Window on Eurasia: Moscow's New Man for the Near Abroad to Use Culture as Weapon

24.03.05

Tartu, March 24 - The Kremlin's newly appointed chief for cultural ties with foreign countries says that he will use "culture and spirituality" as Moscow's weapons of choice in the ideological competition between the Russian Federation and the West across the post-Soviet states.

That declaration made by Modest Kolerov, whom Vladimir Putin named this week to head a new Presidential administration for inter-regional and cultural ties with foreign countries, led Moscow's "Kommersant" newspaper to conclude yesterday that Kolerov is now the Kremlin's point man to ward off future "Orange"-style revolutions in the CIS.

Indeed, that paper quotes political technologist Gleb Pavlovskiy, with whom Kolerov has worked in the past, to the effect that that in his new post, Kolerov will be responsible for showing people in the CIS countries that Russia "is a greater bearer of European values than is the European Union."

But in a series of interviews over the last two days, Kolerov has made clear that his job will involve both more and less than that, a pattern that should not surprise anyone familiar with his own writings over the last 15 years or with his meteoric rise over the course of an exceedingly complex career.

On the one hand, Kolerov apparently will have responsibility for developing and overseeing the implementation of policies regarding "compatriots living abroad" - the Russian term for ethnic Russians and ethnic Russians outside of Russia as well as on cultural other cultural issues throughout the region.

And on the other hand, he has indicated that he will also oversee contacts between Russian regions and neighboring countries and between ethnic groups in the Russian Federation and their co-ethnics living elsewhere, including beyond the borders of the former Soviet space.

These broad responsibilities both reflect the importance Putin places on these questions (see the note on the new administration posted on the official site of the President of Russia, http://194.226.82.50/text/docs/2005/03/85617.shtml) and suggest that Kolerov will have a seat at many tables where policy is made.

Kolerov has stressed both in his remarks to "Kommersant" and in three other interviews he has done since assuming his new post where many questions remain open - the Kremlin has not yet posted a decree defining his position and he must familiarize himself with a broad swatch of issues before he will be able to say precisely what he will be doing.

In an interview with Grani.ru, however, Kolerov dismissed as "rumors not corresponding to the facts" that he would be in charge of efforts to block the spread of Orange-style revolutions. But at the same time, he said he would be active in promoting Russian culture and language abroad (http://grani.ru/Politics/m.86633.html).

He told the Ukrainian agency Glavred.ru that he will focus on the three Baltic countries as well as the CIS and that he would be travelling to Ukraine in the near future to study the situation there. He added that he looked forward to doing so because he has relatives in Kyiv, Rovno and the Crimea (http://www.glavred.info/?art=135067732).

And in conversations with the Regnum news agency and the Nizhniy Novgorod Telegraph Agency, he indicated that he would be devoting a great deal of time to preventing social problems from growing into political ones and looking at the foreign ties of regions and ethnic communities in the Russian Federation itself (http://www.ntann.ru/?id=252969).

His comments on the latter are particularly intriquing because they suggest that he may work to restrict some of the contacts that regions and ethnic communities inside the Russian Federation now have with a wide variety of foreign partners.

Noting that the situation of Russia's Finno-Ugric peoples has attracted attention from their linguistic relatives in Estonia, Finland and Hungary, Kolerov said that the Russian groups should have "the broadest possible dialogue" with Finno-Ugric organizations abroad but that they must also recognize "their responsibility beyond the borders of the CIS" - a phrase some mayl find chilling.

In his interview with Grani.ru, Kolerov said that his current convictions were formed 17 years ago and that he has "never concealed them." But because his position is so new and because he is so new to it, that makes an examination of his career and ideas especially important and useful.

Immediately prior to his appointment, Kolerov served as head of the Regnum news agency, a news and information service that has frequently carried articles and commentaries both signed and unsigned suggesting that Russia is surrounded by "enemies" who must be unmasked and opposed.

Regnum carried one such article on March 18 with the title "The Front Against Russia: A Cordon Sanitaire' and ,Foreign Rule'" in which the news agency said that the United States and the European Union were seeking to eliminate Moscow's influence in the former Soviet space and impose their own rule there.

In many ways, that article and the use to which Kolerov put the Regnum news agency both reflects his earlier career path and suggests what he may try to do in the future. Born in the family of an artist in Tula oblast in 1963, Kolerov graduated from Moscow State University and completed a dissertation on the pre-revolutionary political figure Petr Struve.

He worked in the State Archives and served as a commentator in a variety of journals -- including the nationalist newspaper "Segodnya" in the early and mid-1990s. Then he worked as head of public relations operations in a major bank. In 1999-2000, he helped create a number of Internet sites, including among others Polit.ru, Regions.ru, and Rusoil.ru. And after having sold his shares in these, he moved to the Regnum news agency.

While occupying these positions, Kolerov nonetheless found time to write and edit a series of books on Russian religious, philosophical and political questions as well as a steady stream of articles and essays in which he promoted what he has said are his "liberal-conservative" views.

Kolerov told "Kommersant" that he views himself as a scholar and that he hopes that his new responsibilities will not prevent him from continuing his scholarly activities. But given the scope of his new duties and the importance that President Putin attaches to them, that may prove impossible even for someone as versatile and hardworking as Kolerov has shown himself to be.

Paul Goble