Kremlin Gives Non-Russians New Holidays as It Steals Their Present and Threatens Their Future

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 5 – Students of imperial systems frequently speak of what they call “the folklorization of robbery,” the practice whereby the imperial center offers minorities the chance to flaunt their cultural traditions as a way of covering that center’s suppression of the rights of these peoples and threatens their survivals.

            That is exactly what is happening in Putin’s Russia, Valery Panyushkin says in a commentary for The Moscow Times where he suggests that that is exactly what the Kremlin leader is doing with his two new holidays for minorities at a time when Moscow is stealing ever more from the minorities (moscowtimes.ru/2025/11/05/folklorizatsiya-grabezha-a179222).

            The journalist who identifies himself as being from Ingria, the land around St. Petersburg in Russia’s Northwest, says that allowing people to flaunt their culture two days a year does little to make up for what the state is doing against them on those days and on all the other days of the calendar.

            And in confirmation of that, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin almost on the same day Putin was announcing the two new holidays for minorities confirmed a new plan for the development of the Russian Arctic that will put at risk even the survival of minorities there (echofm.online/stories/mishustin-utverdil-novyj-plan-razvitiya-arktiki-on-stavit-pod-ugrozu-korennye-narody-regiona).

            Very few Russians or non-Russians will have any doubts about what is going on. The only ones who can be counted on to believe the Kremlin’s version and overlook what the Russian government is doing are useful idiots in the West who will celebrate the holidays and suggest that they show that Putin and his regime are in fact concerned about minorities.

            That could hardly be further from the truth. To paraphrase a Russian general who said in the 19^th century that Russia needs Armenia but it doesn’t need Armenians, Putin needs the resources in the regions where non-Russians live and the non-Russians themselves as cannon fodder. He doesn’t need the non-Russians and is no respecter of their legitimate rights.