Paul Goble
Staunton, May 11 – As the chairmanship of the Arctic Council passes from Norway to Denmark, leaders of the numerically small peoples of the Russian North who’ve been forced into exile, are calling on the Council to include their groups to be included in expert meetings the Arctic Council regularly assembles.
If that doesn’t happen and the Council continues to rely on ethnic organizations from the Russian Federation, they say, Moscow will be given an undeserved place in Council activities from which it has been otherwise suspended given Moscow’s control over these institutions (thebarentsobserver.com/news/call-for-arctic-council-to-include-russian-indigenous-groups-in-exile-in-working-groups/429604).
At least some of the countries on the Arctic Council are sympathetic to this appeal and are likely to act on it. But others may see it as threatening east-west conversations by threatening understandings about who can play a role in these meetings that have been followed more or less consistently in the past.
More than that, however, this case is a reminder of why it is so critical to follow what the Kremlin is doing in the NGO area because often Russian NGOs continue to be treated as genuine even when Western governments recognize Russian officialdom as a danger and take actions against it.
Indeed, the handling of Russian NGOs is the latest update of the Cold War-era lament by some in the West that Moscow sends us spies and we treat them like diplomats while we send them diplomats and they treat them like spies.
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Arctic Council Must Include Russian Indigenous Leaders Now in Exile or It will Be Allowing Moscow to Play an Undeserved Role, Activists Say
Moscow Readying New Moves to Further Restrict Ethnic Diasporas
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 12 – At the end of last month, Russia's Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs submitted draft legislation that would significantly restrict the ability of diaspora organizations in the Russian Federation to accept any foreign funding (nazaccent.ru/content/43877-fadn-vneslo-v-pravitelstvo-zakonoproekt-ob-ogranichenii-finansirovaniya-nacionalnyh-nko-iz-za-rubezha/).
Because that is a government proposal, it is virtually certain to pass and become law. Now, the LDPR has proposed also preventing anyone who has been declared a foreign agent to serve in a leadership position in any diaspora organization (nazaccent.ru/content/43932-v-gosdume-predlozhili-zapretit-inoagentam-rukovodit-ili-finansirovat-diaspory/).
The fate of that proposal is less certain, although in the current environment, it too is likely to pass and become part of what is an expanded Kremlin effort to restrict the activities of diaspora groups inside the Russian Federation. The most likely to be hit first are those whose diasporas are large and especially active.
Among the first to be targeted in this new campaign are groups like the Circassians which Moscow has been trying to take total control of and those like the numerically small peoples of the North and Siberia who are so small in numbers that they are unlikely to be able to form diaspora organizations unless they have outside help.
Tatar Youth Organization Formed in Orenburg Last Year Increasingly Active
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 12 – Berge, Tatar for “Together,” is a Tatar youth organization in Orenburg, the land bridge between Bashkortostan and the nations of the Middle Volga, on the one hand, and Kazakhstan, on the other. Formed last fall, it is led by Ilfat Batyrshin, who has now given an extensive interview about it.
The 27-year-old chef and businessman is a native of a Tatar village in Orenburg and has sought to make contact with other Tatars in that oblast and promote the survival and flourishing of his national community (milliard.tatar/news/ilfat-batyrsin-interes-u-tatarskoi-molodezi-k-svoei-kulture-v-orenburgskoi-oblasti-est-xotya-popadayutsya-i-te-komu-eto-bezrazlicno-7446).
According to Batyrshin, the group operates under the slogan “We are Together. We Can Do It and We are Moving Forward;” but he acknowledges that most of those who take part in its activities are products of Tatar-speaking homes. Those where Russian has displaced Tatars show much less interest.
The Berge organization has regular meetings and hosts a variety of cultural events, he continues. It also seeks to develop ties with Tatar activists in Tatarstan and elsewhere in the hopes that such cooperation will inspire greater action among that national community in what is now a predominantly ethnic Russian region.
The group maintains sites on social media, Batyrshin says; and in this way, it reaches out to a larger audience than just those who take part in its activities immediately. For background on the Orenburg corridor and the importance of Tatars and Bashkirs there, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/russian-commentators-adopt-updated.html as well as the sources cited therein.
Teaching Immigrant Children Russian Not the Panacea the Kremlin Believes, Experts Say
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 11 -- A recent spate of violent crimes by the almost 800,000 minor children of migrant workers in the Russian Federation is sparking demands in some quarters that Moscow ban such immigrant children from accompanying their parents when the latter come to Russia to work.
Such an approach would almost certainly contribute to an acceleration in the decline of Central Asians and Caucasians willing to come to Russia. Consequently, the Kremlin has placed its hopes on Russifying such migrants by insisting that they learn Russian, a policy that reflects Putin’s view of the centrality of language as far as ethnic identity is concerned.
But experts at the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science (Rosobnadzor) say that teaching immigrant children to speak Russian will be insufficient to correct the problems that these young people present (versia.ru/testy-po-russkomu-yazyku-ne-reshat-problemu-rosta-prestupnosti-sredi-detej-migrantov).
They are proposing other methods, including special classes in schools, to acculturate immigrant children although it is far from clear whether the Kremlin is prepared to commit the kind of resources that such an effort would entail or even whether those steps in addition to promoting Russian language would be sufficient.
A discussion at the end of Soviet times highlights why just promoting Russian language competence may not be the panacea that Putin and his regime think and that it is even possible that ensuring that Central Asia and Caucasian youth who do learn Russian will have experiences that could further alienate and radicalize them.
At that time, it was recognized by many Soviet experts and some Western ones that a notional Central Asian who did not know Russian and could not get an important job would see that not as a form of ethnic discrimination but as the result of his own failure to have the linguistic competence needed to get it.
But a Central Asia who did learn Russian and still was passed over for such a job would inevitably conclude that he was being discriminated against because of his nationality, something that in many cases would lead anyone passed over to adopt an increasingly nationalist and anti-Russian position.
And it was even recalled by some Western observers, including the author of these lines, that the experience of other countries confirms this: After all, British control of India was not threatened so much by Hindi speaker peasants as by an English-trained lawyer named Gandhi; and the Irish did not become radically nationalist until they stopped speaking Gaelic.
Few Russian Couples Now Living Together Plan to Get Married Anytime Soon or Even Ever, New Poll Finds
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 11 – Only 22 percent of Russian couples now living together plan to get married in the next year with more than a third of these saying that they do not plan to marry at any point in the future, according to a new Russian Field poll, whose findings represent a challenge to Putin’s promotion of traditional values.
Of the 1600 Russians surveyed in this poll, 53 percent were married, 15 percent were living together without official registration, and 33 percent were living alone. Those between 30 and 59 are most likely to be married; those under 30, to be in unregistered unions (actualcomment.ru/brak-ne-v-planakh-2505120950.html).
More bad news for the Kremlin came from the responses of Russians to another question: 89 percent of those married or living together said that they did not plan to have a child in the coming year. Ten percent said they did, and one percent indicated that they were ready to adopt.
The most likely to plan to give birth or adopt of course are the members of younger age groups and also those with a family income above 80,000 rubles (800 US dollars) a month. Analysts suggest that this reflects more than just general economic difficulties but the sense that having children will lead to poverty (kommersant.ru/doc/7712466).
Numerically Small Peoples of Russian North and Siberia have Suffered Vastly More Combat Deaths in Ukraine Relative to Population than have Russian Residents as a Whole
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 11 -- It is widely recognized that non-Russian peoples have suffered more combat losses in Ukraine relative to population than have Russians, but an Arktida portal survey suggests that the numerically small peoples of the North and Siberia, those who can ill afford any losses if their nations are to survive, have in many cases suffered the most.
The nationality that has lost the most in this regard are the Telengits, a Turkic ethnic group in the Altai Republic who number only 3700. They have suffered 10.26 deaths per 1000 population – more than one percent – compared to an average for the Russian Federation as a whole of 0.67 percent (kedr.media/news/arktida-korennye-narody-ponesli-neproporczionalno-vysokie-poteri-v-hode-boevyh-dejstvij-v-ukraine/).
The figures for other numerically small peoples of the North and Siberia are slightly less but still daunting and an indication that the Russian authorities have found it even easier to recruit soldiers from these ethnic groups than from among larger non-Russian ones which in many cases have their own republics and are thus better able to defend themselves.
The numbers of combat deaths relative to population that Arktida gives for these peoples are as follows: the Telengits with10.26 deaths per 1,000 followed by the Eskimos with 6.04, the Chukchi with 5.8, the Udygey with 5.28, the Nganasans with 4.37, the Nentsy with 4.03, the Itelmens with 3.85, the Koryaks with 3.74, the Saami with 3.27, and the Khanty with 2.45.
Other peoples in this category who have suffered more deaths per 1000 members than have the ethnic Russians include the Dolgans, the Selkuts, the Chelkans, the Evens, the Nivkhs, the Komi-Izhemstsy, the Shors, the Mansi, and the Ulchi with losses ranging from a high of 1.84 deaths per 1,000 population to a low of 0.81.
Among the numerically small peoples of the North and Siberia, only the Evenks, the Nanays, the Tubalars, the Yukagirs, and the Teleuts have lower per capita losses than the Russians. Their death rtes range from a high of 0.66 per 1,000 just under the Russian rate to a low of 0.45.
Lana Pylayeva, an expert on the rights of numerically small peoples, says that the differences reflect the relative dispersal of these peoples territorially. Where they live in dispersed communities, the number impressed into service and then dying in Ukraine is smaller. But where they live compactly, like the Telengits, the Russians simply took all the young men.
Iranian Vice President's Statement that Iran and Tajikistan are ‘Second Homes for Each Other’ Limited in Meaning
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 11 -- Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president, says that Iran and Tajikistan are “second homes for each other” because of their “broadening of economic and energy cooperation.” However, there is a danger that his words will re-enforce or even spread a major misconception about the two countries.
Aref made this comment in the course of a meeting with Daler Juma, Tajikistan’s minister for energy and water resources, and focused on the results of the latest meeting of a joint commission on economic ties rather than on something broader (parstoday.ir/ru/news/iran-i210978).
But the Iranian official’s words are at risk of being misunderstood because Iranians and Tajiks speak mutually intelligible languages and thus are frequently assumed to share a common culture. However, that is a mistake: the Iranians are Shiite Muslims while the Tajiks are Sunnis, a divide which limits the appropriateness of speaking of them as closer than they are.
Moreover, while their languages are similar, they use different scripts – Iran uses a Persido-Arabic one while Tajikistan uses a Cyrillic-based one – and their different religious traditions reflect even broader cultural divisions, facts of life that must not be forgotten in any analysis of Iran’s role in Tajikistan in particular and Central Asia more generally.
Unfortunately, that does not always happen given that the four other Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan – are all Turkic linguistically and share a common Sunni Islamic faith and so many are inclined to counterpose Tajikistan with its Persian-linked language as necessarily opposed to them.