Russian Courts Convicting Record Numbers for Treason, Espionage, and Crimes by Military Personnel, ‘Important Stories’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 18 – The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has released data on convictions during the first six months of 2024. They show that courts there sentenced record numbers of people for treason, espionage, and crimes committed by military personnel, the Important Stories portal says.

            In the first half of this year, according to the portal’s journalists, “52 people were convicted of treason, 3.5 times more than in the same period a year earlier and more than have been convicted in any whole year since 2015” (istories.media/tanews/2024/10/18/gosizmenniki-shpioni-terroristi/).

            Perhaps more significantly, the court figures show that during the first half of 2024, Russian courts found 6,000 Russian soldiers guilty of various crimes, three times more than in the same period in 2023 and 7.5 times more than for that period in the years preceding Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine.

            The crimes for which Russian servicemen were convicted are increasingly serious and the percentage being sentenced to prison is now 4.5 times greater than was the case in pre-war years (istories.media/en/news/2024/10/15/russian-soldiers-have-become-more-likely-to-receive-real-sentences-as-punishment/).

            Russian courts also sentenced more Russian civilians for terrorism and extremism during the first half of 2024. According to Important Stories, 366 were sentenced for terrorism; and 340 were convicted of extremism, both up by double digits from 2023 and even more when compared with earlier years.

Minnikhanov Visits Memorial to Ivan Grozny’s Soldiers who Died Attacking Kazan Khanate in 1552 Having Earlier Banned Meeting to Remember Its Defenders

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 18 – The Kremlin’s efforts to rein in Tatarstan have just taken another step forward, one certain to undermine its authority among Tatars: Republic head Rustam Minnikhanov has visited a memorial to Russian troops who died during the sacking of the Kazan khanate in 1552 after having earlier banned a meeting of Tatars to remember its defenders.

            Between 1989 and 2021, Tatars assembled every year on October to remember those who died in Kazan fighting the Russian advance. At first, only a few hundred did so and then tens of thousands in the 1990s. But as Putin increasingly moved against the republic, Kazan officials were forced to restrict the size and location of such meetings and then in 2022 to ban them.

            (For this history, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/10/kazan-refuses-to-authorize-meeting-on.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/this-year-tatars-wont-mark-anniversary.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/10/latest-ban-on-tatarstan-memorial-day.html.)

            Over the last decade, the Russian Orthodox Church and Moscow officials have devoted more attention to marking the 1552 battle at a monument built two centuries ago in tsarist times to those Russian soldiers who lost their lives in the course of their conquest of Kazan (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/10/muscovite-plans-to-memorialize-russians.html).

            And earlier this year, the government of Tatarstan announced that it had allocated 300 million rubles (three million US dollars) to refurbish the Russian monument (m.business-gazeta.ru/news/628522), but few Tatars thought that their own leaders would go there, especially on such a sensitive anniversary.

            Now, however, that has happened, sparking anger among Tatars not only at Minnikhanov who has shown himself increasingly deaf to the demands of the Tatars but at Moscow for its increasingly hostile attitude (idelreal.org/a/dlya-chego-publichno-sech-sebya-ruslan-aysin-o-poseschenii-minnihanovym-hrama-voinam-pogibshim-pri-vzyatii-kazani/33163431.html).

            Minnikhanov’s visit to a Russian shrine may seem a small thing to many outside observers, but it is likely to prove anything but, given that it shows there are apparently no limits to what the Moscow-imposed head of Tatarstan is prepared to do to satisfy the wishes of the Kremlin at the expense of his own nation. 

Putin to Bring Back Stalin-Era Sports Parades in Red Square

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 19 – Vladimir Putin is justly criticized for his Stalinist approach to rule; but in most cases, his approach is analogous to the late Soviet dictator. However, there are exceptions in which the current Kremlin ruler is reviving activities that almost precisely those that Stalin promoted and even subsequent Soviet leaders dropped after his death.

            One of those involves the parades of athletes through Red Square, a practice started in 1919 under Lenin but became annual in 1931 after Stalin had consolidated power and then was immediately dropped in 1953 after he died (moscowtimes.ru/2024/10/19/v-rossii-vozrodyat-stalinskie-sportivnie-paradi-a145389).

            In October 2023, Putin said he favors such celebrations because they can help make sports “a norm of life” for three out of every four residents of the Russian Federation. Now, now he has directed the sports ministry to organize the first of these revivals of a Stalin practice in 2025.

            Such Soviet sports marches in Stalin’s time resembled similar marches in Hitler’s Germany, and this parallel contributed mightily to the conclusion that the two regimes, despite their hostility at one level, were manifestations of the same totalitarian approach. Putin’s revival of these celebrations will likely lead many to draw comparisons with fascist regimes. 

By Denying Russia is Now China’s Junior Partner, Putin Only Calls Attention to that New Reality, ‘Moscow Times’ Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 18 – Sometimes a denial has the effect of calling attention to something than silence would have. Such appears to be the case with Vladimir Putin’s insistence that there is no basis for suggesting that Russia is becoming “the junior partner” of China, to judge from a new article in The Moscow Times.  

            Asked at a press conference at the BRIKS conference in Kazan whether he now considers Moscow to be “the junior partner” of Beijing, Putin said there was no basis for such suggestions because the two countries deal with each other as equals (moscowtimes.ru/2024/10/18/putin-otkazalsya-schitat-rossiyu-mladshim-partnerom-kitaya-a145379).

            The Kremlin leader’s words will disturb both those Russians who have long been accustomed to viewing Russia as the “senior” partner in this relationship and others who will see the statistics the newspaper offers that show both China’s role in Russia and Russia’s dependence on China growing.

            Among the figures The Moscow Times offers are the following:

·       The Russian economy is more dependent on China than that of any other country except for North Korea.

 

·       China is rapidly increasing its presence in the Russian economy, with Chinese firms now accounting for more than a third of all new businesses registered in Russia this year.

 

·       Moscow continues to sell gas to China at discount prices far below what it might be able to get from other countries.

 

·       China now dominates the new car market in Russia but shows no interest in building plants in Russia to manufacture them that might employ Russians.

Plans to Restore Chechen District in Dagestan by 2025 Foundering on Property Disputes

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 19 – Moscow and Makhchkala have committed themselves to restoring the Chechen district in Dagestan by 2025, something that would be possible only if most of the ethnic Laks now populating that region are resettled elsewhere. But plans for that have run into difficulties because Lak property owners are insisting on compensation for any takings.

            That district, which runs along Dagestan’s border with Chechnya, existed until 1944 when Stalin deported the Chechens. When the Chechens were permitted to return, the Aukh District was not restored. Instead, it has remained the Novo-Lak district named for the ethnic Laks who had moved there in place of the Chechens.

            After the demise of the USSR, the Chechens were promised both by Moscow and Makhachkala that they would be allowed to restore the Aukh district, that property they had owned there earlier would be restored to them, and that the Laks would be resettled elsewhere in Dagestan.

            But the Laks don’t want to leave unless all of their property claims are satisfied, they are fully compensated for any property they give up, and are provided with equivalent housing and land elsewhere in Dagestan. Not surprisingly, these competing claims are in the courts, with both Chechens and Laks saying they will carry their cases to the highest Russian courts they can.

            That makes it unlikely that this issue can be resolved anytime soon and quite possibly not before 2026 or even later. And it also means that these cases and the human tragedies they reflect will spark more serious conflicts between the Laks and the Chechens, the latter of whom have the backing of Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov.  

            (For the complicated history of this dispute and its growing potential for violence, see  kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/346298/, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/banal-corruption-reason-dagestan.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/moscow-and-makhachkala-risk-violence.html.)

Moscow Not Sending Those Convicted of Draft Evasion to Prison, ‘Vyorstka’ Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 18 – One of the more interesting anomalies of Russian judicial action since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine is that in the course of all of 2023 and the first half of 2024, Russian courts did not send to prison any of the 1378 men they convicted of draft evasion, Vyorstka reports.

            Instead, a handful were given suspended sentences or fined 100,000 rubles (1,000 US dollars) or even more, the independent Russian news outlet says, sentences that are unlikely to cause those who want to avoid service to think again (t.me/svobodnieslova/5780 reposted and discussed at nemoskva.net/2024/10/18/ni-odin-uklonist-ne-sel-v-tyurmu/).

            The absence of real sentences for this crime, especially at a time when serving personnel are now receiving them is striking and may very well reflect concerns that imposing harsh sentences for such actions might affect the sons of too many important people or bring the costs of the war home to a larger number of Russians. 

Putin’s Russia Moving toward One Definition of Totalitarianism where Everything Not Permitted is Compulsory, Grashchenkov Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 18 – More than a half a century ago, I was privileged to take the last course Hans J. Morgenthau taught at the University of Chicago. Among the many wise things he said that have remained with me in the years since was his relating of an anecdote about the difference between democracy, authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

            Morgenthau said that there were of course many differences but he insisted that the key one was this: in a democratic political system, everything not prohibited is permitted; in an authoritarian regime, everything that not permitted is prohibited; and in a totalitarian one, everything permitted is compulsory.

            His words have come to mind on reading a new comment by Ilya Grashchenkov about Putin’s Russia in which he asks whether “everything that isn’t permitted is going to be prohibited” (rosbalt.ru/news/2024-10-18/ilya-graschenkov-teper-v-rossii-vse-chto-ne-razresheno-zaprescheno-5225612).

            That is the classic definition of authoritarianism, the head of the Center for the Development of Regional Policy says, and a good description of a political system where the vice speaker of the Duma, Anna Kuznetsova, has declared that it is time to ban not just this or that activity but “destructive information as a whole.”

            Of course, under the terms of Morgenthau’s anecdote, that would simply mean that Russia would be a full-blown authoritarian state. But because Kuznetsova doesn’t propose to specify everything that she thinks is “destructive,” the next step will be to pass a law telling Russians what they must do in all cases, the very definition of totalitarianism.

            Putin has opened the way to this outcome because he routinely talks about things that he either wants to ban or doesn’t define; and so Russians can expect that the Kremlin leader will move on from measures like the one Kuznetsova is now urging to catalogue not of what is banned but of what is permitted and therefore in most cases at least compulsory.