Moscow Moves to Strip Dagestan of Fundamental Right of that Most Multi-National Republic

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 20 – Dagestan, the most multi-national of the non-Russian republics in the Russian Federation, may soon lose a right it alone among those republics had had up to now, the right to determine and declare the list of its smallest peoples, if a proposal by the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs goes through.
    Current Russian law specifies that Moscow will determine and declare the list of nationalities in each republic that are to be considered by the authorities but makes an exception for Dagestan because of its ethnic complexity. Now, Moscow wants to end that arrangement (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2025/02/20/1093252-dagestan-lishat-isklyuchitelnogo-prava-opredelyat-perechen-malochislennih-narodov).
    If the proposal becomes law – and it must first be considered by all the non-Russian republics who like Dagestan may oppose this, although their opposition is unlikely to stop the Kremlin – the Dagestan government will lose the ability to declare as constituent nations of its republics to Moscow.
    That could lead to the downgrading of the smallest nations in the republic, with Moscow deciding to fold them into larger nations, and thus give the center yet another way to weaken Makhachkala and threaten the continued existence of some of the smallest national groups in Dagestan.
    And that in turn could threaten the positions of the three largest nationalities in that republic, not one of which has a majority, a development that could exacerbate ethnic conflicts and likely lead to both the exacerbation of ethnic tensions and the rise of Islamism as the dominant identity there.