‘How I Lost My Russian Nationality’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 14 – The Guild of Interethnic Journalism today carries on its website one of the most amazing and in its way both disturbing and instructive headlines with regard to ethnic relations in the Russian Federation and especially the attitude of indigenous ethnic Russians there to ethnic Russians in other countries.

            That headline reads “How I lost my nationality.” In the article beneath it, Kira Sukhanova, a student at the Pskov School of Inter-Ethnic Journalism describes how, on coming from Uzbekistan to Russia, she “ceased to feel herself Russian” (nazaccent.ru/content/29434-kak-ya-poteryala-svoyu-nacionalnost.html).

            “One fine day,” she writes, “I lost my nationality.” It happened when I moved from my home in Tashkent to Russia.  While in Uzbekistan, being Russian was always important; and her family always felt that it was important to maintain good relations with Uzbeks as they, ethnic Russians, were guests among them. 

            Her grandfather, Sukhanova says, was especially insistent about the idea that it was necessary to be proud of being a Russian but tolerant of those around them who were Uzbeks. When he died, his neighbors buried him according to Orthodox and also Muslim traditions, a measure of his place as someone with good ties to both.

            The young journalist says that she had thought that was the norm, that “every Russian person” thought that way “until I came to Russia.”

When she arrived, people asked where she was from and what her nationality was; and then “suddenly it happened that they didn’t believe [her] when [she] said [she] was Russian.  My new acquaintances guessed that in fact [she] was an Uzbek ora Tatar.” They made that assumption not because she was different but because she was committed to being a Russian.

            “It seemed to them,” Sukhanova says, “that “I in this way was trying to separate myself out from migrants or conceal my true origin because I was ashamed of it. I ceased to be regarded as a representative of the Russian people. No one believed that I simply was returning to my native nest.”

            “’What kind of Russian is she?’ was the question in their eyes,” the Russian from Tashkent now in Pskov continues. “‘She has simply invented her genealogy” so as to confuse us. Alas, it is much easier to believe that the earth is flat than that someone with a passport of a different color could be a Russian.”

            In this way, she says, “I lost that which was with me from my birth, but without which, as it turned out, it is possible to get along, my nationality.” At first, Sukhanov says, she was angry and upset; but over time, she realized she didn’t have a nationality or need one.

            “It is possible,” she says, “that it is necessary to divide people by nationality in order to deprive them of their self-respect, to suppress them with tyranny or unleash a war against them. The sense of one’s own national identity allows one to celebrate it and oppress others.”  But “this is an occasion for pride which you do not deserve … National distinctions are useless.”

            And so Sukhanova concludes, “my nationality now lies somewhere, lost and covered with dust.” Perhaps someone will find it again but perhaps not.  “I do not know,” she says; “I know only that I certainly will never return to it.”