Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 20 – Three of
Moscow’s most influential specialists on ethnicity – Valery Tishkov, Vladimir Zorin,
and Leokadiya Drobizheva – discussed some of the most sensitive issues in that
field at a small conference at Moscow State University this week. Their views
individually and collectively will disturb many non-Russians and some Russians
as well.
The conference did not attract a
large audience or much media attention but the remarks of the three were
covered in some detail by Kazan’s Business-Gazeta (business-gazeta.ru/article/446762).
Its report is likely to be picked up and discussed by outlets in many
non-Russian parts of the country.
Academician Tishkov, former
nationalities minister and former director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology
and a close advisor to Vladimir Putin on nationality and language issues,
devoted most of his time to a discussion of the problems of the last two
Russian censuses and those of the upcoming 2020 enumeration.
In the 2002 and 2010 censuses, he
says, there were clear distortions with the non-Russian republic governments
boosting the numbers and shares of the titular nationality at the expense of
other non-Russians and ethnic Russians.
This was a manifestation of ethno-nationalism because “if you increase
someone, someone else will be reduced.”
Tishkov also complained the Russian
Duma has not corrected a shortcoming in the earlier censuses which reduced their
accuracy. Because census takers are still going to be allowed to rely on
government records when they cannot or do not speak to individuals, that will
lead to undercounts of many things, including ethnic identity.
In 2010, the census reported that there
were 5.6 million residents of Russia without a nationality, he said. “In fact,
those 5.6 million citizens from whom the census did not get data on nationality
and those who did not indicate their nationality … are different things
entirely” and the difference distorts the overall picture.
One would expect censuses to miss some
people, perhaps a million in the case of the Russian Federation; but not 5.6
million, Tishkov continued. These
undercounts hit the major nations like the Russians or the Tatars especially
hard. He also complained about the creation of subgroups for various nationalities
as a useless complication.
But the academician devoted most of
his time to the issue of whether those enumerated could declare more than one
nationality or language. “We have a sufficiently
large stratum of people who are offspring of mixed marriages and in equal
decree speak two languages,” the ethnographer said.
“Today,” Tishkov said, “bilingualism
is characteristic for at least dozens if not more millions of Russians, especially
people of non-Russian nationality and from those who come from the Volga region
and the Caucasus who in varying degrees speak two languages. And the language of
the father and the language of the mother are native for them.”
“The logic that one’s native
language is the language of your nationality reduces the number of bearers of
Russian as native among the non-Russian population. Kalmyks, Buryats, Karels,
and Mordvins speak Russian above all, and only then if they know it, the language
of their own nationality. This isn’t reflected in the census,” and that distorts
things.
Tishkov concluded by saying that
non-ethnic civic Russian identity is not about “denying the existence of
nations.” We aren’t trying to force everyone
into a single homogenous identity: civic Russian national identity is “a
complex formula of self-identification.”
Vladimir Zorin, another former
nationalities minister and deputy director of the Institute of Ethnology and
Anthropology responsible for the institute’s work with public organizations, stressed
that Vladimir Putin’s 2012 essay, “Russia: the Nationality Question,” had
played “an important role” in improving ethnic relations in the country.
“We confirm that the multi-national
people of the Russian Federation and the [non-ethnic] Russian nation are synonyms,”
Zorin said, arguing that ‘we insistently recommend to everyone to use this in
their daily conversations but up to now, he added with regret, many senior
officials have not done so.
And Leokadiya Drobizheva, a longtime
specialist on ethnic issues in the USSR and the Russian Federation who is now a
professor at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, said that the situation with regard
to ethnic issues in Russia has improved markedly over the past generation.
“Many young people may not know but
those who are older are aware that in the Constitution, there existed the right
to self-determination and the possibility of withdrawing from the country.
Therefore, we have tried to eliminate the terms ‘nation’ and ‘national
self-determination’ and have replaced the word ‘nation’ with ‘ethnicity.’”
The same thing is true with the term
‘ethnic federalism,” Drobizheva continued. “I am an advocate that that term
should be used more rarely. According to the Constitution, we do not have
national republics. One should recognize this more often. We have Russian
republics, not national ones!”
In all republics and constitutions, they
are proclaimed in the name of the people of the republic,” she pointed out. Yet
another terminological change is that “accord” has increasingly replaced the
term “tolerance” because the latter has a negative connotation for many given
its links to homosexuality and pedophilia.
And in conclusion, Drobizheva said, the
status of ethnic Russians is changing as well. Instead of being “’the elder brother’”
to all the others, Russians are now to be “equal partners” with them.
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