Paul Goble
Staunton, Jan. 12 – Émigré activists from Pskov Oblast have declared that they seek independence from Moscow as the only way to achieve freedom and a better life for a region that was once a free and independent republic (telegra.ph/Fundamentalnye-principy-Pskovskoj-volnosti-Zayavlenie-storonnikov-Svobodnogo-Pskova-01-08).
In so doing, they are following similar actions by their émigré counterparts from Kalmykia and Ingushetia (rbc.ua/ukr/styler/kalmikiya-uhvalila-rishennya-vihid-iz-rf-1667117840.html and fortanga.org/2023/01/deokkupacziya-i-polnaya-nezavisimost-chto-izvestno-o-sozdanii-komiteta-ingushskoj-nezavisimosti-za-rubezhom/).
Such actions, Tatyana Vintsevskaya, a Siberian regionalist now living in Norway, says, create the impression that the Russian Federation is falling apart before our eyes; but in fact they devalue the meaning of declarations of independence because they are taken by a clutch of emigres who have no influence at home (region.expert/reality/).
Emigres taking part in such actions, she says, imagine that they will be greeted at home as liberators; but that is not the case. They are irrelevant or worse. Instead of issuing declarations, they should be seeking ways to form genuine national and regional movements in the places they are from.
That is vastly more important than issuing bold declarations that have no consequences except to devalue the term and reduce the possibilities for positive work by the emigres and their comrades at home.
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