Moscow Repressing Northern Peoples as Stalin Did but This Time Not for the State but for the Capitalists, Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 11 – The growing wave of repressions against the peoples of the Russian Far North is the second in the history of the country, Tatyaa Britskaya says. But there is one critical difference between what was done by Stalin at the start of industrialization and what is being done now. Then, Moscow acted in the interests of the state. Now, it acts for the capitalists.

            With these words, the Novaya Gazeta correspondent sums up what activists have told her and her own reflections on the repressions of the 1930s and those now. “It is impossible not to draw parallels” with the repression and resistance of the early 1930s and with the situation today, she says (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/11/11/okhranniki-protiv-shamanov).

            Then, the powers that be left the indigenous populations with no option but to resist or surrender. Many resisted and were suppressed in a brutal fashion. Now, the powers are doing the same thing, and the already intimidated populations are seeking to use the courts to defend themselves, a similarly unequal battle in which they usually lose even if the law is on their side.

            “Almost a century on,” Britskaya writes, “we are again colonizing the Arctic.” Indeed, “the Arctic for Russia of the 21^st century has become just as much a great hope as was space for the Soviet Union, although without the latter’s romantic flair.” That is because, “the Arctic is oil, gas, and platinum. It is arms. It is power.”

            But however that may be, “the colonization of the Arctic is going at full speed and no less cruelly than a century ago.”  There is, however, “a difference: If the first colonization of the Arctic went in the interests of the state, then the current on serves the colossal enrichment of private corporations” for whom “the Arctic is money.”

            And against that power, the peoples of the North have had less success. None of them has yet risen against the powers in the way that their ancestors did. But as their activist leaders now frequently way “we must speak even if there is no hope.” The big question is whether anyone will listen and respond before it is too late for these nations.