Divide between Russian and Non-Russian Émigré Opposition Groups Deepens

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 31 – The League of Free Nations of Post-Russia says that it will not recognize “any political forces and centers which seek to justify the preservation of the Russian Federation in its current form” and which insist that deputies chosen under the perverted system of elections in Russia speak for anyone but themselves.

            This declaration comes in response to plans by some former Russian deputies now in emigration to hold a Congress of Peoples Deputies in Poland November 4-7 in order to work out a political agenda (idel-ural.org/archives/zayavlenie-ligi-svobodnyh-naczij-otnositelno-sozyva-sezda-narodnyh-deputatov-rf-v-polshe/ and idelreal.org/a/32109088.html).

            “We do not need arbiters from Moscow whether they are from the powers that be or the opposition,” the League statement continues. “We are open for dialogue and contacts only with those who publicly support the right of enslaved peoples to establish independent states.” Talk with the others would be meaningless.

            According to the League, “the process of forming a new Russian state must be voluntary and take place exclusively on the basis of those subjects, the legislative organs of which call for inclusion in a new federation,” something that would be possible only after separation and the holding of genuine elections.

            The Leagues stresses that regardless of what those meeting at the upcoming Congress think, “elections in the Russian Federation disappeared long before 2014,” something that involved as well the banning of all non-Russian political parties “13 years before the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.”

            The Russian and non-Russian emigrations have always coexisted in a less than amicable way given that their goals are antithetical, with the Russian one insisting on the preservation of the existing borders of the country and the non-Russian ones insistent that all the peoples of the empire must have the right to choose whether to be part of it or independent.

            The declaration of the League deepens this divide and likely will make it far more difficult for the two sides in this debate to cooperate in the future.