Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 16 – Historically,
non-Russian nations within the borders of a Russian state have responded to an
upsurge in Russian nationalism with nationalisms, inevitably anti-Russian, of
their own. That is why most Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet leaders have kept tight
control over Russian nationalists lest the slogan “Russia for the Russians”
lead to disaster.
But while the Putin regime has gone
after the most extreme Russian nationalists especially in the last year, it has
positioned itself as a defender of ethnic Russian interests on issues like
languages in the schools that have encouraged ethnic Russians to think that their
time may be coming and to say and do things that inevitably will generate
responses.
Those are beginning to appear, and
the Free Ural portal this week features a post by Buryat activist Aleksandr
Garmadzhapova that reflects the dangers of the Kremlin’s playing with Russian
nationalism and exceptionalism in a country that is a quarter or more
non-Russian. It is translated below in full (freeural.org/chto-delat-s-rossiej/):
“Racism in Russia is
acquiring absurd forms. For example, the persecution of migrants in the country
began after the conflict in the Matveyev market in which all the participants
were citizens of Russia (Daghestan), and the idea declared by many in the
course of a poll that the Russian nation should have priority over others is
worrisome. I as a Buryat can then say: “let’s go to our own national apartments
and destroy the empire. Do you want this?
41 percent of our citizens support the slogan ‘Russian for the Russians.’
What are they going to do with the non-Russians? Give me Buryat citizenship and give you
Kostroma citizenship. Let’s divorce. This will be the honest thing to do if you
want to live separately. [But] no (they
say) we want the national republics to be gubernias where Russians rule and you
serve them by working in the fields.”
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