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Moscow’s Loss of Influence Abroad Said Product of Problems at Home Vienna, June 30, 2006 – Moscow has lost influence abroad not so much because of the loss of the former Soviet republics or the absence of human and natural resources but rather because the Russian government lacks the ability to mobilize the country for the achievement of common goals, according to one of Russia’s most controversial analysts. more story...
Moscow Said to Lack Clear Definition of ‘Compatriot’ Vienna, June 30, 2006 – Despite the frequent and highly politicized use of the term “compatriot” by President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials, Moscow lacks a precise definition of just who Russia’s “compatriots” are, what their relationship to the country should be, and how the Russian government ought deal with them. more story...
Moscow’s Plan to Close Religions Museum Angers Muslims Vienna, June 30, 2006 – Moscow’s announced plans to eliminate the Museum of History of Religions in St. Petersburg by combining it with Russian Ethnographic Museum there into a single Museum of Civilizations will
destroy a unique institution and work against the interests of Russia’s Muslims, a leading Muslim broadcaster says. more story...
Russian Officers Denounce ‘Clericalization of the Military’ Vienna, June 29, 2006 – A group of Russian officers has denounced what it calls the unconstitutional “clericalization” of the Russian armed forces and says that by promoting that development, the Orthodox Church and some in the higher command are spreading Islamophobia and thus undermining the military’s cohesion. more story...
Moscow’s Ties to Islamic World Could Make Russia a ‘Russistan,’ Chudinova Says Vienna, June 29, 2006 – The Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to form alliances with countries in the Islamic world might under certain conditions help Moscow to win a kind of victory over the United States, but such a
victory, however welcome, would be Pyrrhic because it would help convert Russia into a “Russistan,” Elena Chudinova warned last week. more story...
Many Russians Say Voting for Incumbents Best Form of Protest Vienna, June 29, 2006 – Nearly one in every three Russians says that the most effective way for their countrymen to protest existing conditions is to vote for members of the party in office because its members are responsible for resolving the problems that have given rise to the anger of the voters. more story...
Baku Blocks Young Azeris From Studying at Islamic Universities Abroad Vienna, June 28, 2006 – The Azerbaijani authorities reportedly are prohibiting young people there who want to study in Islamic universities in Iran, Egypt and other Muslim countries from going abroad as part of Baku’s broader campaign to prevent the spread of political Islam in that south Caucasus republic. more story...
Moscow Urged to Use Tax Code, Zoning Laws to Boost Birthrate Vienna, June 28, 2006 – The Russian government will be more successful in boosting the country’s birthrate, especially in the urban middle class, by giving tax breaks to businesses that employ women with two or more children and by prohibiting the construction of small apartments than by offering the kind of payments President Vladimir Putin has announced, according to a Moscow analyst. more story...
Moscow Ignoring Impact of Benefits Monetarization in Regions Vienna, June 28, 2006 – In the months since the large public demonstrations against the monetarization of benefits died down, the Russian government and the Moscow media have largely ignored the ways in which this change has continued to hit ordinary Russians in the regions very hard. more story...
Putin Policies Said Leading to ‘Degradation’ of Russia’s Regions Vienna, June 27, 2006 – President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to create a power vertical in which Moscow controls everything may have saved the country from disintegration, but they are “leading to the degradation” of Russia’s regions and thus threating the country’s future in other ways, according to a Urals-based scholar. more story...
Putin Said Exploiting Religion to Control Electorate Vienna, June 27, 2006 – Religion plays a major role in Russian elections, not so much by energizing the population to vote for one or another
candiate but rather by “sacralizing” the existing power structures and thus reducing the chances that Russian voters will select someone that those in power do not approve. more story...
Drug Seizures Up in Russia But So Too is Drug Abuse Vienna, June 27, 2006 – The senior Russian government official responsible for combatting drug abuse proudly announced yesterday that his officers had seized five tons of heroin last year, five times more than the annual average of the early years of this decade and an indecation that Russia has stopped the growth in drug addiction. more story...
Mironov Calls Editor an ‘Enemy’ of Russia for Article on WWII Vienna, June 26, 2006 – In indication of the sensitivity of World War II for many Russians and the tendency of some to react harsly to any divergence from the official line, Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov denounced an editor for publishing a story about a quasi-autonomous Russian republic at the time of German occupation. more story...
Russians Say Their Political Culture is Unique but Changing Vienna, June 26, 2006 – Two out of every three Russians (67 percent) believe that the political culture of their country is very different from that of other developed countries, but one in four (24 percent) thinks that it is roughly the same, according to the results of a survey carried out across the country earlier this month. more story...
Russia Facing a Hepatitis B Epidemic Vienna, June 23, 2006 – Russian epidemiologists warned this week that the population of their country is on the brink of an epidemic of hepatitis B, a disease that already affects more than seven million people and one that is likely to cause the premature deaths of as many as two percent of that group. more story...
Russians Say They’re Victims of Ethnic Discrimination in Karelia Vienna, June 23, 2006 – Russians are victims of ethnic discrimination in Karelia, the result of the continuing application of what one Russian writer there says was the mistaken Soviet approach of promoting the national consciousness of small groups to the detriment of the ethnic Russian majority. more story...
Muslim Leader Decries Patriarchate’s Violations of Russian Constitution Vienna, June 23, 2006 – A leading Muslim leader last week condemned the Moscow Patriarchate for violating the Russian Constitution’s provisions calling for the separation of church and state and for the equality of religions, criticism that many Orthodox Christians say is wrong but the ever more Muslims argue is long overdue. more story...
Special Privileges for Ethnic Russians Said “a Path to Chaos” Vienna, June 22, 2006 – Attempting to give special privileges to ethnic Russians who form up to 80 percent of the population of the Russian Federation, as some advocates of the slogan “Russia for the Russians” would like, is “a path to chaos” that undermine any chance that Russia could survive and prosper, according to one Moscow analyst. more story...
Russia Said Putting Itself at Risk of Becoming a Second Serbia Vienna, June 22, 2006 – The Russian Federation risks transforming itself into a second Serbia if it moves to incorporate one or more of the so-called “unrecognized states,” a step that would not only isolate Moscow internationally but threaten the territorial integrity of the country itself, according to a leading Moscow analyst. more story...
Kremlin Policies Blamed for Rise of Separatism in Sakha Vienna, June 21, 2006 – The Kremlin’s “short-sighted policies” in Sakha (Yakutia) and especially the work of its political technologists are
unleashing “the genie of separatism” in that Far Eastern republic, a development that the leader of the opposition there argues could prove “fatal” for the Russian Federation as a whole. more story...
Russia’s Religious Oppose Ending Deferments for Seminarians Vienna, June 21, 2006 – The leaders of Russia’s largest religious communities – Orthodoxy, Islam, and Protestantism – are individually and collectively speaking out against Defense Ministry plans to end existing draft deferments for those studying in their respective religious training institutions. more story...
Moscow is Very Far Away for Residents of Russia’s Far East Vienna, June 21, 2006 – Fewer than one in five residents of the Russian Federation’s Siberian and Far Eastern Federal Districts has visited Moscow or St. Petersburg even once during the last decade, a reflection of the enormous distances and daunting difficulties involved in making such a trip. more story...
Moscow Now Wrestling with the Problems of its Own Non-Citizens Vienna, June 20, 2006 – After more than 15 years of complaining about the status of those who did not qualify for citizenship in the Baltic states, Moscow is now having to deal with the problems arising from the fact that thousands of ethnic Russians do not have citizenship in the Russian Federation. more story...
Weakness of Russian Nationalists Reflects Their Statist Approach Vienna, June 20, 2006 – Russian nationalists have failed to win a large following not because they have incorrectly identified the grievances many ethnic Russians feel but rather because the prescriptions they offer, almost all of which require the state rather than the people to act, are alien to the traditions of the Russian people themselves. more story...
Chinese Texts Say Siberia a ‘Temporarily Lost’ Chinese Land, Russians Complain Vienna, June 20, 2006 – Chinese textbooks currently portray “Western Siberia up to and including Tomsk oblast as temporarily lost Chinese territories,” according to a researcher in the Altai Republic. And as a result, many Chinese students expect that “sooner or later,” the Chinese will return there. more story...
Plans to Unite Moscow City, Oblast Prove Divisive Vienna, June 19, 2006 – Kremlin plans to unite Moscow city and Moscow oblast into a single federal unit are already dividing the residents of these
two neighboring areas and indeed the population of the country as a whole, with a majority of city residents now opposed while two-third of the residents of the oblast saying they favor such a step. more story...
A “Catalonian Recipe” in Russia’s Future? Vienna, June 19, 2006 – By overwhelmingly approving a new charter identifying themselves as a country within Spain and their language as the preferential one in their region, the Catalans have shown the way for European countries to avoid two interrelated problems that could threaten many of them: hypercentralization and disintegration. more story...
Moscow Urged to Mobilize CIS Muslims Against U.S. Vienna, June 19, 2006 – Moscow should mobilize Muslim groups in the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States in order to block
the expansion of American influence in that region, according to Geidar Dzhemal, the head of the Islamic Committee of Russia who has often allied himself with Russia’s most anti-Western politicians. more story...
Russia’s Muslims Shift from Building Mosques to Training Mullahs Vienna, June 16, 2006 – Russia’s Muslims have built more than 7,000 mosques over the last 15 years, but many of them lack either a congregation capable of supporting them or well-trained mullahs who can lead these communities. As a result, the country’s Muslim leaders are shifting their attention away from the construction of mosques to the training of mullahs. more story...
No Azerbaijani Revolution in Iran Likely, Moscow Specialist Says Vienna, June 16, 2006 – Radzhab Safarov, a senior Moscow specialist on Iran who serves as an advisor to the chairman of the Russian Duma, has dismissed the suggestion of some observers that ethnic Azerbaijanis living in Iran may constitute a threat to the Iranian political system. more story...
New Site Helps Muslim Women in Russia Find Muslim Husbands Abroad Vienna, June 16, 2006 – Muslim women in the Russian Federation who would like to marry Muslim men abroad can now turn to the first such website that seeks not only to facilitate marriages of this type but also to promote Islamic family values, acccording to one of its organizers. more story...
Ethnic Russian Converts Seen Threatening Tatar Dominance of Islam in Russia Tallinn, June 15, 2006 – Even as Tatars this week marked the 1,117th anniversary of the adoption of Islam by their forefathers in the Middle Volga, some of their number expressed concern that a recent wave of ethnic Russian conversions to Islam could reduce Tatar sominance of the Islamic community in the Russian Federation. more story...
'Russia for the Russians’ Said a 'Cry of Despair,’ Not a Xenophobic Program Tallinn, June 15, 2006 – Increasing popular support for the slogan "Russia for the Russians” is not powering a rise in ethnically or religiously based crime or pointing the way toward fascism, according to a St. Petersburg political scientist. Instead, it is „a cry of despair” by both Russians and non-Russians alike who have suffered so much over the last 15 years. more story...
Baku’s Approach on Radical Islam Said a Model for Post-Soviet States Tallinn, June 15, 2006 – Baku has blocked the rise of a radical Islamist movement there despite the fact that Azerbaijan has many of the preconditions „essential” for such a movement, and that very success should make it „a model” for Russia and other post-Soviet states, according to a leading Moscow analyst. more story...
Moscow's Failure to Mark Sakharov Anniversary Reflects Larger Problems Tallinn, June 14, 2006 -- Both the Russian government and most of the Russian media passed over in silence the 85th anniversary of the birth of Academician Andrei Sakharov at the end of May, leaving the commemoration of that event to human rights activists and prompting a bitter reflection by one Russian intellectual on where Russia is heading now. more story...
Orthodox Church Fights Internet Dependence in Yekaterinburg Tallinn, June 14, 2006 -- Following a tragic incident in which a Yekaterinburg schoolboy suffered a fatal stroke after play video games twelve hours a day, the rehabilitation center operated by that city's Russian Orthodox Church eparchate is now working to combat a rising tide of Internet dependence there. more story...
Russia Said Heading Toward '1937 Light' Tallinn, June 13, 2006 – The recent wave of dismissals and retirements from the FSB, the Federation Council, and in the regions suggests that the Russian authorities are moving toward a „softer and smaller” version of the purges of 1937 – something which might be called „1937 light,” according to one Russian nationalist author. more story...
Patriarch’s Decoration of Vodka King Outages Russia’s Muslims Tallinn, June 13, 2006 – Patriarch Aleksii II’s decision to decorate senior officials from one of Russia’s largest vodka producers has outraged many Russian Muslims not only because of Islam’s prohibition of the use of alcohol but also because of the cozy relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and big business that this award calls attention to. more story...
'Moderate Islam' Is Not Equivalent to Islamic Moderation, Writer Says Tallinn, June 13, 2006 – „The difference between Islamic moderation and ‚moderate Islam’ is approximately the same as that between a water pipe and a sewer,” according to a leading Muslim commentator in Russia. And those who confuse the two, he says, are consciously or not undermining the Islamic faith. more story...
Islamic Revival in Russia Less than Meets the Eye, Muslim Leader Says Tallinn, May 29, 2006 -- Over the last 15 years, the head of the Nizhniy Novogorod Muslim Spiritual Drectorate (MSD) said last week, Russia’s Muslims have opened a large number of new mosques but they have done far less to transform either themselves or their community than Islam requires. more story...
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