Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 28 -- Russia’s
salvation, it is sometimes said, is that officials don’t enforce the horrific
laws and decrees Moscow promulgates. But at the same time, other equally
serious problems may occur when officials try to read between the lines of such
laws and decrees and overfulfill the plan, going further than Moscow intended
or at least wanted to declare.
An example of the latter that should be of
concern to all those concerned about the situation the non-Russian peoples now
face in Putin’s Russia comes from Chuvashia, a Christian Turkic republic in the
Middle Volga, where Chuvash symbols are disappearing from the streets and roads
of that land (irekle.org/news/i2036.html).
The portal of Irekle Samakh (Chuvash for “Free Word”) provides before and after
photographs showing how statues and signs looked before and after these
desecrations, steps almost certainly taken by local officials confident that
they know which way the political winds are now blowing.
One reason Chuvash activists are so
focused on this is that they have faced similar problems in the past. Several
years ago, officials painted trash heaps the colors of the republic flag; and
on another occasion, they replaced a genuine Chuvash flag with one that had
been distorted to meaninglessness.
The 1.2 million-strong population of
Chuvashia often finds itself in a complicated position politically. On the one
hand, precisely because it is both Christian and Turkic, Moscow views it as a
bridge over which ethno-nationalist ideas may pass and thus often takes steps
there that foretell similar moves elsewhere.
And on the other, because of that mixture,
the Chuvash often find themselves unable to get the kind of fraternal support
from other republics in the Middle Volga, with the Turkic ones viewing it as
different because of religion and the Orthodox Christian ones as an outlier
because of its Turkic population and language.
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