TALLINN – Russian officials in the Finno-Ugric republics of the Middle Volga appear to be preparing for a new round of repression against the democratic opposition there, employing language about the latter that recalls some of the worst features of the Soviet past.

On December 6, Ilya Klebanov, the plenipotentiary representative of the Russian president to the North West Federal District, called a meeting of officials from these republics to discuss what he said was a rise of extremism there and the measures he proposed to take against those responsible.

The next day, Klebanov told a press conference in Syktyvkar that the situation had become “a matter of concern” because “a large number social organizations [in that region now were by their public actions] ever more clearly demonstrating their nationalist extremist strivings.”

There are now more than 400 non-governmental organizations in the district, he continued, “and the overwhelming majority of them are special structures who under the form of social work are involved in business or something else. We know this as well. But nevertheless, it is impermissible to simplify the situation in any way.”

“For Russia, this is intolerable,” the presidential representative continued. “Russia is a multi-national country and has lived for centuries in national peace and accord,” adding quite reasonably that “such tendencies sharpen in a society when social problems exist.”

At one level, of course, Klebanov’s remarks are nothing more than an effort by a representative of Moscow to follow the lead of the center in all things. His remarks came at precisely the time that the Duma and President Vladimir Putin were working on the new law restricting the activities of NGOs.

But at the local level and largely out of the view of the Moscow media, Klebanov’s remarks have triggered actions by Russian officials in the Finno-Ugric republics of Mari El, Mordovia and Udmurtia to step up their campaign against democratic activists by demonizing them and their supporters in Moscow and abroad.

This campaign, which has been going on for some time, had been intensifying even before Klebanov spoke. On November 23, a website that has frequently attacked the democratic opponents of governments there featured a long article entitled “The ‘Mari Card’ in the Great Game Against Russia”.

That article attacked not only the democratic activists in the region but their supporters in Moscow and outside of the Russian Federation, especially Estonia and the two other Finno-Ugric states, Finland and Hungary, which have pushed the European Union to focus its attention on the situation in Mari El.

But in the last two weeks, following Klebanov’s meeting, Russian officials in these republics and especially in Mari El have stepped up their efforts to demonize their opponents, isolate them from the outside world, and attack all those who support the national aspirations of these people.

The first attack was against the leaders of the Mari community in Moscow, a group that has often served as a link between the isolated Middle Volga and the outside world. It was denounced by News12.ru on December 6 as having become “in essence a coordinating center for the subversive activities of foreign states against the Mari Republic -- and that means against Russia as a whole.”

Among the leaders of that group, the website said, are two former KGB officers, Yu.I. Yeroffeyev and M.A. Dolgov, both of whom have been active political opponents of Mari El President Leonid Markelov and his regime.

And the site then pointed out that the KGB of the USSR at one time had realized well-developed methods for replacing regimes, which had been successfully applied in the countries of Asia and Africa in the 1960s and 1970s” and in such efforts the Soviet agency often used “national feelings” as “the chief moving force.”
“As a former officer of the KGB,” the site continued, “Yerofeyev certainly “had access to such materials. In any case, his use of the slogan ‘Mari El for the Maris’ is fully consistent with the conception of ‘national-liberation movements’” in the past.

Such commentaries are cleverly but clearly designed to suggest to the people in the region, to Russian human rights groups in Moscow, and to those in the West who have taken up the Mari cause that it is not regimes like that of Markelov but their opponents who have links with the security organs.

But in the last weeks, attacks against the supporters of the Mari El opposition have become even more hyperbolic and vicious. On December 8, for instance, News12.ru picked up a story from a Russian-language paper in Estonia suggesting that Markelov’s opponents are involved in the trafficking of drugs between Central Asia and Europe.

Then, on December 9, the site featured an article which suggested that anti-Markelov groups had formed an alliance with Islamist groups and that Vladimir Kozlov, one of the democratic leaders in Mari El, had even promised to distribute leaflets and broadsides in Mari El prepared by Chechen militant Shamil Basayev.

The article continued with the assertion that Finno-Ugric opposition groups were actively engaged in seeking “a rapprochement” with Turkic groups and that some of them had been “honored guests” at a recent meeting of the Congress of the Turkish Youth Organization in Istanbul.

On December 12, the same site reported, the leader of the traditional – and entirely loyal to the Markelov regime – Muslim organization in Mari El, Fanus Salimgareyev, had gone on television to denounce this alliance of the Finno-Ugric nationalists and what he called the “Fahabite” [sic] Muslim extremists.

This report added that the Mari nationalists had turned to the radical Islamists because “under the pressure of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,” their supporters in the West are backing away from them, forcing Markelov’s opponents to seek help from more radical groups “generously financed by Saudi Arabia.”

And on December 14, News12.ru launched a major attack on the leadership of the Mari State Pedagogical Institute, suggesting that as a result of “the complete discrediting of the nationalist organizations ‘Mariy Ushem’ and ‘Mer Kanash,’” that training center had become “the center of the activity of the separatists.”

This educational establishment, the site continued, “always has been under the influence of the nationalists.” That is because most of its students are from rural areas, do not speak Russian well, and hence can be easily convinced by the leaders of the school that all their problems are the result of the dominance of ethnic Russians in the republic.

The article listed a number of staff members who it said were particularly guilty in this regard and then concluded with the assertion that this institution is becoming ever more nationalist in advance of 2007 when Markelov’s government has announced that it will be shut down.

“The goal” of all this activity” on the part of the leaders of the school, News12.ru said, “is to present before the ‘friends’ of Russia abroad the process of the structural reform of the higher school [in that Finno-Ugric republic] as an action directed at the genocide of the Mari people.”

But the goal of all these articles clearly is to de-legitimize the democratic opposition to the Russian-dominated regimes in the Middle Volga not only in the eyes of the people there but also and perhaps even more importantly in the minds of Western governments who had been prepared to criticize what these regimes are doing.

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