Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 2—The Crimean Tatars today
are an inspiration and model for the non-Russians of the Russian Federation
because they simultaneously defend the fundamental rights of their own nation
and insist that they are part of the Ukrainian state, according to a Chuvash journal.
“Looking at that energy with which
the Crimean Tatars as before insist on their choice,” “Syltan Havat” says, “you
involuntarily compare them with the non-Russian peoples of Russia” who clearly
do not have the same “universal consolidating force” even though there are “all
the preconditions” for its development (syltam-havat.livejournal.com/8718.html).
The obvious reasons it does not
exist are because the Russian state “doesn’t allow it” and because “the reality
surrounding us by itself works against us.” The mentality of every indigenous
people of Russia has been profoundly affected by and “levelled” by the
Russianness promoted by Moscow.
“The ‘correction’ of [the original
and underlying] mentality for the ethnic Russians involves only the
modification of their culture, [but] for the remaining indigenous peoples of
Russia [it threatens and requires] their complete disappearance,” the Chuvash
journals explains.
This Russian mentality is “already
so deeply rooted in our consciousness” that “beaking with it is not only
complicated but also painful.” It has
become “customary,” and not surprisingly “people choose a cheaper and more
easily accessible type of self-identification – an ersatz nationality,” which “is
mutating into a [non-ethnic] Russian surrogate.”
Such commonality is maintained only “by
enormous efforts” because “the natural self-consciousness laid down in us by
nature unconsciously seeks to arrange everything in correspondence with those
initial intentions.” Thus, it is ready for “re-awakening” despite Russian
efforts to suppress it.
There is no reason for this “struggle
with nature” or for Russian mediation between and among the non-Russian peoples
as Moscow insists. Instead, the non-Russians can and must come together as a
group both because of their common interests and because they share many things
which set them apart from the Russians who have tried to wipe out their
national distinctiveness.
At present, ethnic Russians increasingly
show that they want to “live in isolation” from others. The only proper response, the journal says,
is that “we, together with the other small peoples of Russia and in the first instance
the Turkic and Finno-Ugric ones form a single spiritual organism separate from
the ethnic Russian one.”
The peoples of Volga Bulgaria show
this can be done. “Our peoples for several centuries existed without the
mediation of ‘the elder brother,’ and did not experience any problems in
interacting with each other.” There was not a single war or other serious
conflict, and “then as now we lived in one state based on mutual respect and
not one in which one culture and tradition was forced on anybody else.”
At the present time, the journal
continues, what the non-Russians face is “the imposition of the ethnic Russian
and non-ethnic Russian cultural code” with its “striving toward the complete
unification of the peoples populating Russia and the unitarization of Russia.” Unless
the non-Russians combine in opposition, “Russian culture will swallow up all
the remaining cultures of the indigenous peoples of Russia.”
“In nation states as a rule,
nationalism is equated to patriotism, and at present, Russia is moving “along
the path toward a nation state.” As that
happens, “Russian nationalism in Russia will be converted into patriotism, and
the nationalism of the non-Russian peoples will automatically become hostile to
the Russia state and as a result, illegal.”
The Chuvash, the journal continues,
are seeking “equality of Chuvash and Russian cultures in all spheres of social
life.” This is “not xenophobia, fascism
or chauvinism, but an elementary demand based on fundamental international
legal norms.”
“But the government understands that
if it were to introduce this elementary equality ... the natural [that is, the
original national identities] would take the upper hand over the artificial
[identity that Moscow has promoted and that so many Russians and non-Russians
currently accept.]”
“Why do the Crimean Tatars stand on
Ukraine’s side?” the journal asks rhetorically. “Because in that country, their
national cultural requirements are not denigrated but realized on the basis of
guarantees.” That is what Russia should
be doing and not trying to restore a system based on the notion of a Russian “elder
brother” with all the non-Russians being “junior” ones.
This argument is important for at
least three reasons. First, it shows the way in which many non-Russians in
Russia are viewing Ukrainian events not through a Russian lens but through a
Crimean Tatar one, selecting out of the flow of events there that which is most
important to themselves.
Second, this argument matters
because it suggests that at least some of them see Ukraine’s approach as one
that Russia should follow and that of the Crimean Tatars as a model for
themselves, yet another way that Putin’s intervention in Ukraine is having
blowback in the Russian Federation itself.
And third and most important, the
Chuvash call for cooperation or even unity among non-Russians in the face of
Russian nationalist assertiveness is Moscow’s greatest fear, given that Russian
state policy now as in the past has been based on the ancient principle of “divide
and rule.”
Of course, achieving such
cooperation will be difficult, and it may never go beyond the regional level
such as the Middle Volga or the North Caucasus.
But even that will make Moscow’s current management of the country far
more difficult, forcing the center to make concessions or possibly face a new
round of disintegration.
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