Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 3 – Ever
more Russian nationalists are calling
for Russians to be identified in the country’s Constitution as “the
state-forming people,” but this is just as “absurd and insulting” to all the
peoples of the country as it would be for most Americans to assert that slave
owners were the sole creators of the US, Karolina Kanayeva, a Mordvin activist
says.
“Moscow is wallowing in luxury in
comparison with other regions who are drowning in poverty and Moscow’s trash …
[they] have been reduced practically to the level of slavery if not worse.
National cultures are practically destroyed and ethno-national pride of the
indigenous peoples systematically trampled upon” (idelreal.org/a/30411717.html).
Others are less dramatic, but they
observe as does Ulyanovsk commentator Konstantin Tolkachev that elevating the
ethnic Russians to such a special status is “impermissible and very dangerous”
given that doing so can, as the experience of other countries has shown, lead
to mass conflict and even war.
He adds that in many subjects of the
Russian Federation, this is more true now even than it was in Soviet times as
shown by the self-immolation of Albert Razin in Udmurtia last September. (On
that tragedy, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-last-udmurt.html.)
But what makes the situation so
potentially serious is that ever more ethnic Russians and political leaders
seem convinced that they should have insert such declarations in the
Constitution regardless of the feelings of the non-Russian third of the population
(windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/01/to-save-country-from-collapse-zyuganov.html).
Such plans will
end badly, leading to a situation in which Moscow will have to apply ever more
force to keep the non-Russians in line or creating one in which the Russians
will thereby achieve exactly the opposite of what they seek, the coming apart
of the country rather than its unification around them and their nation.
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