Staunton,
January 23 – In a transparent attempt to win votes but one that may backfire
not only among non-Russians but also among many Russians opposed to his authoritarian
approach, Vladimir Putin has published the nationality plank of his
presidential campaign, one that restates and extends ideas he has presented in
the past.
Putin’s 3700-word
essay, which appears today both on his presidential campaign website (http://putin2012.ru/events/95) and as
a major article in Moscow’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta” (www.ng.ru/politics/2012-01-23/1_national.html),
adopts a stateman-like pose, saying how dangerous it is for politicians to play
the ethnic card and then proceeding to do just htat.
As he
has often done, the Russian prime minister stresses that the ethnic situation
in his country is “in principle different” than it is in other countries, with
its “nationality and migration problems “directly connected with the destruction
of the USSR and in esstence historically greater Russia which was established in
its essentials already in the 18th century.”
“Having
declared sovereignty 20 years ago,” Putin continues, “the then-deputies of the
RSFSR” in their struggle with “the ‘union center’” put in motion “the process
of the construction of ‘national states,’ including even within the Russian
Federation itself,” a process that could lead to “collapse and separatism.”
“With
the disintegration of the country,” he says, “we turned out to be at the edge
and in certain well-know regions even beyond the edge of civil war.” But
fortunately, just as in the case of “the first Russian time of troubles” in the
seventeenth century, while the state was “critically weakened, Russia did not
disappear.”
The
ethnic Russian people and ethnic Russian culture which defines and maintains “the
fabric of this unique civilization,” Putin argues, held things together and
even now are preventing those who would “with their own hands destroy their own
motherland” by calling for “a mono-ethnic state,” “the shortest path … the
destruction of the Russian people and Russian statehood.”
Moreover,
those who today say that it is time to “stop feeding the Caucasus” will
eventually say that it is time to “stop feeding Siberia, the Far East, the
Urals, and the Moscow region,” Putin adds, repeating the kind of domino effect
that led to the destruction of the Soviet Union.
The
[ethnic] Russian people, Putin continues, “is a polyethnic civilization held
together by a Russian cultural nucleus.” As such, “the [non-ethnic] Russian experience
of state development is unique. We are a
multi-national society,” he says, “but we are a single people,” something that
must oppose any “germ” of narrow nationalism.
Again as
he has done in the past, Putin notes that “many citizens of the USSR when they
were abroad called themselves [ethnic] Russians” because “in our identity is a
different cultural code” than others have. “the [ethnic] Russian people is the
state-forming people as is shown by the fact of the existence of Russia. The
great mission of the [ethnic] Russians is to unify and support [this]
civilization.”
“Such a
civilizaitonal identity is based on the preservation of [ethnic] Russian cultural
dominants, the bears of which are not only ethnic Russians but all the bears of
this identity independently of nationality.
This cultural code which ahs been subjected in recent times to serious
tests” has been preserved.
From
this perspective, Putin argues that the Russian Federation needs “a strategy of
nationality policy based on civic patriotism,” one in which “every individual
living in our country must not forget about his faith and ethnicity. But he
must above all be a citizen of Russia and proud of that.”
“No one
has the right to put national and religious differences higher than the laws of
the state,” Putin says, although he does allow that “the laws of the state must
consider national and religious differences.” To that end, he calls for a new
nationalities agency, even though he was the one who disbanded as unnecessary
the Russian ministry for nationality affairs.
The
presidential candidate adds that the rights of ethnic Russians must be constantly
protected from abuse lest some begin to talk about “the national oppression of [ethnic]s
Russian” and use that to promote disorder or even to allow some to talk about
the rise of “’[ethnic] Russian fascism.’”
Force
must be used to suppress violence but otherwise dialogue should be maintained,
Putin suggests. Only “one thing” is not permissible: There must be no chance “for
the creation of regional parties, including in the national republics” because that
step “is a direct path to separatism.”
In some
detail, he calls for a toughening of immigration policy and expanded efforts to
ensure that legal migrants “adapt” to the Russian cultural code, all popular
positions given the number of gastarbeiters in Russian cities. But he uses this proposal to talk about
something else, which potentially has far reaching consequences.
Putin
suggests that to address the migration issue there needs to be “Eurasian
integration” across the former Soviet space, a process that will “strengthen
our ‘historic state,’ left to us from our ancestors. A state-civilization which
is capable of organically resolving the task of the integration of various
ethnoses and confessions.”
“For
centuries,” Putin concludes, “we have lived together. Together we won in the
most terrible war. And we will lvie together in the future. To those wo want or try to divide us, I will
say only one thing – don’t expect to succeed,” language that probably will
generate a different reaction in the other post-Soviet states than among his
supporters.
Given
his place in the Russian political system, Putin’s essay even today has
attracted enormous comment, generally positive but not universally so even
among ethnic Russians and those who describe themselves as Russian
nationalists. Among the most interesting of these comments are www.russ.ru/Mirovaya-povestka/Putinskij-imperskij-nacionalizm-i-regional-nye-partii,
actualcomment.ru/theme/2178/,
www.polit.ru/article/2012/01/23/putinnat/,
www.specletter.com/obcshestvo/2012-01-23/natsionalnyi-lider-zagovoril-o-natsionalnom.html,
echo.msk.ru/blog/oreh/851592-echo/,
http://www.rus-obr.ru/lj/16444,
and
But one
comment today from a Kazan Tatar suggests how many of the Russian Federation’s
increasingly numerous non-ethnic Russians are likely to react to Putin’s
approach. In a commentary on ETatar,
Robert Bolgarsky politely but firmly disagrees with the Russian politician’s
approach (etatar.ru/top/42022).
Bolgarsky
begins by observing that Putin’s “long-awaited article” failed to provide
answers which “it would have been interesting” to find the answers to, among
which are Putin’s attitudes toward instruction in non-Russian languages in the
republics of the Russian Federation and to the state of native languages in
general.
Instead,
the Tatar commentator said, Putin used terms that raise more questions and will
lead almost any non-Russian to draw some very negative conclusions about what
the Russian prime minister and president presumptive believes and where he
wants to take the country in the future.
As
Bolgarsky notes, Putin talks about “[ethnic] Russian Armenians, [ethnic]
Russian Azerbaijanis, [ethnic] Russian Germans, [and ethnic] Russian Tatars.” Just who are “[ethnic] Russian] Tatars,” the
commentator asks, suggesting that Putin for some reason or other has confused
the terms “Rossiyanin” or non-ethnic Russian with “Russkiye” or ethnic Russian.
“Ask any
Tatar who speaks even the slightest amoung of his native language,” Bolgarsky
continues, Having heard the term ‘[ethnic]
Russian Tatar,’ he as a minimum will begin to think about what that means because
from birth he has not heard such a definition of his nationality.”
“Is this
a Tatar who has converted to Orthodoxy? Or is it a Tatar who has forgotten his
native language? Or is it a Russified Tatar? There are perhaps a great many
possibilities, but they all mean the loss of national identity, of the Tatar
cultural code, if you like, and thus the term ‘[ethnic] Russian Tatar’ is
viewed by Tatars themselves in an extremely negative way.”
Putin
should know, the Tatar commentator says, that there are more than 100 language
and ethnic groups who are “indigenous peoples of the federation. These are not
just Russian lands, they are Tatar, Bashkir, Koryak, Yakut and other lands. But
for some reason, Putin gives to the Russians ‘the great mission to unite.’”
Bolgarsky
then says “Permit me not to agree with you, Vladimir Vladimirovich! I am first
of all a Tatar and Muslim who considers Russia as his motherland. I am in no
way an ‘[ethnic] Russian Tatar’! I am a [non-ethnic] Russian Tatar,” despite
the fact that the laws of the Russian state don’t allow him or others to learn
their native languages to perfection.
But
Bolgarsky concludes that there is one point with which he has to agree with
Putin and that is when the prime minister says that anyone “who comes into
regions with other cultures and historical traditions must relate to local
customs with respect. To the customs of [ethnic] Russians and all other peoples
of Russia.”
So
anyone, including Russian presidential candidates who come to Tatarstan and the
Middle Volga should be good enough to “learn at least 100 words of Tatar” in
order to behave respectfully to the Tatar population. Vladimir Putin, Bolgarsky concludes, has been
good enough to do at least that.
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