Non-Russians will Protest if Moscow Adopts Law Declaring Russian Their Native Language, Sakha Leaders Say

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 21 – Ivan Shamayev, head of the Sakha Congress, says that “no matter how much I love the Russian language,” he can’t “consider it to be his native one” and that if the Duma passes a law saying that he must recognize Russian as being that, there will be protests in Sakha and in other non-Russian areas.

    He is far from the only one making such a declaration. Even senior regional officials are doing the same: Aleksandr Zhirkov, the Sakha Republic’s deputy prime minister, has said the same on numerous occasions (t.me/s/Govorit_NeMoskva/43968 reposted at indigenous-russia.com/archives/43404).

    Moscow officials, including most prominently Putin advisor Elena Yampolskaya, have demanded that the new law specify that Russian is the native language of all the peoples of the Russian Federation; and the current draft of the legislation contains a provision which does precisely that.

    The situation is about to come to a head. A revised draft law is to be presented for the Duma’s consideration by May 1. If there are no changes, then it is likely that the warnings from the two Sakha leaders will soon come true and that there will be clashes between non-Russian activists and officials, on the one hand, and Muscovite and Russian ones, on the other.