Shift to Single-Chamber Parliament and to Exclusive Party List Voting Weakening Links between Astana and Kazakhstan’s Regions, Barayeva Telegram Channel Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 8 – The shift to a single-chamber parliament in Kazakhstan and the exclusive use of party list voting to fill it is seriously weakening links between the central government in Astana and Kazakhstan’s far-flung regions, according to an analysis published by the Barayeva telegram channel.

            People in the regions no longer have representation in an upper house based on regions or identify with a specific candidate given shift from single-member districts to party list voting (eadaily.com/ru/news/2026/10/08/kazahstanskiy-kurultay-ne-sposoben-obespechit-svyaz-regionov-s-vlastyami-baraeva).

            That may nationalize politics in Kazakhstan as the country’s leadership clearly intends, but it will mean that the regions will view the capital as something different and distant especially as all of them retain senate-type government structures and use single-member district voting.

            In the event of a crisis, the Barayeva telegram channel suggests, that could lead to a situation that might threaten national integration and thus even the territorial integrity of the country, especially given differences in the ethnic composition of the regions and in their economies.

            Should that prove to be the case, what is now being celebrated as a step forward by many analysts and media outlets may prove to be something else entirely.

Use of House Arrest Spreads in Russia, Saving State Costs of Incarceration but Harming More than Just Those Kept in It, ‘Takiye Dela’ Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 6 – House arrest in the Russian Federation is increasingly used to save the state the cost of placing criminals in jails and prison camps and also to allow the courts to limit the actions of members of more privileged groups to a less severe form of punishment, the Takiye dela portal says.

            House arrest arose informally in Russia in the 19^th century. It was formally declared a permitted form of sentence by the Soviets but not used by them. But since the end of the USSR, the Russian state has used it ever more frequently, saving itself money and allowing the privileged to avoid being put behind bars, the portal says (takiedela.ru/notes/domashniy-arest/).

            Many Russians, Takiye dela says, view it as not a sentence at all; but lawyers and human rights activists say that those who are confined to their residences and forced to wear warning bracelets suffer as do the members of their families who continue to live with them. Consequently, the increase in its use is another way the state is saving money for other purposes.

            Formally but not always in practice, house arrest “cannot be a sentence.” Instead, the criminal code says it is “exclusively” a way to ensure that someone will not disappear while his or her case is being investigated. The law establishes that two days in home detention count as one when the total sentence is set, a sign that the powers view it as a softer form of punishment.

Members of Groups Referred to as ‘Small Peoples’ or ‘Nationalities’ Don’t Like These Terms, ‘Komi Daily’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 8 – Many human communities on the territory of today’s Russian Federtion are called “small peoples” or “nationalities,” but those who ae members of such groups don’t like these terms because in the first case this term is dismissive and in the second suggests that they haven’t developed enough to be a nation, in contrast to the Russians, Komi Daily says.

            Moreover, the independent émigré outlet of the Komi people says that many are also unhappy to be lumped in one group as “the non-Russian peoples,” not just because it makes the Russians “the point of reference” but also because it is typically used dismissively (komidaily.com/2026/10/08/kak-korrektno-govoritt-pro-korennye-narody/).

            “There is no perfect term, “ the Komi Daily portal acknowledges but suggests that “indigenous peoples” and “ethnic minorities” are more neutral and thus better.  And the use of words like these matters because otherwise much coverage of such groups manifests a kind of exoticism, a tendency to focus only on what makes them different from Russians.

            That is not only offensive, the portal continues, but dangerous because it suggests that to become a real nation, they have to give something up and because it ignores that in many cases Russians are doing many of the same things as the indigenous peoples but under different names, including broader categories like polygamy and clans.

            And related to this is another terminological danger. Many Russians and even some indigenous peoples use words like “mastering” or “discovery” to talk about the history and development of the regions in which the latter live and always have. It would be far better, the portal says, to use “the broader term ‘colonization.’”

Kremlin ‘Gradually Suppressing’ Regionally Distinct Political Cultures but Only as Far as Public Declarations are Concerned, Gilyev Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 5 – Aleksey Gilyev, a Russian scholar at the University of Helsinki, says that Russia remains “incredibly diverse in terms of its regions” but that the Kremlin is “gradually suppressing regionally distinct political cultures because it believes that such variations are “signs of weakness.”

            The political scientist, who has conducted a variety of surveys in the Russian Federation, says that the Putin regime has been more successful in getting Russians in various parts of the country to declare that they share a common political culture than in getting them to actually adopt it (semnasem.org/articles/2026/10/05/aleksey-gilev-rossiyane-vlast-propaganda).

            That is because on that issue just as in cases of the assessment of the 1990s or the economic situation now and others involving the future course of the war in Ukraine what people say they feel when asked global questions is quite different than what they report when more narrowly focused questions are used.

            Thus, for example, Russians overwhelmingly say they support Putin’s war in Ukraine but they also say they don’t want mobilization and would like to see peace. This reflects the fact that people evaluate issues globally according to one set of criteria and their own experiences and involvement in terms of a different set.

            While Gilyev does not address this specifically in his interview with Horizontal Russia, it is thus likely that rising poll numbers in support of a common Russia-wide political culture are at variance with the actual support people in various places have when the questions are asked about their personal experiences.

Elected Mayors Remain in Only Two Capitals of Federal Subjects and They Will Disappear in 2029, but Elected Mayors Will Continue in Many Smaller Cities

Paul Goble

            Staunton,  Oct. 6 – Putin’s campaign to strengthen governors whom he appoints against the mayors of cities that until 2010 were mostly elected is succeeding, with only two of the capitals of federal subjects – Abakan of the Khakass Republic and Anadyr of the Chukotka AD – remaining.

            In 2029, the terms of these two mayors will run out; and elections will no longer be held to fill them. As a result, the heads of these cities will be effectively reduced to “deputy governors” who won’t challenge the Kremlin-appointed heads of the regions and republics (svpressa.ru/politic/article/534984/).

            But this Putin effort has not yet reached all of the smaller cities in the federal subjects. There in many cases, elected mayors remain in place and are likely to do so in the future. And that in turn means that these urban centers could be where real campaigns and even protests will emerge and from which politicians with popular support could come.

            Because such places are small and distant from the centers of power, neither politicians nor opposition figures have focused on the possibilities this survival of Russia’s otherwise all-too-brief experiment with elected mayors; but because these places feature the closet thing to real democracy Putin’s Russia now has, those thinking about the future should focus on them.

            Putin likely will try to reduce the possibility of meaningful elections there not only by the manipulation and falsification of results but also by combining electoral districts and thus making it harder for opposition groups to organize even at that level. But because the Kremlin leader likely doesn’t view this effort as a priority, some cities will likely continue to have votes.

            These are places where prospects for democracy in Russia are still the object of real struggle; and they can be tracked because many of these smaller cities have their own websites that outsiders can access. What is going on won’t be as dramatic as mass protests in Moscow, but it may be that such places will become the seedbeds of democratic change in Russia.

To Prevent Continuation of Imperialist Muscovite State, Ukraine and Its Supporters Must Focus on What Many Now Call Central Russia, Dushin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – Most discussions of the decolonization of the Russian Federation, a move that is the precondition for the demolition of the hyper-centralized imperial state that threatens its own people and the world focus on peripheries far from the center, Igor Dushin says.

            But that is a fundamental mistake because this focus on Siberia and the North Caucasus means that even if they break away, Moscow will be able to continue as an empire for some time to come, according to the Ukrainian activist who is a participant in the Free Ingria movement (region.expert/ukraine-ingria/).

            Of course, the freedom of these regions is important; but if Ukraine and Europe are to be saved from continuing Muscovite attacks, the focus of their decolonization agendas must shift to that section of the Russian Federation that is typically called “European Russia” and viewed even by Ukrainians and others threatened by Moscow as “European Russia.”

            In fact, this geographic region is home to many ethno-national and supra-national regionalist groups; and support for them, even more than support for groups further away from the center will do more and more quickly for the demolition of the Russian empire and the prevention of its continuation after the demise of Vladimir Putin.

            One of the key portions of this region is Ingermanland, the area in northwestern Russia including St. Petersburg and its surrounding lands, Dushin says. It has long sought to go its own way as a supra-national independent state; and if it succeeded, that would quickly reduce the Russian state to a Muscovy far less capable of threatening its people or its neighbors.

            Unfortunately, despite this history and the existence of the Free Ingria movement now, this region and what its independence could mean have attracted relatively little attention even in Ukraine, let alone elsewhere, as a key “submerged nation” whose emergence would help everyone except Russian imperialists. That, Dushin says, needs to change.

            (For background on the history of Ingermanland and today’s Free Ingria movement, see Ott Kurs , “Ingria: The Broken Landbridge Between Estonia and Finland,” GeoJournal 33.1 (1994): 107–113; Ian Matley, “The Dispersal of the Ingrian Finns,” Slavic Review 38:1 (1979): 1-16; windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/07/two-other-baltic-republics-remembered.html; windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-ingermanlanders-punished-people.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/10/window-on-eurasia-ingermanland-is-ready.html, and the numerous sources cited in these articles.)     

Putin has Not Learned that Expansionist Wars No Longer Build Empires but Lead to Their Downfall, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – Until the start of the 20^th century, the use of military force to build empires was a cost-effective strategy, Vladislav Inozemtsev says, because relatively few troops had to be used to gain the bases of wealth, the occupied lacked the ability to resist, and technology flowed from the military to society rather than the other way around.

            Most leaders around the world have recognized this new reality and avoided trying to build empires by military means alone, the Russian economist says; but one who hasn’t is Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine is likely to lead to the downfall of precisely what he hopes to build (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/10/07/krest-zavoevatelia).

            For most of human history, using armies to conquer land and the natural resources on it, the two key elements of national wealth and power, made sense. Armies were small, losses were restricted in number, and those so occupied were less able to resist because they lacked the resources to do so with confidence, Inozemtsev says.

            But over the course of the last century, each of these elements has changed beyond recognition. Land and the natural resources in it are no longer the most important bases of national wealth and power. Military actions entail far larger losses, and those against whom they are directed can use means others call terrorist to resist, Inozemtsev continues.

            By the end of the 20^th century, it had become clear to most that wars of conquest to build empires represented “a cross of the conqueror,” in which “the willingness of peripheral peoples to resist had increased the price of war … and the decline in the comparable values of resources [like land] relative to production and innovation had reduced” the returns on such actions.

            In short, the Russian economist and commentator says, “by the end of the 20^th century, at least for those who know how to understand history, war had ceased to be an instrument for effective political and economic expansion.” Instead, it put those who launched such military actions at risk of losing the powers their countries had before they started these wars.

            Another change, one seldom attended to, exacerbated the consequences of “the cross of the conqueror” in the 21^st century, Inozemtsev says. ”It concerns the role of war in economic development and technological progress of countries at war or those potentially involved in such conflicts.”

            As war become more technologically advanced in the course of the last century, governments made most of their investments in technology in the military sector and counted on those investments to “spin off” into the civilian sector. But over time, government spending on such investments declined and the private sector increased investments.

            Consequently, in the most recent conflicts, governments have been forced to acquire the technology they need from private sector firms, making the vitality of such firms critical to the success of any military effort. Western countries have such a private sector advantage; Russia quite obviously doesn’t.

            What that means for Russia in its war with Ukraine is this: Putin has launched a war on the basis of an out of date understanding not only of the ability of states to build empires now by military means alone but after having completely failed to understand both Ukraine’s remarkable resilience and Russia’s lack of a vigorous private technological center to support its army.

            Putin’s prospects to achieving his goals are close to zero over the longer term, however many temporary and partial victories he may appear to be winning.

Soviet Myth of Caucasian Longevity Just That and Other Russian Regions are Offended, ‘Svbodnaya Pressa’ Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – Near the end of Soviet times, the New Yorker featured a cartoon about longevity in the USSR. The aged figure in it in North Caucasian dress was asked to what he attributed his great age. He responded, while eating a bowl of porridge, “I have never criticized the state.”

            That cartoon was a Cold War echo of a myth the Soviets promoted that the oldest people in the Soviet Union and indeed in the world came from the North Caucasus, a myth that the Putin regime has continued and thus offended other regions in the Russian Federation, the Svobodnaya pressa portal reports (svpressa.ru/health/article/534937/).

            In fact, Russian researchers say, there were then and are now relatively large numbers of people in the Middle Volga and Sakha who have lived more than 100 years; and they and their governments are angry that Moscow writers focus only on the centenarians of the North Caucasus.

            Living so long reflects a variety of factors, including but not limited to genetics, diet, activity levels, and family support. In portions of the North Caucasus, Moscow scholars say, these factors combine in ways that boost the chances people will live to great age. But those factors are present elsewhere, these Russian investigators say.

            Focusing on the North Caucasus alone reenforces the view that living to a great age is the result of genetics alone rather than reflecting as well personal choices and social patterns, something that discourages people living elsewhere from taking the necessary steps or demanding them from their government to ensure that some of them will also live longer.

Creation of Tatarstan Academy of Sciences in 1991 Prevented Mass Emigration of Scholars and Helped Other Turkic and Muslim Countries as Well

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – When Kazan set up its own Academy of Sciences in 1991, most observers saw that as little more than a component of Tatarstan’s efforts to achieve independence; but today, 35 years later, the real contribution of that act was to prevent the mass emigration of scholars to other countries, Kazan officials and scholars say.

            In 1991, many even in Tatarstan opposed the idea, participants at an anniversary meeting said; but they lost out to those who said that the three Baltic republics, “whose total GDP is less than that of Tatarstan has its own Academy of Sciences and asked why can’t the Tatars have theirs?” (milliard.tatar/news/sozdanie-sobstvennoi-akademii-nauk-v-kazani-spaslo-ot-emigracii-vydayushhixsya-ucenyx-tatarstana-10524).

            Because the academy was established and continues to grow, scholars who might have left for Moscow or other foreign centers largely stopped. They have made contributions to the republic and to its ties with the Turkic and Islamic worlds, and they have helped other Turkic and Muslim peoples in the former Soviet space develop as well.

‘Ice Free Arctic’ Won’t Be Safer for Ships or Require Fewer Icebreakers, Western Experts Say at Oslo Meeting

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – Most discussions, Russian and otherwise, about the future of the Northern Sea Route begin with assertions that the Arctic will be ice free by 2050, making the use of that sea lane easier and safer, allowing for the expansion of trade and reducing the need for icebreakers.

            But speakers at a conference on Arctic security held in Oslo last month say that all such assertions are at a minimum problematic and may lead those concerned about Arctic transit to reach the wrong conclusions (arctictoday.com/an-ice-free-arctic-ocean-in-2050-doesnt-actually-mean-ice-free/).

            Tony Russell, executive director of the Center for Arctic Study and Policy at the US Coast Guard Academy, was among those insisting that there is a compelling need for a more nuanced understanding of what is going on in the Arctic and how those who hope to expand use of it must act.

            That “the Arctic will be ice-free in 2050 … is a great headline,” he said. “It’s truthful but it isn’t the full story.” First of all, there will still be nearly a million square km of sea ice, an enormous amount; and because it will be less thick and therefore more mobile, this remaining ice may make shipping ever more hazardous. Others echoed his words.

            Consequently, he and others said, how much use the Arctic sea lanes will allow will depend on the development of infrastructure, including more ice breakers not fewer to cope with the  mobile ice. Building them and other infrastructure for the route will be enormously expensive, especially since the prime season for transit won’t expand.

            And that in turn means that many governments and businesses will conclude that such investments are not cost effective and that they are better off to use alternative routes which do not require the same amount of money to maintain their current volumes or even support greater ones. 

Astrakhan ‘Port’ Now a Bottleneck as Far as Trade with Iran is Concerned, Moscow Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 5 – Russia’s trade with Iran via the Caspian faces many obstacles including the silting up of the sea and the reduction in the size of ships and the weight of the cargo they carry that has led to, but none of these problems rivals the bottleneck that Astrakhan now represents, Moscow experts say.

            In newly published research, they argue that it is not appropriate to call Astrakhan a port as such. Instead, that term is used to describe wharves spread along more than 100 km of the Volga river and its delta, transshipment points that in many cases are not directly served by railroads (ng.ru/economics/2026-10-05/1_9596_port.html).

            That has multiplied the difficulties in intermodal transfers, a problem that has affected all Russian ports on the Caspian, including Astrakhan if one can call it that, Olya and Makachkala but has been obscured in recent months by increases in trade via all three as the result of the use of ever more workers to shift even bulk cargo, let alone finished goods.

            Moscow needs to develop a real port in Astrakhan, something that will be enormously expensive given that it will require not only the construction of new rail lines to the existing wharves but also concentrating wharves and building ships that have shallower drafts so that they can use them.

            Moscow’s ability to build such ships quickly is limited by problems with its yards and the absence of funds for such efforts and by the Russian government’s proclivity to build bigger ships at a time when the declining water levels in the lower Volga and the Caspian mean that smaller ships are the only ones that will be able to function.

            As a result, trade between Russia and Iran via the Caspian is likely to slow and then even stop in the relatively near future, and both countries, although saddled by Western sanctions have few choices, are likely to look again at rail transit through countries to the east and west of the sea if they are to achieve the trade volumes officials in both have been talking about.   

Relative Size of Different Rising Generations Varies Widely across Russian Federation

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 6 – Many discussions about the future of the Russian Federation focus on the impact of the rising generation which will replace older people whose lives and ways of thinking were formed in Soviet times and who often continue to act accordingly, but the rising generation varies in many ways.

            One of the most important involves variations among those groups identified as boomers, millennials, and zoomers in the West not only in the Russian Federation as a whole but in terms of the relationship of the size of these groups in various regions, another product of the demographic differences among them.

            The To Be Precise portal now provides data on these differences, variations that are likely to play a growing role in the way in which people living in them will behave and how leaders who seek to appeal to them will act (tochno.st/materials/karta-pokolenii-gde-v-rossii-bolse-bumerov-millenialov-i-zumerov).

              Millenials, those born between 1946 and 1964, now account for 21 percent of the Russian population overall and are the largest generation in 28 of Russia’s more than 80 federal subjects. They dominate in predominantly ethnic Russian regions where birthrates have been lower and outflow of migrants greater.

              Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1980, form almost 21 percent of the population.  According to the portal, they are “the only generation that does not prevail in any region of Russia.” Instead, boomers, millennials or zoomers form larger shares of the rising generations there.

              Millenials, those born between 1981 and 1996, form 24 percent of the population, some 35 million people in all and the largest generation in Russia and also the one who experienced the radical changes during their personality forming years. It dominates areas around the two capitals and in oil and gas producing regions.

              Finally, the zoomers, born between 1997 and 2012, now account for 17 percent of the population of Russia. In four republics where birthrates have remained highest – Ingushetia, Chechnya, Tyva and the Altai Republic—they form a larger share, between 23 and 29 percent of the total population.

Astana and Moscow Agree to Joint Monitoring of Irtysh and Ural Rivers

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 5 – Despite any progress towards an agreement on the diversion of Siberian river water to Central Asia and Russian anger about Kazakhstan’s demand for a voice on the way in which Moscow handles the flow of the Volga into the Caspian, the two countries have agreed to joint monitoring of the Irtysh and Ural, two transborder rivers.

            In fact, the two countries have been negotiating on this possibility for some time, even as conflicts over the much larger issues have continued. (On earlier talks, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/07/moscow-and-astana-inch-toward.html; and on public clashes on such issues, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/08/russians-outraged-kazakhstan-wants.html.)

            The Kazakhstan Altyn-Orda portal says that at a recent meeting in Yekaterinburg, the two sides did agree to continue to monitor flows of the transborder rivers, study the impact of those on water resources, and work to prevent flooding (altyn-orda.kz/kazahstan-i-rossiya-dogovorilis-sovmestno-upravlyat-irtyshem-i-uralom/).

            Such meetings and the accords they often produce are a reminder that even when countries in the former Soviet space may very publicly disagree on headline issues, they often continue diplomatic contacts that may open the way for progress on bigger questions later.

‘Thousands of Russians Complicit’ in Kremlin’s Electoral Fraud, Sokolov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 5 – As the Putin regime has tightened its control, not only have elections become ever more fraudulent but ever more Russians have become complicit in this fraud,  making it less likely that this fraud will be exposed and certain that it will cast a dark shadow on Russia even after Putin leaves the scene, Egor Sokolov says.

            In the first years of Putin’s rule, the regime did not have the control it does now. Journalists were freer to cover what was going on, and election observers were numerous and active, the Russian historian who just competed his studies at the University of Oxford. As a result, fraud was both easier to expose and less common (themoscowtimes.com/2026/10/05/the-kremlins-election-fraud-works-because-thousands-are-complicit-a93869).

            Now, however, Sokolov says, the press has been gelded; the observers have been blocked from doing their work; and genuine opposition parties like Yabloko have been prevented from running. And at the same time, the state has mobilized ever more people to work in election commissions which are tightly controlled.

            According to the Russian historian, this last move is especially disturbing in its consequences. Not only does it make electoral fraud “easier, it also corrupts tens if not hundreds of thousands of their members who either participate in the fraud or, at the very least, turn a blind eye to it.”

            The number of people involved is so large because “Russia has almost 50,000 election commissions, each of which consists of between three and 16 members.” Moreover, Sokolov continues, many of those now working on these commissions are teachers given that voting takes place most often in schools.

            That in turn means that the impact of fraud will spread to their pupils as well as having an impact on their future behavior, something that those concerned about creating an honest electoral system should be worried about given how difficult it will be to remove these twin nefarious influences from Russian life. 

Putin Regime Keeps Itself in Place Not Just by Carrots and Sticks but by Using Those to Define Social Relations among People, Rudkovsky Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 6 – Many assume that Putin keeps himself in power by a combination of carrots and sticks, Stanislav Rudkovsky says; but it is not by those alone. Rather, it is the way he uses such incentives and disincentives to regulate the way Russians interact with reality, a factor that by inertia keeps the situation under his control

            In Wschody, the émigré Russian libertarian politician and commentator argues that Putin remains in power “not only by fear and material dependence but also by daily life itself” that is so structured to preclude challenges (wschody.net/sem-stolpov-putinskoj-soczialnosti-kak-rezhim-stal-universalnym-posrednikom-mezhdu-rossiyanami-i-realnostyu/).

            According to Rudkovsky, “the key resource of this order is not only money, administrative vertical, security forces or control over information. Instead, it involves  manipulation of emotions, and control over identity, memory and language. He says that this involves seven “key pillars:”

            The first of these is “the vertical of mistrust,” the libertarian says. Russians “do not “trust anyone beyond a narrow circle of family and friends. All other are potential threats.” Of course, Putin didn’t invent this distrust but he has “instrumentalized it for his own purposes.”

            The second of these “pillars” is “loyalty in exchange for stability.” According to Rudkovsky, “Putin’s regime offers the population a very simple social contract: you do not get into politics,” show loyalty or at least don’t dissent, and “in exchange you are guaranteed ‘stability.’”

            The third such “pillar” is “an imperial identity and the colonial logic of mobilization: You are not a resident of a particular city or region; you are ‘part of a great country.’ Local identity is suppressed, and in its place stands an extremely generalized ‘pride in the country.”

            The fourth is “a culture of fear and cynicism. People don’t believe that it is possible to change anything at the global level and that collective action is suspicious” and inevitably fails. This attitude has its roots in Soviet times and is not despite what some thing an inherent quality of Russians.

            The fifth is the control of language. The regime “seeks not only to restrict access to information but also to determine what words people in Russia can use to describe the most transgressive states,” one that refers but does not name what is going on and thus euphemizes reality.

            The sixth pillar is the state’s monopolization of the past: “it assigns itself the right to interpret history alone, and primarily the highly traumatic experience of World War II.” As a result, the historical past of the country ceases to be a common space of discussion and becomes state property, issued to citizens in a dosed and consistent fashion.”

            And the seventh pillar of Putin’s organization of social interaction involves the cultivation of “a specific temporality: life is now because the future is unpredictable and does not belong to you: it belongs to a state that can rewrite it at any moment.”

            Taken together, Rudkovsky observes, there is “a common denominator: each pill has the effect of destroying some horizontal connection and replacing it with a vertical dependence on the state as the only source of meaning, stability and legitimate discourse.” Consequently, “Putin’s sociality involves the total monopolization of connectivity.”

            That in turn means, he concludes, that “Putin’s Russia is not just a bad form of rule. Rather it is a special and specific way of organizing social ties” so as to ensure that those in power cannot be effectively challenged and thus remain there.

Putin’s Much-Ballyhooed Power Vertical in Fact Consists of a Multitude of ‘Subverticals’ that Render the State Far Weaker than It Appears, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 6 – The Russian sate is “much weaker in reality than it appears to the outside” because it consists not of the single power vertical many like to talk about but rather of a plethora of “subverticals” which means officials must determine who is the critical figure in any particular situation, according to Abbas Gallyamov.

            Instead of applying laws and decisions equally regardless of who is involved, the former Putin speechwriter and now Putin critic says, officials act on the basis of their views about who is the most important and powerful figure in the case and thus undermine the power of the state, leaving it ever weaker (pointmedia.io/story/6ac3831875d0d3346a25cbc6).

            That may not be obvious to everyone all the time because the state’s coercive powers remain enormous, he continues; but it means that the state as an institutional whole is ever weaker since this coercion is used not so much to advance state interests as to promote those of leaders of one or another of “the subverticals” that form the regime.

            The former Putin speechwriter and now Putin critic says that a series of recent cases shows how this prevents officials from acting in the interests of the state and means that they will instead act in the their own interests or those to whom they are in fact rather than in law subordinate (pointmedia.io/story/6ac3831875d0d3346a25cbc6).

            That makes the state as a whole weak, something that is obscured much of the time because of the state’s enormous coercive power but that becomes critical when the state is subject to ever greater internal and external influences and thus acts not as a strong and integral state but as a congeries of groups, Gallyamov argues.

            A state is strong when “an official does not need to know who is behind the person applying to him: there is a single common procedure that must be used,” he continues. But in Russia, that is seldom the case; and the official’s “most important skill is to find out quickly who is behind whom” in each case.

            The more frequently that happens, Gallyamov says, “the stronger the state may appear to outsiders but the looser it is inside” and thus in fact the more at risk its survival in its current form becomes if it is buffeted as all states are by internal and external pressures.

Russia’s Birthrate will Continue to Fall Unless State Planners Return to Soviet Arrangement where Apartment Blocks were Surrounded by Common Yards, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 2 – Many believe that Moscow can boost birthrates by increasing the size of apartments or building individual houses, but experts at a meeting in Yekaterinburg suggest that neither will do the job because they fail to provide state support for children growing up and thus shift that burden almost entirely to potential parents, Elena Rychkova says.

            In Soviet times, the Nakanune journalist says, the government kept the birthrate higher than it would otherwise be by creating yards around apartment blocks so that the community would bear the cost of supervising children rather than that burden being shifted to parents alone (nakanune.ru/articles/125115/).

            As land prices have increased, banks have favored construction of buildings closer together, a move that has destroyed parks and means that parents by themselves must bear all the costs of supervising children. Consequently, demographers say, larger apartments or separate ho        mes will do little to change that part of their calculation.

            For parks to return and thus for birthrates to rise, the experts continued, the state must take a larger role in urban planning and insist on parks around buildings rather than using up all the available land because of its rising costs. That way young people can have children confident that the community will bear much of the cost of supervising them.

            This judgment is critically important because it highlights the reality that larger apartments aren’t the real solution and that banks and builders will remain in opposition to almost any policies that might reverse the accelerating decline of the birthrate in the Russian Federation.

More than Half of Internet Cables in Russia Aging and Must Be Replaced, ‘Izvestiya’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 2 – More than 50 percent of the internet cables linking computers together in the Russian Federation are older than their guaranteed life of 25 years and need to be replaced if the system is not going to be subject to repeated breakdowns, according to Russian government documents examined by Izvestiya.

            That finding (iz.ru/2176122/valerii-kodachigov/v-rf-mozhet-potrebovatsya-zamena-poloviny-linij-svyazi) not only because it suggests that the Russian internet system is at risk not just from Kremlin efforts to restrict access but for three larger reasons that call attention to problems a much larger problem.

            And that is this: Moscow has not been maintaining even those infrastructure investments it has made and thus is now seeing them begin to fail as well as those which the Soviet system had made earlier and on which the Putin regime and its immediate Russian predecessor has been living most of the time.

            That is because most internet cable in the Russian Federation as in other countries was laid not 40 or 50 years ago but less than 30. That means that the Kremlin, to ensure it has enough money to fight wars abroad, has not invested in infrastructure that it or its immediate Russian predecessors installed.

            Consequently, the Putin regime at least in this area but likely in many others as well is living off its own past as well as off the Soviet one, an approach for which the bill is certainly coming true, a bill that if the Kremlin doesn’t change course, is going to hurt ever more Russians and the prospect for the development of that country. 

If Russians Really Supported Repression, Kremlin Wouldn’t Be Restricting Release of Data about Such Policies, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 3 – It is an article of faith among many that Russians on the whole support the repressive policies of their government; but if that were so, Abbas Gallyamov says, the Kremlin would be less likely than it is to block the release of data about repression and might even be hyping it.

            To be sure, the decision to restrict such data also reflects a desire not to spark more criticism from its opponents abroad or to offend potential allies there, the Putin speechwriter turned Putin critic says; but that isn’t the whole story (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/11225 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/esli-rossiyane-odobryayut-repressii-zachem-skryvat-ih-statistiku).

            Many people, especially liberals, believe that Russians “approve of repression,” Gallyamov says. “I have repeatedly said that this is not exactly the case and even rather not so at all. That the authorities have decided to hide relevant statistics” and block movies about siloviki misbehavior “confirms this once again.”

            According to the commentator, “the myth of approval for repression was born from the high ratings of early Putin and positive attitude towards Stalin. But in fact, a large part of the fans of both respect them not for repression, but rather the relationship of repression and other things.”

Russians in many cases believe that the achievements of the two leaders outweigh the costs of their use of repression, something that leads them to downplay or ignore repression but does not mean they actively support it. If a leader achieves a victory, Russians will forgive repression; if not, then not

That attitude does not represent unqualified support for repression but rather a contingent calculation, Gallyamov says. Consequently, a Russian regime not sure that it is achieving victory will try to hide its repressive moves lest information about them exacerbate popular anger about the failure to achieve some goal or another.

De-Colonization Broader and More Important than Other Terms Used to Discuss Russia’s Future, Orlova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 2 – De-Colonization subsumes de-imperialization, sovereignization, federalization, and decentralization and allows for addressing all the questions they raise at one and the same time, Vasilina Orlova says. It is thus the most useful term to employ in discussing the future of the peoples now within the borders of the Russian Federation.

            “De-imperialization,” an anthropologist from Vladivostok now in the US says, “is about the abandonment of empire and imperial domination. Sovereignization concerns the acquisition of political subjectivity. Federalization focuses on a certain way of distributing power within a common state; and de-centralization is about the emergence of new centers of power” (wschody.net/federalizacziya-ili-dekolonizacziya-kto-reshaet-gde-periferiya/).

            According to her, de-colonization involves not only all of these issues but “also calls into question why a number of meanings have a culturally established and unquestioned primacy, one that can be explained only by established traditions, norms and values as dictated by colonial history.” As a result, de-colonization is the best framework to think about the Russian Federation.

            “De-imperialization,” Orlova continues, “is probably closest to the concept of de-colonization” given that as Russia arose as an empire, “it is natural to assume that the dismantling of the empire and its imperial implications should take place” to allow for all the peoples of the region, including Russians, to find a new place in the sun.

            She argues that it involves “the state’s rejection of imperial claims from the right to establish the boundaries of foreign subjectivity, from the idea of neighboring countries being within a sphere of its special interests, and from viewing some peoples as parts of a single historical whole which as a result of misunderstandings were split apart by state borders.

            De-imperialization is thus “a necessary part of de-colonization;” but it is far from all that is covered by the later term. That is because “the empire may disappear as a political struggle but the relations and perceptions it created will continue to exist.” That has certainly happened in Russia since 1991.

              Sovereignization is also close to de-colonization, Orlova writes; but it too is not the same thing. It is about who has the right to make decisions and thus may or may not involve the pursuit of independence by a group but also consider possibilities of federation or confederation.

              Those two concepts are also involved in such discussions especially as the Russian state is “already called ‘the Russian Federation.’” But most of those who advocate this do not challenge Moscow as the center of that state that will make the decisions for all other centers.

              Instead, she says, “federalization usually begins within the context of an already pre-existing map, one that says here is the Russian Federation and its subjects. Now, it is necessary to distribute power more fairly among them. The de-colonial view allows us to see that this map itself is the result of colonial history.”

              “Federalization can give the periphery more power,” Orlova continues; but “declonization calls into question the very right of the center to determine who is the periphery” and insists that “the center does not have some natural right to decide the fate of the territories because it has been able to govern them historically.”

Russia’s Parliamentary Parties Attract Different People Not So Much by Different Programs as by Different Emotional Appeals, INSOMAR Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 1 – INSOMAR, the Moscow Institute of Social Marketing on the basis of a survey says that Russians divide in their votes for the country’s parliamentary parties not because these parties offer radically different political programs than because they appeal to very different emotions.

            Using INSOMAR’s findings (t.me/insomar/499), the Club of the Regions identifies what it says are the differences among the parties in terms of the emotional appeals they have made to voters (club-rf.ru/theme/733). Here is how the Club’s experts describe the basic voters of four of these groups:

·       United Russia voters have enormous pride in their country and most of them expect positive changes in the country in the coming years.

·       KPRF voters in contrast are unhappy with the state of things in the country and a majority believe that worse times are ahead.

·       LDPR voters are proud of their country but say they are fed up with government news and are more likely than any of the others to articulate local and regional identities.

·       The New Peoples Party voters are the only party a majority of whom does not consider themselves supporters of any political powers. They are more economically active and want the state to stop interfering with the internet and let people work.

Neither INSOMAR nor the Party of the Regions talked much about Just Russia, a reflection of the fact that that party had a less clearly defined emotional content and thus was unable to set itself apart and attract voters on that basis than were the other four.  

Another Revenant from Soviet Past – Private Plots Provide Half the Potatoes Russian Eat

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 2 – In Soviet times, much of the food Russians consumed was grown not in the fields of state and collective farms but on the small private plots that rural residents were allowed nominally for personal use but in fact to feed not only the rural population but to keep urban residents from starving.

            At that time, this was a source of shame in the Soviet Union; but it was regularly pointed to by commentators in the West as a sign that the collectivist approach to agriculture didn’t work and that capitalism would lead to expanded production and a better life for those who raised this food and those who consumed it.

            But today, despite the spread of capitalism throughout rural Russia, it is not the enormous farms controlled by large corporations but the small private plots that farmers and dacha owners maintain that is delivering a disproportionate share of food for residents of the Russian Federation.

            According to new research by the To Be Precise portal, a large share of the foods Russians consume comes not from the big farms but from private plots owned either by those with dachas or who work for the big agricultural firms (tochno.st/materials/bolse-poloviny-kartofelia-v-strane-vyrashhivaiut-na-licnyx-ucastkax-razbiraemsia-kak-ustroeny-ogorody-v-rossii).

            It reported that “more than half of the potatoes, about half of the vegetables and most of the berries in the country are now being produced not by agricultural holdings but by people on their personal plots” as private plots are now known. These figures are in fact less than they were in the 1990s when the private plots were responsible for up to 90 percent of such production.

            In some federal subjects – Dagestan, the Altai Republic, Karelia, and Kirov Oblast – more than 90 percent of all vegetables are produced on such plots, while in others the figures are much smaller. There and elsewhere, some of the private plot production comes from small farms; but most of it comes instead from dacha lands or gardens of agricultural workers.

            This pattern reflects the fact that large but now private farms produce mostly for export and the kind of output that Russians actually consumes requires the personal involvement and commitment of farmers rather than just a change in the formal ownership of the property that so many have claimed will give rise to more food production by itself. 

Having Closed Thousands of Rural Libraries before 2022, Putin is Now Purging the Shelves of Those Still Operating, ‘Veter’ Journalist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 2 – Having closed an average of 1,000 rural libraries a year even before he invaded Ukraine in 2022, Vladimir Putin is now overseeing the purging of the books those still hanging on have on their shelves, an action that is a tragic echo of what Lenin’s wife Nadezhda Krupskaya did in the first years of Soviet power.

            That action, described by the late Bertram Wolfe in his classic 1969 Survey article “Krupskaya Purges the People’s Libraries” describes how the Bolsheviks put a straightjacket on intellectual life in the USSR. What Putin is doing now is at least as instructive and reprehensible but not yet nearly as widely condemned.

            An important exception to this restrained reaction is provided by Veter journalist Yulia Kulikova in an article which quotes one rural librarian as saying Putin is removing from the shelves “all of our classics” (veter.info/posts/eRnmWyJBAJb6 reposted at novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/10/02/my-takimi-tempami-izbavimsia-ot-vsekh-nashikh-klassikov).

            Unlike Krupskaya’s attack, Putin’s is easily hidden from prying eyes because money is still going to libraries, albeit from businesses working in the area rather than the state but for furniture and computers but not books and because the censorship is not imposed all at once but rather gradually as more and more authors are deemed foreign agents or worse.

            Rural libraries in the Komi Republic which Kulikova examined remove books the state doesn’t approve of, don’t buy books that it fears will get them in trouble such as anything about LGBT+ people, but also doesn’t buy even what the regime wants disseminated such as books about Putin’s war in Ukraine.

            As a result, the intellectual life of rural Russia is being strangled. And it is not just books: most rural libraries aren’t connected to the internet and so the computers businesses help pay for can’t be used to access the broader world that the web promises, limiting their educational role to preparing local people to work for businesses rather than broadening their horizons.

            These actions are typically justified by the Putin regime as “optimization,” the reduction in funding to libraries and schools which service relatively few people; and that justification is accepted by all too many people in Russia and the West. But the reality is worse: optimization in this case is simply a euphemism for destruction.

Academician Says Almost All Peoples in Russian Federation are ‘Indigenous,’ Raising Questions about Special Legal Status of ‘Indigenous Numerically Small Peoples’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 2 – Academician Andrey Golovnyov has called for identifying all the peoples of the country “indigenous” if they have historical and ethno-genetic roots on its territory regardless of their memory, an idea that will please Russian nationalists who resent the fact that in law, ethnic Russians are not “indigenous.”

            The director of the Kunstkammer Museum made that proposal at a session of Federation Council’s Committee on Federal Structures, Regional Policy, Local Self-Administration and the Affairs of the North on September 28 (indigenous-russia.com/archives/50603) and thereby opened a can of worms with potentially far-reaching consequences.

            Golovnyov was careful to say that he did not want to see any change in special rights the 47 numerically small peoples of the north, Siberia and the Far East now enjoy under Russia’s legal system. But by suggesting that almost all peoples in the country are indigenous, he is whether he intends to or not challenging that arrangement.

            Under current Russian law, the numerically small indigenous peoples are those 47 peoples who live on the territories of their ancestors, preserve a traditional way of life and economic activity, number fewer than 50,000 peoples and recognize themselves as distinct ethnic communities.

            Russian law does not define indigenous any other way; but of course, indigenous in the everyday meaning of a people long settled on a particular territory and in the Russian legal code defined as the numerically small peoples of the north, Siberia and the far east are not one and the same thing.

            But insisting, as Golovnyov has done, that all peoples who are indigenous in the common sense meaning of the term raises questions about whether the status of the numerically small indigenous peoples as a special legal category won’t be affected even if he would leave their status untouched.

            The issue of the definition of who is indigenous and who is now has been percolating for some time and not only among Russian nationalists. First, there is the question of number. One numerically small people – the Nenets – is close to the 50,000 figure. If it passes that, will it lose its status? Or will others gain that status if they fall below that number in the future?

            Second, the numbers question has both a domestic and an international component. Within Russia, there is a very real issue of what government level should have the right to determine who is and who is not a numerically small people. And abroad, Russia’s indigenous peoples deal with their counterparts in other countries who do not think in the same categories.

            In almost all of them, governments and activists stress the traditional way of life rather than the number of people pursuing it. That means many of those who define themselves as indigenous abroad are far larger than the Russian communities with whom they interact and thus have larger agendas than most of the Russian ones do.

            And third, will calling almost everyone including ethnic Russian indigenous undermine the existing government programs for the numerically small indigenous peoples and put even more of them on track to disappear in the future, something Golovnyov is against but that Putin’s support for exploitation of their territories makes increasingly likely?

            That is far more likely than many are willing to recognize. Already, of the 47 nations identified as indigenous, only three have majorities who know their national language, a clear sign of just how much pressure they are under (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/08/in-only-three-of-47-numerically-small.html).

            It should be obvious that indigenous and numerically small indigenous nationalities are not equivalent terms, but in the Russia of Vladimir Putin, that is likely to be forgotten and those who are called indigenous now are almost certain to suffer the most just so some Russians offended that the state doesn’t call them indigenous now can gain such official recognition.