Risks from Russia Falling Apart Far Less than Risks from It Remaining in One Piece, Ginzburg Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 27 – Now that some are predicting that the Russian Federation will fall apart, a veritable army of Moscow commentators and Western analysts are pointing to all the risks that such a development could entail ranging from chaos and violence on the territory of what is now the Russian Federation to a third world war.

            But what they are not doing is comparing those risks to the risks to the peoples of the region and the world if Russia does not fall apart. As a result, the impression has been created that there will only be problems if Russia falls apart and that there won’t be any if Russia remains in one piece.

            That is a clear mistake, as Prague-based Russian commentator Vitaly Ginzburg observes in a comment on a recent post by the Tallinn-based regionalist portal Region. Expert. He writes: “The risks of the disintegration of Russia undoubtedly exist, but they are an order lower than the risks of the preservation of its unity” (stress supplied) (region.expert/after-defeat/?fbclid=IwAR1KEZ4oiHvW6qIwTtQRWxVLk4imFr4SaDQnJh_X65mgrb_mrnwH3Caaigo).

            Ginzburg’s point may seem a small one, but it is anything but for both those who believe and want the Russian Federation to fall apart along ethnic and regional lines and those who believe and want it to remain in one piece. Both groups have a responsibility to address both halves of this equation.

                        Up to now, those who want the Russian Federation to disintegrate or believe that it will even if they don’t want it have done the far better job because they are seeking a fundamental change, but they too need to do far more to point out the real dangers and risks that the continued survival of the Russian Federation would present.

            Those risks involve not only the kinds of threats domestic and foreign that the Russian Federation now presents but also additional risks that are likely to emerge as the Kremlin seeks to hold things together both by repression at home and aggression abroad. As the Putin period shows, those risks are not only real and great but almost certainly increasing.

Putin Wants Russians to Live So Poorly They’re Ready to Die for Him, Kolesnikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 26 – Most governments want their peoples to live well, and almost all operate on the assumption that other governments do as well. That assumption lies behind the sanctions policies that many of them have adopted to try to force those at odds with the international order to behave.

            But some governments have demonstrated that they do not care how poorly their people live, and at least one, the Russian of Vladimir Putin, have indicated that they believe the increasing impoverishment of their own people will make those living under their control more ready to die for the regime.

            New Times commentator Andrey Kolesnikov argues that the Putin regime “doesn’t like it when people live peacefully and well” because it believes that only if they live “poorly” will they be increasingly will to “give up life itself ‘for the tsar,’” an attitude that sets that regime at odds with others and calls into question the value of sanctions (newtimes.ru/articles/detail/238081).

            Dmitry Medvedev laid out that argument in a recent comment where he suggested that in the 1990s, Russian society was “amorphous” because everyone was living for himself or herself  and now has achieved new unity now that people are not living for themselves but living for the country.

            That is real progress, the former Russian president argues, even if Russians saw their standard of living rise in the former case and fall in the latter. Indeed, Medvedev suggests, the change of heart among Russians about coming to the aid of the country may reflect that trend (tass.ru/politika/17367317).

            “In other words,” Kolesnikov says, according to Medvedev, Russians 25 years ago “lived too well, focused on their private lives and forgot how to love the Motherland and ‘defend’ it in a situation where no one thought to attack it.” But now, they have changed; and Medvedev and other Putin supporters welcome that shift.

            “The strategic line of the Putin regime,” the commentator says, “involves a rejection not only of generally recognized values including the value of human life … but also of those arising from normal life as it took shape in peace time for more than 30 years after the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

            According to him, “from the point of view of the regime, its ideologues and talking heads, to live well, peacefully and to be concerned about ‘personal well-being’ is incorrect and contradicts the interests of ‘society.’” And what are those interests? “To die for the Motherland,” perhaps.

            But Medvedev and Putin are wrong that society has now united under that banner. Any unity is “artificial,” a manifestation of how people living in an authoritarian society adapt to pressure rather than a reflection of their real values. They support what they have to rather than what they want to. And polls show the young don’t even do that.

 

            “It turns out,” Kolesnikov continues, “that democracy, human rights and the rotation of those in power have applied pragmatic significance: without them, consumerist values suffer inflation in the broad sense of the word and the government begins to become ever more archaic and put at the center of its policy force and heroic death ‘for the tsar.’”

            According to the commentator, “the corruption of brains, souls and demographics continues, with the military-police regime ready to squeeze human and financial resources out of the country. This is the policy of cannibals, the negative effects of which don’t appear immediately but over time deprive Russia of the possibility of any normal development.”

Real Russian Patriots Learning Chinese So They Can Stay in Russia, Other Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 28 – Russians have long believed that the foreign language their co-nationals study indicates where they would like to live. Those who study English want to go to England or the US, those who study German, Germany; but those who study Chinese are the real patriots because they have decided to remain in Russia even when the Chinese come.

            That is just one of the anecdotes now circulating in Moscow that Russian journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova has assembled and published (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/45469/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       One Russian insists that it isn’t true that the Russian economy is declining. He says he bought a Hyundai for 1.1 million rubles five years ago, put 80,000 km on it, but has been able to sell it for 1.5 million. In what other country would that be possible, he asks.

·       The Russian Duma has banned sex change operations, reducing still further one kind of international trade.

·       Erich Maria Remarque observed that Hitler too though he was “the apostle of peace and that others had imposed war on him – and he got 50 million Germans to agree – a remarkable precursor of Russia today.

·       Baty Khan observed that things are good where we have not yet come, but we will get there.

·       Turbo-patriotism is when you had America for a rising dollar and suspect it when the dollar is falling. Whatever a turbo-patriot says, he ends by talking about the collapse of the dollar and America.

·       One mustn’t ask how much is two times two because the answer varies depending on what those above you want.

·       Putin says that Russia isn’t becoming dependent on China, but he also declared that Russia would land on the moon in 2019, that Russia would be in the top five economies in the world, and that he wouldn’t attack Ukraine, earlier claims that raise questions about his latest one.

·       The latest news about Russian democracy: Ramzan Kadyrov’s daughter at a meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov spoke about the contributions of the Akhmat Kadyrov Foundaiton which is headed by Ramzan Kadyrov’s mother Aimani Kadyrova.

·       Russian historians can easily do what God can’t: they can change the past.

37 Percent of Ukrainians Say One of Their Family Members or Close Friends has Died as Result of Putin’s War

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 25 – Thirty-seven percent of Ukrainians, nearly four out of 10, say that one of their family members or close personal friends has died as a result of Putin’s war in Ukraine, a figure that highlights both how brutal the Russian invasion has been and also how much Ukrainians are likely to take this to heart both now and in the future.

            A survey of 2,000 Ukrainians conducted by the Razumkov Center found and reports this figure. The polling agency said that four percent had difficulty in answering, while 59 percent said they had not yet lost anyone in the conflict (realtribune.ru/s-nachala-konflikta-u-37-ukraincev-sredi-blizkih-ljudej-est-ubitye-i-ranenye-opros).

            These losses which continue to mount will make it difficult if not impossible for any serious rapprochement of Ukrainians to Russia and Russians even if Putin is ousted and Russia returns all the Ukrainian territory including Crimea that it has occupied since 2014. Indeed, it is likely that antagonism to Russia and Russians will remain a central tenet of Ukrainian identity.

Putin and His Regime have Same Underlying Goals Hitler and the Nazis Did, Skobov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 26 – Putin puts people in jail because they call his war in Ukraine a war rather than a special military operation, just one more example of why it is critically important to call things by their right name in order to be in a position to recognize how dangerous they are and how they can be defeated, Aleksandr Skobov says.

            If one does this at a global level, the Russian commentator says, one can easily see that Putin and his regime have the same basic goals Hitler and the Nazis did and that the Kremlin now really views Euro-Atlantic civilization as its “existential enemy” that it must defeat or be defeated  by (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=642016E964682).

            Putin shares with Hitler several core believes which put both of them at odds with the democratic West: a belief that the world is a place of eternal struggle for dominance, a disregard for law, the denial of equality of peoples and countries and a willingness to deny subjecthood to some, and a lack of belief in democracy, a system both view as manipulated by the plutocracy.

            Like Hitler, Putin has imposed on society this view “with the help of a gigantic propagandistic machine” which exploits the Versailles syndrome both countries suffered from as well as the radical conservative ideas from the nineteenth century that stress the uniqueness of German society for Hitler and the Russian one for Putin.

            Again like Hitler, Putin uses the powers of the state to repress any disagreement and to try to overturn the international order so that the Russian leader today like the German one nearly a century ago can try to impose his rules on the world so that he can dominate it, Skobov continues.

            According to the Russian commentator, “the Putin regime really considers Euro-Atlantic civilization as its existential enemy,” just as Hitler viewed Britain and the other democracies as his. All this means that it is entirely appropriate to “call Putin’s regime Nazi like and Vladimir Putin the new Hitler.”

            To be sure, Skobov says, “Putinist Nazis has been modified and adapted to the conditions of the post-industrial era. But its essence is the very same.”

            “The contemporary world order,” he continues, “was set up by those who defeated Hitler. It is based on the view that Hitler’s system was an absolute evil and that his system must never be allowed to return. Today, however, there is a war over the world order,” Skobov says; and to successfully prosecute that war, “the threat must be recognized and named.”

 

Paris Graves of People from the Caucasus Being Maintained By Their Descendants and Supporters

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 22 – Reports earlier this year that the Russian government had stopped making payments to cemetery officials in Paris and that some of the graves of the most prominent Russian emigres from a century ago at Saint Genevieve des Bois were at risk alarmed supporters of the numerous emigres from the Caucasus who are also buried there.

            The Russian Imperial House announced not that it would provide funds to correct the situation but rather would work with French and Russian officials in the hopes that something could be done (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/01/russian-imperial-house-seeks-to-save.html).

            But that effort appeared to be about ethnic Russian tombs rather than the tombs of all those who fled when the Russian Empire collapsed in 1917. Now, a survey of the situation by the Kavkaz-Uzel news agency reports that the family and friends of Georgian, Armenian, and other Caucasian emigres have nothing to worry about (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/387016/).

            That is because the families and supporters of these non-Russian emigres have taken responsibility all along for paying the needed maintenance fees and so there is no problem for them even though there are still concerns that the Russian graves may face problems if not immediately than in the future.

            This story is worth reporting not only because of the human concerns it highlights but also because it throws into high relief the different approaches of the nations involved. The Russians even in emigration looked to the state to solve the problem, while the non-Russians looked in the first instance to themselves.

            That difference is on display in many cases, but nowhere is it clearer than in this one where the state-centric nature of Russian identity has so clearly overwhelmed any sense of collective national identity – even when it involves something as intimately human as taking care of the graves of revered ancestors. 

Singing in Native Languages Continues to Help Bashkir and Tatar Nations to Survive

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 23 – Everyone who follows the former Soviet space knows about how the singing revolutions helped Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania recover their de facto independence; and many know that a rich oral culture often highlighted by singing has helped many nations under pressure from the outside to survive.

            But those ideas have become so commonplace that few focus on how this process actually works in the current situation, and yet it may very well be that singing for the peoples of the Middle Volga may be their national salvation at a time when Moscow is seeking to marginalize their languages and identities.

            A new article by two journalists, Stas Sharifullin and Marsel Ganeyev, focuses precisely on this current situation and argues that just as in earlier times of Russian oppression, singing is “helping the Bashkirs and Tatars to preserve” not only their languages but their identities (beda.media/special/zvuchashchiy-sifr).

            They make the point in a heavily footnoted scholarly article that the language of song is truly a living language and its constant appearance in a community is a response to Moscow’s efforts to destroy the Bashkir and Tatar languages. People who sing and who listen to singing have their own language reinforced and revived, exactly the opposite of what the Kremlin wants.

            And the two argue that over the past decade in Tatarstan at least, Tatar singing has gained ground against Russian and English son and that this gives hope that singing, just as was the case in the Baltic countries, can be a means for that nation to survive, thrive and ultimately drive out those who are oppressing it.

            Every time a Tatar or a Bashkir sings a song in his or her language or even listens to it, that is a small victory, the journalists say; and the evidence they produce suggests that ever more of the people of these two communities are now singing their nation’s way into the future. One can only hope that is so and that other nations under Moscow’s yoke are doing the same.