Fissiparousness of Russians in Emigration Yet Another Sign of Weakness of Ethnic Russian Identity

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 11 – Russians who move abroad rapidly fight among themselves with most assimilating after the first generation, Ruslan Gorevoy says, a pattern that sets them apart from other emigrations like the Ukrainian whose members typically stay together even if they learn the local language and accept the culture of the country they live in.

            As a result, diasporas like the Ukrainian not only remain cohesive and influential at least relative to the Russians who have moved abroad, the Versiya commentator says (versia.ru/yemigraciya-po-interesam). But this difference in the behavior of the various ethnic emigrations also speaks to something Gorevoy doesn’t mention and probably wouldn’t accept.

            And that is this: Russian national identity despite all the bombast coming out of the Kremlin and the beliefs of many Russians and many who spend their lives studying their country is significantly weaker than the national identities of many of the other peoples who live under Moscow’s control.

            Indeed, without the power of the Russian state bucking up Russian national identity which is in fact identification with the Russian state, Russians display a fissiparousness much less frequently found in other nationalities, yet another reason why many Russians fear that if the state under which they live weakens, their own survival will be weakened as well.