Udmurt Activists Create Parliament in Exile

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 4 – Udmurtia, a Finno-Ugric republic in the Middle Volga, seldom gets much attention, although it has a long tradition of resistance to central power; but that may be about to change given the decision of Udmurt activists abroad to create a parliament in exile and to hold elections to it on the same day Putin is orchestrating his Duma vote.

            Udmurtia, with a population of just under 1.5 million, is a major arms producing center; but the central media typically ignore it except when Moscow intervenes to impose a new republic head as happened recently (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/08/udmurt-case-suggests-putin-may-no.html).

            Otherwise, the republic, whose population is two-thirds ethnic Russian and only one-quarter ethnic Udmurt, is passed over in silence, viewed as a mere appendage to the larger Turkic Muslim republics of the region – Udmurtia is animist by tradition and Orthodox by official count – or even as a republic on its way to becoming little more than a Russian oblast.

            That approach is not justified: Udmurtia has a long tradition of resistance to the center. It was the site in 1918 of the first working-class revolt against the Bolsheviks, the Izhevsk-Votkins rebellion (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/08/russian-authorities-to-block.html). It people blocked a Moscow effort to rename its capital after Ustinov in the mid-1980s (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/02/udmurts-in-1987-forced-moscow-to.html).

            In 2019, the republic was again in the news when Albert Razin, 79, an Udmurt scholar, set himself aflame and burned to death in front of government offices to protest what he said was the destruction of his language and his nation as a result of Moscow’s policies (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/09/udmurt-scholars-self-immolation.html).

            And last year, in the face of rising Russian racism against the Udmurts (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/03/being-dark-skinned-in-todays-russia-can.html), activists issued a new declaration of republic sovereignty (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/09/udmurts-issue-new-declaration-of.html).

            Now, these activists, most but not all are in emigration, have taken another giant step: they are moving to create a parliament representing and consisting only of Udmurts by means of an election that is to take pace on the same date, September 20 as Putin’s electoral exercise for the Duma.

            They have created a committee under the leadership of Andrey Grigoryev, the editor of the émigré journal Vskhody; and despite official moves against those who are cooperating with this project, numerous Udmurts both in the homeland and in emigration have signed up run as candidates (facebook.com/groups/1328401217630901/user/61590157064309/ and facebook.com/groups/1328401217630901/user/61590157064309/).

Unlike in Past Elections, Kremlin Now Not Offering Russians Anything Except More of the Same, Kolesnikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 4 – In the course of earlier Duma elections, the Kremlin always offered some kind of “social contract” to the Russian population: oil-fueled prosperity in exchange for giving up political rights and great power pride over Crimea in exchange for dealing with a worsening economy, Andrey Kolesnikov says.

            But now, the commentator at Novaya Gazeta says, the Kremlin has nothing to offer: Its promises of security in face of internet restrictions when “there is no security,” of “victory over the entire civilized world” as compensation for belt tightening, and of plunging the country into backwardness in the name of “traditional values” (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/08/04/vybory-v-osazhdennoi-kreposti).

            According to Kolesnikov, “the regime has exhausted its bargaining chips … Nothing matters to anyone anymore … There is no contract to speak of here. And that means there is nothing left to offer in the election either.” All that the Kremlin can offer and without anything in exchange is “an endless stalemate and the atmosphere of a besieged fortress.”

            Any election held in a besieged fortress, he continues, “will not lift the state of siege and more importantly won’t lift ‘the siege mentality’ that views the use of a super weapon as the only way out. And that means the Duma election this time around is a vote “without a choice” and therefore without real meaning.

            This election will create yet more enemies and allow the authorities to further tighten the screws on the population, something the Russians should have come to understand because it is simply an extension of what Putin has been doing since coming to power.

            And it will mean as Orwell observed in 1984, “since a decisive victory is impossible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is for there to be a state of war.” That Putin will continue to supply as long as he is in power, something that will harm not only others but the Russian people as well.

New Law Depriving Political Emigres of Civil Rights Directed against Those Still Living in Russia, Martynov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 5 – The new law pushed through the Duma rapidly and quickly signed by Putin which strips Russian political emigres of many of their civil rights is in fact directed even more at those still living in Russia, according to Kirill Martynov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Europe.

            Indeed, he says, “the target audience of the new law  is 140 million people living in Russia” because the measure issued “before the elections” has the effect of creating “a legalized fear” of extrajudicial punishments beyond the scope of court decisions” (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/08/05/vechnye-vyrodki).

            As such, Martynov argues, groups of unnamed officials at the justice ministry who are responsible for maintaining the lists of those whose rights are limited can expand that list at will and thus they “perform the same function that the troikas played during the Great Terror.” For the moment, these new troikas aren’t depriving people of their real lives but only their civil ones.

            And consequently, the editor concludes, Russians can see that if the Kremlin is announcing such “vegetarian” techniques now, it may very well decide to make them something else after the September Duma elections are continued. That in itself produces fear among the population and generates more opposition to the government. 

Higher Education in Russia Now in ‘Systemic Crisis,’ Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 4 – Higher Education in Russia is now in a state of “systemic crisis,” according to Rostov sociologist Vitaly Kovalyov, with the state caring only about numbers and failing to come up with a new plan, students increasingly convinced they’ll get degrees without working very hard, and professors outraged by the decay around them.

            In a new article in Science, Culture, Society, the professor at the Southern Federal University notes that Moscow keeps pushing off the date for the introduction of some replacement of the Bologna system and seems to care only about retention and graduation rates (journal-scs.ru/index.php/scs/article/view/UFFHNM discussed at nakanune.ru/articles/124859/).

              Kovalyov interviewed students and faculty at a number of higher educational institutions and found that the former felt that they couldn’t be expelled lest the institution’s numbers would look  bad and the latter that this was forcing universities to view students as “customers” above all else.

              Half of the teaching staff told him that they have “lost their freedom” in making decisions and just under a third (31 percent) said the quality of staff was declining as a result. According to Kovalyov, the more qualified the professors, the more intensely such feelings were held.

              Only if the government recognizes that it needs highly skilled professionals and changes its educational model, the sociologist concludes, will Russia get the people it needs to ensure that its economy will grow and the country will prosper. Just putting up rosy statistics as now isn’t going to work. 

Single-Person Households in Russia Increasing Rapidly at Both Ends of the Age Spectrum, Institute of Sociology Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 4 – The number of single-person households in Russia is increasing rapidly both because of the share of younger Russians who have never married and that of older ones who are living longer even though their partners have died, according to the Moscow Institute of Sociology.

            Both are a matter of concern to the state. Fewer marriages among the young are further depressing the birthrate the Kremlin cares so much about , and that in turn is reducing the number of people who can help the older generation and forcing the government to spend more to compensate (ng.ru/economics/2026-08-04/1_9552_marriage.html).

            Census data show, Institute researchers say, that the number of never-married Russians increased from 70 per 1,000 in 2002 to 104 per 1,000 in 2020. The data also show that in 2002, 658 out of every 1,000 women over 70 were widows, with 427,000 of those aged 70 to 74 and more than 620,000 of women 75 and older.

            According to Oksanda Kuchmayeva, Ekaterina Vasiliyeva and Ekaterina Knyazkova, the share of single-person households has more than doubled in the last decade alone “with the greater number of people living alone found within the country’s working-age population.

            Among men, those under 45 dominate the category of those living alone; while among men, they are “typically widows over the age of 60. Thus most of the men living alone have never married, although a quarter of those doing so are divorced. Only one woman in five now living alone has never married.

            Among the young, Russians living alone have higher incomes, more space and higher expectations of what their lives should be like than those who don’t, the sociologists report.  Among the elderly, the reverse is true on all three metrics, the Institute of Sociology finds.

            One of the consequences of this trend, the sociologists point out is an increase in “the elderly dependency ratio and a projected increase in the state’s social obligations toward the support and servicing of elderly citizens living alone,” a large and growing problem for an already cash-strapped government.

In the Last Decades of Soviet Power, the KGB Used Movies and Books to Change Its Image and Win Support for the Organs, Mayofis Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 4 – Russian support today for the security services did not come out of nowhere in Putin’s time but rather was the result of the massive effort by the KGB in the final years of Soviet power to recast the organs not as the feared representatives of the Stalinist state but as the defenders of the country and its population.

            That is the conclusion Maria Mayofis, a Russian historian of culture now teaching an Amherst College in the United States, draws in a detailed new article for the Important Stories portal (istories.media/opinions/2026/08/04/nash-otvet-bondu-kak-kgb-menyal-svoi-obraz-s-pomoshchyu-kino-i-knig/).

              She says that according to documents from the Lithuanian Special archive analyzed in 2017, this secret plan to redefine the image of the KGB was outlined as early as 1963, a decision she suggests was prompted by the fact that by the late 1950s, the very word “chekist” had become almost a term of abuse.  

              The KGB supported the production of books and movies, Mayofis says, “to explain to the mass viewer and reader what the KGB did, to show that work in it was important and honorable, to show who in the modern world is dangerous and why, and to convince people that only state security can eliminate such dangers.”

              Exploiting Russian interest in Western entertainment figures, like James Bond, the KGB operatives sough to present “the Soviet intelligence officer is primarily an intellectual: his weapon is not a physical force or technical innovations like Bond, but rather analysis, memory, endurance, composure, multiplied by personal courage.”

              But beneath all this was the message that Russian security services were not only essential to the survival of the country but were always right, even when the political leadership of the country ignored them as Stalin ignored warnings from Soviet agents that Germany was about to attack the USSR.

              That this image has survived helps to explain Putin’s power, especially now when representatives of the security services like him are in the top positions of the Russian government. 

Siberians Now Search 50 Percent More Often than People West of the Urals Do for Information about MIAs in Ukraine War

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 3 – Moscow works hard to hide information about things it doesn’t want anyone to know both from its own people and from the outside world; but in many cases, the central Russian government fails in this effort because it unwittingly allows the release of information that reveals much about what it is trying to hide.

            The latest example of this concerns MIAs in Putin’s war in Ukraine. Moscow hasn’t been willing to publish data about them, but those who search for information via Yandex about MIAs have found a treasure trove of information that speaks volumes about the regional recruitment and losses in the Russian Federation (baikal-stories.media/2026/08/03/bez-vesti-propal-na-svo/).

            Prior to the summer of 2023, the data show, almost no one asked Yandex for citations about MIAs; but now more than 100,000 people are doing so every month with this metric reaching 116,000 in June 2026 alone. That figure understates the numbers, of course, because people ask for information in various ways.

            But the figures one can obtain in this way are striking: People east of the Urals ask for information 50 percent more often than do Russians on average, with residents of Buryatia doing so 4.5 times more often than this average, while residents of Moscow and Moscow region ask about MIAs only half as often as the all-Russia average.

            That reflects the higher number of soldiers sent to Ukraine from Siberia and the Far East in general and Buryatia in particular and the far lower numbers dispatched there from the city of Moscow and the surrounding Moscow Oblast, thus confirming stories about the pattern of recruitment but also showing where anger about MIAs is likely to be greatest.

            More than that, this report should serve as a reminder to everyone that when Moscow stops publishing data, there often are alternative workarounds that allow observers to get the information they seek.