Kazan Calls for Punishing Those who Show a Lack of Respect for Symbols of Federal Subjects

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 11 – In an action that can only be described as locking the barn door after the horse has fled, the State Council of Tatarstan has called for the adoption of a Russian law that would punish anyone failing to show respect to the state symbols of the federal subjects of the country, their flags, coats of arms and hymns.

            What makes this call now so sad, IdelReal’s Ruslan Aysin says, is that it comes at a time when Moscow has gutted all these things, leaving federalism only “a pale shadow” of its former self, and at exactly the moment when Putin has stripped the leader of Tatarstan of his title as president (idelreal.org/a/31935984.html, nazaccent.ru/content/38666-prezidenta-tatarstana-okonchatelno-pereimenovali-v-glavu.html and idelreal.org/a/31939899.html).

            But the State Council’s appeal is still worth supporting. If at present, “the symbols of statehood” that the regions and republics of the Russian Federation are little more than “paths overgrown with grass and filled with concrete, the time will come when they will be cleared to make way what the course of history itself requires.”

            Of course, there is another problem with the legislation Kazan has opposed: it would be obvious to everyone precisely who has shown the least respect for the symbols of the federal subjects, not something that the guilty in the Kremlin have any interest in being pointed out now regardless of how much justification for that there is.