Russia’s New Ideology Must Create ‘an Ethnic Russian Yakut, an Ethnic Russian Tatar, and an Ethnic Russian Buryat,’ Karaganov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 11 – Sergey Karaganov says that Russia can’t exist without an idea that unifies its peoples because if it loses that, it will fall apart and that the unifying idea must arise from the ethnic Russian core that will promote the development of “an Ethnic Russian Yakut, an Ethnic Russian Tatar and an Ethnic Russian Buryat.”

            In a new 46-page essay (iwmes.hse.ru/mirror/pubs/share/1064657083.pdf), he somewhat softens this hardline Russian nationalist position by saying that ordinary people must be free to define themselves as they wish but that those who rule over them must accept that principle as the basis for action.

            Karaganov argues that this ideology is based on three fundamental ideas: “multi-national unity under the spiritual leadership of the ethnic Russian people, reliance on tradition, including the heritage of Byzantium and ‘the fantastic cultural openness’ of the Mongol Empire, and ‘the force of the spirit, the force of ideas and the force of arms’ as its main constituents.”

            This hyper-nationalist and hyper-statist program is already sparking discussion with many questioning how policies guided by such principles can be implemented without sparking resistance both from peoples within the borders of the Russian Federation and from other powers beyond those (apn.ru/index.php?newsid=48067).

            Those discussions are certain to continue, but Karaganov’s argument this time as so often in the past undoubtedly both reflects where the Kremlin elite already is close to and where it is heading, making both his essay and the responses it will generate in support as well as in opposition critical for the understanding of Russia today.