Combat Deaths among Numerically Small Peoples Even Larger than Reported Because Many have Russian Names, Berezhkov Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Mar. 7 -- That the numerically small indigenous peoples of the Russian North and Far East have been hit harder in percentage terms than have the ethnic Russians is now acknowledged by almost all observers, but even they are understating the numbers of these losses and thus the impact of the deaths, according to Dmitry Berezhkov.

    The editor of the Indigenous Russia portal says that the number of deaths among these nations is being seriously understated because in the case of many of these peoples, their members have been given Russian last names and thus are typically counted as Russians even though they are not (indigenous-russia.com/archives/41925).

    And that in turn means, Berezhkov says, that the war's impact on these peoples is far greater than even their sympathizers think and is accelerating "the collapse of languages, traditons, and self-sufficient economies already under thereat from industrialization and environmental destruction" that have been carried out by the Russian authorities. 

    "With every life lost, vital knowledge disappears," he continues; and "without young men to cntinuae traditional practices, entire ways of life vanish." This means that "Russia's war in Ukraine is also a war against the survival of its indigenous peoples, as these communities disappear, so too deos the memory of who they were, how they lived, and what they might have become."