Bastrykhin Wants to Amend Russian Constitution to Allow for a State Ideology like China's

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 26 – Aleksandr Bastrykhin, the influential chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee, has called for an all-Russian referendum to amend the constitution in order to allow for the introduction of a state ideology, something that Russia’s basic law currently forbids.

            He told the St. Petersburg International Youth Legal Forum that such a step was necessary to “answer the question: ‘What are we building?’” and he pointed to the case of China which combines socialism as a basic doctrine with a market economy (kommersant.ru/doc/8777915).

            While it is unlikely that the Kremlin will move in that direction anytime soon given both the looming Duma elections and the certainty that both many Russians would oppose such a step and many in the Putin elite would likely disagree over just what that ideology should consist of and how it would be imposed, this is another sign that the Kremlin is moving in this direction.

            And at the same time, it is another indication of the extent to which for many in the Putin regime, China has become the model for Russia, a reversal of the pattern of earlier decades and one that at least some Russians will be angry about for that reason even if they would like to see the revival of a state ideology in Russia. 

Calls for ‘a CIS without Russia’ Doomed to Failure, Mendkovich Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 24 – Calls coming out of Armenia and finding some resonance elsewhere to form a kind of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) without and opposed to Russia are nothing more than a warmed-over version of GUAM and equally “stillborn,” according to Nikita Mendkovich.

            The head of Russia’s Eurasian Analytic Club says the idea was first floated by Armenian leader Nikol Pashinyan a month ago (https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8636026) and then apparently was discussed by diplomats from some of the countries of the region in Brussels and Vienna (https://t.me/enabludatel/3943).

              He suggests that what is going on is a new attempt “to revive the long-ago failed project of GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova) which was established as a regional grouping opposed to any integration with Russia and will fail for the same reasons (vfokuse.mail.ru/articles/69627944-ekspert-pochemu-proekt-sng-bez-rossii-obrechen-na-proval/).

            Indeed, its rapid failure is even more likely because it is impossible to imagine any organization in which both Armenia and Azerbaijan would be members without the balancing influence of the Russian Federation. That is something everyone must recognize, Mendkovich says, and dismiss such talk as worse that meaningless except as a kind of voice of despair. 

Moscow Offers West’s Extreme Right Validation Because It No Longer has Much Else to Offer Anyone Else, Memorial Researcher Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 26 – Many in the West mocked the decline in the status of the foreign guests at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum noting that world leaders no longer came but instead had been replaced by “conspiracy theorists and convicted criminals” from the West’s far right, Inna Bondarenko says.

            But in doing so, they missed the main point of this meeting now, the Memorial researcher says. By attracting this different audience Moscow is “validating” these people by flattering them and making them feel “they matter” (themoscowtimes.com/2026/06/26/russia-helps-the-western-far-right-feel-at-home-a93112).

            That is easy for Russia to do, she continues, as “there is very little in today’s Russian message that is distinctly Russian. The anti-woke politics, the anti-migrant rhetoric, the vaccine scepticism, the panic about Western decline – none of it originated” in Russia. Instead, these grievances have been “imported from Western culture wars” and lightly “repackaged.”

            According to Bondarenko, “this is the change that matters most, hiding in plain sight behind the spectacle. The USSR exported the image of a forward-looking country, which the world debated until its collapse. Contemporary Russia has no idea of its own to export, and sowWhat it offers instead is a mirror to the conspiracists of the world.”

            “These days,” she says, “that is the only thing Russia has left to offer — and, increasingly, the only thing the far-right still travels there to collect. The guest list and spectacle are easy to laugh at. The rest is harder.”

Censorship Restrictions ‘Far from Only or Most Important’ Reason for Decline in Russian Publishing Industry, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 26 – The evidence is clear, Russia’s Book Industry journal reports, “the book industry [in Russia] is dying at an accelerating pace,” with total circulation down by 26 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to a year ago, print runs down by 17 percent, and the number of bookstores down by almost that much.

            “But censorship restrictions are not the only and not the main reason” for these declines, the Not Moscow portal says. Instead, this decline reflects the economic situation: “People are running out of money and life in Russia is becoming too expensive to buy books at current prices.” Other needs take priority (nemoskva.net/2026/06/26/kot-findus-i-drugie-inoagenty-i-ekstremisty/).

            But the latter source says that the way that Moscow is currently moving against publishing is in some ways worse than censorship. Too many different parts of the bureaucracy are involved, publishers don’t know what is required, and some people are even urging that Soviet-style centralized censorship be restored.

            For better or worse, that isn’t going to happen, experts the portal cites say. The costs would be prohibitive to create such an expensive and ramified system at a time of budgetary stringency. As a result, uncertainties about what is allowed will continue or even grow, exacerbating the declines driven by economic stagnation and decline.

Kremlin Approves Building Fifth Mosque in Moscow, Simultaneously Giving Boost to Mufti Krganov and Promoting Religious Quiescence and Syncretism

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 25 – The Kremlin has given the go ahead for start of the construction of a fifth mosque in Moscow, a step that ignores the opposition of the city’s mayor, boosts the standing of Mufti Albir Krganov relative to other Muslim leaders in Russia, and promotes religious quiescence and syncretism by putting it alongside facilities for other traditional religious faiths.

            Krganov, who has been pushing for such a mosque since he arrived in the Russian capital from Chuvashia in 2010, is celebrating his victory, one that gives him a leg up on the other heads of the super-Muslim Spiritual Directorates who have long sought without success to build another mosque in Moscow (business-gazeta.ru/article/705412).

            (On Krganov’s standing and especially on his rise in the eyes of the Russian government relative to these others, see jamestown.org/moscows-arrests-of-muslim-spiritual-directorate-officials-likely-to-backfire/. For background on the fight over a fifth mosque in Moscow, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/muslims-plan-to-erect-fifth-major.html.)

            But the Kremlin’s agreement is not an unqualified victory for Krganov personally or for Islam. On the one hand, the authorities have insisted that the new mosque include elements of Russian Orthodoxy in its design and be located in a complex with Orthodox Christian, Jewish and Buddhist shrines.

            That appears to be a new part of the Kremlin’s strategy for dealing with calls by minority religions like Islam for more religious buildings, a strategy that has already been tested out elsewhere, most prominently in the southern Dagestani city of Derbent (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/derbent-to-erect-synagogue-mosque-and.html).

            And on the other hand, the Kremlin has also required that the mosque as part of this complex participate in civic educational projects and in the rehabilitation of veterans of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, both efforts that will limit the ability of Krganov to present this development as a personal triumph or for Muslims to view it that way as well.

            Moreover, Krganov acknowledges that the new mosque will be financed by contributions which have only begun to be collected and that its construction will take three or more years. That means what looks like a victory now may turn into another defeat, especially given continuing Russian opposition to the building of any more mosques in Moscow.

Number of Maris in Sverdlovsk Oblast who Speak Their National Language has Fallen by 40 Percent over Last Decade, Academy of Sciences Study Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 24 – Most data on declines of native language use come from the republics where it is falling rather than from the large communities of such people who live outside the borders of those republics and who in almost all cases are suffering from even more intense assimilatory pressures than their co-ethnics within their titular republics.

            That makes the findings of a large Academy of Sciences study of the fate of the Mari language in Sverdlovsk Oblast, a massive study carried out by the Moscow Institute of Linguistics especially important. (For the complete text of the study, see ling.tspu.ru/files/ling/PDF/articles/kutsaeva_m.v._49_61_2_52_2026.pdf; for a discussion of its key findings, see mariuver.eu/2026/06/24/ural-mari-vymirajut/).

            Those conducting the study visited three districts in the predominantly ethnic Russian federal subject and found that the Maris are increasingly using Russian even in completely Mari families. In fact, the study said, the national language is now used there “only by older and middle-aged people” and not even all of them.

            “Young people,” the study continued, “massively go to the cities and completely switch to Russian. At the same time, parents often do not pass the language themselves to children because of its low prestige. They are afraid that doing elsewhere will  unnecessary difficulties for their children in schools.”

            As ever fewer Maris speak Mari – and 40 percent fewer do now than only a decade ago – officials find it easier to close local schools offering courses in that language, a practice that only accelerates the demise of the Mari language outside the Mari El Republic, the Moscow linguists say.

Even Though Moscow has Not Yet Annexed South Ossetia, Some are Now Asking Whether It will Absorb Abkhazia Next

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June  24 – Whenever one country annexes part of another as Russia did with Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, many observers immediately ask whether such moves presage the opening of a new era in which annexations will become more common. Now although Moscow hasn’t yet annexed South Ossetia, some are already asking about the future of Abkhazia.

            In most cases, it becomes obvious that any annexation does not lead immediately to more but rather delays any further moves in that direction not only because conditions in other potential candidates for absorption are different but also because the international community makes it clear that it opposes any such actions.

            Now, it appears that Moscow is close to annexing South Ossetia, a territory Russian forces carved out of Georgia in 2008, with both the Russian and South Ossetian sides apparently on track to take this step, long rumored because South Ossetia has so few attributes of an independent state, sometime in the near future (jamestown.org/south-ossetia-and-russia-make-further-steps-toward-annexation/).

            Georgia would certainly be infuriated if Moscow and Tskhinvali take that step. Indeed, it could put on hold any hopes Moscow may have making more progress to returning Georgia to its fold. But given the size of South Ossetia and the fact that many in the West have assumed Moscow would eventually take this step, it is not clear how Western governments would react.

            But even before Moscow makes such a move, some are speculating that the Kremlin will follow this step by annexing Abkhazia, which also achieved the status of a partially recognized state in 2008 as a result of the Russian invasion of Georgia, although even those who do are saying Moscow would face more problems with the Abkhaz case than the South Ossetian one

            One observer in the region, Ruslan Magomedov, says that no one should forget that Abkhazia represents a much different situation than does South Ossetia, something many are inclined to do because for them the two attracted attention as Russian-sponsored breakaway states at the same time (akcent.site/novosti/45307).

            According to that commentator, “Abkhazia’s political circles are actively discussing the scenario of the republic joining Russia. This discussion has become inevitable against the backdrop of developments in South Ossetia, which could culminate in that republic’s integration into Russia.

            But he stresses, Abkhazia is very different. It has a border on the Black Sea. Its own people worked far more actively to achieve independence even before the Russian invasion. And “it is a region with a far more complex elite structure” and with a far more ramified legal system allowing elites to control the situation.

            Many in the Abkhazian elite “are not as heavily dependent on direct subsidies from Moscow as their South Ossetian counterparts and are prepared to aggressively defend their autonomy. They have their own economic interests which do not always align with Russia’s” and have shown themselves capable of blocking Moscow moves they oppose.  

              As a result, what is most likely to happen in the near term, regardless of any moves in South Ossetia will be “a faster harmonization of the tax and legal systems of Russia and Abkhazia” and ones that will involve not “a landing party’ of Russian officials … but rather “the cultivation of a loyal pro-Russian pool of administrators.”

              That will serve Russia’s interests without the problems that an attempt at annexation would cause and over the longer term could help make Abkhazia a stronger candidate for emerging from its partially recognized status to a more normal position in the international order, a development some in Moscow may see as the most useful.