Moscow Wants to Ban Russophobia in Russia and Abroad But isn’t Seeking to Ban Analogous Attitudes and Attacks on Country’s Non-Russians

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – The Russian government’s approval of a draft law that would ban Russophobia both within the Russian Federation and beyond that country’s borders has sparked many questions but none more interesting than one posed by Konstantin Pakhalyuk in The Moscow Times.

            In discussing the concept of Russophobia and the proposed law, the commentator pointedly asks: “Why is a country which celebrates ‘the friendship of the peoples’ defending the honor of only 75 percent of its citizens?” (moscowtimes.ru/2024/10/07/z-rusofagiya-ili-russkie-eto-prilagatelnoe-a144104).

            The draft legislation and commentaries supporting it fail to give an answer, a shortcoming that means this latest Muscovite ban is likely to prove counterproductive among the one quarter of all Russian Federation citizens who are not ethnic Russians and only exacerbate the alienation between them and the increasingly Russian nationalist Putin state.

            Putin’s defenders both inside Russia and beyond its borders will likely insist that Russophobia is something that is directed at all the citizens of the Russian Federation, but that defense will only make things worse because it will reenforce the feeling of many non-Russians that Moscow has little respect for them as communities.

            And that suggests that this is another case of ideological zugzwang in which almost anything the Putin regime is likely to do or say will be counterproductive as far as the survivability of the Russian Federation as an integrated state. Indeed, this attack on Russophobia may ultimately come to be seen as the attack on the Russian Federation instead.