Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 15 – The Russian
Federation is so large and the populations of its regions so diverse, including
those that are all too often lumped together as predominantly ethnic Russian,
that it should not surprise anyone that in the face of increasing repression,
ever more Russians from the regions are leaving the country and forming
regionally-based emigrations.
The first and largest of these, the Sibiryaki
or “Siberians,” has already attracted some attention but little support from either
international organizations or Russian liberal activists (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/06/a-new-siberian-emigration-takes-shape.html). But now there is a second, the Uraltsy or “People
of the Urals.”
Albeit
smaller than the Siberian emigration, the Uraltsy are not only more active but
growing more rapidly because of deteriorating conditions in their homeland. As
a result, Moscow’s security services have closed down their Internet portals
and sought to isolate their advocates (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/05/situation-in-regions-deteriorating.html
and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/06/idel-ural-movement-seeks-backing-of.html).
Urals diaspora leader Andrey Romanov
remains unbowed and insists “the Urals will be free even if the West will save
Moscow,” a recognition on his part that once again, as in 1991, Western governments
are likely to remain defenders of the status quo until someone else changes it
and only then rush in to take credit (sichovyk.com.ua/svitovid/1246-ural-will-be-free;
in Russian at region.expert/free-ural/).
Romanov
who now lives in Finland seeks cooperation with the Free Russia Forum and with
other regionalist and nationalist groups, but he is insistent that the Urals
region is separate and apart from the Siberian one with which it is often grouped,
especially by outsiders. And he is now working hard to underscore the
differences between Uralsty and Sibiryaki.
Romanov has now reposted a Russian
article which discusses in detail how the two groups of people are different
and why (andrey-lf.livejournal.com/185824.html
reposting rambler.ru/other/43112634-chem-uraltsy-otlichayutsya-sibiryakov/).
That article, originally prepared by
the Kirillitsa portal points out the obvious: “the territory of Russia is so
great that Russian people living in various regions of our country exist in
completely different conditions and are beginning to display in their character
the special aspects of the residents of these regions.”
People from the Urals and from
Siberia, although often lumped together by outsiders, are completely different
peoples as a result of their very different histories, with the first having been
far more under Moscow’s control than the second, perhaps why the Russian
security agencies are especially concerned about regionalism there.
From the 17th century on,
the article points out, the Urals was not only the edge of the Russian world
but also the site of the country’s arms industry, with gigantic metal-working
and armament factories on which the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union both
relied. The center thus worked hard to control the population despite any signs
of independence despite climatic conditions that made self-reliance a
necessity.
Siberia, on the other hand, was where
people from the European portions of the empire fled, where they were able to
get large amounts of land, and where they were often able to exist apart from
many of the controls that the center far more successfully imposed elsewhere including
in the Urals.
The Kirillitsa article is based on a
recent essay on “The Urals Character in Texts and Ads” (in Russian at taby27.ru/studentam_aspirantam/reclama_wse/reklama_studenty/1145.html)
and a 2014 volume (“Siberian Character as a Value” in Russian, Krasnoyarsk,
2014, 256 pp, at
No comments:
Post a Comment