| JRL Home | JRL Simple/Mobile | RSS | Newswire | Archives | JRL Newsletter | Support | About
Old Saint Basil's Cathedral in MoscowJohnson's Russia List title and scenes of Saint Petersburg
Excerpts from the JRL E-Mail Community :: Founded and Edited by David Johnson

Underground Fire Bursts Forth

Moscow Rioters with Flares

From: Sergei Roy <sergeiroy@yandex.ru>
Subject: Re: Moscow riots
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010
Underground Fire Bursts Forth
By Sergei Roy

Russia's top leadership's response to the disturbances by the Kremlin wall on Dec. 11 has been nothing short of a political disaster. Medvedev, enjoying an Elton John concert, tweets "everything under control" while OMON riot police return to base in gloomy silence. For one thing, they proved no match for the thousands massed in Manege Square to protest the killing of their comrade. For another, being mostly Russians, they felt about those murderous newcomers from the Caucasus very much like the angry young men they had fought in Manezhka (see http://vadimb.livejournal.com/966905.html ).

In his Dec. 16 Q&A TV show Premier Putin lashed out, for no apparent reason, against the liberal intelligentsia that had had nothing to do with the riots. True, he also blamed corrupt police officers who had released the murdering Caucasus gang for an all too obvious bribe. However, treating the episode as a mere police matter is painfully inadequate. Putin must be aware of it, and talking the way he does is just a sign of his helplessness, an inability to cope with the situation.

Medvedev's later reaction was even worse. Feeling that he had flopped dismally, he staged an angry performance in front of police and military heads in Ryazan, talking of "pogroms," "extremists," and even "fascists." Ever since World War II, the word "fascist" has been simply a term of abuse in Russia. Using it about millions of his subjects who feel exactly like the young men in Manezhka and elsewhere is a political gaffe to end all gaffes. From now on, Medvedev is just a hollow man, a stuffed man. Trouble is, Putin is not much better. A poor lookout for 2012 for both.

The political regime these two personify refuses to recognize the reality that threatens to destroy not just the regime but the country itself. The reality is this: the population of Russia (not just the 79.8 percent of it that are Russians but practically everyone else who is not a North-Caucasian) is under a sustained attack from the Muslim migrants from the North Caucasus ­ from Chechnya, Dagestan, Kabarda, Balkaria, Ingushetia, etc.

Those North Caucasus "republics" have either fully carried out ethnic cleansing (as in Chechnya, which has murdered or threw out all of its non-Chechens) or are doing their damndest to squeeze out any non-natives still left there. But that's just stage one. All of those regions are basket cases in terms of the economy (say, in Ingushetia unemployment is 56 percent), so the next stage is spreading throughout Russia ­ and as good as conquering it, taking over businesses, municipal and other administrative organs, and behaving most aggressively toward the locals.

A few factors go for the invaders. The Muslims, apart from being united by faith, mostly of the radical Islamist variety, are well organized. The organization is primitive, of the tribal or clannish sort, but quite effective. The invaded locals rely on the police and government to protect them, but they rely in vain. The police are simply suborned, as in the Sviridov case and thousands of others, while the local and federal governments refuse to admit the fact itself of ethnic strife, automatically mumbling inanities about mere "hooliganism" where ethnic strife is plainer than the noses on their faces.

Another fact of life is that the invaders, one and all, are armed and are using weapons on the slightest provocation as well as without it. Their young have been brought up on Chechen ("Ichkerian") videos from the two Chechen wars and hate all Russians indiscriminately. The weaponless Russians (Russian speakers, actually), accustomed to live in ethnic peace for decades, were slow to react at first. Manezhka has shown that things are changing. Blaming Russian "extremists" and nationalists for this is plain pathetic.

Russia's political class, busy with jockeying for power and division and re-division of the country's assets, simply refuses to admit that it is sitting on top of a volcano. Well, in the late 1980s the Gorbachev bunch behaved in much the same way ­ and lost the country.

 

Keyword Tags:

Russia, Government, Politics, Moscow Riots - Russia, Extremism, Moscow Riots - Russia, Law, Corruption, Crime - Russia News - Russia - Johnson's Russia List

Bookmark and Share - Back to the Top -        

-

Bookmark and Share

- Back to the Top -        


 
 
---->
  Follow Johnson's Russia List on Twitter Tweet