Moscow’s Moves Against Nenets and Komi Regions Directed Against Middle Volga as Well, Idel-Ural Movement Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 31 – Moscow’s moves toward amalgamating the Nenets Autonomous District and even the Komi Republic with the predominantly ethnic Russian Arkhangelsk Oblast are intended not only to guarantee the center’s control of the oil and gas resources of those regions but also to block the republics of the Middle Volga from having an outlet to the sea.

            In this sense, the Idel-Ural movement says, this Russian government action in the north corresponds to its defense of the predominantly Russian Orenburg Oblast which serves as a block to prevent the peoples of the Middle Volga from having an external border in that case with Kazakhstan (idel-ural.org/archives/kоми-и-имперская-политика-в-арктике).

            (On the Orenburg corridor, see  jamestown.org/program/the-orenburg-corridor-and-the-future-of-the-middle-volga/, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/03/moscow-analyst-denounces-kazakh.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/11/window-on-eurasia-separatism-both.html).

            Two things flow from this, the Idel-Ural movement says. On the one hand, it is a reminder that Moscow’s policies toward nationalities in one place almost always have implications for other places. And on the other, it means that the peoples of the Middle Volga must now come to the defense of the Nenets and Komi nations against Moscow.

            The basin of the Pechora river, the Northern Urals and the shores of the Barents Sea have always attracted the Russian state because of their natural wealth, furs initially but now oil, gas and coal.  And to ensure this access, Idel-Ural movement says, they have subjected the peoples whose homeland this area is to “russification, alcoholization, and collectivization.” 

            “In a moment of its weakness,” the movement continues, Moscow was forced to recognize the right of the peoples there to self-determination. In August 1921, the Soviets recognized the formation of the Autonomous Komi (Zyryan) Oblast, which initially included a lengthy part of the Arctic littoral.

            That meant that the Komi and Nenets were within a single national unit, but that was not a bad thing because it meant that these dispersed communities lived within the same borders and at least in principle had the opportunity to dominate local decision making. But Moscow wasn’t through.

            In 1929, it deprived the Komi of access to the sea by forming the Nenets District and reduced its importance by including it within an enormous Northern Kray.  Then in 1936, Moscow split up the Northern Kray, and the Komi area was transformed into an autonomous SSR. At the same time, the Nenets region remained within the Arkhangelsk Oblast until 1977 when it6 was elevated to the status of an autonomy but remained subordinate to Arkhangelsk.

            Despite this failed Soviet attempt at combination, Putin’s regime has decided to recreate the Northern Kray, albeit under a new name but with the native peoples, the Nentsy and the Komi, subordinate to an ethnic Russian majority. But it is likely the Kremlin is responding to more recent developments and its current fears.

            On August 29, 1990, the Komi ASSR was among the first within the RSFSR to proclaim state sovereignty; and on May 21, 1991, it elevated its status to that of a union republic. But that came too late to be recognized in the center. According to the 1993 constitution, the Komi and the Nenets became subjects of the federation, as a republic and autonomous district respectively.

            Putin fears something similar but he fears something else more: a band of republics from the Arctic to Central Asia cutting off European Russia from Siberia and the Far East. That is why Moscow is now so obsessive about maintaining the Orenburg corridor between Bashkortostan and Kazakhstan, the Kudymar corridor between Udmurtia and Komi, and the subordination of Nenets lands to Arkhangelsk.

            If Kremlin’s current plans are realized, Moscow will have put in place a system that will allow it to oppress the non-Russians even more than now. And for that reason, if for no other, the peoples of the Middle Volga as well as all others must come to the support of the Nentsy and the Komi now, the Idel-Ural movement says.