Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 3 – Russian nationalists
have always been more divided than most analysts have suggested, with some
committed imperialists, others devoted to a small Russia, and still others
believing that their best course forward is in the elaboration of a civic
national identity that would allow them to retain the loyalty of non-Russians
within current borders.
But there is yet another kind of Russian
nationalism, one that supports elevating the status of predominantly ethnic
Russian oblasts and krays to the level of republics, and that kind is increasingly
finding common ground with non-Russians committed to the defense of their republics
and renewed federalism, Kharun Sidorov says (idelreal.org/a/30758362.html).
That common position is being
promoted under the rubric “Self-Determination for the Peoples of Russia” (SONR
in its Russian acronym) by political activist Ayrat Dilmukhametov of
Bashkortostan, his supporters in Kalmykia and Russian ethno-federalists like
the Association of Popular Resistance as well as other groups, the Russian
commentator adds.
And Sidorov argues that the protests
in Khabarovsk and the support these actions have received across the country
show that “anti-centralist” positions are now shared by “all the radical
opposition in Russia,” even though some back ethno-federalism (including ethnic
Russians) and others want a Russian nation state with minorities.
The idea that ethnic Russians as
well as non-Russians must have the right to republics within a federation goes
back before the Bolsheviks. Those who carried out the February 1917 revolution
supported it, Sidorov says; and their view was enshrined in a declaration by
the Constituent Assembly before the Bolsheviks dispersed that body.
During the Russian Civil War, it was
promoted by Komuch in Siberia and Boris Savinkov’s Russian Political Committee
(windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/07/open-federalism-widely-backed-in-russia.html).
And during World War II, it was backed by the Committee for the Liberation of
the Peoples of Russia.
It also informed the thinking of
many at the time of the coming apart of the Soviet Union and the drafting of the
1993 Russian Constitution, Sidorov says, even though the predominant position
of Russians at those times remained largely committed to centralism as a means
of holding Russia together.
Today, both Russians and non-Russians
want to create “a New Russia” which recognizes the rights of both Russians and
non-Russians to self-determination in opposition to those who want to restore “a
single indivisible” pre-February 1917 Russian state that would oppress both the
one and the others.
When the Soviet Union came apart,
the creators of a new state did not go far enough and did not give Russian oblasts
and krays the status of republics. As a result and quite naturally, Russians
resented that others were getting more than they, and some in the Kremlin have
played on that to win them over to centralist positions. But now that effort is
losing ground.
Russian oblasts and krays, like
Khabarovsk, want the same status that the non-Russian republics have; and that
provides the basis for the emergence of a common agenda across what many had
thought was an impassable gulf and to the detriment of the imperial
centralizers in Moscow.
The new agenda presupposes that
borders will not be changed as history shows that any shift in borders opens
the way to conflict and that ethnic minorities in both predominantly Russian
and predominantly non-Russian republics will have representation in the
governments, either by an upper house in the republic legislatures or some
other way.
Achieving this reorganization won’t
be easy because it will have to overcome Moscow’s “neo-colonialism, centralism,
and drive for cultural unification.” But now there is a chance because at least
some ethnic Russians and some non-Russians see that the best path to the future
is offered by their coming together rather than being played against one
another.
No comments:
Post a Comment