Asia Times: Northern Russia demands end to economic exile


	March 16, 2000	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Northern Russia demands end to economic exile
By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW - Historically Russia's northeastern regions were places of exile. A century ago Anton Chekhov wrote about the area saying that ''all - the prisoners and their guardians likewise - are keen to get out of that living hell''. Not much has changed except, of course, that residents of the area are free to leave - and this they do in search of better living conditions.

''Russia's northeastern frontier regions, and the people who live there, face countless problems such as lack of employment and education opportunities and disease,'' says Vladimir Goman, chairperson of Russia's Northern Affairs Committee. ''Suicide rates are also high over there,'' he told IPS.

The Russian government has repeatedly promised to support the indigenous inhabitants of the north, Siberia, and the far east who appear to have suffered the most from the reforms in Russia. However, experts argue that current government policy toward the far northern remote regions and its populace is hardly adequate. In 1999 - for the first time in the last decade - the Russian government allocated, in full, the budget funding of 1.5 billion roubles ($52.6 million) to support 30 northern ethnic minorities totaling 200,000 people.

''There is no official list of Russia's northern indigenous ethnic groups,'' says Dmitry Founk, head of the Siberia and Far North Department of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology. Before 1993, the authorities regarded 26 ethnic groups as minorities, but since then four more have been added to the list, he told IPS.

However, state funds designed to support these groups, are often used to finance infrastructure projects thus being difficult to account for, Founk said.

Furthermore, every year the perennial question looms - whether Russia's northeastern frontier is prepared for another winter. Supplies of food and fuel to 12 million people in Russia's far north and east have been plagued by financial crisis in previous years.

Cold weather, combined with Russia's severe economic troubles, leave tens of thousands of people shivering in their homes across the remote areas. Winter temperatures of around minus 40 degrees Celsius make fuel supplies a crucial necessity to see residents through the winter - among the harshest on earth. Nonetheless, energy shortages have repeated themselves regularly in Russia's remote regions. Last winter, however, the government allocated funds to purchase food and fuel supplies and the situation in the far north and east of Russia, for once, was not verging on the disastrous.

The Russian government has long vowed to become more selective in its support for industry in the far north - promising to close down unprofitable enterprises and to move residents of cities and villages that have poor economic prospects to southern regions. But the policy causes population outflows. If present demographic trends continue, the population of Siberia could decline by a third in the next 15-20 years, according to the demographic projections.

Russia's northern indigenous groups - officially dubbed as ''Numerically Small Peoples'' - now want more protection of their interests. According to Evdokiya Gaer, Secretary General of the Association of Numerically Small Peoples of Russia, the indigenous inhabitants of the north, Siberia, and the far east have suffered most from the reforms in Russia. And activists complain that legislation defining the status of the territories has not been adopted.

Characteristically, Kamchatka Itelmens, an indigenous Paleo-Siberian group, decided to boycott the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of Kamchatka becoming part of the Russian empire. The Itelmens argued that it was time that Russia admitted that it had captured Kamchatka as a colony. Now few more than 1,400 Itelmens live in Kamchatka out of an estimated population of 15,000 when Russia first colonized the area.

For Russia's northern indigenous groups the land rights are essential to their survival. Goman promises that the government and the parliament will draft a series of bills designed to give northern minorities more say regarding land rights. The new legislation, he says, will stipulate the right by the minorities to assess ecological implications of major development - notably oil and gas - projects in their respective areas.

Russia now mulls other projects to help its remote areas and indigenous peoples. The idea to set up an Arctic Bank of Reconstruction and Development to be based in St Petersburg, Russia's ''northern capital'' has been floated - but has yet to materialize.

(Inter Press Service)