Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 18 – The National Accent portal, which supports and covers Moscow’s nationality policies, has launched a series of films on how various non-Russian peoples joined what the portal calls “the friendly family of peoples of Russia.’ The first to get the treatment are the Setu and the Kalmyks, but the next such films are to cover the Circassians and Altai people.
This is an expansion into the popular domain by the Putin regime of ideas that Soviet historians promoted as well. (For the most comprehensive examination of that effort, see Lowell Tillett’s 1969 classic study The Great Friendship.) (nazaccent.ru/content/44391-nacionalnyj-akcent-pristupil-k-semkam-filma-o-tom-kak-kalmykiya-voshla-v-sostav-rossii/).
In a few cases, the story of the absorption of the non-Russian nations can easily be made to fit the Procrustean bed Moscow is insisting on, that they joined voluntarily and have lived happily ever afterwards with a Russian dominated and Russifying social and political system. But for most, the situation was and remains fundamentally different.
The Circassians are certainly among the latter category. They fought against Russian occupation for 101 years, were subject to a genocidal mass deportation at the end of that conflict, then were divided into a series of nationalities by the Soviet system, something the Russian Federation continues, and are actively seeking to unite and restore a Circassian state.
Consequently, in their case, putting out a film which whitewashes all of this and promotes a completely false alternative version of their history is more likely to offend than convince – and even to spark additional resistance to Russification. It will be interesting to see whether National Accent continues or quietly shelves it lest it make the situation for Moscow worse.
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