‘Now or Never’ as Key to Understanding Strength of Non-Russian Movements within the Russian Federation

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 23 – There were two kinds of national movements among the non-Russian peoples of the USSR, the optimistic ones in Central Asia who concluded that their goals were going to be achieved by demography alone and the pessimistic who felt that they had to work for independence now because within a generation it would be impossible.

            The classical examples of these were the three Baltic nations, all of whom felt that if they didn’t escape Moscow’s rule very quickly, they would not have the numbers to do so, and others like the Ukrainians and Belarusians who felt that they were being assimilated so quickly that the same

            Not surprisingly, the Baltic movements born out of this sense of desperation were the strongest and for this reason, in combination with their geographic location, historical experience, and support from abroad, they proved the strongest and achieved more of their goals than any of the others.

            This sense of “now or never” is affecting many of the non-Russian nations within the current borders of the Russian Federation. A clear reminder of this is provided by a Bashkir activist who outlines the reasons that members of his nation must pursue independence now or face disaster (t.me/s/freenationsrussia?before=7649 reposted at idel-ural.org/archives/12-prychyn-pochemu-bashkortostan-dolzhen-obresty-nezavysymost/#more-24564).

            Specifically, he argues at the conclusion of a long article that it must be the message of the national movement that “if the Bashkirs in the next 30 years do not acquire independence and do not construction their own nation state, they will be condemned to assimilation and to disappearance as a separate people.”

            Those words could have come out of the mouths about the nations who experienced pessimistic nationalism at the end of Soviet times, either because they were so small and not growing in numbers or because, however large they might be, they were subject to assimilation pressures they could not resist. 

             By their policies, the Soviet leadership in the 1980s and the Russian leadership now have left ever more nations with this sense and thus bore and bear primary responsibility for the fact that nations under their control now think that they have no option but to pursue independence now or never.