#12 - JRL 6597
From: Ira Straus <IRASTRAUS@aol.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002
Subject: Re 6596-Muslim Heritage
I am always struck when a writer draws a conclusion logically opposite to the import of the evidence he or she provides. Here's an instance, concerning Russia and Chechnya: "simultaneous with its attempts to crush the Chechen rebellion, Russia has pursued a very different path in its relations with the Volga Tatars and Bashkirs, who live in their own republics in the Volga-Ural area. In the early 1990s, Yeltsin concluded bilateral agreements with those republics, conceding extensive autonomy to Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Although restoration of centralized political power in the Kremlin has marked Putin's presidency, Moscow and the two Muslim-dominated Russian republics still adhere to the Yeltsin-era bargain." (Andreas Kappeler, "Russia's Muslim heritage", Taipei Times, JRL 6596.)
The author goes on to blame Russia for failing to learn in Chechnya from its own experience with Islam in the other areas, and for that matter from its experience over the centuries when, he argues, Russia followed a policy considerably more inclusive toward Islam -- once Islamic communities had been brought into subjection to Russian power -- than did Western Europe! an states.
Now the logical conclusion would seem to be the opposite. The difference, according to the author's actual evidence, was not in Russia's behavior, but in that of the Chechens vis-a-vis the other Islamic communities. The Tatar and Bashkir leaderships were willing to negotiate compromise solutions and, once achieved, uphold and enforce those compromises against separatist extremists. The Chechen leadership was not. Russia's policy was the same in all three places, and the same as in its earlier history as the author outlines it: one of tolerance, inclusiveness of local elites, and autonomy, within a framework of acceptance of supreme Russian state authority. The refusal of the Chechen leadership to accept or even serious consider any negotiated compromise, prior to the first Chechen war, would seem to be what led to that war. The Chechen leadership got most of what it wanted at the end of that war, with a form of autonomy that was unique and usually described as de facto indepen! dence, but failed to enforce the minimum requirements of even this compromise on its own militants. Crimes, kidnappings, and external invasions by those militants brought on the second Chechen war.
The bulk of the article is interesting, informative, and probably most of its judgments are correct. Why is its main conclusion, the one on what went wrong with Chechnya and who to blame -- the conclusion that will get all the readers' attention and that for many people will be the only reason for looking at the article -- diametrically opposite to its evidence?
Bertrand Russell, when coming across the same phenomenon among his fellow philosophers whom one might have expected to pay some attention to the rules of logic, commented that an author's inconsistencies are clues to his or her prejudices. This would seem to be a reasonable expanation.
And when it comes to social commentaries, the inconsistencies are also clues to the prejudices of the social milieu for which the author is writing.
It would seem that there is a strong "demand" in the West for anti-Russian conclusions whenever anything is being written about Chechnya. Has the author or publisher bent the conclusions to satisfy this market demand? If so, it is a formula for the public to keep itself perpetually in ignorance about some important matters.
Public ignorance is dangerous. It is not true that "ignorance is strength", despite the frequent temptation to take attitude. Ignorance is a danger to policy formation, and to preparedness. We should have learned that from September 11, when our country's willful blind eye to some separate but related complexities came back to haunt us.
It is also possible, of course, that the author observed the vilification that was often visited upon people who said anything at all positive about the Russian side of the Chechen wars or anything seriously negative about the Chechen nationalist side, and bent his language to avoid such a fate. This too would be a formula for perpetuating public ignorance, probably even more dangerous than the first.
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