperation with the Cossacks.”   

             Under Russian law, Cossacks have the same rights to join state institutions as other Russians, but now Vladimir Putin has indicated that he is open to a more corporate status for the Cossacks, one that might allow them, under the control of the intelligence services, to play a bigger role.

            As Kovalyev observes, Putin “who has called the Cossacks ‘a special caste’ and ‘a special subculture in the good sense of this word,’ declared during the last electoral campaign that ‘the state has supported and undoubtedly will support the Cossacks,’” a promise he now appears to be making good on.

            On October 15, Putin signed a Strategy for the Development of the Russian Cossacks Up to 2020, a document which treats the Cossacks as a social collective and seeks to use them to promote economic development as well as law and order in the areas where the Cossacks now operate (ria.ru/society/20121018/904090213.html).

            Just what that may mean in fact is far from clear, Kovalyev says, but he points to two straws in the wind that may presage greater activism especially among the neo-Cossacks in the coming years.  In Krasnodar, Cossack druzhinniki have been successfully supporting the police for the last few months, identifying more than 1300 administrative violations and one crime.

            And in St. Petersburg, the leader of the neo-Cossack Community there, Dmitry Karpushin, has attracted attention for his opposition to the showing of “Lolita” in the northern capital and his widely reported statement that “Russians are speaking out against the United States of America.”  

            If participation in law enforcement, admittedly defined according to their own lights, is a longstanding Cossack tradition, this new role of the Cossacks suggests, given Kovalyev’s references to the security agencies, that Putin and those around him may want to use the neo-Cossacks to advance positions in a way that allows the Kremlin to disown them if need be.

Window on Eurasia: Nogays’ Call for Their Own Republic Threatens Ethno-Territorial Division of North Caucasus

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 10 – Because significant numbers of the Turkic Nogay nation live in Daghestan, Stavropol, Karachay-Cherkesia, and Chechnya, a call by the Fourth Conference of the Nogays of Russia that Moscow create a separate autonomous republic for them could further destabilize the North Caucasus.

            That body, meeting at the end of October in Terekli-Mekteb in the Nogay District of Daghestan appealed on November 7 to Russian President Vladimir Putin to create a separate Nogay republic that would include within its borders the 70,000 Turkic-speaking Nogays of Stavropol, Chechnya and Daghestan (www.ng.ru/regions/2012-11-08/1_nogaicy.html).

            The Nogays, who number just over 100,000 in Russia’s North Caucasus, have been divided territorially since 1957 when Moscow suppressed Grozny oblast at the time of the return of some of the ethnic groups deported by Stalin and divided the Nogay steppe into three parts. Since then, the Nogays have repeatedly but unsuccessfully asked for their own autonomy.

            But they may have more success this time.  On the one hand, the situation in Daghestan where a plurality of the Nogays lives is deteriorating rapidly.  And on the other, the Nogays have cast their demand explicitly in terms of “strengthening the security of Russia in the North Caucasus.”

            “Only separation from Daghestan and the establishment of an autonomy can give the Nogays the opportunity to preserve themselves as a people-ethnos and to preserve their land for future generations.”  If the Nogays are kept within Daghestan, the letter continues, “it will be impossible” for them to do so because of the approach of Makhachkala.

            Moreover, the Nogays say in their appeal, the weakening of Nogay national traditions because of the absence of territory has opened the way for the spread of Islamist influence, something that until recently had been entirely alien to Nogay national traditions.  Only a territorial autonomy can stop that, they suggest.

            The Daghestani government has exploited the Nogay steppe to the point of exhaustion, they say, exceeding “by several times” state-established ecological norms.” If that continues, the letter says, “then in the near future, Russia will have the first man-made desert in its European portion.”

            But many in the region, including some Nogays outside of Daghestan, are less enthusiastic.  Valery Kazakov, head of the Karachayevo-Cherkess Nogay El National Cultural Autonomy, says a separate Nogay republic would create “a bucket of problems” for Russia as a whole (www.bigcaucasus.com/events/topday/08-11-2012/81510-nogay_step-0/).

            If the various existing republics could agree to cede territory, something Kazakov says is unlikely, then perhaps this would work. But because they won’t, Moscow dare not create a territorial unit lest it spark more violence in the Caucasus.  He proposes instead an extra-territorial approach to promote broader national-cultural autonomy.

            Nogays have already created such formations in Sakha, Yamalo-Nenets, and St. Petersburg, and they occupy senior posts in Karachayevo-Cherkesia, posts they could lose if a separate territorial autonomy were to be created. Nonetheless, the Nogays may press forward – and for a reason none of the Russian commentators mention.

            The largest Nogay community in the world is in Turkey, and many Nogays in the North Caucasus feel empowered by that fact, just as do the Circassians who are vastly more numerous outside the borders of the Russian Federation than within.  And that sense of empowerment, even if it is based more on fellow feeling than actual support, is likely to play an increasing role.

Window on Eurasia: Russians Must Insist on Distinction between “Russkiy” and “Rossiyskiy,” Writer Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 7 – Russians must maintain the distinction between “russkiy,” an ancient term referring to ethnic membership and not initially having anything to do with the state, and “rossiyskiy,” a more recent innovation referring to those who are part of a state, first in their own work at home and then in the use of these terms by those writing in foreign languages.

            In an essay posted on the Rospisatel.ru portal yesterday, Yuri Serb says that Russians in both the ethnic and the political sense must understand this distinction themselves, must maintain it in their own work and in translations, and must insist that foreigners writing about the people and state of Russia follow this distinction as well (www.rospisatel.ru/serb-zametky4.htm).

            “It is understandable,” Serb says, “that two words, different in content and as a result of shear accident having only one foreign analogue inevitably give birth to misunderstandings, all the more so when this circumstance helps some to create ‘misunderstandings’” for their own purposes.

            A generation ago, he continues, “representatives of the Russian White Emigration in the US had occasion to protest against the use of ‘russkiy’ in a negative sense when what was referred to were purely Soviet aspects of reality and of the political practice of the USSR.” President Reagan issued an order on this, but “in fact nothing changed.”

            More recently, the Russian Federation foreign ministry “called upon the Spanish authorities and mass media to more responsibly use the word ‘russkiy’ when they are talking about the arrests of Russian-language criminals.  As a rule, these are people with citizenship in the CIS and not of Russia and also have foreign passports.”

            “For the ministry, it is not a matter of indifference when individuals who do not have any relationship to the Russian Federation are called Russians in either sense.  And for simple citizens of Russia, not diplomats, it is also not a matter of indifference when [such people who may behave badly abroad] are called Russians” when they have no connection of that kind.

            Unlike the foreign ministry, Serb writes, “citizens of Russia do not have instruments at hand to attract the attention of this or that country to the incorrect use of the word ‘russkiy.’” But educated Russians nonetheless must promote this distinction, first in their own work and then in translations or the work of their partners.

            To help in that regard, Serb offers his own dictionary entry on the appropriate and inappropriate use of these two terms in English:

           

“Russian adj. 1 . related to the Russian Federation as a state, or to its territory; (of persons) having the citizenship of the Russian Federation, holding a Russian passport n. 1 . (inappropriate use) person who emigrated from the former Soviet Union     2 . (inappropriate use) any person of Russky descent, irrespective of citizenship Russky n. (pl. Russkie ) 1. one belonging to the most numerous people of Russia , the Ukranian Republic and Belarus (White Russia), totalling over 85 percent of population 2. the East Slavic language spoken throughout Russia and Belarus , and in most of the Ukranian Republic.”             Similar definitions can be worked up for French, German, Spanish and other languages, he suggests and gives the following example: “The French word russe by its sound value and morphology best corresponds to our russkiy; for the translation of the meaning rossiyskiy, more suitable would be russianique, formed in complete correspondence with the laws of French word formation.”

Window on Eurasia: Russia’s Future Depends on the Relationship between Ethnic Russians and Muslims in the Country’s Largest Cities, Mufti Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 7 – Russian society, including its Muslim community, is “becoming ever more polarized and atomized,” according to a leading mufti, who argues that this is especially dangerous given that the future of the country depends on the elaboration of a new relationship between ethnic Russians and Muslims in the country’s largest cities.

            On his blog today, Damir-Khazrat Mukketdinov, the deputy chairman of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of European Russia, offers the seventh installment of his series on developments in the Muslim community of the Russian Federation, an installment that focuses on Russian society more generally and the place of the umma within it now and in the future (damir-hazrat.livejournal.com/66143.html).

            According to the mufti, one cannot analyze the situation among Russia’s Muslims without a clear understanding of what is happening with Russian society more generally, but when one looks at that, one sees a large number of “trends which are unfavorable for all of us, trends which over the last few years have slowly but steadily increased their influence.”

First of all, Mukhetdinov says, one must note that “Russian society like the Russian umma is becoming ever more polarized and atomized,” the result of the destruction of “social ties and their replacement by business interests in various forms, from corporate culture to communities of various social and professional strata.”

That development “in no way assists the formation of a single social organism,” he continues, adding that “the degradation of the institution of the family and the understanding of marriage also affects” that outcome.

Second, and this is especially true among the young, there is growing alienation among the young toward the Russian state, an attitude expressed in relations between young people and the police and between them and the political system as a whole.  The loyalty to particular politicians is “not at all connected with the relations of simple citizens to the existing political system.”

And third, and in Mukhetdinov’s view, this is the most important and defining characteristic trend in Russian society, there is an ongoing “loss of cultural orientations and traditions.” The loss of those the Soviets sought to impose led to the demise of the Soviet system; the loss of those remaining today can have a similar impact.

Many of the ideas for creating a new social compact, Mukhetdinov continues, “are not connected any of the preceding traditions of Russia as a political formation, neither tsarist nor Soviet.” Instead, they are imported from abroad and are being grafted on something that is already in terrible trouble

This reality has serious consequence for the relationship between Russian society and Russia’s Muslims, the mufti continues. Because it means that today “there are no guiding principles which could help [the two sides] find a common language and develop a dialogue” to resolve their differences.

The “70 years of the construction of communism alienated Russian society not only from religiosity but also created a unique stereotype about the city as a place where only civic ways of life are adopted.”  And because of that, there is no framework for Russians to conceive of “Islam and the growth of its representatives within the framework of major cities.”

Protests by Muscovites against construction of new mosques are “based not on experience of interacting with Muslims but on the absence” of such interaction. And consequently, there is no understanding of the reality that “Moscow is a poly-cultural city, a megalopolis of the 21^st century.”

            Those officials who seek to regulate these relations by using “soviet methods of forming religious (ethnic) identity” by setting rules for the number of mosques per district “without the ideology of communism looks at the very least,” Mukhetdinov says, “shortsighted” and counter-productive.

            Moreover, “the striving toward segregation between the Russian community and the Russian umma (something that is happening from both sides)” is the result yet again of “ideological conceptions which have come to use from abroad” rather than those growing out of indigenous traditions.

            The two sides need to find “points of contact in the social space” despite this lack of a traditional foundation, and they need to do so in particular in Russia’s largest cities, Mukhetdinov argues. That is because the numbers of Muslims in major Russian cities is “rapidly increasing.” And thus, the best place to look for interaction is at the municipal level.

            “Beyond any question,” the mufti concludes, “the level and character of the activity of Muslim organizations is the most important factor in the course of changes in the relationship between the umma and society.” The former “must learn not only to speak with Russian society, but to show respect and find compromises” that do not undermine anyone’s rights.    

            If that is done in a competent and honest way, he says, “the birth of not simply mutual understanding between Russian society and the umma will be possible, but also a new tradition of Russian community can be established precisely in the cities and megalopolises of the country.”