Paul Goble
Staunton, Mar. 24 – Konstantin Zatulin, special representative of the Russian Duma for issues of migration and citizenship, is calling for the creation of a special ministry to deal with issues of migration, citizenship and the relocation of compatriots returning from abroad. It would replace what he says is the ineffective administration for such issues that now exists.
He says that such a ministry would ensure that the government would devote “much more serious attention” to these issues and promote the adoption of new laws on repatriation of compatriots (nazaccent.ru/content/37976-konstantin-zatulin-v-rossii-nuzhno-sozdat-ministerstvo-po-voprosam-migracii.html).
According to Zatulin, people in foreign countries “with Russian roots” must know that they have the right to return to Russia and gain citizenship. Failure to promote that understanding now, he says, is “incorrect, mistaken, and even criminal” given how oppressed Russians are abroad and how they are needed to help Russia at home.
Along with other deputies, he has proposed legislation that would make it easier for those with Russian roots and Russian language knowledge to return (nazaccent.ru/content/37967-inostrancam-s-russkimi-kornyami-oblegchat-poluchenie-rossijskogo-grazhdanstva.html).
It is not clear how many ethnic Russians or Russian speakers abroad would accept such an invitation, but one thing is clear: this legislation and any new ministry in Zatulin’s understanding would be directed at ethnic Russians and Russian speakers but not at non-Russians or those who do not speak Russian even if they too have roots in Russia.
Indeed, it seems likely that his words are part of a larger effort to promote the Russian nation narrowly understood in ethnic and linguistic terms rather than a broader political nation that had been the agenda of the Putin regime at least nominally until very recently. And this change undoubtedly is yet another fallout from Putin’s war in Ukraine.
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