Belenkin’s useful bibliographical guide to national extremism charters the ideological and organizational terrain of Russian nationalism. It gathers bibliographical entries on articles published mostly in Moscow dailies and periodicals from 1992 to 1996. They are divided into groups under the subheadings of the various extremist organizations and leaders to which the articles are devoted. The drawback is that the short introductions to the organizations and their leaders, followed by bibliographical entries, do not make a distinction among the employed classificatory labels: nationalism, national extremism, fascism, nazism (national socialism), or racism. As in the heyday of Soviet propaganda, they are used interchangeably as pejoratives without being defined.
With that clarified, it is obvious that the bibliography probes mainly into xenophobia, and the image of the Other afforded by the stereotype of the “perfidious Jew” or “Chechen terrorist.” Numerous organizations mentioned in the booklet employ these stereotypes in their rhetoric. It is easiest to blame some scapegoat for all of the calamitous political changes that have shattered people’s sense of a steady course of life. That is why the organizations included in this publication appeal for a return to some golden age, imagined invariably as the era of the Russian Empire or Soviet Union.
Ponomarev’s digest gathers Russian translations of articles from the Uzbek-language press. These pieces focus on Tashkent’s spurious “struggle with Wahhabis”. Until September 11, 2001, the West seemed to have been in search of an enemy to replace the “evil empire” of the defunct Soviet Union. This grandiosely named “attack on America” spawned a useful image of the enemy within and without. On this ticket other states joined the US-led coalition against the threat of “global terrorism”.
The pieces from this digest are on the “Islamist enemy” stereotyped as “Wahhabis”. In the useful footnotes the compilers and translators explain largely unknown aspects of post-Soviet Islamic society in Central Asia as well as debunk the above-mentioned stereotypes. The extensive use of stereotypes in the Uzbekistani mass media indicates that Soviet-style propaganda survives in the service of Central Asian dictatorships. It is enough to label someone a “Wahhabi” so as to make him guilty of all crimes prescribed, and the courts will eagerly concoct whatever evidence is necessary.
Ponomarev’s little digest provides significant insight into the process of how authoritarian governments manipulate the mass media in post-Soviet Central Asia so as to legitimize their undemocratic rule in the eyes of the world and of their own citizenries. This happens at the cost of human lives and through suppressing entire segments of population. One wishes further digests of this kind would cover Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, or at least Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, where even activists of Human Rights Watch do not dare tread.
I hope that Belenkin’s bibliography will be followed by similar contributions. Ideally, such bibliographies would cover the Russian Federation’s all too little known extremist political movements during later periods and focus on the regions in addition to Moscow.