ST. PETERSBURG/ When the St. Petersburg City Court finally sentenced four white supremacists to a total of 39 years in prison in June for killing 29-year-old Congolese student Roland Epassak in September 2005, it was a positive decision that took human rights advocates by surprise after the 20-month jury trial, which was tarnished by controversial acquittals last July followed by a retrial in February.
In the row of the convicted men ranging in age from 19 to 26 were Andrei Gerasimov, who was sentenced to 14 years in a high security prison, Viktor Orlov, sentenced to 7 years, and Andrei Olenov and Yury Gromov, each given a 9-year term.
But it was an unusual verdict in a city so used to jurors letting perpetrators of hate crimes go free. The behavior of law enforcement and policymakers gives them a license to maim and kill while enjoying the backing of the general public.
"About 40 percent of the city's residents have xenophobic attitudes," said Tamara Smirnova, a sociologist and co-leader of St. Petersburg's multiracial umbrella organization, the House of National Cultures. A study on the level of xenophobia in St. Petersburg and Moscow she conducted last year revealed that 47 percent of Muscovites admit to xenophobic views, but explains that in St. Petersburg, "people are more open to revealing the reality than in Moscow."
Over the past five years, St. Petersburg has become Russia's unofficial capital of hate crime following a series of racially-motivated murders and an apparent sympathy towards the culprits on the part of local officials and residents that has sparked outrage among both local and international human rights groups.
"They have been dealt a serious blow today," said Ruslan Linkov, head of the Democratic Russia human rights movement as he watched a small picket of discontented nationalists, friends and relatives of the convicted men waving placards reading "Shame to Fascist Prosecutors!" and "It Could be You in Their Place!" outside the court building soon after the sentences were passed on June 19.
An Anniversary Present
"Today we have a good reason to commemorate the third anniversary of (Nikolai) Girenko's death," said Aliou Tunkara, president of the St. Petersburg African Union, a group that represents the city's African community. Girenko, an ethnographer who fought racial extremists through providing scientific evidence in court, was gunned down in his apartment June 19, 2004. He was also a force behind the formation of Tunkara's organization.
"He gave his life so that neo-Nazis could get their due, and I wish he were alive to see how the judiciary has finally come to its senses," Tunkara said. The June 19 sentence was a welcome change from a series of hate trials last year in which criminals were either acquitted or received light, symbolic sentences.
"But in the meantime, anything should be expected of the wounded wild animals they are," said Linkov as he spotted Yury Belyayev leading 20 of his followers outside the court. Belyayev, head of the extreme nationalist Freedom Party, which was outlawed in 2004, is currently serving an 18-month suspended sentence for promoting hate.
Only a few hours after the verdict, the need for Linkov's warning became apparent as Girenko's predecessor, Valentina Uzunova, 59, was hospitalized with severe injuries following an attack by a female neo-Nazi near Girenko's home on her way back from meeting his family. In the attack, she was stripped of a dossier on a hate trial against retired submariner Vladislav Nikolsky, whose hearing was due to convene the following day.
Exactly a week before the anniversary, Dmitry Nikulinsky, a 22-year-old Jewish student of biology at St. Petersburg State University, was stabbed to death in the stairwell of his apartment building--murdered in the same way his classmate, anti-fascist activist Timur Kachareva, was by a group of skinheads in November 2005.
Prosecutors have thus far ruled out any hate motives in the incident saying Nikulinsky's killing "was sparked by jealousy in what was likely a love triangle," declaring an ex-boyfriend of Nikulinsky's girlfriend a key suspect. But Linkov countered that argument: "With his distinct Jewish features and appearance... 20 stab wounds, a style typical of neo-fascists and akin to Kachareva's murder, which involved such a group, hate is the only possible motive," he said.
A Situation of Desperation
Despite the woes, Tunkara believes the latest sentence is a reflection of an improvement in the public awareness towards tolerance compared to two years ago, when Epassak was killed.
He recalls an African man, triggered by disappointment and fear for his life, who broke away from a crowd of demonstrators in front of the St. Petersburg City Hall a day after Epassak's murder waving a placard reading "Russians, you have awakened the Black Panther!"
That message of hate received so much media attention that it dominated angry chants of the mixed crowd of Africans and other anti-fascist demonstrators; Tunkara had to work very hard to distance the African Union, which had organized the demonstration, from what appeared to be a call for racial violence harkening back to the U.S. Black Panther movement of the 1960s.
"He did it on his own, but his message reflects the general mood of the desperate ethnic minority to which he belongs," Tankara said, adding "I don't rule out the emergence of the likes of Black Panthers if the problem of the rising xenophobia and violent hate crimes goes unchecked."
During the protests, St. Petersburg Police Chief Vyacheslav Piotrovsky told the protesting Africans and their supporters at the local parliamentary building that there was "nothing racist in (Epassak's) murder. He used to hang out with the lowest of the lows," Piotrovsky said, adding that Epassak "was drunk when he was attacked," although according to Epassak's doctor, there was no sign of alcohol in his blood.
The day following Piotrovsky's remarks, Belyayev, the self-proclaimed godfather of the St. Petersburg hate crime underworld, claimed responsibility for the murder on behalf of his Freedom Party and distributed a press release claiming to have deployed "beliye patruli" (white patrols) in the city center and on public transport in order to "cleanse the city of unwanted elements where the police have failed."
A few days later, Piotrovsky acknowledged he had lied to "silence the media and give enough room for my boys to investigate the crime," Fontanka.ru reported.
But in his earlier remark, Piotrovsky was only singing from the same hymn sheet as his colleagues.
"Ethnic minorities, especially blacks and Asians, have tended to allege racism as a way of diverting attention from their involvement in crimes," said St. Petersburg Police spokesman Pavel Rayevsky in January 2004, following an attack in which Russian language student, Isaac Mwita, 23, from Tanzania was stabbed by a group of five skinheads in a manner reminiscent of Satanic sectarian rituals.
He vehemently denied that hate crimes in the city had reached an alarming stage. "I wouldn't say such crimes have reached the level of concern that you (foreigners) would like to believe... They are daily occurrences in big cities in the West," Rayevsky said.
But Yury Vdovin, co-president of the local Human Rights watchdog Citizens' Watch, believes that the extremists enjoy the full support of the state. "Police tend to protect the state from citizens and make a saint of the government, which supports the rising wave of extremism, xenophobia and racism in a society dominated by the legacy of Communist-defined patriotism. It is like saying, Фwe (the state) cannot do it openly, so let the young (extremists) do the job for us," he said.
However, Belyayev's words also echo the voices of the law enforcement bosses: "The government just keeps its borders open for all sorts of lowlifes," he commented after the February 2006 slaying of two Kazakh women, "As if we didn't have enough of our own. When they arrive in town, the immigrants behave without respect to locals and take root in all sorts of criminal groups."
The Winds of Change
With Epassak's murder, the city witnessed a massive reaction against hate crimes for the first time. Suddenly City Hall and the legislative and law enforcement organs began to realize that what had appeared to be a small, weak minority was actually the main target of racial extremists, who were showing every sign of overwhelming any feeling of tolerance in the city.
However, Epassak's death only continued a wave of hate crimes that started with the killing of an ethnic Indian medical student from Mauritius, an Azeri watermelon vendor and a Roma girl in 2003--the last of these the skinhead assailants videotaped as proof of their dedication to the cause.
Epassak's murder was a turning point for the African community, moving them from a state of depression to take a more active stance. The "Black Panther" approach was replaced by the proactive massive awareness campaign on tolerance only because community members decided that the rising wave of hate crimes was due partly to lack of information about Africa and cultures alien to Russia. African activists visited more than 80 local schools as part of the campaign, exposing about 14,000 senior graders to positive views about Africa in less than two months starting in January 2006.
The campaign was not without its difficulties, however. At the peak of its second phase in April 2006, when group members were working in universities and other higher education institutions, one of its eight most active members, Lampzer Samba, a Senegalese fifth-year student at the St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications Engineering, was gunned down by neo-Nazis, who left behind at the murder scene the gun emblazoned with a swastika.
This act was part of the extremists' media campaign to counter that of the Africans. In its January 26 issue, local extremist weekly Novy Peterburg ran a front-page story branding the tolerance endeavor as a "promotion of the African culture of cannibalism, drugs and the dissemination of infectious diseases among children."
"No one doubts the fact that the natives of Africa share a strong tradition of cannibalism to the present day," read an article in the paper. "Emperor Bokassa [the former dictator of the Central African Republic] and his son serve as proof. They have infested schools with their Negro jazz bands, displaying cannibalistic rituals and all kinds of sexual excesses, under the pretext of national tolerance."
The paper also urged the City Hall to send the African instructors for "veterinary medical checkups before any contacts with schoolchildren." The Prosecutor's Office said that legally, there was nothing offensive in the article.
It was also during this time that the city experienced another outbreak of violent hate crimes, including attacks on students from India and Jordan, an African and a Chinese person. Two men, Dembele Mamutu of Mali and Leon Canhem of Cameroon, were killed.
Lilian Sisoko, a nine-year-old African-Russian girl was attacked on the second day following the end of the trial of the suspects in the murder of nine-year-old Tajik girl Khursheda Sultavova; the suspects were either acquitted or given suspended sentences.
"(Racists) have been given license to attack and kill everything that moves; they won't spare the children now," said Lilian's mother Yekaterina Sisoko.
A Lack of Information
Novy Peterburg's article citing Emperor Bokassa as a product of the "African tradition of cannibalism" was echoed in the Kremlin as well. At a joint press conference with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in April 2006, President Vladimir Putin responded to a British journalist comparing the lack of democracy in Russia and Africa by saying: "It's not a fair comparison... It's typical of their (African) leaders Фto make snacks of each other,' but we don't have such traditions in Russia."
Alexei Mitrofanov, an LDPR Duma deputy later joined the race to the bottom while appearing in a talk show on the Rossiya television channel.
"To be frank I used the services of prostitutes in the 1980s when I was working in the West as a diplomat," he said, "but now the West is spoiled with dirty Negro prostitutes. It's full of filthy migrants from Africa." Mitrofanov faced no rebuke for his remark.
In fact, later on, a prominent anchor on the same channel had this to say with regard to an honor killing committed in the UK by an Iraqi father after his daughter began dating an Iranian Kurd: "Such incidents are not uncommon, especially in the UK; Europe has recently been invaded by the medieval barbaric traditions brought by migrants from the Islamic world."
This remark is typical of the Islamophobic propaganda rampant in the Russian media. Mukhlisa Zaripova, an expert in oriental studies and head of the St. Petersburg Tatar Community said: "It seems that she [the anchor] is not only ignorant about Islam as a religion, but also too blind to distinguish it from traditions that people hold irrespective of their religion or nationality.
Zaripova suggests that the war on intolerance should start with mass education of media professionals, perhaps similar to the kind of information campaign African activists brought to the schools. But Moishe Tresnikov, a spokesman for the St. Petersburg Jewish Community, says that it is Russia's spiritual crisis that has led the nation into this state of intolerance.Smirnova, of the House of National Cultures agrees that the lack of spirituality may inform the problem, but that the crisis has been exacerbated by a mixture of bad policies, a lack of awareness and overall economic difficulties.
Ali Nassor is a freelance journalist and a lecturer at the African Department of Oriental Studies at St Petersburg State University.
Rabu, 10 Desember 2008
Can Russia Reverse its Demographic Crisis?
In 2000, newly elected President Vladimir Putin said that the most important issue facing Russia was its demographic decline, which currently numbers around 750,000 people per year.
Given the present fertility rate, Russia’s population will have shrunk by one-third by 2050, bringing it back to the low level of 1950 – 103 million, in a country still reeling from the massive population losses due to the Second World War. There are 1 million fewer children of school age in Russia today than in 1999. In the future, Russia is likely to have a smaller population than many of its neighbors, such as Iran and Turkey. To even maintain current population levels, Russian women should average 2.5 children, as opposed to today’s rate of 1.2. This is a most unlikely development.
In 2006, the number of children born in Russia was 1.5 million, while in 1987, the figure was 2.5 million. In light of these figures, the 2005 study by the Levada Center seems surprising. According to the results of its interviews, 50 percent of respondents believed the ideal family has 2 children, while 40 percent stated it had 3 or more. But many people are prevented from achieving this ideal due to factors such as insufficient income, lack of confidence in the future, poor quality housing, lack of state aid, difficulties in holding down regular employment and high prices.
These reasons could lead to the conclusion that birth rates will increase as living conditions improve. There are, however, a number of other reasons for the low birth rate. Many Russian women, like their Western counterparts, have chosen to focus on their careers rather than family. Less than half of all Russian women are married; and while many Russians live with a partner of the opposite sex, these relationships are less likely to lead to the birth of a child. Statistics show that although one-third of all Russian children are born out of wedlock – a figure similar to that of the United States and lower than the 50 percent of children born to unmarried couples in the UK, studies also show that married couples have three times more children than unmarried ones.
Secondly, low levels of health care have resulted in 7 percent of the population – 4 million men and 6 million women – being sterile. This is twice the level of in developed countries. The main reason for this staggering figure is the recourse to abortion as the prevailing method of contraception and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Syphilis, for instance, is believed to be 100 times more prevalent in Russia than in the EU. Additionally, up to 10 percent of pregnant women miscarry, primarily due to malnutrition.
Sterile women could benefit from adequate treatments or assisted reproductive technology, but treatments are too expensive for the average Russian citizen.
State Solutions
Historically, government action to increase birth rates in Russia has been slow, generally lacking coordination and with little or no positive result, and today’s efforts are no exception. In 1941, Stalin introduced a childless tax – men and women in certain age brackets had to pay up to 6 percent of their income if they were childless – but the success of this measure was scant and it was also discontinued. In the 1980s, the Soviet government tried again to introduce measures to increase the birth rate, and while they were successful for a few years, they did not have a significant impact on the birth rate and were discontinued.
The long and largely unsuccessful transition from a central economy to a market one created large numbers of working poor, who have refrained from having children. Even those who remain optimistic have postponed having a family, making it more likely that they will have only one child.
The government’s most recent initiative has been to throw money at mothers, paying them to have a second or third child. In May 2006, family allowances were doubled for the first child and multiplied by four for the second child. A one-time payment of 250,000 rubles ($9,700) will also be deposited in a special account after a second child is born, but will be released only when the child is three and its use is limited to expenses that will primarily benefit the child, such as tuition or mortgage payments.
Several criticisms of this policy have been made. There is some fear that people would decide to have more children simply for the increased payment, which would, in the long run, increase the number of underfed, ill and undereducated children. Others feared that the new incentives would result in a transfer of funds to Russia’s Muslim minority, who already have a higher birth rate than Christian Russians, thereby increasing their power in the country.
The higher birth rate in the Muslim population has already translated into a higher proportion of Muslims in the young population; nearly 13 percent of children aged between 0–4 are Muslim, compared to 10 percent in the population as a whole.
This difference cannot be attributed to economics – on average, Russia’s Muslims have lower salaries, higher unemployment rates and generally worse living conditions than non-Muslims, but their conservative social policies mean that Muslim women are less likely to have abortions or use birth control and Muslims are less likely to divorce.
In general, paying women to become mothers is generally not a successful proposition – in order to give women a truly appropriate sum, the funds required would be gigantic and no state could afford such a policy to boost birth rates to the required level.
Countries, such as Estonia, that have seen a sizable increase in birth rates because of income-related financial incentives, have nevertheless been unable to stop the overall population slide: even a 20 percent increase in the birth rate will do little to stop Russia’s demographic decline considering the present fertility rate is one of the world’s lowest.
France is perhaps the one happy exception and one of the very few EU countries to have avoided a collapse in its birth rate, but this success has come at a cost – 4.5 percent of total GDP. The contribution of France’s immigrant Muslim population to the birth rate is difficult to measure, but is believed to be important.
Following the European model?
Generally, with very few exceptions, birth rates are declining worldwide and even in wealthy countries, parents fear the cost of raising children. In most developed countries, however, total population numbers have remained stable due to prolonged life expectancy. Demographers have suggested that we are witnessing a natural correction of the birth rate in the face of a major decrease in mortality over the last century; this mechanism would serve to avoid a population explosion.
The birth rate in nearly all European countries has dropped over the last 50 years, although at different speeds and spread over time. The drop was constant in the Northern countries, while in the Mediterranean it dropped in stages – dropping, stabilizing then dropping again to reach a low of 1.3 children per woman. The fall of Communism and the end of free child care led to the same result in the Central European countries.
Everywhere in Europe, women seem content to have one child, in contrast with 1960, when nearly half of European women had two or more children. That year is notable because it is the beginning of the contraceptive revolution in Northern and Western Europe, which only reached Southern Europe twenty years later.
A reversible trend?
New statistics out Monday show that Russia’s birth rate has indeed risen over the past year, with births up 6.5 percent in 2007 compared with the same period last year. But it would be wrong for Russian authorities to rest on their laurels. Investments must be made in preventive health care to ensure a substantially higher level of maternal care, and thus a significantly reduced number of stillbirths or children born with low birth weights and other preventable health problems.
More should also be done to assist infertile women who want children. IVF technology is quite advanced in Russia, though the cost is prohibitive for most Russian families. Further development of these technologies would have the added advantage of developing Russia as a premier center in this medical specialty and drawing patients from other European countries, effectively competing with Spain.
Unless remedies are applied rapidly, Russia risks falling into a fertility trap. A smaller population today means fewer children in the future, even if the birth rate increases. Young people brought up in families with one child see them as the norm, and in turn reproduce this pattern. This is already happening in Germany, for example.
The French demographer, Chaunu, once stated that if a human group sustains a negative growth curve for 10 or 20 years, it totally destroys itself. Will this happen to the Russian Slavs, or even to the entire European population?
Time will tell, but the odds are not very much in favor of a resurgence of the European population. History is replete with civilizations that have disappeared. The tell tale signs are already present, and we should urgently act to avoid a population collapse
Given the present fertility rate, Russia’s population will have shrunk by one-third by 2050, bringing it back to the low level of 1950 – 103 million, in a country still reeling from the massive population losses due to the Second World War. There are 1 million fewer children of school age in Russia today than in 1999. In the future, Russia is likely to have a smaller population than many of its neighbors, such as Iran and Turkey. To even maintain current population levels, Russian women should average 2.5 children, as opposed to today’s rate of 1.2. This is a most unlikely development.
In 2006, the number of children born in Russia was 1.5 million, while in 1987, the figure was 2.5 million. In light of these figures, the 2005 study by the Levada Center seems surprising. According to the results of its interviews, 50 percent of respondents believed the ideal family has 2 children, while 40 percent stated it had 3 or more. But many people are prevented from achieving this ideal due to factors such as insufficient income, lack of confidence in the future, poor quality housing, lack of state aid, difficulties in holding down regular employment and high prices.
These reasons could lead to the conclusion that birth rates will increase as living conditions improve. There are, however, a number of other reasons for the low birth rate. Many Russian women, like their Western counterparts, have chosen to focus on their careers rather than family. Less than half of all Russian women are married; and while many Russians live with a partner of the opposite sex, these relationships are less likely to lead to the birth of a child. Statistics show that although one-third of all Russian children are born out of wedlock – a figure similar to that of the United States and lower than the 50 percent of children born to unmarried couples in the UK, studies also show that married couples have three times more children than unmarried ones.
Secondly, low levels of health care have resulted in 7 percent of the population – 4 million men and 6 million women – being sterile. This is twice the level of in developed countries. The main reason for this staggering figure is the recourse to abortion as the prevailing method of contraception and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Syphilis, for instance, is believed to be 100 times more prevalent in Russia than in the EU. Additionally, up to 10 percent of pregnant women miscarry, primarily due to malnutrition.
Sterile women could benefit from adequate treatments or assisted reproductive technology, but treatments are too expensive for the average Russian citizen.
State Solutions
Historically, government action to increase birth rates in Russia has been slow, generally lacking coordination and with little or no positive result, and today’s efforts are no exception. In 1941, Stalin introduced a childless tax – men and women in certain age brackets had to pay up to 6 percent of their income if they were childless – but the success of this measure was scant and it was also discontinued. In the 1980s, the Soviet government tried again to introduce measures to increase the birth rate, and while they were successful for a few years, they did not have a significant impact on the birth rate and were discontinued.
The long and largely unsuccessful transition from a central economy to a market one created large numbers of working poor, who have refrained from having children. Even those who remain optimistic have postponed having a family, making it more likely that they will have only one child.
The government’s most recent initiative has been to throw money at mothers, paying them to have a second or third child. In May 2006, family allowances were doubled for the first child and multiplied by four for the second child. A one-time payment of 250,000 rubles ($9,700) will also be deposited in a special account after a second child is born, but will be released only when the child is three and its use is limited to expenses that will primarily benefit the child, such as tuition or mortgage payments.
Several criticisms of this policy have been made. There is some fear that people would decide to have more children simply for the increased payment, which would, in the long run, increase the number of underfed, ill and undereducated children. Others feared that the new incentives would result in a transfer of funds to Russia’s Muslim minority, who already have a higher birth rate than Christian Russians, thereby increasing their power in the country.
The higher birth rate in the Muslim population has already translated into a higher proportion of Muslims in the young population; nearly 13 percent of children aged between 0–4 are Muslim, compared to 10 percent in the population as a whole.
This difference cannot be attributed to economics – on average, Russia’s Muslims have lower salaries, higher unemployment rates and generally worse living conditions than non-Muslims, but their conservative social policies mean that Muslim women are less likely to have abortions or use birth control and Muslims are less likely to divorce.
In general, paying women to become mothers is generally not a successful proposition – in order to give women a truly appropriate sum, the funds required would be gigantic and no state could afford such a policy to boost birth rates to the required level.
Countries, such as Estonia, that have seen a sizable increase in birth rates because of income-related financial incentives, have nevertheless been unable to stop the overall population slide: even a 20 percent increase in the birth rate will do little to stop Russia’s demographic decline considering the present fertility rate is one of the world’s lowest.
France is perhaps the one happy exception and one of the very few EU countries to have avoided a collapse in its birth rate, but this success has come at a cost – 4.5 percent of total GDP. The contribution of France’s immigrant Muslim population to the birth rate is difficult to measure, but is believed to be important.
Following the European model?
Generally, with very few exceptions, birth rates are declining worldwide and even in wealthy countries, parents fear the cost of raising children. In most developed countries, however, total population numbers have remained stable due to prolonged life expectancy. Demographers have suggested that we are witnessing a natural correction of the birth rate in the face of a major decrease in mortality over the last century; this mechanism would serve to avoid a population explosion.
The birth rate in nearly all European countries has dropped over the last 50 years, although at different speeds and spread over time. The drop was constant in the Northern countries, while in the Mediterranean it dropped in stages – dropping, stabilizing then dropping again to reach a low of 1.3 children per woman. The fall of Communism and the end of free child care led to the same result in the Central European countries.
Everywhere in Europe, women seem content to have one child, in contrast with 1960, when nearly half of European women had two or more children. That year is notable because it is the beginning of the contraceptive revolution in Northern and Western Europe, which only reached Southern Europe twenty years later.
A reversible trend?
New statistics out Monday show that Russia’s birth rate has indeed risen over the past year, with births up 6.5 percent in 2007 compared with the same period last year. But it would be wrong for Russian authorities to rest on their laurels. Investments must be made in preventive health care to ensure a substantially higher level of maternal care, and thus a significantly reduced number of stillbirths or children born with low birth weights and other preventable health problems.
More should also be done to assist infertile women who want children. IVF technology is quite advanced in Russia, though the cost is prohibitive for most Russian families. Further development of these technologies would have the added advantage of developing Russia as a premier center in this medical specialty and drawing patients from other European countries, effectively competing with Spain.
Unless remedies are applied rapidly, Russia risks falling into a fertility trap. A smaller population today means fewer children in the future, even if the birth rate increases. Young people brought up in families with one child see them as the norm, and in turn reproduce this pattern. This is already happening in Germany, for example.
The French demographer, Chaunu, once stated that if a human group sustains a negative growth curve for 10 or 20 years, it totally destroys itself. Will this happen to the Russian Slavs, or even to the entire European population?
Time will tell, but the odds are not very much in favor of a resurgence of the European population. History is replete with civilizations that have disappeared. The tell tale signs are already present, and we should urgently act to avoid a population collapse
Old Habits Die Hard
Litter Will Only Disappear When Russians Begin to Look at the World in a New Way
The history of the Russian nation has been difficult—so difficult that it has distorted the psyche of many generations. The main result of these historical difficulties is that the Russian people have become close to barbaric. It is senseless, merciless, and utterly unjustified. The most obvious example of this barbarism occurred during the October Revolution, when hoards of enraged peasants seized the houses of the wealthy and destroyed works of art.
Although this was barbarism in an extreme situation, it continued on an everyday level even after the revolution. A common sight in the Soviet era was destroyed public property: public telephones with the earpieces cut off; benches with their backs torn off.
The trash and dirt that Russians leave in their public spaces is just another logical extension of this barbarism. The use of building entrances as urinals or the drawing of graffiti on the walls of elevators seems unmotivated, but there is an explanation. For centuries, the poor Russian people were deprived of private property. People in pre-revolutionary Russia lived in complete poverty. Even after the revolution, people lived in ruin and hunger for a long time. As the years passed, the situation began to improve as a result of “the restoration of a national economy,” the “great construction projects,” “the fight for the harvest” and so on. But there was no private property.
In typical Soviet residential buildings, the apartments were clean and beautiful, but the courtyards and entryways were filthy since in the Soviet Union, tenants never paid for janitorial services for the courtyards and entrances. All these services were provided for out of the state budget and since it was someone else’s budget, it was someone else’s problem. Clean courtyards and entrances have now started to appear in Russia—now that tenants themselves pay for the cleaning.
However, even in these clean buildings there are still men who continue to throw cigarette butts in the clean hallways and in the cleared courtyards; these men can’t seem to let go of these long-standing habits. Of course their mothers did not teach them to throw their cigarettes wherever they liked, but these mothers could not teach their sons to throw their trash in proper locations—there weren’t any. It seems ridiculous, but along with the shortage of everything else in the Soviet Union, there was a shortage of trash cans. And when trash cans finally appeared, people kept their old habits and continued to carelessly throw trash on the ground.
The same explanation can be made for why people continue to use the courtyards and entrances of buildings as public urinals. In the Soviet Union, there were very few public toilets. Now we have toilets, but the old habit of doing your business in building entrances has remained.
Certainly the fact that people now have a greater sense of ownership has contributed to an improved situation in entrances and courtyards. But things could improve even more if there were fines for littering. I have occasionally seen signs threatening a fine for throwing trash in improper places, but I have never seen anyone actually fining someone for such behavior. And although there are huge fines in Europe for improperly disposing of cigarette butts, to my knowledge, in Russia, there is no such law on the books. This presents an interesting paradox: Russians are not allowed any political freedom, however, they are at absolute liberty to litter as they want. Perhaps this is actually a carefully considered tactic on the part of the authorities –people who don’t care are easier to manipulate.
It is interesting, incidentally, that our nearest neighbors, the Belarusians, live considerably cleaner lives. Some Russian citizens give credit for this to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, but average Belarusians are offended by this assumption, pointing out that even during the Soviet era they had clean cities and villages. And this is true, but why was this the case? It is possible that Belarusians are cleaner because they are closer to the West and, therefore, to the mentality of private ownership. I really can see no other reason why people so much like the Russians would take such a different approach to their surroundings.
Russians only begin to understand something once it affects them directly. Russians only became interested in the environment when Transneft planned to lay a pipeline on the shores of Lake Baikal. People clearly understood that any accident, any break in the pipe, which was to be laid in two places directly on the bottom of the rivers that feed the lake—and the lake would be ruined, killing off both the fish and the tourism industry—the two things by which local people made their living. Protests against the pipeline aroused such fury that President Vladimir Putin personally backed a new route for this pipeline.
From this story, it is possible to at least envision a day when Russians will take their garbage problem seriously—the day when they literally begin to choke from the stink and physically sink in the sewage. Only when the garbage directly threatens their physical existence will Russians possibly learn to clean up after themselves.
Yelena Rykovtseva is a correspondant for Radio Free Europe/Radio Libertyy. This comment represents her own views and not those of Radio Liberty.
The history of the Russian nation has been difficult—so difficult that it has distorted the psyche of many generations. The main result of these historical difficulties is that the Russian people have become close to barbaric. It is senseless, merciless, and utterly unjustified. The most obvious example of this barbarism occurred during the October Revolution, when hoards of enraged peasants seized the houses of the wealthy and destroyed works of art.
Although this was barbarism in an extreme situation, it continued on an everyday level even after the revolution. A common sight in the Soviet era was destroyed public property: public telephones with the earpieces cut off; benches with their backs torn off.
The trash and dirt that Russians leave in their public spaces is just another logical extension of this barbarism. The use of building entrances as urinals or the drawing of graffiti on the walls of elevators seems unmotivated, but there is an explanation. For centuries, the poor Russian people were deprived of private property. People in pre-revolutionary Russia lived in complete poverty. Even after the revolution, people lived in ruin and hunger for a long time. As the years passed, the situation began to improve as a result of “the restoration of a national economy,” the “great construction projects,” “the fight for the harvest” and so on. But there was no private property.
In typical Soviet residential buildings, the apartments were clean and beautiful, but the courtyards and entryways were filthy since in the Soviet Union, tenants never paid for janitorial services for the courtyards and entrances. All these services were provided for out of the state budget and since it was someone else’s budget, it was someone else’s problem. Clean courtyards and entrances have now started to appear in Russia—now that tenants themselves pay for the cleaning.
However, even in these clean buildings there are still men who continue to throw cigarette butts in the clean hallways and in the cleared courtyards; these men can’t seem to let go of these long-standing habits. Of course their mothers did not teach them to throw their cigarettes wherever they liked, but these mothers could not teach their sons to throw their trash in proper locations—there weren’t any. It seems ridiculous, but along with the shortage of everything else in the Soviet Union, there was a shortage of trash cans. And when trash cans finally appeared, people kept their old habits and continued to carelessly throw trash on the ground.
The same explanation can be made for why people continue to use the courtyards and entrances of buildings as public urinals. In the Soviet Union, there were very few public toilets. Now we have toilets, but the old habit of doing your business in building entrances has remained.
Certainly the fact that people now have a greater sense of ownership has contributed to an improved situation in entrances and courtyards. But things could improve even more if there were fines for littering. I have occasionally seen signs threatening a fine for throwing trash in improper places, but I have never seen anyone actually fining someone for such behavior. And although there are huge fines in Europe for improperly disposing of cigarette butts, to my knowledge, in Russia, there is no such law on the books. This presents an interesting paradox: Russians are not allowed any political freedom, however, they are at absolute liberty to litter as they want. Perhaps this is actually a carefully considered tactic on the part of the authorities –people who don’t care are easier to manipulate.
It is interesting, incidentally, that our nearest neighbors, the Belarusians, live considerably cleaner lives. Some Russian citizens give credit for this to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, but average Belarusians are offended by this assumption, pointing out that even during the Soviet era they had clean cities and villages. And this is true, but why was this the case? It is possible that Belarusians are cleaner because they are closer to the West and, therefore, to the mentality of private ownership. I really can see no other reason why people so much like the Russians would take such a different approach to their surroundings.
Russians only begin to understand something once it affects them directly. Russians only became interested in the environment when Transneft planned to lay a pipeline on the shores of Lake Baikal. People clearly understood that any accident, any break in the pipe, which was to be laid in two places directly on the bottom of the rivers that feed the lake—and the lake would be ruined, killing off both the fish and the tourism industry—the two things by which local people made their living. Protests against the pipeline aroused such fury that President Vladimir Putin personally backed a new route for this pipeline.
From this story, it is possible to at least envision a day when Russians will take their garbage problem seriously—the day when they literally begin to choke from the stink and physically sink in the sewage. Only when the garbage directly threatens their physical existence will Russians possibly learn to clean up after themselves.
Yelena Rykovtseva is a correspondant for Radio Free Europe/Radio Libertyy. This comment represents her own views and not those of Radio Liberty.
Russian Muslims Go on the Hajj with Official Support
As Islam in Russia undergoes a revival, more and more local Muslims are determined to fulfill the fifth pillar of Islam and undertake the hajj—the pilgrimage to the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. The most recent pilgrimage, in December 2007, saw record numbers of Muslims travel from across Russia to take part in what is seen as a holy duty among those who are physically and financially able to travel.
The Saudi method for working out quotas per country is to allow one place on the hajj for each 1,000 Muslims living in any given country. Because Russian censuses don’t ask about religion, nobody knows exactly how many Muslims live in Russia, and estimates vary between 8 million and 20 million. The Saudis already took the higher end of the estimate in setting the Russian allocation at 20,500, but flouted their own system to give an extra few thousand places, irritating some other Muslim countries in the process. In December last year, Russia was granted an additional 4,500 spaces in the allocation that the Saudi authorities give to each country, boosting the numbers from 20,500 to 25,000. It was rumored that the additional spaces were granted after personal lobbying from President Vladimir Putin, who made his first trip to Saudi Arabia last year.
Even this figure seems to have been well exceeded, however, with officials in the Dagestani capital of Makhachkala claiming that 17,000 pilgrims from Dagestan alone made the journey. In recent years, the number of people willing and able to make the hajj in Russia was below the official quota, but in 2007, demand exceeded even the newly revised quota—something that indicates both a revival of Islamic practices among Russia’s Muslims and an increase in wealth, which makes the journey more plausible. Many first-time hajj participants dedicate their pilgrimages to elderly or deceased relatives who were forbidden from making the journey during the Soviet period or unable to during the 1990s.
Muslim pilgrims walk around the Kaaba in Mecca as part of the hajj.Traditionally, more than half the pilgrims are from Dagestan, and Chechnya claims the second highest number of Russian pilgrims. There is also a contingent of Tatars and Bashkirs, but as Islam is less entrenched in these regions, their numbers taking the opportunity are not as high. There have been allegations in the past that the hajj has been used as a pretext to smuggle goods into and out of Russia, with many Dagestanis accused of loading up cars full of wares, and the same people travelling to the hajj year after year. These charges led the Russian authorities to introduce limits a few years ago on how much may be brought into Russia duty free.
Official estimates—which could well be lower than the real numbers—say that around 26,000 Russians traveled to Saudi Arabia last December . Aeroflot scheduled special flights from Mineralny Vody in the North Caucasus direct to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, while others flew out of Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport to Jordan, and then took transport on from there.
“Mecca is a holy place for every Muslim, and if they can afford it, they should visit at least once in a lifetime,” one elderly bearded Muslim man told Russian television before beginning his journey from Domodedovo. “It’s the home of Allah and also the tomb of the Prophet Mohammed.”
“I’ve already been there, but my son was killed and now I’m going again, to pray for him,” a woman told the TV cameras. “Hajj was given as an order from Allah, and anyone who can must go there.”
Not everyone had the resources to be able to travel by plane though, and many pilgrims took lengthy routes, either over the Black Sea to Trabzon and then onwards by bus, or all the way from Russia to Saudi Arabia by bus. One group of pilgrims was trapped for over a week on the return journey waiting for a ferry in the Turkish port city of Trabzon, after storms prevented them from sailing.
One even more extreme story hit the headlines in 2007—Dzhanar-Aliyev Magomed-Ali, a 63-year old Chechen, cycled all the way from his home in the Caucasus Mountains to Mecca and back. The pensioner crossed 13 states on his bike, apparently after his mother appeared to him in a dream and told him that he must perform the hajj, and perform it on a bicycle. He traveled through Azerbaijan, Iran and war-torn Iraq, where he claimed a group of American soldiers smashed his bicycle and called him a “Russian pig.” He had to head back to Iran, and bypassed Iraq by riding through Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Syria and Jordan before finally making it to his destination country—the Saudi kingdom.
“The Russian authorities have a two-sided approach to Russian Muslims doing the hajj,” said Sergei Markednov of the Institute of Military and Political Analysis. On the one hand, the authorities are worried about the possible radicalization of Russian Muslims when they travel abroad and come into contact with more aggressive strands of Islamic thinking. The hajj is seen as less risky than actual study abroad at foreign madrassahs though, when Russian Muslims remain in other countries for an extended period of time and thus have a higher chance of being radicalized. And in regions such as Dagestan, there is also a likelihood that they could come into contact with radical Islamic teaching without having to leave the boundaries of Russia.
But although there is some disquiet among Russian authorities and the official Muslim spiritual bodies about the number of Muslims who now want to make the hajj, there is another side of the story. With Russia very keen to win allies in different parts of the world, its image as a multi-confessional country is important. “Russia is friendly with Iran, and is part of the Organization of the Islamic Conference,” said Markedonov. “Also, many regional leaders see the hajj as good PR—[Chechen President] Ramzan Kadyrov even went himself.”
This use of the hajj as a tool to boost Russia’s standing in the Middle East is nothing new, says Eileen Kane, a post-doctoral researcher at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. “Starting in the 1840s, and continuing throughout the 19th century, the authorities made it easier for Muslims to go on the hajj, and helped subsidize it,” she said. Competing with the UK for influence in the Middle East—a region where the British had many more business and trade links than the Russians—the pilgrims made a good excuse for getting a foothold in the area. In 1880 a Russian consulate was opened in Baghdad, and in 1891 in Jeddah.
“They were doing a similar thing to what Putin is doing now,” said Kane. “The thinking was that people were going on the hajj, there was no way to stop them, and by helping them it was possible to get a foothold in regions where Russia had strategic interests but no real reason to be there.”
In the middle of the 19th century, only around 1,000 pilgrims made the journey each year, while by the end of the Tsarist period, there were over 10,000 pilgrims officially recorded annually on the hajj, and the real number was much higher. Most of these were from the Caucasus and Central Asian territories of the empire.
Now, Russia no longer has the Central Asian territories but has a huge number of Muslims within its modern day borders—a population which, unlike the rest of the country, is not in decline but still growing. As more of these Muslims rediscover the faith that had to be kept quiet during the Soviet period, demand for places on the yearly pilgrimage to fulfill the fifth pillar of Islam is likely to continue growing.
The Saudi method for working out quotas per country is to allow one place on the hajj for each 1,000 Muslims living in any given country. Because Russian censuses don’t ask about religion, nobody knows exactly how many Muslims live in Russia, and estimates vary between 8 million and 20 million. The Saudis already took the higher end of the estimate in setting the Russian allocation at 20,500, but flouted their own system to give an extra few thousand places, irritating some other Muslim countries in the process. In December last year, Russia was granted an additional 4,500 spaces in the allocation that the Saudi authorities give to each country, boosting the numbers from 20,500 to 25,000. It was rumored that the additional spaces were granted after personal lobbying from President Vladimir Putin, who made his first trip to Saudi Arabia last year.
Even this figure seems to have been well exceeded, however, with officials in the Dagestani capital of Makhachkala claiming that 17,000 pilgrims from Dagestan alone made the journey. In recent years, the number of people willing and able to make the hajj in Russia was below the official quota, but in 2007, demand exceeded even the newly revised quota—something that indicates both a revival of Islamic practices among Russia’s Muslims and an increase in wealth, which makes the journey more plausible. Many first-time hajj participants dedicate their pilgrimages to elderly or deceased relatives who were forbidden from making the journey during the Soviet period or unable to during the 1990s.
Muslim pilgrims walk around the Kaaba in Mecca as part of the hajj.Traditionally, more than half the pilgrims are from Dagestan, and Chechnya claims the second highest number of Russian pilgrims. There is also a contingent of Tatars and Bashkirs, but as Islam is less entrenched in these regions, their numbers taking the opportunity are not as high. There have been allegations in the past that the hajj has been used as a pretext to smuggle goods into and out of Russia, with many Dagestanis accused of loading up cars full of wares, and the same people travelling to the hajj year after year. These charges led the Russian authorities to introduce limits a few years ago on how much may be brought into Russia duty free.
Official estimates—which could well be lower than the real numbers—say that around 26,000 Russians traveled to Saudi Arabia last December . Aeroflot scheduled special flights from Mineralny Vody in the North Caucasus direct to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, while others flew out of Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport to Jordan, and then took transport on from there.
“Mecca is a holy place for every Muslim, and if they can afford it, they should visit at least once in a lifetime,” one elderly bearded Muslim man told Russian television before beginning his journey from Domodedovo. “It’s the home of Allah and also the tomb of the Prophet Mohammed.”
“I’ve already been there, but my son was killed and now I’m going again, to pray for him,” a woman told the TV cameras. “Hajj was given as an order from Allah, and anyone who can must go there.”
Not everyone had the resources to be able to travel by plane though, and many pilgrims took lengthy routes, either over the Black Sea to Trabzon and then onwards by bus, or all the way from Russia to Saudi Arabia by bus. One group of pilgrims was trapped for over a week on the return journey waiting for a ferry in the Turkish port city of Trabzon, after storms prevented them from sailing.
One even more extreme story hit the headlines in 2007—Dzhanar-Aliyev Magomed-Ali, a 63-year old Chechen, cycled all the way from his home in the Caucasus Mountains to Mecca and back. The pensioner crossed 13 states on his bike, apparently after his mother appeared to him in a dream and told him that he must perform the hajj, and perform it on a bicycle. He traveled through Azerbaijan, Iran and war-torn Iraq, where he claimed a group of American soldiers smashed his bicycle and called him a “Russian pig.” He had to head back to Iran, and bypassed Iraq by riding through Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Syria and Jordan before finally making it to his destination country—the Saudi kingdom.
“The Russian authorities have a two-sided approach to Russian Muslims doing the hajj,” said Sergei Markednov of the Institute of Military and Political Analysis. On the one hand, the authorities are worried about the possible radicalization of Russian Muslims when they travel abroad and come into contact with more aggressive strands of Islamic thinking. The hajj is seen as less risky than actual study abroad at foreign madrassahs though, when Russian Muslims remain in other countries for an extended period of time and thus have a higher chance of being radicalized. And in regions such as Dagestan, there is also a likelihood that they could come into contact with radical Islamic teaching without having to leave the boundaries of Russia.
But although there is some disquiet among Russian authorities and the official Muslim spiritual bodies about the number of Muslims who now want to make the hajj, there is another side of the story. With Russia very keen to win allies in different parts of the world, its image as a multi-confessional country is important. “Russia is friendly with Iran, and is part of the Organization of the Islamic Conference,” said Markedonov. “Also, many regional leaders see the hajj as good PR—[Chechen President] Ramzan Kadyrov even went himself.”
This use of the hajj as a tool to boost Russia’s standing in the Middle East is nothing new, says Eileen Kane, a post-doctoral researcher at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. “Starting in the 1840s, and continuing throughout the 19th century, the authorities made it easier for Muslims to go on the hajj, and helped subsidize it,” she said. Competing with the UK for influence in the Middle East—a region where the British had many more business and trade links than the Russians—the pilgrims made a good excuse for getting a foothold in the area. In 1880 a Russian consulate was opened in Baghdad, and in 1891 in Jeddah.
“They were doing a similar thing to what Putin is doing now,” said Kane. “The thinking was that people were going on the hajj, there was no way to stop them, and by helping them it was possible to get a foothold in regions where Russia had strategic interests but no real reason to be there.”
In the middle of the 19th century, only around 1,000 pilgrims made the journey each year, while by the end of the Tsarist period, there were over 10,000 pilgrims officially recorded annually on the hajj, and the real number was much higher. Most of these were from the Caucasus and Central Asian territories of the empire.
Now, Russia no longer has the Central Asian territories but has a huge number of Muslims within its modern day borders—a population which, unlike the rest of the country, is not in decline but still growing. As more of these Muslims rediscover the faith that had to be kept quiet during the Soviet period, demand for places on the yearly pilgrimage to fulfill the fifth pillar of Islam is likely to continue growing.
The Virtual Diaspora
Large Russophone Organizations Abroad Rely Heavily on the Web
In a brown flagstone single-story house in the middle of America, Olga Koutsenko is a diaspora of one.
But that doesn’t mean that she, a Russian immigrant who took a circuitous route from Moscow through Israel, New York, Oklahoma City and, finally, to this indiscriminate cul-de-sac in Norman, Okla., is cut off from the world she left behind. Although she may be alone in this house, her desktop computer makes her part of a transnational collective of Russians living their lives abroad, as if they were in a Soviet-style communal flat on the outskirts of Moscow.
On the shelf next to her television set, she has spindle after spindle of Russian TV series and movies burned on CDs. Her computer streams last night’s Russian television to her monitor the next day. Every once in a while, in the early morning or late at night, her computer will ring. The call over the Internet comes from Moscow through a voice-over IP program called Skype.
“I have pretty much everything that my mother has in Vidnoe (a suburb of Moscow), aside from the food. The sausage, pelmeni and other things I like won’t fit through the cable,” Koutsenko joked in a telephone interview.
For many first-generation immigrants like Koutsenko, the Internet provides a lifeline to their home country. For younger immigrants, who are more acclimated to their new home, the tie weakens, but for them too, the Internet is a way to connect with their heritage and maintain language exposure.
Around the world but especially in the United States, Western Europe and Israel, there is a host of Russian-language community portals, social networking groups, news sites and even dating sites shaping diaspora communities. In the last decade, as Russian-based Internet offerings to émigré communities have blossomed, the number of these sites has grown. There is now a virtual diaspora buzzing with many languages—English, Hebrew, German—but only one lingua franca binds the community together.
“Many Russian immigrants who live in Israel or elsewhere visit Internet sites, portals and forums that are truly transnational,” said Larissa Remennick, a professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and the author of a book titled Russian Jews on Three Continents. “Their domain name may be .ru (Russia) .il (Israel), .de (Germany) or .com, but the main bond is the language and cultural legacy despite the users and the Web sites being spread across the globe.”
From the outside in
As the Soviet Union took its last gasps in the 1990s, Internet connections were few and far between in Russia. Outside the crumbling empire, the virtual, text-based marketplace of ideas relied entirely on a character set known as ASCII that could only transmit the Latin alphabet. That quickly changed as programmers, many of whom were from Russia, helped standardize and diversify the linguistic flexibility of the Internet.
Nevertheless, the bulk of Web sites in Russian were hosted outside the former Soviet Union. Many Russian programmers living abroad laid the foundation for the Russian Internet dealing in information, amateur literature and political thought. The ideological grounding of the early Russian Internet provided a stark contrast to the largely technical and entertainment-based U.S. model. To some extent, this difference is still visible today in the popular Russian blogging platform, Livejournal.ru, which is far more politically oriented than its American counterpart according to Vlad Strukov, an assistant professor at the University of Leeds in Britain, who studies Russia’s Internet culture.
“These new digital media, symbolically, are the voice of a new generation, of a post-Soviet generation,” Strukov said. “They use the digital medium to articulate their new aspirations, new ideas.”
Leonid Delitsyn, an early contributor to the Internet’s development and an Internet consultant at present, noted that in the mid-1990s, as Russians on Russian soil gained more access to the Web, there was a backlash against the foreign-born ideological strains affecting its Russian segment. In an article about that time, he recalled an anonymous author lashing out against the émigré authors.
“He blamed us,” Delitsin said. “He said it’s time for the Russians to make the Russian Internet and kick out those guys living abroad and influencing our culture. We were not really ready to see this response of Russians living in Russia to our invasion with basically foreign values.”
The relationship between the development of Russian Internet culture and Russian literature bears a striking resemblance. Under the censors of the Soviet system, dissident authors relied on subversive distribution methods such as samizdat (self-publishing) and tamizdat (publishing of works abroad). The Internet made both of the methods possible and stoked a new fire, a digital intelligentsia both at home and abroad.
From the inside out
As the Russian Internet grew, the balance shifted. The early-adopters became pioneers and the subversive became mainstream. A largely international phenomenon became a domestic affair.
The advent of streaming video, social networking and ubiquitous broadband in Russia’s urban centers has flipped the information flow. Now émigrés are the consumers rather than the producers, turning to the Internet as a tie to their home culture, downloading movies through file-sharing programs.
One of Russia’s most prominent search sites and portals, Yandex.ru, receives 20 percent of its traffic from outside Russia, according to Dina Litvinova of Yandex’s public relations office.
Sites like Yandex are catering to those abroad “wherever they live,” she said. These portals provide the backbone of the new Russian Internet, “the only space on the Russian media market in which the government and other institutions allow people to express their opinions freely,” Strukov said. Other media have come under increasing control of the corporations or business friendly to the Kremlin.
“I generally believe that the Internet actually does smooth (the global Russian culture) up a little bit and kind of makes it more coherent,” Strukov said. “It keeps the society, including diaspora, more cohesive in the end.”
The Russian Internet is now overwhelmingly Russian-centered and even nationalistic in character. Henrike Schmidt, a literary scholar and leader of the project Russian Cyberspace.org, said that the Internet is one way the Russian officials are looking to unite the Russian-speaking diaspora under a common cultural and even nationalistic banner. To some extent, that is accomplished through this reversal of the information flow.
“In the 1990s, there was more broad content brought into the Russian Internet community from diasporic resources,” Schmidt said. “Now, of course, there is so much information coming from inside Russia that we have this shift from producer culture to consumer culture.”
Sticking together
Irina Lukina is an officer at a global association that connects Russian-speaking youth called ZARYA. Through Facebook messages, Skype conference calls and email lists, a group of college students cobbled together a community, put up a Web site and made it accessible worldwide. “None of it would have been even close to possible without the Internet,” Lukina said.
For the four waves of immigrants from the Soviet Union, the landing point was often a cohesive Russian community like Brighton Beach in New York or the Russian neighborhoods in Israel. Some of those areas now struggle to maintain their boundaries with the latest wave of largely economic-based immigration. “It’s important for young and not-so-young people of Russian descent to couple with people like themselves. This is a phenomenon which extends even to the second generation of Russian immigrants,” Remennick said.
Instead of brick-and-mortar community centers, synagogues or Russian restaurants, the émigré communities now rely on the Internet to make connections. The result is a virtual diaspora, propped up by community Web sites, social networks, online forums and even dating sites. The physical community may be lost, but the desire to connect remains the same.
Pillars of the homemade Russian Web have set up portals to connect with these communities. Rambler.ru, another major Russian portal, has opened a site specifically to cater to Russian speakers in New York City. In almost any major American city there is a forum dedicated to connecting Russian speakers.
Organizations like the recently founded Russki Mir (Russian World) Foundation may rely on these virtual connections to consolidate and promote Russian language and culture outside Russia’s borders. But if history is any guide, the Russian communities themselves will have the biggest say in the success or failure of such projects.
“I’m wholly optimistic about this,” Strukov said. “They are creating new online communities. It may be a bit frustrating because at some point you realize it’s all a bit virtual reality, but in spite of that, I think these are the most Russian places outside Russia.
In a brown flagstone single-story house in the middle of America, Olga Koutsenko is a diaspora of one.
But that doesn’t mean that she, a Russian immigrant who took a circuitous route from Moscow through Israel, New York, Oklahoma City and, finally, to this indiscriminate cul-de-sac in Norman, Okla., is cut off from the world she left behind. Although she may be alone in this house, her desktop computer makes her part of a transnational collective of Russians living their lives abroad, as if they were in a Soviet-style communal flat on the outskirts of Moscow.
On the shelf next to her television set, she has spindle after spindle of Russian TV series and movies burned on CDs. Her computer streams last night’s Russian television to her monitor the next day. Every once in a while, in the early morning or late at night, her computer will ring. The call over the Internet comes from Moscow through a voice-over IP program called Skype.
“I have pretty much everything that my mother has in Vidnoe (a suburb of Moscow), aside from the food. The sausage, pelmeni and other things I like won’t fit through the cable,” Koutsenko joked in a telephone interview.
For many first-generation immigrants like Koutsenko, the Internet provides a lifeline to their home country. For younger immigrants, who are more acclimated to their new home, the tie weakens, but for them too, the Internet is a way to connect with their heritage and maintain language exposure.
Around the world but especially in the United States, Western Europe and Israel, there is a host of Russian-language community portals, social networking groups, news sites and even dating sites shaping diaspora communities. In the last decade, as Russian-based Internet offerings to émigré communities have blossomed, the number of these sites has grown. There is now a virtual diaspora buzzing with many languages—English, Hebrew, German—but only one lingua franca binds the community together.
“Many Russian immigrants who live in Israel or elsewhere visit Internet sites, portals and forums that are truly transnational,” said Larissa Remennick, a professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and the author of a book titled Russian Jews on Three Continents. “Their domain name may be .ru (Russia) .il (Israel), .de (Germany) or .com, but the main bond is the language and cultural legacy despite the users and the Web sites being spread across the globe.”
From the outside in
As the Soviet Union took its last gasps in the 1990s, Internet connections were few and far between in Russia. Outside the crumbling empire, the virtual, text-based marketplace of ideas relied entirely on a character set known as ASCII that could only transmit the Latin alphabet. That quickly changed as programmers, many of whom were from Russia, helped standardize and diversify the linguistic flexibility of the Internet.
Nevertheless, the bulk of Web sites in Russian were hosted outside the former Soviet Union. Many Russian programmers living abroad laid the foundation for the Russian Internet dealing in information, amateur literature and political thought. The ideological grounding of the early Russian Internet provided a stark contrast to the largely technical and entertainment-based U.S. model. To some extent, this difference is still visible today in the popular Russian blogging platform, Livejournal.ru, which is far more politically oriented than its American counterpart according to Vlad Strukov, an assistant professor at the University of Leeds in Britain, who studies Russia’s Internet culture.
“These new digital media, symbolically, are the voice of a new generation, of a post-Soviet generation,” Strukov said. “They use the digital medium to articulate their new aspirations, new ideas.”
Leonid Delitsyn, an early contributor to the Internet’s development and an Internet consultant at present, noted that in the mid-1990s, as Russians on Russian soil gained more access to the Web, there was a backlash against the foreign-born ideological strains affecting its Russian segment. In an article about that time, he recalled an anonymous author lashing out against the émigré authors.
“He blamed us,” Delitsin said. “He said it’s time for the Russians to make the Russian Internet and kick out those guys living abroad and influencing our culture. We were not really ready to see this response of Russians living in Russia to our invasion with basically foreign values.”
The relationship between the development of Russian Internet culture and Russian literature bears a striking resemblance. Under the censors of the Soviet system, dissident authors relied on subversive distribution methods such as samizdat (self-publishing) and tamizdat (publishing of works abroad). The Internet made both of the methods possible and stoked a new fire, a digital intelligentsia both at home and abroad.
From the inside out
As the Russian Internet grew, the balance shifted. The early-adopters became pioneers and the subversive became mainstream. A largely international phenomenon became a domestic affair.
The advent of streaming video, social networking and ubiquitous broadband in Russia’s urban centers has flipped the information flow. Now émigrés are the consumers rather than the producers, turning to the Internet as a tie to their home culture, downloading movies through file-sharing programs.
One of Russia’s most prominent search sites and portals, Yandex.ru, receives 20 percent of its traffic from outside Russia, according to Dina Litvinova of Yandex’s public relations office.
Sites like Yandex are catering to those abroad “wherever they live,” she said. These portals provide the backbone of the new Russian Internet, “the only space on the Russian media market in which the government and other institutions allow people to express their opinions freely,” Strukov said. Other media have come under increasing control of the corporations or business friendly to the Kremlin.
“I generally believe that the Internet actually does smooth (the global Russian culture) up a little bit and kind of makes it more coherent,” Strukov said. “It keeps the society, including diaspora, more cohesive in the end.”
The Russian Internet is now overwhelmingly Russian-centered and even nationalistic in character. Henrike Schmidt, a literary scholar and leader of the project Russian Cyberspace.org, said that the Internet is one way the Russian officials are looking to unite the Russian-speaking diaspora under a common cultural and even nationalistic banner. To some extent, that is accomplished through this reversal of the information flow.
“In the 1990s, there was more broad content brought into the Russian Internet community from diasporic resources,” Schmidt said. “Now, of course, there is so much information coming from inside Russia that we have this shift from producer culture to consumer culture.”
Sticking together
Irina Lukina is an officer at a global association that connects Russian-speaking youth called ZARYA. Through Facebook messages, Skype conference calls and email lists, a group of college students cobbled together a community, put up a Web site and made it accessible worldwide. “None of it would have been even close to possible without the Internet,” Lukina said.
For the four waves of immigrants from the Soviet Union, the landing point was often a cohesive Russian community like Brighton Beach in New York or the Russian neighborhoods in Israel. Some of those areas now struggle to maintain their boundaries with the latest wave of largely economic-based immigration. “It’s important for young and not-so-young people of Russian descent to couple with people like themselves. This is a phenomenon which extends even to the second generation of Russian immigrants,” Remennick said.
Instead of brick-and-mortar community centers, synagogues or Russian restaurants, the émigré communities now rely on the Internet to make connections. The result is a virtual diaspora, propped up by community Web sites, social networks, online forums and even dating sites. The physical community may be lost, but the desire to connect remains the same.
Pillars of the homemade Russian Web have set up portals to connect with these communities. Rambler.ru, another major Russian portal, has opened a site specifically to cater to Russian speakers in New York City. In almost any major American city there is a forum dedicated to connecting Russian speakers.
Organizations like the recently founded Russki Mir (Russian World) Foundation may rely on these virtual connections to consolidate and promote Russian language and culture outside Russia’s borders. But if history is any guide, the Russian communities themselves will have the biggest say in the success or failure of such projects.
“I’m wholly optimistic about this,” Strukov said. “They are creating new online communities. It may be a bit frustrating because at some point you realize it’s all a bit virtual reality, but in spite of that, I think these are the most Russian places outside Russia.
Mastering Russian Veggies
Having spent 13 years in Canada, Pasha Voytinsky moved back to Russia in 1994 to find much tolerance towards vegetarianism in the country of pelmeni and cutlets. Other vegetarian Muscovites have discovered that contrary to popular belief, Russians are far less of meat eaters than could be expected.
“In some respects it’s easier to be a vegetarian in Russia than it is in Canada,” said Voytinsky, who moved to his dacha on the Volga River from a downtown Moscow apartment a few years ago. “No one would be pointing to a verse in the Bible that says Man must eat meat, or say that farmers will go bust if you don’t eat meat. No one has ever tried to use such primitive arguments with me here. I think it’s this well-known Russian tolerance, but also many people simply don’t understand what vegetarianism is about.”
Voytinsky is a pioneer of vegetarian tourism in Russia. He has been receiving tourists in his vegetarian-friendly apartment in central Moscow since 1997. Five years ago, he turned his dacha into a real vegetarian tourism hub.
One third of visitors to this dacha come from abroad only to discover that genuine Russian cuisine is not about pelmeni or cutlets. “The Russian cuisine offers an abundance of pickles and smoked food,” Voytinsky said. “In more sophisticated Russian cuisine, meat will not necessarily be a central thing.”
Maxim Syrnikov, St. Petersburg-based Russian cuisine researcher, rebuffs the misconception that Russian cooking is meat-oriented. “We’re used to an idea that meat is the center of Russian cuisine, which is simply wrong. Meat is by no means the most widely used ingredient. It is third after breads, cereals and fish.”
A preference or a religion?
Whether due to the increasingly popular healthy lifestyle trend or to religious beliefs, Lent is becoming ever more popular in Russia. Every other person having lunch these spring days will claim that they are not having meat or fish, but fasting.
Having been born in Britain, Neil McGowan finds this astonishing. “I could easily think of 15 people who stick to the rules of Veliky Post [Lent] and don’t eat meat or fish. Come to think of it, it’s more like 50 percent of the people I know.”
In Russia, vegetarianism is often merged with the idea of Lent, but these two concepts are fundamentally different. “The essence of Lent is asceticism, curbing your desires. Hunger is a metaphor for a spiritual hunger,” said Voytinsky. “Vegetarianism is not about infringing on your interests, but about not hurting the little animals. Vegetarianism is utilitarian.”
Maxim Syrnikov notes that Russia’s deep-rooted Orthodox Christian tradition, with a strict fasting calendar, has had a great impact on the national cuisine. “There are some 200 Lenten days in the year, and 140 of them exclude any meat intake,” he said. “It is this huge number of Lenten days that brought to life such a wide variety of Russian hors d’oeuvres like pickles, smoked and marinated foods. They would not have been invented without Russian Lent.”
With the largest part of the population living in the countryside until 1917, the Russian cuisine is based on the cooking of peasants. Syrnikov notes that meat was a rare ingredient in rural meals. “Peasants would eat meat only on holidays. It was hard to get, hard to store, and also there was a lot of fasting to do. They would cook it to store and eat very little of it.”
Others maintain that Russians subconsciously shun meat not only because of the culinary tastes, but also due to a wide-spread animal-loving sentiment. “A Russian peasant won’t slaughter a pig without getting drunk beforehand and shedding a tear afterwards,” said Pasha Voytinsky. “There’s also this idea of ‘blessed are those who mercy the cattle’ in the Orthodox tradition. Then, we have babushkas who compulsively feed stray dogs.”
Healthy choices
Russia’s consumer market seems to have picked up the new trend. Avokado is one of the small but growing number of vegetarian restaurants in Moscow. But its target consumer segment is not necessary vegetarian. “Some of the clientele are vegetarian, some are just curious,” said the restaurant’s manager Eldar Idrisov. “People know that it’s good for you to avoid meat a couple of days a week.” Avokado has been operating for four and a half years, and its client base is growing. “Sometimes we have lines during lunchtime and in the evening,” Idrisov said. “We are often asked whether we are going to open another outlet.” Avokado is attracting new clients with some advertising, but mostly by word of mouth as 60 percent of its customers are regulars, Idrisov claimed.
Avokado gets particularly crowded during Lent. “We try to make sure that if someone comes to us for the first time during Lent, they come back,” Idrisov said.
Many Muscovites claim that Lenten menus in the restaurants are nothing but a rip-off – you pay the same price for a dish without meat as you would for one with it. Yet others see a reason behind this practice. “I can kind of sympathize with their [the restaurant’s] position – they don’t pay the staff or the landlord less during Lent,” said McGowan.
But not all vegetarians are dying to visit vegetarian eateries. “I’m actually not in favor of vegetarian restaurants,” McGowan said. “I think vegetarians should be able to eat in a normal restaurant and not in some kind of ghetto. Although I know two or three vegetarian restaurants in Moscow – they are not the places you could go with your friends unless they’re also vegetarian. I would prefer to see restaurants offering more vegetarian choices in their menu.”
Doing without meat
Syrnikov consults Moscow’s top restaurants like Pushkin, Turandot and Shinok on recipes and cooking meat-free dishes. He admits that a large part of the Russian restaurant cuisine is not “genuine.” “You can’t adapt some things to the restaurant type of cuisine. You have to sacrifice the authenticity in some cases,” he said. “There’s a particular thing about the Russian cuisine – it’s not really designed for a restaurant serving. It doesn’t look good. I know one Italian chef who was meaning to try okroshka [cold soup based on kvas] but he didn’t, just because it looked ugly. Dishes with meat always look much better.”
Possibly the strongest argument against vegetarianism in Europe and North America is that the human body can’t survive without meat in a cold climate. Those who have visited Siberia are, however, challenging this idea. “I go to Siberia quite a lot – in winter too – you don’t have to eat meat,” said McGowan, who runs a tourism company. “You need food that the body digests slowly like beans, pulses or potatoes. But I don’t want to convert anyone to vegetarianism and I’m not going to say to the Chukchi that they have to change their diet.”
Scientific research proves that vegetarians are healthier than meat-eaters in some respects. “Vegetarian diets tend to be higher in many things that dietitians consider to be healthy,” said Ursula Arens of the British Dietetic Association. “They are usually higher in complex carbohydrates, fiber and fruit and vegetables, and tend to be lower in saturated fats.”
Data from many large studies shows lower rates of heart disease and even cancer in groups of vegetarians. “Conversely, diets containing a lot of meat may be high in saturated fats, and high intakes of processed meats (ham, salami, bacon) seem to specifically increase the risk of cancer of the colon," she said. On the downside, however, vegetarian diets may increase the risk of anemia.
If meat is excluded from the diet, it must be substituted with something else. The guideline would be to eat a variety of foods, fruits and vegetables, nuts, beans and lentils, Arens said. But is it easy to find such a variety of fresh vegetables in Russia?
“I find tricks with food pretty easy,” said countryside resident Voytinsky. He names the things that can be found in his kitchen – eggplants, couscous, Indian spices, crackers, ginger, greens, potatoes, haricots, corn grain, lentil flour, black radish, rye flour, celery, home-produced eggs and mushrooms. Some of these can be purchased at local stores, while others, like Indian spices, are only available in Moscow. Voytinsky believes that the problem is not that Russians do not grow and sell enough various fruit, vegetables, and cereals that could make a good vegetarian menu, but simply do not know how to cook meat-free dishes that their forefathers invented for Lent time. “It’s so sad to see how people treat food in Russia – like when they boil onions or broccoli, and then fry it in oil,” he said. “The Russian cuisine mashes everything into squash.”
A trend for the successful
Muscovite Neil McGowan finds himself cooking a lot of Indian food at home, as Indian restaurants in the city are often overpriced and of poor quality. “There are simple things that restaurants don’t see as worth offering, like cheese and onion pie, because it’s so cheap and you can’t do anything to make it look glamorous,” he said.
Many foreigners are appalled by the high food prices in downtown Moscow stores. Those in the know strongly advise shopping around before grabbing three tomatoes for $15. “Avoid foreigner traps. Don’t panic and take your time,” Voytinsky recommended. “You won’t find cheap shops or markets in central Moscow. The cost of living here may vary enormously.” Indeed, bread in Moscow is priced between a whopping $7 and 50 cents.
Voytinsky may believe that with their deep-rooted Lenten traditions, Russians are all secretly vegetarian-minded, but he is soberly realistic about the future of vegetarianism in this country. “I don’t think it will reach Russian regions soon, although the expansion of vegetarianism is inevitable.” The percentage of vegetarians increases due to higher standards of living, rather than lofty ideas. “People become vegetarians because of a comfortable and stress-free life, whereas a lot of people in Russia are struggling to make ends meet,” he said. “There are lots of affluent people here, but there are a few who can afford to sit and think. Vegetarianism is for the prosperous. The Russian society may be rich but it is not prosperous.
“In some respects it’s easier to be a vegetarian in Russia than it is in Canada,” said Voytinsky, who moved to his dacha on the Volga River from a downtown Moscow apartment a few years ago. “No one would be pointing to a verse in the Bible that says Man must eat meat, or say that farmers will go bust if you don’t eat meat. No one has ever tried to use such primitive arguments with me here. I think it’s this well-known Russian tolerance, but also many people simply don’t understand what vegetarianism is about.”
Voytinsky is a pioneer of vegetarian tourism in Russia. He has been receiving tourists in his vegetarian-friendly apartment in central Moscow since 1997. Five years ago, he turned his dacha into a real vegetarian tourism hub.
One third of visitors to this dacha come from abroad only to discover that genuine Russian cuisine is not about pelmeni or cutlets. “The Russian cuisine offers an abundance of pickles and smoked food,” Voytinsky said. “In more sophisticated Russian cuisine, meat will not necessarily be a central thing.”
Maxim Syrnikov, St. Petersburg-based Russian cuisine researcher, rebuffs the misconception that Russian cooking is meat-oriented. “We’re used to an idea that meat is the center of Russian cuisine, which is simply wrong. Meat is by no means the most widely used ingredient. It is third after breads, cereals and fish.”
A preference or a religion?
Whether due to the increasingly popular healthy lifestyle trend or to religious beliefs, Lent is becoming ever more popular in Russia. Every other person having lunch these spring days will claim that they are not having meat or fish, but fasting.
Having been born in Britain, Neil McGowan finds this astonishing. “I could easily think of 15 people who stick to the rules of Veliky Post [Lent] and don’t eat meat or fish. Come to think of it, it’s more like 50 percent of the people I know.”
In Russia, vegetarianism is often merged with the idea of Lent, but these two concepts are fundamentally different. “The essence of Lent is asceticism, curbing your desires. Hunger is a metaphor for a spiritual hunger,” said Voytinsky. “Vegetarianism is not about infringing on your interests, but about not hurting the little animals. Vegetarianism is utilitarian.”
Maxim Syrnikov notes that Russia’s deep-rooted Orthodox Christian tradition, with a strict fasting calendar, has had a great impact on the national cuisine. “There are some 200 Lenten days in the year, and 140 of them exclude any meat intake,” he said. “It is this huge number of Lenten days that brought to life such a wide variety of Russian hors d’oeuvres like pickles, smoked and marinated foods. They would not have been invented without Russian Lent.”
With the largest part of the population living in the countryside until 1917, the Russian cuisine is based on the cooking of peasants. Syrnikov notes that meat was a rare ingredient in rural meals. “Peasants would eat meat only on holidays. It was hard to get, hard to store, and also there was a lot of fasting to do. They would cook it to store and eat very little of it.”
Others maintain that Russians subconsciously shun meat not only because of the culinary tastes, but also due to a wide-spread animal-loving sentiment. “A Russian peasant won’t slaughter a pig without getting drunk beforehand and shedding a tear afterwards,” said Pasha Voytinsky. “There’s also this idea of ‘blessed are those who mercy the cattle’ in the Orthodox tradition. Then, we have babushkas who compulsively feed stray dogs.”
Healthy choices
Russia’s consumer market seems to have picked up the new trend. Avokado is one of the small but growing number of vegetarian restaurants in Moscow. But its target consumer segment is not necessary vegetarian. “Some of the clientele are vegetarian, some are just curious,” said the restaurant’s manager Eldar Idrisov. “People know that it’s good for you to avoid meat a couple of days a week.” Avokado has been operating for four and a half years, and its client base is growing. “Sometimes we have lines during lunchtime and in the evening,” Idrisov said. “We are often asked whether we are going to open another outlet.” Avokado is attracting new clients with some advertising, but mostly by word of mouth as 60 percent of its customers are regulars, Idrisov claimed.
Avokado gets particularly crowded during Lent. “We try to make sure that if someone comes to us for the first time during Lent, they come back,” Idrisov said.
Many Muscovites claim that Lenten menus in the restaurants are nothing but a rip-off – you pay the same price for a dish without meat as you would for one with it. Yet others see a reason behind this practice. “I can kind of sympathize with their [the restaurant’s] position – they don’t pay the staff or the landlord less during Lent,” said McGowan.
But not all vegetarians are dying to visit vegetarian eateries. “I’m actually not in favor of vegetarian restaurants,” McGowan said. “I think vegetarians should be able to eat in a normal restaurant and not in some kind of ghetto. Although I know two or three vegetarian restaurants in Moscow – they are not the places you could go with your friends unless they’re also vegetarian. I would prefer to see restaurants offering more vegetarian choices in their menu.”
Doing without meat
Syrnikov consults Moscow’s top restaurants like Pushkin, Turandot and Shinok on recipes and cooking meat-free dishes. He admits that a large part of the Russian restaurant cuisine is not “genuine.” “You can’t adapt some things to the restaurant type of cuisine. You have to sacrifice the authenticity in some cases,” he said. “There’s a particular thing about the Russian cuisine – it’s not really designed for a restaurant serving. It doesn’t look good. I know one Italian chef who was meaning to try okroshka [cold soup based on kvas] but he didn’t, just because it looked ugly. Dishes with meat always look much better.”
Possibly the strongest argument against vegetarianism in Europe and North America is that the human body can’t survive without meat in a cold climate. Those who have visited Siberia are, however, challenging this idea. “I go to Siberia quite a lot – in winter too – you don’t have to eat meat,” said McGowan, who runs a tourism company. “You need food that the body digests slowly like beans, pulses or potatoes. But I don’t want to convert anyone to vegetarianism and I’m not going to say to the Chukchi that they have to change their diet.”
Scientific research proves that vegetarians are healthier than meat-eaters in some respects. “Vegetarian diets tend to be higher in many things that dietitians consider to be healthy,” said Ursula Arens of the British Dietetic Association. “They are usually higher in complex carbohydrates, fiber and fruit and vegetables, and tend to be lower in saturated fats.”
Data from many large studies shows lower rates of heart disease and even cancer in groups of vegetarians. “Conversely, diets containing a lot of meat may be high in saturated fats, and high intakes of processed meats (ham, salami, bacon) seem to specifically increase the risk of cancer of the colon," she said. On the downside, however, vegetarian diets may increase the risk of anemia.
If meat is excluded from the diet, it must be substituted with something else. The guideline would be to eat a variety of foods, fruits and vegetables, nuts, beans and lentils, Arens said. But is it easy to find such a variety of fresh vegetables in Russia?
“I find tricks with food pretty easy,” said countryside resident Voytinsky. He names the things that can be found in his kitchen – eggplants, couscous, Indian spices, crackers, ginger, greens, potatoes, haricots, corn grain, lentil flour, black radish, rye flour, celery, home-produced eggs and mushrooms. Some of these can be purchased at local stores, while others, like Indian spices, are only available in Moscow. Voytinsky believes that the problem is not that Russians do not grow and sell enough various fruit, vegetables, and cereals that could make a good vegetarian menu, but simply do not know how to cook meat-free dishes that their forefathers invented for Lent time. “It’s so sad to see how people treat food in Russia – like when they boil onions or broccoli, and then fry it in oil,” he said. “The Russian cuisine mashes everything into squash.”
A trend for the successful
Muscovite Neil McGowan finds himself cooking a lot of Indian food at home, as Indian restaurants in the city are often overpriced and of poor quality. “There are simple things that restaurants don’t see as worth offering, like cheese and onion pie, because it’s so cheap and you can’t do anything to make it look glamorous,” he said.
Many foreigners are appalled by the high food prices in downtown Moscow stores. Those in the know strongly advise shopping around before grabbing three tomatoes for $15. “Avoid foreigner traps. Don’t panic and take your time,” Voytinsky recommended. “You won’t find cheap shops or markets in central Moscow. The cost of living here may vary enormously.” Indeed, bread in Moscow is priced between a whopping $7 and 50 cents.
Voytinsky may believe that with their deep-rooted Lenten traditions, Russians are all secretly vegetarian-minded, but he is soberly realistic about the future of vegetarianism in this country. “I don’t think it will reach Russian regions soon, although the expansion of vegetarianism is inevitable.” The percentage of vegetarians increases due to higher standards of living, rather than lofty ideas. “People become vegetarians because of a comfortable and stress-free life, whereas a lot of people in Russia are struggling to make ends meet,” he said. “There are lots of affluent people here, but there are a few who can afford to sit and think. Vegetarianism is for the prosperous. The Russian society may be rich but it is not prosperous.
Farewell, and Forgive
Russian History Needs a Spring-cleaning
Every nation has treasured memories as well as disgraceful eras when it demonstrates the worst of what it is capable of. The communist era was that shameful time for the Russian nation, yet Soviet ideological symbols are still abundant in Russia today. What the Russian people need to do is to sort through their national experience and take out the “historical garbage.”
There’s a popular stock phrase: “the garbage heap of history.” One image that immediately comes to mind upon hearing this phrase is the one evoked by a recent picture from Naples in Italy; garbage that has not been removed rots under the burning sun and expands; in some places it has been set on fire, and the air is filled with bluish-gray ashes. Meanwhile, the Naples garbage heaps have accumulated only because the mafia was in conflict with the authorities and forbade to take the previous day’s waste to the rubbish dumps. If it wasn’t for this ban, such an unsanitary situation would have never happened. Similar things happen in history; without sorting through your national experience, without taking the garbage out to the dumpster, without overcoming the inevitable resistance of political mafia, you are creating a stifling atmosphere for yourself. Not to mention the nausea. And an uncomfortable life. And a stagnant society.
In the last few years, the humanitarian field in our beloved country has been governed by a historical cosa nostra. At first the authorities silently agreed: whatever happened in the 20th century is long forgotten. Let’s not touch or move anything; let everything stay in its place. It will mean less stench. Let’s cover the heap with the red flag, disinfect it with the rewritten anthem, and let’s keep moving. Later it turned out that there’s actually no place to keep moving to; the road to the future is blocked by the past. “Ah!” said our cosa nostra. Let’s sort out the waste then by arranging it in nice little compartments; anyway we won’t have to dispose of it. Here’s a little drawer for Stalin’s things; here’s a special bin for NKVD needs. And we will also write a travel guide of our dear heaps of garbage, to make sure nobody gets lost. This is how the school textbook emerged, under the names of Comrades Filippov and Danilin, with their immortal thesis: Stalin’s regime was cruel, but it was effective management for a speedy modernization. And then, a direct order to television networks was born: never to compare national-socialism with communism and Hitler’s regime in Germany with Stalin’s regime in the Soviet Union. Here’s a little map for you, guys: you can go here and here, here’s one turn and here’s another, and this is where you can never go – otherwise, we’ll hurt you.
But the guide did not help either as the heap of scum kept growing incessantly. One kind of historical feces was separated from another, some things were packaged in cellophane, paths between the heaps of garbage were made and arrow road signs were erected. But there was still no way forward – only narrow trails inside a labyrinth, circle after circle. Moreover, they wanted to combine the incompatible: to keep the Communist regime untouched because it’s too horrific; to vindicate the NKVD, because there’s no other way; and to snuggle up to Solzhenitsyn, because he’s a great patriot. But this was not an easy thing to do. In the end, our own cosa nostras got so confused that they decided to completely stop pondering over this dangerous topic – and forbade everyone else from talking about it, even the church.
And now, yesterday, a representative of the Department for the Church’s External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Father Georgy Ryabykh, made a certain important statement. I am quoting material from the Interfax-Religion agency; with some effort, I was able to find a link to the original source on the Yandex search engine: it was lost in approximate paraphrases with commentary. “The condemnation of communism started in the 1990s, but was left unfinished,” says Father Georgy. Today, it remains a necessity to continue to denounce communism, “to honor the memory of victims of repression and their civil perseverance, to open memorial complexes, to restore the original names of cities and streets, to get rid of Soviet symbolism on governmental buildings, to remove monuments to murderous leaders from central squares of Russia’s towns and cities and the cemetery by the Kremlin wall.”
Let’s stop here for now – and maintain the general pathos which this discussion evokes.
Father Georgy is undoubtedly right. Every historical nation has memories that elevate the soul, as well as shameful eras when it demonstrates the worst of what it possesses within itself. Communism is this black-and-red era in Russia’s life. Naturally, the experience of social repentance that has been accumulated by post-war Germany will not work for us – nobody conquered us, nobody suggested court procedures and rules on morality from the outside. It has been a long time since it was interpreted amongst the public that the name of the metro station “Voykovskaya” in the center of Moscow had some ideological symbol – a vector of historical direction. And yet, this name is inscribed in our subcortex, and this inscription is reproduced from generation to generation: regicide and infanticide are possible in Russia, they are not only not a sin, but a way to the pinnacle of fame. As for the Mausoleum preservation of Lenin’s mummy, a chemical conservation of pseudo-relics of the one who is personally guilty of causing the multi-million catastrophe of Russia’s 20th century, is actually similar to having an open repository for anthrax. And the symbols of Stalin’s greatness, so carefully preserved on governmental buildings. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera.
Father Georgy is an intelligent, respectable, independent man, but he is representing a rather official church structure – the External Relations department. Does his statement mean that the authorities are thinking about daring to clean up the obstructing heaps in historical memory? And have they indicated that they wouldn’t mind if the Russian Orthodox community took on the public initiative? Perhaps. Particularly as it’s impossible to imagine a peaceful de-communization of history without significant participation from the church; who else can bless the purging process and turn it from a political squabble into a problem of national conscience? And if it is to be done, then now is the right time – the fate of “chief cleaner” has passed on to Medvedev. Everything that was not done in the previous eight years – because it would have been unpleasant either for the elites or for the people, and thus would have decreased the popularity of the leader – must be done now. The housing and communal utilities reform. The repayment for the inevitable food crisis (accordingly, the unpopular decisions are still to come). The final and conclusive burial of communism.
Be that as it may, in the renowned business of de-communization (if it is ever started), we are doomed to run against an invisible barrier, a forbidden line drawn beforehand in this direction – and Father Georgy has nothing to do with this. We can take off the symbols of Stalin’s era; it is conceivable that we might even bury Lenin. But who will ever dare to officially speak the unspoken and to call not only the Bolshevik party but also its armed unit, the NKVD, criminal organizations? And thus, to close, once and for all, the topic of succession of the modern special service, to abolish all these “80 years in service” badges and pins. That is, to turn the secret services from a quasi-mystical order of supreme beings into a normal instrument of self-defense for the new Russian state. With limited powers. And a short history – one that starts on August 23, 1991, not earlier.
And what do we do with the neo-Soviet anthem, which also symbolizes a totalitarian state?
And what about the refusal to recognize Katyn as a crime?
Father Georgy wasn’t asked about that, so he didn’t say anything. But he was asked something else: what do we get instead? He replied: a civic cult of Tsar the Passion Bearer, a symbol of legitimate power and authority. And this is where, to be honest, I deeply doubt that Father Georgy is right. For one segment of our society, the last tsar is a saint; for another segment, he is just a failed politician who lost Russia on three occasions; for the third segment, he is a victim of circumstances and commands the deepest human sympathy, but doesn’t need to be worshipped. And this is normal. You can treat Nikolay II any old way you choose. You can even have multiple opinions of him. But there can be only one way to treat Voykov, Lenin and Stalin – as the creators of a criminal regime of impostors. It would be best to stop at this. We cannot do without a cleanup, but we can manage to survive somehow without any civic cults.
The sky’s the limit for Moscow’s architectural innovation
In ten years time, Moscow will look much different than it does now. With the city becoming more developed, skyscrapers are no longer an exotic luxury, but a must.
Moscow will soon be eclipsed by yet another ring, this time a ring of skyscrapers.
The supertall modern buildings that once seemed so alien to the Soviet and later Russian capital are now a compelling part of the city’s architecture and can even be seen on the background of the Red Square ensemble. Soon, Moscow will be sporting a totally different skyline with skyscrapers defining the city’s image.
The standardized apartment buildings that started infesting the area some fifty years ago have given Moscow a somewhat cluttered look. The new block buildings stood out and looked rather odd, sharply contrasting with the city’s historical buildings. However, they provided accommodation for millions of people coming into the city to do their jobs.
Today, the scenery has, once again, been disturbed by the architecture of economic expediency.
According to Emporis, Moscow has over 2,000 completed high-rise buildings with 81 more under construction. Twenty-nine out of the 46 buildings that stand taller than 100 meters (328 ft.) have been built over the past seven years in a response to the skyrocketing growth.
Even the Moscow government decided to contribute. In 1999, it passed The New Ring of Moscow, an investment program calling for construction of 200 multifunctional skyscrapers in the city by 2015. The list of premises included the lack of office space, as Moscow has around 12-13 million square meters of office space, while the demand vastly outstrips it, as 180-200 joint ventures and subsidiaries of international corporations come to Moscow annually.
For this city, there is simply no other way to grow but skywards. “The social economic development of the city indirectly affects its architectural image,” said Ara Aramyan, vice president of the MIRAX GROUP Corporation, developer of the Federation Business Complex, an integral part of the Moscow City International Business Center. “Russia is experiencing a dynamic economic growth. Built-up areas are stretching thin and getting more and more expensive. For Moscow, the only way to develop is to go high.”
The quality is starting to translate into quantity, as the new business district Moscow City will boast the Russia Tower, the tallest building on the whole continent standing 612 meters tall.
“Skyscrapers could be good or bad for the city, depending on where they are built and what they are used for,” said vice principal of the Moscow Institute of Architecture Ilya Lezhava.
Most of the tall structures that either have been or are being erected, including those from the Moscow’s New Ring project, serve multiple purposes, including providing spaces for offices, leisure facilities such as fitness centers and housing. “Skyscrapers are very good for offices,” said Lezhava. “However, residential skyscrapers cannot be built. That’s what they do in China for obvious reasons, but we should not learn from that experience. In Europe, you will not see a residential building with more than six floors, there are laws that set limits for them,” explained Lezhava. “It’s not comfortable to live too high up.”
“Apartments on the higher floors are cheaper and this is important right now when the real estate market is soaring. I think when the situation gets balanced out such practices might stop,” he added.
A major American city would beg to differ. Chicago Spire, which will be the world’s third tallest building at 610 meters trailing only Barj Dubai and the Russia Tower upon its completion in 2012, is going to be all-residential.
After all, residential areas might be a necessity. “Moscow is distinguished by the trend of implementing the so-called mixed-use projects,” said commercial director of Capital Group Alexei Belousov. “The traffic is very heavy so people try to minimize the distance from home to work. That’s why versatility is in demand. Such high storey mixed-use buildings are the future of the city.”
When it comes to location, it’s good as long as skyscrapers are kept away from the historical part of Moscow. Building tall structures is discouraged in Moscow, even though no regulations exist that would limit the number of levels for each building within the Garden Ring like in cities such as Washington, DC. “Of course, limits on the number of levels have to be set for buildings constructed in the historical part of the city. That is what is done all over the world,” said Aramyan.
Outskirts make for a much better place for experiments as these mostly have nothing but the countless apartment buildings, said Lezhava. “There is nothing to spoil there, so I’m all for going upstairs in these areas,” he added.
“There are places in Moscow where tall structures can be built and blend easier into the existing architecture without insulting the eye. Moscow City is a fair example of that, it’s a new self consistent integral part of Moscow,” said Aramyan.
When it comes to the upper level, Moscow is still looking for a style. “Moscow’s contemporary architecture is still looking for its own image,” said Aramyan. For now, he said, emulating the projects that exist in the West is the best way to go. There isn’t enough creativity, other experts add.
“We don’t experiment enough; we don’t really have any projects that stand out,” said Lezhava. “Building such structures would require a lot of funding and our architects can’t afford that while investors would be reluctant to finance it.”
“The United States and Europe have these kinds of projects and we lack them. I think it would not hurt us either to try them out,” he added.
These things are already being tried out. Moscow will soon host the world’s second rotating skyscraper, beating all other cities, except Dubai, to it. Set to be completed in 2011, the 300 meter tall tower with independently rotating floors, designed by Italian architect David Fischer, will be developed by the MIRAX GROUP. The construction is expected to draw over $400 million worth of investments.
“Today, the world’s leading architects work on projects in Moscow. These would spice up any city,” said Belousov. “Moscow City is one of the leading examples of that.”
“I’ve walked around Moscow City and it didn’t impress me much, compared to what I got to see in China,” said Lezhava. “Their business centers are like vanity fairs. What we have right now is quite modest. At least, for now.
Moscow will soon be eclipsed by yet another ring, this time a ring of skyscrapers.
The supertall modern buildings that once seemed so alien to the Soviet and later Russian capital are now a compelling part of the city’s architecture and can even be seen on the background of the Red Square ensemble. Soon, Moscow will be sporting a totally different skyline with skyscrapers defining the city’s image.
The standardized apartment buildings that started infesting the area some fifty years ago have given Moscow a somewhat cluttered look. The new block buildings stood out and looked rather odd, sharply contrasting with the city’s historical buildings. However, they provided accommodation for millions of people coming into the city to do their jobs.
Today, the scenery has, once again, been disturbed by the architecture of economic expediency.
According to Emporis, Moscow has over 2,000 completed high-rise buildings with 81 more under construction. Twenty-nine out of the 46 buildings that stand taller than 100 meters (328 ft.) have been built over the past seven years in a response to the skyrocketing growth.
Even the Moscow government decided to contribute. In 1999, it passed The New Ring of Moscow, an investment program calling for construction of 200 multifunctional skyscrapers in the city by 2015. The list of premises included the lack of office space, as Moscow has around 12-13 million square meters of office space, while the demand vastly outstrips it, as 180-200 joint ventures and subsidiaries of international corporations come to Moscow annually.
For this city, there is simply no other way to grow but skywards. “The social economic development of the city indirectly affects its architectural image,” said Ara Aramyan, vice president of the MIRAX GROUP Corporation, developer of the Federation Business Complex, an integral part of the Moscow City International Business Center. “Russia is experiencing a dynamic economic growth. Built-up areas are stretching thin and getting more and more expensive. For Moscow, the only way to develop is to go high.”
The quality is starting to translate into quantity, as the new business district Moscow City will boast the Russia Tower, the tallest building on the whole continent standing 612 meters tall.
“Skyscrapers could be good or bad for the city, depending on where they are built and what they are used for,” said vice principal of the Moscow Institute of Architecture Ilya Lezhava.
Most of the tall structures that either have been or are being erected, including those from the Moscow’s New Ring project, serve multiple purposes, including providing spaces for offices, leisure facilities such as fitness centers and housing. “Skyscrapers are very good for offices,” said Lezhava. “However, residential skyscrapers cannot be built. That’s what they do in China for obvious reasons, but we should not learn from that experience. In Europe, you will not see a residential building with more than six floors, there are laws that set limits for them,” explained Lezhava. “It’s not comfortable to live too high up.”
“Apartments on the higher floors are cheaper and this is important right now when the real estate market is soaring. I think when the situation gets balanced out such practices might stop,” he added.
A major American city would beg to differ. Chicago Spire, which will be the world’s third tallest building at 610 meters trailing only Barj Dubai and the Russia Tower upon its completion in 2012, is going to be all-residential.
After all, residential areas might be a necessity. “Moscow is distinguished by the trend of implementing the so-called mixed-use projects,” said commercial director of Capital Group Alexei Belousov. “The traffic is very heavy so people try to minimize the distance from home to work. That’s why versatility is in demand. Such high storey mixed-use buildings are the future of the city.”
When it comes to location, it’s good as long as skyscrapers are kept away from the historical part of Moscow. Building tall structures is discouraged in Moscow, even though no regulations exist that would limit the number of levels for each building within the Garden Ring like in cities such as Washington, DC. “Of course, limits on the number of levels have to be set for buildings constructed in the historical part of the city. That is what is done all over the world,” said Aramyan.
Outskirts make for a much better place for experiments as these mostly have nothing but the countless apartment buildings, said Lezhava. “There is nothing to spoil there, so I’m all for going upstairs in these areas,” he added.
“There are places in Moscow where tall structures can be built and blend easier into the existing architecture without insulting the eye. Moscow City is a fair example of that, it’s a new self consistent integral part of Moscow,” said Aramyan.
When it comes to the upper level, Moscow is still looking for a style. “Moscow’s contemporary architecture is still looking for its own image,” said Aramyan. For now, he said, emulating the projects that exist in the West is the best way to go. There isn’t enough creativity, other experts add.
“We don’t experiment enough; we don’t really have any projects that stand out,” said Lezhava. “Building such structures would require a lot of funding and our architects can’t afford that while investors would be reluctant to finance it.”
“The United States and Europe have these kinds of projects and we lack them. I think it would not hurt us either to try them out,” he added.
These things are already being tried out. Moscow will soon host the world’s second rotating skyscraper, beating all other cities, except Dubai, to it. Set to be completed in 2011, the 300 meter tall tower with independently rotating floors, designed by Italian architect David Fischer, will be developed by the MIRAX GROUP. The construction is expected to draw over $400 million worth of investments.
“Today, the world’s leading architects work on projects in Moscow. These would spice up any city,” said Belousov. “Moscow City is one of the leading examples of that.”
“I’ve walked around Moscow City and it didn’t impress me much, compared to what I got to see in China,” said Lezhava. “Their business centers are like vanity fairs. What we have right now is quite modest. At least, for now.
Many People Are Forced to Retire While Still Able to Work
A year ago I was looking for a birthday card for my mother. I wanted it to have the number “70” on it. I searched in all of Moscow’s stores. There were tons of cards for special “round” birthdays: the 10th, the 25th, the 40th… The “oldest” card, however, was only 65.
Luckily, not long before Mom’s birthday I was going to Sweden. And there I immediately found exactly what I needed: a musical birthday card with the number “70” on the cover and a cheerful birthday song inside. But the funniest thing was that this was the “youngest” card in the store!! It was followed by 75, 80 and all the way up to 100.
I drew a simple conclusion from this story. Russian birthday card buyers probably were guided by the average numbers for life expectancy in Russia. And these numbers are obviously lower here than in Sweden. Secondly, they were probably thinking that whoever manages to live a bit longer will not need any birthday cards. They should be happy if they get a package of tea or a box of chocolates for their birthday. And in Sweden, if you judge by the display case in the gift shop, life only starts at 70. And this really is true. We all know perfectly well what the average age of a Western tourist is—it’s 70!
At the same time, statistics show that Russia is the most quickly ageing country on the European continent: in the last 15 years, the ratio of working Russian citizens to the number of retired pensioners has decreased by 1.5 times. As you might have guessed, this does not mean that care for pensioners has improved and thus their life spans have increased. This only proves the terrifying death rate in Russia (primarily for males) for people of working age. And this situation only aggravates the situation with pension payments.
Amazingly enough, even Ukraine has surpassed Russia in average pension levels! Just some ten years ago Ukrainian senior citizens envied their Russian counterparts: the average Ukrainian pension back then was equal to ten dollars, while in Russia it was 30 dollars. But now the picture is different. Today, the average Russian pension is equal to 150 dollars. The average pension in Ukraine is also 150 dollars. However, this means that in the same amount of time Ukrainians have been able to improve the conditions for their pensioners by 15 times, while in Russia pensions only grew fivefold.
By the way, great progress in the Ukrainian pension system is tied to Yulia Timoshenko’s ascent to power: during the first days in her post as the prime minister she increased pensions for the Ukrainians who have outstanding accomplishments (for example, great length of work service, medals, etc.) by almost double!
Russia also has its own “Yulia Timoshenko”—Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov. He takes great care of Moscow’s pensioners. Moreover, in Russia’s capital pensioners have a 50 percent discount for all utility bills (housing fees, electricity, telephone), and they don’t pay anything for use of public transportation. No other pensioners residing throughout Russia’s vast territory can even hope for anything similar. They live in terrible poverty and barely make ends meet with their diminutive pensions.
What can the state use to increase the pensions, though? Sure, Russian businesses pay the Integrated Social Tax (ESN), which goes into the Pension Fund. But this money is meant for payments not only to the current, but also to the future pensioners, which means it can’t all be spent right now. Moreover, the total sum of the ESN decreases each year—because the number of working Russians decreases.
All of this means that the Pension Fund doesn’t have enough money to pay the pensions. Twice already, this shortage of funds was compensated from the state budget. But this is an exception rather than a rule. The Russian government refuses to make budget injections to the Pension Fund a regular measure. The budget has money today, it says, but what if it runs out tomorrow?! The government suggests looking for other solutions for this situation. For example, to increase the age of retirement. To make it 60 years for women (currently it is 55) and 65 for men (currently it is 60).
This would be the most effective measure. However, it is believed that the population will be apprehensive about it—especially the male population. After all, with low average life expectancy, many men will simply not live to retirement.
Incidentally, I personally do not understand this argument. I think that the situation in Russia is often the opposite: a person is forced to retire when he or she is still very capable of working and then quickly dies in retirement simply because he is not able to survive the stress of this new, unusual situation of idleness and uselessness. This is especially true for former executives.
And still, Russia stubbornly refuses to accept the recommendations of increasing the retirement age in the country, while there are really no other rational and realizable recipes for raising the living standard of pensioners. This means that in the next few decades their situation in Russia will continue to be disastrous.
Yelena Rykovtseva is a correspondent for Radio Liberty. She contributed this com
Luckily, not long before Mom’s birthday I was going to Sweden. And there I immediately found exactly what I needed: a musical birthday card with the number “70” on the cover and a cheerful birthday song inside. But the funniest thing was that this was the “youngest” card in the store!! It was followed by 75, 80 and all the way up to 100.
I drew a simple conclusion from this story. Russian birthday card buyers probably were guided by the average numbers for life expectancy in Russia. And these numbers are obviously lower here than in Sweden. Secondly, they were probably thinking that whoever manages to live a bit longer will not need any birthday cards. They should be happy if they get a package of tea or a box of chocolates for their birthday. And in Sweden, if you judge by the display case in the gift shop, life only starts at 70. And this really is true. We all know perfectly well what the average age of a Western tourist is—it’s 70!
At the same time, statistics show that Russia is the most quickly ageing country on the European continent: in the last 15 years, the ratio of working Russian citizens to the number of retired pensioners has decreased by 1.5 times. As you might have guessed, this does not mean that care for pensioners has improved and thus their life spans have increased. This only proves the terrifying death rate in Russia (primarily for males) for people of working age. And this situation only aggravates the situation with pension payments.
Amazingly enough, even Ukraine has surpassed Russia in average pension levels! Just some ten years ago Ukrainian senior citizens envied their Russian counterparts: the average Ukrainian pension back then was equal to ten dollars, while in Russia it was 30 dollars. But now the picture is different. Today, the average Russian pension is equal to 150 dollars. The average pension in Ukraine is also 150 dollars. However, this means that in the same amount of time Ukrainians have been able to improve the conditions for their pensioners by 15 times, while in Russia pensions only grew fivefold.
By the way, great progress in the Ukrainian pension system is tied to Yulia Timoshenko’s ascent to power: during the first days in her post as the prime minister she increased pensions for the Ukrainians who have outstanding accomplishments (for example, great length of work service, medals, etc.) by almost double!
Russia also has its own “Yulia Timoshenko”—Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov. He takes great care of Moscow’s pensioners. Moreover, in Russia’s capital pensioners have a 50 percent discount for all utility bills (housing fees, electricity, telephone), and they don’t pay anything for use of public transportation. No other pensioners residing throughout Russia’s vast territory can even hope for anything similar. They live in terrible poverty and barely make ends meet with their diminutive pensions.
What can the state use to increase the pensions, though? Sure, Russian businesses pay the Integrated Social Tax (ESN), which goes into the Pension Fund. But this money is meant for payments not only to the current, but also to the future pensioners, which means it can’t all be spent right now. Moreover, the total sum of the ESN decreases each year—because the number of working Russians decreases.
All of this means that the Pension Fund doesn’t have enough money to pay the pensions. Twice already, this shortage of funds was compensated from the state budget. But this is an exception rather than a rule. The Russian government refuses to make budget injections to the Pension Fund a regular measure. The budget has money today, it says, but what if it runs out tomorrow?! The government suggests looking for other solutions for this situation. For example, to increase the age of retirement. To make it 60 years for women (currently it is 55) and 65 for men (currently it is 60).
This would be the most effective measure. However, it is believed that the population will be apprehensive about it—especially the male population. After all, with low average life expectancy, many men will simply not live to retirement.
Incidentally, I personally do not understand this argument. I think that the situation in Russia is often the opposite: a person is forced to retire when he or she is still very capable of working and then quickly dies in retirement simply because he is not able to survive the stress of this new, unusual situation of idleness and uselessness. This is especially true for former executives.
And still, Russia stubbornly refuses to accept the recommendations of increasing the retirement age in the country, while there are really no other rational and realizable recipes for raising the living standard of pensioners. This means that in the next few decades their situation in Russia will continue to be disastrous.
Yelena Rykovtseva is a correspondent for Radio Liberty. She contributed this com
Russia’s Headache
Combining the Efforts of Private Businesses With Those of the Authorities Is the Only Way to Get Russia’s Healthcare System Out of a Lengthy Crisis
Article 41 of Russia’s Constitution guarantees its citizens the right to receive free medical care in federal and municipal state healthcare institutions. In addition to this article, the law “On Medical Insurance for Citizens of the Russian Federation” was passed in 1993, abolishing the exclusively state-funded budget financing for healthcare and prescribing the creation of federal and territorial Funds for Mandatory Medical Insurance (FOMS). This law, with minor amendments, is still in effect today.
The largest portion of the territorial FOMS budgets is made up of tax revenue, including part of the Integrated Social Tax (ESN), as well as the tax fees paid by the state for its unemployed citizens. This does not look too bad on paper. Data from the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development shows that both parameters were noted to have increased in 2007, as compared to the year the before, by an average of 25 percent. However, in practice the percentage of deductions turns out to be insufficient, primarily because of the lowering of the ESN rate and the difference between “gray” and official salaries (when the latter is used to calculate tax fees), as well as due to incomplete financing provided by the regional authorities to cover the unemployed population. It should be noted that inflation in 2007 reached 11.9 percent, while the corresponding decree of Russia’s government set the norm for providing healthcare services covered by OMS (Mandatory Medical Insurance) funds at 1936.3 rubles (about €52) per person.
Of course, the whole system is in urgent need of restructuring. Even during the relative prosperity of the last few years, the federal budget assigned no more than 2.7 to 3.1 percent of the GDP to healthcare. The healthcare sector remains deprived not only in small towns and villages, but also in large cities: inaccessibility to free services even in state-owned institutions, long waiting lists, a low professional level of medical staff, poor condition of equipment and supplies, insufficient amount of medicines in hospitals and drugstores, substandard facilities and conditions for treatment and stays in clinics—this is far from a complete list of the problems patients have to deal with at their places of residence.
On the other hand, the measly wages paid at state-run hospitals compel medical staff to transfer to privately-owned clinics, leading to a lack of highly professional personnel in local state health centers. The notorious 2006 increase in wages for physicians, district doctors and pediatricians left their colleagues beyond their means, and led to a new wave of resignations of medical specialists, who chose to join the ranks of general practice physicians.
The Unpopular Reform
Despite the fact that the healthcare reform was always considered one of the most important and anticipated reorganization projects, it always turned out to be one of the most difficult for the socially vulnerable groups of the population. This is why neither in the 1990s nor during Vladimir Putin’s first term as president did the authorities dare to make any major changes. Essentially, the first step in this direction was the program of benefits monetization—the replacement of “natural benefits” in transportation, medical expenses and other costs with monetary compensation. This program has been in progress since 2005, as provided for by Federal Law number 122, passed on August 22, 2004, and has affected the largest category of benefits recipients—senior citizens and the disabled.
Aversion to this law reached its climax when the law came into force in January 2005. About half a million protestors took part in demonstrations across the nation’s regions. The government was pressured into increasing the program’s budget by 100 billion rubles, which were used to increase pensions, in addition to the 280 billion already granted for this purpose.
Rather paradoxically, the section on the healthcare reform that caused the most resentment in 2005 was the clause on additional medication provision (DLO). This was something that Mikhail Zurabov, who then headed the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development, took pride in, as it announced the possibility of receiving high-quality and free medication within an acceptable timeframe. Formally speaking, eligible benefits recipients had this right before, but the system wasn’t stable enough for this right to be recognized: drugstores often lacked vital medicines, and people had to pay with their own money for different brand-name alternatives. “The main problem is not that there are not enough laws. There are laws, but they are not being observed,” said Vladimir Bondarenko, a Chernobyl liquidator with 2nd degree disability. The January confusion, however, happened for a different reason. It happened because the authorities wanted to start the reform as soon as possible, in the following year: there was not enough time left to hold a tender for suppliers, and the selected pharmaceutical companies did not have time to sign contracts with all the consumers.
After the aforementioned obstacles were overcome, the state was able to win back the trust of benefits recipients and the protests stopped. In fact, the regularly renewed lists of subsidized medications now included not only inexpensive brands, but also medicines that were previously unavailable to the public, including foreign-made brands; an efficient supply chain was established, delivering medications from the manufacturer to the drugstores through distributors; finally, the government made DLO part of the “social package,” which also included health spa treatment, along with a number of benefits from adjacent fields. At the same time, every year citizens were free to choose between the “social benefits package” and monetary compensation.
Although by October 1, 2005, as many as 46 percent of benefits recipients (about 6.4 million people) agreed to receive monetary compensation, the next year the overall number of social package recipients increased by 1.5 million people, to 9 million. This is where the shortsightedness of the ministry officials became obvious. After the results of the first year of the reform, the already insignificant DLO budget (50.8 billion rubles for more than 12 million citizens) was reduced by the same 46 percent, i.e., the program turned out to be unprepared for the possibility of further refusal of monetary compensations, which had been included in the program.
Moreover, doctors themselves acted against the instigators of the reform— supported by both the drugstores and the distributors, they began prescribing expensive medications. In order to stop increasing the debt to the suppliers, the program had to be urgently reshaped and a number of drugs removed from the list: at the end of 2004 the program included 1,861 drug names; in November 2005 it was 2,347, and in October of 2006—only 1,623. However, the suppliers also became frustrated at operating without being able to compensate their own expenses, and some medications disappeared from the drugstores completely, while others stopped being covered by the benefits program. It all ended in a large-scale corruption scandal—in November of 2006, a few key FOMS officials were arrested, and others were removed from their posts.
As a consequence, the situation concerning the supply of medicines was now similar to what existed before the reform. Russia’s Accounting Chamber established that the portion of filled prescriptions was reduced from 94.8 percent in 2006 to 88.3 percent in 2007, with the overwhelming majority of provided drugs originating from foreign manufacturers. “A prescription is valid for three months. If the prescribed medication is not available in a drugstore, the law says that it has to be provided for me within ten days,” said Bondarenko, who has survived two severe heart attacks. “But in reality, the medication does not appear in ten days, and not even after that. In the end, I spend my own money to buy an alternative brand name.”
Nationalizing the project
The painful experience surrounding the monetization of benefits forced the authorities to look for the fastest possible way of getting out of the crisis. On January 19, 2006, the government passed a program for Russia’s social and economic development for the mid-term perspective (for the years 2006-2008). The most important part of this program was a complex of measures aimed at improving medical care. In the same year, healthcare received the status of a “national project,” which, along with three other top-priority fields, was monitored and supervised by Dmitry Medvedev, who was then first deputy prime minister.
According to the plan of operation for the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development for the year 2008, the realization of the “Health” project has been noted for significant progress in the system of medical care, taking into consideration the time of the project’s inception: the salaries of “first-echelon” doctors have been increased, along with funds allocated for their professional development and further education; some tens of thousands of outdated equipment units have been replaced; 70 percent of the ambulance fleet has been revamped; polyclinics and hospitals, including federal institutions and large medical centers in the federal districts of the Russian Federation, are continuously provided with new X-ray, ultrasound, laboratory and endoscopic equipment; the waiting time for various examination procedures in ambulatory and polyclinic organizations has been reduced to just a few days.
In her report at the government session on March 27, 2008, Minister of Healthcare and Social Development Tatiana Golikova made it clear that it would be wrong to become complacent. Among the health ministry’s main goals under Golikova in 2008 is the training of new doctors in the fields of general medical practice (family medicine), internal medicine and pediatrics. Other priorities include the construction of eleven new federal centers for high medical technologies; provision of high-technology medical care; introduction of new medical technologies in federal medical institutions and provision of high-technology medical equipment for these institutions. Moreover, a project aimed at improving the quality of medical services is due to conclude in nineteen regions of Russia. The results and outcomes of this project will be used to develop a general concept for the medical profession and industry, which, assuming the outcome is successful, will spread to other subjects of the federation and will underlie the strategy of healthcare development for the years 2009-2019.
The state authorities have also turned their attention back to the unsatisfactory situation with regard to the OMS. In June of this year, when surveying the products of the “Farmstandart” factory in Kursk, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin suggested adding provision of vital medicines to the list of services covered by the OMS: free of charge for sections of the population that are eligible to receive benefits, and as part of the cost of medications prescribed by a doctor for others. At the same time, a decision was made to support local drug manufacturers.
Partnering with business
Currently, an OMS policy only partially covers a patient’s treatment expenses; this is why voluntary medical insurance (DMS) is becoming more and more popular in Russia. In this area, a real battle to secure clients is being fought out between different insurance companies; part of this competition’s strategy is providing additional medical care privileges and benefits.
“One of our advantages is the fact that we have our own ‘Mir’ (‘World’) medical center,” said Yulia Lavrova, director of the insurance company “Russky Mir” (“Russian World”) Center for Medical Insurance. “At our medical center, we have personal doctor services and medical house call services; highly qualified medical specialists see patients at the center, test samples are collected and various physiotherapy services are provided.” A network of MedSwiss clinics operates under the aegis of the “RESO-Garantiya” insurance company. “Based on the clients’ needs, we have introduced weekend opening hours and house call services in Moscow, including up to 50 kilometers from the Moscow Ring Highway (MKAD),” said Marina Chernomorova, manager of the “Medicine” department in RESO. “In addition, we invite experts on rare medical conditions to provide consultations, and, when necessary, we invite renowned doctors.”
Of course, the DMS, especially when it comes to private clinics owned by insurance companies, is a reasonable alternative to the state healthcare system, with its long waiting times, defective equipment and constant perturbations in medical institutions. Nevertheless, despite the fact that competition has recently driven down the price for a DMS policy, on average an amount equal to two-three monthly pensions must be paid for a year of services, which makes this service still inaccessible for the elderly and the disabled. The insurers also confirm this. “Since DMS is not a social program with financial support from the state, we cannot give any discounts to senior citizens and pensioners,” said Chernomorova. “However, we do have programs designed specifically for the elderly that cover the main medical needs of this category of our population.”
On the whole, businesses are ready to invest in refining the healthcare infrastructure, but such enterprises believe that help from the state is still necessary. “Serious projects that involve expensive, high-technology medical services are being implemented today, and they allow many members of the public to receive the necessary care free of charge,” admitted Lavrova. “At the same time, in order to provide DMS for a wider section of the population, it is necessary to increase the tax benefits that come with signing DMS contracts, both for legal entities and for the general public.”
Similar ideas were expressed in connection with the drugstore industry by Ilya Milevich, Director General for Pharmacor CJS. The company also owns a drugstore chain under the same name, with an inter-regional program of support for the elderly: “A commercial structure can only realize a limited amount of social programs if it receives no support from the state. It is essential to provide certain privileges and benefits for companies that implement social programs.”
However, another rather significant component is required to ensure the success of the healthcare reform. “A Chernobyl veteran was receiving treatment in a federal medical institution. All of the services were supposed to be covered by state funds, but he was asked to pay 130,000 rubles (about 3,500 euros), and he agreed,” said Bondarenko. “Only after he came to our organization was he told that the request for this money was unlawful, and he was able to get it back.” Therefore, while reasonably setting hopes on the fruits of a mutually beneficial partnership between the state authorities and private businesses, citizens should know their rights and learn how to stand up for them.
Sergey Tereshenkov holds a master’s degree in political science .
Article 41 of Russia’s Constitution guarantees its citizens the right to receive free medical care in federal and municipal state healthcare institutions. In addition to this article, the law “On Medical Insurance for Citizens of the Russian Federation” was passed in 1993, abolishing the exclusively state-funded budget financing for healthcare and prescribing the creation of federal and territorial Funds for Mandatory Medical Insurance (FOMS). This law, with minor amendments, is still in effect today.
The largest portion of the territorial FOMS budgets is made up of tax revenue, including part of the Integrated Social Tax (ESN), as well as the tax fees paid by the state for its unemployed citizens. This does not look too bad on paper. Data from the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development shows that both parameters were noted to have increased in 2007, as compared to the year the before, by an average of 25 percent. However, in practice the percentage of deductions turns out to be insufficient, primarily because of the lowering of the ESN rate and the difference between “gray” and official salaries (when the latter is used to calculate tax fees), as well as due to incomplete financing provided by the regional authorities to cover the unemployed population. It should be noted that inflation in 2007 reached 11.9 percent, while the corresponding decree of Russia’s government set the norm for providing healthcare services covered by OMS (Mandatory Medical Insurance) funds at 1936.3 rubles (about €52) per person.
Of course, the whole system is in urgent need of restructuring. Even during the relative prosperity of the last few years, the federal budget assigned no more than 2.7 to 3.1 percent of the GDP to healthcare. The healthcare sector remains deprived not only in small towns and villages, but also in large cities: inaccessibility to free services even in state-owned institutions, long waiting lists, a low professional level of medical staff, poor condition of equipment and supplies, insufficient amount of medicines in hospitals and drugstores, substandard facilities and conditions for treatment and stays in clinics—this is far from a complete list of the problems patients have to deal with at their places of residence.
On the other hand, the measly wages paid at state-run hospitals compel medical staff to transfer to privately-owned clinics, leading to a lack of highly professional personnel in local state health centers. The notorious 2006 increase in wages for physicians, district doctors and pediatricians left their colleagues beyond their means, and led to a new wave of resignations of medical specialists, who chose to join the ranks of general practice physicians.
The Unpopular Reform
Despite the fact that the healthcare reform was always considered one of the most important and anticipated reorganization projects, it always turned out to be one of the most difficult for the socially vulnerable groups of the population. This is why neither in the 1990s nor during Vladimir Putin’s first term as president did the authorities dare to make any major changes. Essentially, the first step in this direction was the program of benefits monetization—the replacement of “natural benefits” in transportation, medical expenses and other costs with monetary compensation. This program has been in progress since 2005, as provided for by Federal Law number 122, passed on August 22, 2004, and has affected the largest category of benefits recipients—senior citizens and the disabled.
Aversion to this law reached its climax when the law came into force in January 2005. About half a million protestors took part in demonstrations across the nation’s regions. The government was pressured into increasing the program’s budget by 100 billion rubles, which were used to increase pensions, in addition to the 280 billion already granted for this purpose.
Rather paradoxically, the section on the healthcare reform that caused the most resentment in 2005 was the clause on additional medication provision (DLO). This was something that Mikhail Zurabov, who then headed the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development, took pride in, as it announced the possibility of receiving high-quality and free medication within an acceptable timeframe. Formally speaking, eligible benefits recipients had this right before, but the system wasn’t stable enough for this right to be recognized: drugstores often lacked vital medicines, and people had to pay with their own money for different brand-name alternatives. “The main problem is not that there are not enough laws. There are laws, but they are not being observed,” said Vladimir Bondarenko, a Chernobyl liquidator with 2nd degree disability. The January confusion, however, happened for a different reason. It happened because the authorities wanted to start the reform as soon as possible, in the following year: there was not enough time left to hold a tender for suppliers, and the selected pharmaceutical companies did not have time to sign contracts with all the consumers.
After the aforementioned obstacles were overcome, the state was able to win back the trust of benefits recipients and the protests stopped. In fact, the regularly renewed lists of subsidized medications now included not only inexpensive brands, but also medicines that were previously unavailable to the public, including foreign-made brands; an efficient supply chain was established, delivering medications from the manufacturer to the drugstores through distributors; finally, the government made DLO part of the “social package,” which also included health spa treatment, along with a number of benefits from adjacent fields. At the same time, every year citizens were free to choose between the “social benefits package” and monetary compensation.
Although by October 1, 2005, as many as 46 percent of benefits recipients (about 6.4 million people) agreed to receive monetary compensation, the next year the overall number of social package recipients increased by 1.5 million people, to 9 million. This is where the shortsightedness of the ministry officials became obvious. After the results of the first year of the reform, the already insignificant DLO budget (50.8 billion rubles for more than 12 million citizens) was reduced by the same 46 percent, i.e., the program turned out to be unprepared for the possibility of further refusal of monetary compensations, which had been included in the program.
Moreover, doctors themselves acted against the instigators of the reform— supported by both the drugstores and the distributors, they began prescribing expensive medications. In order to stop increasing the debt to the suppliers, the program had to be urgently reshaped and a number of drugs removed from the list: at the end of 2004 the program included 1,861 drug names; in November 2005 it was 2,347, and in October of 2006—only 1,623. However, the suppliers also became frustrated at operating without being able to compensate their own expenses, and some medications disappeared from the drugstores completely, while others stopped being covered by the benefits program. It all ended in a large-scale corruption scandal—in November of 2006, a few key FOMS officials were arrested, and others were removed from their posts.
As a consequence, the situation concerning the supply of medicines was now similar to what existed before the reform. Russia’s Accounting Chamber established that the portion of filled prescriptions was reduced from 94.8 percent in 2006 to 88.3 percent in 2007, with the overwhelming majority of provided drugs originating from foreign manufacturers. “A prescription is valid for three months. If the prescribed medication is not available in a drugstore, the law says that it has to be provided for me within ten days,” said Bondarenko, who has survived two severe heart attacks. “But in reality, the medication does not appear in ten days, and not even after that. In the end, I spend my own money to buy an alternative brand name.”
Nationalizing the project
The painful experience surrounding the monetization of benefits forced the authorities to look for the fastest possible way of getting out of the crisis. On January 19, 2006, the government passed a program for Russia’s social and economic development for the mid-term perspective (for the years 2006-2008). The most important part of this program was a complex of measures aimed at improving medical care. In the same year, healthcare received the status of a “national project,” which, along with three other top-priority fields, was monitored and supervised by Dmitry Medvedev, who was then first deputy prime minister.
According to the plan of operation for the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development for the year 2008, the realization of the “Health” project has been noted for significant progress in the system of medical care, taking into consideration the time of the project’s inception: the salaries of “first-echelon” doctors have been increased, along with funds allocated for their professional development and further education; some tens of thousands of outdated equipment units have been replaced; 70 percent of the ambulance fleet has been revamped; polyclinics and hospitals, including federal institutions and large medical centers in the federal districts of the Russian Federation, are continuously provided with new X-ray, ultrasound, laboratory and endoscopic equipment; the waiting time for various examination procedures in ambulatory and polyclinic organizations has been reduced to just a few days.
In her report at the government session on March 27, 2008, Minister of Healthcare and Social Development Tatiana Golikova made it clear that it would be wrong to become complacent. Among the health ministry’s main goals under Golikova in 2008 is the training of new doctors in the fields of general medical practice (family medicine), internal medicine and pediatrics. Other priorities include the construction of eleven new federal centers for high medical technologies; provision of high-technology medical care; introduction of new medical technologies in federal medical institutions and provision of high-technology medical equipment for these institutions. Moreover, a project aimed at improving the quality of medical services is due to conclude in nineteen regions of Russia. The results and outcomes of this project will be used to develop a general concept for the medical profession and industry, which, assuming the outcome is successful, will spread to other subjects of the federation and will underlie the strategy of healthcare development for the years 2009-2019.
The state authorities have also turned their attention back to the unsatisfactory situation with regard to the OMS. In June of this year, when surveying the products of the “Farmstandart” factory in Kursk, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin suggested adding provision of vital medicines to the list of services covered by the OMS: free of charge for sections of the population that are eligible to receive benefits, and as part of the cost of medications prescribed by a doctor for others. At the same time, a decision was made to support local drug manufacturers.
Partnering with business
Currently, an OMS policy only partially covers a patient’s treatment expenses; this is why voluntary medical insurance (DMS) is becoming more and more popular in Russia. In this area, a real battle to secure clients is being fought out between different insurance companies; part of this competition’s strategy is providing additional medical care privileges and benefits.
“One of our advantages is the fact that we have our own ‘Mir’ (‘World’) medical center,” said Yulia Lavrova, director of the insurance company “Russky Mir” (“Russian World”) Center for Medical Insurance. “At our medical center, we have personal doctor services and medical house call services; highly qualified medical specialists see patients at the center, test samples are collected and various physiotherapy services are provided.” A network of MedSwiss clinics operates under the aegis of the “RESO-Garantiya” insurance company. “Based on the clients’ needs, we have introduced weekend opening hours and house call services in Moscow, including up to 50 kilometers from the Moscow Ring Highway (MKAD),” said Marina Chernomorova, manager of the “Medicine” department in RESO. “In addition, we invite experts on rare medical conditions to provide consultations, and, when necessary, we invite renowned doctors.”
Of course, the DMS, especially when it comes to private clinics owned by insurance companies, is a reasonable alternative to the state healthcare system, with its long waiting times, defective equipment and constant perturbations in medical institutions. Nevertheless, despite the fact that competition has recently driven down the price for a DMS policy, on average an amount equal to two-three monthly pensions must be paid for a year of services, which makes this service still inaccessible for the elderly and the disabled. The insurers also confirm this. “Since DMS is not a social program with financial support from the state, we cannot give any discounts to senior citizens and pensioners,” said Chernomorova. “However, we do have programs designed specifically for the elderly that cover the main medical needs of this category of our population.”
On the whole, businesses are ready to invest in refining the healthcare infrastructure, but such enterprises believe that help from the state is still necessary. “Serious projects that involve expensive, high-technology medical services are being implemented today, and they allow many members of the public to receive the necessary care free of charge,” admitted Lavrova. “At the same time, in order to provide DMS for a wider section of the population, it is necessary to increase the tax benefits that come with signing DMS contracts, both for legal entities and for the general public.”
Similar ideas were expressed in connection with the drugstore industry by Ilya Milevich, Director General for Pharmacor CJS. The company also owns a drugstore chain under the same name, with an inter-regional program of support for the elderly: “A commercial structure can only realize a limited amount of social programs if it receives no support from the state. It is essential to provide certain privileges and benefits for companies that implement social programs.”
However, another rather significant component is required to ensure the success of the healthcare reform. “A Chernobyl veteran was receiving treatment in a federal medical institution. All of the services were supposed to be covered by state funds, but he was asked to pay 130,000 rubles (about 3,500 euros), and he agreed,” said Bondarenko. “Only after he came to our organization was he told that the request for this money was unlawful, and he was able to get it back.” Therefore, while reasonably setting hopes on the fruits of a mutually beneficial partnership between the state authorities and private businesses, citizens should know their rights and learn how to stand up for them.
Sergey Tereshenkov holds a master’s degree in political science .
Ethnic Peoples Populating the Russian North Are Extremely Diverse
But as the economic and cultural pressure to assimilate into the greater Russian population increases, their remoteness makes it ever harder for them to maintain unique identities and traditions.
Fifty thousand people—a number that could easily fit inside many sports stadiums—is the upper threshold for defining an “indigenous small nation” in Russian terms. There are approximately 40 such nations in Russia, according to Professor Igor Nabok of the Institute of Nations of the North at the St. Petersburg’s Herzen State University. These peoples—along with their larger neighbors, such as the Yakuts and the Buryats (both over 400,000 strong)—are mostly found in Siberia, the Far East, and the Far North.
The diversity among these groups is striking. The Paleo-Siberian peoples, such as the Chukchi and Itelmen, are of great antiquity and belong to a language group not demonstrably related to any other. The Khanty and Mansi, two small peoples isolated near the Ob River, are the closest linguistic relatives to the Hungarians. The Yakuts, who occupy some of the coldest territory on Earth in northern Siberia, are in fact a Turkic people. The small Tungusic peoples, such as the Udege and Nanai, are the linguistic kin of the Manchus, who conquered China and gave that country its last imperial dynasty. These nations represent a range of religious traditions—shamanistic, Orthodox, Islamic, Buddhist, and syncretistic (mixing elements of different religions). However, their remoteness from Russia’s Slavic heartland has not saved them from all kinds of economic and cultural pressure; and it’s an open question as to whether they will be able to maintain their distinctiveness.
What it takes to survive
Nabok said that it is impossible to give an objective scientific answer to the question of these peoples’ long-term survivability. However, many factors are contributing to changes in their situation. It is remarkable, given the forces acting on them in the last century or so that many of them maintain both a strong sense of identity and a dedication to a traditional way of life.
Soviet policies both promoted the viability of the peoples of the North and damaged them. On the one hand, the Soviet Union brought literacy, some degree of economic development, and state subsidies. On the other hand, the economic basis for many peoples’ existence was restructured in often harsh ways—nomads were forced to become permanent settlers, and many indigenous people were subjected to collectivization. The Soviet policy of mixing children from different small nations together in boarding schools, so that they were educated separately from their native communities, led to language loss and a weakening of ethnic identity. The general economic collapse of the 1980s and 1990s meant a plunge into disorder and poverty. While the situation has begun to improve in some respects, challenges remain.
The question of identity is not simple, and confounds a number of assumptions. Such traditional pillars as language, religion, and ancestry are not necessarily reliable guides. Sofia Sorokina, a colleague of Nabok at Herzen University, provided an example based on her field work among her own nationals—the Evenks—in their homeland near the Laptev Sea, deep in northern Siberia. The Evenk villagers have forgotten their own language and undergone a linguistic shift—but not to Russian. Rather, they adopted Yakut, the most widely spoken local language. However, they do not identify as Yakuts, because their cultural traditions and habits remain what they were for centuries.
Identity can also be complex and multivalent. The situation on the Yamal Peninsula, is a case in point. Here people are prone to identify themselves in three ways—as having an ethnic identity (“we’re Nentsy” or “we’re Khanty”), and a national identity (“we’re citizens of Russia”), but also a regional one (“we’re Yamalians”).
As if highlighting their distinctiveness from the general Russian population, the demographics of the Northern peoples are also notably different. Their birth rates are significantly higher. It is normal for families to have three or four children. Since the last Soviet census in 1989, 18 of the small indigenous peoples have recorded an increase in their numbers. However, these facts should not be taken as an unambiguous sign of good health. Their death rate is also much higher, and lives often shockingly shorter. Among the Koryak people of Kamchatka, life expectancy is only between 40 and 50 years—the lowest in Russia. Suicide, in particular, plagues many of these communities, and is fueled by high rates of alcoholism and depression. Pavel Sulyandziga, the vice president of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, points to cultural factors as playing a role as well. “In the Caucasus, if somebody offends you, you take it out on him. But in the North, if somebody offends you, you take it out on yourself.”
Anchored in the cold
Despite these pressures, migration is not a crucial issue among the indigenous peoples of the North. “We have to distinguish between two population groups in the North,” said Sulyandziga. “There are the people who moved there for economic reasons—mostly ethnic Russians—and there are the indigenous peoples.” The former group is more inclined to leave the North for good; the latter show no particular desire to do so, preferring to maintain their traditional way of life when possible. About 90 percent of the indigenous people live in rural areas. The economic basis of their lives has not changed much over the centuries: they still make their living raising cattle, herding reindeer, hunting and fishing. The ancient modes of life continue, although the form they take has been upgraded in certain respects. “People used to get around on dogsleds,” said Sorokina. “Now they use snowmobiles instead.”
Those who do migrate to the cities face assimilative pressures, and how they deal with those pressures is an individual matter. Since such migrants are few and their nations are small, they lack the institutions that one finds among larger minorities in Russian cities. Nor can they be bundled together in a general “Northern group”—each of these cultures differs greatly from the others. They look different, and this sometimes makes them targets of ethnically-motivated attacks; two students at the Institute of Nations of the North have been killed by racist gangs in recent years. As Nabok says, “A Russian in St. Petersburg can forget who he is; for a member of a Northern nation, that’s not possible.” In Siberian cities, there is a greater degree of tolerance—the indigenous people are considered as “locals,” and inter-ethnic relations are better.
If cultural and ethnic identity continues to hold despite changes and there is no rush to escape from the traditional homeland, it still does not mean that the future of these small nations is secure. Probably the biggest threats to these people’s integrity come in the economic sphere, and are exacerbated by Russia’s weak legal system.
Legally vulnerable
The Russian North may be vast and empty in popular imagination, but the ecosystem it hosts can be fragile. Thus the ongoing development of the oil and gas industry has potentially dire ramifications for the viability of ancient communities. Although this development has obvious positive aspects—investment and jobs—it carries dangers of its own. For instance, laying a pipeline through a river might have devastating consequences: vibrations from the pipeline scare away all the fish, and suddenly a populace that has survived over the centuries by fishing, loses its means of subsistence. There is also the question of control. As the large companies move in, the indigenous inhabitants become increasingly alienated from their land, as power over it passes into the hands of outside forces.
According to Sulyandziga, however, current economic threats come more from other types of business now that the major oil and gas companies have divided the land among themselves. In particular, firms engaging in activities related to hunting and fishing are taking control of lands long used by indigenous people. Charges of rigged auctions and bureaucratic pressure abound, irrespective of what the law actually says. Thus the issue of protection of indigenous peoples’ rights bumps up against the law enforcement realities of Russia.
Sulyandziga states that there are substantial differences in efficiency of governance across Russia’s patchwork of ethnic regions, districts and republics. “In Yamal, for example, the Nentsy have an effective leadership, and local government follows the laws,” he says. He also cites oil-rich Khanty-Mansiysk as a place where the indigenous communities have produced strong and efficient leaders, able to defend their own interests in negotiations even with such industrial giants as Gazprom. But in other regions, the situation is different. Sorokina claims that in the Amur region, for example, there is no effective government policy regarding the indigenous nations, and people are thus “abandoned” to their own devices. Sulyandziga sums it up like this: “The key to the fate of the Northern peoples is held by two hands. One hand is the state; the other is the Northern peoples themselves. Right now, the state isn’t helping very much.”
However, the peoples themselves may be taking up the slack. The Institute of Nations of the North continues to look to the future, preparing a new cadre of teachers and experts who expect to return to their native lands. “We’re not talking about the extinction of peoples,” says Nabok, “but about an identity crisis among them”—which is, after all, a natural consequence of social change
Fifty thousand people—a number that could easily fit inside many sports stadiums—is the upper threshold for defining an “indigenous small nation” in Russian terms. There are approximately 40 such nations in Russia, according to Professor Igor Nabok of the Institute of Nations of the North at the St. Petersburg’s Herzen State University. These peoples—along with their larger neighbors, such as the Yakuts and the Buryats (both over 400,000 strong)—are mostly found in Siberia, the Far East, and the Far North.
The diversity among these groups is striking. The Paleo-Siberian peoples, such as the Chukchi and Itelmen, are of great antiquity and belong to a language group not demonstrably related to any other. The Khanty and Mansi, two small peoples isolated near the Ob River, are the closest linguistic relatives to the Hungarians. The Yakuts, who occupy some of the coldest territory on Earth in northern Siberia, are in fact a Turkic people. The small Tungusic peoples, such as the Udege and Nanai, are the linguistic kin of the Manchus, who conquered China and gave that country its last imperial dynasty. These nations represent a range of religious traditions—shamanistic, Orthodox, Islamic, Buddhist, and syncretistic (mixing elements of different religions). However, their remoteness from Russia’s Slavic heartland has not saved them from all kinds of economic and cultural pressure; and it’s an open question as to whether they will be able to maintain their distinctiveness.
What it takes to survive
Nabok said that it is impossible to give an objective scientific answer to the question of these peoples’ long-term survivability. However, many factors are contributing to changes in their situation. It is remarkable, given the forces acting on them in the last century or so that many of them maintain both a strong sense of identity and a dedication to a traditional way of life.
Soviet policies both promoted the viability of the peoples of the North and damaged them. On the one hand, the Soviet Union brought literacy, some degree of economic development, and state subsidies. On the other hand, the economic basis for many peoples’ existence was restructured in often harsh ways—nomads were forced to become permanent settlers, and many indigenous people were subjected to collectivization. The Soviet policy of mixing children from different small nations together in boarding schools, so that they were educated separately from their native communities, led to language loss and a weakening of ethnic identity. The general economic collapse of the 1980s and 1990s meant a plunge into disorder and poverty. While the situation has begun to improve in some respects, challenges remain.
The question of identity is not simple, and confounds a number of assumptions. Such traditional pillars as language, religion, and ancestry are not necessarily reliable guides. Sofia Sorokina, a colleague of Nabok at Herzen University, provided an example based on her field work among her own nationals—the Evenks—in their homeland near the Laptev Sea, deep in northern Siberia. The Evenk villagers have forgotten their own language and undergone a linguistic shift—but not to Russian. Rather, they adopted Yakut, the most widely spoken local language. However, they do not identify as Yakuts, because their cultural traditions and habits remain what they were for centuries.
Identity can also be complex and multivalent. The situation on the Yamal Peninsula, is a case in point. Here people are prone to identify themselves in three ways—as having an ethnic identity (“we’re Nentsy” or “we’re Khanty”), and a national identity (“we’re citizens of Russia”), but also a regional one (“we’re Yamalians”).
As if highlighting their distinctiveness from the general Russian population, the demographics of the Northern peoples are also notably different. Their birth rates are significantly higher. It is normal for families to have three or four children. Since the last Soviet census in 1989, 18 of the small indigenous peoples have recorded an increase in their numbers. However, these facts should not be taken as an unambiguous sign of good health. Their death rate is also much higher, and lives often shockingly shorter. Among the Koryak people of Kamchatka, life expectancy is only between 40 and 50 years—the lowest in Russia. Suicide, in particular, plagues many of these communities, and is fueled by high rates of alcoholism and depression. Pavel Sulyandziga, the vice president of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, points to cultural factors as playing a role as well. “In the Caucasus, if somebody offends you, you take it out on him. But in the North, if somebody offends you, you take it out on yourself.”
Anchored in the cold
Despite these pressures, migration is not a crucial issue among the indigenous peoples of the North. “We have to distinguish between two population groups in the North,” said Sulyandziga. “There are the people who moved there for economic reasons—mostly ethnic Russians—and there are the indigenous peoples.” The former group is more inclined to leave the North for good; the latter show no particular desire to do so, preferring to maintain their traditional way of life when possible. About 90 percent of the indigenous people live in rural areas. The economic basis of their lives has not changed much over the centuries: they still make their living raising cattle, herding reindeer, hunting and fishing. The ancient modes of life continue, although the form they take has been upgraded in certain respects. “People used to get around on dogsleds,” said Sorokina. “Now they use snowmobiles instead.”
Those who do migrate to the cities face assimilative pressures, and how they deal with those pressures is an individual matter. Since such migrants are few and their nations are small, they lack the institutions that one finds among larger minorities in Russian cities. Nor can they be bundled together in a general “Northern group”—each of these cultures differs greatly from the others. They look different, and this sometimes makes them targets of ethnically-motivated attacks; two students at the Institute of Nations of the North have been killed by racist gangs in recent years. As Nabok says, “A Russian in St. Petersburg can forget who he is; for a member of a Northern nation, that’s not possible.” In Siberian cities, there is a greater degree of tolerance—the indigenous people are considered as “locals,” and inter-ethnic relations are better.
If cultural and ethnic identity continues to hold despite changes and there is no rush to escape from the traditional homeland, it still does not mean that the future of these small nations is secure. Probably the biggest threats to these people’s integrity come in the economic sphere, and are exacerbated by Russia’s weak legal system.
Legally vulnerable
The Russian North may be vast and empty in popular imagination, but the ecosystem it hosts can be fragile. Thus the ongoing development of the oil and gas industry has potentially dire ramifications for the viability of ancient communities. Although this development has obvious positive aspects—investment and jobs—it carries dangers of its own. For instance, laying a pipeline through a river might have devastating consequences: vibrations from the pipeline scare away all the fish, and suddenly a populace that has survived over the centuries by fishing, loses its means of subsistence. There is also the question of control. As the large companies move in, the indigenous inhabitants become increasingly alienated from their land, as power over it passes into the hands of outside forces.
According to Sulyandziga, however, current economic threats come more from other types of business now that the major oil and gas companies have divided the land among themselves. In particular, firms engaging in activities related to hunting and fishing are taking control of lands long used by indigenous people. Charges of rigged auctions and bureaucratic pressure abound, irrespective of what the law actually says. Thus the issue of protection of indigenous peoples’ rights bumps up against the law enforcement realities of Russia.
Sulyandziga states that there are substantial differences in efficiency of governance across Russia’s patchwork of ethnic regions, districts and republics. “In Yamal, for example, the Nentsy have an effective leadership, and local government follows the laws,” he says. He also cites oil-rich Khanty-Mansiysk as a place where the indigenous communities have produced strong and efficient leaders, able to defend their own interests in negotiations even with such industrial giants as Gazprom. But in other regions, the situation is different. Sorokina claims that in the Amur region, for example, there is no effective government policy regarding the indigenous nations, and people are thus “abandoned” to their own devices. Sulyandziga sums it up like this: “The key to the fate of the Northern peoples is held by two hands. One hand is the state; the other is the Northern peoples themselves. Right now, the state isn’t helping very much.”
However, the peoples themselves may be taking up the slack. The Institute of Nations of the North continues to look to the future, preparing a new cadre of teachers and experts who expect to return to their native lands. “We’re not talking about the extinction of peoples,” says Nabok, “but about an identity crisis among them”—which is, after all, a natural consequence of social change
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