Academy of Sciences Releases Maps Showing Concentrations of Ethnic Groups in Moscow and 'Readovka' has Posted Them Online

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 10 – In addition to data on fertility rates among various ethnic groups in major Russian cities (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/11/ethnic-immigrants-in-major-russian.html), the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics has released maps showing where some of the most prominent ethnic groups are now concentrated.

            The Readovka news service has now posted online seven of these maps – for the Azerbaijanis, the Chinese, the Georgians, the Jews, the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, and the Russians. That these maps are now being published is certain to worry many Russian nationalists, although one aspect of these maps may be reassuring.

            The maps contain a key to the number of these groups per 1000 population in each of the sections of the city and that shows that even where the non-Russian groups are concentrated, their concentrations are relatively small relative to the total number of Russians. The ethnic enclaves as Russians refer to ghettos occupy smaller areas than the regions of the city. 

Russian Police on the Beat Increasingly Outnumbered and Outgunned by Criminals

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 8 – In location after location across the Russian Federation, police on the beat find themselves outnumbered and even outgunned by criminals, a situation worse than was the case even in the 1990s and one that some view as a threat to national security and others as the first sign of a new time of troubles.

            Russian officials and Russian commentators have been alarmed for some time that there are so many vacancies among police on the beat especially outside Moscow and the other megalopolises (jamestown.org/program/war-against-ukraine-leaving-russian-police-state-without-enough-police/).

            But now a series of incidents across the Russian Federation in which the police lacked the forces to respond to criminal actions both by ordinary Russian criminals and immigrant communities has sparked alarm that the situation has deteriorated to the point that there is good reason to fear what is going on (svpressa.ru/society/article/489662/).

            Indeed, according to Svobodnaya Presssa commentator Dmitry Svetlov, based on all available evidence, “the police ever more needs help from the side of society although the very idea of the existence of such forces is that everything should be just the reverse, that the man in uniform is called upon to defend ‘civilians,’ and not them him.”

            He gives numerous examples where the police lacked the manpower to stand up to criminal elements and then quotes two expert observers as to what this means. Military journalist Dmitry Steshin says that the disappearance of the police as an effective force is the first thing that happens when a society begins to descend into a time of troubles.

            And journalist Andrey Medvedev goes even further/ He suggests that what is already going on in the Russian Federation as far as the police is concerned is “a threat to the country’s national security.” History shows, he adds ominously, that states don’t collapse because of outside forces but from the failure of internal ones and the police among the first of these. 

Most Serious Problem of Russian Courts is that They are Arranged So that the Number of Not Guilty Verdicts is Approaching Zero, Agranovsky Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 6 – Igor Krasnov, chief judge of the Russian Supreme Court, says that he believes the main problem of Russian courts is that the logic behind verdicts in one place often is at serious variance with that in others, something that increases the number of appeals and decreases the authorities of the courts (tass.ru/obschestvo/25510289).

            But Dmitry Agranovsky, a lawyer and rights activist, says that the judge should be focusing on an entirely different problem, “the virtual absence of adversarial proceedings between the prosecution and the defense” and the resulting disappearance of “not guilty” findings (svpressa.ru/society/article/489219/).

            (For statistical evidence on this point which shows that the number of acquittal in Russian courts has fallen to only 0.15 percent – that is one “not guilty” finding for every 670 cases, see the discussion at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/05/acquittals-in-russian-courts-fall-to.html.)

            This trend reflects a weakening of the position of defense lawyers, Agranovsky says; and “without an adversarial process, courts become a mere conveyor belt for manufacturing verdicts, where officials view acquittals as a flaw and strive to minimize them. That is the most important problem” of Russian courts, he continues. “All others are merely cosmetic.”

            He argues that a capitalist system needs adversarial relations in its courts to provide “at least some kind of regulator because without cross-cutting systems of control, capitalism simply destroys it completely, and the system as a whole quickly decays.” Governments of other capitalist countries understand that; the Russian government does not appear to.

            As a result, the prospects for Russian courts and the Russian economic and political system are anything but bright. 

In Best Tradition of All Empires, Putin is Offering Superficial Help to Smallest Minorities while Working Overtime to Undermine Larger Ones, Saidukova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 6 – In announcing the creation of a Day of the Languages of the Peoples of Russia, Vladimir Putin has followed the best imperial tradition of offering superficial opportunities to the smallest minorities even as he continues working overtime to undermine and ultimately destroy the larger ones which could challenge Moscow, Marina Saidukova says.

            Like other imperialists, the Buryat activist who now teaches at the University of Montana says, Putin is more than ready to allow the tiniest minorities in his country to sing and dance on such holidays so as to distract attention from what he has been doing to the larger ones (idelreal.org/a/den-yazykov-narodov-rossii-simvolicheskiy-shag-ili-pir-vo-vremya-chumy-/33581889.html).

            Those who are victims of Putin’s policies as well as those who seek to understand what he is doing need to recognize this distinction, one between often tiny groups no larger than a few thousand and major nations numbering the millions. The former are no threat to him and can be allowed to celebrate; the latter are a threat and must be destroyed, she says.

            Saiduova says that Putin’s latest move is “a cynical symbolic gesture intended to create the appearance of concern about diversity while his real policy is leading to unification … and even legitimizing Russification.” No one must allow him or herself to be deceived, and everyone of good will must struggle against what the Kremlin leader is doing. 

‘In Russia, There are No Non-Russians’ Only Russian-Non-Russian Hyphenates, Karaulov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 8 – That is how poet and publicist Igor Karaulov headlines his latest commentary in Vzglyad, using the ethnic term russkiye rather than the political one rossiiskiye and arguing that it is time to update Stalin’s words about national cultures to indicate that they may remain national in form but that their content must be that of the core Russian people.

            Because that is so, the Moscow writer says, Russia has “not simply Buryats but Russian Buryats, not simply Evenks but Russian Events, and not simply Avars but Russian Avars. And when we understand that and feel it in out hearts, then our multiplicity will cease to confuse us and will frighten only our enemies” (vz.ru/opinions/2025/11/8/1371978.html).

            Karaulov takes as his point of departure Vladimir Putin’s recent speech in which he said that “without the ethnic Russians, there will be no Russia;” but the poet’s words go much further than even Putin did although perhaps not further than the Kremlin leader intended (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/11/putin-says-that-without-ethnic-russian.html).

            Indeed, the extension of Putin’s ideas that Karaulov has made suggests that many in the Russian bureaucracy, even those who nominally still support the existence of non-Russian nations are committed to transforming them in ways just as radical as Stalin did but in a somewhat different direction.

            Many non-Russians in the current sense are likely to be outraged by that possibility because a completely Russianized and Russified non-Russian nation is far more likely to be at risk of absorption by the dominant ethnic Russian nation, exactly the opposite of what Karaulov suggests he favors but precisely the end that his words point to.

            That he should reintroduce Stalin’s words about national culture in this context is especially worrisome because of what Stalin did to destroy pre-existing nations and to homogenize them. It seems entirely likely that Karaulov and those who think like him would like to see an equally radical transformation of all the non-Russians who still exist in Putin’s Russia.

Chuvash Woman Recovers Her Language and Identity after Being Alienated from her Roots by Russian Villagers and a Teacher of Chuvash

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 6 – In the latest installment of its series “The Non-Russian World,” the Horizontal Russia portal describes the way in which a Chuvash woman, 37, who spoke only Chuvash as a child, was alienated by Russians who thought her language and identity marked her as rural bumpkin, and then recovered both after she reached 30.

            Until the age of seven, Okshchini says, she lived with her grandmother and great-grandmother in a Chuvash village. She didn’t attend kindergarten, and she poke only Chuvash, something that seemed to her at the time “completely normal” (semnasem.org/articles/2025/11/05/nerusskij-mir-chuvashka-okcini).

            But then her family moved into another larger village and went to school. There, the other children spoke only Russian. She practiced speaking Russian and one of her friends helped her to do so. By the time she was a teenager, Okshchini says, she was ashamed to speak her native language and even to identify as a Chuvash.

            She did take a class in Chuvash, but the teacher didn’t like her; and consequently, she was even more alienated from her past not so much by the criticisms of her friends as by a teacher of a subject who might have been expected to encourage her to identify according to her ethnic roots.

            Okschini says she only became interested in Chuvash when her son was born and she decided to speak with him only in her native language and also when she got involved in making jewelry. She says she has incorporated Chuvash elements in her work and that has made her even more proud of her nationality and language.          

            As a result of her interest in Chuvash, she has been reconciled with her older relatives and that in turn has intensified her interest in and desire to express herself via the Chuvash language and through the use of Chuvash symbols.  She and her mother have even appeared together in Chuvash festivals. 

Ethnic Immigrants in Major Russian Cities have Fertility Rates More than Twice as High as Those of Ethnic Russians There, Academy of Sciences Study Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 7 – Ethnic minorities in major Russian cities are rapidly increasing their shares of the population there because on average the women in these communities have fertility rates more than twice as high as those of indigenous ethnic Russians, according to a new study released by the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

            The study found that ethnic Russian women in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk have between one and two children per woman per lifetime, their non-Russian counterparts in immigrant communities, both from abroad and from non-Russian republics within Russia, have fertility rates of between three and four (mk.ru/social/2025/11/06/genetiki-soobshhili-o-tom-kak-v-stolice-menyaetsya-populyacionnyy-sostav.html).

            This means not only that the non-Russians will quickly increase their share of the population even if in-migration were to be significantly reduced but also that there will likely be more inter-ethnic marriages and a shift in the ethnic and confessional composition of Russia not only in these cities but more generally, the authors of the study suggest.

            Such trends are also likely to exacerbate the feelings of ethnic Russian nationalists who fear the impact of rising percentages of non-Russians in their cities and increases in the number of intermarriages between Russians and non-Russians as a result and especially this evidence that Russian cities and Russia itself are becoming ever less Russian.