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15 July, 2008 2:16 PM
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| Newsletter No. 970
The following newsletter has been contributed by Elena N. Shadrina (Shingetsu Member No. 102). Shadrina is based at Niigata University.
This current newsletter covers the theme of Japan’s economic cooperation with a Russian Muslim region for the first time. The newsletter opens with a brief description of Russian regions with the highest ratios of Muslim population, which is followed by a description of the economic structure of the Republic of Tatarstan, the subject of this newsletter. As will be seen, Tatarstan has a rather developed automobile sector. Japanese automakers’ interest in implementing joint projects in this republic is thus natural. Given the bright prospects for Russian automobile market expansion, initiatives of this sort can be expected to continue.
Russia now has some twenty million Muslims. That makes Islam Russia's second most-popular religion after Russian Orthodoxy. According to Radio Free Europe, Russia's Muslims are located mainly in the north Caucasus and in the mid-Volga region, especially in the republics of Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Chuvashia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachaevo-Cherkessia. Thriving local communities can also be found in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ulyanovsk, Samara, Nizhnii Novgorod, Perm, as well as the Moscow and Leningrad oblasts. Almost all Russian Muslims belong to the Sunni branch of Islam, but there are small pockets of Shiites in the north Caucasus, including the Lezgins and Dargins. A few other ethnic groups, such as the Chechens, practice Sufism. The leadership of the Muslim community was originally divided along territorial lines. When the Soviet Union broke up, the Russian Federation inherited two spiritual directorates, or muftiates. One administered the activities of Islamic groups in the north Caucasus and the Transcaucasus, while the other oversaw the Islamic communities in European Russia and Siberia. Challenges to this system emerged, and in 1992 Tatarstan and Bashkortostan withdrew their recognition from the muftiate for European Russia and Siberia and created their own independent muftiate.
According to the republic’s official website, Tatarstan is one of the most economically developed Russian regions. The republic is located in the center of the largest industrial region of the Russian Federation, at the intersection of most important transportation networks connecting the country. The Republic of Tatarstan boasts wealthy natural resources and a diversified industry. Fuel and petrochemical industries determine the republic's profile (production of crude oil, synthetic rubber, tires, polyethylene, and a wide range of petroleum products). There are also large engineering enterprises that produce helicopters, aircraft and aircraft engines, heavy trucks and small cars, compressors and oil-gas pumping equipment, and hi-tech electronic and radio devices. Tatarstan produces approximately 32 million tons of crude oil per year. Locally-produced KAMAZ trucks held 52% of the Russian market as of 2007. Tatarstan also produces about 24% of Russian tractors. Its petrochemical sector produces about a third of all Russian polyethylene, synthetic rubber, and automobile tires.
With that preface, perhaps the following story will then be more comprehensible. According to the Russian media, a Russian-Japanese joint enterprise for the production of trucks, Severstal-Isuzu, will be commissioned in Tatarstan on April 13th. Prime Minister of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov will take part in the commissioning ceremony. The production of medium trucks will form the heart of the new enterprise. When completed, the plant will produce about 25,000 trucks a year. Two Japanese companies will be partners in the venture as follows 66% -- Severstal (Russia) This is the first Russian-Japanese auto partnership of its kind.
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