Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 7 – It remains an article of faith in the Kremlin and is widely accepted by many analysts in the West that assimilation in Putin’s Russia proceeds in only one direction, that non-Russians lose their languages and cultures and become Russianized while ethnic Russians never give up Russia or assimilate to non-Russian nations.
But there are exceptions both inside the Russian Federation when Russians find themselves surrounded by or intermarry with representatives of non-Russian nations or when Russians move abroad and intermarry with representatives of other nations. At present, Moscow has good reason to worry about both possibilities.
A year ago, the NeMoskva portal called attention to ethnic Russians whose ancestors moved to rural portions of Sakha (Yakutia) long ago, who are surrounded by ethnic Sakha, and who now know the language of the titular nationality better than they do Russian, the language their ancestors spoke when they first arrived (nemoskva.net/2024/04/18/russkie-yakuty/).
The number of such people is relatively small and might be dismissed as anecdotal; but their existence is important for three reasons: First, it shows that ethnic Russians are not exempt from the rules that govern the behavior of other ethnic communities who find themselves in an overwhelmingly different ethnic and linguistic milieu.
Second, the existence of such people helps to explain the passion with which many in the Moscow government pursue policies of Russification, a passion driven not only by a desire to spread the Russian nationality to others but also and by fears that Russian identity could be challenged if non-Russians grow in number and retain their languages.
And third, “the ethnic Russian Yakuts” as NeMoskva translates “Sakhalar” should remind the non-Russians of the power of their own ethnicity and language when these are maintained, a power sufficiently great to overwhelm “the Great Russian nation” that the Kremlin and its propagandists typically insist upon without the kind of pushback some might expect.
As the share of non-Russians in the population rises as a result of higher birthrates among non-Russians than among ethnic Russians and the influx of non-Russian migrants, the possibility that Russians will be assimilated by others is thereby increasing – and not surprisingly alarming the Putin regime and many Russian nationalists (jamestown.org/program/non-russians-increasing-their-share-of-russias-population/).
Indeed, because such assimilation challenges one of Putin’s core beliefs, its appearance and spread helps to explain some of the passion of his push for assimilation in the opposite direction, a push intended to prevent the Russian nation from dying the way his actions are leading to the demise of other nations (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/putin-has-long-believed-ethnic-russians.html).
But it is the other case of the assimilation of Russians by others that is alarming ever more Russian politicians. Chinese men, who outnumber Chinese women because of Beijing’s former one-child policy, have long looked abroad to find wives; and among the places they have done so is the Russian Federation (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/02/50000-russians-have-moved-to-china-some.html).
Some Russian politicians, including Svetlana Zhurova, the first deputy chairman of the Duma’s international affairs committee, are convinced that the number of such marriages and the possible loss of Russians to China by assimilation will skyrocket as a result of more travel by Chinese to Russia and more Russians to Chinese (versia.ru/kitajcy-vyvozyat-nevest-iz-rossii).
According to the Russian Academy of Sciences, as many as half a million Russians now live in China, including many women from Russia who have married Chinese men (www.ng.ru/economics/2025-01-30/1_9182_china.html). That at least some of these women will assimilate and be lost to the Russian nation is a very real concern in Moscow.
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