Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency conference report, numbered RTT 95-10039 and dated October 1995, presents the proceedings of a conference held 30 September to 1 October 1993. The CIA's Geographic Resources Division sponsored the conference. In it, academic geographers, anthropologists and US Government officials examined ethnic conflict by region, covering Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. The report also discusses what these conflicts mean for US policy. It does not deal with UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena.
“Nevers”25 pages
Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268 Russia anyway-—‘is a question of decentralization ver- sus centralization, more than of ethnicity. QUESTION: To what extent will patterns of trade and commerce shift the regional identification of the Rus- sians who live in the Far East from considering them- selves to be Russians to considering themselves a part of the Pacific Rim or the Northeast Asian community? Vlfill such pattems accelerate the trends that you are speaking of in terms of localization? DR. KAISER: Dr. Wixman seems to see more of a potential for separatism in the Far East among the Russians themselves than I do. On the ethnic map of Russia, the Far East is overwhelmingly Russian and has been since about 1700. Even so, the region is sparsely populated; only about 25 million people live east of the Urals. I suppose a redirection or reorienta- tion of the population could occur, because there is a great deal of localism there. Two different regional restructuring processes have been at work, however. First, the Russians themselves are reorganizing and directing their attention to the Pacific Rim and think- ing more in local and economic terms; second, the non-Russian population IS banding together in groups and organizing to try to gain political clout. Neither of these restructuring processes is on the same level as an independence movement and certainly not on that of a movement based on ethnonationalism. Instead, local Russian areas are demanding more autonomy within a more decentralized Russia and particularly seek greater control ojver the economic wealth that flows through their region. Because these Russians are not sacrificing for the good of Mother Russia and all Rus- sians, one could probably question the level of their Russian national consciousness and their common sense of homeland, but this localism/regionalism is not on the same order of magnitude as separatist nationalism. , DR. WIXMAN: I think the movement for autonomy in the Russian Far East is greater than in even the eth- nic regions. There is a strong anticentralist feeling. There is no question that the population is Russian; they are just as Russian as anyone else. But who resides in the Russian Far East? The descendants of the people who fled to the Far East to escape central authority before the Soviets took over and of those people who were sent there after 1917. This is the groupof people in the Russian empire who, more than anyone else, has had an antagonistic attitude toward Moscow for decades. They are located on the Pacific, so a strong movement exists toward stronger ties to Korea, Japan, the United States, and Canada. QUESTION: Would you comment on the relation between ethnicity and environment? DR. KAISER: At the beginning of the independence movements, a lot of national fronts-—particularly in the Baltic states and in Belarus—began as environ- mental movements. Environmentalism and national- ism—especially national independence——were very closely tied, not only in the Baltic states but also in many of the European republics. This should not be surprising because people consid- ered their soil to be sacred-—as the only place where their nation could survive and prosper—-and they became angry when it was polluted by forces outside their control. Indeed, a lot of the region’s polluting industries were moved in at the behest of Moscow. Along with them came Russians, so the ethnic feature was added on top of the environmental one. Since independence, environmentalism has often taken a back seat to nationalism and independence. For example, nationalists in Estonia who had lamented the fact that Russians had set up an oil shale mining operation there now say they need to keep that operation going so as not to rely on Russia for oil. The same thing occurred in Lithuania with the Ignalina nuclear plant. The Lithuanians have talked about add- ing a third unit to that nuclear facility—even though before independence it was a symbol of Soviet oppression and a symbol of the environmental degra- dation of the homeland. In Ukraine, there is even talk about keeping Ohomobyl‘ (Chernobyl') in operation and maybe expanding it as well. In Armenia, a nuclear plant had been shut down by grassroots opposition because it was on a geologic faultline and has been damaged by earthquakes. Now the Armenians are considering reopening it because they need local 72 Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 205 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.