‘We’re Not Part of Russia at All,’ Irkutsk Villagers Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 27 – Rural Russia when it attracts attention at all almost always is talked about in the most general terms, but in the last two weeks, the People of Baikal portal has featured two stories from a single 180 person village, Vershina Tutury, where time has stopped or even gone backward and where the people increasingly feel they’re not part of Russia at all.

            The two articles (baikal-journal.ru/2022/12/13/u-nas-zdes-takoj-mentalitet-nam-vsyo-mozhno/# and baikal-journal.ru/2022/12/20/chitat-umeesh-pisat-umeesh-chto-tebe-eshhyo-nado-ot-shkoly/) paint a devastated portrait of an impoverished place without medical facilities, a post office, a police station, or basic services – and where the people are losing hope.

            The village was established in the 1920s during the Soviet effort to wipe out nomadism among the Evenks. But now, their descendants believe that their traditional way of life has been ruined and that the Russian authorities are to blame. If Moscow would only leave them alone, they’d manage, residents say; “We’re not part of Russia at all.”

            Putin’s war in Ukraine may put the final nails in the coffin of Vershina Tutury. On the one hand, Moscow’s offer of high pay to those who volunteer to serve there is attracting the last of the young men. Their parents often don’t want them to go but poverty is forcing everyone’s hand.

            And on the other, the war has ended outside investment in the town. Villagers were promised a new school but now those promises have been put off as money has been shifted to spending on the war and on annexed portions of Ukraine. The school is decaying, without adequate internet connections or even enough teachers.

            There are several danger signs: Far too little Evenk is being taught any more. Evenk parents want their children to learn English so they can leave. And many young people have given up on the idea of education altogether. We can always return to hunting and fishing, pupils say, hardly the restoration of tradition Vladimir Putin constantly talks about.

West Seeking to Use Central Asian Women to Promote Regime Change in Their Countries, ‘Rhythm of Eurasia’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 27 – Almost a century ago and despairing about organizing a social and political revolution in Central Asia, a region without an industrial proletariat, the Bolsheviks chose to use women as their shock troops, an effort brilliantly described in Gregory Massell’s classic study, The Surrogate Proletariat.

            Now, inspired by the prominent involvement of women in recent protests around the world, observers for Rhythm of Eurasia say, American and British officials have taken a page from the Bolshevik playbook and are seeking to use Central Asian women to promote regime change (ritmeurasia.org/news--2022-12-27--k-chemu-zovet-amerika-slabyj-pol-turkmenistana-63825 and ritmeurasia.org/news--2022-12-26--anglosaksy-pytajutsja-raskachat-tadzhikistan-cherez-gendernyj-faktor-63800).

            The two commentators, Marat Nurgozhayev from Turkmenistan and Rustam Masaliyev from Tajikistan, however, do not so much describe what the US and the UK are doing, including such things as training sessions promoting equal rights, as attack what they see as the deployment of radical feminism to attack traditional societies anvd their rulers.

            Their remarks undoubtedly are welcomed by the rulers and traditional male-dominated societies in those two countries and in the Russian Federation, but what they are doing is likely going to encourage the rulers in Ashgabat and Dushanbe to continue to repress women now that two Moscow-linked analysts have said the West is using women against them.

            This is just one of the serious ways in which Vladimir Putin’s commitment to traditional values is having a negative impact far beyond the borders of the Russian Federation. And it is welcoming news that US and UK officials are challenging it in Central Asia even if they have not been in a position to take similar actions in Russia itself.  

Number of Foreign Tour Groups Visiting Russia Fell by More than 90 Percent since Start of Putin’s War

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 27 – Russian tour operators say that the number of foreign tourist groups coming to Russia has declined this year by more than 90 percent from 2021, a year that was depressed because of the pandemic, because of negative images of Russia arising from the conflict in Ukraine.

            Leaders of the Russian tourist industry say there are no prospects for recovery in 2023 and that their member companies are trying to stay afloat by focusing on domestic tourism, visits by people from former Soviet republics, and visits from Iran and, they hope, China, once the pandemic ends there (kommersant.ru/doc/5747995?tg).

            In 2019, there were 5.1 million foreign tourists to the Russian Federation. Last year the number fell to under 300,000. And now, the numbers are dramatically lower, although exactly how many is unclear because the Russian tour industry and government are now talking about tourist groups rather than individual tourists.

            But such a decline is a measure of just how isolated Russia has again become.

Moscow Patriarchate Says It has Churches in 19 African Countries, Angering Orthodox World but Giving FSB Expanded Possibilities

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 27 – When the Patriarch of Alexandria, whose canonical territory includes all of Africa, recognized the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine at the end of 2019, Moscow responded by announcing it would ignore Alexandria’s claim and both seek to poach congregants from existing Orthodox churches in Africa and set up its own.

            The Moscow action infuriated not only the Alexandrian patriarchate but the entire Orthodox world which has a long tradition of respecting the canonical territories of each of the recognized patriarchates, but it was welcomed by Russian officials and especially by the FSB which saw it as a way of expanding intelligence operations in Africa.

            (On these developments and the formation of an ROC MP exarchate for Africa, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/11/moscow-patriarchate-mulls-setting-up.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/11/alexandria-patriarchate-follows-greek.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/12/moscow-patriarchate-threatens-to-set-up.html.)

            In the months since, the Russian church has won over 200 priests, often by providing them with generous subsidies, intensifying anger at Moscow among the Orthodox world and further isolating the ROC MP from other leaders of that religious denomination (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/07/russian-orthodox-presence-in-africa.html).

            But with Russian government support, the Russian Orthodox exarchate has taken the next step forming an administrative center in Kampala, Uganda, and claiming that it now has parishes in 19 African countries (stoletie.ru/lenta/v_stolice_ugandy_postrojat_duhovno-administrativnyj_centr_rpc_625.htm, ria.ru/20221227/rpts-1841733567.html and  gazeta.ru/social/news/2022/12/27/19368805.shtml?updated).

            If true, the ROC MP has emerged as a genuine competitor of Alexandria in Africa; but even if it isn’t that – and as the Russian exarch admits, there is bad blood between the two churches – this expansion means that the Russian church may be providing cover for Moscow’s intelligence and subversive activities on the continent.

China Chief But Not Only Beneficiary of Moscow’s Decision to Allow Kazakh Ships to Use Volga-Don Canal between Caspian and Azov Seas

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 27 – The Russian government has decided to allow Kazakhstan-flagged ships to use the Volga-Don canal to carry cargo between the Caspian and the Sea of Azov, a decision likely intended to tie Astana more closely to Moscow but one that will benefit China more than anyone else, Russian analysts say.

            The decision by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced today will allow Kazakhstan ships to begin using the canal through Russian territory next year, but China will be the chief beneficiary because those ships will be carrying Chinese goods. Indeed, Beijing seems to be the demandeur in this case (tgclick.com/emphasises/6560 and iarex.ru/news/88185.html).

            Not only has China been expanding its presence the Kazakhstan port of Aktau in order to send cargo westward but it has offered to help Russia widen and deepen the aging Russian canal, one whose siltification means that it can’t be currently used year around (rosmorport.ru/filials/asf_news_main/44253/).

            Moscow is interested in getting such Chinese help because it has been using the Volga-Don canal to move vessels from the Caspian Flotilla to the Sea of Azov as part of its war against Ukraine (jamestown.org/program/moscow-shifts-flotilla-from-caspian-to-azov-sea-giving-it-a-new-offensive-capability/ and jamestown.org/program/moscow-moving-15-warships-from-caspian-sea-to-waters-off-ukraine/).

            Indeed, problems with the canal have become so serious that there has been talk about building an entirely new canal between the two seas via the North Caucasus, an enormously expensive project that Moscow cannot afford and could not complete on its own anytime soon (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/10/shippers-hope-to-make-volga-don-canal.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/04/moscows-use-of-caspian-flotilla-against.html).

            Consequently, what looks like a bow by Moscow to Kazakhstan and China may in fact be intended by the Russian authorities to give Beijing incentives to invest more heavily in the Volga-Don canal or in the construction of a new waterway, either of which would allow for using the Caspian Flotilla more easily.

            That in turn means that what may look like an economic decision in fact will have enormous security implications for the entire region. 

Putin Abiding by Stalin's Warning but Not His Practice in Wanting to Annex All of Ukraine Except Its Far West

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 27 – Vladimir Putin’s recent remarks show that he still wants to annex all of Ukraine except for Galicia, the extreme Western portion, a conclusion that flows from the Kremlin leader’s reference a week ago to a remark by Nicholas II’s interior minister, Pyotr Dunovo, Lyubov Stepushova says.

            The Pravda journalist reports that Putin noted that Durnovo had warned that “if you want to lose Ukraine, join Galicia to it,” because that region had been under Austro-Hungarian rule and was a hotbed of Ukrainian nationalism (pravda.ru/world/1783495-putin_ukraine/; for Putin’s own use of this idea, see rg.ru/2022/12/22/putin-schitaet-chto-rossiia-poterpela-fiasko-kogda-udalos-razobshchit-russkij-i-ukrainskij-narody.html).

            According to her, Putin believes that he can annex the rest of Ukraine and that Galicia (consisting of today’s Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Ternopil oblasts) could be left as a rump Ukraine, after Russian negotiations with Poland. Indeed, these may be the only negotiations Putin really wants to have.

            As Putin likely has been told, the idea that much of Ukraine which had been ruled by the Russian Empire could be re-absorbed by Moscow but that those portions in the west which had not could not be has its real origins in the words not of a tsarist minister but in the observations of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

            After the Bolshevik revolution, Lenin and many Bolsheviks believed that as the revolution spread so too could the borders of their country and that the creation of SSRs like Ukraine could be the model for a future in which there would be a German SSR, a French SSR and even an American SSR.

But there was one Bolshevik leader who didn’t, Joseph Stalin. And at the time of the Second Congress of the Komintern in 1920, he registered his objections in two code cable, one of which was published in Soviet times just once (in a footnote in the third edition of Lenin’s collected works) and one of which remained unpublished until after the demise of the USSR (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/12/if-lenin-had-had-his-way-ussr-might.html).

In both, Stalin made clear that national identities would remain powerful even after a socialist revolution and that trying to impose Moscow’s control on those who had never experienced Russian rule before would be a mistake.  He said that the Poles would never accept Soviet RUSSIAN rule and that the same would be true elsewhere.

In the event, Lenin was incapacitated and died not long after the USSR was formed, and Stalin was able to put his ideas into practice, ideas that gave birth to a world socialist system in which there were many states not one with the kind of diversity that he had no intention of allowing within the Soviet Union.

After 1945, Stalin was consistent in not absorbing communist bloc countries. He violated his own view only when he occupied Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and parts of what is now Moldova as well as when after a gap of 25 years he re-imposed Moscow’s rule in the Baltic countries.

Precisely for the reasons Stalin had foreseen earlier, these violations played a major role in the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Putin clearly understands some of the dangers Stalin recognized and hoped to avoid, but he doesn’t seem to recognize that all of Ukraine has now been independent of Moscow longer than Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were when Stalin occupied them, something that is true of all the other former Soviet republics as well. 

Real Cost of Putin’s War: Russians Far Poorer than They Were Ten Months Ago, Milov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 26 – The Putin regime has used a variety of macro-economic indicators to suggest that the war and the sanctions it has sparked have not had that great an impact on Russia and that the country is weathering the current problems far better than anyone might have expected, Vladimir Milov says.

            But those indicators form a kind of “Potemkin village” that conceals the real cost of the war to Russians: they are now 20 to 25 percent poorer than they were in 2013 and 10 to 15 percent poorer than they were only ten months ago, the opposition politician and economist says (theins.ru/opinions/vladimir-milov/258141).

            This is far from the only price Russians have had to pay for Putin’s adventurism and aggressiveness – they have suffered from increased repression and increased isolation -- but it is a high one, likely to create a situation in which economic problems will become political ones in unexpected ways in the future, he continues.

            To understand the true state of affairs in the Russian economy, Milov says, one must not use the macro indicators so beloved by Kremlin propagandists. For example, GDP, something which has one meaning in peacetime and quite another in wartime, a fact the Putin regime ignores.

            In peacetime, GDP “consists of profit, pay and taxes” and has a multiplier effect; but in wartime, it includes the production of arms and ammunition which also “add value” but are quickly expended without making a contribution to economic dynamism. Because that is the case, talking about how small the decline in GDP has been is deceptive nonsense.

            The same thing is true of other gross measures. Unemployment is growing but remains largely hidden because people are kept listed as employed even when they don’t get all or even any of their pay. Inflation is something that is profoundly affected by the methods used to calculate it, and the regime uses those which show it to be lower than it is in fact.

            Investment, which the regime claims is actually growing, isn’t taking place when the country is experiencing a record capital flight; and the ruble’s supposed strengthening is the product of the government’s controls rather than any increase in demand. In reality, demand has collapsed, but you’d never know that from government claims.

            If one looks beyond these “Potemkin indicators,” the economist continues, one gets a better idea of what is going on. Production is collapsing in many sectors, demand has collapsed as people try to feed themselves at a time of rising prices and falling incomes, budget deficits are growing, and import substitution has failed.

            If one considers these, Milov says, it becomes obvious that there are no positive prospects; and “for Russians, this means only one thing: they will continue to get poorer and the quality of their life will get worse.”  That is the real price of “Putin’s imperialism and geopolitical adventurism,” he concludes.