Russian Centenarians Remember the Past Very Differently than Younger Russians Do

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 31 – The approximately 7,000 Russians over the age of 100 remember the last ravaged century in their country to use Robert Conquest’s term quite differently than do younger groups, including the majority born after the death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982 and the youngest who think about the Soviet past only in ideological terms.

            As Russia prepared to enter the centennial year of the 1917 revolutions, Dmitry Rogozin, a sociologist at Moscow’s Russian Academy of Economics and State Service, talked about some of the findings of his interviews with more than 100 100-year-old Russians to Olga Filina of “Ogonyek” (kommersant.ru/doc/3164655).

            He noted that he and his colleagues spoke with this group of people in four regions of the Russian Federation – in the city of Moscow, in Astrakhan and Chelyabinsk oblasts and in the Khakass Republic.  People in Moscow, not in the North Caucasus, live the longest, he said, because they have more of the support infrastructure they need.

            But the most important thing for this group of elderly, he says, is that they know that they did not live in vain and that they were and remain needed by others.  Their memories of the past are informed by this and that contributes to the fact that they do not think in linear terms with one decade succeeding another but with a “broadened” present that includes all at once.

            Unfortunately, Rogozin continued, all too many of the relatives of these elderly Russians view such an approach to the past not as a specific feature of those who live a long time but rather as an indication of the onset of dementia.

            Those who are middle aged, he said, “live in the flow of events and must rapidly respond to the present. But at the age of 100 there comes a time for comparisons, for the reassessment of life, for ‘slow thought’ and here the broadened present becomes very useful: it doesn’t distort the significance of events … depending on whether they happened under the current president or in the past.”

            On the one hand, Russian centenarians become “freer in their assessments” of past events; but on the other, they also become “significantly less politicized” than are younger people.  That is, Rogozin says, “they concentrate more on the social life of the country than on the arrival of one leader or another.”

            “Of course, the Great Fatherland War is the key event for them, but precisely because there in a special way were manifest the human qualities of various people which became ever more real in the face of death,” the researcher says.  They remember the pre-war years and especially collectivization given that many came from the villages.

            As far as the post-1945 period is concerned, most recalled their transfer from the vilalges into cities and construction sites, something that they now recall “not only as a social life but also as a trauma, a break with their customary way of life,” one for which these Russian 100-year-olds still feel nostalgia.

            Concerning more recent events, he said, those who are still alive recall as “more or less a plateau without significant changes.” Rogozin said he had been surprised that “the 100-year-olds hardly took note of the 1990s.  They do not have a sense of a radical change in the social system.” There was one at the time of collectivization but not in the 1990s.

           

            Yes, they lost money, but no more than they lost in the mandatory purchase of state bonds in earlier times. And because they have that feeling, many of this age group, to the extent they can judge from TV and conversations, are inclined to view “the contemporary situation in Russia” as being much like “the Soviet system.” They “do not find a big difference.”

Medvedev Says ‘Tatarstan Must Know Its Place,’ Driving Another Nail in the Coffin of Federalism in Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 30 – Responding to Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov’s complaint about Moscow’s unilateral taking of more funds from the regions – see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/12/minnikhanov-slams-moscows-unilateral.html -- Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev declared that “Tatarstan must know its place” and not expect any concessions from the center (vip-rm.info/?p=2806).

                In short, what the Moscow leader was saying is that Tatarstan should simply put up and shut up rather than think that it has any rights even to raise the kind of question that is likely on the minds of many in regions from which more money is being taken and thus the Russian constitution’s talk about federalism is just that, talk and only talk.

            In a commentary for Radio Liberty’s Tatar-Bashkir Service, Ayrat Fayzrakhmanov and Artur Khaziyev says that Medvedev’s hardline is certain to be counter-productive not only in Tatarstan but across the Russian Federation however popular it may make him in Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin (idelreal.org/a/28202502.html).

            At a time of economic difficulty and budgetary stringency, they write, it is “completely natural that donor regions don’t like paying more to the central budget and thus it is a normal situation when one of their heads expresses dissatisfaction about such things.” To act otherwise, as Medvedev has done, thus is profoundly troubling.

            In Russia today, however, “such natural expressions are viewed as thunder from out of a blue sky,” as something that should not be tolerated, Fayzrakhmanov and Khaziyev say.  Indeed, as they point out, Medvedev directly declared that all such talk “on this issue must “stop now.”

            Medvedev’s reaction, they continue, is “a disturbing signal not only and even not so much for the regions. It is one for the country as a whole. The stability of the political system is the result of maintaining a balance of interests in it, among various social strata, among people with varied views, and between donor regions and donor recipients.”

            After all, as they reasonably point out, “how can a balance of interests be found if the various sides are prohibited from raising them?” And that is especially true when there is an economic crisis and when the pie to be divided is getting smaller not larger, forcing money to be shifted from one group to another.

           

            Thus, it is wrong to dismiss what Minnikhanov said as a reflection of Tatarstan’s special case as the only republic with treaty relations with Moscow and as one of the few donors.  “It s completely possible,” the two analysts write, that he “expressed what almost every second subject of the federation now thinks.”

            And that is especially likely to be true today, Fayzrakhmanov and Khaziyev conclude, “when requirements for spending are being shifted onto the shoulders of the regions while incomes are ever more being concentrated in Moscow.” In short, Medvedev hasn’t ended this conflict: he has simply raised the stakes.

But It’s Not in Moscow: 2016 Saw Far More Protests and Repression Beyond the Ring Road

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 30 – The last 12 months saw more public protests in Daghestan than ever before and more repression in Russian-occupied Crimea than at any time since the Soviet period; but because these develop ments don’t not correspond to Moscow’s narrative and took place far beyond the Russian capital’s ring road, they have attracted little attention.

            In a commentary on the Kavkazskaya politika portal today, journalist Lyudmila Magomedova says that 2016 will go down in history as “a year of kidnappings, suffering and maternal tears and also as “a record one in terms of the number of meetings, pickets, and other protest actions” (kavpolit.com/articles/god_pohischenij_stradanij_i_materinskih_slez-30767/).

            Most of these actions – and she provides remarkable details about many of them – came in response to policies imposed on the population by the republic leadership at Moscow’s insistence, thus making them truly opposition actions even if neither the participants nor the republic leadership chose to identify them in that way.

            Republic head Ramazan Abdulatipov admitted as much when he acknowledged during an interview with Moscow media that his “anti-terrorist work has disturbed people” but that such problems are as noting “compared to those with even a single terrorist action in which dozens might die” (kavpolit.com/articles/pravitelstvo_dagestana_provotsiruet_narod_na_prote-30731/).

            In the name of fighting terrorism, the Daghestani authorities have launched a program of intimidation featuring mass arrests and the disappearance of more than a hundred young men.  Despite the fact that many are frightened, an increasing number of mothers have spoken out and demanded an accounting of what the authorities have done with their sons.

            As Magomedova points out, their protest activity has attracted the negative attentions of the powers that be; but instead of being frightened off, activists have been able to attract ever more people to their meetings and to make demands against those who they believe are responsible for this tragedy.

            In short, in Daghestan now, the powers that be have applied just enough force to infuriate the population but not enough to keep them in a state of fear.  And that pattern, perhaps not surprising in Russia’s most Muslim and restive republic, is likely to spread to other parts of the North Caucasus and beyond in 2017.

            As a result, the Russian authorities are going to have to make a choice soon: either impose even more draconian measures on the population or change their policies. Continuing as they have been doing in 2016 is only going to lead to more anger, more protests and a greater risk of loss of control.

            Meanwhile, in Russian-occupied Crimea, the Russian special services engaged in a sweeping crackdown of all those Moscow suspects of being opposed to its illegal occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula, using intimidation, arrests, violence, and confinement in psychiatric hospitals in the worst Soviet tradition (ru.krymr.com/a/28205353.html).

            The fact that these actions have gone on so long and with no let up, as Viktoriya Veselova points out in her report on “The Year of Repressions-2016” shows that they are a concerted policy and not the random actions of local or regional officials, as they are sometimes dismissed by those viewing the situation from Moscow.

            But what is most important about these two reports and others like them that could come from regional news outlets or international portals are two things. On the one hand, there is far more protest activity in Russia than many who look only at the capitals assume and there is likely to be even more in the future.

            And on the other hand, there is currently a grave danger that the Kremlin is using the regions, including and perhaps especially occupied Crimea and Muslim republics like Daghestan, as laboratories of repression, confident that few will notice and that its actions will therefore either be ignored altogether or come to be viewed as business as usual.

            Either of those outcomes – and tragically both are on view now – will have disastrous consequences not only for the people immediately involved but for the future of all those who live within the borders of the Russian Federation.