Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 24 – In a comment
that many non-Russians in the Russian Federation are certain to see as a threat
to the existence of their groups and some Russians may view as a danger to
Russianness as well, Vladimir Putin said yesterday that “it is not so important
what is written in the ‘nationality’ line; what is important is how an
individual identifies himself.”
In a conversation with Vladimir
Tolstoy who is overseeing the state project on “The Foundations of State
Cultural Policy,” the Kremlin leader continued that “what is important is who
he considers himself to be, what underlying cultural principles are part of him
from childhood, in what milieu he is raised and to what he is oriented toward in
a moral plane” (kremlin.ru/news/20855).
Putin’s
words could be nothing more than a situational response to Tolstoy’s
effort. After all, that effort is
focusing on culture and cultural identity rather than on ethnic or national
ones. But they will send and almost certainly were designed to send a broader
message about Putin’s thinking and the direction of his policies toward the
latter.
The Soviet government introduced a
system of almost completely fixed national identities, one in which with only
rare exceptions individuals could change the nationality indicated in their
passports and other documents and on which the Soviet system of
ethno-federalism rested.
(There were three exceptions:
Children of ethnically mixed marriages could choose which nationality to have. Ethnically
Ukrainian and Belarusian military officers and political figures reaching a certain
rank were allowed to declare themselves to be Russians. And some others were
allowed or even forced to change in support of specific ethno-national
policies.)
With the demise of the USSR, that
system partially but not completely collapsed as well. The 1993 Constitution
prohibited requiring people to set a fixed nationality, and nationality lines
in official documents disappeared. Nonetheless, members of various
nationalities have viewed the retention of nationality as important (http://postnauka.ru/faq/25100).
Non-Russians, especially those which
have autonomies, view nationality as their last line of defense against Putin’s
attacks on ethno-federalism, his amalgamation of non-Russian areas with predominantly
Russian ones, and his stripping of these state institutions of ever more of
their marks of sovereignty. They will thus view Putin’s words as a new threat
to themselves.
And ethnic Russians have viewed
nationality not only as a defense against threats to their numbers including
the rise of groups like the Cossacks or Siberians but also as a way of
maintaining their drive for the creation of a Russian nation state on the
territory of the Russian Federation.
Because the Soviets used the
nationality line invidiously against various groups, most notably against the
Jews, many liberals have pushed for an end to such “officialization” of ethnic
identity and demanded that the state allow people to identify however they want
to at any particular time.
While some might view Putin’s
comments as fitting in that tradition, a more sinister interpretation seems
justified given the Kremlin leader’s general approach. That interpretation
holds that he wants to undercut nationality as such for the non-Russians by
promoting a more expansive definition of Russianness.
That judgment is supported by Putin’s
own words yesterday when he said that “what is very important” to him is “the
creation of a single cultural space.” Such a space would be Russian in culture,
of course, and that would further call into question the vitality or even
survival of non-Russian groups within the country.
They are thus certain to feel
threatened by this and to oppose it to the extent they can. But many Russians are likely to oppose this
idea as well, fearing that it will dilute what it means to be Russian by
eliminating a clear line between their nation and others and especially by
eliminating the political dimension of official nationality.
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