Problems in Russian Logistical Networks Boosting Regional Businesses

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 25 – Growing problems with Russia’s logistical networks, including accidents on its troubled railway system (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/102248), has given local and regional businesses the chance to grow more rapidly than country-wide businesses which rely on distribution, statistics show.

            Re-Russia provides a compilation of data showing that local and regional businesses have grown almost ten percent in the last year after seven years of stagnation, with their sales rising 11 percent in real terms, both far greater than the all-Russian companies have been able to achieve (re-russia.net/review/728/).

            If Russia’s infrastructure problems continue to grow and that is likely because Putin has been pulling money out of projects intended to address these problems and improve the networks, then that will mean that local and regional companies will play an expanded role in many local and regional markets and hence local and regional politics.

            That will constitute a fundamental reversal of trends that Putin’s earlier policies had put in place and may mean that regional and local officials backed by regional and local businesses will become more independent-minded in their thinking, confident that their businesses and officials are now in a better position to address problems than ever before.

            In most countries, as residents of smaller cities and towns now, improved transportation networks have nationalized marketplaces and centralized economic and political decision making. But in Russia today, the new data suggests that the situation is going in precisely the opposite direction. 

Moscow Patriarchate’s Moves against Anti-War Priests Undermining the ROC MP and Opening the Way for Renewal of Orthodoxy in Russia, Soldatov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 26 – Moscow Patriarch Kirill is punishing ever more Russian Orthodox priests for anti-war views, an action that may win him support in the Kremlin but that is undermining the authority of his church structure and even opening the doors to the creation of an alternative Russian Orthodoxy to replace it, Aleksandr Soldatov says.

            Kirill’s actions not only violate the rules of the ROC MP but offend believers and have led the Ecumenical Patriarchate to restore the priestly rights of those he has punished and thus create a group of religious who may form the nucleus of a new Russian Orthodoxy within Russia itself, the specialist on Russian religious life says (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2024/04/26/rpts-b).

            (For a constantly updated list of the priests the current Russian patriarch has sought to exclude from church life for their opposition to the war in Ukraine, see shaltnotkill.info/presledovanie-hristian-za-antivoennuyu-pozicziyu-ili-podderzhku-ukrainy-v-zashhite-ot-agressii-so-storony-religioznyh-organizaczij-i-vlastej/).

            As a result of Kirill’s actions, Soldatov says, “a new host of confessors of the Christian faith has appeared in Russia today, one that is suffering in the first instance from its new persecutors in the person of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, its bishops and other church officials obedient to him.”

            One of their number, Andrey Kurayev, who was stripped of his office as a proto-deacon, has gone into emigration and not long ago became a priest subordinate to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople, says that what is happening shows “the complete powerlessness of Kirill and his satraps.”

            Russian Orthodox publicist Sergey Chapnin who now lives in the United States says that Constantinople has opened the floodgates and the number of those who will follow Kurayev into the ranks of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s priesthood will exceed Kirill’s ability to control the situation in Russia itself.

            “For the first time in many centuries,” Soldatov continues, such priests have a chance to escape serfdom from the patriarchy, and the jurisdiction of the ROC MP on its own ‘canonical territory,’ ceases to be absolute and unconditional – the first step toward the dismantling of the post-imperial totalitarian structure of the ROC in the form it took after 1943.”

Poorer Federal Subjects Forced to Use Compulsion Not Cash to Meet Russian Military Quotas

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 25 –Moscow has been able to meet its goals to sign up men for military service by offering men enormous bonuses that will lift them and their families out of poverty. But because some federal subject governments lack the cash to fund such bonuses, they are falling back on compulsion.

            And in at least some cases, they appear to be using that compulsion to achieve other ends, including destroying smaller local minorities by sending their men to die in Ukraine or possibly by forcing members of those groups to reidentify as members of the dominant titular nationality to escape that fate.

            This behavior seldom attracts much attention not only because the numbers of people involved are likely small and so don’t attract the attention of the central media but also because the media outlets in these federal subjects are typically firmly under control of the governments there who have little interest in having such stories reported.

            That makes a story by Radio Svoboda journalist Fidel Agumava about what is happening to the Soyots in Buryatia especially important not only in and of itself but also because of the light it shines on what is likely far more widespread phenomenon (sibreal.org/a/rubyat-semi-pod-koren-kak-vlasti-zagonyayut-lyudey-na-voynu-po-kontraktu/32920096.html).

            As she documents, Buryat officials working with the Russian military are using compulsion to meet Moscow’s recruitment goals because the republic does not have enough money to offer the kind of bonuses that other regions and republics either on their own or with special help from Moscow are able to do instead.

            And Agumava shows that this use of compulsion is selective in that it is directed more at the Soyots, a Buryat sub-ethnos, than at other Buryats, an apparent indication that Ulan-Ude may be taking advantage of the Kremlin’s mobilization program to engage in its own kind of ethnic engineering.

             This report at the very least should introduce a notion of caution that Moscow can buy its way out of its recruitment problems. Moreover, it also should lead to an examination of exactly what is happening in Russia’s poorest and often non-Russian republics, especially outside the North Caucasus where Moscow provides funds for such bonuses to keep things quiet.

Moscow Increases Quotas for Immigrant Workers Despite Demands by Many Russians that They Be Cut

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 26 – The Russian government has increased the quotas for migrant workers to come to Russia despite widespread demands among officials, commentators, and the Rusisan population that the influx of workers from Central Asia and the Caucasus be significantly restricted (pnp.ru/social/v-rossiyu-khotyat-zavezti-eshhe-bolshe-migrantov.html).

            The quotas themselves are far smaller than the actual numbers of migrants coming in, and what the Russian government is doing may in fact be part of a plan to meet the needs of business and industry by boosting official quotas and satisfying the population by attack “illegal” immigration.

            That approach may have worked before the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack, but now almost certainly it is likely to trigger more popular anger at the government, something the Kremlin and its minions certainly do not need at the present time (paperpaper.ru/kvoty-na-trudovyh-migrantov-vyrosli-p/).

Russian Justice Ministry Calls for Declaring Non-Existent ‘Anti-Russian Separatist Movement’ an ‘Extremist’ Organization

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 26 – Last fall, Grigory Golosov, a professor at St. Petersburg’s European University, said that Moscow has come up with a new means of going after those it doesn’t like: first declaring that those the Kremlin doesn’t like are part of an international movement and then declaring that movement to be “an extremist group” even if no such organization exists.

            It did that with the LGBT community, Golosov says, adding that it is likely to do so with feminism, a move many Kremlin supporters already are calling for and noting that such moves will make it easier for Moscow to prosecute those advancing ideas at odds with Putin and his regime (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/11/kremlin-deploying-two-more-means-of.html).

            The latest victim of such an approach consists of those who promote regionalist and nationalist ideas. They do not form a single organization, but Moscow has decided that they do and thus can be treated in the same way that it has been persecuting the LGBT community in Russia.

            Nine days ago, the Russian justice ministry called on the Russian Supreme Court to declare the Anti-Russian Separatist Movement and it structures extremist organization at a hearing on June 7 (minjust.gov.ru/ru/pages/izveshenie-o-vremeni-i-meste-rassmotreniya-administrativnogo-dela-7-iyunya-2024-g/).

            In its letter to the Court, the justice ministry said that “the Anti-Russian Separatist Movement is an international movement for the destruction of the multi-national unity and territorial integrity of Russia;” but it did not provide any details about just what this Movement is and what its organizations international or local may be.

            The Sova-Center monitoring and analysis group in reporting this development said that the experience of the LGBT movement strongly suggests that the Russian authorities will use this declaration as an “elastic” means of bringing new and additional charges against activists the Kremlin doesn’t like (sova-center.ru/misuse/news/persecution/2024/04/d49736/).

            Russian prosecutors will no longer have to point to specific actions to bring charges of separatism against anyone. Simply declaring that someone is a member of this “Anti-Russian Separatist Movement” will be enough -- even though as the Sova-Center points out no such “movement” exists.

            According to the Sova-Center, Moscow is likely to use such a declaration against regionalist as well as nationalist groups and also against people outside of Moscow who are not interested in separatism at all but rather only in creating genuine federalism in the increasingly unitary Russian state.

           This has sparked a large number of sharply critical comments by Russian independent news organizations and bloggers (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=662C9F2C5D0E6). 

Moscow May Restart Regional Amalgamation Effort but Unlikely to Touch North Caucasus, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 24 – Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko says that there are several regions in the Russian Federation which should be combined with their neighbors to make it easier for Moscow to administer the country but that such efforts must be carefully prepared lest amalgamation spark resistance.

            Her comments now (ria.ru/20240424/obedinenie-1941914211.html and versia.ru/valentina-matvienko-zayavila-o-neobxodimosti-obedinit-neskolko-rossijskix-regionov) are almost an exact repetition of those she made more than a decade ago (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/02/window-on-eurasia-are-russias-non.html).

            But although amalgamation has long been on hold, Matviyenko’s call for unifying federal subjects may take off. On the one hand, there have been increasing rumblings about that among non-Russians who fear that Putin will follow his latest “re-election” with a move against them (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/before-end-of-2024-putin-will-abolish.html).

            And on the other, there have been similar calls by some officials in the Russian government in recent months, also repeating earlier arguments made by the same people (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/01/kremlin-now-planning-to-combine.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/01/if-moscow-restarts-regional.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/04/deputy-prime-minister-wants-to-replace.html).

            Nonetheless, resistance to such moves continues to arise even when officials seek to combine cities and towns (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/local-resistance-spreads-and.html). And experts warn that Moscow would again face opposition if it sought to combine regions or republics, slowing or even killing such moves (svpressa.ru/politic/article/412973/).

            However that may be, Putin has shown himself much enamored of the idea of combining federal subjects and may indeed move ahead now to distract attention and demonstrate his control. Given that, Stavropol’s Center for the Support of Social and Civic Initiatives has issued a report about the regions and republics most likely to be combined (akcent.site/novosti/31161).

            As summarized by Aksent’s Anton Chablin, the Center provides the following checklist for the next 18 months:

·       In the Far East, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast is the most likely candidate for unification and may be combined with Khabarovsk Kray. Combining Khabarovsk Kray with Primorsky Kray or Primorsky Kray with Sakhalin are unlikely.

·       In the Urals, Moscow may seek to unite the Tyumen matryoshka of Tyumen Oblast, Yamal, and Yurga but that would face serious local resistance. More realistic is the combination of Kurgan and Chelyanvsk Oblasts.

·       In the North-West, Moscow is unlikely to repeat its failed effot to unite the Nenets Autonomous District with Arkhangelsk Oblast; but it may seek to combine Pskov Obalast with Novgorod Oblast and Leningrad Oblast with St. Petersburg which has the status of a federal subject.

·       In the South, no changes are likely in the North Caucasus because of local resistance; but Moscow may try to combine Sebastopol and Crimea in those occupied portions of Ukraine.

·       And in Central Russia, some of the poorer oblasts which are losing population may be combined to form larger ones and give Moscow a victory on the amalgamation front, the Center says.

 

Media Stories Promoting Ethnic Divisions in Russia have Grown by Orders of Magnitude Since Launch of Expanded War in Ukraine, FADN’s Bulatov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 24 – Since February 2022, the number of stories promoting ethnic divisions within Russian has increased by more than 15 times for the country as a whole and more than a thousand times in some republics, according to Abulgamid Bulatov, who monitors media for the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs (FADN).

            He said that the number of such stories in 2023 exceeded the number in 2021 by 15 times and that this growth was far greater in the non-Russian republics. There the increase was by a factor of “500, 600 and in some cases more than a thousand times” what it had been before the war (tass.ru/proisshestviya/20648187).

            The worst examples of this growth, Bulatov continued, were in Buryatia, Daghestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia. And he added that the focus of these articles typically was on questions of historical memory with authors questioning established versions of historical events and thus trying to set the non-Russians against the ethnic Russians.

            Bulatov did not provide more specifics or define the way in which his monitoring group decides which articles are guilty of the offenses he is concerned with. But his numbers are striking especially since Moscow has closed down many media outlets in the republics and elsewhere during this period and tightened controls over most of the others.

            It is possible that FADN is now counting stories which appear on Internet platforms that are based abroad. But even if that is the case, this trend highlights the way in which many non-Russians are responding to Putin’s continued insistence on a single stream of Russian history in which all its peoples now share a common view of the past.