Paul Goble
Staunton, Nov. 10 – Traditionally, what Moscow calls “the nationality question” is all about ethnic minorities and their relations with the state; but Nazaccent, the leading Russian Federation portal on ethnic relations, has upended that approach in its new podcast series on the nationality question. The first issues focus on the ethnic Russians and their state.
The first podcast is devoted to the way in which ethnic diversity is a resource for the Russian state, the second is on the well being of the ethnic Russian people, the third is on ethnic Russian mastery of its Arctic shores, and the fourth is devoted to the role of ethnic Russians in the North Caucasus.
(Nazaccent’s report about its launch of this new series can be found at nazaccent.ru/content/46160-nacionalnyj-akcent-zapustil-podkasty-o-nacionalnom-voprose-v-rossii/ and links to these and other podcasts that portal has produced and posted on Facebook at youtube.com/@Nazaccent.)
This shift in the traditional focus of Russia’s nationality question from the non-Russians to the ethnic Russian majority is a clear echo of Putin’s elevation of the Russians as the state-forming nation of his country and his moves to reduce the status of non-Russians to a cultural phenomenon.
But it may have the unintended consequences not only of infuriating many of the non-Russians who thought that they could at least be the focus of Moscow discussion of “the nationality question” but also of prompting them to reflect on the ways in which the relationship between ethnic Russians and the non-Russians may ultimately lead to the demise of the empire.
One of the most useful discussions of that possibility was offered in a book published abroad more than 60 years ago by Russian émigré I.A. Kurganov entitled The Peoples of the USSR and the Russian Question (in Russian, Munich, 1961) in which he focused on the way that Russian attitudes toward non-Russians will define Russia’s future.
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