Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 20 – Stavropol kray,
which over the last month became less secure than Ingushetia, is set to become
even more troubled in the coming weeks as nationalist activists push forward
with their plans to declare the territory an ethnic Russian republic, a move
that will not only destabilize the North Caucasus but other portions of the
Russian Federation as well.
In the troubled North Caucasus, some
federal subjects are nonetheless at any one point less or more secure than
others. In June, the Foundation for the Study of Electoral Processes said, Stavropol
kray was the most secure, but now the situation in that predominantly ethnic
Russian region has deteriorated (bigcaucasus.com/events/actual/19-08-2013/85546-reiting-0/).
On Sunday, a meeting of 300 member
and supporters of the “For Honor and Dignity
Against Ethnic Crime and Corruption” group took place in Rostov-na-Donu with
the approval of local officials. (Rostov oblast is the immediate neighbor of
Stavropol kray but is in the Southern Federal District rather than the North
Caucasus FD.
Among the speakers were Yevgeny
Mikhailov, the head of that group, Sergey Popov, head of the Public River
group, Sergey Klyata of the “We are Russians” group, Dmitry Davydov of
Whirlpool, as well as representatives of the Resistance Movement from St.
Petersburg and the Cossack community of Salsk (u-f.ru/News/u214/2013/08/18/659898,
kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/228756/
and rod-pravo.livejournal.com/398414.html).
In addition to complaining about ethnic
crime and problems with Russia’s immigration system, speaker called for giving
Russians and Cossacks more rights.
Klyata said that “for several years we have been struggling for Russians
and Cossacks to be recognized as indigenous residents of the oblast.”
If inter-ethnic conflicts are to be
resolved, he continued, these two groups must have “equal rights with other
peoples of Russia. Our Constitution declares that we are a multi-national
people … with equal rights. But somehow Russians do not have rights. And in
this regard, we are not extremists; we are patriots of the Motherland.”
He noted that the governor of Rostov
oblast has a consultative council which consists of representatives of the
national-cultural autonomies there, but among these, Klyata added, “there is no
Russian autonomy.”
“Who defines the internal policy of
Rostov oblast?” he asked. “Why is it defined without the opinion of the indigenous
population of the oblast being taken into account? I propose to introduce into the resolution of
the meeting a demand for including in the basic law of Rostov oblast a
paragraph recognizing [ethnic] Russians as the indigenous population of the
region.”
Sergey Popov said that the Russians
of Stavropol have the same views but intend to take a more radical step. “In
our region, the time of meetings has ended,” he said. “We have held four
sessions of the organizing committee for holding a congress of the Russian
people of Stavropol at which we intend to declare a Stavropol Russian Republic.”
He pointedly added that in the words
of Kavkaz-Uzel that “this is a reaction to the formation in Russia of federal
districts,” a reference to the longstanding demand of many in that
predominantly ethnic kray to have their territory shifted out of what is
otherwise a wholly North Caucasus federal district.
A
half century ago, émigré Russian scholar I.A. Kurganov wrote a book on The Nations of the USSR and the Russian
Question (in Russian, Munich, 1961), in which he argued that the fate of
the Soviet Union would depend less on what the non-Russians did but rather on
how the Russians would react to non-Russian actions.
That
certainly appears to have been the case at the end of Soviet times; it now
appears that it may be true as well in the Russian Federation at the present
time.
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