Window on Eurasia: Who are the ‘Moskals’ and Why Are They a Threat?

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, January 1 – A “Moskal” is not a member of an ethnic category – he or she “can be a Russian, a Jew, a Ukrainian or even a space alien,” and thus the term must not be confused with a Russian. Instead, as Vadim Shteppa points out on his Facebook page, it is a category of people who have a particular worldview (https://www.facebook.com/vadim.shtepa?fref=nf).

 

            A Moskal, the regionalist writer says, citing the words of the late Russian conceptualist Ilya Kormiltsev, is someone who backs the ideological project of Muscovy, one launched in the 14^th century with the goal of creating, maintaining and strengthening a centralized military state” and having the following characteristics:

 

• Moskals believe that the ruler should have the broadest possible powers.
   
• They seek the subordination of all spiritual life to governmental supervision and regulation.
   
• They favor universal and compulsory state service.
   
• They ignore the rights of the individual in order to support the power of the state.
   
• They favor limiting contacts with the outside world.
   
• They want all resources to flow to the central government.
   
• And they insist that the capital of the country be Moscow.
   
              Such people exist not only in every region of Russia but also, as their recent letter attests, among “descendants of the White emigration.”  “Operation Trust,” the first great Chekist campaign to penetrate and disorder the anti-Bolshevik cause, apparently continues to this day, Shtepa says.
   
  The only way forward, the regionalist writer says, is for the complete and genuine federalization of Russia in order that “the freely elected authorities in each city and region will be in a position to determine the future” of Russia as a whole.
   
              The Ingermanland movement portal, Ingria.ru, echoes and expands on this in a post that it has kept on its masthead for two years.  “A Moskal,” it writes, “is different from a normal person in his attachment to imperial ideas, sympathy to authoritarianism, the violation of human rights and anti-Western attitudes” (ingria.info/component/content/article/7-interview/741-2012-12-23-10-14-58).
   
              Its roots, Ingriya.info continues, are to be found in “the era of the Tatar-Mongol attack on the federation of Russian lands,” and “in essence,” the Moskal of today “is the spiritual heir of the Tatar-Mongol paradigm of social and state construction.”
   
              As such, Moskals “can be of various types and subtypes – Stalinists, ‘Orthodox Great Power chauvinists,’ Putinists, and so on. But they are united by their support for the characteristics” the site and Shteppa list.
   
              “In reality,” the site continues, “Moskalism, being in essence a super-national imperial ideology is directed at the destruction above all of the Russian super-ethnos, even if the bearers of this ideology sincerely consider themselves to be Russian nationalists, who are sacrificing it to utopian messianic ideals.”
   
              Under the pretext of a threat of the possibility of inter-ethnic conflict and the loss of empire, the site says, “Moskals in the majority of cases discriminate against the rights of the Russians,” who “represent the greater danger for Moskalism and the imperial ideas” since Russians suffer from maintenance of the empire.
   
              “At the present time,” it concludes, “the regime in power actively uses the attitudes of the Moskals for its own selfish interests. Under the pretext of preserving ‘the one and indivisible’ and under the pretext of the need for the rebirth of ‘great power’ status,” Moscow uses the Moskali to steal the country’s natural resources and throw those opposed “into jails and cemeteries.”