How 1991 Looks Beyond the Ring Road: Moscow Seceded from USSR and Took Over Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 19 – In a new essay “The War of Russians with Native Muscovites,” Russian commentator Vitaly Burlutsky offers an alternative interpretation of what happened in 1991, an interpretation which may strike many as hyperbolic and absurd but that captures feelings about the events of that year better than do many of the more “mainstream” views.

            Yesterday, on the Publizist.ru portal, he writes that “in 1991, the city of Moscow separated itself from Rus. A change in power took place. The overthrow was made by native Muscivtes for Muscovites and only in the interests of native Muscovites. Russians elsewhere weren’t asked” how they felt (publizist.ru/blogs/109386/16146/-).

            Everyone in the Russian Federation was given “a new document” in the form of a passport but “native Muscovites received another one, ‘the Muscovite card,’ thus signaling the division of the population and the country, one in which the Muscovites were “the victors” and everyone else was a loser.

            As the victors, the Muscovites engaged in pillaging over the Rus they had defeated. Having disbanded Gosplan, they paralyzed trade; and this liquidated the industry of Russia. That suited Moscow,” because it led to an influx of goods that Moscow could control and tax for its own benefit. Thus, “the native Muscovites enriched themselves at the expense of Russians.”

            “The artificial bankrupting of Russian industry followed by its being bought up by Muscovites and the registration of these firms in Moscow added to the wealth of the native Muscovites.” But it had another and more important consequence, Burlutsky says. It marked “the appearance of a new nation, the nation of ‘native Muscovites.’”

            Most Russians don’t know about this because the media, “100 percent of which is run from Moscow” seeks to conceal it in order to protect the interests of it nation.  And it gets away with this because Muscovites resemble Russians in many ways, although “the similarities are becoming ever less and less.”

            “Voting for Muscovite parties has the effect of denigrating us Russians,” he says, “as if we were incapable of self-determination. It isn’t that Muscovites call us genetic trash without a leader and our own party. It is simply that Muscovites as another nationality are not legitimate for Russians.”

            This divide can be seen most obviously, Burlutsky argues, in the reaction of Moscow and the reaction of the rest of the country to the events of the last 25 years.  “The death of Rus not only didn’t agitate Muscovites; it was profitable to them because this fed Moscow must better.” But beyond the ring road, things are different.

            And, the Russian commentator says, Moscow won’t succeed in unifying all the residents of the Russian Federation into a single nation just by passing a law. But Russians must realize this and not allow Moscow to continue to treat them as if they were “a banana colony” of the capital city.

            As more people become aware of what actually happened in 1991, he concludes, they will see that what is emerging in Russia is something that has happened elsewhere, the rise of two nations in conflict. And now, a Moscow surrounded by barbed wire is only “a question of time.”