MINELRES: RFE/RL: Russia: Tatar Nationalist Loses Appeal; Embattled Tycoon Casts Spotlight on Nationalities Issues

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RFE/RL Russian Political Weekly
Vol. 3, No. 15, 17 April 2003

A Weekly Review of News and Analysis of Russian Domestic Politics

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TATARSTAN

TATAR NATIONALIST LOSES APPEAL, CLAIMS POLITICAL PERSECUTION.
Tatarstan's Supreme Court rejected the appeal of Rafis Kashapov, leader
of the Tatar Public Center branch in Chally, who was arrested on 25
March, RFE/RL's Kazan bureau reported on 11 April. The Supreme Court
left the ruling of the lower Chally City Court unchanged; that court
ruled that leaflets found in Kashapov's apartment incited interethnic
and interconfessional discord by featuring negative assessments of the
Russian people and Russian Orthodoxy. Police searched Kashapov's
residence during the investigation of an act of vandalism at the
construction site of St. Tatyana's church in Chally last October (see
"RFE/RL Newsline," 4 October 2002). Kashapov told "Vremya novostei" last
month that there were political motives behind his arrest. The deputy
head of the Chally center, Geptrakhman Jeleletdinov, told RFE/RL's
Tatar-Bashkir Service on 25 March that the action against Kashapov and
his brother, who was also arrested, must have been ordered "from above"
and is a result of several years' "political persecution" by prosecutors
with the support by the Chally administration. Last May, members of the
Chally branch of Tatar Public Center were beaten up, and Kashapov
refused to attend the trial this year of those charged in the attack,
because he said that "the organizers [of the attack] are still at large,
and the authorities remain silent concerning them." JAC

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END NOTE

EMBATTLED TYCOON CASTS SPOTLIGHT ON NATIONALITIES ISSUES

By Charles Carlson and Denis Valeev

Although he relocated to London in late 2000, self-exiled Russian tycoon
Boris Berezovskii continues to feel legal pressure from Moscow, and next
month he faces an extradition hearing in a London court. The
Prosecutor-General's Office might be pursuing its case against
Berezovskii with particular vigor because the former oligarch continues
to play a significant political role in Russia, managing to stir up
trouble in places far away from London. At a recent Liberal Russia party
conference in Kazan devoted to the ethnic problems of the peoples of the
Volga region, Berezovskii moderated a forum dominated by criticism of
Moscow's nationalities policy. Berezovskii was officially expelled from
the Liberal Russia party in October, but some regional organizations of
the party continue to cooperate with him.

The March conference provided a rare public discussion of the
deficiencies in the federal government's approach to nationality policy.
Speaker after speaker lambasted Moscow's recent initiatives with regard
to the non-Russian peoples of the Russian Federation. Berezovskii,
speaking via video link from London, wrapped up the proceedings with a
denunciation of the current direction of Russian government policy and
its likely negative consequences for the cohesion of the federation.

State Duma Deputy Fendes Safiullin (Russian Regions), who was elected
from a single-mandate district in Tatarstan, kicked off the chorus of
complaints with a stinging comment about the status of Vladimir Zorin,
government minister without portfolio in charge of nationalities policy.
Safiullin charged that Zorin has neither political influence nor
financial resources: Zorin "is merely a bum minister with no staff,
finances, or power."

Safiullin also charged that the articles of the Russian Constitution
that grant state status to the languages of ethnic minorities in the
republics of the Russian Federation and that declare that international
legal norms on ethnic rights take precedence over national laws are
routinely violated. He deplored a February 2002 federal government
decree requiring that all university dissertations be written in
Russian. He also deplored a government ban on offering university
courses in the language and history of non-Russian peoples with
instruction in national languages. Safiullin criticized the fact that,
despite the many native languages of the Russian Federation, passports
are issued only in Russian. He pointed out that in 1998 the
Constitutional Court abolished the requirement that candidates for the
office of executive-branch head in the republics of the federation must
be able to speak the language of the titular non-Russian population.

Safiullin said that to preserve its image as part of European
civilization, Russia must be more sensitive to the needs of its ethnic
minorities. He said the 2002 ban on the planned Tatar orthographic
reform from a Cyrillic-based script to a Latin-based one is a "disgrace
for Russia." He recalled that the State Duma rejected the Tatar alphabet
reform on the basis of a fabricated report that claimed the reform was
"initiated by Turkish intelligence." Safiullin said that report labels
all members of the Tatar intelligentsia "Turkish spies." He predicted
that if Russia continues to pursue such negative policies toward its
non-Russian minorities, it could lead to the country's
"self-destruction."

In his remarks to delegates, Kerim Yaushev, a Tatar journalist from
Bashkortostan, echoed Safiullin's criticisms. Yaushev said he disagrees
with some Russian politicians' claims that Russia has no distinct ethnic
policy. "Russia always had a nationalities policy, and this policy's
name is 'the policy of empire,'" he said. Yaushev added that Russian
chauvinism toward non-Russians has been elevated to official state
policy. One aspect of that policy, Yaushev said, is the promotion of
Russian Orthodox Christianity as inherently superior to other faiths.
Yaushev also criticized what he termed the falsification of the results
of the October Russian national census. He said a large number of Tatars
in Bashkortostan were falsely registered as Bashkirs in order to weaken
the status of Tatars in the region and to sow enmity between Tatars and
Bashkirs.

Tatar ethnologist and historian Damir Iskhakov, who is deputy chairman
of the Executive Committee of the World Tatar Congress, also lamented
the direction of Moscow's ethnic policy. He said the ongoing local
self-government reforms disregard ethnicity, even given when the
reformed local authorities will be obliged to administer territories
inhabited only by non-Russian ethnic groups. He said that ever fewer
Tatar children are attending Tatar-language schools. Parents prefer to
send their children to Russian-language schools so that they will
succeed in universities where exams and lectures are conducted
exclusively in Russian, according to Iskhakov.

In his address to the congress, Berezovskii said: "The remaining
economic strengths of Russia's regions, combined with unsolved ethnic
issues, are producing a centrifugal process. This creates an explosion,
which can be seen in the example of Chechnya." Berezovskii said it is
imperative to liberalize Russia's federal structure so that instead of
the center delegating powers to the regions, the regions decide which
powers to delegate to the center. This, Berezovskii continued,
necessitates not strengthening the power vertical, as is being done now,
but devolving power to the federation subjects.

Berezovskii noted that the Russian government is moving toward merging
regions to create larger territorial-administrative units. The next
step, he charged, will be to replace elected regional leaders with ones
appointed by Moscow. He predicted that if the Kremlin-backed Unified
Russia party wins a majority in the State Duma elections in December,
the Kremlin will attempt to amend the constitution to extend the
presidential term in office and to permit the merging of regions and the
appointment of regional leaders.

Of course, this assertion directly contradicts President Vladimir
Putin's public statements that he has no plans to fundamentally alter
the constitution. It is therefore not difficult to imagine that the
Kremlin continues to find Berezovskii irritating - even at a
considerable distance.

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Charles Carlson is a former director of the RFE/RL Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and
Uzbek services, and Denis Valeev is a political scientist and freelance
contributor to the Kazan bureau of RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service.

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Copyright (c) 2003. RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.

The "RFE/RL Russian Political Weekly" is prepared by Julie A. Corwin
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