ACPC: Interview With Gregory Shvedov, Editor -in-Chief Of The Caucasian Knot
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posted by eagle on January, 2010 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Contents: Overall Trends
I would say that the year 2007 might be referred to as “Caucasus on Fire.” I apply such an alarming title because Caucasus as a whole – not just the North Caucasus, but also the South Caucasus -- really changed within the past year. Clearly, roots of the current situation go back to previous years, previous centuries even, but there are more recent trends worth noting.
Lack of Federal Control: The first trend is, at least in the South Federal District of Russia, that the level of federal control over regional politics has been dramatically reduced. On the ground one can hardly see that the North Caucasus is really part of the Russian Federation. Instead, the region appears to be made up of informal units that are not part of the whole country. I ...
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Window On Eurasia: Only The Islamic World Wants Russia To Recover As Great Power, Muslim Analyst In Moscow Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 4 – The revival and growth of Islam is typically portrayed as a threat to Russia, but a leading Muslim commentator in Moscow argues that “the only global force which is interested in the rebirth of Russia as a great super power is the Islamic world,” a category that he insists includes Muslims within the Russian Federation itself.
Shamil Sultanov, the president of the Moscow Center for Strategic Research on Russia and the Islamic World, makes this provocative and controversial argument in the course of a lengthy essay on the state of the Muslim community in Russia now and over the next 20 years that was posted online today on the IA-Centr.ru portal (www.ia-centr.ru/expert/6841/).
As the leftwing analyst notes, estimates about the number of Muslims in the Russian Federation vary widely, with the Orthodox Church putting the figure at no more than 14 ...
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Window On Eurasia: Demographic Decline Threatens Russia’s Universities, Fursenko Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 5 – Russia’s demographic decline, something that has already had an impact on its draft pool and workforce, is now hitting its higher educational institutions, with the number of secondary school graduates and hence potential university students which stood at 1.3 million in 2006 currently projected to fall to 700,000 over the next two years.
That means, Education and Science Minister Andrey Fursenko said on Ekho Moskvy this week, that “three or four years from now, there will be half as many students [in the country’s higher educational institutions] as there are now,” a decline that is forcing these institutions to be less selective and to cut staff (www.vz.ru/news/2010/1/3/363754.html).
“Today,” Fursenko continued, “the situation is such that we not so much are selecting people as searching for people whom we can accept. This is connected with demography; it is changing catastrophically in a negative direction.” And that in turn, the minister said, ...
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Window On Eurasia: ‘Putin Zigzag’ Fails To Stop Russia’s Decline, Kalashnikov Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 6 – All the problems Russia had in the late 1990s remain unresolved because Vladimir Putin failed to use income from the rise in oil prices to address them, preferring instead to enrich himself and his friends and to pretend that the existence of such wealth, even though kept abroad, was by itself sufficient to pull Russia back from the brink.
But now, a decade after “the miracle” of the rise in oil and gas prices propelled Putin to the stop, Moscow commentator Maksim Kalashnikov says, “the Putin zigzag” in the ongoing decline of Russia is coming to an end, and Russia faces a terrible reckoning, one highlighted by but not limited to technological disasters (forum-msk.org/material/lenty/2126251.html).
Tragically, however, he continues, “the inadequacy of [Putin’s] regime to deal with the challenges” Russia continues to face is matched by intellectual and political poverty of the country’s opposition groups, a situation that makes ...
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Prague Watchdog: The Chechen As The "alternative Russian"
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
The Chechen as the "alternative Russian"
Alexander Prokhanov’s interview with Kadyrov For example, to a Russian nationalist like myself this "conversation" is an indelible, shameful stain, a genetic mutation, a "full Achtung". A betrayal. Author: fenrir93 Shamanov – brushstrokes for a portrait It is quite hard to find any non-swearwords to describe this general. It's too bad that those who appointed him and moved him up the career ladder are surely aware of all these facts. Source: tverdyi-znak What do Russians think of Chechens? - Poll 1. What do Russians think of Chechens (your opinion)?
2. What do you personally think of Chechens?
3. What do Chechens think of Russians (your opinion)? Author: timur-aliev From the replies: 1. Most Russians take an extremely negative view of Chechens. In this a part is played both by Russians’ generally bad attitude towards non-Russian citizens of Russia, especially if they are from the Caucasus, and by the image of Chechens as aggressive and cruel to the point of callousness, people who have no sympathy or compassion for anyone, even women and children, ... |
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