Central Asian Diasporas in US Increasingly Organized and Active

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 5 – Compared to the attention the Ukrainian, Armenian, and Baltic diasporas in the US received, the smaller and newer diasporas of the five Central Asian countries still attract relatively little, although their numbers and activities, including political and lobbying efforts are growing, Asia Today reports.

            As is true of other diaspora groups, the US census shows far fewer members of these groups than their leaders claim, the result of partial assimilation and the possibility that some of the members of these groups are in the US illegally, the regional news agency says (asia-today.news/05122025/7329/).

            But they are clearly growing in size and increasingly forming their own organizations to take part in broader public life, including political life, in the United States, Asia today says; and consequently, they already deserve more attention from scholars and activists than they have received.

The Uzbek diaspora is the largest. Its leaders estimate that there are now as many as 250,000 ethnic Uzbeks in the US, far more than recent census have shown. They have two important organizations, and they have begun to attract the attention of some American politicians, including the newly elected mayor of New York city.

There are approximately 50,000 Kyrgyz in the US, most of whom are concentrated in major cities, where they have formed a Kyrgyz Social Center to support community activities and participate in public life. Therea re some 100,000 Kazakhs, who are also concentrated in major cities.

The Tajik diaspora in the US is much smaller, approximately six thousand in all, but it has created two broad organizations, the Tajik Community in the USA and the Tajik American cultural Association (TACA). The Turkmen diaspora is very small and maintains close ties with the Turkmenistan embassy in Washington. 

Opposition Parties in Karelia Walk Out of Parliament to Protest ‘Hegemony’ of United Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 5 – Russia’s so-called “systemic” opposition parties, those which are able to elect deputies to parliaments at one or another level, seldom display much courage in Moscow, but in federal subjects far from the capital, they are increasingly speaking out against what some call “the hegemony” of United Russia, that country’s ruling political party.

            The latest and in some ways the most radical of these moves had taken place in Karelia where deputies who are members of opposition parties walked out of a session of parliament  after United Russia refused to have a discussion of their proposed amendments to the budget (ru.thebarentsobserver.com/v-karelii-deputaty-parlamenta-usli-s-zasedania-v-znak-protesta-protiv-gegemonii-edinoj-rossii/441843).

            KPRF, Just Russia and Yabloko deputies walked out after United Russia used its position in the parliament to block any discussion of the 73 amendments to the 2026 budget that the three had proposed. After a rules committee said they should all be rejected out of hand, United Russia leaders of the parliament said discussion of the entire measure should not exceed 50 minutes.

            In response, representatives of the three walked out; but that did not prevent United Russia and its allies in the LDPR, Pensioners’ Party and New People group from approving the budget without any of the amendments that the three protesting groups had insisted should be included.

            Despite this failure, the opposition groups won a victory of sorts: They demonstrated that they and not the United Russia bloc is on the side of the population and its needs rather than automatic supporters of the optimization efforts that the Kremlin has insisted on in order to have money for Putin’s war in Ukraine. 

Efforts to Restore Traditional Values Not Integrated into Modernity Invariably End in Disaster, Russia’s ‘Open Expanse’ Telegram Channel Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 5 – Many governments around the world are promoting what they call a return to traditional values, but few of them recognize the most important fact about such efforts: Unless traditions are integrated into modernity, the Open Expanse telegram channel says, they will prove a disaster as has already happened in Cambodia, Afghanistan, China and Iran.

            In places where people feel that change has come to quickly, they often look back to the past and to traditional values as a refuge, the telegram channel says. And governments often make use of this especially if they are ideologically conservative in the first place (t.me/openexpanse/26608 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6932D20E55019).

            What many of the peoples and governments forget is that “the traditional world is not an idyllic space of ‘eternal truths’ but a specific social formation: patriarchal families, harsh hierarchies, low mobility, an agrarian economy, dependence on natural cycles and an enormous amount of labor by hand.”

            In that past, Open Expanse says, “the family was large not because of these values but because children provided free labor and helped the family to survive. Morality then was strict because the survival of the community depended on it. And life then was not hurried because speed was impossible.”

            “But now, humanity lives in a world which is maintained by intensive energy flows, global logistical chains, mass education, the most complex professional specialization and cities where a large part of the population and the economy is concentrated.” Returning to a traditional social structure while preserving the current level of life is “impossible.”

            Nonetheless, in radical ways or less radical ones, those who have tried to do just that have demonstrated that such a course was and is “not simply a utopia. It became [and will become again] a catastrophe,” as Cambodia, China, Afghanistan, Iran and other countries who have adopted radical methods in the pursuit of that goal have shown.

            Meanwhile, “attempts at social traditionalism in Europe and the US, where conservative forces are trying to return ‘the old order,’ by limiting immigration or restoring the ideals of the classical family, look a little less dramatic. But even here the same logic holds: rhetoric returns the symbols but doesn’t change the structures.”

According to Open Expanse, “the main mistake of forced traditionalism is that it attempts to replace modernization processes with moral prescriptions. But morality is a consequence of the material order, not its cause. The family changes because the cost of raising children and the role of women have changed.”

“Society becomes individualistic because the infrastructure allows individuals to live independently. Culture becomes flexible because instant communication exists in the world. It is impossible to restore the old order without destroying the new structures. And the destruction of new structures is always a path to crisis”

The telegram channel continues: “A return to traditions becomes an instrument of power in places where power is afraid of or ceases to see the future. Under the guise of tradition, censorship is strengthened, dissent is suppressed, freedoms are restricted, and competence is replaced by ideology.”

            And Open Expanse concludes that “tradition, transformed into a tool of political control, ceases to be tradition. It turns into a ritual, a decoration, a gesture, a dogma. And a society that tries to live within such a dogma gradually (and over time, with increasing speed) loses its ability to develop.”

            In sum, “preserving traditions is possible – but only as an internal source of energy, and not as a social regulation. Traditions can inspire, but they cannot govern an industrial society. They can be an integral part of identity but not a substitute for modernization mechanisms. They can support values, but not dictate their rules to the economy or demography.”

Ever More Russian Soldiers Wounded in Ukraine – So Putin Stops Publishing Data on Invalids

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec.  5 – Stalin infamously said “no person, no problem.” Putin has pursued that policy in part, but far more often, he has adopted an analogous position, clearly believing that if he orders disturbing data not to be published, then the problem will go away because coverage of it will become more difficult and less widely known.

            The current Kremlin leader has adopted that approach on a variety of issues since he became Russian president and has done so ever more often since his war in Ukraine has featured so many developments that he would prefer not to be covered. The latest result of this approach is that Moscow has stopped publishing key data on invalids.

            As a result, the To Be Precise investigative portal says, “now it is unknown just how much government funding is going for the treatment of invalids and [what may be even more significant] how many adults first received invalid status in 2024” (tochno.st/materials/rosstat-perestal-publikovat-cast-dannyx-ob-invalidnosti).

            The Russian government’s Social Fund, which in the past has been the most important place for data on invalids, stopped publishing data in May 2023, and figures posted on its website then covered only the fourth quarter of 2022, the end of the first year of Putin’s war in Ukraine.

            Its data and those of other government outlets offered global data but none divided into categories which would allow anyone to know exactly how many Russians had become invalids as a result of combat in Ukraine. But there is one indication of that still available: the number of Russians gaining the status of invalid fell by two-thirds from 2004 to 2021 but has risen since.

‘Gay Conversion Therapy’ Alive and Well in Putin’s Russia, ‘Novaya Gazeta’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 4 – Gay conversion therapy, something human rights groups and the United Nations has described as a form of torture, is alive and well in Putin’s Russia given the Kremlin’s anti-LGBT campaign and the fact that polls show that one Russian in four believes that gay people are “sick” and in need of medical treatment.

            According to a survey conducted last year, there are at least 12 LGBT “rehabilitation centers” in various parts of the Russian Federation where inmates are kept in isolation, “forced to undergo ‘spiritual rehabilitation,’ take medications, undergo hypnosis, and even be subjected to violence,” Novaya Gazeta says (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/12/04/a-cure-for-wellness-en).

            Officials at the Initiative for the Prohibition of Conversion Therapy in Russia (https://bctir.org/) say that there are some 16 other such institutions on their list and that the total number of such places in the Russian Federation today “is likely to exceed 30,” a number that reflects the support they have from the Putin regime. 

            The total number of victims of this unethical and immoral process in Russia is unknown, but it is certainly in the hundreds if not more, and the existence of these “hospitals” not only tortures those who are confined to them but casts a dark shadow over all LGBT people in that country because of the threat that officials can send such people to them.

On Anniversary of Franco’s Death, Russian Extreme Right Group Reverses Anti-Fascist Slogan of Spanish Civil War and Declares ‘We Shall Pass’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 4 – During the Spanish Civil War, anti-fascist groups, including many who were allied with the Soviet Union, went into battle with the slogan “They shall not pass.” Last month, on the 50^th anniversary of the death of fascist leader Francisco Franco, an extreme right Russian group reversed that and told like-minded people in Spain, “we shall pass.”

            This group of Russian extremists, the Brotherhood of Academicists, not only is promoting an expansive view of Russian power and providing its members with military training but is reaching out to radical right groups across Europe (publico.es/politica/ultras-rusos-entrenamiento-paramilitar-figuran-invitados-cumbre-neofascista-domingo-madrid.html).

            At the end of September, the Brotherhood joined members of the Russian Society of the Two-Headed Eagle, which is supported by Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev who heads the Tsargrad media corporation and has close ties with both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Kremlin (publico.es/politica/ultras-rusos-entrenamiento-paramilitar-figuran-invitados-cumbre-neofascista-domingo-madrid.html).

            According to Novaya Gazeta, this is only the latest of an increasing number of contacts between fascist groups in Russia and fascist groups in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, contacts that at least on some occasions have enjoyed the support of Russian officials even though they have not attracted much attention (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2025/12/04/oni-proshli-im-dali-vizu).

            Whether this Moscow-supported neo-fascism will be more successful there and elsewhere in Europe than its earlier anti-fascist assistance remains to be seen, but the fact that the Kremlin now is taking a page from a Stalin-era playbook to promote an opposite outcome to the one it suffered at the end of the 1930s certainly deserves more attention. 

For Russians Under 30, Most Significant Book is Orwell’s ‘1984’; for All Russians, It’s Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 4 – The Russian Field polling agency, at the request of Aleksandr Asafov, a member of the Social Chamber, surveyed Russians on which books were in their minds the most significant for them. The differences between Russians under 30 and those older than that are striking.

            Those under 30 listed George Orwell’s 1984 first, followed by Tolstoy’s War and Peace, the Harry Potter books, Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, the Bible and the Constitution. For Russians as a whole, the top spot was occupied by War and Peace, followed by Ostrovsky’s How the Steel was Forged and Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita (kommersant.ru/doc/8251546).

            For Russians as a whole, Orwell’s anti-utopia was fifth, largely the result of young people putting it first. In 15^th place was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s GULAG Archipelago; and in 17^th place was the Koran, with one percent of all Russians naming the former and only 0.3 percent of all Russians the latter.