CIS at 30 Becoming ‘a Valdai Club’ for Presidents, Byshok Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 16 – Speaking at a meeting of CIS leaders on the 30^th anniversary of that organization’s founding, Vladimir Putin said that the group had “exhausted” its current possibilities and must evolve to deal with new challenges. None of the leaders challenged him, but neither they nor others appear to see much change of Putin’s plan being realized.

            Stanislav Byshovk, vice president of the Belarusian-Russian Union Civic Initiative, for example, said that in his view, “the CIS is being transformed into something like the Valdai Forum” but with presidents rather than experts. Other structures, like the ODKB, are playing a greater integrative role (ura.news/articles/1036283267).

            “I don’t see in the rhetoric or Putin and other leaders any indication that they want to somehow strengthen the CIS,” the Belarusian commentator says. Putin would be the last person to want to do away with this organization given Russian dominance there, but he too understands that real integrative processes will take place elsewhere. The CIS in that sense is a talk shop.

            Dmitry Zhuravlyev, head of the Moscow Institute for Regional Problems, is even more blunt. He says that the members of the CIS have “already lost interest” in the organization. It was “important in the 1990s when there was still a common currency and Soviet passports. Now, each country has its own independence, above all from Russia.”

            Consequently, he doesn’t expect the CIS to increase in importance although he too seems certain that it won’t disappear. It will simply be marginalized by Moscow’s other integrative programs and by the disinterest of the non-Russian members in giving Moscow yet another way of imposing its interests on them.

 

Establishing Russian Bishopric in Armenia Creates Problems in Region and in Moscow’s Ties with Orthodox World, Soldatov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 16 – Two days after hosting the senior religious leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Moscow, Patriarchate Kirill orchestrated via a special online meeting of the Holy Synod the creation of a Yerevan-Armenian bishopric of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

            And he appointed to its head Archbishop Leonid who retains his position as deputy head of the ROC MP’s Department of External Church Relations and is widely viewed as Kirill’s point man in the projection of the power of the Moscow Patriarchate beyond the borders of the Russian Federation in the Middle East and Africa (patriarchia.ru/db/text/5853045.html).

            While there have long been a small number of ROC MP churches in Armenia, they have always been under bishoprics located beyond the borders of that republic; and the creation of a bishopric for them within Armenia raises questions about Moscow’s intentions there and also about new ROC MP churches in Qarabagh.

            The ROC MP in the past has always been respectful of the Armenian Apostolic Church, religious affairs expert Aleksandr Soldatov writes in Novaya gazeta; but now it has taken an action which looks like a challenge to Armenian Catholicos Geregin II and his ancient church (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/10/15/prisoedinenie-armenii).

            That move has already sparked an angry reaction among many Armenians who view it as an effort to Russify their religion and their country, and it has raised serious questions about what Moscow’s intentions are regarding church administration of parishes set up in Qarabagh for the Russian forces now there (regnum.ru/news/polit/3399581.html).

            Were Moscow to subordinate them to this Armenian patriarchate, that would offend both the government in Baku and the Russian Orthodox leadership in Azerbaijan. Indeed, it could fuel more talk about the possibility of the pursuit of autocephaly by the small but influential Orthodox church in Azerbaijan (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/10/another-nail-in-coffin-of-moscow.html).

            Consequently, whatever hopes the Kremlin had that Kirill might promote a settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan with his meeting of religious leaders have been replaced by concerns that the Russian church leader as has often been the case in the past has taken a difficult situation and made it far worse than it was.

            But there is another reason for the Kremlin to be alarmed by this. The Armenian Apostolic Church is not only ancient – more than a millennium older than the Russian church – but is a leader of a brand of orthodoxy rooted in fifth century disputes and politics that still splits the Orthodox world and which Moscow has sought to overcome.

            Instead of contributing to that outcome, Kirill’s move has reminded everyone of Russian heavy-handedness and made it more rather than less likely that the Orthodox world that has been allied with Armenia in the past will become ever less willing to listen to the Russian church on issues not only in the Caucasus but also on autocephaly in Ukraine and elsewhere.

 

After Ten-Year Pause, Russia Resumes Importing Radioactive Wastes from Europe

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 16 – To the horror of environmental activists in Europe and Russia and the fears of security analysts that Moscow will reprocess this waste for nuclear projects including potentially weaponry, Moscow has begun importing radioactive wastes from Europe after a ten-year gap when such shipments did not take place.

            Russia confirmed that it has begun importing for storage more than a thousand tons of radioactive waste from France on the basis of a deal that was reached last year (region.expert/uranium/ greenpeace.org/eu-unit/issues/climate-energy/45879/french-nuclear-companies-exposed-dumping-radioactive-waste-siberia/, and newizv.ru/news/society/13-10-2021/rossiya-budet-pererabatyvat-uranovye-othody-i-frantsii).

            Environmental activists have expressed serious concern that Moscow has won these contracts with low bids that reflect the fact that it does not observe the safety requirements for the storage of materials that will remain radioactive for decades or longer or ensure that transit from ports to the interior of the country is handled in ways that do not threaten public health.

            France is not the only EU member now sending nuclear wastes to Russia for storage. Germany is too on the basis of an agreement reached in 2019 that anticipates the dispatch of 12,000 tons of radioactive waste from Germany to Russia in the coming years (finanz.ru/novosti/aktsii/v-rossiyu-vvezut-12-tysyach-tonn-uranovykh-otkhodov-iz-germanii-1028622113).

 

85-Year History of Baikal-Amur Mainline Provides Few Reasons for Optimism, Zhirnov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 16 – Many assume that the Baikal-Amur Mainline railway super project was a Brezhnev era effort begun in 1974, but in fact, construction of the BAM, as the railway is commonly known, began not then but in the early 1930s and was scheduled to be completed by November 7, 1936.

            Now that Moscow is again talking about expanding BAM by enlarging tunnels and making it a double-track rather than single-track road, Kommersant journalist Yevgeny Zhirnov has examined the history of this project and concludes that the main obstacles are not “severe weather conditions and the lack of a labor force” but in Moscow (kommersant.ru/doc/5038170).

            Again and again, from the 1930s on, Moscow announced grand plans and then engaged in bureaucratic infighting that precluded their achievement. As a result of these problems, Zhirnov shows, the east and west branches of BAM were connected only in 1984 and the most important tunnel, itself only single-tracked, was completed only in 2001.

            Something similar appears to be going on now, and that provides little reason for optimism. The obvious problems of climate and labor availability seem so overwhelming that few look beyond them to the bureaucratic difficulties in the Soviet and now Russian capital. But it is there that BAM has been blocked so often in the past.

            Zhirnov’s article provides compelling evidence that a similar pattern holds again now, with big talk in the capital about transformative development and far less progress actually achieved on the ground in the Trans-Baikal. 

           

 

Russians Seek to Live Apart from Regime or to Emigrate rather than to Oppose Putinism, Shapovalova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 16 – Those who are horrified by the Putin regime, which is now at its apogee, Marina Shapovalova says, need to disabuse themselves of two mistaken notions, the idea that the majority of Russians blindly support him out of love or that they are ready to seek his replacement by someone else with a different policy.

            Instead, the Russian commentator says, those who do oppose the regime must recognize that the Russian people no longer love Putin but instead of opposing him, something dangerous because of his free use of police power, have adopted the traditional Russian approach of seeking to get out from under his rule.

            In tsarist times, Russians to Siberia; but today, they either emigrate or seek to live in ways independent of the state or at least below the state’s radar screen as the best ways to maintain themselves without the obvious risks of opposition, the Russian commentator writes in Gorod 812 (gorod-812.ru/utrambovannyj-monolit-strategiya-vyzhivaniya-v-rossii/).

            The Putin regime benefits not only from its use of police powers but also from the way in which Russians perceive the current international system, Shapovalova says. They see an international community that is unwilling to go after Putin directly but instead takes actions that hurt them instead.

            As a result, the image of the West which many had at the end of Soviet times, as a model and liberator has been replaced by a view of the West as something opposed to Russia as such. In that situation, rocking the boat inside Russia makes no sense because any instability would simply work to the benefit of those who Russians believe want to destroy them.

            The average Russian thus “clearly feels the senselessness and danger of any active resistance to the regime in its current state,” Shapovalova continues. “This is not the Belarus of Lukashenka … It is already not 2011 in the Russian Federation.” Instead, it is a place where it makes “good sense” to keep one’s head down or to leave but not to resist openly.

            “There is no ‘genetic slavery’ in the people; there is only good sense,” she argues.

            Exit either via emigration or keeping one’s head down is “our perspective for the coming decade or even more,” Shapovalova continues. What this means is that the people will increasingly live apart from the regime, not challenging it but also not providing it with the kind of support the rulers seek.

            The only thing that could change this would be the departure of Putin, a development some in the regime may be prepared to take risks to achieve but that few if any in the population are prepared to do the same given the near certainty that they would lose more than they would be likely to gain.

            Shapovalova concludes her essay by insisting that her words are “not a defeatist manifesto. It is simply necessary to see reality as it is. Especially if your personal strategy presupposes resistance. It is better for you and those close to you if you find means adequate to the threat” and not build your hopes on false assumptions about the people and the powers.

Putin Regime Seeks to Replicate Itself Abroad, Felshtinsky and Popov Say

Paul Goble     

            Staunton, Oct. 16 – The mafia state Vladimir Putin has put in place in Russia is not only a danger to that country but to the world, Yury Felshtinsky and Vladimir Popov say, because like its Soviet predecessor, the Russian regime seeks to replicate itself in other countries and is even less constrained in its actions toward that end than were the communists.

            In a new book, From the Red Terror to the Mafia State: Russia’s Special Services in the Struggle for World Rule (in Russian; Kyiv: Nash Forman), the US-based Russian historian and the former KGB lieutenant colonel demolish the argument of those who insist that Putinism is a threat only to Russia or at most to Russia’s neighbors.

            In that respect, the argument of the two is even more important than was that of Felshtinsky in his 2002 volume, The FSB Blows Up Russia, that documented how Putin orchestrated the blowing up of the apartment blocks in Russian cities in order to have a pretext for restarting Moscow’s war against Chechnya.

            Felshtinsky told Radio Liberty interviewer Dmitry Volchek that his new book covers a far broader theme than did his earlier one. It focuses on “the century-long history of the struggle of the special services for power first in the state and then already after 2000 when this power was seized for the spread of this power beyond the borders of the Russian Federation” (svoboda.org/a/agenty-i-obekty-omerziteljnaya-gadina-gosudarstva-chekistov/31506942.html).

            Some see this as a return to the Soviet past, but there is a fundamental difference, one that springs from the relationships between the CPSU and the security services. The latter were celebrated as the weapon of the former, but in fact, “the chief enemy of state security” in Soviet times was not invaders or dissidents but the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”

            The KGB under its various names was engaged in a struggle against the CPSU even as it ostensibly served that ruling stratum, Felshtinsky says. When the CPSU ceased to exist, the KGB, now renamed the FSB, had an unobstructed path to total power and was prepared for this because it had its agents in all parts of Russian society.

            “Tens of thousands of spies secretly worked in Soviet structures and organizations, in the editorial offices of newspapers, in television, in banks, in scientific research institutions and in universities.” As a result, when Putin became president, the FSB was able to seize power almost “instantaneously.” There was no real power capable of opposing them.

            This regime, unprecedented in history, has proven surprisingly strong and stable, the researcher continues. That is because the KGB officers are “very special people.” They are committed to obedience to those above them and to view everyone else as an enemy that must be destroyed and against whom all means are justified.

            These people are prepared to use military force when they can but also to subvert and recruit leaders in other countries, much as they have already done in the Russian Federation, Feltshtinsky says. This is their strategic goal and its immediate application calls for the destruction of the EU and NATO so that the KGB rulers can expand their power.

            “We are accustomed to exist in a system when states are run by political parties, when leaders who represent the interests of this or that party come to power. [But] in the Russian Federation, a system has been established when the parties fight for places in parliament” to enrich themselves “but do not fight for political power in the country.”

            Those who think otherwise either about the KGB state’s goals abroad or its actions at home only deceive themselves and others and make it easier for the Putinist special services state to achieve its ends, Felshtinsky concludes.

            In his interview, the US-based Russian analyst does not say; but the logical of his argument is this: democratic forces in Russia and their supporters in the West focused on doing away with the CPSU 30 years ago but failed to recognize that there was a parallel and even greater threat from the Russian security agencies.

            As a result, those were never dismantled in the same way; and the Putin regime today is at least in part the consequence of this failure in understanding then and to this day.

'WINDOW ON EURASIA' REOPENS

I am happy to report that my health situation has stabilized sufficiently to allow me to prepare Windows on Eurasia again. I have managed to keep up my daily surveys of URLs since mid-October but only more recently have been able to prepare my own posts on them. Because I was not certain how well I would do, I did not post those WOEs I did manage to write; and because I believe that continuity is important, I am now posting WOEs from the day in October after I was compelled to stop. With time, I hope to be able to catch up and again become more current.

I take this opportunity to remind my readers that those of you who would like to receive WOEs via email every six days can be do so by sending me an email to paul.goble@gmail.com; and of course, those who have been getting them can ask to be removed from that list at any time.

As I return to more regular production, I want to thank all of you who have sent me messages of encouragement since I was forced to suspend preparation of WOEs and to wish everyone the most joyous of holiday seasons and a healthy and happy 2022. 

Paul Goble