Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 24 – In an article on
KM.ru, Aleksandr Romanov says that the influx of North Caucasians into
Stavropol has forced residents in that south Russian kray to consider “radical
measures,” including the possibility of establishing or more precisely
re-establishing a “Stavropol [Ethnic] Russian Republic.”
But the journalist pointedly asks whether
such an institution, one that would give ethnic Russians their own statehood
within the Russian Federation and thus something many non-Russians already
have, represents “a path to the
establishment of a state of the [ethnic] Russians or rather one to the collapse
of Russia” itself (km.ru/v-rossii/2013/08/22/migratsionnaya-politika-v-rossii/719016-stavropolskaya-russkaya-respublika-put-k).
At the dawn of the Soviet period, a
Stavropol Soviet Republic existed between January and July 1918 when it became
part of the North Caucasus Soviet Republic. Neither of course was defined in
ethnic terms, but their existence, like that of other earlier state
arrangements, appears to be one of the reasons that people in Stavropol are
talking about a republic.
The major reason, however, is the influx
of north Caucasians and the growing feeling among Stavropol’s indigenous ethnic
Russians that there is something fundamentally unjust about a situation in
which these North Caucasians have their own republics but that ethnic Russians
in Stavropol kray and elsewhere don’t.
“Ethnic Russians can only dream” about
such a republic, Romanov says. But “in their dreams they imagine how they would
respond to migrants who live according to their own rules” rather than those of
the Russians. You must respect Russians
and Russian traditions, they dream of saying: “You aren’t at home but in the
[ethnic] Russian Republic!’”
Unlike the non-Russians who have their
own territories in which they dominate the situation, the Russians don’t – and because
of the attitudes of the North Caucasians, they increasingly resent those who
say, as one Chechen did recently, “Russia is common for all, but [our] republic
is only ours.”
Over the last few weeks, various groups
in Stavropol have organized meetings and circulated petitions calling for a
referendum on the establishment of an ethnic Russian Republic, an action that
Romanov suggests would have resonance elsewhere. But whether that would lead to integration or
disintegration remains far from clear, at least to the KM.ru writer.
The Soviet government opposed the creation
of distinctly Russian areas lest their existence limit migration within the
country or spark greater nationalism among and resistance from non-Russian
groups. Instead, it offered the Russians
a Faustian bargain in which they were able to dominate the country but only as
long and in so far as they did not proclaim it.
That arrangement helps to explain why
the Russians received only the RSFSR and why Russian nationalist CPSU
officials, typically based in Leningrad, never reached the top positions in the
Soviet state. But with the collapse of the USSR, the Russians continued to have
only a “federation” and no explicitly ethnic territories of their own.
That has become increasingly infuriating
to many Russians, especially given the nationalist attitudes and behavior of
some non-Russian groups. But so far, Moscow officials appear to understand just
how dangerous the appearance of an ethnic Russian republic would be for a
country that is more than a quarter non-Russian in terms of population.
What remains to be seen is whether the
rise of demands from below for “ethnic Russian republics” may prove even more
dangerous, either because they further exacerbate relations among the nationalities
of the Russian Federation or because such declarations highlight the
impotence of the center to prevent such developments.
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