Oleg Kashin — this voice of the «lost generation» of the Kremlin’s pseudo-opposition, a part of the «intelligentsia», as Lenin called it, perpetually dangling over an ice hole, pleased the listeners of «Echo of Moscow» with a fresh portion of his revelations. There is neither the desire nor the need to dissect all the banalities he expressed. However, it is impossible to ignore his statements about Muslims. They represent a conglomerate of thoughts on this matter from a significant part of Russian society, for which both Muslims and society itself are paying dearly.
For example, when discussing with his interlocutors the issue of increasing torture and other lawlessness by law enforcement officials against the Russian opposition and dissidents, Kashin correctly points out that the root of this problem lies in the experience of Russian law enforcement officials in the Caucasus. Does he draw the conclusion that the torture and extermination practices of Russian law enforcement officers in the Caucasus should be stopped and condemned? After all, this conclusion should be obvious to any rational person who begins to consider at what point «something went wrong» in post-Soviet Russia.
Not at all! Instead, the mouthpiece of the «national democrats» urges law enforcement officials to apply these practices strictly to «bad» and «wild» Caucasians, Muslims, and not to extend them to all «good» and «civilized» Russians. Let’s listen to his words: «This issue, in fact — I will say it frankly — seems more serious to me. In the sense that everyone is still afraid to talk about it: in our society there is a consensus that the fight against so-called terrorism in the Caucasus is going well, it is going as it should, which means that law enforcement officers can do anything there. They can shoot with heavy weapons at five-story buildings where alleged terrorists live, of whom nobody knows whether they are terrorists or not, they can kill, they can torture, and so on. But Russian society has gotten used to it. And I’m calling on our security services, our gebukha [word for law enforcement in a derogatory way], not to treat Russians in Moscow in the same way as they treat residents of disputed regions, let’s say, in terms of their actual compliance with Russian legislation, Russian realities, and heightened terrorist risks. They transfer their methods, their colonial habits from this literally colonial war in the Caucasus to Moscow and behave like occupiers towards ordinary, normal Russian Muscovites. That is a very wrong approach. I don’t think they think about it themselves, but I urge them to think: Is Moscow the same as the Caucasus? I think not.
Let’s put aside thoughts about the double morality that allows Kashin to simultaneously approve lawlessness and call a spade a spade with regard to the Caucasus and condemn it with regard to Russians, residents of capital cities, because «Moscow is not the Caucasus. There is no morality here, so there is no need to appeal to it. Let us concentrate on simple logic.
Isn’t it clear that the carriers of this lawlessness that is now spreading throughout Russia are certain individuals? These individuals, first of all, have «lost their minds» and, secondly, have realized their impunity. Whether Kashin likes it or not, formally the Caucasus is just as much a part of Russia as any other part, and Caucasians are just as much citizens as residents of other parts. And if law-enforcement officials are given a free hand to act without restraint, to torture and kill certain citizens in certain areas of Russia, what is to prevent these practices from spreading to everyone else?
Apparently understanding this problem, Kashin calls for legalized discrimination: «It is time to recognize that the North Caucasus Federal District is not an ordinary Russian region. Maybe even internal visas are needed for movement, maybe a special status is needed. Maybe a general governorship is needed, maybe something else.» Or maybe, in that case, it would be better to leave the Caucasus and its people alone, so that not only will they not annoy Kashin, but people like Kashin will reciprocate and not interfere in their affairs?
But instead of this seemingly obvious conclusion from his reasoning, Kashin, following a classic imperial logic of «keeping out,» is ready to go to any «special regime» that will allow discrimination only against Caucasians. And he seems to be unaware that this is not only immoral (to repeat, there is no point in discussing morality here), but also simply ineffective. As the heroes of Western movies, beloved by the progressive public, say in such cases, «it just doesn’t work». The proof of this is the results of almost two decades of attempts by all this liberal or pseudo-liberal public close to power to establish a special regime for the Caucasus. In the end, it comes to Russia and begins to devour it.
Why is this happening? According to Kashin, the blame for the savagery of the Caucasus today lies with the Caucasians themselves, who bring their practices into the civilized space of Russia (at this point, the entire civilized world should burst out laughing). He speaks of the recently arrested Senator Arashukov and says: «This person didn’t finish school, but he voted for laws that Russian citizens live by. This is humiliating.»
But who drafts these laws? Whose interests are served by those who vote for these laws? Who ultimately approves them? Or are they independent politicians who win in free elections? Or perhaps the political space of the Caucasus has not been cleared by the law enforcers, who acted according to Kashin’s instructions, that anything can be done there, after which the Caucasians no longer elect their real representatives, but simply vote for the puppets selected in the Kremlin — on the principle of negative selection?
Or does Kashin prefer the laws prepared for Russians by deputies like Lugovoy and Klishas or Mizulina and Yarovaya? How do they differ from the laws enacted by Arashukov, and what role, in the absence of real politics in Russia, can the personal and national aspects of those who push the buttons play?
Kashin’s approach is not only hostile to Caucasians and Muslims, to whom it has long been applied extraterritorially outside the North Caucasus, thus destroying the formal principles of rights and equality of citizens in the «non-Caucasian» territory of the Russian Federation. Above all, Kashin’s approach deprives the «non-Caucasian Russians» themselves of their hopes for a constitutional state and a civilized society. Because it distracts them from the causes of the spread of lawlessness by normalizing it in certain territories and towards certain people, with whom they are supposed to deal by begging these people not to use violence against them.
«A people that oppresses other peoples cannot be free. The force it uses to oppress another people ultimately turns against itself» — this sentence from a classic written at the end of the last century has not been internalized by people like Kashin. This is the reason for their lack of freedom, and even the lack of prospects for achieving it.