Putin Puts Security Council Instead of Culture Ministry in Charge of Peoples of Russia Festival

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 3 – Russia’s security services have always played an outsized role in the management of international festivals Moscow has organized to promote its agenda especially if foreigners are to be among the attendees, but this role has typically been behind the scenes with that country’s cultural minister in nominal overall charge.

            Now, however, Putin is dispensing with that cover and has openly declared that the Russian Security Council and its apparatus will be in charge of what is slated to be the annual Week of the Peoples of Russia which will include both large numbers of non-Russians from within the country and abroad (indigenous-russia.com/archives/48174).

            In making this announcement, the Kremlin leader makes no reference at all to any role for the culture ministry, the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs, or other parts of the Russian government bureaucracy which are usually listed at the organizers and funders of such activities.

            The Indigenous Russia portal says that this shift not only emphasizes the increasing tendency of the Kremlin to view ethnic relations exclusively as an issue of national security but also the growing role of the Russian Security Council and its staff in overseeing and managing these relations.

            What that suggests is that the staff of the Russian Security Council is increasingly playing the role that the staffs of the departments of the CPSU Central Committee did in Soviet times and that its activities should attract more attention than it has up to now. (For key staffers, see the list at en.special.kremlin.ru/structure/administration/members.)