Paul Goble
Staunton, Nov. 7 – Many non-Russian groups have suggested what the borders of their independent states should look like if and when the Russian Federation disintegrates. Russian groups have not done the same for themselves. But a Daghestani telegram channel is calling for the formation of a new Russian nation state in the borders of current Central Federal District.
According to the Godecan telegram channel, many who now call themselves Russians will cease to do so and instead identify as members of Russian-speaking regional groups and nations (telegra.ph/Velikorossiya---nacionalnoe-gosudarstvo-russkih-10-29 reposed at region.expert/velikoros/).
“But there will remain those who instead of denying their current identity will pass through the difficult path of repentance and rethinking of their national identity – in much the same way the Germans did after World War II and the Turks after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire,” the telegram channel says.
According to Godecan, “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has served as the catalyzer for its likely future disintegration.” At the same time, that action has “intensified the crisis of Russian identity,” with some going as far as to insist that such an imperialist consciousness has no right to exist.”
But the appearance of “a nation state of Russians (not post-Russians), a Great Russia, is an anti-imperialist project.” It presupposes that the Russians, while continuing to identify as such, “reject their imperial past and review their identity,” something that won’t be easy but that is certainly not impossible.
The telegram channel specifies that “Great Russia as a project is not part of the idea of ‘a beautiful Russia of the future’ which is circulating in the liberal Russian milieu.” Those who seek the latter want it to include “the entire Russian Federation with certain exceptions like Tyva, Chechnya and something else.”
The new Great Russia will be located on the territory of the ethnic metropolis of the Russian Empire. Its area will be approximately that of a restored Ukraine, and its population that of Poland. It will be a parliamentary republic with a federal system. And its capital will be in Vladimir, not Moscow, the Daghestani telegram channel says.
Most importantly, the channel continues, “Great Russia will not be the legal successor of the Russian Federation just as the Federal Republic of Germany did not become the legal successor of the Third Reich.” It army will be stripped of weapons of mass destruction and limited, as is Japan’s, to no more than 100,000 soldiers.
And according to this Daghestani vision, it will be compelled to pay reparations to those peoples and countries Moscow has invaded and be subject to intensive program of de-communization and de-imperialization to ensure that it never takes up arms against its neighbors again in order to restore an empire.
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