Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 7 – Sergey Katanandov,
the head of the Republic of Karelia, was an active supporter of Russian
democracy and Boris Yeltsin against the August 1991 coup but now has reversed
himself on democracy and the goals of the coup itself, a “historic” reversal
that says much about where Russia is heading, according to Vadim Shtepa.
In an article that was posted on “Vesti
Karelii,” then taken down, but now has been reposted on the Free Karelia site,
the Petrozavodsk regionalist notes that the local paper there had, as part of
its coverage of the anniversary of the August 1991 coup attempt, talked
extensively about Katanandov’s opposition to it.
His opposition, Shtepa says, “undoubtedly
had an impact on his subsequent career and his popularity among the citizens”
of Karelia who elected him as head of the republic in 1998 (free-karelia.info/index.php/ru/nastoyashchee/respublika/173-trudno-zhit-bez-vragov.html). But subsequently,
the Karelia head betrayed his own past.
In an interview given to “Vedomosti
Karelii,” Katanandov reversed all the positions he took earlier, including
support for integration with Europe – he helped create the Euroregion of
Karelia – and opposition to the Soviet empire in the name of democracy (vedkar.ru/slider/sergej-katanandov-poteri-budut-v-tom-chisle-druzhestvennye/).
Did
someone attack Russia and force him to change “his worldview?” Shtepa asks.
Katanandov in his interview calls Crimea “‘our land from immemorial.’” One would
be interested to learn “how he would react if neighboring Finland suddenly
declared analogous claims on Sortavalu or Pitkarantu,” places to which they
have “no less basis” to consider its.
“Might
it not have been better for him to reflect that by its attempt of such
territorial transfers, Russia has opened a dangerous Pandora’s box?” Shtepa continues. But that is not the direction
things are moving in the Russian Federation now.
“Of
course,” the regionalist continues, “no one has the right to ask a current
member of [Russia’s] Federation Council such questions.” The latter can only “translate
the official position that ‘Crimea is Ours’ and that support for the Donbas
militants is not intereference in the affairs of another country but the noble ‘defense
of the Russian world.’”
It is also “interesting,” Shtepa says, that Katanandov, while “cursing
America for its expansionist policy fails to notice that he himself has fallen
into aggressive imperialism.” And thus it is also strange that 23 years ago,
the Karelian head “did not speak in support of the putschists who sought to
revive the USSR and against the ‘pro-Western’ Yeltsin.”
Of
course, Katanandov’s evolution is no different than that of many politicians in
Russia, Shtepa says. They not only now disown what they used to support with
regard to the borders of their country but also and in an equally worrisome
fashion with regard to how things should be organized within those borders.
Today, the Karelian head calls on the population to raise fruits and
vegetables to feed themselves in order to “overcome the difficult times.” Perhaps
he now opposes the existence of supermarkets because they were “thought up” by
the “hostile West,’” Shtepa reflects, a conclusion suggested by Katanandov’s
Soviet-style rhetoric.
Such “propaganda,” he points out, “is inevitably accompanied by the
forgotten and empty Soviet slogans like ‘mobilize … consolidate and by common
efforts solve those problems which today stand before” the country.”
As a result, Shtepa says, one has “the very strange impression” that “today
[the coup plotters] have taken their revenge,” and those helping them to do so “are
precisely those who 23 years ago spoke out against” them. In the end, the latter, he says with regret, “simply
are not able to live without enemies…”
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