Moscow Increasingly Deciding Whom to Admit to Russia on Ethnic Basis Narrowly Defined, Gannushkina Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 15 – Russian immigration policy both reflects and intensifies the increasing role of ethnicity in Russian life, with officials ever more often using ethnicity as a test to decide who is allowed into the country and who is not, under what terms and for how long, Svetlana Gannushkina says.

            Until 2015, Russia operated more closely to the provisions of the international convention on refugees, a document Moscow has signed but not ratified; but now, the immigrant rights activist says, the Russian authorities have dropped any pretenses that they are doing so (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2019/03/11/79830-otbrakovka-lyudey-po-etnicheskomu-priznaku).

            In large measure, this reflects the impact of the large number of Ukrainians who fled to Russia in 2014-2015. Many Russians were happy to welcome them at first only to turn on them when the Ukrainians proved less “angelic” and less grateful than Russians assumed they should be if they were to remain in Russia.

            And the Russian government, which initially trumpeted its willingness to take in these people, generally ceased to be interested in them as soon as their propaganda value was exhausted and in those many cases when the Ukrainians refused to take Russian citizenship. As a result, many have been forced into impossible situations within Russia or forced to leave. 

            Not only does this mean that Russia is increasingly closed to refugees – except for those who agree to cooperate with the FSB, Gannushkina says – but it is also leading to a situation in which ethnicity is being elevated to the point that Moscow wants not just ethnic Russians but “’pure Russians,’’” a much narrower category.

            She gives as an example of this the case of Larisa Iosiashvili, her colleague at Civic Action.  Larisa is the product of an ethnically mixed marriage. Her father, a Georgian, left the family early on and she know no Georgian, speaking only Russian and considering herself a Russian despite her name.

            But when she sought to get Russian citizenship “as a bearer of the language,” officials weren’t even willing to give her a test. She was told that in their view, she was “not a bearer of the Russian language,’ that in fact, she was a ‘not human’ because the ability to speak is what separates us from the animals, and Russian is the only language Larisa knows.”

            “In explanation,” Gannushkina continues, after she succeeded in convincing the officials to allow her to take the test, she was told that she had failed because she “’did not understand the hidden meanings’” behind the text. Maybe she didn’t discuss a saying the way they wanted, but that is because she is an ordinary person, not an alien.

            If Russian officials can exclude someone in this way, the rights activist says, they can exclude anyone and do so apparently in the name of ethnic “purity” whatever they think that means.