Secret Poll Results on Russian Attitudes toward Migrants have Kremlin Worried, ‘Verstka' Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 22 – After the Crocus City Hall terrorists attack, the Kremlin ordered VTsIOM to conduct a secret poll of Russian attitudes toward migrants. It showed a sharp decline in positive attitudes toward immigrants and a sharp increase in negative ones, a shift the Kremlin hopes will be short-lived lest it using migrants to deal with Russia’s labor shortage impossible.

            That is the conclusion of a Kremlin source who on the basis of anonymity shared the results of the poll and discussed concerns in the Russian leadership about its findings with journalists from the Verstka media outlet (verstka.media/v-rossii-sekretno-izmerili-ksenofobiyu-posle-terakta-v-krokus-city-hall).

            According to this source, Verstka says, Russian attitudes toward immigrants shifted from an even split in positive and negative ones to a situation in which those who oppose migrant workers and want them limited or expelled outnumbered those who don’t and aren’t focused on restricting their presence in Russia because of the country’s economic needs.

            Those results, in the wake of the terrorist attack, are consistent with the trends polls conducted by more independent agencies have reported. But precisely because this survey was ordered by the Kremlin itself, it is likely to have greater impact on the thinking of Russian leaders.

            Many Russian outlets and politicians have been calling for tighter controls over migration and even expelling some of those already there, policies that if they were to be adopted in toto would have the direst consequences for the Russian economy given worker shortages in a variety of key industries.

            The Kremlin has little choice but to try to show that it takes popular attitudes on this issue seriously; but it has to hope, the source says, that such demands will cool and the regime will be able to continue to attract and use migrants, something that will become ever more important given demographic trends and the need for manpower for Putin’s war in Ukraine.

 

Kremlin’s Refusal to Break with Soviet Identity has Led to War and Will Lead to Russia’s Collapse, Eppl Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 22 – Had the Kremlin honestly faced up to and then rejected the failed Soviet past, Russia could have joined the West; but instead, it decided that its own survival depended on ensuring that Russia would continue in the Soviet tradition, a decision that has led directly to the war in Ukraine and will lead to Russia’s collapse, Nikolay Eppl says.

            In an essay for the Carnegie Endowment’s Berlin Center,, the Russian philologist and translator argues that “the unresolved question about “the identity of Russia as the heir of the USSR has defined all the zigzags of the country’s existence over the last 30 years” (carnegieendowment.org/politika/92259).

            The reformist course Moscow adopted in the early 1990s, Eppl continues, “increasingly came into contradiction with the unpreparedness of the New Russia to turn away from the identification of itself as an empire and from the former administrative practices as well as dissatisfaction with democratic institutes both by the state and by the society.”

            “The experience of criticizing one’s own past could show the Russian leadership that reinventing oneself without committing suicide is possible, that admitting crimes and being willing to take responsibility for them is a manifestation of strength, not weakness,” he argues.

“The refusal to follow this path determined what is happening now with the Russian state.”

        Many Soviet crimes were so heinous that there was at the end of Soviet times and the beginning of post-Soviet ones a real demand for condemning that past, but the regime soon refused to go beyond “cosmetic” and indeed “fictional” denunciations lest the involvement of many of its members in those crimes led to attacks on them.

 

               According to Eppl, “the real dilemma for the Kremlin was whether to turn away from identifying with the USSR and Soviet practices and receive for this the advantages of compete entrance into the club of Western democracies or openly recognize that the former model hadn’t gone anywhere and continues to define the nature of the political regime in Russia.”

              

               For a few years, “the Kremlin allowed itself to avoid making a final choice and balanced between authoritarian and liberal-democratic models,” doing just enough to convince some that it was still headed to reform but protecting itself by using many of the methods drawn from the Soviet past.

 

               But after the protests of 2011-2012, the Kremlin recognized that a choice had to be made; and it made one, by launching the war in Ukraine by seizing Crimea and then using that to make the system inside the Russian Federation fully congruent with what had existed in Soviet times.

 

               “Without functioning democratic mechanisms,” he continues, “there was nothing to legitimate the regime besides patriotic mobilization,” first in Crimea, then in Syria, and then in Ukraine again with Putin’s launch of an expanded invasion of that former Soviet republic in February 2022.

 

               The collapse of an empire is always difficult, Eppl points out, noting that even between 1991 and 2014, the much-ballyhooed collapse of the USSR claimed “no fewer than 200,000 lives.” But collapses can be more or less difficult depending on whether the successor regime breaks with the past or refuses to do so.

 

               When it doesn’t and when it assumes its own survival and that of its own country is at risk if it were to do so, then the situation becomes worse. And for the Putin regime, the war in Ukraine is “critical to the survival of Russia in the form in which its leaders would like to keep it in a deep freeze.”

 

               That explains both the decision to go to war against Ukraine and the way Moscow has explained and fought this war, Eppl says. The Kremlin’s decision to refuse to break with Soviet identity did not and does not “leave it with any possibility besides a return to the USSR with all or at least very many of the characteristics of this process.”

 

               That reality “defines both the official explanations of the goals of this war and the particular ways it is being conducted,” he argues. If there is a war, it must be against fascism and so Ukraine must be declared a fascist state, however absurd that is; and Russian forces in Ukraine must act to restore Soviet symbols, including erecting Lenin statues in occupied areas.

 

               But there is an even more serious consequence of the Russian leadership’s refusal to give up Soviet identity and its efforts to recreate Soviet conditions and it is this, Eppl concludes. These efforts are restoring a system that already failed and will lead in the end to the final destruction of that system and the country that follows this mistaken past.

The Caspian Sea on Its Way to Becoming a Desert, Kazakh Political Scientist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 22 – The Caspian Sea is “shrinking dramatically,” Aida Amangeldina says, a development that puts it at risk of desertification, a development that threatens not only the flora and fauna of the sea itself but also and potentially far more seriously “the socio-economic situation” of the five littoral states.

            Experts have been sounding the alarm about the Caspian following the Aral Sea into extinction for some time (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/water-level-of-caspian-sea-falling-at.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/10/declining-water-levels-in-caspian-plus.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/07/northern-sections-of-caspian-sea.html).

            But the Kazakh political scientist’s discussion of this issue at a conference at the end of 2023 (which has now been published in a 3,000-word heavily footnoted article at beda.media/en/articles/caspian-sea) is a sign that alarm about the fate of the Caspian is now moving from marginal groups to the center of policy concerns.

            Amangeldina says that water level of the Caspian has been declining more or less constantly since the beginning of the 20^th century, although a slight rise two and three decades ago led many to conclude that the problem would go away on its own. But in 2023, the sea’s water level reached the lowest level ever, 29 meters below sea level.

            Most of the decline can be attributed to climate change, with precipitation in the region falling and evaporation increasing. But human causes are also critical: ever more people in the area are taking water from rivers that feed the sea and are desalinating the water of the sea itself to meet their needs.

            The situation is not yet irreversible, Amangeldina says; but it will require both the agreement of all five littoral states and international involvement. So far, such agreement has been in short supply. Even the 2018 convention on the delimitation of the sea remains unratified (by Iran) and has not gone into effect, and most governments are focused on their specific needs.

            Unless that changes and soon, the Caspian will likely “repeat the fate of the Aral Sea,” with far larger ecological, economic and political consequences given the size and importance of the Caspian Sea not only for the littoral countries but for the international community as well, she says.

 

Moscow Increasingly Worried about Rise of Roman Catholicism in Belarus

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 22 – Both the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate are increasingly worried about the rise of Roman Catholicism in Belarus, with the former concerned primarily about the possibility that the church’s rise will threaten Putin ally Alyaksandr Lukashenka and the latter about the danger that it will weaken the Moscow church in Belarus.

            These fears have been growing over the last several years, following the prominent role Catholics played in the protests following the last “elections” in Belarus and the spread of autocephaly movements among Orthodox churches in the post-Soviet states (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/04/moscows-greatest-fear-about-orthodox.html).

            These fears have fed anti-Catholic attitudes both in Moscow and in Minsk (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/01/anti-catholicism-spreading-in-moscow.html) and have now led to direct attacks on the Vatican for what one Russian author says is its direct involvement in the rise of an anti-Russian and anti-Belarusian Catholic movement in Belarus.

            On the Rhythm of Eurasia portal, Moscow religious affairs commentator Artyom Karpovich directly attacks the Vatican and Pope Francis for what he says is Rome’s efforts in Belarus  to overthrow both Russian Orthodox and Russia’s ally Lukashenka (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2024-04-22--vatikan-aktivizirovalsja-v-belorussii-72858).

            He argues that the Roman Catholic Church has always been anti-Russian, although he notes the Pope Francis has promised in public not to interfere in Orthodox affairs. But he says that pledge has been undermined by the increasing activity in Belarus of an apostolic administration set up last year to coordinate Catholic churches in that country. (On that body, see vaticannews.va/ru/church/news/2023-03/belarus-novaya-struktura-dlya-katolikov-vizantijskogo-obryada.html).

            According to Karpovich, the pope has taken this position because he fears retaliation from Moscow and Minsk; but the pope’s subordinates believe that they can proceed and that the Holy Father will eventually change his position and allow the creation of a Roman Catholic exarchate in Belarus.

            To that end, the Catholic apostolic administrator has become increasingly active in meeting with Belarusian officials and in providing financial support and guidance to the growing number of Catholic churches in Belarus (eadaily.com/ru/news/2023/04/07/pochemu-v-belorussii-aktivizirovalis-grekokatoliki).

            The Belarusian Catholic church is closely connected with the Greek Catholics of Ukraine. Many of its priests were trained in western Ukraine, and not surprisingly, they and their flocks have supported Ukraine since Putin launched his expanded invasion of that country in February 2022, yet another reason for Moscow’s opposition to Catholicism in Belarus. (On these interrelationships, see dekoder.org/ru/gnose/greko-katolicheskaya-cerkov-v-belarusi.)

            The Belarusian government and the Russian church in Belarus recognize the dangers that this “fifth column,” to use Karpovich’s expression, poses to both. And the former has adopted new laws that give Minsk far greater powers to interfere in and limit the growth of Roman Catholicism in Belarus (apnews.com/article/belarus-lukashenko-religion-repression-dissent-58428374005dd0da383fbac7ad2c5d57).

            Karpovich would clearly like to see the Belarusian government do even more and the Moscow church there become increasingly active in opposing what he believes is a Catholic threat to both. 

Two Weeks Before Crocus City Attack, Tajikistan’s President Expressed Concern about Tajik Involvement in Terrorist Actions Abroad and at Home

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 21 – Two weeks before terrorists attacked the Crocus City venue in Moscow, Emomali Rakhmon, the president of Tajikistan, publicly expressed concern about the participation of citizens of his country in terrorist acts in 10 foreign countries over the last three years and blamed the intelligence services of other countries for recruiting them.

            Tajik and Russian sources reported his speech at the time (tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/20192699), but it is now being given expanded attention in Moscow media because it both confirms one Kremlin version of the Moscow attack and provides justification for taking a tougher line against Tajik migrant workers (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2024-04-21--tadzhikskie-vlasti-trevozhit-rost-chisla-teraktov-s-uchastiem-ih-grazhdan-72843).

            Islamist extremists have also carried out 6700 terrorist attacks inside Tajikistan over the last decade, but the authorities have not been able to arrest all those involved. The Fergana news agency says that more than 4,000 Tajiks are still wanted for such actions by Tajikistan’s police (fergana.media/news/133185/).

            President Rakhmon places the blame for radicalism in his country on the rise of Salafism there, a trend within Islam that calls for jihad against both unbelievers and other groups in the faith, including the Hanafi and Ismaili trends of Islam which are followed by the majority of Tajiks.

            He argues that Salafism has been introduced in Tajikistan in two ways: by Muslims who have studied abroad and then become imams in the mosques of that country and by the return home of 1640 Tajiks who had fought for ISIS abroad and who were pardoned by the state after promising to break with it (tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/20192699).

 

Russia’s Systemic Opposition Parties Could Play Key Mediating Role in Post-Putin Transition, Bederson Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 20 – Many are now writing off the systemic opposition parties as moribund and irrelevant (ridl.io/parties-in-a-coma/), but Poland’s experience in the 1980s suggests that they could play a key role in the post-Putin transition from authoritarianism to democracy, according to Vsevolod Bederson.

            The Perm political scientist says that in such a transition, mediators are necessary and that the systemic opposition in Poland played that role and its counterparts in Russia now very easily could (moscowtimes.ru/2024/04/19/nenavidet-i-berech-sistemnaya-oppozitsiya-mozhet-stat-posrednikom-pri-perehode-ot-avtoritarizma-k-demokratii-a128509).

            Bederson points out that in communist Poland, the regime controlled the top echelons of the systemic opposition parties but that below that level there were many members of those groups who were far more opposed to the regime than their party bosses and thus ready to mediate between the old regime and the forces of a new democracy.

            For these systemic parties to play that role, he says, they must maintain contacts with the real opposition, have some but not large political weight, have structures and people in the regions, and not aspire to take control themselves. The KPRF and some of the other systemic parties have at least some of these features.

            And thus it is possible that they could play the role the Catholic parties did in Poland and that Muslim radical groups in the Middle East did. Writing them off in advance is thus a mistake, although looking to them provides no guarantee that they or those who seek to use them will be successful, Bederson concludes.

Kremlin Testing Limits on Rehabilitating Fascism, El Murid Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 20 – For the last three weeks, a controversy has been swirling in Moscow between Aleksandr Dugin and the Russian State Humanities University, on the one hand, and Russian students and their supporters, on the other, over whether to name a new policy center there for émigré Russian Ivan Ilin, a leading articulator of what many call Russian fascism.

            (For details on this back and forth and references to both supporters and opponents of creating such an institution with the odious Putin ally Dugin as its head, see groza.media/posts/students-rsuh-against-dugin and topwar.ru/240721-delo-ivana-ilina-protiv-chego-protestujut-studenty-rggu.html.).

            The Kremlin and government media are treating this back and forth as a private matter and distancing themselves from it; but Anatoly Nesmiyan, who blogs as El Murid, says that it the latest effort by the Kremlin to see how far it can go in rehabilitating fascism and thus bringing its ideological stance into line with its actions (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/17950).

            What makes what is going on a bellwether about Russia’s future under Putin, the blogger says; and it  highlights the way in which the Kremlin operates when it wants to see how far it can go in saying openly what it is in fact already doing, in this case, talking positively about fascist ideas that in fact it is already implementing but calling them something else.

            If plans for an Ilin center under Dugin fail as a result of public opposition, the Eurasian leader and his Kremlin backers won’t suffer. He has nowhere to go, and the Kremlin can act as if nothing has happened, El Murid says. But if the center opens, he continues, then Putin will be able to move further in the direction of being openly fascist.