Russia’s Looming Disintegration Not Result of Efforts by Other Countries but of the Kremlin’s Mistaken Policies, Ethnic and Regional Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 29 – In a new article, Sergey Shoygu, former Russian defense minister and now secretary of the Russian Security Council, says that Russia’s foreign enemies are working to try to divide up the Russian Federation into dozens of small statelets so that these enemies will be able to impose their will on them.

            They will not succeed, Shoygu adds, echoing what Putin and Russian propagandists have long asserted because the unity of the nationalities of the Russian Federation is too firm; but those who want to understand what is happening must look abroad rather than at home (aif.ru/politics/russia/sergey-shoygu-edinstvo-narodov-fundament-rossiyskoy-gosudarstvennosti).

            But Shoygu’s argument is fundamentally wrong and thus pure propaganda, according to regional and ethnic activists who form the Forum of Free States of Post-Russia in that it points to one factor which does not exist and ignores two others which very much do (region.expert/shoigu/).

            On the one hand, most of the countries Moscow identifies as its enemies are doing little or nothing to promote the disintegration of the Russian Federation. In fact, many are taking steps like closing down broadcasting to the peoples of that country or returning ethnic and regionalist activists who have fled Muscovite oppression.

            And on the other, Shoygu’s argument ignores two factors which are very much at work and will ultimately lead to the disintegration of the Russian empire – the natural and growing desire of the peoples living under Kremlin diktat to be free to make their own choices and Muscovite oppression which is fueling that desire. 

            Indeed, the Forum says, “the main threat to ‘the integrity of Russia’ is not the West but the very structure of Moscow’s colonial administration.”