Paul Goble
Staunton,
June 2 – Moscow’s nationality policy is more assimilationist and destructive of
federalism than it was in Soviet times, Ayrat Fayzrakhmanov says; and its
authors appear to have forgotten that even the Soviet variant was one of the
factors that contributed to the disintegration of the USSR (business-gazeta.ru/article/384327).
The
draft legislation on languages is “only a drop in the bucket” of the problems
with Russian nationality policy now, the Tatar activist says. It involves the
liquidation of the system of general education in native languages, the disappearance
of the languages of indigenous numerically small peoples, and an
assimilationist model that undermines federalism.
“Today,
the path to the formation of a single [non-ethnic] Russian nation in a
multi-national country somehow has become possible only by means of putting pressure
on native languages … Apparently,” he suggests, “the term ‘dialectical’ is not valued
by present-day Russian ideologues” in this area at least.
Not
surprisingly, the Kremlin’s has generated opposition among almost all
non-Russian peoples, Fayzrakhmanov says; but Moscow remains committed to
pushing through the new law that codifies Vladimir Putin’s position on language
issues and has pulled out all the stops to demonize and suppress opposition.
The
center has used pressure, including corrupt pressure, on officials, and “unleashed
a massive information campaign for the draft law ‘about second class’ languages
in the course of which beauty bloggers, advertisements on social networks,
stories on central channels have been directed in the main against our
republic.”
Tatarstan
has become the target of this campaign, the activist says, apparently reflecting
Moscow’s belief that its enviable position can be used against it with other
non-Russians. But in fact, anger about the draft language law is if anything
even greater in the North Caucasus than in the Middle Volga, at least among the
people if not among the more easily intimidated elites.
Many
in the North Caucasus are worried that this attack on native languages will
enrage young people in particular and that they will as a result decide to join
ISIS or other radical groups to fight back, Fayzrakhmanov says. There are concerns about that even in
Chechnya, he continues.
One
of Moscow’s tactics is to keep the various non-Russians apart from one another.
As a result, people in one republic often know little or nothing about people
and practices in another. Moscow promotes the notion that any cooperation
threatens the country and any talk about the constitutional status of the republics
is a move toward separatism.
Foolishly
and counterproductively, “representatives of the federal powers that be have
said aloud for ten years that national schools are a threat to the national security
of the country, even though in the years of Stalin’s repressions, there was no
such nationality school policy. And now, even native languages have been placed
in the ranks of enemies.”
Moscow
doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know what is going on or how people feel in
the republics, the activist says. “For
Russian political parties, the nationality question is at the edge of their
priorities,” something they consider only after they have considered everything
else.”
And Russian
government agencies charged with working in this area “do not inspire trust.” That
is because they spend what little money they have on organizing “folkloric
festivals and cultivating ‘the unity of the [non-ethnic] Russian nation.” And
they develop strategies without taking into account the views of the
non-Russians.
“Instead
of this,” Fayzrakhmanov says, “imitation structures have approved the existing draft
of a single [non-ethnic] Russian nation” and make decisions about “how and in
what proportions” are to be “’preserved’ the languages and cultures of the people,”
infuriating those they are supposed to be serving.
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