Kyrgyz Activist Reminds Russian Minorities that Kyrgyzstan was Once an Autonomy in Russia but Now is an Independent Country

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 3 – The Russian government has criminalized the display of maps showing any change to Russian borders the Kremlin hasn’t approved or maps showing the countries likely to emerge if the Russian Federation disintegrates into countries based on nationality or region.

            But in the other former Soviet republics where the publication of such maps of the future is now prohibited, they are spreading, a trend that some pro-Western Internet portals are actively promoting. One place where such maps have become especially common is on the Kyrgyz segment of the Internet.

            That has drawn the ire of pro-Russian commentators in Bishkek, anger that no doubt reflects how Moscow views things. But the attacks they are making about these maps have not only attracted more attention to them than they would otherwise have garnered but is calling attention to something even more dangerous.

            A prime example of this is a new article by Kyrgyz writer Feliks Tairov who complains about the appearance of the maps in the Kyrgyz segment of the Internet but then provides extensive quotations from two Kyrgyz activists who back self-determination for nations living within the current borders of the Russian Federation (kundemi.kg/index.php?newsid=9971).

            Their words almost certainly will reach larger audiences in Kyrgyzstan and in the Russian Federation than would have been the case if there had been no such attack, yet another example of the ways in which Russian actions in this sphere are undermining Russian purposes and possibly even threatening the territorial integrity of the country.

            Bektur Iskender, a Kyrgyz now living in emigration in Ukraine because of his points of view, writes the following:

The Russian Federation is an evil and it must not exist in its current form. I want to direct my words to the residents of current Russian colonies and especially to the representatives of the native peoples of these colonies.

Dear residents of Adygeya, the Altai, Bashkortostan, Buryatia, Daghestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Kalmykia, Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Karelia, Komi, Mari El, Mordovia, the Nenets AD, Sakha, North Ossetia, Tatarstan, Tyva, Udmurtia, Khakassia, the Khanti-Mansi AD, Chechnya, Chuvashia, the Chukchi AD, and the Yamalo-Nenets AD. I very much sympathize with you and your position.

Our republic, the independent Kyrgyz Republic, at one point was an autonomous republic within the RSFSR. If it had not had its status raised to that of a union republic in the 1930s, we would not be independent and we would be subject of the fourth Russian Federation. Thank God that we escaped that fate.

In the main, I do not feel sorry for the Russian soldiers who are dying today in Ukraine. These people are attacking my second homeland, and their deaths are a natural and well-deserved consequence of Ukraine’s self-defense. The Russian Federation must be destroyed, and one of the best ways to do this is ot launch a serious movement for the independence of Russia’s colonies.

The Russian Federation must be destroyed at the instant when it has weakened itself. Freedom for Russia’s colonies! Glory to Ukraine!

            Tairov quotes a second Kyrgyz activist, Sumsarbek Mamyraliyev, whom he describes primarily as a leader of the gay community in Kyrgyzstan:

Only the disintegration of Russia can stop this war. And you, its residents, can do this. If you unite and begin the struggle for real independence, you can divide up Russia was one was divided up the USSR … Flee what is a sinking ship. Russia is internationally isolated and under sanctions and is going to the bottom. Take your fate into your hands and get your republics out of Russia.

            And yet a third Kyrgyz activist, Umay Arykova, observes:

I do not know when we should be talking about decolonization and de-Russificaiton if not now. Could it be that fear is stronger than the desire to be free? I look at photographs from Bucha and understand that for me, the Russian soldier is a fascist.”

            Obviously not all Kyrgyz let alone all non-Russian feel the same way, and equally obviously many of these attitudes reflect the support some of these activists have received from the Ukrainian government which has promoted the principle of self-determination for non-Russians inside the Russian Federation.

            But these Kyrgyz voices may have more impact precisely because they are not Ukrainian. If that is the case, then the problems Moscow already faces in the non-Russian republics and regions of the Russian Federation are only going to intensify as Putin’s war in Ukraine grinds into the winter.