Non-Russian Republics Appear Likely to Lose Their Education Ministries

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 25 – There are many ways to destroy the non-Russian republics within the current borders of the Russian Federation: appointing as heads people who are not members of the titular nationality and amalgamating the republics with predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays being two of the ones that regularly attract the most attention.
    But Vladimir Putin, who is clearly committed to the destruction of these institutions, has adopted a variety of other measures including pushing through laws that strip the republics of rights in important areas like language policy and economic relations with each other and with foreign countries.
    However, one of the most serious seldom gets much attention but may be one of the most important: eliminating ministries that handle key issues and transferring their responsibilities not to other bodies in the republics themselves but to agencies in the Russian capital from which one-size-fits-all policies will be imposed.
    The latest example of such a move is taking place in Mari El, a Finno-Ugric republic in the Middle Volga.  There, the republic head and his government are talking about dispensing with the republic’s ministry of public education, a step that would strip that federal subject of what in many ways is its most important function and hand that over to Moscow.
    Governor Yury Zaytsev is heading this effort which he says is needed to ensure “a unified approach” to education, something that can be achieved in his mind only by “a centralized decision at the federal level” (gtrkmariel.ru/news/news-list/glava-mariy-el-prokommentiroval-ideyu-uprazdneniya-ministerstva-obrazovaniya/ and idel-ural.org/archives/maryj-el-gotovyat-k-otmene-mynobrazovanyya/#more-25586).
    If this happens – and there is every reason to think that it will – then Moscow is likely to put pressure on the governments of the other non-Russian republics to follow suit, something that will reduce to almost nothing in one of the most important areas of defending the national languages and national identities of the peoples involved.