Moscow will Now Move to Abolish Non-Russian Republics in Name of Defending Ethnic Russians, Activists from Non-Russian National Movements Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 1 – Last month, the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs (FADN) released a new draft nationality policy document intended to guide Russian policy for the next decade. (On the provisions of that draft. See jamestown.org/program/moscows-nationality-policy-to-promote-ethnic-russians-and-counter-threats-from-others/.)

            Leaders of non-Russian national movements have denounced it, arguing presages a new wave of Kremlin efforts to undermine ethnic and territorial identities and to destroy the non-Russian republics in the name of defending the Russian language and the Russian nation (idelreal.org/a/reanimatsiya-stalinskoy-doktriny-predstaviteli-natsionalnyh-dvizheniy-raskritikovali-proekt-novoy-strategii-natsionalnoy-politiki-rf-/33459906.html).

            Tatar activist Rusland Aysin says that this is fully consistent with the Kremlin’s current course which he calls “chauvinist in its essence and which repeats Uvarov’s trinity of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality, with the only difference being nationality has been replaced by Russianness.”

            Buryat activist Yuliya Khazagayev adds that the new policy document indicates that Moscow will seek to eliminate all identities except the ethnic Russian and will attack all those who seek to keep them alive. To that end, she says, it will now destroy the non-Russian republics having gutted the authority of non-Russian groups outside those republics.

            And Bashkir activist Ruslan Gabbasoc says that this trend is a response to a trend among all non-Russians since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine. According to him, non-Russians now see that Moscow can be defeated and are increasingly speaking out despite the inevitable repression. The draft document shows how the Kremlin will respond.