Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 17 – Kalmykia, a Buddhist
republic of some 300,000 on the edge of the North Caucasus, seldom gets much
attention except for its religion – it is the only political unit in Europe
with a Buddhist plurality -- and the fact that its earlier leader was an
international chess champion. Moreover, for the last 15 years, it has been
relatively quiet politically.
But Moscow’s decision to impose a
former head of the DNR as mayor of Elista, the republic capital, has changed
that, sparking large and sustained protests over the last two months, yet
another way that Russian aggression in Ukraine is spilling back into the Russian
Federation and in which Moscow’s appointment of outsiders to positions of power
is backfiring.
And what is happening in Kalmykia follows
the pattern in Ingushetia and some other republics: Activists who began their
protests with a focus on a single narrow issue have broadened their agenda and
are now challenging not just one decision but the foundations of the Putin
system as a whole.
(For background, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/11/kalmyks-resist-moscows-dumping-its.html,
windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/11/those-criticizing-moscow-in-non-russian.html,
windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/10/protests-in-three-non-russian-republics.html
and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/10/kremlins-new-old-policy-of-assigning.html.)
Vladimir Dovdanov, an activist from Kalmykia
who participated in the Free Russia Forum in Vilnius, told Idel Real’s Artur Asafyev
that the current wave of protests in his republic which shows no sign of ending
is the largest since 2004 when an earlier one was harshly suppressed (idelreal.org/a/30275295.html).
This wave began as a spontaneous response
to the decision of the Elista city council to confirm as mayor a former DNR
official who has no ties to the republic as mayor. Moreover, the man is someone
“with an extremely questionable reputation, being from an unrecognized republic
under sanctions.”
“Is our republic to become a place where
such people will be laundered and assimilated?” This couldn’t be happening,
Dovdanov said, without the approval of republic head Batu Khasikov and so the
protesters soon began to demand that he be removed and replaced, although not
every taking part in the demonstrations has gone that far yet.
And now, he continued, some of the demonstrators
are talking about demanding the ouster of other republics, including Kalmykia’s
representative to the Russian Federation Council, because “we all understand
perfectly that if they break us, if they leave things as they are, they will
crush the spirit of our people – and not only ours but of all protesters in
Russia.”
Dovdanov also spoke about an even bigger
issue: He insisted that there is no such thing as a Kalmyk nation. We are Oyrats, he said, and we speak the
Oyrat language, one now “under threat of being pushed out by Russian. On this
issue, our authorities are puppets. Perhaps in their souls, they are patriots
and even know the language,” but they aren’t defending it.
“I in fact am an internationalist and
state-thinking person, but above all I am an Oyrat and must first of all think
about my people. And the situation of my people concerns me. We have done much
for Russia as a people, and nonetheless, beginning with Catherine II and up to
now have been treated as second-class people.”
He said he was pleased that the Free
Russia Forum had begun to talk about “a new federation,” drawing on the ideas
of Bashkir politician Ayrat Dilmukhametov, ideas, Dovdanov said which he
considers to be correct. (On Dilmukhametov’s ideas, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/10/effective-russian-federalism-and-strong.html.)
“When equal subjects create a state and
when they are vitally interested in its preservation, it will be very strong
and not be like the USSR,” the Oyrat activist says. In contrast, “empires based
on unequal relations are always doomed.”
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