Kremlin Urged to Stress ‘Positive Soviet Experience’ in Revising Nationality Program

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 29 – In December, Magomedsalam Magomedov, the Presidential Administration official who oversees nationality policy, said the current strategy document signed by Vladimir Putin in 2012 was “neither the Bible nor the Koran” and could be updated and revised (nazaccent.ru/content/26217-strategiyu-gosudarstvennoj-nacionalnoj-politiki-izmenyat-v.html).

                That is now happening. The first meeting at which modifications were discussed took place on January 25 and has been reported today by the Nazaccent portal (nazaccent.ru/content/26459-fadn-nachal-obsuzhdat-izmenenie-strategii-gosnacpolitiki.html). The meeting did not reach any final decisions, but some comments made are disturbing.

            Moscow historian Andrey Andreyev said that Moscow needed to adopt an entirely new document, one that in his words would place “an accent on the positive Soviet experience and [contain] language about Eurasian integration,” suggestions that point to an even more centralist approach than the one the Kremlin has been pursuing.

            And Rustam Ibragimov, the director of the Moscow Institute for National Security Strategy,” called the current strategy “stillborn” and said that “in his opinion, its basic slogan is ‘Long live, separatism!’” His words like those of Andreyev suggest that the new document when elaborated will be more hostile to the non-Russian republics and nations than the current one.

            In conclusion, Mikhail Mishin, the official of the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs, stressed that this meeting represented just the beginning of a discussion; but it is all too clear the direction in which policy seems to be moving in this direction – and it is a direction that will be increasingly hostile to and resisted by the non-Russians of the country.