Staunton, February 10 – Even as
Vladimir Putin talks about and many accept the notion that the ethnic Russians
are an increasingly consolidated nation, there is growing evidence that the
Russian nation is anything but a single community and that subgroups within it
constitute an increasingly important basis for the identity of their members.
There has been much discussion of the
Siberians, the people of Novgorod, and the differences between Muscovites and
the rest of Russia and between Russians in the Russian Federation and Russians
in the Baltic countries and elsewhere. But in recent months, other sub-ethnic
communities within the Russian nation are beginning to attract attention.
And because they are finding their
voice in literary journals and elsewhere in the public sphere, there is every
likelihood that they will play an ever more important role in the future of
that country, contesting the hyper-centralist policies of Moscow and seeking
greater autonomy or ultimately even independence from the center.
The fact that all of them speak
Russian, albeit with often significant regional variations, is not the limiting
factor that many assume. Indeed, as has happened elsewhere, nations can speak
the same language but insist on political independence as has happened in the
English and Spanish speaking worlds in particular.
On the APN.ru portal yesterday,
Semyon Reznichenko discusses one of these often neglected sub-ethoses of the
Russian nation and asks “who are Kubantsy, the people of Kuban?” and “how and
why are they different than ethnic Russians elsewhere?” (apn.ru/publications/article33071.htm).
As Reznichenko who has written
frequently on the region points out, “the Slavic population of Kuban formed
over a long period to a large extent on the basis of migration and very often on
the basis of migration directly organized by the state,” including the
establishment of Cossack settlements and then the arrival of Red Army men after
de-Cossackification in the 1920s and 1930s.
At the same time, he writes, “a very
large number came and continue to come to the Kuban in search of a good and
free life. In the Kuban, many people with Ukrainian ethnographic roots and
speech have accepted Russian identity and after mixing with those from other
Russian and Ukrainian regions have closely integrated” with all these groups.
Kuban identity, he suggests, is both
something between the past and future with its final form incomplete. It is
stable in that regard now, and in this way “Kuban people are close to
Ukrainians who,” he argues,” also have been in the intermediate and incomplete
status for centuries.
The difference is that the
Ukrainians have preferred to go their own way while the Kubantsy have preferred
“fusion with Russians.” But that fusion “is not complete,” and as a sub-ethnos,
the Kuban people have numerous distinctive features which set them apart from
other Russians.
Some of this reflects the continuing role of
Ukrainianness among the Kuban residents, but according to Reznichenko, efforts
to promote the idea of a separate “Kuban” nation have failed because “no one is
really” interested in promoting that.
He suggests that the sub-ethnos of
Kuban people is characterized by “a striving to independence and
self-sufficiency,” albeit “under ‘the umbrella’ of the empire and by
individualism, instrumentalism, conservativism and restraint. At the same time,
he says, the people of Kuban see themselves as distinctive from both Cossacks
and Ukrainians.
“The people of Kuban understand
their special nature within the framework of the Russian people, and thus
apparently, a Kuban sub-ethnos exists,” one that is not just Cossack but
includes others who have come to the region.
And he adds that “residents of other regions” see the Cossacks as
distinctive as well.
Among the vehicles for promoting such regional identities and giving
them a more explicit shape are regional literary journals, and after falling
victim to the turbulence of the 1990s, they are re-emerging in many predominantly
ethnic Russian parts of the Russian Federation, both on paper and online.
A
useful survey of two of them, “Veshch” which is issued in Perm and “Grafit”
which is issued in Toliatti, a survey which suggests they will provide a
regional focus for many, is provided in the current issue of one of Russia’s
oldest regional journals, “Volga” (magazines.russ.ru/volga/2015/2/14p.html).
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