Paul Goble
Staunton, June 9 – During 2025, the Russian government told the Duma in its report on the implementation of the state’s ethnic policy that “more than 37,000 of the almost 38,500 newsworthy events recorded could affect inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations and that “almost 1200” of these could provoke conflicts.
This remarkable admission by the government is highlighted by columnist Dmitry Popov on the Absatz portal in the course of his upbeat treatment of the state of ethnic relations and solidarity in Russia (absatz.media/mneniya/166723-duhom-okrepli-v-borbe-pochemu-za-12-let-nevidanno-vyrosla-splochennost-rossijskogo-naroda).
Three things make the impact of news stories on ethnic and religious relations and even more the government’s decision to call attention to them. First, it is a sign of just how much ethnicity and religion are embroiled in almost all issues and how something apparently distant from them can come out of nowhere as it were and cause problems.
Second, it is why no amount of censorship can block all the stories that might cause trouble in this area given that different people will read into different stories their own ideas and then act on them, often in ways completely at odds with what the authorities, their censors or their writers try to do
And third, it is yet another indication of why no Soviet or Russian government has been able to form an effective nationality policy agency. The issues involved are so broad that were an effective one to be established, it would have to be almost as powerful as all the other ministries taken together, something no government would be willing to concede.
Consequently and now by its own admission, the Russian government at least on this occasion recognizes that nationality problems are something that will always be with it however much Kremlin leaders proclaim that they have “solved the nationality question” or unified the population into a single nation.
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