Putin Making Russian Nation Ever Less Russian, Putting His Empire at Risk, Idel-Ural Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 15 – By calling on non-Russians to identify as ethnic Russians if they agree to fight for Moscow in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has compromised the ethnic status of the Russian nation, making it more non-Russian than ever before and putting it on course to follow classical Rome into oblivion, according to Idel-Ural activists.

            According to these advocates of independence for the Middle Volga, Putin is “ruining the pseudo-mono-ethnicity” of the Russian Federation since those immigrants who join it will eventually dominate “the population of the Muscovy that remains” as a result (idel-ural.org/archives/ymperskaya-gojda-rossyya-dlya-russkyh-no-kto-ety-russkye/).

            The indigenous non-Russians will separate from this pastiche, the Idel-Ural activists say, allowing the Kremlin to assume that the Russians are even more dominant than they were but in fact these Russians will be less Russian than ever before. As a result, the empire will implode and collapse, just as Rome did almost two millenia ago.

            This is a hyperbolic view of what the inclusion of non-Russians within the Russian nation means, but it calls attention both to the ways in which some non-Russian nations there believe they will escape and to the fears of many indigenous Russians that Putin’s policies are undermining the real meaning of being Russian.

            If those two factors do come together, the consequences both for the unity of the Russian “nation” and the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation could be enormous.