Putin Seeks to Have it Both Ways about Possibility of Another Mobilization, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 28 – Vladimir Putin is seeking to have it both ways concerning the possibility of another mobilization, commentator and former Putin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov says. On the one hand, media leaks about that sends a message to the West that he is prepared to fight on in Ukraine for an indeterminate future.

            But on the other hand, he adds, the Kremlin leader’s insistence there won’t be a new mobilization and that the media shouldn’t be talking about it are intended to reassure war-weary Russians that there is no danger that they will be forced to serve (apostrophe.ua/article/world/ex-ussr/2022-12-28/zachem-putinu-nujna-mobilizatsiya--est-dve-prichinyi/49568).

            In this as on so many other occasions, Putin is trying to have it both ways, Gallyamov continues; but it is clear that plans for an additional mobilization have been developed and could be put in place at any point when the Kremlin leader decides he needs more cannon fodder. All his denials are intended to distract domestic attention, while the leaks are for foreign ears.

            This strategy may not work as Putin hopes, however, according to the commentator. Russians are less isolated from foreign news and less influenced than they were by domestic propaganda than they were. And consequently, the leaks Putin welcomes for foreign consumption may further undermine his standing with Russians at home.

Helsinki’s Willingness to Take in Ingermanlanders in 1990 Prevented What Might have Become ‘a Second Karabakh’ in the Russian North, Finnish Scholar Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 28 – Finnish President Mauno Koivisto’s declaration in April 1990 that his country would welcome Ingermanlanders was driven by a fear that their drive for autonomy might involve Finland in something like a Karabakh dispute in the north and that that could prompt Moscow to take severe measures against Helsinki, Kristiina Hyakiyo says.

            But that declaration, which ultimately led to the emigration from the Russian Federation of 30,000 to 35,000 Ingermanlanders to Finland had the effect of undermining the drive for autonomy within Russia that Moscow had promised in 1920 but never carried out, the Finnish researcher says.

            The author of a University of Helsinkki doctoral dissertation entitled “The Difficult Path Home. The Beginning and Expansion of the Process of the Repatriation of Ingermanland Finns at the Time of the Disintegration of the USSR” summarized her findings for Finnish state television (yle.fi/a/74-20010420).

            What happened in 1990 had an important pre-history during World War II. At that time, Finland took in approximately 63,000 Ingermanlanders; but after 1945, 55,000 of them returned to the USSR, only to be confined to the GULAG. Koivisto knew that history well, Hyakiyo reports, and felt some responsibility to these people.

            But he was frightened that the Ingermanland drive for autonomy could land Finland in difficulties with Moscow. Two months before the Finnish president made his declaration, Ingermanland activists confronted Leningrad oblast officials with copies of the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty and demanded autonomy. At that time, everything seemed possible, the researcher says.

            This was also the period when the Karabakh dispute broke out in the Caucasus, and Koivisto feared that if the Ingermanlanders demanded autonomy, that would look to Moscow like a copy of the Armenian efforts in Karabakh and so he decided to offer immigration to them in order to prevent that from happening.

            It is likely that the Finnish president’s move significantly delayed the drive for Ingermanland autonomy; but it didn’t end it. And today, Ingermanlanders in Estonia and Karelia are pressing for autonomy or even independence, to the growing nervousness and anger of the Russian authorities.

            On those trends which continue to this day, see discussions at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/12/ukrainian-and-finnish-attention-to.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/09/ingermanland-activists-open-house-in.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/12/ingermanlanders-launch-podcast-to.html.

            For more background on the Ingermanders and this still submerged nation, see Ott Kurs , “Ingria: The Broken Landbridge Between Estonia and Finland,” GeoJournal 33.1 (1994): 107–113; Ian Matley, “The Dispersal of the Ingrian Finns,” Slavic Review 38:1 (1979): 1-16; windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/07/two-other-baltic-republics-remembered.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-new-aspirant-to-be-fourth-baltic.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/06/regionalism-threatens-russia-today-way.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/05/by-attacking-free-ingria-leader-moscow.html, and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/10/window-on-eurasia-ingermanland-is-ready.html.

 

Moscow’s Repression of Jehovah’s Witnesses Continues to Intensify

Paul Goble

Staunton, Dec. 28 – During the last 12 months, Moscow’s repression of Jehovah’s Witnesses which took off when Putin’s Supreme Court declared them an extremist organization in April 2017 spread and intensified, with cases brought in more regions, longer sentences on believers imposed, and more raids on members of the denomination conducted.

Seventy-seven more Jehovah’s Witnesses were charged or convicted of engaging in extremist activities, bringing the total number to 674. Prosecutors brought criminal charges in two more federal subjects during 2022, raising that total to 72 over the last five years (sova-center.ru/religion/news/harassment/intervention/2022/12/d47439/).

During 2022 alone, 121 Jehovah’s Witnesses were convicted, of whom 57 are now appealing these decisions. According to Jehoavh’s Witnesses organizations, 108  have already appealed and the sentences have remained in place, in most cases without any change in the nature and length of sentence.

In the last year, 45 Witnesses were sentenced to serve time behind bars, up from 32 a year before. The average sentence also increases year on year from five years to five years, six months. In three cases, courts of first instance found Witnesses innocent, but two of these have been reversed by appellate courts.

As of this month, there are 115 Jehovah’s Witnesses in preliminary detention facilities, up from 76 in 2021, 44 in 2020, and 44 in 2019. And during the last 12 months, there were 200 searches of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ residences in 39 different locations in Russia.

Belarus Must Not Be ‘a Consolation Prize’ for Putin after His Loss in Ukraine, Tsikhanouskaya Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 28 – Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the Belarusian opposition now in emigration, says the West must not allow Vladimir Putin to annex Belarus as some kind of “consolation prize” after the Kremlin leader loses in Ukraine. “An independent Belarus is just as important for Europe as an independent Ukraine.”

            In an interview with RFI’s Russian Service, she says she and her colleagues are constantly working to reinforce the understanding in the West that “Belarus is a constituent part of our common regional crisis and that one mustn’t save Ukraine and not save Belarus” (rfi.fr/ru/европа/20221227-светлана-тихановская-беларусь-не-должна-стать-утешительным-призом-для-москвы).

            Today, all assistance is going to Ukraine, “and we completely support this … this is the primary task for all democratic countries but we declare that Belarus also needs your help. We do not ask the West … for arms. We ask for help and solidarity,” Tsikhanouskaya continues. “Don’t forget to talk about the importance of Belarus when you talk about Ukraine.”

            “Don’t forget to say that not only the Kremlin is taking part in a war against Ukraine, the regime of Lukashenka is as well and he also must bear responsibility for this.” The war has allowed him to commit more crimes against the Belarusian people, half a million of whom have fled his repression.

            Many Belarusians abroad are rapidly approaching a point at which their passports must be renewed. They don’t want to return to their homeland as long as Lukashenka is in power. Tsikhanouskaya says she is working to make arrangements with EU governments to have them give special documents to such people so that they can remain abroad and remain Belarusians.

            She says she is also seeking to get a European country to set up a Foundation to help Political Prisoners. There are more than 1400 of them in Belarus. Such a foundation would both focus attention on their plight and help them upon their release.

Russia’s Fundamental Problem isn’t Lack of an Ideology but Lack of a Goal, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 28 – Many Russians are obsessed with the idea that their country must adopt an ideology in order to overcome its current problems, but that is “irrational,” Vladislav Inozemtsev says. Russia’s fundamental problem isn’t its lack of an ideology but rather its lack of a clearly defined and expressed goal.

            Ideologies by their nature are universalist and define what an ideal society should be and what steps are needed to achieve that end, the Russian economist and commentator says. Just being against something, like anti-communists or anti-globalists are, doesn’t by itself constitute an ideological position (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=63AC386B4C6B7).

            “Therefore,” Inozemtsev says, “attempts to elevate anti-Westerism to the rank of an ideology appear somewhat insane.” And consequently, “if Russian society wants to restore an ideological character to itself, it can do so by choosing one of three paths:” adopting one of the universalist ideologies, creating an entirely new one, or substituting for ideology banal Nazism.”

            This third path, of course, is “the simplest” and involves opposing Russia to the rest of the world “on the grounds of religious or ethnic exclusivity.”

            What everyone needs to keep in mind, Inozemtsev suggests, is that Russia’s fundamental problem isn’t the absence of an ideology – many countries lack one and as Daniel Bell argued ever more are likely to. Russia’s fundamental problem is that “after the collapse of communism, our society has been trapped in discussions which are essentially meaningless.”

            “Today,” he continues, “we position ourselves as a post-Soviet (post-communist), anti-Western and pseudo-democratic country.” But these negative positions have no positive content concerning how we are different from others, what our goals are, and what we must do to achieve them.

            In many ways, this recalls what led to the rise of Nazism, as Peter Drucker, “quite correctly in my view,” Inozemtsev says, presciently observed in 1939: “fascism is the stage reached after communism has proven an illusion” [The End of Economic Man (New York, 1939, pp. 230-231.]

            “If Russia wants to overcome the problems which have plagued it for 30 years,” the analyst says, “it must select not an ideology with which the country wants to associate itself but a goal which it intends to achieve.” That goal must be clearly defined and articulated and not be confused with talk about processes.

            In this situation, “the goal is everything; movement is nothing: that is the imperative which can save our society” because otherwise leaders will not do what is necessary to reach it but only to maintain themselves in power.

Regardless of Outcome in Ukraine, Russia has Suffered Geopolitical Defeat, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 28 – “The main result of the last year,” Vladimir Pastukhov says, “is the geopolitical defeat of Russia. Putin has already lost the war.” And more than that, “his defat already is creating the preconditions for global changes in the world order, but hardly in the direction he counted on.”

            “This will be a world order in which Russia in the best case will be given a place in the second tier of partners and in which it will be seen by a large part of world leaders as an observer … That would be a good outcome,” and “the Kremlin elites have done all this with their own hands” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=63ABE75A298E7).

            This defeat, he continues, will remain in place regardless of what happens in Ukraine.” As history shows, a war can be lost long before the final battle. That was true of Germany in World War II; and it is true of Russia today.” Hitler lost when the international community united against him; and Putin has lost for the same reason.

            In an important way, Putin’s war in Ukraine is “special.” Its end came at its beginning when “in his ‘great dispute’ with the West, he was the first to blink and ‘plunge’ Russia into ‘a major war,’” something that all Russian despots have sought to avoid because none has “gone unpunished” for violating that rule.”

            According to Pastukhov, “there is no reason to believe that history will make an exception for Putin.”

            And because that is the case, “the success or failure of his military campaign in Ukraine will not play a fundamental role” in determining what follows. “This is a resource war and not with Ukraine. A defeat in Ukraine will speed up the finale and a victory will delay it a little but not change the essence of the matter. The deed is done.”

            There is of course the risk of a nuclear apocalypse, the London-based Russian analyst says; but it would likely destroy everyone and “if someone does survive, then in that destroyed world, Russia will be on the losing side” – and “if no one survives, then she will be assigned the blame at the Last Judgment.” Despite what Putin thinks, “joking with paradise won’t work.”

Rules Informal and Formal No Longer Being Obeyed in Russia Thus Creating a New Political Reality, Shaburov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 28 – Over the last 12 months, Aleksey Shaburov says, everything in Russia has been “put in motion” with both informal rules and actual laws no longer observed but with no clearly defined new ones put in their place. This has opened a struggle over what the new ones should look like but no clear agreement about either has yet been reached.

            The Yekaterinburg commentator says that up to 2022, everyone understood what the informal rules were and obeyed them and most of the time both those in power and those under them obeyed formal laws (politsovet.ru/76151-vse-prishlo-v-dvizhenie-neochevidnye-politicheskie-itogi-2022-goda.html).

            But in 2022, everything changed, Shaburov says, with ever more political figures deciding that they could ignore the rules and the laws and try to carve out most power for themselves. There is every reason to think that trend will intensify in the coming year, and that by itself will change the nature of the Russian system.

            When no one is confident that any informal rules or formal laws will be obeyed and that many will test them to try to boost their power, then both at the top of the political system and throughout the population uncertainty about what lies ahead will intensify and ever more people will do what they can to try to protect themselves.

            The consequences of this change, Shaburov continues, are enormous. If earlier, one could speak about contracts between the Kremlin and elites and between the rulers and the ruled, now one no longer can; and that makes these relationships vastly more unpredictable, with people on both sides increasingly inclined to see how far they can go.

            In the past, the powers were careful not to violate what had been the social contract; but given what they have done in the past year and gotten away with, the Yekaterinburg analyst says, they are likely to be far less cautious in the steps they will be willing to take in the future. How the Russian people will react to that, however, very much remains to be seen.