Anti-Trash Protests in Russian North Don’t Follow Ethnic or Expected Political Lines, Komi Activist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 7 – “’The line of the front’” in protests across the Russian North does not follow ethnic lines or the political divisions many might expect, Nikolay Edoratin, a leader of the Komi national movement, “We will Defend Ourselves.” Instead, he says, there are Komis on both sides and anti-trash nationalists are working with anti-trash KPRF deputies.

            In an interview taken by Vadim Shtepa of Region.Expert, Edoratin, who is also a student at the Sorokin State University in Komi, says that the powers that be in the republic have organized pro-trash groups in order to be able to claim that the republic supports Moscow and attacked the KPRF for its role in opposing the dumps (region.expert/dorjam/).

            The only ethnic or political groups with which the Komi anti-trash activists are not willing to cooperate with, Edoratin continues, are “those who call themselves ‘Russian nationalists’ because they often taken imperial positions and speak against our Republic as such.”

            Edoratin says that he and his Komi activist friends are not worried that the KPRF will sell them out. That party “today is the only one in the republic parliament which has come out against the dumps,” and as such, it is an appropriate ally for all who want to block this Moscow plan which is intended among other things to profit the private owners of these dumps.

            At the present time, the activist adds, “the prospect for the Komi Republic and for Arkhangelsk Oblast is one: to show that in the North of Russia a civil society has been formed and the authorities must take that into account. To guess what this will lead to,” he says, is something he cannot now say.

            At the same time, however, Edoratin points to the fact that “at the meetings it has become obvious that the colonial policy of the federal center cannot be continued; our citizens will not accept it.” And they will not accept Moscow’s installation of outsiders as heads who have no interest in defending the rights of the Komi.

            “We want a power which will be freely elected and will defend our people rather than look always to Moscow and to the clutch of United Russia politicians.”

            The activist says that he spoke to the anti-trash meeting in both Komi and Russian and that many taking part carried the cross-based unofficial flag the Komi opposition has come up with that follows the lines of other Finno-Ugric and Scandinavian countries to oppose the Moscow-imposed tricolor one. 

            The opposition’s flag appeared in 2011 when Sergey Sivkov came up with the idea of using the traditional blue, green and white colors of the Komi people but to combine them not in the tricolor format as Moscow has insisted but rather in a cross-based form like the Ingermanlanders, Karelians and Scandinavians to underscore our common culture and goals.