Putin’s Use of Dzerzhinsky Echoes Soviet History and His Own Past but May Be Harbinger of More Repression, Historian Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – Vladimir Putin’s use of Feliks Dzerzhinsky resembles the use Soviet leaders put the founder of the Cheka to after the death of Stalin and Putin’s own use of Yury Andropov to send a message about the organs to the Russian people, Rustam Aleksander says. But it is even more worrisome because it may be a harbinger of more repression ahead.

            After ousting and then executing Lavrenty Beriya, Stalin’s last secret police chief, the Soviet dictator’s successors elevated Dzerzhinsky to an almost sacred status to suggest that real Soviet secret policemen were not guilty of the viciousness which characterized Beria’s actions, the popular historian says (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/29/feliks-vozvrashchaetsia).

            In December 1958, the Khrushchev leadership even erected a statue of Dzerzhinsky in Moscow’s Lubyanka Square; but in 1991, during the failed coup attempt, the Russian people attacked the status and pulled it down, a highly symbolic action that suggested the new Russia would not be like the old.      

            But shortly before coming to power, Putin, himself a KGB officer and then head of the FSB, came to power, sought to use Yury Andropov in a similar way, to suggest that the Russian security services were models of competence and professionalism and that he Putin was committed to following in that tradition.

            Now, instead of continuing to boost Andropov as a role model, Putin is suggesting that Dzerzhinsky is, and that, Aleksander says, “clearly signals something else entirely.” His moves in this direction are “no longer about restoring respect but rather about establishing fear and arbitrary power as the fundamental principles of Russia’s special services.”

            And that raises “a more troubling question: Is this a symbolic warning about the FSB’s future trajectory toward harsher repression or is it an actual admission that fear and repression have already become the norm in present-day Russia that that the rising generation of security officers will only intensify that?”

Putin’s War in Ukraine Behind Dramatic Increase in Missing Persons Cases in Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 28 – The number of Russians asking the human rights ombudsman in Irkutsk for help in finding missing persons has doubled since 2022 and 70 percent of such applications are connected with the war, according to an investigation by Asya Gay, a journalist with the People of Baikal portal.

            According to her figures, during the period since Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine began, 3966 Irkutsk military personnel have disappeared, 664 are known to be in prison, and 338 have unsuccessfully tried to get out of the army and whose locations are not known (baikal-stories.media/2026/04/28/pochti-chetyre-tysyachi-propavshih-bez-vesti/).

            Svetlana Semyonova, the Irkutsk oblast, says that the number of missing cases involving military personnel that have reached her office has gone up 20 times and now forms 70 percent of the total in this category; and she adds that the share in neighboring Buryatia is even higher – 80 percent, an indication that the Irkutsk figures are not outliers.

In 2022, the Irkutsk ombudsman handled 193 cases involving missing soldiers and 2513 involving other causes; but in 2025, the relationship between these two categories had changed dramatically, with 3753 involving soldiers and onlly155 all other categories, Semyonov continues.

These numbers for a single federal subject are horrific given the number of relatives and friends involved; but it is important to remember, Gay says, that they understate the problem given that many people suffering such losses do not turn to the authorities for help because they do not think they will get any.

Almost Half of Russian Victims of Crime Don’t Report This to Police, St. Petersburg’s Institute of Law Enforcement Problems Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – Between 2020 and 2024, 13 percent of Russians were victims of fraud, assault, theft, robbery or violent robbery, but only 55 percent of them reported these incidents to police and 10 percent did not tell anyone about what happened, according to St. Petersburg’s Institute of Law Enforcement Problems.

            What this means, the Institute says on the  basis of surveys conducted since 2018 is that “the police remain unaware of a vast number of crimes” and that the information they do have is systematically distorted as some crimes are far more likely to be reported than others (tochno.st/materials/skolko-liudei-stanoviatsia-zertvami-prestuplenii-i-kakaia-cast-prestupnosti-ne-ucityvaetsia-v-oficialnoi-statistike).

            These surveys have found that different age groups report even violent crimes at different rates. Among victims of assault over 65, 91 percent of women and 76 percent of men turn to the police, but among the 18 to 24 cohort, these figures are only at 43 percent for women and 26 percent for men.

            Online crime, so-called “victimless” crimes like drug possession, and family violence are less likely to be reported, the surveys found, with police completely unaware of at least 60 percent of online crimes involving fraud and financial loss, the Institute says. Far more Russians are thus victims of crime than the police know or act on or that official statistics report.

With Russian Birthrate Continuing to Plummet, Putin Orders Reproductive Health Screenings for Wide Swath of Population

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 28 – With Russian birthrates continuing to plummet despite all the Kremlin’s efforts to reverse that trend, Vladimir Putin has directed the health ministry to conduct more medical check-ups to assess the reproductive health of the population and thus the ability of both men and women to have children (ehorussia.com/new/node/34486).

            According to Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, such screenings have already begun and are proving “highly popular,” but these have been voluntary and relatively few in number. It is unclear how Russians will respond especially if they are compelled to undergo such examinations and if the authorities use the outcomes to direct them to have more children.

            Moreover, it is unclear who will conduct these tests in many parts of the country because Putin’s healthcare “optimization” program has resulted in the shuttering of many medical points or how the regime will pay for such tests. Indeed, they may become yet another unfunded liability imposed on the regions.

            The most likely use of data collected from such tests, however widespread they prove to be, will be a government effort to shift the blame for the plummeting birth rates away from Putin policies to the physical conditions of Russians. But such efforts are likely to backfire because many will recognize such physical problems are typically the result of social ones.

Desertification of Southern Russia and Kazakhstan In Part Result of Cancellation of Stalin’s Plan to Transform Nature There, ‘Rhythm of Eurasia’ Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – In the last years of Stalin’s rule, the Soviet dictator made plans to “transform nature” by among other things rerouting the flow of water in Russian rivers. Those plans were cancelled by his successors; but the problems this program was designed to fix remain – and Stalin’s ideas remain relevant and should be revisited, Aleksey Chichkin says.

            The Rhythm of Eurasia analyst says that in 1948 Stalin announced plans for reforestation of areas along these rivers and other means to redirect and save Russia in the southern portions of the RSFSR and the Kazakh SSR (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-04-29--stalinskij-plan-preobrazovanija-prirody-otmenen-v-1953-m-no-aktualen-ponyne-87368).

            “Had this program been fully implemented” – and Stalin suggested it would take until 1966 -- Chichkin continues, “it would have enabled this vast region to boost natural soil fertility, while minimizing the extent of soil degradation and desertification, the impact of dry winds, the frequency of droughts, and other associated climatic and environmental extremes.”

            As a result of the cancellation of Stalin’s program by his successors, the situation has gotten worse with forests along riverways being cut down, erosion and water loss increased, and all the other problems that his program would have addressed earlier when it was easier are now much larger, the commentator says.

            Consequently, it is long past time for Moscow to consider reviving the Stalin-era plan regarding the most effective means of fighting desertification in the south of Russia and in the adjoining regions of Kazakhstan. Indeed, unless it does so, these problems almost certainly will continue to expand and may become too large to address at all.

            What makes this argument worth noting is that it represents an attempt, one that is now far from alone, to present Stalin not only as the victor in the Great Fatherland War but a thoughtful statesman concerned about the well-being of his country and thus someone who should be emulated rather than condemned.

Finnish Paper Suggests Hungarians Ashamed of Their Finno-Ugric Origins

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 28 – It has long been common ground that three Finno-Ugric peoples – the Estonians, the Finns and the Hungarians – have independent statehood and that they are the first nations that those Finno-Ugric peoples still living under Russian rule look to for help and support.

            But a Finnish newspaper is now suggesting that the Hungarians are somehow “ashamed” of their Finno-Ugric roots and prefer instead to stress their ties to the Huns, something that helps explain why Hungary has been far less focused on the Finno-Ugric nations within the borders of the Russian Federation.

            (The article, “Hungarians: Finnish is No Longer a Related Language and That is the Issue,” appeared in Finnish in Helsinki’s Ilta-Sanomat (is.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000011934420.html) and is discussed in Russian in Tallinn’s Mari portal (mariuver.eu/2026/04/28/vengry-stesnjajutsja-svoego-finno-ugorskogo-proiskhozhdenija/.)

            The article cites the conclusions of University of Budapest linguist Marta Csepregi who says that “especially in the 21^st century,” ever more Hungarians are insisting that “Hungary does not belong to a common language family with Finland,” a reflection of their conviction that Hungarians real origin lies with the Huns and that they are closer to the Turks.

            “Despite all this,” the Finnish article says, “for the average Hungarian, Finland remains closer than Sweden or Norway, and Marta Csepregi hopes that the Finns will consider Hungary closer than these countries which it neighbors.”

            There is no question that Finns and Estonians feel closer to each other and to the other Finno-Ugric peoples than do the Hungarians who live further away, do not have Finno-Ugric neighbors, and have a language which is more distant from other Finno-Ugrics than are Estonian and Finnish.

            But the difference in attitudes about Finno-Ugric languages and peoples between Estonians and Finns, on the one hand, and Hungarians, on the other, helps to explain why the Finno-Ugric peoples within the Russian borders who are subject to intense assimilationist pressures are less likely to find support in Budapest than in Helsinki and Tallinn.

Ethnic Russians Still in Central Asia will Assimilate to Local Populations in Future Unless Moscow Works to Repatriate Them Now, Shustov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – Most Russians operate on the assumption that while non-Russians may assimilate to Russians, ethnic Russians will not assimilate to non-Russian nationalities even if they live among them.  That has never been true, of course, despite Moscow’s best efforts; but it is seldom acknowledged even as a possibility.

            That makes a new article by Aleksandr Shustov, a Russian commentator who specializes on ethnic issues, especially important. He says Moscow must try to repatriate ethnic Russians from Central Asia or else those Russians will be assimilated by the titular nationalities there in a few decades and lost to the Russian world (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-04-29--repatriacija-iz-srednej-azii-vostrebovana-russkimi-iz-za-ugrozy-assimiljacii-87395).

            Russia already has a repatriation program which exists alongside but is fundamentally different from the resettlement of compatriots. Unlike the latter, repatriants can live wherever they like in the Russian Fedeation. Over the last two years, some 10,000 ethnic Russians have taken advantage of this program (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2026/04/15/1190464-repatriantov-pereselilis).

            A recent study by experts at Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences suggests that the potential number of repatriants could be much larger (jour.fnisc.ru/index.php/population/article/view/11063/10726), and Shustov argues that Moscow should act to get as many of them back as possible.

            Otherwise, the commentator suggests, they will be lost to Russia entirely with many dying out and others eventually becoming part of the titular nationality