"Russian at all out of work"
By 2020, the share of Russian citizens who positively evaluate inter-ethnic relations in the country will increase to 65%, and the level of tolerance towards people of other nationalities - to 85%. Such goals are set by the Ministry of Regional Development, said recently the State Secretary, Deputy Minister of Regional Development Svetlana Ivanova.
Speaking at the discussion platform at the congress of United Russia, which was devoted to discussing the presidential decree of 7 in May 2012 of the year “On ensuring inter-ethnic harmony”, she recalled that at the end of August the federal program “Strengthening the unity of the Russian nation and the ethno-cultural development of the peoples of Russia” was adopted .
Before 2020, 6,8 billion rubles are allocated for it, including 4,6 billion rubles from the federal budget. “In particular, centers for monitoring interethnic relations and call-centers for receiving information about conflicts and pre-conflict situations will be created at the regional level. Rules will be defined for prompt response to such situations and the responsibility of officials if they are inactive. In 2014, it is planned to complete the formation of a federal monitoring system, ”she recalled.
The topic of combating illegal migration, which is directly related to national unity, has also been developed in recent days. Thus, the appointment of the former Yamal Governor Vladimir Vladimirov to the post of the Acting Governor of Stavropol, forced many experts to assume that the tough measures taken by him regarding the problems of migration to the territory of Yamal will be implemented in the Stavropol Territory.
Recall also that on Thursday, President Vladimir Putin spoke in favor of toughening the requirements for migrants and invited the government and lawmakers to think about what kinds of foreigners can be replaced by Russians.
Note that, according to VTsIOM, more than half of Russians were in favor of toughening migration laws and called a large number of visitors a negative phenomenon.
Questions about ethnic relations, illegal migration and the expediency of the new federal program VZGLYAD newspaper were answered by an expert on issues of ethnic and religious politics, journalist Maxim Shevchenko.
VIEW: Maxim Leonardovich, it is obvious that the theme of the unity of the nation today is closely intertwined with the problem of migration. Recently, Stavropol Territory was headed by the former vice-governor of Yamal Vladimir Vladimirov, a local native, Cossack by birth. It is known that the Yamal authorities, using the status of the border zone, simply banned everyone from entering their territory. Is it worth it for Vladimirov to use the Yamal experience in his small homeland?
Maxim Shevchenko: Yamal is a special territory where the population is concentrated around heat sources, that is, cities. Nobody migrates there to settle in the tundra. No one will survive there. And the cities will not accommodate all. A lot of money, but small cities. Therefore, in Yamal, regulation of the migration flow is a forced thing. As for the Stavropol Territory, the experience of Yamal is not applicable there. This is a completely different region. There must be other ways of regulation.
Studying in detail the interethnic conflicts in the Stavropol Territory, I came to the conclusion that this is a criminal-economic conflict, the cause of which is the land. In particular, in the region in recent years, there has been a tendency to transfer pasture lands to arable - under grain sowing.
Why it happens? Stavropol region was one of the largest exporters of meat in the Soviet years. Livestock livestock simply destroyed, cut, it is unprofitable. Today, they sow the land, even pumping it with fertilizers, and after that they take grain, for example through Novorossiysk, to the world market and take money offshore. As a result, Stavropol Territory does not get anything from it at all. Extremely profitable business. In fact, the Stavropol Territory under the guise of fighting the "domination of Caucasians" turned into a colony. He does not receive anything from the sale of grain. The same situation in Mineral Waters. Behind many sanatoriums, which actually represent ruins, and behind many objects of dot building in the resort zone, where nothing can be built at all, there are various offshore companies that withdraw their money abroad.
Or take, for example, the same Neftekumsky district of Stavropol. It was necessary to drive out the Dargins, who drove cattle there from Dagestan for decades, in order to convert the land to a different kind - for arable purposes. And remember the ardent and endless disputes over the Nogai’s hijabs - it was the same attempt to pressure this people to be more arrogant to the lands that should go under grain crops. It turns out that the Stavropol Territory has vast natural resources, but cannot dispose of them, because they are completely criminalized.
The second question is the largest in the region Goryachevodsky market in Pyatigorsk. The owners of this market are Armenians, Greeks, and Jews. Russians in the region are robbed primarily by the bureaucracy. Millionaire collective farms disbanded under false pretenses. Land from the people taken away. Now this land under the guise of the Cossack societies transferred to some joint-stock organizations, which consist of 2 – 3 person, as a rule, atamans. Then these lands are rented to the same Caucasians. Israeli companies also lease land there. The Russians are not at all in business, and the arrows are then transferred to Caucasians, and not to local crime, along with bureaucracy and all sorts of crooks who pretend to be Cossacks.
Migration policy in the region is simply monstrous. Chinese, Vietnamese, Kyrgyz, and Tajik are imported to work in agriculture. Well, if where there is the slave trade in the sense of the illegal use of labor of migrants, then the North Caucasus and the Stavropol Territory here do not lag behind Moscow.
In addition, the Stavropol Territory is very strongly associated with Yamal, because in Nizhnevartovsk Nogai and Kumyk have representative offices. Many families in the Stavropol region are fed by Nizhnevartovsk or Noyabrsk. People work there on a rotational basis and send money from there. I think this is a very clever appointment of a governor. At least, this person was regulating a rather complicated situation in international relations in the North. And I think that if he correctly approaches what is happening in the Stavropol region, he will cope.
VIEW: Now the number of Russians, positively assessing inter-ethnic relations in the country, is only 52%. The Federal Target Program adopted at the suggestion of the Ministry of Regional Development promises to raise this level to 65%, with the level of tolerance towards representatives of another nation compared to today's 53% to 85%. Does it make sense to set such clear-mathematical goals, because the work of the federal target program depends not only on the regions, but also on other factors?
M.Sh .: Of course, setting goals in such detail with interest is difficult enough, because sociology depends on how you ask a question. It is necessary to evaluate not by such indicators, but by the content of the projects that are offered under this program. Although I do not exclude the sociological evaluation of the program. I just don’t know where these 65% come from, but in general, given that nobody in our country used to deal at the strategic level with interethnic relations and diversity of nations, much can be done if you want.
We must look at the specific projects that they proposed. I believe that films, the documentary system — the peoples of Russia, the faces of Russia that go through federal channels — influence the mass consciousness of people to a greater degree. For example, the series, where the main characters are good policemen, for example, Russian and Caucasian. People respond positively to someone with whom they can associate themselves. The representation of the peoples of Russia in works of art, works of popular culture should be the main expense item of the budget, in my opinion. Although, of course, the budget should also be allocated to support national cultural autonomies. Not all people are tied to the territories and have local funding. There is a problem with groups of migrants from other regions, the problem of compatriots, the problem of large cities and so on.
Mass intolerance arises in the presentation of the global image of the “other” or “alien” in the most massively influencing television audience consciousness. Therefore, I would, if it were my will, allocate the main part of this budget for the production of films and serials.
VIEW: One of the articles of the federal program is aimed at improving the investment attractiveness in the regions, including the North Caucasus, which is allocated separately. Is this goal achievable?
M.Sh .: The investment attractiveness of the North Caucasus will not be improved until working mechanisms of state, financial and social development are created there that would be distanced from the corruption schemes. There are no investments in the North Caucasus, not because Caucasians are bad, but because there everything is solved according to the principle “from hand to hand”. In some regions of the North Caucasus, no banks can operate except for those that launder money. And in some regions, for example, in the Stavropol Territory, Karachay-Cherkessia, normal financial and insurance institutions are gradually lining up.
Just so invest without any guarantees no one will. Here comes a man and says: "We have a legal entity, there is a project, give us a billion." But sorry, who guarantees our risks? The bulk of the investment there comes under rollback and cashing. Therefore, the system of normal functioning of public or private financial institutions is not built. And this is not connected with the image, but with economic and corruption problems. When they are resolved, by the way, Alexander Khloponin is now fighting and what Igor Sechin has taken on to some extent, people will start investing in the North Caucasus, regardless of a positive or negative image. Just because it is very cost effective. In the meantime, these investments at the local level are not protected by anything, the risks exceed the possibility of winning.
VIEW: State Secretary Svetlana Ivanova said that at the regional level it was planned to establish centers for monitoring interethnic relations and call centers for receiving reports of conflict and pre-conflict situations. In addition, the creation of centers of tolerance that could promote the culture of other nations of the country was reported in the spring. How much do you welcome such ideas?
M.Sh .: I was a supporter of monitoring centers and wrote this project. It was clearly determined that they would be from themselves, what they would do, what was their meaning. Tolerance centers are something abstract for me. I do not understand what they will do, but they have allocated a considerable amount of money. Are they going to gather people in the audience and talk about all the good things, as in the Soviet era did the society "Knowledge"? For decades, our country has laughed at these societies, their attempts to say: "Yes, love each other!". The Orthodox Church copes with this much better.
So I think that all of this is a fiction that will end in “zilch”, and it’s good if it goes without a scandal. Such issues need to be addressed at the regional and federal levels. And the emphasis in the work should be put on the media, and not to create some nomenclature position and allocate money to them.
VIEW: And if all the same monitoring and a network for monitoring will be created, how will the information gathering be organized?
M.Sh .: It can be organized in a sociological way, which will contribute to the development of regional sociological science, when local sociologists will receive contracts and orders for any research.
Investment, after all, is not only a monetary component, but also a way to bring intellectual forces to the regions. We all the time say that the intelligentsia in the regions is impoverished, so give this intelligentsia work and budget! In addition, there is an empirical way of working with experts, for example, expert interviews. There are always people who understand better than others what is happening and how.
In any case, the centers for the collection of information should be subordinated not to the Ministry of Regional Development, but to the representative offices of the Council on Interethnic Relations under the President in the regions or in the plenipotentiary. Of course, they will interact with the Ministry of Regional Development. However, the task of the executive authorities is to monitor the implementation of laws and budget execution. And political structures, in particular the council under the president, which have no formal status, have great potential. A non-official view of the problem — free, independent, and non-systemic — would allow it to be more accurately and distinctly evaluated.
I have always been a supporter of the development of external outsourcing. After all, any system, whatever it may be, will not whip itself. Any official, even if he sees a problem, immediately realizes that he can be made extreme in this problem, and he will send a more favorable picture to the higher authority than it actually is. This is a property of any system.
And if a person does not have the interests of career growth, he, working on a contractual basis and being taken out of the framework of this system, will give a much more balanced, independent and tough assessment of what is happening.
There is no need to develop internal evaluation structures. In my opinion, they are not able by their nature to give a tough assessment. Even if among them the most honest and advanced scientists work there, no one will allow them to expose the truth, or these assessments will be extremely private and will be held only by the departments of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
It is external structures, such as the Center for Strategic Studies, that are able to give fair estimates, prepare annual reports, conduct monthly or weekly monitoring depending on the need.
VIEW: In February, a bill was passed to the State Duma, which allows dismissing mayors who indulge in interethnic dissension or allow it. Since October, it has entered into force. Do you support him?
M.Sh .: I do not in any way feel sorry for any mayors and any bureaucrats in general. If they created a system of so-called bureaucratic absolutism in Russia, then let them play by the rules so that any bureaucrat can be taken by the scruff of the neck and thrown anywhere, even in the defendants' bench, even on the street. Here, the idea of controlling bureaucrats is right.
Mayors should not be involved in inciting ethnic hatred and conflict, and even be suspected of their support. After all, all conflicts of this kind have a criminal economic background. There are no pure ethnic conflicts. No nation will hate another just because of the color of their skin, language, or religion. This can only be done by separate groups of marginal thinkers. As a rule, all the conflicts that we know are Kondopoga, Sagra, and Pugachev, have a criminal-economic background.
These are conflicts of hidden groups, as a rule, of a criminal nature, because there is practically no non-criminal business in the regions. They use cash and make illegal or semi-legal transfers of land to a different type of functioning, this struggle is framed with the phrase “Black got it!”. For example, some shout: “The Tajiks flooded everything here!”, And then it turns out that it was all organized against them, for example, the Armenians or someone else. So often masked conflicts between the mafia and drug dealers. There are no conflicts of interethnic, there is a conflict of criminal economic interests, which in the information space hide behind in the form of interethnic or interreligious contradictions.
Therefore, mayors and other leaders who are involved in corruption frauds and solve them through interethnic conflicts should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. This is a double crime - they are involved in the illegal circulation of money and for shielding they use public shaking and interethnic conflicts.
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