Another Measure Protecting Russia’s Numerically Small Nations May Be about to Disappear

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 3 – Moscow has long granted special privileges to members of numerically small peoples of the Russian North and Far East who pursue a traditional way of life. Such people are given the right to catch more fish or hunt more animals than are all others, a right that has helped maintain these groups and especially their traditional way of life.
    Many Russians object to such privileges and now a group of Duma deputies and senators are pushing for a law that would extend the same rights to Russians born in these regions or who have lived there at least 35 years (nazaccent.ru/content/43070-zhitelyam-dalnego-vostoka-predlozhili-dat-takie-zhe-prava-kak-u-korennyh-narodov/).
    The deputies see this as simple justice and many observers are likely to view it in the same way, but in fact, if being a member of a numerically small people who pursues a traditional way of life brings no special benefits, many who now do may stop and these numerically small nations will be in trouble.
    Two other outcomes are even more disturbing. On the one hand, if the number of people who can harvest more food and game is expanded in this way, overfishing and overhunting may soon mean that there will not be enough game for either group and that the entire economy of these regions will collapse.
    And on the other, if this proposal is adopted, it is likely to prove yet another tool that Moscow will use to undermine the survival of these and other non-Russian groups which depend on such special privileges to survive in the face of much larger Russian communities who have come into their traditional regions.
    If that should prove to be the case, then what looks like a move toward simple justice will have the most unjust of results.