RFE/RL Russian Federation Report: Excerpts
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RFE/RL Russian Federation Report: Excerpts
RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
________________________________________________________
RFE/RL Russian Federation Report
6 March 2002, Volume 4, Number 8
PAN REGIONAL ISSUES
..
SAKHA'S HARMONIZATION EFFORT FOUND FAULTY... Legislators in the Sakha
(Yakutia) Republic approved a bill on 4 March amending and changing 11
articles of the republican constitution -- a measure designed to bring
the latter document into compliance with the federal constitution,
Interfax-Eurasia reported. Legislators repealed the stipulation
banning the storage of spent nuclear fuel or the placement of any
weapons of mass destruction on the republic's territory. Sakha
legislators had resisted making the changes in the constitution for
some months last year (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 17 January 2001).
However, the republic's prosecutor, Nikolai Polyatinskii, was not
pleased with their effort and said he is going to recommend that Sakha
President Vyacheslav Shtyrov seek to dissolve the legislature.
According to Interfax-Eurasia, he said that five laws making changes
and amendments to the constitution adopted during 2001-02 introduced
new violations of the federal constitution. JAC
..AS CRITICISMS ARE ALSO LODGED AGAINST TATARSTAN'S NEW
CONSTITUTION... Following the passage in its first reading of
Tatarstan's new constitution in the republican legislature, State Duma
Legislation Committee head (Union of Rightist Forces) Pavel
Krasheninnikov has declared that some paragraphs of the draft
constitution contradict laws crafted by his committee, RFE/RL's Kazan
bureau reported on 4 March. Specifically, he said stipulations
regarding republican citizenship may spark new protests by
prosecutors. Tatarstan's legislature passed in its first reading on 28
February a bill amending the republic's constitution. According to
RFE/RL's Kazan bureau, the most heated disputes were devoted to the
1994 power-sharing treaty between Russia and Tatarstan, as well as
citizenship in Tatarstan, which is separate from citizenship in
Russia, according to the bureau. "Izvestiya" reported on 1 March that
the new version still defines Tatarstan as a sovereign state.
Tatarstan's president, Mintimer Shaimiev, said at the legislative
session that "we realize that some will not like the mention of
sovereignty in the Constitution of Tatarstan. However, the Russian
Constitution recognizes republics as states. Consequently, it is
impossible to reject the notion of sovereignty either hypothetically
or in practice." In addition, in the new version, Tatarstan also
retains its own citizenship, but "citizens of the Republic of
Tatarstan are at the same time citizens of the Russian Federation."
According to Shaimiev, the notion of "citizenship of Tatarstan" is
symbolic, linked with the fact that Tatarstan is acknowledged as a
state but regulates no relations in reality. A second reading is
slated for late March or early April. JAC
..ALTHOUGH MOSCOW ALLEGEDLY PAID DEARLY FOR REVISIONS. According to
"Vek" on 22 February, Tatarstan's new constitution does not give
Tatarstan the right to its own separate judicial system or the right
to conclude international treaties. And Tatarstan also rephrased its
sections regarding its "association" with the Russian Federation. In
exchange for these concessions, according to the weekly, the republic
won economic benefits, such as some 12.8 billion rubles ($420 million)
earmarked in the federal budget for Tatarstan's socioeconomic
development in 2002. In comparison, a development program for the
entire Southern federal district of Russia was funded at the level of
only 600 million rubles, according to the weekly. JAC
..
MARII EL
MARII CULTURE UNDER PRESSURE. Representatives of the Marii political
opposition recently took part in a press conference organized in Kazan
by the Tatar Public Center, Liberal Russia in Tatarstan, and the
public political movement Idel-Ural, RFE/RL's Kazan bureau reported on
1 March, citing "Vostochnyi ekspress." Viktor Nikolaev, the chairman
of the All-Marii Council and a former Marii El culture minister, said
Marii opposition movements are preparing to protest against pressure
being exerted on the Marii language and culture in the republic. They
are appealing to Tatars, as well as to related Finno-Ugric peoples,
for support. Nikolaev said that since Leonid Markelov, who was
supported by the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, took over as
president of the republic, a government body in charge of ethnic
issues has been abolished and a major discussion on the necessity of
teaching the Marii language has been initiated. In addition, the
Education Ministry's National Education Department has also been
closed, while its employees have been accused of "spreading the Marii
language," he said. The opposition newspaper "Kudo-Kodu" is printed
outside the republic with the support of George Soros's Open Society
Fund. JAC
..
END NOTE
PROFILE OF A DISAPPEARING PEOPLE
By Jolyon Naegele
Across Siberia, small, traditionally nomadic ethnic groups have been
fighting a losing battle for decades, if not centuries, against
encroaching Russian settlement and the ensuing pressures of
assimilation, economic development, and alcoholism. The collapse of
the Soviet Union a decade ago resulted in new hardships as
cradle-to-grave socialism gave way to dog-eat-dog Wild East
capitalism. A case in point is one of Russia's least developed
regions, Evenk Autonomous Okrug, a vast area of more than
three-quarters of a million (767,600) square kilometers, nearly as
large as Turkey, inhabited by some 20,000 people -- 8,000 of them
Evenks. The remainder are settlers from elsewhere in Russia who
arrived in several waves -- the first with the founding of the
settlement of Vanavara in 1921.
During the economic upheavals in Russia during the 1990s, many
residents left the region for more populated districts far to the
south, leaving behind a decimated, formerly nomadic population no
longer able to survive in the taiga and devastated by rampant
alcoholism. Pavlina Brzakova, a Czech doctoral candidate in
anthropology at Prague's Charles University, has made seven solo
expeditions to Evenkia during the past decade. She has been witness to
a disappearing way of life, recording the last shamans and traditional
singers, interviewing the last nomadic reindeer herders and
collecting, translating and publishing folk tales.
According to Brzakova, there are fewer and fewer families who have
succeeded in maintaining a herd (through Soviet times) or won back
possession of their herds after the collapse of the sovkhozes and
kolkhozes (state and collective farms). A program supporting nomads
was established in 1991 but soon collapsed when the government
realized that the oldest generation was dying out -- mainly people who
are no longer able to live in the taiga and can no longer take care of
themselves. A center was set up for the elderly at Vanavara to care
for former nomads who are too old and infirm to rough it in the taiga.
But the nomads inevitably succumbed to depression and alcoholism.
There have been a variety of attempts to encourage Evenks and other
small, northern peoples in Siberia to return to a nomadic way of life,
with mixed results. Brzakova says the Evenk generation that,
theoretically, would be able to return to the region's original
nomadic way of life no longer has the experience to do so. Starting in
the 1930s, 24-hour-a-day nursery schools and boarding schools were
established so that parents could lead a nomadic life and watch over
the herds. Meanwhile, their children were educated by Russian teachers
and began to speak Russian, not Evenk. After a while, they were no
longer able to communicate in any language other than Russian.
Brzakova told RFE/RL that "since they've been living in a village, are
sedentary and have gone through the whole system of boarding schools
until adulthood, they are not capable of orienting themselves in the
taiga." She continued: "They haven't even any basic know-how about how
to look after the herd [or] what it means to be a nomad. At best, they
are able during hunting season to catch fur-bearing animals. That's
all they are capable of. And so they spend all summer in the village
doing nothing -- at the most fishing and drinking vodka."
Nevertheless, Brzakova says the idea of nomadism is receiving
considerable publicity: "Now, within the framework of national revival
[among northern nomadic peoples], handbooks on nomadic life are being
published. There's a lot of interest all across Siberia in these.
These books have been a great success. But of course there's the
question of what practical effect they will have. Everyone is buying
them, and everyone has the tendency to return to being a nomad because
of pressures from the difficult economic situation. They are aware
that if they don't look after themselves, no one else will either."
>From 1993 to 1994, local authorities made herds of reindeer available.
Whoever wanted to raise the reindeer would receive a subsidy in the
form of fodder. Evenks would claim a herd, Brzakova says, but not
bother to build fences. Inevitably, the herd would wander off, or else
the owners would slaughter the herd for food. As a result, Brzakova
says a return to a nomadic way of life has proven difficult in all but
a few cases, mainly in the area around Tura and Baikit. As Brzakova
puts it, "Basically, the nomadic way of life is all but gone, and it
appears that attempts to revive it are not succeeding because these
attempts are too artificial and people don't really want to" return to
the taiga.
Yet, the Czech anthropologist notes, even amid the despondency and
alcoholism, there appears a growing sense of national identity among
the Evenks. "The Evenks only began expressing themselves [nationally]
in the last two years, possibly at the urging of the Yakuts in the
[neighboring] Sakha Republic, because the contacts are very close,
even though traditionally they were enemies," she says. "But all the
same, the fact that the Yakuts are advancing and are organizing all
sorts of conferences, it seems that they are having an effect on the
Evenks because they are in close proximity to each other and
participate in these conferences and are trying to express themselves
as a nation."
But Brzakova notes that the wide dispersion of Evenks across
northeastern Asia is a handicap. "The Evenks are spread out from the
Yenisei [River] eastwards across all of Siberia. Those who live in the
Evenk Autonomous Okrug number 8,000, but in total there are about
29,000 Evenks. Ten thousand of them live in China, and 4,000 live in
Mongolia. So they really are spread out, which is to their great
disadvantage because they have fallen victim to assimilation, in
contrast to the Yakuts, who are concentrated in their Republic of
Sakha, or Buryats who have their own territory," Brzakova says. "Where
they are more compact, they are capable of resisting assimilation and
acculturation. In these places, they are more nationalistic [toward
the local Russian population]. They won't let Russians work as civil
servants and the tendencies for [national] revival are stronger."
Brzakova says the "Evenks want the Evenk Autonomous Okrug to be
Evenk." However, she says Evenk nationalism is not expressed in terms
of violence but rather in an interest in gaining positions in the
local administration -- and in the development of a fledgling Evenk
intelligentsia. In addition to publishing a bilingual newspaper,
"Evenkiiskaya Zhizn" (Evenk Life), Evenks in the okrug capital, Tura,
have published an Evenk grammar book, a songbook, a cookbook, a
dictionary of Evenk names, and a catalogue of Evenk artists. Brzakova
notes that there aren't many university-educated people among the
Evenk intelligentsia. "Within the framework of the national revival,
these people are largely the offspring of parents who were nomads, and
they remember this, but they don't live in the taiga. Simply put,
there is a kind of deep sympathy," she says. "They feel the need to
look for their roots, and so they try, for example, to compose songs,
even if Evenk songs were originally improvised. They sang what they
saw around themselves."
Brzakova acknowledges that the chances of the Evenk intelligentsia
helping the region find a way out of its dire economic situation are
"very small." But she says young Evenks represent a certain hope for
the future. The old nomadic world is probably gone forever, so they
must become accustomed to the contemporary world. In Brzakova's words,
"They will have to learn to accept responsibility for their
decisions." In Soviet days, someone else always assumed
responsibility. Now, she says, most Evenks do not know how to deal
with the new conditions. They do not understand that living somewhere
and having electricity all cost money. They are unable to evaluate
their work, or to plan. Instead she says, they live from day to day.
Thus, Brzakova says, it is hardly surprising when the Russian oil
company Yukos, which is building up its operations in Evenkia, says it
is unable to find suitable Evenks to hire. But, she warns, "We just
can't chase them back into the forest."
Jolyon Naegele is an RFE/RL correspondent based in Prague.
--
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