Window on Eurasia

Kremlin Plan to Unite Two Altai Territories Sparks Opposition

 

Paul Goble

Vienna, August 24, 2006 – Public organizations in the Altai Republic are
working to mobilize the population there against Moscow’s plans to
combine that national republic with the neighboring Altai kray and run
a pipeline through what many people in the region view as a sacred
region.

The republic’s Development NGO, Foundation for Culture and Sport in
the Altai Republic, Ene Til cultural group, and Kuresh National
Struggle Organization have formed an umbrella group to oppose any change in the status of the republic, the Russian Agency for National News reports
[http://www.annews.ru/news/detail.php?ID=13334].

Vladimir Kydyyev, the president of Ene Til, told ANN that he and his
colleagues are hearing ever more reports that the federal authorities
are interested in combining the two Altai units, but he insisted that
there was absolutely no reason to take this step and that an
overwhelming majority of the republic’s population are opposed.

The republic is completely capable of solving its own economic
problems, he said, insisting that “if a referendum on this question were
conducted in the republic today without any administrative pressure,
then approximately 80 percent of its residents would vote for the
preservation” of the status quo.

Ene Til and the other organizations plan to take a number of steps to
resist what they are sure will be mounting Moscow pressure on their
republic. In the near term, they plan to convene a kurultai (congress)
of the Altai people to which they plan to invite representatives of the
Yakut, Buryat, Tuvin, Khakas, Tatar, and Bashkir peoples as well.

Moreover, Kydyyev said, they “plan to appeal to international human
rights organizations in order to attract the attention of world public
opinion to this process of combining the two regions” and to the
threat this represents to all ethnic minorities in the Russian
Federation.

And finally, although Kydyyev does not mention it, the new group
appears likely to reach out to Turkey, the government of which operated a
Turkish lycee in the Altai Republic and a land and people with which
many of the residents of the Altai feel a particular affinity.

One reason the Altai activists are almost certain to take this step is
the success Adygei leaders had when they did so. By reminding Moscow of
the large number of their fellow Circassians in Turkey and especially
the Turkish military, the Adygei forced Moscow to back down from its
plans to fold that region into a larger Russian one.

In the past, the Altai Republic’s political leadership also expressed
its opposition to any change in the federal unit’s status. At the
time of his appointment as head of the republic, Aleksandr Berdnikov
promised that he would not initiate any process that might lead to the
combination of the two Altais.

And the republic’s legislative assembly both collectively and
especially in the person of its chairman Aleksandr Nazarchuk have
announced their opposition to it. For his part, Nazarchuk has denounced
repeated calls by officials in the Altair Kray for consolidation as
“impermissible.”

But over the last few months, both Moscow and its allies in the Altai
kray have stepped up the pressure on Altai Republic officials to
support unification, and consequently, Yuri Chernyshov, who heads the Altai
School of Political Research, told ANN that Moscow’s victory in this
competition is likely “inevitable.”

That is because of the importance to Moscow of the territory the two
Altais occupy: the point at which the borders of Russia, Kazakhstan,
China and Mongolia and because of Moscow’s plans to build a pipeline
through an area that many Altai residents view as sacred.

A Kazakhstan commentator has denounced these plans for a pipeline
through the Altai as sacriligious and suggested that they should be
viewed as equivalent to the construction of a pipeline right through
Moscow’s Danilevskiy monastery, something he says no Russian would
sit still for
[http://www.apn.kz/publications/print5430.htm].

But however that might be, the Kremlin appears likely to continue to
press for the amalgamation of these two regions, concluding that its
administrative means and the shared identity of the Altai peoples
within the two federal subjects will prove sufficient to gain it a victory
after its recent defeat in Adygeia.

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