New Putin-Backed Measure Makes It Easier to Add or More Likely Remove Nations from List of Indigenous Peoples

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 25 – The Duma is set to pass a government-backed measure that will make it easier for Moscow to add or remove nations from the list of numerically small peoples who currently receive special benefits. The bill does so by shifting responsibility for the inclusion on this list from the center to the regions.

            Up to now, numerically small peoples of the North and Far East were listed by Moscow if they numbered fewer than 50,000 residents each and if they engaged in traditional ways of economic activity, but the Kremlin says that those standards are insufficient and wants both regions and the Academy of Sciences to have a voice in the matter.

            As a result, this new measure drafted at the direction of Vladimir Putin says that it will fix the bases for membership more precisely and the sources of expertise that are to be used for making such decisions (nazaccent.ru/content/45626-v-gosdume-podderzhali-pravitelstvennyj-zakonoproekt-o-korennyh-narodah/).

            That might seem to be a positive development but in fact it is likely to have just the opposite effect. That is because the regions which will likely bear most of the costs will have now have a special voice and decisions will be taken not in forums where all indigenous people are likely to focus on a decision but in single regions regarding single groups.

            That conclusion is suggested by the fact that the Duma nationalities committee while recommending that this bill be approved by the Duma as a whole sent back for revision a bill calling for the formation of a system of regional councils of representatives of the numerically small indigenous peoples, almost certainly killing the measure for the foreseeable future.