Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 4 – As the date of
Vladimir Putin’s inauguration approaches, many are speculating about the fate
of this or that agency and its head and about what any particular choice would
portend for Moscow’ policies in the area of its responsibility. The Federal Agency for Nationality Policy and
its head have not escaped such discussions.
The editors of the Nazaccent portal argue that the fate of
the ministry will answer the question: “does the state in the future intend to
be involved in nationality policy n the country or to put off that issue as
insignificant to better times as was the case in the middle of the first decade
of this century?” (nazaccent.ru/content/27167-sudba-minnaca-byt-ili-ne-byt.html).
Unlike in the case of larger agencies
and issues, the editors say, “a particular feature of the political segment of
this sector is that the number of experts in it is very small. More than that,
they all know one another, have their own interests and complicated interrelationships
with each other and with the authorities.”
Consequently, they continue, “the
majority of the experts of the ethno-cultural sector agreed to share their
predictions only on conditions of anonymity.” But nonetheless, there are some
intriguing suggestions about whether the bureaucratic structure will remain an
agency or become a ministry or even disappear altogether.
One idea that is circulating would
have the Ministry for the Development of the Far East, the Ministry for the
North Caucasus and the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs “optimized” can
combined into a single ministry, likely headed by one of the current chiefs of
the first two rather than by Igor Barinov who now heads the small third.
Another idea making the rounds is
that the Federal Agency won’t be folded into some other ministry but rather
expanded and become a ministry in its own right. If that were to happen, Barinov might be
elevated; but many in the North Caucasus are “certain” that Chechnya’s Ramzan
Kadyrov would get the job.
And yet a third is that the Federal
Agency will simply be dissolved. That is likely, experts say, if Aleksey Kudrin
expands his power because he “doesn’t like the nationality question” and sees
any money spent on it as wasted. Saving
even the 200 million rubles (3 million US dollars) the Federal Agency now costs
would for him be a good thing.
If that were to happen, nationality
issues wouldn’t go away but rather would likely to be put under the Russian
Committee on Youth or the Ministry of Culture – or, according to Vyacheslva
Mikhaylov, be run out of a powerful administration within the Presidential Administration
that would focus on the ideological dimensions of the issue.
Such an arrangement, the editors of Nazaccent say, would represent a return
to what obtained in the late Soviet period. Then, “formally there was no organ
of executive power for the nationality question but in the CPSU Central
Committee, a department for inter-ethnic relations worked actively.”
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