Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 12 -- In the course
of a wide-ranging 9500-word interview published in today’s Kazan Business-Gazeta,
former Russian prime minister Sergey Stepashin says that no one should expect
Vladimir Putin to retreat a millimeter on his insistence on making the study of
non-Russian languages voluntary.
But the former senior officials says
that if the country is to function adequately, it should be “an unwritten law”
that anyone occupying or even aspiring to occupy the top jobs in the governments
of the non-Russian republics should know the language of the titular
nationality (business-gazeta.ru/article/385242).
Stepashin provides enormous
information on the events of the 1990s, but he makes five additional key points
that have continuing relevance:
·
The
Soviet leadership devoted enormous efforts to raise the standard of living in
the non-Russian union republics, but it did not try to do the same with the
Russian villages.
·
The
USSR leadership did not manage to fully create a Soviet people. Instead, the
residents of the country remained attached to their nations, classes and
regions.
·
“Had
Kazan broken away from Russia [in the 1990s], Chechnya would have seemed to us something
beneath notice.”
·
“Russian
oligarchs aren’t Rockefellers or Morgans. All of them know from whom and how
they arose.”
·
And
finally, Stepashin says that he “understands why Putin ever more often turns to
God. Things aren’t easy for him: he is quite alone.”
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