Paul Goble

Tallinn, February 16 – The inability of the authorities in Stavropol kray to control the influx of immigrants to that predominantly Russian region and the failure of central Russian government to help them do so is rapidly transforming a place that had been an island of stability in the northern Caucasus into one of its most explosive locations.

And that danger, highlighted last week by clashes between ethnic Nogays and Russian forces there, could be compounded if Stavropol leaders who up to now have tried to integrate new arrivals on the basis of a non-ethnic definition of Russian citizenship decide to adopt the kind of Russian ethno-nationalist stance several other regional governments there have.

Indeed, Sergei Markedonov, a longtime observer of ethnic developments in the Caucasus, writes this week, Stavropol appears to be moving from being „a melting pot” in which ethnic groups can find common ground into the scene for violent clashes among them (http://www.apn.ru/?chapter_name=print_advert&data_id=870&d0=view_single).

The violence that took place February 9-10 in the kray’s Neftekum district should serve as a wake-up call, he continues. In terms of the number of people killed, he suggests, it is possible to talk about this being a „’second Buddenovsk,” and in terms of the goals of the Nogay insurgents – the seizure of a school – one could call it, he says, „’a second Beslan.’”

But unfortunately, Markedonov continues, this is not an isolated event as some in the media have suggested but rather the latest in a string of developments that point to more disasters ahead. Prior to the end of the Soviet Union, Stavropol kray was famed mostly for its large grain harvests and for the fact that is was Mikhail Gorbachev’s home.

But with the end of the USSR, the region changed dramatically, perhaps more than any other region in the Russian Federation. Bordering on six different non-Russian republics and territories, Stavropol became a magnet for both Russians and non-Russians seeking to escape from the violence in the northern Caucasus.

Ethnic Russians in the Mozdok region of North Osetia, Kizlyar and Tarum districts of Daghestan, Urup and Zelenchuk districts of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, and Naur and Shelkov districts of Chechnya sought – unsuccessfully – to have their territories joined to Stavropol, a place they viewed as an island of stability.

Meanwhile, members of non-Russian groups from those areas as well as others flowed into the region in increasing numbers, reducing the dominance of the ethnic Russian community, complicating the kray’s ethnic make-up and adding to the difficulties of the authorities there.

As a result of these immigrations, Stavropol now has more Chechens on its territory than all but three other Russian Federation areas – Chechnya itself, Ingushetiya and Daghestan. Moreover, both the influx of co-ethnics and the growth of existing communities means that the Turkmens, the Nogai, and the Meskhetian Turks are also important minorities.

After the 1996 Khasavyurt accords which ended the first post-Soviet Chechen war, the Stavropol authorities found themselves sharing a border with Ichkeria. To cope with that and in the absence of support from Moscow, they introduced legislation intended to control immigration and thus stabilize the situation.

The region’s law, „On the Status of Resident of Stavropol kray,” violated Russian Federation legislation by introducing at least on a de facto basis kray citizenship and even establishing an Immigration Code at the regional level -- the only Russian region to do so, as Markedonov points out.

The Stavropol authorities, the Moscow analyst suggests, believed that it was far more effective to limit immigration and then to seek to integrate new arrivals on a non-ethnic basis than to retreat into the kind of radical and often extravagant Russian ethno-nationalism of the kind adopted by officials in Krasnodar kray.

Unfortunately, he notes, Moscow „so far” has not supported this effort to promote civic assimilation, and without such backing from the center, he suggests, „Stavropol is losing its role as a melting pot” and „advance post of ‚Russian peace’” in the Caucasus and becoming the site of ever more ethnic clashes.

That development, Markedonov suggests, will further reduce Russian influence across the northern Caucasus since by failing to support what Stavropol has tried to do, Moscow „is losing the most important instrument of ‚rossification’ [a play on Rossiya – the non-ethnic term for the country].”

And as a result, he concludes, the entire North Caucasus is likely to descend ever more quickly into an increasingly vicious circle of rising russophobic attitudes among the non-Russians and increasing ethno-nationalism among the Russians, something that makes more clashes like those last week not only likely but inevitable.

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