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Bashkir people confront a new stage of ethnic genesis and in the future "the old people" of the 1990s will finally leave the public political arena. Just therefore it is very important from the beginning to build the parameters of the new Bashkir nation and to try to avoid the mistakes of the 1990s. It is necessary "to assemble" the people on the basis of traditional and ethnic values by means of organic synthesis of tradition and modernization.
"Perspektivy modernizatsii traditsionnogo obshchestva", Ufa, 2011, pp. 116-127.
Andrei Lukienko,
Journalist (Stavropol State University) CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF GROWING TENSION IN THE NORTH CAUCASUS
For the past twenty years the transformation processes in all spheres of public life in post-Soviet Russia have aggravated old and engendered new problems in inter-ethnic and inter-cultural life. The rapid regional process of ethno-cultural self-determination and sovereignization, which intensified in Russia in the 1990s and 2000s, can be termed "ethnic revolution. It coincided with the general world tendencies of bringing to the fore the ethno-national problems. These processes have been brought about by the striving to eliminate historical and socio-political injustice (heritage of colonial and neo-colonial policies), discrimination of racial, immigrant and ethno-religious groups, reaction of ethno-cultural communities to globalization, and exacerbation of competition for using the limited natural resources.
The growing tension in the North Caucasian region is a reflection of the general world processes and trends. As a result of powerful, uncontrolled processes of religious renaissance, such destructive phenomena have become more pronounced as radical ethnic nationalism and extremism in the religious sphere, which have destabilized the situation in the North Caucasus during the past two decades and prevented realization of positive tendencies in regional development. Instead of a decisive modernization breakthrough, the real life of the region is in the grip of a systemic crisis.
The reasons for this crisis in the North Caucasus are domestic (political-ideological) and external (geopolitical) factors. They include the disintegration of the powerful Soviet Union, the weakening vertical of state management, emergence of nationalistic separatism, loss of the former ideals and orientations, appearance of ideological vacuum, and crisis of civil identity.
These circumstances have created tension in the region and fanned up interethnic differences. Due to growing terrorism and extremism the above-mentioned factors have created a foundation for ethno-political and ethno-confessional conflicts which tend to expand.
An important aspect of studying tensions in the North Caucasus is the cultural-ideological factor and its manifestations, primarily, the phenomenon of religious renaissance, which has become one of the major tendencies of the development of post-Soviet Russia. It should be noted that religion in the Soviet Union was actually under the ban imposed by the authorities, due to which the number of believers substantially decreased and the role of religion weakened a great deal. During the past two decades the positions of religion in Russia have been restored considerably, the religious factor became predominant in certain spheres of public life, including the education sphere.
It should be noted that religious renaissance has not influenced the modernized parts of the Russian Federation too much, whereas in the traditionalist regions, particularly in the North Caucasus, it became a major development factor of many processes preventing solution of numerous problems of the region. Religious propaganda aimed primarily at young people, along with drawing them to the foundations of faith, Islamic culture and morality, at the same time fostered dogmatic thinking and propagated authoritarian conservative traditional patterns of social behavior. All this gives birth to backward, reactionary trends in social development and become an obstacle along the way of real socio-political transformations.
The opening of mosques and madrasahs is a major component of religious revival in the North Caucasian region. Increase in the number of these religious institutions began to take place in the last years of the existence of the Soviet Union. In 1985 there were only 47 registered mosques in the North Caucasus (27 of them were in Dagestan), whereas their number increased to 431 in 1990. By the year 2010 there were 2,200 mosques in the Republic of Dagestan alone (its population is 2.6 million), which means that one mosque is per 1,000 population, whereas in mainly Russian regions one Orthodox Christian church is per 10,000 to 15,000 population. For instance, in Rostov region inhabited by four million Orthodox Christians there are 260 churches.
Proceeding from these data, an impression is created that the process of religious revival in the North Caucasus has eliminated almost completely the secular models of life created in the U.S.S.R. Soviet power had built a system of secular general school system in the Russian and national languages in the region for many years. As a result, considerable success was registered in the formation of secular world outlook based on scientific traditions among the North Caucasian people. At the same time, the successes of Muslim school education
during the first decade of the Islamic "cultural revolution" are quite impressive. In Dagestan, for example, in the period between 1987 and 1996, 25 madrasahs and 13 Islamic institutes of higher learning, with branches in rural districts, came into being. There are courses to study the foundations of Islam almost in every town and village and educational institutions of various type are in 40 out of 42 rural districts and in nine out of ten cities in Dagestan.
On the other hand, it should be noted that study courses and methods of teaching at many Islamic educational establishments have been borrowed from secular educational institutions of Russia. There is a strange mixture of subjects, which has an adverse effect on the training level and knowledge of graduates from Islamic institutes, many of whom have to receive another, secular education to be able to find a job.
Another important element of religious renaissance in the North Caucasus is mass education of North Caucasian young men at foreign religious institutions of higher learning. The North-Western and Central Caucasus (Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia) is under Turkish influence, which is due to historical reasons (Islam came to this part of the North Caucasus from Turkey and the Crimean Khanate under Turkish domination), and there are large Cherkessian and Chechen communities there now. This is why it is quite natural that many young men wishing to receive Muslim education go to Turkey. At the same time, some young men from the above-mentioned North Caucasian republics prefer to go to Middle Eastern countries (Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Gulf states, etc.).
On the whole, more than 4,000 young men from the North Caucasian region received Islamic education abroad during the 1990s. Many of them became adherents of radical Islam, namely Wahhabi.
Their activity run counter to the traditional currents of Islam in the North Caucasus. Moreover, some of these men take the path of religious extremism and even terrorism.
The developments in Chechnya have played a no small role in the radicalization of the Islamic movement in Russia. In the early 1990s the infrastructure for training combatants under the guise of "studying the foundations of Islam" was formed in Chechnya. A network of training camps has been organized on the money from extremist organizations. Under the guidance and command of a Saudi man named Khattab a "training center" was opened in the populated center of Serzhen-Yurt, Shali district, which consisted of five camps where young trainees studied Arabic, Sharia law, guerilla war tactics, demolition techniques, etc. At the end of 1987 a Dagestani named B. Kebelov came to Chechnya and opened a Wahhabi center in the Urus Martan rural settlement, which coordinated the actions of Islamic radicals in the North Caucasus.
Apart from education, religious revival influenced the subsequent radicalization of ethno-confessional identity, which contributed to the further exacerbation of the situation in the North Caucasian region. Today ethno-confessional identity becomes the foundation of the self-determination and general behavior of individuals and whole social groups. Religious radicalism is the most dangerous consequence of the absolutization of ethno-confessional identity.
Religious fundamentalism as a socio-political phenomenon demands to build and regulate the entire social organization and public life in full conformity to religious precepts. And this often runs counter to the Constitution and laws of the Russian Federation.
Extremism based on ideological, particularly religious, convictions which cover political aims, is especially dangerous. This extremism is not necessarily connected with the socio-economic
situation. Various people join numerous extremist movements and trends, and some of them participate in the implementation of these movements and trends' ideas, while many others give them moral and financial assistance. There are people who use these ideas, without sharing them, for their own selfish interests and aims.
Wahhabism is the most vivid manifestation of religious radicalism and extremism in the North Caucasus. Its ideology is based on religious discrimination and calls for enmity against the "infidels," that is, all those who do not share the Wahhabi views. In the view of the Wahhabis, secular, democratic, capitalist, communist, or other trends or views are apostasy, betrayal of Islam. Any form of socio-political structure or socio-political activity not based on the Sharia law is infidelity.
Wahhabism is the ideology of evil and hate, it calls for enmity and violence. It is one of the factors creating tension and provoking conflicts in the North Caucasus. It should be noted that quite a few attempts have been made to ban the activities of the Wahhabi organizations at a legislative level in the region, but they have not brought the desired results.
It becomes evident that the escalation of extremism and terrorism in many North Caucasian republics is directly connected with Wahhabi activities. Propaganda of religious extremism exerts direct influence on young people. It is connected with the material factor of high unemployment in the region, where almost 60 percent of the able-bodied population have no jobs, or if people do work their wages are meager. Another reason is the local population's opposition to the authorities. Local people either support militant groups or are neutral to them, but do not betray them to the federal forces.
It should also be noted that the existence of the terrorist underground in the North Caucasian region is a major factor
contributing to spreading Wahhabi teaching, ideological extremism and terrorism in the area.
Thus, the process of religious renaissance in the North Caucasus creates favorable ground not only for a positive spiritual development of North Caucasian society, but also for the emergence and propagation of the most radical trends of Islam. Simultaneously, the socio-cultural factors of tension in the region also grow. The powerful ideological base provides an opportunity to the terrorist Wahhabi underground to increase the number of its direct and passive supporters among the local population. This goes to show that up to now the local and federal authorities have proved unable to create any effective methods and instruments to oppose Wahhabi activities and influence.
So far the struggle against what is called "new terrorism" has been waged in the Russian Federation, just as in many other countries, along the following lines; the strengthening of the legislative basis; improvement of the activity of special services; increasing struggle against the financial sources of terrorism, and improvement of propaganda and ideological work. Certain success has been achieved along the first three lines in the past few years, whereas the last field remains "badly cultivated," especially within the Muslim medium. In these conditions, one of the real instruments of opposing aggression on the part of religious extremism and religious-political terrorism could be evolvement and realization of a comprehensive cultural-ideological strategy aimed at the integration of the North Caucasian region in the All-Russia socio-cultural area, painstaking work to overcome ethno-cultural and value-ideological contradictions within the region, and increased interaction of Russia and the North Caucasus as its inalienable part.
"Nauchnaya mysl Kavkaza", Rosto- on-Don, 2011, No 4, pp. 9 -104.
