Elista (September 2003). An empty dark main road, no street lights to see people. So that was Elista, the capital of the Russian republic of strange Kalmykia. Center of Russian Buddhists. Venue for the world chess championship. But at half past four clock in the morning but at first only a dark Provinzkaff 1600 km away from the warm Moscow apartment.
The night bus from Rostov had stopped right in front of the only hotel in town and drove the same, as we had unloaded our bags. But me still a young woman got out in camouflage uniforms, apparently a military personnel. We both ran over to the locked door of the hotel and knocked. The porter, an old Kalmuck made only a small slit wide open. "All evidence," he snarled curtly and proposed the door again before we have much to say.
"insolence," murmured the woman, then she said, turning to me. "Irina, military prosecutor of Rostov. I will arrange hotel rooms for both of us already. Come on, do not we go to the Military District Command. "Together we then walked down the dark street.
tea and biscuits in the morning at six clock
inserted before the Army National Guard two young recruits. She winced as my new friend rattled the gate. "I will now speak to the commander," she cried, calling name and rank. Before I could even think about whether I not me should adopt better, we were let in no questions asked, we were sat in a waiting room, served tea with biscuits and promised to immediately wake up the military commander of the Kalmyk government.
Meanwhile, the young prosecutor explained the reason for their trip. She was the prosecutor in the trial of a young soldier from a village in the Kalmyk steppe. He had run over with a truck in Chechnya several children. Of course he was completely innocent, Irina assured that the Chechens would constantly push their children from intentionally Russian military vehicles, they said in all seriousness. But any process there must just give, it should be the law. Therefore, it is on the way to a town in southern Kalmykia.
If the commander calls the hotel, people would then immediately beat up their heels and find a free room, she was safe. I also wanted to help her, the prosecutor promised. She would just say, I was sent by the Moscow Department of Defense to report on the case law in the military and about the process. Your official guide, so to speak.
The legend becomes a problem
So I was then presented to the thick Kalmyk field commander, a friendly man with a sitting perfectly uniform, which seemed a bit confused, because at six clock in the morning suddenly sat for a prosecutor and a foreign correspondent in his office. He let us continue to serve, eventually showed us some pictures of his children and then went to take care of the hotel room. "Before anything, the fear," Irina said with an expert eye.
The Colonel was now always courteous. No way we should go out by bus to the court after Prijutnoje. He would leave us like his personal chauffeur service with Volga. And, oh yes, two single rooms in the hotel are also just become free when we return to the process. Irina had my horrified look immediately seen through. "Excuse me, but now you have to still play the role well for a while," she whispered. Unwittingly, I was "embedded journalists" the Russian armed forces have become.
Direct from the grounds of the military administration, we started at this unexpected for me and especially unplanned trip. Full tilt, the black car roared with army service mark through the treeless, gently rolling steppe. We stopped in front of the local army recruiting office, where Irina wanted to discuss their approach to the process again. I looked from the window on the village street, the one-story stone houses with corrugated iron roofs, the grazing cows and leafed through the corridor in laid out copies of the army newspaper Red Star. " Half an hour later
my attorney was angry from the office. Everything was free, the judge was sick, they complained, we jumped back into the official car and left us in the capital return. With such a quick release, I had not even expected. As the trial ended later, I have never experienced. It's possible that the judge found that Chechens would throw their children to the Russians before the cars.
Buddha's return to the country Chalmg Tangtsch
From Karsten Packeiser, Elista. After two hundred kilometers Ride across the steppe Elista seems like a mirage. The capital of the autonomous Russian republic of Kalmykia surprise with lots of green grass amidst parched landscape and many new buildings with exotic pagoda roofs. Currently Elista only knows one thing: The announced with great pomp visit of the Dalai Lama in the only traditional Buddhist region in Europe has to fail again.
"Many old people have so been waiting for his holiness," says a woman who sold in the lobby of the great Buddhist temple on the outskirts of incense, amulets, and images of the Dalai Lama. "They wanted to see him again before they die" she adds, then big tears rolling down her face. In order not to burden the relationship with China, the Russian Foreign Ministry as early as the Nobel Peace Prize last year refused a visa again.
"That's absurd," Telo Tulku Rinpoche also wonders, the spiritual head of Kalmyk Buddhists. "Even during times of Brezhnev was the Dalai Lama to travel to the Soviet Union, but the new democratic Russia, he may no longer visit. I understand, "said the lama," that is politics. But what we have faithful to do with politics? "
300,000 people, as many sheep
called in Kalmykia, in the Mongolian language Chalmg Tangtsch living between the Volga and the Caucasus on an area the size of Bavaria just over 300,000 people and about as many sheep. Like the Germans from Russia were the Kalmyk during the 2nd World War II was deported to Siberia, ostensibly because they collaborated with the Wehrmacht. In exile and in the years after the return they could speak neither language, or exercise their religion. "In the early 90's years, the people no longer knew who they were and what is Buddhism," says Telo Tulku Rinpoche, a descendant of Kalmyk immigrants, who grew up in the U.S..
Since the skurrile Millionär Kirsan Iljuschinow 1993 die Macht in der Steppenrepublik übernahm, wurde den Nachfahren der mongolischen Nomaden die Rückkehr zu den Traditionen ihrer Vorväter verordnet. Während Iljumschinows Regierungszeit entstanden überall in Kalmückien buddhistische Reliquienschreine und Tempel, angeblich teils aus dessen Privatvermögen bezahlt. Als Präsident des Schachverbandes FIDE holte er die Schach-Olympiade in das der Welt bis dato gänzlich unbekannte staubige Steppenstädtchen Elista.
Kritische Journalistin ermordet
Gleichzeitig brach die Wirtschaft Kalmückiens endgültig zusammen, in Elista gibt es inzwischen weder einen öffentlichen Busverkehr noch a street lighting at night. Iljumschinows sharpest critic, journalist Larisa Yudina, fell victim to a brutal murder. Many opponents offers the busy business man of mismanagement, despite his concerns about national culture and the religious revival of Kalmykia.
"Even when we are separated church and state," said Mikhail Burninow responsible in the presidential administration for the contacts with religious organizations, the policies of his bosses. "But the state has destroyed in Soviet times, the religious culture. What we do is to send a message of atonement. "
(EPD)
Originally
published by Russia News .
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