Staunton, August 21 – It will not
surprise anyone that some Russians, unhappy that their country was fourth in
the Rio Olympic medal count, are talking about how many medals they would have
won if their country was still the USSR and they could count all the additional
medals the other post-Soviet states won as theirs (forum-msk.org/material/news/12151137.html).
And it will also not surprise many
that some Russians are outraged that the leader of Ingushetia publicly rooted
for an ethnic Ingush who competed for Turkey rather than for the Russian
Federation although there were no complaints about the Belarusian who competed
for the Russian team (http://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/287957/).
But it may come as a surprise to some
that the people in the non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation are not
only focused on what athletes from their republics did, counting how many medals
their republics would have won were they competing as independent countries,
and that Russians are anything but happy about attention that in any way reduces
the Russian wins.
That may prove a larger problem for
Moscow in the future because athletes from non-Russian areas, including the North
Caucasus, the Middle Volga and Buryatia to name just three areas, were so
numerous not only on the Russian Olympic team but also and more prominently
among its winners of gold, silver and bronze medals (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/287942/).
Whatever the ultimate fallout from
this proves to be, it may be instructive to consider the very different ways
the titular nationalities of two republics, Tatarstan and Buryatia, have
reacted to the victories of their athletes and to efforts in first case at
least to downplay the nationality of the Olympians involved.
An article in Kazan’s “Business
Gazeta” points out that “a hypothetical Tatar team at the Olympiad would have
been in the Top 25 surpassing Ukraine, Poland and Iran.” But unfortunately, it continues, “not
everyone is pleased by this” as is highlighted by some strange goings on at
Wikipedia (business-gazeta.ru/article/320377).
The open online encyclopedia at
whose urging it remains unclear suddenly decided to change the nationality of
two of the Tatar winners because they came from Bashkortostan. The day before
they won, the Kazan paper says, the two were listed as Tatars; but after they
did so, they were listed as Bashkirs because they come from Bashkortostan.
As the paper points out, “the issue ‘Tatar
or Bashkir’ is as eternal as Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be,’” but in this case,
the parents of the two young men confirmed that they and their children are
Tatars not Bashkirs and want to be known as such whatever Wikipedia or other sources choose to
report.
The result of the protests from
Tatarstan to this regionalist approach, however, was not to restore their
nationality but rather to describe them as “’Russian sportsmen’” and ignore
their nationality altogether, even though the encyclopedia doesn’t do that with
ethnic Russians on the team or in other cases where there may be a difference
between ethnicity and citizenship.
“Business Gazeta” concludes its
survey of the real number of Tatars on the Russian and other teams with the
following remark: “Let’s fantasize a little. What if all the Tatars were on a
separate team? What place would it have in the overall medal count at the
Olympiad in Rio? In the middle of the third ten … Not bad, true?”
Meanwhile, in Buryatia, commentator
Bato Ochirov says that the difference between the way in which the authorities
there reacted to the victory of an ethnic Russian from that region and to that
of an ethnic Buryat prompts some disturbing questions about what the republic’s
rulers are about (/asiarussia.ru/blogs/13331/).
By playing up the importance of an
ethnic Russian, he continues, the authorities did their part to promote the
notion Moscow has long pushed that the strengthening of regional identities is
fine but the strengthening of ethnic ones is not. Tragically, some Buryats have internalized
this attitude.
Like their regional rulers, they accept
this division of “ours” and “not ours” rather than the more natural one between
fellow Buryats and other nations, including the Russians. And their acceptance has led to “a ‘silence
of the lambs’” which he describes as “the most powerful virus for the destruction
of the Buryat people.”
The Buryats, Ochirov says, should
follow the example of Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the Ingush head, who not only
celebrated the victory of an Ingush athlete from his republic but also openly
rooted for an ethnic Ingush who was a member of the Turkish national team. That is something Russian nationalists don’t
like but that all other nationalists should emulate.
No comments:
Post a Comment