Kremlin Russifying Russia Step by Step, Telegram Channel Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 9 – Many Russian nationalists have long been upset that the Kremlin isn’t doing more to make Russia Russian even to the point of accusing its denizens of being Russophobic, the Terem Teremok e Channel says. But they wouldn’t if they considered what Moscow in fact has been doing.

            “Without hurrying or rocking the boat and only as circumstances allow,” the channel says, “the Russian government is step by step doing away with various dangerous manifestations of multi-nationality,” including a decade ago eliminating the regional component in the schools and earlier this year the obligatory study of national languages.”

            “Now,” it continues, the center is taking up migration policy “and it is already obvious that in this direction too things will be Russified completely. And ahead looms the doing away with the national autonomies This pattern reflects the composition of the people in the Kremlin (t.me/terem_teremok/2866).

            There, the Terem Teremok channel continues, “sit chekist-nationalist-anti-Soviets who well understand why the Union disintegration and who cover the mausoleum during the Victory Parade.”

            To the extent that this interpretation is correct or is accepted as such, that means that Russians and non-Russians will divide on how they evaluate any development however small. Today, for example, it was reported that the share of parents in Tatarstan declaring Tatar as the native language of their children fell over the last year from 69 percent to 68 percent (idelreal.org/a/29590325.html).

            Ethnic Russians are thus likely to view this as a move in the right direction, however small, while non-Russians will see it as an indication that the Kremlin really does want to russify them but that the threat is not immediate and therefore there is no need to protesst, exactly the conclusions the Telegram Channel suggests the Kremlin wants to the two groups to draw.