Circassian Flag Day Highlights a National Unity Russians have Never Been Able to Break

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 26 – The Russian state has repeatedly tried to destroy the Circassian nation, first by expelling from the Russian Empire 90 percent of the Circassians in 1864, then by splitting up the Circassians on the basis of subethnic groups, and most recently by promoting divisions among Circassian groups not only in the homeland but in the diaspora as well.

            But despite those efforts, Russia has not been able to destroy the national unity of the Circassians, something highlighted at the end of April every year by the celebration of the Day of the Circassian Flag, a banner that as Circassian historian Adel Bashqawi notes emphasize what unites Circassians not what divides them (justicefornorthcaucasus.info/?p=1251684904).

            The Circassian flag, he points out, features “twelve golden stars and three golden crossed arrows. Each of the twelve stars represents a major [and equal] Circassian tribe … and the crossed arrows symbolize that the Circassians do not seek war but will defend themselves and their existence when they are exposed to aggression.”

            This year, as in every year since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Circassians in Adygeya, Kuban, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachayevo-Cherkessia, and Sochi joined their co-nationals in the diaspora to celebrate this symbol of national unity, again despite efforts by the Russian government to block these events.

            In the North Caucasus, Moscow and its representatives restricted how Circassians could celebrate this day; and in the diaspora, which numbers more than five million people across the world, Moscow’s agents sought to set various groups against each other to limit this celebration (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/399429 and https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/399473).

            But Moscow failed; and its failure to do so highlights not only the weakening of Russian power and influence but also both the growing strength and increasing radicalism of Circassians who are increasingly convinced that the Russian empire by invading Ukraine is committing suicide and that the Circassians and other peoples will only benefit from its demise.

            One of the clearest articulators of that view and why it is spreading is Ibragim Yaganov, who has been a Circassian activist for more than 15 years, has been in the emigration for two years, and now heads Free Circassia and calls on residents of the Muscovite state to fight on the side of Ukraine against the Russian invaders.

            In an interview he gave to Izabella Yevloyeva of the Kavkazr portal timed to coincide with the Day of the Circassian Flag, Yaganov says that “practically all” young Circassians now favor independence (kavkazr.com/a/vosstanovitj-istoricheskuyu-spravedlivostj-cherkesskiy-aktivist-o-borjbe-za-prava-naroda/32914701.html).

            There are some who don’t, of course, he continues; but they mostly work for the government or are “former Soviet people.” And even they now “understand that the idea [of a Russian world and a Russian empire] has outlived its usefulness” and that the future belongs to others.

            “It is quite possible,” Yaganov continues, “that our freedom may fall at our feet.” But if that happens, Circassians and others must be ready to defend it. “Otherwise, someone will come [in Russia] and suppress it; and everything will start all over again.” Only independent statehood will give Circassians and the other nations a chance.

            Yaganov, long an advocate of the federalization of Russia, now believes that only independence followed by the arrangement of confederal relations among some of the successor states can prevent a recrudescence of a Russian empire. “Dreaming of federalization within a rotting empire is futile,” he says.

            One reason he says he is optimistic about the future is the vitality of the Circassian diaspora. It has existed for almost 200 years without losing its language, ethnicity, and sense of mission, a sharp contrast to the first Russian emigration which disappeared through assimilation in less than a century.

            But another Yaganov suggests, is that the Circassians share with the other peoples of the North Caucasus a commitment to adat law; and once the Russian “big brother” is removed from the scene and with him all of Russia’s “divide and rule” tactics, all these nations will be able to resolve any differences peacefully and with justice.

Islam Far More Important for Russia’s Muslims than Christianity is for Russia’s Orthodox, Levada Survey Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 28 – Only 21 percent of Russians who identify as Orthodox Christians say that their religion plays a very important role in their lives and only 38 percent say that it plays quite an important one, for a total of 59 percent, much lower figures than among Russians who identify as Muslims report, according to a new Levada Center poll.

            Among self-identified Muslims, the sociological service says, 44 percent say their faith plays a very important role in their lives and 39 percent more say that it plays quite an important one, for a total of 83 percent (levada.ru/2024/04/27/prazdnovanie-pashi-i-religioznye-predpochteniya-rossiyan/).

            This is yet another indication that Orthodoxy is less strong in Russia than the Kremlin and the Patriarchate like to believe and that Islam is far stronger among its followers in the Russian Federation than many at the center and elsewhere have often thought, a difference that undoubtedly worries the Kremlin and is likely to play a key role in Russia’s future.

With New Naval and Air Exercises, Azerbaijan Highlights Its Growing Power on the Caspian – and Russia’s DeclineThere and across the Region

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 28 – Azerbaijan has announced a series of combined naval and air exercises on the Caspian, yet another development that highlights Baku’s growing power there, the decline in Moscow’s dominance over what many had viewed as a Russian lake, and new possibilities for the expansion of Turkish and Iranian influence there.

            Baku’s moves (casp-geo.ru/azerbajdzhanskaya-respublika-provela-seriyu-voennyh-uchenij-na-kaspii/ and mod.gov.az/ru/news/vms-i-mchs-provodyat-sovmestnye-takticheskie-ucheniya-volna-2024-51508.html) follow similar actions by Kazakhstan (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/kazakhstan-conducts-major-naval.html) and Iran (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/iran-launches-new-flagship-for-its.html).

            These actions highlight the declining role of Russia in the Caspian (jamestown.org/program/russias-caspian-flotilla-no-longer-only-force-that-matters-there/ and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/russia-not-keeping-up-with-naval-build.html) and open the way for Turkey to play an expanded role there (jamestown.org/program/turkey-planning-to-become-dominant-naval-player-in-the-caspian/).

            And that in turn, in the minds of some Moscow commentators, will only accelerate Russia’s loss of influence in the South Caucasus and Central Asia even as the Kremlin tries to recover it via its war in Ukraine (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/while-kremlin-focuses-ukraine-rest-of.html).

 

Behavior of Russian Occupiers in Ukraine Recalls ‘Dark Times of Stalin Repressions,’ Nevzlin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 28 – Putin’s war in Ukraine has become not only the occasion for increasing repression there and in Russia itself but also a model for that repression, with the behavior of Russian officials in occupied portions of Ukraine increasingly the model for what the Putin regime is doing at home.

            Indeed, just as Putin’s war against Chechnya at the start of his reign became the occasion and model for his behavior in Russia as a whole, a development that grew into the Chechenization of Russia, so too his war against Ukraine is having a similar effect with the tactics his minions use there bleeding back into the Russian Federation.

            That conclusion is suggested by Russian commentator Leonid Nevzlin in his discussion (t.me/leonidnevzlin/2031of the new OSCE mission on the treatment of Ukrainians by the Russian occupiers (osce.usmission.gov/joint-statement-on-the-report-of-the-moscow-mechanism-to-address-the-arbitrary-detention-of-ukrainian-civilians-by-the-russian-federation/).

            To the extent that is true, those Russian officials are involved in war crimes and crimes against humanity; and the future of Russia under Putin is bleak because, as Nevzlin puts it, “the actions of the occupiers recall the dark times of Stalinist repressions” in the Soviet Union and thus presage an equally dark future as long as Putin and his minions remain in power.

‘Kazakh Russian-Speaking Poles from Ukraine’ Struggle with Multiple Identities in Present-Day Kazakhstan

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 28 – The more than 30,000 ethnic Poles now living in Kazakhstan are the descendants of two waves of Soviet deportations of Poles from the Ukrainian and Belarusian union republics of the USSR in the 1930s, an ethnically diverse borderland that Moscow absorbed after the Soviet-Polish war of 1920.

            When the first wave of Poles was deported at Stalin’s order on April 28, 1936, they became the first nation the Soviets deported as a whole and thus the first of the punished peoples. But because of the complexities of the region from which they came and the subsequent deportation of Poles from Poland after 1940, they have received less attention in the West.

            That is remedied in part by journalist Ramil Niyazov-Aldyldzhyan has published on the SibReal portal, an article that explains why many in this group describe themselves as “Kazakh Russian-speaking Poles from Ukraine” (sibreal.org/a/kazahskie-russkogovoryaschie-polyaki-iz-ukrainy-zhizn-posle-deportatsii-/32923041.html).

            She cites the work of Anastasiya Maskevich, a descendant of the first Poles to be deported to Kazakhstan and author of a book and an English-language master’s thesis about them (litres.ru/book/anastasiya-maskevich/anastasiya-36624545/chitat-onlayn/ and nur.nu.edu.kz/bitstream/handle/123456789/6247/Thesis%20%E2%80%93%20full%20draft%20(Maskevich).docx.pdf).

            Maskevich points out that while the Poles deported from Poland were able to return home after the end of World War II, the Poles deported in 1937 were not freed from the status of special settlers until 1956 and were restricted from returning home until the very end of Soviet times and the beginning of the post-Soviet period.

            Because they have remained in Kazakhstan so long and because of problems in Belarus and Ukraine, the Poles from this wave now see themselves as part of Kazakh life and define themselves in many cases as “Kazakh Russian-Speaking Poles from Ukraine,” Maskevich and other experts on this group say both because and despite help from Warsaw and Astana.

            The SibReal journalist also interviews Yury Serebryansky, the editor of the journal of the Polish diaspora in Kazakhstan and the author of a novel about the lives of the first wave of Poles to be deported to Kazakhstan, Altynshash, which has won many prizes and details the struggle for survival and identity of the Poles of Kazakhstan.

            “For me,” Serebryansky says, “the Soviet Union finally ended on February 24, 2022 with the beginning of hostilities against Ukraine.” That action burst the bubble that had arisen in Soviet times for many including himself; but tragically, “there was an is a generation for whom the USSR never ended.”

            Such people, he continues, have “their heads somewhere other than in sovereign Kazakhstan.” And almost all questions about what it means to be a Kazakhstani arise from that. “Russian is a colonial legacy and sore point, but,” he says, “the future of the country belongs to bilinguals at a minimum who know Kazakh and Russian and ideally also English.

While Kremlin Focuses Ukraine, Rest of Post-Soviet Space ‘Disappearing Before Our Eyes,’ Influential Telegram Channel Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 27 – The Putin regime’s obsessive focus on Ukraine is not only isolating Russia from the West but it is reducing Moscow’s influence across the former Soviet space, the SytoSokrat telegram channel says. Indeed, it can be said that Moscow’s expanded invasion of Ukraine has “destroyed what was left of Russian influence in the near abroad.

            The influential channel which is directed at Russia’s security elite says that “immediately, in several places, the Russian positions have gone to hell,” a conclusion justified by the fact in that in place after place, Moscow has been forced to pull back or even worse forced to pull back (t.me/sytosokrata/892 reposted at charter97.org/ru/news/2024/4/29/593337/).

            The situation in the Caucasus is especially bad and especially instructive, the telegram channel continues. Moscow is “shamefully” pulling back there. “For the sake of implementing an ephemeral geopolitical project of a southern corridor to Iran, Moscow has treacherously abandoned Armenia.”

            “The GRU and the FSB tried to overthrow the Pashinyan government by trying to implement a pro-Kremlin color revolution,” SytoSokrat says; but for their troubles, they got “hit in the teeth. As a result, the Armenian government not wanting to deal with Putin’s cum began to redirect its foreign policy toward the West.”

            And despite Kremlin hopes, “the Azerbaijanis did not become allies for the Russians. They see their future in the Turkic world and welcome with stormy applause the withdrawal of the Russian contingent from Karabakh.” Baku shares with Turkey a vision of a Turkish world, which represents “a colossal threat to the territorial integrity of Russia” with its Turkic units.

            Moscow also made the situation for itself worse in Georgia. There, “the Russian special services at the direction of Patrushev are pushing through a foreign agents law” and thereby generating “a powerful anti-Moscow popular movement” that won’t let Tbilisi engage in any rapprochement with the Russian Federation.

            Meanwhile, “Putin’s special services have become more active in the direction of Moldova” but with no more promise of success and an increasing likelihood of failure. Moscow orchestrated a meeting of Moldovan opposition figures and stimulated Gagauz succession, all of which are likely to do nothing more than push Chisinau into the hands of the West.

In Declaring Non-Existent Anti-Russian Separatist Movement ‘Extremist,’ Kremlin Opens the Door to Broad Range of Repression, Legal Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 27 – Moscow’s plans to declare the Anti-Russian Separatist Movement, a body that doesn’t exist, is consistent with its general approach of making its charges more absurd and its sentences for those convicted harsher (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/russian-justice-ministry-calls-for.html and novayagazeta.ru/articles/2024/04/27/shtraf-detsadu-sud-nad-bibliotekarem-i-seksualnyi-terrorist-i-arest-vracha).

            But that does not mean that this latest action will collapse of its own weight at least any time soon or that it won’t open the way to a new wave of repressive actions against a variety of people who discuss regional and ethnic issues, Russian legal specialists warn (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/04/26/spektr-repressii-mozhet-byt-ochen-shirokii).

            Russian lawyer Anastasiya Burakova says that at a minimum, the authorities are likely to use this finding against anyone who calls the territories in Ukraine now under the control of Russian forces “occupied” because from Moscow’s point of view that represents a direct challenge to the Kremlin’s definition of Russia’s borders.

            But in addition, she says, there is the danger that the Russian government will bring charges against any discussion of ethnic and federal affairs by national groups within the Russian Federation regardless of whether these discussions call for separatism or are in fact formally organized into groups.

            “Any discussions about nationalities living on the territory of Russia and about their histories which the powers don’t like may be counted as ‘extremist,’” she says; “and the authors of such expressions may now fall under the pressure” of charges of extremism and punishment for that.

            Burdakova continues: “I have no doubt that the justice ministry suit will be satisfied and the specter of repression may be very broad” especially given the precedent provided by declaring LGBTs members by definition in an international anti-Russian body and that the number of people charged and imprisoned is likely to be large.

            Another Russian lawyer, Valeriya Vetoshkina, with whom Novaya Gazeta spoke, agreed entirely, although she said that the decision by the Supreme Court won’t tell anyone much given the way in which the powers that be now treat all legal forms in a highly variable and elastic way.