Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 24 – The notion
that ethnic Russians should be allowed for form their own “national cultural autonomy”
inside the Russian Federation, something many Russian nationalists have
advocated, “contradicts the very
definition” of that term as well as the country’s constitution, according to
the chair of the Duma nationalities committee.
In an interview with Nazaccent.ru,
Gadzhimet Safaraliyev dismisses the very idea by observing that there is no
purpose to speak about the ethnic Russians in that way “if we have an [ethnic]
Russian state and [ethnic] Russian cultural dominants, the bearers of which speak
on behalf not only ethnic Russians but all citizens of the country regardless
of nationality” (nazaccent.ru/interview/31/).
Challenged
to “name even one document which would say that we have an ‘[ethnic] Russian
state,’ the Daghestani deputy says that “we have a Russian state and the
nucleus of our multi-national people is the more than 100 million-strong
[ethnic] Russian people,” something that “it is hardly necessary” to declare
more formally.
“The
task of contemporary state nationality policy in the Russian Federation,”
Safaraliyev continues, “is the strengthening of the spiritual consolidation of
the multi-natinal people of Russia as a single civic nation.” That is not as easy to carry out as many think
and there are real “problems.”
One of the most
serious, he says, is “the resolution of conflict situations and securing the
rights of citizens to the free choice of the language of communication,
training and instruction.” His committee
is working on a definition of “language status,” he suggests that “in
multi-national Russia, bilingualism and multilingualism is natural!”
“Knowledge of languages brings
peoples together,” he says, noting that “in Daghestan, we have many [ethnic]
Russians who know Caucasian languages and speak them freely.”
Again challenged by his interviewer
to justify his claim that Moscow is treating nationality policy seriously given
that there are no budget funds specifically allocated to it, Safaraliyev says
that this situation is being addressed, that money will be provided, and that a
new institution, possibly a nationalities agency or ministry will be set up.
Meanwhile, Ramazan Abdulatipov, a former
Russian nationalities minister, was challenged in the Moscow press to explain
another official move that has infuriated Russian nationalists: the decision to
drop references to “the state-forming role” of the new Russian nationalities
strategy paper of which he was a co-author.
In an interview published in
“Vzglyad” yesterday, Abdulatipov said that he and his colleagues had agree that
Moscow must shift from references to “the state-forming” role of ethnic
Russians to their “unifying” role because of the attitudes of non-Russians in
the Russian Federation (www.vz.ru/politics/2012/10/23/603696.html).
“Each national republic wants to
write in its own constitution that the people that predominates there is that state-forming
people. In Khakhassia, they write that the Khakass are the state-forming
people; in Chechnya, the Chechens; and so on.”
Everyone needs to understand this and not be alarmed.
He and his co-authors, Abdulatipov said,
“did not change the essence of this thesis but rather introduced precision. No
one denies that the [ethnic] Russian people formed [non-ethnic] Russian
statehood.” Indeed, he said, he and his
co-authors “took certain definitions from the essay of Vladimir Putin” where he
talked about the “Russian code” as the basis of statehood.
“But despite that it is necessary to
understand that not even the one most dominating people could uniquely form the
contemporary Russian Federation. And even in the Constitution it is written
that we are a multi-national people.” Had the authors of the strategy paper not
recognized this, they would have had “to change the Basic Law of the country.”
And as far as the existence of
national republics is concerned, Abdulatipov noted, all the federal subjects
are equal in status, but history itself requires that each choose its own “style.” Daghestan has existed many thousands of
years, the city of Derbent alone is 5,000 years old. Tatarstan is more than a
thousand. These are historical names” and should not be changed.
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