Eye on Eurasia: Mari El simmers

17.05.05

Tartu, Estonia, May. 16 (UPI) -- Increasing international attention to and condemnation of human rights abuses in Mari El, a Finno-Ugric republic in the Middle Volga region, has infuriated Russian commentators, three of who have now suggested this focus is part of a broader plot to destabilizie Russia, overthrow Putin, and seize control of the country's nuclear weapons. 

Last Thursday, the European Parliament unanimously passed a resolution denouncing the violation of human rights, media freedom and democratic procedures in Mari El, and its members called on officials in Moscow and Ioshkar-Ola to live up to their commitments on these issues.

The resolution, advanced by representatives of the three independent Finno-Ugric countries - Estonia, Finland and Hungary - comes after three other indications the international community is beginning to turn its attention to what is taking place in a part of the Russian Federation that few outsiders track.

First, earlier last week, members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to Igor Nikitin, the president of the Russian Association of Christian Churches, expressing their "deep concern" about the actions of Russian police agencies against Christian groups in the Middle Volga (see portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=news&id=33347).

Second, the week before, the Federal Union of European National Minorities at its meeting in Budapest took up the issue of the mistreatment of the Mari and other ethnic groups in the Middle Volga (www.mari.ee/rus/news/polit/2005/05/01.htm). At that meeting, Vladimir Kozlov, a Mari opposition leader, described the threats his people now face.

As a result of what he described as the "Mariphobic" policies of the current Russian leaders of the Republic of Mari El, there are now no ethnic Maris in the Russian Federation Duma or Federation Council. And the number of ethnic Maris in the republic's bureaucracy has fallen from more than 30 percent in 2000 to only a handful now.

Moreover, Russian officials there have cut back Mari language media and instruction in schools so the linguistic future of that nation is now in doubt. They have sought to close down all independent media there. And they have either sponsored attacks or looked the other way when independent journalists - including Kozlov - have been beaten or even killed.

And third, these developments have occurred as politicians, analysts and human rights activists from around the world continue to add their signatures to a Finnish-prepared appeal on behalf of the Mari people. That document, posted on the Web in late February, now has been signed by almost 10,000 people from some 60 countries (ugri.info/mari/).

Not surprisingly, Russian officials in Mari El -- who like most regional leaders there have been used to being able to operate almost completely out of the public eye -- have denounced these statements as the invention of what they say are a small group of malcontents who do not reflect the views of the Mari El people.

But neither these officials nor Moscow writers are able to continue to maintain that stance given outside criticism. And at the end of last week, three commentaries on a Russian nationalist Web site offer some disturbing analyses of just why some in Moscow believe the West is now devoting so much attention to a small region far way.

In the first of these articles, Aleksandr Yeliseyev argues the vote in the European Parliament must serve as a wake up call for Russians about the West's intentions. (rustrana.ru/article.php?nid=9066). And he suggests that Estonia, Finland and Hungary have followed Poland and are using European institutions to weaken Russia.

Consequently, he says, everyone must recognize the Mari people are not really responsible for what is happening: their supporters from abroad are. But at the same time, he insists the Kremlin already understands "the entire seriousness of the Finno-Ugric factor" in Russian politics at present.

Indeed, Yeliseyev says, this understanding lies behind ongoing efforts to unite the Komi-Permyak Autonomous Oblast with the ethnically Russian Perm oblast, and plans to fold the republics of Mari El and Chuvashia into the Kirov oblast. The question Yeliseyev ends with is the following: will such administrative measures be enough?

As he has in other articles, Yeliseyev answers in the negative, arguing the Mari El issue and the involvement of Europeans in it reflects "a crisis of Russian statehood," which he says is now just as clearly in evidence in foreign as in domestic affairs.

In the second article, Andrei Smirnov, who writes frequently on geopolitical topics for a variety of Russian nationalist Web sites, argues the West's current obsession with the Mari reflects the coming together of two trends (rustana.ru/print.php?nid=9072).

On the one hand, he says, "the time of giants has passed, and the epoch of minorities - sexual, intellectual and national - has arrived." Consequently, he continues, it should come as no surprise that people around the world are devoting far more attention to the Mari than their numbers -- approximately 670,000 - would appear to justify. And on the other, the West in general and the Finno-Ugric countries in particular have decided to exploit the unhappiness of a numerically small people against a large one - in this case, the Russians -- for their own purposes.

The small people, of course, are not in a position to defeat the large one on their own, but together with other small peoples, especially if they are backed by stronger outside elements, they can repeatedly "attack (the large one) from various sides and not let it live in peace."

The Russian Federation, Smirnov continues, is "not in a position to support" the cultural institutions of minority nationalities in the way the Soviet government did, and it should not apologise for that, especially since these minorities "for some reason or another have not assumed a proportional part of Soviet-era debts."

Instead, he suggests, Moscow should take the offensive on this issue, pointing out to the world that many Estonians, Finns, and Hungarians fought on the side of Hitler during World War II and that the policies of these three nations both then and more recently have left much to be desired.

And at the same time, Smirnov concludes, the Russian authorities must move quickly against any manifestion of separatism by these groups lest it grow into what Smirnov called "a catastrophe" for the Russian Federation similar to what the end of the Soviet Union represented for everyone involved.

And Sergei Pakhmutov, the third Moscow analyst, argues those in both Moscow and the West who are now paying attention to Mari El and are trumpetting their support for its people, in fact, have far broader and more sinister motives (rustana.ru/print.php?nid=9065).

According to Pakhmutov, "anti-government" figures in Russia - including Irina Khakamada, Vladimir Ryzhkov, Garri Kasparov and "other odious politicians of the left-liberal direction" - hope to launch Ukrainian or Kyrgyz-style uprisings in Russian regions like Mari El to trigger a countrywide explosition that would help them oust President Vladimir Putin.

But he writes those standing behind them, the Finno-Ugric countries in the first instance and the European and American "special services" as well, are playing the key roles in this effort of promoting "an Orange-style revolution" in a republic which until recently few had ever heard of.

The reasons for that, Pakhmutov continues, should be obvious, and they have nothing to do with human rights, media freedom or democracy. Instead, they are about control of Russia's most fearsome weapons. In Mari El, he points out, there are several of the Russian Federation's most important factories of the country's military industrial complex.

In addition, he notes, that Middle Volga republic is the home of a strategic rocket forces facility where advanced RS-12M missiles are based and also of arms dumps that contain many of the Russian navy's most advanced torpedo and artillery weapons systems. Even if many Russians are not aware of that, Pakhmutov says, Russia's "internal and external enemies" are.

And so working together, these enemies hope either to bring to power a new regime in Mari El that will be less interested in defending Russia's military interests or to destabilize the situation to the point the international community might decide that U.N. "blue helmets" would have to be introduced.

If that were to occur, Pakhmutov says, it would transfer effective control over a significant part of Russia's nuclear arsenal to U.S. control.

Of course, Pakhmutov concludes, none of this is inevitable. But neither is it impossible, and he urges the Russian government to be sensitive to what he argues is the fact the West and its allies in Russia frequently pursue geopolitical goals under the banner of protection for the human rights of ethnic minorities.

Yeliseyev, Smirnov, and Pakhmutov, of course, do not speak for the Russian government as a whole, and their arguments likely would be dismissed by many in Moscow as extreme and hyperbolic. But no one should ignore what they say, however farfetched and even paranoid their words may be.

Indeed, if one ignores some of their more baroque comments, the arguments of the three parallel those Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev have advanced in recent days, and suggest that many in Moscow back an even harder line against non-Russian groups in the Russian Federation and their supporters abroad.

To the extent that proves to be the case, it will entail far-reaching and potentially explosive consequences not only for the Mari people, other non-Russian groups, and those in Moscow and the West who are concerned about their fates, but also for the future of the Russian Federation as a whole. 

Paul Goble 

Source: The Washington Times