Moscow to Limit Ability of Federal Subjects to Modify List of Numerically Small Indigenous Peoples

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 13 – Under existing Russian law, the heads of federal subjects have the power to propose including or dropping nations from Mocow’s Unified List of Numerically Small Indigenous Peoples, which determines whether members of these groups are entitled to special subsidies or not.

            But if new draft legislation proposed by the government is adopted, something that is almost a certainty, the regional heads will be severely constrained in their ability to do so (pnp.ru/social/status-korennykh-malochislennykh-narodov-predlozhili-prisvaivat-po-soglasovaniyu-s-ran.html).

            That is because census results seldom provide sufficient information on the smallest ethnic groups in the country and so regional heads have been able to add or subtract groups to this list on their own. Under the new law, these heads will be required to support their claims with materials from the Academy of Sciences and other Moscow agencies.

            There are currently 47 national groups on the Unified List of peoples with fewer than 50,000 each. Some of them number only a handful but others are close to or even have exceeded the 50,000 threshold. In the first case, some groups may disappear; and others may become too large to be included.

            By imposing the new requirements, Moscow will thus take away the ability of regional heads to act as independently as they have in the past of making such determinations, although to be fair the heads were never all that independent as the Russian government could reject their applications for changing membership. But now that ability will be codified and thus reduced.

            According to some Duma deputies, the measure is intended to save money, although given the small number of people involved, there are few economies. More likely what this means is that Moscow will decide who gets to be a favored minority and who loses that status on the basis of the needs of the government and its business allies.

            At the very least, it will give Moscow even more leverage on the question and mean that some groups on the list will be dropped either because they have effectively died out or because they have grown to beyond the 50,000 upper limit of this category and promote the further homogenization of the population of the Russian Federation.

            Some of the smallest groups will be Russianized and even reidentify as ethnic Russians, but at least some of them are likely to assimilate to other numerically small groups as these populations seek to find ways to continue to get the benefits both financial and in terms of rights into the future.

            The biggest fights, however, are likely to be at the other end, involving those groups which are now close to or even above the 50,000 threshold as once Moscow experts decide that they have done so, these groups will almost certainly be removed from the list and lose the subsidies and special benefits they currently receive.

            Two groups that may be most at risk are the Abaza in Karachayevo-Cherkessia and the combined Evenk-Even nationalities. The former is approaching the 50,000 limit and the latter, if the two do combine – they are closely related – are already above that threshold.