Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Window on Eurasia: Yet Another Potentially Risky Kremlin Move against Non-Russian Republics


Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, November 5 – The Russian Federation Council has approved a bill that calls on the country’s national-cultural autonomies to expand their activities by getting involved with the social adaptation of gastarbeiters and other immigrants, a move few of them are prepared to undertake but one that raises their profile compared to the non-Russian territorial republics.

 

            On the one hand, as leaders of the non-Russian republics certainly understand, this could be the first step in a Moscow campaign to downgrade the non-Russian republics or even abolish them, with Russian officials arguing that the national-cultural autonomies can do everything the republics are doing.

 

            But on the other and precisely because of that danger to their own existence, non-Russian republics are likely to try to develop even closer relationships with the national-cultural autonomies of their ethnic groups and use such links to bring additional pressure to bear on Moscow or at least to block moves against them.

 

            As Elena Meygun notes in her report on Nazaccent.ru today, “at first, [under the terms of the legislation which created them] national-cultural autonomies were established for the preservation of the ethnic culture” of members of nationalities who form minorities in particular regions and cities (nazaccent.ru/content/13742-novye-gorizonty.html).

 

            “The logic of the [new] legislation is clear” and redefines the nature of these bodies at least potentially because many are unlikely to want to take up such duties. According to a poll Nazaccent.ru conducted last summer, she says, they aren’t “burning with a desire” to take up “such a burden.”

 

            And those few that are only want to work with immigrants of their own ethnic group. Thus, the Roma national autonomy wants to work with Roma and the Ukrainian with Ukrainians. At least for the time being, none of them is going to feel compelled to change direction because as one leader pointed out, the law doesn’t require them to do so but only gives them the chance.

 

            Moreover, the new legislation does not provide general funding for this effort. Rather, individual national-cultural autonomies are urged to apply for presidential grants. Some will receive them and some won’t. If the state wants this done, Amil Sarkarov, the head of the Moscow Lezgin group, it should “stimulate this activity” by funding it.

 

            Unless that happens, these groups are unlikely to do much, Meygun suggests. Most are underfunded and inactive in the best of cases, according to research by Magomed Omarov, a professor of political science at Moscow State University, and in many places only experts, the government and five percent of the population even know they exist.

 

            Obviously, Omarov says, the state needs to make use of such civil society institutions to help solve Russia’s problems, but it is unlikely to find the national-cultural autonomies capable of doing much unless it gives them more prominence and more resources. Many republics will be against that, thus setting the stage for new conflicts between them and the center.

 

 

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