Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 24 – The Russian
government has made it clear that it will defend Russians beyond the borders of
the Russian Federation, “enormous progress” compared with Moscow’s approach in
the recent past, Pavel Svyatenkov says; but the question remains open as to
whether it will defend Russians within those borders.
In a commentary for APN.ru, the Russian
nationalist points out that both Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov have declared that the Russian government will defend the rights and
interests of ethnic Russians abroad as in Ukraine and devote more attention to
them than it has in the past (apn.ru/publications/article33455.htm).
Such an approach, Svyatenkov argues,
is “absolutely normal” for “all nation states” But for the Russian Federation,
their pledges represent “enormous progress” given that this means that “the
Russians have a state which can defend our people from genocide and this state
is Russia. A sensation!”
Until recently, such declarations
would have been unheard of given that the Russian Federation “positioned itself
as a ‘multi-national’ state,” that its constitution doesn’t say anything about
Russians and that “the closest thing to Russian statehood was in China where
there exist the Enhue-Russian National District.
But “despite the loud declarations about the defense of
Russians abroad, the Russian Federation continues to position itself as a ‘multi-national
state’ when domestic policies are concerned. Putin emphasized this when he
declared that “nationalism is a very harmful and destruction phenomenon for the
integrity of the Russian state” which has been formed as “a multi-national and
poly-confessional country.”
However,
Svyatenkov points out, “the policy of supporting Russians abroad is a nationalist
policy.” Is it thus the case that with Russians “nationalism is an export
commodity like oil and aluminum,” something we don’t need “within the country and
thus is “exclusively” for other countries?
Anyone
who begins to speak about the rights of Russians within the country “will be
suspected of extremism,” and calls for having the Constitution specify “the
Russian character of Russia” lead to “accusations that one is working for the
disintegration of the country,” despite the fact that the majority of republics
within Russia “include in their basic laws references to ‘titular peoples’ and the
defense of their rights.”
“It turns out,” he says, that in Russia
whole states of titular peoples of the
national republics perfectly peacefully exist. No one is agitated by this and
no one makes charges about extremism because of it. But Russians somehow are
deprived of this legal status,” the Russian commentator says.
“Why is the ‘multi-national’ state
of Russia involved with the defense of Russians beyond the borders of the
country but is not defending them on its own territory?” This mystery is “the
source of ‘the Russian question’ which has become ever sharper in recent years.
How has it happened that the Russian world ends today at the Russian state
border?”
“If Russia is the defender of
Russians, Russian language and Russian culture, then it must say so,”
Svyatenkov argues. “This should be in the Constitution of Russia. Then the lawful
rights of our people will be defended and foreign aggressors will know that an
attack on Russians is an attack on Russia.”
But as long as the Russian
authorities try to take one position for Russians abroad and another for
Russians at home, there are going to be problems, he says. “Is it not time to
open the door and allow the Russian world to come into the Russian Federation
itself” – especially given that the rights of Russians in certain regions are “under
question.”
As Foreign Minister Lavrov correctly
said, Svyatenkov concluded, “’one should have more actively defended the rights
of Russians’” but “not only outside but inside the country as well.”
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