To Get Copper for Industrialization, Stalin Confiscated Church Bells

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 30 – Stalin made up the difference between the production of copper in the USSR in the 1930s and the needs of Soviet industrialization during that decade by confiscating the bells of Russian Orthodox churches, an economic requirement that gave an added impetus to Bolshevik anti-religious activities.

            In 1931, the Tolkovatel portal notes, the Soviet economy needed 60,000 tons of copper but Soviet mines produced only 27,000. To make up the difference, Stalin went after church bells which included some 250,000 tons of copper in them (ttolk.ru/articles/tserkovnyie_kolokola_-_na_stroyki_industrializatsii).

That covered the deficit in production for the entire decade but only at the price of the destruction of one of the loveliest parts of Russia’s architectural and religious heritage.

The size of this campaign is reflected in the following statistic: In 1930-31 alone, the Soviet authorities confiscated from the Trinity-Sergiyev lavra 19 bells weighting a total of 130 tons; and officials calculated that with each parish church closed in Moscow, they could count on getting at least a ton of copper.

The entire effort was promoted by an ideological campaign to “transform bells into cars and tractors” – for examples of this, see vecherniyorenburg.ru/cat181/show4102/ -- one that explicitly suggested that while Russians might never again hear the sound of bells, they would benefit from Soviet industrialization.

For Moscow, Non-Russians Abroad with Roots in Russia aren’t Russian Compatriots

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 30 – Once again, Moscow is hosting a World Congress of Russian Compatriots (rossiiskiye sootechestvennniki); and once again, no non-Russians have been invited, a pattern that undercuts Kremlin claims that it views the non-Russians as genuinely part of the broader non-Russian nation Vladimir Putin is constantly talking about.

            “We do not divide people by nationality or citizenship,” Ilya Dorofeyev of the Russian Foreign Ministry says; but among the 400 delegates from 98 countries at the Moscow meeting this week, there is not a single non-ethnic Russian. Instead, all are ethnic Russians and all the focus is on ethnic Russian issues (kavkazr.com/a/kavkaztsev-ne-priglasili/29570492.html).

                Among the topics to be discussed are: “The Preservation of Ethnic Russian Identity: The Support of Russian-Language Education,” “The Media of the Ethnic Russian Diaspora in the Contemporary World,” “The Defense of the Rights and Legitimate Interests of Compatriots,” and so on. 

            There is not a single session on non-Russians or non-Russian issues; and representatives of non-Russians within the Russian Federation who have significant co-ethnic communities are anything but pleased about this.  Among the angriest are the Circassians whose co-ethnics in the Middle East very much want to return to their homeland but have been largely blocked.

            Asker Sokht, the head of the Adyge Khase in Krasnodar, is among them. “Is there no need to preserve the identity of Circassians or Tatars abroad?” The Russian foreign ministry “should be interested” in them as well – or at a minimum to explain exactly why not given Moscow’s claims that it now supports a non-ethnic Russian identity for the country.

            Nusreta Basha, the head of the Circassian Federation in Turkey, tells Laris Cherkes of Radio Liberty that “no one invited” any Circassians there to the meeting. “No one works with us.” Had we been invited, we would have come, she continues.  “We don’t like the policy of Russia with regard to the Circassians.”

            Basha continues: “A large part of the Circassians is in the diaspora.” (She doesn’t say but most estimates put the figure at above 90 percent, with more than five million Circassians living abroad and only about 500,000 in the North Caucasus.) “Russia closes its eyes and doesn’t see the Circassians and we do not agree with this.”

            Khafitse Mukhamed of the Adyge Khase in Kabardino-Balkaria is equally angry. He says no one told his group about the meeting despite the fact that many Circassians would have been interested in attending. And indeed, Cherkes says, that problem is general: no one in Circassian communities abroad or within the borders of the Russian Federation heard about the session.

            The message to non-Russian groups abroad is clear: if you are not ethnically Russian, you aren’t a Russian compatriot. But the message to non-Russians within the current borders of the Russian Federation is equally so: when Moscow says rossiisky, the Russian world for non-ethnic Russian, it only has in mind russky, the Russian word for the ethnic group.

Ever More Russian Trials, Even for Administrative Violations, Now Held Behind Closed Doors

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 30 – Courts in all countries consider some cases in closed session as when the cases touch on sensitive issues of national security, but in Russia, there is a disturbing new trend: ever more cases involving administrative charges against participants in meetings or those posting on the Internet charged with extremism are being held behind closed doors.

            “The official reason,” Natalya Granina of the Lenta news agency says, is so that the names and faces of the police who have been involved with bringing the charges won’t be publicly identified given that many of them “struggle with terrorism and extremism in their free time” (lenta.ru/articles/2018/10/30/sudebnaya_tauna/).

                This trend is especially worrisome now given that Vladimir Putin has directed that cases against those who post things online should be treated as administrative rather than criminal matters; but trying such people in secret not only is more intimidating but opens the way to more repression of more people.

The Kremlin leader is thus taking away with one hand what he offered with the other and doesn’t deserve the credit for “liberalization” that he has sometimes been given by commentators in Moscow and observers in the West.

Interestingly, the presidential decree Russian courts use to close administrative cases was issued not by Putin recently but by Boris Yeltsin on November 30, 1995.  That decree gives judges and prosecutors sweeping powers to close almost any case they want without providing the possibility of a legal appeal.

Sometimes, Granina says, the actions of the courts in this regard are truly absurd. Thus, judges and prosecutors will say they have to close the doors lest the identity of the police involved be exposed even when the names and even photographs of those very same police are in the public domain.

Dinar Idrisov, a rights activist for Sitting Russia, the umbrella group that monitors the court and penal system, says that increasingly this practice is being used to avoid public comment on what the courts are doing. He adds that it is spreading and that his group plans to appeal to the European Court for Human Rights.