Moscow Should be Worried about Discontent of Ethnic Russians and Not Just Discontent of Non-Russians, Molchanov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 7 – An “abnormal” situation has arisen in Russia where the assertion that “Russia is the country of Russians” is considered almost extremist and any moves to address the concerns of ethnic Russians is viewed as something “almost extremist” and a threat to the survival of the country, Igor Molchanov says.

            Those who feel that way say that nothing can be done to change the Soviet-imposed divisions within the country lest that lead non-Russians to seek the disintegration of the country, the Svobodnaya pressa columnist says. But Moscow should be worried instead about discontent among ethnic Russians (svpressa.ru/society/article/530979/).

            In reaction to such attitudes and their impact on Moscow’s thinking, many Russians now are reflecting bitterly that “the Russian is the owner of the hotel and has keys to all the doors, but he has no room of his own” and wondering whether that will ever change so that they too will have their place in the sun.

            It is in fact “amazing,” Molchanov continues, that while “the resentment and discontent of peoples on the periphery and the numerically small nations are feared, the discontent of ethnic Russians is not.” 

            “The fact that there are 150 indigenous peoples living on the territory of the Russian Federation doesn’t trump the fact that the Russian people constitute an absolute majority of the country’s population,” with 71.7 percent of it declaring themselves to be ethnic Russians in the 2021 census.

            (Moscow routinely cites a figure of over 80 percent and most Westerners follow it and say the same, but that figure reflects official assignment of nationality to the large share of the Russian population that did not give any nationality mostly to the Russians even though these people did not identify as such.)

            The 71.7 percent of the population the Russians now form is less than it was, but it is still numerically dominant over all others and vastly more than any of the individual nationalities: The Tatars, the second largest nation, for example, Molchanov continues, amount to only 3.8 percent.

            That ethnic Russian preponderance must be recognized, he continues; and “there should thus be a fundamentally different approach to the resolution of the national question,” one that doesn’t depersonalize ethnic Russians but rather recognizes “without any reservations, the Russians as the state-forming people.”

            The ethnic Russians “must defend their right to their own existence, Molchanov argues, although he quickly adds that “no one is talking about the infringement of the rights of other indigenous peoples.” But everyone must recognize that the Russian people is the only one capable of keeping the country together and the state in place.

Representatives of Extreme Russian Nationalist Groups Formed Only Two Percent of Participants in Moscow Procession, SOVA Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 8 – Many outlets have suggested that the Moscow Procession on Sept. 6 which was led by Patriarch Kirill and attracted some 100,000 people who marched behind the newly discovered relics of Dmitry Donskoy was an outpouring of extreme Russian nationalism (e.g., doxa.team/news/2026-09-07-moscow-krestny-hod-ultrapravye).

            But the authoritative SOVA human rights monitoring group says that only about two percent of that total consisted of representatives of extreme nationalist groups such as the Russian Community, the Northern Man, and Forty of Forties and that most of them did not participate as groups but as individuals (sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/news/racism-nationalism/2026/09/d54483/).

            That doesn’t mean that the other participants were not animated by Russian nationalist thematics – Patriarch Kirill certainly was – but it does mean that their nationalism at least as expressed on this occasion was far more the tradition kind focused on the history of the country and deferential to the state rather than promoting a narrow “Russia for the Russians” agenda.

            Such Moscow processions have a long history. The first “all-Moscow” one took place in 1525. They were an annual event in tsarist times but suppressed by the Soviets, but they were revived in 2025 when officials said that 40,000 people took part (nazaccent.ru/content/45911-v-obshemoskovskom-krestnom-hode-prinyali-uchastie-100-tysyach-chelovek/).

Russians Not Telling Jokes about Putin Not Only Because They Fear Repression but Also Because They Care More about Other Russians than about Him, Arkhipova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 5 – In Soviet times, Russians came up with anecdotes about their leaders; but now, there are few such stories. The reason for this change is two-fold, Aleksandra Arkhipova says. On the one hand, people fear repression; and on the other, they are now focused on other Russians rather than the leader alone.

            The Russian anthropologist who now lives in Paris says the lack of anecdotes is thus part of the adaptive strategies Russians have adopted to cope with the new era and the evolution of Russian society which has more information about more things than did its predecessors (svoboda.org/a/gena-rabstva-ne-suschestvuet/33846353.html).

            In the course of a wide-ranging interview with Radio Liberty, Arkhipova makes three other particularly noteworthy observations:

First, she says that she “does not really believe in a specifically Russian model of behavior or in some specific ‘slavery gene’ about which people began to speak a lot in 2022.” The Russian state “is able to do terrible things with people,” but it is far from alone in that. And like other peoples, Russians adapt to the way the state acts.

Second, she observes that Russians grow up with the view that they must keep as much distance as possible from the state, although some use it as a social elevator and thus look on it more positively. Since Putin came to power, Russians have participated in new loyalty rituals, but that doesn’t mean the view that they should keep their distance from the state has changed.

And third, she points to the fact that today, urban legends are spreading in Russia as a way for people there to cope with the cognitive dissonance generated by the sharp contrast between what the Russian authorities are saying about the weakness of Ukraine and what Russians can see with their own eyes when it comes to drone attacks and returning dead.

Since 2000, Murmansk Regional Government has Moved from Protecting Ethnic Minorities to Promoting ‘Friendship of the Peoples’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 7 – Earlier this summer, the Murmansk regional government changed the name of the Murmansk Regional Center of Indigenous Peoples of the North and Interethnic Cooperation into the Murmansk Regional House of Friendship of the Peoples, completing a shift begun 20 years ago from a structure defending minorities to one promoting ethnic harmony.

            In the 1990s, Saami activist Andrey Danilov says, numerically small peoples like his own created their own structures and the regional government set up institutions to work with them. Over time, however, Murmansk gelded the independent structures and changed the focus of government ones (indigenous-russia.com/archives/50014).

            In a 2500-word article, he details how each of these processes occurred, most step-by-step rather than all at once, and argues that this process of eliminating structures whose primary goal was the defense of the minorities or the organization at least of consultation with them has been replaced by something else.

            No one can be against promoting “friendship of the peoples,” of course, he suggests; but that is not the same thing at all as protecting the rights of ethnic minorities and giving them a voice in how the state will mediate between them, business interests and the state.

            While Danilov limits his story to what has happened in Murmansk and to the Saami in particular, his description of what has happened there is a harbinger of similar trends elsewhere in the Russian Federation and recalls the last decades of Soviet period when officials used “friendship of the peoples” to cover their exploitation and suppression.

Regional Governments Freeze Salaries of Government Workers to Pay Volunteers to Fight in Putin’s War

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 7 – Government employees including teachers, medical workers and researchers have seen their salaries frozen because the governments of federal subjects need the money to pay the enormous bonuses to those who volunteer to fight in Ukraine.

            So far, this new budgetary approach has hit distant regions like Sakha and Sakhalin, but it is likely to spread (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/09/07/v-rossiiskih-regionah-nachali-zamorazhivat-indeksatsiyu-zarplat-byudzhetnikam-iz-za-viplat-uchastnikam-svo-a205407).

            What makes this important is not that regional governments are having to juggle their budgets to pay for what the Kremlin wants them to spend on manning Putin’s “special military operation” but rather that it threatens to create a whole new class of Russians who may now oppose the war because it is hitting the so close to home.

Kremlin Outlets Outraged Armenian Leader Spoke in Armenian rather than Russian at Shanghai Cooperation Organization Meeting

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 7 – After Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan used Armenian in addressing to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting at the end of August, pro-Kremlin commentators in Moscow were outraged and suggested his move recalled what the Baltic countries and Ukrainian leaders had done earlier.

            The most extreme of these said that what had happened in those countries began “precisely when their elites began demonstratively ‘forgetting’ Russia as the language of inter-internet communication” and using their own national languages instead (charter97.org/ru/news/2026/9/1/696892/ ).

            And they pointed out that all the other leaders of the former Soviet republics at the SCO meeting, including those of Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan had used Russian, which they argued was entirely appropriate at such times to ensure better communication.

            Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was also distressed but somewhat more measured in his words. He acknowledged that what Pashinyan had done was “a signal to assert Armenia’s sovereignty” but added that “frankly, we didn’t understand why that couldn’t be stated in Russian” (charter97.org/ru/news/2026/9/7/697541/).

            What is striking is that both Russian commentators and the Kremlin spokesman seemed more upset by this use of the national language of Armenia than they did by the declaration Pashinyan made only a few days before the SCO meeting that Yerevan no longer considers Russia to be a strategic partner.

            This is not the first time Moscow has been angry about the language used by heads of former Soviet republics. In 2024, Russians were very upset when Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomar Tokayev, used Chinese in Beijing but responded to Russians in Kazakh (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/11/kazakhstan-presidents-use-of-chinese-in.html).

Putin’s Assumptions about Western Weakness Pushing Russia toward Strategic Defeat, Gallyamov Says, Just as Happened to USSR at Its End

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 6 – Like the leaders of the Soviet Union in its last decades, Putin believes that the West is weak and will collapse if Russia simply makes a little more effort, a conviction that is giving Russia now certain tactical victories but is setting the stage for his country’s strategic defeat, Abbas Gallyamov says.

            The former Putin speechwriter and now prominent Putin critic argues that Russia has the resources to achieve some tactical victories. Indeed, examples of Western weakness can “unleash Putin’s hands tactically;” but the real resources of the West mean that pursuit of a strategic victory would lead to Russia’s defeat (vot-tak.tv/95251668/putin-zhdet-krakha-zapada).

            Any decision to engage in a strategic escalation, Gallyamov says, such as a new mobilization, the use of nuclear weapons, or pursuing the destruction of NATO in the short term would mean that Russia’s resources would decline faster than those of the West in whose weakness he is now counting.

            Putin’s approach in recent years, one based on waiting for his opponents to “run out of time” has meant both that “he hasn’t noticed how this ends for himself” or that he is in a position to recognize that “this is what happened to the Soviet Union” in the years leading up to its defeat and demise.

            In the last decade of the Soviet period, Gallyamov reminds, “Moscow has many foreign policy successes: the victory of North Vietnam over America … the fall of the pro-Beijing Khmer Route in Cambodia, the success of the MPLA in Angola and the expansion of a Soviet military presence” in many parts of Africa.

            The Soviet leadership also gained by the geopolitical shifts of Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Iran, Palestine and the GDR, he continues. Given all these trends, the Soviet leadership was certain that if it just pushed a little harder and for a little longer, the USSR would triumph because its Western opponents were retreating.

But then the situation developed in ways that Putin has failed to remember, Gallyamov says. These triumphs, genuine but tactical, rapidly became “expensive for the country. To finance this geopolitical glory, money was needed and money wasn’t there anymore.” To support them, Moscow turned to economic reforms and then the USSR collapsed.

The lesson from this is clear, the commentator says, “going from success to success, you can actually come to the edge of the abyss; and then, without noticing it, take another step forward toward collapse.”