Posted on 10/11/2006 3:54:25 PM PDT by MarMema
Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union there have been worrying signs of a virulent strain of radical nationalism in Russia. The popularity of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultranationalist and inaptly named Liberal Democratic Party, the rise of neo-Bolshevik racist groups that combine Nazi and communist imagery, and the rising tide of racially motivated attacks on anyone who looks vaguely foreign has worried many, but the Russian government has managed to steer a relatively steady course through the treacherous waters of ethnic nationalism.
Until the spy crisis, that is. President Vladimir Putin, breaking with almost a century of Russian policy, announced that "native Russians" should be protected, and illegal immigrants driven out of Russian marketplaces.
This statement could be just what the skinheads have been waiting for: a nod from the Kremlin. Pogrom is surely the worst Russian word to have entered the English language, and it seems some in Russia are keen on making the most frequently used. The August clash in Kondopoga, which resulted in the entire 'ethnic' population of the remote Karelian town being driven out, has been correctly described as a pogrom, but rather than condemning the ethnic violence, Putin laid the blame squarely at the door of the non-Russians, whose alleged sharp practice at the local market and purported links to crime seems to justify this appalling event in the eyes of the Kremlin.
The anti-Georgian campaign-which has seen police demand the details of Moscow school children with Georgian last names-is just one aspect of a deeply worrying trend. Russian internal passports are still marked with the notorious 'fifth column', which states the bearers' natsialnost or nationality, as distinct from citizenship. Thus you can be a Russian citizen, but always marked as a Bashkir, Tatar, Jew, or a Georgian on your documents.
As harmful as this newly state sanctioned ethnic nationalism may well be for Georgia and Georgians living in Russia, it is the domestic hornets' nest that Russia is stirring up that is the most ominous development. Russia is a vast multiethnic state, where ethnic Russians, or russki, make up less than eighty percent, and in some regions like Dagestan as little as twenty percent. History shows that forces of ethnic hatred, though they may be convenient for short term popularity, or punishing prodigal southern neighbours, are almost impossible to contain once they have been released. Russia stands to lose so much more than it can ever gain by summoning up this particular daemon.
This seems especially short-sighted given Russia's encouragement of separatism in its unruly former imperial possessions, Georgia and Moldova. Encouraging secessionism abroad and ethnic hatred at home is surely counterproductive. If Kondopoga becomes a regular event the huge numbers of Caucasians forced to flee Russia proper back to their impoverished republics will hardly be staunch defenders of Russian statehood.
If Russia really wants to be treated as a 'Great Power' and sit at the top table with the guys from the G8, then it has to make sure it is a state that fights against radicalisation and hatred, not one that encourages it.
Russia is playing with fire by encouraging, even implicitly, the xenophobic tendencies of groups that want to turn Russia into an unholy hybrid of Brezhnev's Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany. As one Russian pundit put it in a newspaper this week "Moscow must be the third Rome, not the third…..you know what I mean".
Ah, how some of us long for the restoration of the Czarist Russia, with the Cossacks to keep order.
Putin is supposed to be a Christian.
This may be the funniest thing I've read all day. Is this along the same lines as President Bush looking into Putin's eyes, and seeing the gentle soul of a reformer, or whatever it was?
"Putin is supposed to be a Christian."
That and about four bucks will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
A LOT of people have claimed to be "Christian", but mere baptism and a cursory instruction in some of the tenets of the practice of the religion do not a Christian make. It has to be in the heart, the mind, and to the very depths of one's soul.
Being a Christian is nothing less than the total reordering of your universe.
He has claimed to be a Christian in public on many occasions.
Did Hitler or Stalin do the same, do you know?
Joseph Djugashvili, as a young man, studied at an Orthodox seminary, but some rough bad habits got him expelled. Stalin, as he was later known, chose to be an atheist for the remainder of his life, taking up the fevered pursuit of socialism and anarchy as a substitute for any religious passion.
Adolf Hitler was at least nominally a Roman Catholic, but again, as a young man, he failed to heed the admonishments of his instructors, and also slipped into atheism, with some elements of the old naturalistic Gothic paganism making up a large part of his belief system.
Hitler, most definitely and at length.
Well, let's see why it's not so funny:
1. His conversion corresponded not to an event when it would be politically expedient, but to a fire at his dacha that almost killed all his children.
2. When he was KGB, there was an internal debate in the KGB as to whether or not state atheism hadn't been a hideous mistake (as reported in a biography of Putin in the Atlantic Monthly about a year ago).
3. Spiritually perceptive monastics regard his conversion as genuine.
4. He is the only Russian head of state to ever make a pilgrimage to Mount Athos.
5. He has instituted Orthodox Christian education course in Russian state schools.
6. He regularly makes his confession to monastic priests and attends Divine Liturgy, participating not perfunctorily as Yeltsin did, but with all the proper prayers and gestures of fitting Orthodox worship.
I find his attempts to play balance-of-power politics vis-a-vis the US, trying to use the Iranian lunatics the way Britain used Prussia as a counterbalance to France centuries ago, short-sighted, and suspect it is against the interests of Russia as well as the US.
But all the powers that played balance-of-power games in Europe in the old days were Christian nations, often with pious monarchs.
I'd not laugh at Putin's faith on the basis of his past, or his attempts to look out for his own country's national interests.
Bush took the "No WMD" bullet to spare Putin from the consequences of helping Iraq transport them to Syria, solely because he was advised that this threat was grave. Now that Putin is going there anyway, maybe it's time to correct the record in the weeks before the election?
"This may be the funniest thing I've read all day. Is this along the same lines as President Bush looking into Putin's eyes, and seeing the gentle soul of a reformer, or whatever it was?"
I concur.
Until the spy crisis, that is. President Vladimir Putin, breaking with almost a century of Russian policy, announced that "native Russians" should be protected, and illegal immigrants driven out of Russian marketplaces. ==
Manipulation again:). Putin said the "native ethnicities of Russia" not "native Russians". The "native ethnicities of Russia" mean those etnicities who invested thier lands into whole Russia territory.
Russian internal passports are still marked with the notorious 'fifth column', which states the bearers' natsialnost or nationality, as distinct from citizenship. ==
It is the direct lie. There are no "fifth column" in the ID (the internal passport). For now the etnicities marked ONLY in the one's birth certificate.
Marmeda is is so fun to disprove lies in your posted sources:))
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