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INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS FACTOR ON THE SOCIO-POLITICAL SITUATION IN THE SOUTH OF RUSSIA*
At present the Russian Federation is inhabited by people of more than one hundred nationalities. The specific feature of the situation is that one people - Russian - account for 81 percent of the entire population, and all other peoples comprise only 19 percent. During the post-Soviet period a religious infrastructure, quite impressive in its size, has spontaneously formed in the country. And today its confessional structure can be regarded stable enough.
One of the authors of the above-mentioned book, D. Kotelenko, writes: "The tumultuous growth of religious organizations in postSoviet Russia ended in 2004-2006. At present the total number of these organizations (registered and unregistered) exceeds five thousand. The main confessions (by the number of believers and religious organizations) in the south of Russia are Orthodox Christianity, Islam and five main neo-Protestant confessions (Evangelical Christians, Baptists, Pentecostalists, Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses).
"The Orthodox Christian and Islamic belts differ considerably in the degree of consolidation and intensity, as well as frequency and content of religious manifestations. The territories of the traditional distribution of Islam are distinguished by a high number and density of religious organizations. The leaders in this sphere are Dagestan (especially its mountain districts) and Karachay-Chercessia (Karachay districts). The Orthodox Christian belt lags behind considerably (especially in Dagestan). Chechnya and Ingushetia can be regarded as super-religious Islamic centers".
* G. Matishov, D. Kotelenko, V. Avksentyev. YUNZ RAN Publishers. Religious factor and security problems in the South of Russia. Rostov-on-Don, 2010.
In this author's view, there will be no changes in the ethno-confessional borders in the south of Russia in the near future because the borders of traditional confessions have been firmly established. During the past eighteen years Islam has not advanced any further, although there have been certain possibilities for it. Besides, it is not known whether any further advancement of Islam will meet resistance (and how strong it will be) in the Orthodox Christian territories. Thus, the borders of "Islamic" regions of the North Caucasus remain closed to religious interventions.
Geographically dispersed migration to rural districts has its limits, in contrast to migration to cities (the capacity of the former is connected with the extensive character of agricultural production which aggravates rivalry for resources). Certain "advancement" of Islam was connected primarily with the "development" of new territories.
A period of the stabilization and consolidation of the state and society has begun, and a period of spiritual quests and experiments has ended. Neo-Protestant confessions have exhausted possibilities for a considerable rise in the number of their adherents in the south of Russia.
As a social subsystem of society religion is intertwined with other components of the social system and is always, to one degree or another, a factor of a definite state or change of this system. Its turning into a real factor of concrete social processes, including in the sphere of inter-ethnic relations, takes place by religion fulfilling definite social functions.
Religious manifestations are multiform, which is determined by a complex, ambiguous character of its inner structure and great variety of its components and ties. During many centuries religion has formed man's attitude to the world, nature and entire human life. The turning of people en masse to spiritual values of national cultures (Christianity,
Islam, Buddhism, etc.), which has begun in the past decades, is inalienably connected with a search for and formulation of the laws of moral-ethical behavior in society. As part of the social organism, religion also experiences the influence of the increasing global processes. This is why it is necessary to use its traditional values in determining and shaping man's relations with the modern poly-cultural medium.
During the past few years interest in the Islamic problem has considerably grown all over the world, including our country. It can be explained by large-scale processes going on in the modern Moslem world. The developments of a global character taking place in several countries of the Middle East have led to the emergence of the contradictions which are very dangerous for the entire world. Islam is playing a major role in resolving them on a regional scale, and also exerts considerable influence on the world geopolitical picture.
The ethno-confessional relations in the south of Russia in the 1990s were fraught with dangerous conflicts. Relations between certain peoples of the Russian Federation had a complex contradictory character. The religious factor exerts, as a rule, long-term influence on society and its political systems, which cannot be properly assessed at a given moment.
The collectively-written monograph by scholars at the Southern research center of the Russian Academy of Sciences headed by Academician G. Matishov, examines in a comprehensive manner the role and significance of the religious factor on the southern borders of Russia and its influence on this country's security. The work reveals the main development trends of religious communities in the south of Russia, analyzes the impact of the religious factor on socio-political processes going on in the North Caucasus and in the whole of Russia
and gives recommendations to the bodies of power concerning the key problems of ethno-confessional situation.
This monograph has been written within the framework of the program of fundamental research supervised by the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences entitled "Spatial Development of the Russian Federation: Interdisciplinary Synthesis," subprogram No 12 entitled "Problems of Socio-economic and Ethno-political Development of the Southern Macroregion", and the project entitled "The Functioning and Development of Religious Communities in the South of Russia" (2009-2010). Among the authors of the monograph mentioned are well-known and authoritative Russian scholars and experts.
In their view, most works examining the present ethno-confessional situation in the south of Russia concentrate on studying individual problems of religious life, regions or confessions. The work under review is one of the first attempts to analyze in a comprehensive manner the religious situation in this macroregion.
The approach used by the authors of the work includes spatial and systemic analysis of the situation and conflicts and takes up four volumes of the "Atlas of Socio-political Problems, Threats and Risks in the South of Russia," which was published by the Southern research center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It should be noted that the monograph includes data about religious organizations submitted by local government authorities, their analytical material, archives, the mass media, etc.
One cannot but agree with the authors' view that the continuing segmentation of the political systems of advanced countries is largely determined by the fact that national-political self-identification is pushed to the background by ethnic-religious group identities. The latter contradict one another, and the consensus reached is too fragile,
which reduces the stability of democratic systems and threatens their very existence.
During the 1990s, confessional identity was one of the many factors which prevented the disintegration of Russian society and the state, which was in the process of transformation. However, today it is evident that a firm foundation of national identity cannot be formed on this basis. Religion, even in its most peaceable manifestations, divides people of different confessions. Apparently, power is well aware of the danger of the confessional heterogeneity of the country and is trying to overcome it by lowering the significance of religion in public life.
Russia's cultural variety is a sum total of ethnic and confessional identities of more than one hundred peoples inhabiting the country. The phenomenon of modern Russian self-consciousness has emerged on the basis of inter-ethnic, inter-confessional and inter-cultural contacts and actions over many centuries. We examine ethnic and religious identities as the basic values which exerted the decisive influence on the formation and development of the all-Russia cultural and civilization tradition. At present the formation process is going on in Russia to create a common national identity, and attempts are made at a state level to form a single common national identity by different means. In our view, these attempts are not always successful because the ideas offered at a state level for the formation of common identity come across serious obstacles.
One of the serious reasons for such situation is, in our view, socio-cultural polarization and intolerance, as a consequence of this. Being a direct consequence of inability to reconcile these or other ethnic, socio-cultural and confessional differences, intolerance has now become the biggest obstacle on the way of forming common national Russian identity. Such trend is typical not only of Russia. A radical modernization of all social relations within a very short historical
period inevitably leads to the aggravation of a host of problems -political, economic, cultural, socio-psychological, inter-ethnic and inter-confessional. In the present conditions the center of attention shifts to the sphere of the interaction of various socio-economic, political and socio-cultural tendencies, which determine the parameters of relations between man and nature, the state and society, power and the individual, etc.
The first step on the way of solving the problem of socio-cultural demarcation, as the authors of the work believe, should be a thorough analysis of the current situation. An attempt of such analysis is presented in the first chapter of the work - "Unmanaged Religious Renaissance and Problem of Socio-cultural Demarcation." The socio-cultural area of society and its region can be characterized as a multitude of the subjects of culture and sociality, which are stably connected with a definite territory, have an impact on its objects and interact among themselves. Their interaction forms socio-cultural fields in which the center and periphery, knots and diffusive sponginess, horizontal and vertical structures develop, and the population's mobility on a given territory goes on between them. Certain results of interaction represent the visual layer of the socio-cultural landscape on which the population's identity emerges with these or other parts of the socio-cultural area. The intensity of identity depends on socio-cultural trends in the area, closeness, or distance of its subjects, and the character and speed of communications between them. The symbolic, subject and institutionalized areas of the region are closely intertwined.
In the authors' view, the mapping or visualization of the problem largely facilitates its comprehension and, ultimately, a search for an acceptable solution. The book under review contains the mapping of the results of religious renaissance in post-Soviet Russia which, as
the authors believe, allowed them to reveal the bottlenecks and problematic points calling for greater attention. The distribution of religious organizations in cities and districts of various parts of the Russian Federation situated in the Southern federal area (within the boundaries of 2010) was analyzed. More than 5,200 religious organizations functioned in 299 municipalities, 3,500 of them were registered properly.
An analysis of the distribution of religious organizations on the territory of Dagestan is of special interest. As the book notes, the high level of religiousness is characteristic of societies with traditional culture. "Perhaps, it is not accidental that Dagestan has now the same number of mosques as in the early 20th century. Compared with the same period, "Russian" regions have, on average, five times less the per capita number of religious organizations. The level of religiousness (at least what concerns the per capita number of mosques) can be compared with that in other countries of the Islamic world. For example, 70-million-strong Turkey demonstrates similar figures (80,000 mosques), whereas in Russia with its population of 141 million there are about 30,000 religious organizations.
The changes in the ethno-confessional landscape of the south of Russia in the post-Soviet period are characterized by the authors as the expansion of the zone of Islam at the expense of the traditional territories of distribution of Orthodox Christianity and Buddhism. These changes are especially noticeable in rural districts, where the number of Muslims is constantly growing and that of Orthodox Christians and Buddhists is diminishing. Such situation is fraught with conflicts, which, indeed, flare up from time to time.
The second chapter of the book is called "Terrorism and Islamic Values in the North Caucasus". The authors discuss possible scenarios of the development of the military-political situation in the North
Caucasus in connection with the real threat of terrorism and religious-political extremism in the region. In recent years the leaders of separatists have changed their strategy and ideology. The major factor now is the activity of the consolidated terrorist underground based on the ideology of radical Islam. Until recently the complex of the sociopolitical and economic problems of the Southern macroregion was regarded by experts and scholars as the main threat to security and the principal obstacle to stable development, and the activity of the terrorist underground was viewed as just one of the challenges to the stability and security of the state and society. Mistrust toward the present authorities displayed by a considerable part of the population and the concentration of protest energy in society tend to increase the activity of the terrorist underground. In the view of the authors, there is a risk of the Islamization of the North Caucasian region on the Afghan pattern.
One cannot but agree with the opinion of the authors of the monograph that Islamic resurrection is a spontaneous process, despite the desire of quite a few regional and foreign actors to step up and use it in their interests. Nevertheless, a considerable role in the development of negative phenomena has been played by certain actions of the federal authorities themselves, who relied on support of traditional Islam as a counter-balance to radical Islam. Unexpected consequences will always accompany the adopted decisions when there is no long-term strategy and the authorities' reaction depends only on the immediate situation.
Many experts and scholars during the post-Soviet period oriented the authorities to supporting traditional Islam. The idea has actively been supported by the Islamic clergy in the North Caucasian republics at the regional and federal levels. This resulted in strengthening the influence of the Islamic way of life and Islamic values on the life of
North Caucasian societies. Religious propaganda aimed at influencing young people first and foremost and drawing them to the foundations of faith and Islamic culture at the same time formed a musty, dogmatic type of thinking and authoritarian-conservative, traditionalist patterns of social behavior.
Undoubtedly, the regional authorities hoped that support on the part of traditional Islamic figures would prolong their stay in power. And their behavior copied that of the federal authorities who flirted with religious leaders with a view to preserving their positions. As a result of this erroneous, inconsiderate policy and ungoverned propaganda of traditionalist values, religious ideology has taken an important place in society, having thus created favorable ideological conditions for spreading religious extremism along with separatist tendencies in the North Caucasian region. Supporting the practically uncontrolled process of the revival of traditional Islam, the authorities failed to take into account the fact that the ability to awaken and support and the ability to manage and control religious revival are two different things.
We should also note that the book under review contains objective conclusions and well-founded criticism. "The process of religious revival was left to take its own course. The local authorities thus hoped to win the sympathies of the population and bolster up their positions. However, the ideas of self-organization and self-regulation of the religious sphere have not justified themselves, 'The genie was let out of the bottle. And the situation slipped out of control. An absurd situation emerged: the republican and local authorities sanction the stepping up of religious propaganda by traditionalist structures to combat spreading radical ideas. How is it possible to fight Islamic radicalism with the help of factual Islamization?"
The authors thoroughly analyze the reasons for the Islamization of young people in the North Caucasus. In the post-Soviet period they were left to their own devices, in contrast to Soviet times when the state had taken upon itself the care and concern for the growing generations and channeled their energy to socially useful work. As a result, a whole generation of young people has emerged whose world outlook was entirely based on religion. The overwhelming number of participants in the present-day terrorist underground in the North Caucasus is young men from fifteen to twenty. They are distinguished in their ideology from the generation of men from 25 to 30, who have more secular and moderate views. The Islamists are dangerous because they have a concrete aim, namely, the Islamic political project, that is, seizure of political power. These ideas become a real weapon, especially when society has no clear-cut ideological priorities shared by most people. A result of Islamic revival in the North Caucasus has been the emergence of an entire generation fostered in the traditions of radical Islam.
The authors of the book note that in recent years we have come across only the first results of Islamic revival in the south of Russia. An original mechanism of cultural inertia has begun to operate, and prolonged efforts will be necessary to cope with the existing situation. One of the most crucial tasks is that of establishing secular values in the sphere of education, politics, the way of life and the mass media. Cultural factors, in contrast to socio-economic ones, can exert a more profound influence on society's life and determine its progress for a long time to come.
The third chapter of the work under review is devoted to the study of various network religious communities in the region. They are traditionally considered as Protestant, however, this is a qualitatively new phenomenon denoted as neo-Protestantism uniting Baptists, Evangelical
Christians, Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostalists, and others. It should be noted that numerous western confessions are represented in districts of "color revolutions", on territories of a great geopolitical and geostrategic significance, and in regions which are objects of the foreign forces' claims.
Neo-Protestant missionaries carried on a large-scale activity all over the world prior to 1991, except the countries of the Islamic world and the U.S.S.R., but after its disintegration they now have a new vast area for activity. In today's Russia the total share of these confessions in relation to the overall number of religious organizations reaches 25-40 percent, and the number of believers runs into hundreds of thousands.
Russians and Ukrainians predominate among neo-Protestants in Russia today. However, one cannot assert that other peoples in the south of Russia are spiritually immune to any versions of neo-Protestantism. Among Evangelical Christians, Pentecostalists, Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses there are Adygs, Armenians, Jews, Germans, Kalmyks, Koreans, Ossetians, Lezghins, and representatives of other nationalities. Thus, neo-Protestants are a considerable part of the confessional landscape of the south of Russia.
The authors make a well-founded conclusion that the religious factor will continue to exert profound influence on the socio-political situation in the south of Russia, including the North Caucasus. They cite a wide range of possible negative consequences of this influence, among which are demarcation, lower loyalty, growth of violence and terrorism, and return to archaic more and morals.
A proper, well-thought-out policy of the federal authorities could be a factor putting to order religious renaissance, without restricting religious freedom. It should only protect the values of secular society and the state.
In conclusion we should add that this book is intended not only for specialists, managers and political and public figures, but also for a broad range of ordinary readers.
G. Yusupova, D. Sc. (Philosophy), Regional Center of ethno-political research, Russian Academy of Sciences.
"Vestnik Dagestanskogo Nauchnogo Tsentra", Makhachkala, 2011, N 43, pp. 138-142.
