Posted by Sean on March 28, 2007
Just as readers at Siberian Light are discussing communist names, the NY Times is reporting about the President of Tajikistan’s effort to ban names with Slavic endings. President Emomali Rakhmon’s (the President formerly known as Rakhmonov) decree to drop “-ov” from family names is yet another nationalist attempt to remove the vestiges of Russia/Soviet influence over Tajik society. As Ilan Greenberg of the NY Times writes,
Amid a series of idiosyncratic decrees aimed at removing traces of Soviet influence, the president of Tajikistan announced Tuesday that he had dropped the Slavic “ov” from the end of his surname and that, henceforth, the same must be done for all babies born to Tajik parents.
Most Tajiks added a Slavic ending to their surnames when the country came under Soviet rule early in the last century.
The president, Emomali Rakhmon — formerly Rakhmonov — also banned certain school holidays and traditions ..read more
Posted by Sean on March 28, 2007
Lyndon linked me about Nashi’s “Connecting with the President” or the “President’s Liaison Officer” campaign, so I’ll return the favor by liking his lucid breakdown of Nashi’s marketing-activist tactics. As he concludes:
The idea of using Nashi partisans as electronic “go-betweens” to/from the President (the passers-by receive special SIM-cards which will also be able to receive “all essential information about the movement’s activities,” per this description of the event) is an intriguing modern take on the Soviet idea of a loyal vanguard, though it’s supposedly an exercise in “modern democracy” (“sovremennaia demokratiia”).
I agree. What strikes me is not only how media savvy this all is, but also how these methods can be found among activists on the left and the right all over the world. The question all this poses for me is how much of Nashi’s participation in Russia’s “modern ..read more
Posted by Sean on March 28, 2007
I haven’t given an update on the investigation of Anna Politkovskaya’s murder in a while. The problem is that there have been few new developments. Given the Russian authorities track record in solving journalists’ deaths, we shouldn’t hold our breath. Nor should we be so quick to substitute dramatic fantasy for truth. For example, Kommersant is reporting that the head of the Movement for Human Rights Lev Ponomarev received a letter implying that “Movladi Baisarov’s Highlander special division, FSB agents and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov were involved in her killing.”
Ponomarev told Kommersant that the letter was received at the electronic address of his organization, and he forwarded it to Novaya gazeta and other media outlets. The letter is allegedly written by former members of the Highlander division – Timur from the village of Kirov, Aslambek from the Lenin state farm, Imran ..read more
