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the Irrational in the Context of the Evolution of Religion // New Religions in Russia: Twenty Years Later]. - Moscow, 2013. - P. 91-102.
10. E. Chernobrovkina, R. Minnikhanov. "Bolshe shansov, chto na vas upadyot sosulka, than napadyot wahhabit... "["You May Be Hurt by a Falling Icicle Rather Than by a Wahhabi Fanatic. ": http://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/72340
11. IslamNews. The Public Chamber will Appeal against the court decision banning books // http://www.islamnews.ru/news-13323.html
"Islam v multikulturnom mire: Musulmanskiye dvizheniya i mekhanizmy vosproizvodstva ideologii islama v sovremennom informatsionnom prostranstve," Kazan, 2014, pp. 40-54.
R. Emirov,
Ph. D. student, Moscow State University CONNECTION BETWEEN ETHNOPOLITICS AND GEOPOLITICS IN THE NORTH CAUCASUS
One of the specific features of the North Caucasus as an internal border geopolitical region of the Russian Federation is the multinational, or poly-ethnic, composition of its population, which lays a considerable imprint on the most important spheres of its life. People of many nationalities live there, who belong to different ethnocultural and linguistic families, or groups, such as Caucasian-Iberian (Georgians, Circassian-Adyge, mountain peoples of Daghestan - Avars, Darghins, Lezghins, and others, Chechens and Ingushes, etc.), the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family (Ossetians, Greeks, Tats, Turks - Azeris, Kumyks, Karachai, Balkars, Nogais, and others). The biggest ethnic group in the North Caucasus is Russians, a considerable part of which is Cossaks. The borders of the North Caucasus stretch to the territory of the South Caucasus and further on to the Middle East. We mean the diasporas of North Caucasian peoples settled in the
second half of the 19th century in Turkey, Jordan, Syria, and other neighboring states.
This explains the fact that the ethno-national factor is of key importance from the point of view of ensuring national security and state unity of the Russian Federation along its southern borders, and the North Caucasus itself. Many other factors stem from it, or are closely connected with it. The most important spheres of life, including the political one, are intertwined with ethno-national, tribe, clan, and other aspects.
Political sympathies and antipathies of people are largely determined by their affiliation to a definite ethno-national group, the language, clan, or locality. There is no simple abstract, statistical electorate, but there are voters - Lezghins, voters - Avars, or voters -Kumyks, etc. Any problems of social, economic, educational, or any other character are connected, in one way or another, with the nationalities question. The main development vectors of the region depend on how this question is solved there.
In other words, the interconnection of geopolitics with ethnopolitics is revealed there as vividly as nowhere else in the Russian Federation. They are closely intertwined and strongly influence the vitality, sovereignty and unity of the state. Moreover, the combination of the geopolitical and ethnopolitical factors becomes especially important and timely in a situation when the ethno-national problem becomes a source of various contradictions and conflicts threatening state unity and socio-political stability in the country. This is why investigation of this problem in the context of national security of Russia is quite important not only for understanding and solving the country's domestic problems, but also for evolving a foreign-policy course in relations with many neighboring states.
Touching on the causes of conflicts in the North Caucasus, K. Gadjiyev wrote that they had emerged "within the framework of the implementation of the so-called Leninist foreign policy... Having proclaimed a policy of self-determination of peoples in theory, in real life the state-administrative units were not formed strictly by the national criterion. The very principle of territorial-administrative division on the basis of the nationality principle contradicted the realities of the Caucasus. The arbitrarily established borders between republics in the Soviet period have become a potential source of various conflicts in our time."1
As a result of numerous arbitrary administrative-territorial demarcations, disregarding the ethno-national factor, many ethnic groups have become split between two or even four republics. The pernicious character of such policy has become clear in the conditions of perestroïka and the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. following it, when the latent contradictions in the sphere of interethnic relations have come to the fore.
Among the factors conducive to the growing striving for sovereignty all over the country, and in some cases the greater activity of radical groups demanding secession from Russia and formation of independent ethno-national units, the tendencies toward the politicization of ethno-national relations and the emergence of nationalistic ideologies based on the politicization of ethnic history have played a major role.
As a result, the notorious "show-of-sovereignties" had begun, which created a serious threat to the territorial integrity of Russia and multinational republics. In this context, the example of poly-ethnic Daghestan is of special interest. A number of national republics in the Russian Federation have adopted their own constitutions, which
proclaimed their sovereignty and in certain key articles of their constitutions contradicted the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
True, in the course of administrative reforms carried out during the past decade and aimed at restoring the vertical of power, many excesses in the normative-legal sphere of the North Caucasian republics have been overcome. As a result of amendments adopted in the late 1990s - 2000s these articles were either repealed or amended.
In the Soviet period relations between the titular and non-titular ethnic groups, just as their representation in bodies of state power, were regulated by the Communist party and government bodies. The so-called quota system of filling the vertical of power of national units was in action in accordance with the proportional number of each ethnos. As shown by experience of a number of North Caucasian republics, this system was not effective enough in Soviet time. Nevertheless, it has been adopted by the authorities of the Russian Federation, true with certain changes. However, in a number of republics this system with certain negative characteristic of the Soviet period has moved even farther from the principles, standards and rules of political democracy and a law-abiding state.
The interconnection of the ethno-national and power factors can especially clearly be seen in the multinational Republic of Daghestan, where the struggle for power and the alignment of forces have acquired a well-pronounced ethnic character. The republican population amounts to about three million, but it consists of more than one hundred nationalities, including more than thirty indigenous peoples speaking their own languages, and fourteen ethno-national groups are regarded titular. However, already in the Soviet period, from the late 1930s, the first roles in the higher echelons of power were played by representatives of two or three ethno-national groups, namely, the Avar, Darghin and Kumyk.
After the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. the ethnocratic tendencies have intensified, which resulted in the actual monopolization of state power in the hands of representatives of the above-mentioned three ethnic groups. They have occupied the three highest posts in the republic - President, Chairman of People's Assembly and Head of government of the Republic of Daghestan during the entire post-Soviet period. Lucrative places in the vertical of power were also distributed among representatives of these ethnic groups. Similar situation, though with slight nuances, is typical of other North Caucasian republics.
The clan-ethnic system of organization of business and power, in combination with criminal privatization, has led to growing inequality by the nationality principle. The number and titular status of some or other ethnos guarantees it a majority in political representation in legislative and executive bodies of power in the republic. The key positions have been occupied by the corrupt administrative, bank, commercial and other groups which are part of ethnic clans. They have actually monopolized the political and economic resources and established their own informal mechanisms of adopting key decisions.
Under such circumstances, contradictions and conflicts between clans look like interethnic ones in the eyes of common people. In this sense, groupings formed by ethnic and community principles pose a serious threat to economic security.2 Ethnicization of the vertical of power is also expressed in that the ruling clans use law-enforcement agencies for the preservation of their positions.
As V. Tishkov has justly noted, "the reason for the failure of the division of power and ethnic rotation in ethnically complex parts of the country lies not so much in the very system of social democracy, as in the inadequate civil-legal consciousness of the population and the influence of the criminal and corrupt forces and ties, which use political mobilization by the ethnic and local principle."3 Naturally, this is a
factor violating the principle of proportional representation of the basic ethno-national communities in all three branches of power at a republican and municipal levels. Such situation is a source of differences and conflicts which acquire an extremist character, so dangerous for society.
These realities explain why some or other decisions adopted by the authorities are regarded by part of the population as those infringing upon their interests. Thus, the idea about unification of divided peoples remains one of the incentives capable to violate social and political stability in individual republics from time to time.
Naturally, interethnic relations in such republics as Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaeyvo-Circassia, as well as multinational Daghestan are distinguished by especially great tension. For example, in Kabardino-Balkaria, the main problems aggravating the social and political situation arise in relations between Kabardians and Balkars who rival for political leadership.
In this context mention should be made of several projects of changing the ethnopolitical map of the North Caucasus by uniting certain ethnic groups living in different national republics into unified autonomous units within the Russian Federation.
For instance, Kh. Tuguz put forward an idea to unite all Adyges in the Adyge Republic with autonomous districts: Kabardian, Adyge, and Circassian. Further on, in his view, such model could be used for uniting other ethnic groups living in the North Caucasus.
On June 5, 2010, about 700 representatives of the Circassian, Abazin, Russian and other ethnic groups of the Karachayevo-Circassian Republic held a congress which adopted a resolution demanding to divide the republic and restore Circassian autonomy within the Russian Federation, which had existed from the latter half of the 1920s up to 1957. This demand was backed by assertions that the Karachay
ethnocracy, which had formed and strengthened in the Karachayevo-Circassian Republic, concentrated state power in its hands.
Tension continues to persist in relations between the North Ossetian Republic and the Republic of Ingushetia on the territorial question, and interethnic tension is observed between Chechens, Ingushes, Kumyks, and Meskhetian Turks, on the one hand, and Russians and Ossetians, on the other.
The problem of certain peoples of the North Caucasus, for example, Ossetian, Lezghins, Avars, and others, who have become divided by state borders between the Russian Federation, Azerbaijan and Georgia after the disintegration of the U.S.S.R., remains unresolved from the point of view of regional and national security of the Russian Federation. As a result, any exacerbation of the situation in the South Caucasus is directly reflected in the state of affairs in Russia. Moreover, the latter is automatically involved in any conflicts, for instance, between Georgia and Abkhazia, or between South Ossetia and Georgia. The Georgian-South Ossetian conflict was the most tragic event, which led to the war in August 2008. Another example of the dangerous situation in this sphere was provided by a mass revolt on March 1, 2012, in Kuba (Northern Azerbaijan) inhabited by Lezghins, who were dissatisfied by the nationalities policy of the Azerbajani authorities.4 Traditionally restless Daghestan is facing another problem, that of the Lezghin ethnos living in the south of the republic.
Notes
K. Gadjiyev. Geopolitika Kavkaza [Geopolitics of the Caucasus]. - Moscow, 2003. - P. 77.
A. Bakryashev. Tenevaya ekonomika i ekonomicheskaya prestupnost [Black-market Economy and Economic Crimes] // http://znanie.podelise.ru/docs/933/index-1380.html?page=13
1
2
V. Tishkov. Konflikty i federalism. Federalizm i etnichesky faktopr na Severnom Kavkaze. Obshchaya otsenka situatsii i prirody konfliktov [Conflicts and Federalism. Federalism and Ethnic Factor in the North Caucasus. General Assessment of the Situation and the Nature of Conflicts]. Kazansky federalist, 2002, No 2.
About this see: "Turan": Prichina bunta v Kube — bednost i bezyskhodnost, tsaryashchiye v Azerbaijane [The Cause of Revolt in Kuba - Poverty and Desperation Reigning Supreme in Azerbaijan] // http://panorama.am/ru/ politics/2012/03/05/azerbaijan-guba-turan/
"Vlast," Moscow, N1, 2014, pp. 170—174.
4
G. Kovalyov, A. Levchenko, Political analysts, Moscow State University CENTRAL ASIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS: NEW MODEL OF THE U.S. PRESENCE IN THE REGION
On February 25, 2014, it was twenty-five years since the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan, after almost ten years of their stay there (from December 27, 1979) with the purpose of maintaining the relations "of brotherhood and revolutionary solidarity" with the People's democratic party of Afghanistan, which was then in power in that country. The Soviet government wanted to protect the southern borders of the U.S.S.R. from penetration of Islamic fundamentalism, which could take place as a result of the activity of the Afghan anti-government opposition coming out under traditionalist Islamic slogans. However, the U.S.S.R. did not achieve stabilization on Afghan soil, which was plunged into the permanent confrontation of the Kabul government and the Tajik-Uzbek Northern alliance with the Pashtun units of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.1 The "Taliban" Islamist movement was fighting against all these groupings; the United States considered this movement as the terrorist threat No 1 in 2001, and its
