Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 2 – Yekaterinburg
political analyst Fyodor Krasheninnikov says Vladimir Putin’s talk about “a
Russian nation” recalls not “the Soviet people” the CPSU tried to promote but
rather the efforts of Marshal Tito to create a nation of Yugoslavs out of the
diverse population of his country.
That effort, Krasheninnikov says,
worked for the few offspring of ethnically mixed marriages who did “begin to
consider themselves Yugoslavs” but “then everyone again divided up into Serbs,
Croatians, Slovenians, and so on. Only the fools remained Yugoslavs” (facebook.com/fyodor.krasheninnikov/posts/10210186756479584?pnref=story.unseen-section).
Other commentators are already
suggesting that Putin’s new law will spark more ethnic conflicts between Russians
and non-Russians in the Russian Federation or deepen divisions within the
ethnic Russian nation itself.
Valery Rashkin, the deputy chairman
of the Duma’s nationalities committee, says that “the transition to one nation –
the [civic] Russian one – will generate the hostility of the small
nationalities” which will view it as a direct attack on their culture and
traditions, something that could create serious problems throughout the country
(lenta.ru/news/2016/11/01/national/).
And Russian nationalist commentator
Oleg Kashin is blunt about what the new law means: Putin, he says, “will be
creating his nation, but ours will remain with us,” an indication that many
ethnic Russians aren’t going to be pleased by what they see as a bloodless
identity (spektr.press/putin-sozdast-svoyu-naciyu-a-nam-ostanetsya-nasha-manifest-olega-kashina-o-proekte-rossijskoj-nacii-i-razbitom-koryte/).
Mr. Putin, Kashin says, “you have the
right to do this: your power in the Russian Federation is without limit. No one
can argue with you. You can allow yourself to do what you want. But I,” he
continues, not seeing for myself a place in the nation being created by Putin want
to use this occasion to proclaim my own, not new but which has existed for a
long time.”
“That nation,” he continues, “which
as we see Putin doesn’t need: for simplicity’s sake, I will call it the
Russian.”
“Putin’s nation is the nation of the
biker Khirurg, the nation of Ramzan Kadyrov, th nation of the devotees of
Stalin and Shoygu. [It] pretends to world significance. It fights in Syria. It
gets agitated by the American elections. It even according to rumors would like
to organize something in Montenegro.”
But Kashin continues, “my nation has
more modest desires: It does not have global ambitions, geopolitical interests
or even Iskanders. My nation, one of many of the post-imperial nations in Eastern
Europe consists of millions of people often without a good place, unhappy,
poor, an outdoor privy… I consider it immoral to involve such a nation in these
megalomaniacal projects until the right to human life is realized first.”
“Over the course of all its history …
my nation was taught that life was worthless and that this was normal … My
nation has the most horrific experience with prisons in modern times. The camp
system established in the years of the dictatorship achieved Hitlerite
dimensions, buteven now it is alive, even today … we have the latest testimony
about torture and terror in Russian prisons from political prisoner Ildar
Dadiin.”
“Today there are not so many
political prisoners in Russia,” Kashin says, “but they are not the only victims
of the arbitrariness of prison … The national interest of Putin is the preservation
and strengthening of the prison system. My national interest is its
destruction, freedom for all those wrongly condemned, and an end to terror and
torture.”
“My nation has given humanity a
great culture … [but] in the Putinist state, culture is under the power of
cynical and ignorant managers for whom art is no more than a form of propaganda
and any cultural heritage only a means to make money. My national interest is
the preservation of Russian culture and its salvation from censorship,
destruction and usurpation by the state.”
“My nation mastered an enormous
geographic space and built on it the largest country in the world. For Putin,
this country has value only as a source of exportable resources. My national interest
is an economy in which there is a place for villages and small cities which
have no prospects from Putin’s point of view and for the humanitarian
intelligentsia.”
“My nation,” Kashin continues, “more
than one fought in its history, and the fraternal graves of Russian soldiers
are to be found throughout Europe. For Putin, this experience is the occasion
for a new militarism. My national interest [to the contrary] is peace.”
“The chief misfortune of my nation
up to now has been that it hasn’t succeeded or learned to live outside of the state
that oppresses it.” And now once again, he says, the Russian people can see
that Putin views it as so alien to himself that he cannot even remember Pushkin’s
story about the magnify goldfish.
If he knew that story, he would know
that “after having established his own nation, he puts himself at risk of
remaining with nothing at all. But my nation will take from the shelf Pushkin’s
volume and laugh over the former Petersburg vice mayor who wanted to become the
master of the sea and the father of a nonexistent and invented nation.”
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