Number of Ethnic Russians Grew in Soviet Period but has Fallen Since, Census Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 21 – Between the 1959 and 1989 Soviet censuses, the number of Russians in the USSR grew from 114 million to 145 million; but between the 2002 and 2021 censuses in the post-Soviet Russian Federation, their number fell from 116 million to 105.5 million, perhaps the most significant trend these enumerations have documented.

            That judgment is warranted because nations large and small who feel that their numbers are declining typically feel threatened and want to reverse that pattern by changing state policy or  lashing out at other nations that are doing better (profile.ru/society/rossiya-v-nacionalnom-razreze-kak-za-sto-let-izmenilsya-sostav-naseleniya-strany-1260325/).

            Smaller nations whose numbers are declining frequently begin to talk about the threat that they will disappear altogether, while larger nations like the Russian more often lash out at others, denying the separateness of the latter as Vladimir Putin has done with regard to the Ukrainians as a way of covering or reversing his nation’s decline.

            Some of the recent decline reflects the fact that many ethnic Russians still live in former Soviet republics; some the aging of this nationality, with declining birthrates and rising deathrates; and some that for Russians more than perhaps for others, nationality has declined in importance because the state asks for it only in censuses.

            But there is no question that the trajectory of the Russian nation has changed and become increasingly negative, both absolutely and relative to other groups, the largest of which have remained stable in number or even increased and that that pattern is disturbing for Russians and encouraging perhaps for others.

 

Are the Wakhan Kyrgyz Finally Going to Get to Go Home?

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 21 -- Few peoples of the world have been forced to fight and then flee more often than the Kyrgyz of Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor. They initially fought the Soviets in the 1920s and 1930s as Basmachi, then fled to China only to move again when the communists took power, and retreating to Pakistan when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

            But their odyssey did not end there. The group divided between into two: about a 1,000 who hoped to be resettled in Alaska but ultimately were forced to move to the Lake Van region of eastern Turkey and about 300 who returned to the Wakhan Corridor, hopeful they could hold out. Both hoped to move to Kyrgyzstan but Bishkek wasn’t prepared to take them in.

            With the Taliban moving into their largely inaccessible region, some who had been eking out an existence in the Wakhan have been forced to flee again, this time to Tajikistan where their future is anything but secure (fergana.agency/news/122422/ and asiaplustj.info/ru/news/tajikistan/society/20210714/gruppa-etnicheskih-kirgizov-iz-afganistana-pereshla-granitsu-v-tadzhikistan).

            Many would like to return to Kyrgyzstan, their ancestral home, but Bishkek, in contrast to other post-Soviet countries, has displayed an on-again, off-again willingness to help, largely because of the costs of bringing them home and integrating them into Kyrgyzstan’s life (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/10/kyrgyzstan-officials-again-refuse-to.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2012/01/window-on-eurasia-kyrgyz-who-fled.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/11/kyrgyz-who-fought-bolsheviks-in-central.html).

            Now, the saga of the Wakhan Kyrgyz appears to be coming to an end. Kyrgyz President Sardyr Zhaparov has committed himself to bringing all the Kyrgyz abroad home, including the Wakhan Kyrgyz in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Turkey (ritmeurasia.org/news--2023-02-21--put-domoj-kak-kirgizija-vozvraschaet-na-rodinu-zhitelej-kryshi-mira-64792 and ritmeurasia.org/news--2023-01-26--bishkek-prinimaet-vse-mery-dlja-pereselenija-etnicheskih-kirgizov-iz-afganistana-64330).

            He says that the plight of these peoples weighs on his mind and that he is personally committed to ensuring that all Kyrgyz abroad return home and have what they need including housing and livestock to live the traditional Kyrgyz way of semi-nomadic life that other Kyrgyz have lost but that they continue to embody.

In 2021, Kremlin Made Plans to Absorb Belarus as Soon as It had Achieved Regime Change in Ukraine, New Document Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 20 – The Dossier Center has obtained a Kremlin document which shows that Moscow intended to gradually absorb Belarus into the Russian Federation over the next decade after it achieved regime change in Ukraine by military means. Russia’s inability to do the  latter so far has in no way changed Moscow’s plans for the former, the center’s sources say.

            The document, according to the Dossier Center, was prepared by the Presidential Administration together with the SVR, the FSB, the GRU and the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and laid out specific tasks to be achieved over the next decade to make Belarus not part of a union with Russia but part of it (dossier.center/union-br/).

            Entitled “The Strategy Goals of the Russian Federation in the Belarusian Direction” and dated 2021, the document shows that what the Kremlin is really planning for its Western neighbor is entirely different that what Putin and other Russian officials say publicly. Moscow isn’t interested in a new union state but in the suppression of Belarusian statehood altogether.

            It is unknown whether similar policy documents exist regarding the future of other former Soviet republics, but it seems likely that if they are, they are likely to reflect the policies in this policy document rather than the words of Putin. Because that is so, this leak is likely to cause Belarusian and other non-Russian leaders to become more suspicious of Moscow.

UN CLCS Accepts Russia’s Documentation of Its Claims on Arctic Seabed, Increasing Likelihood It will Do the Same for Claims of Others

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 20 – The United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UN CLCS) has accepted the evidence Russia has submitted in support of most but not all of Moscow’s claims on the Arctic seabed, a major step forward but not the last word in what has been a dispute that has been ongoing for more than two decades.

            On the one hand, the UN CLCS by its decision has acknowledged that it is possible for Arctic powers to use existing technology to provide reasonable claims to the seabed in the north, something that many experts had challenged and that the commission had not made a decision (un.org/depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/rus01_rev15/2023RusRev1RecSum.pdf).

            That opens the way for Canada, Denmark and Greenland to make similar submissions in the future, something that means a final decision on the Arctic is still years away. (The US is not affected directly because its border with the Russian Federation as far as the Arctic Ocean and its seabed are concerned is defined by a 1990 agreement.)

            But on the other hand, by recognizing the authority of Russian claims but not giving Russia all it wants, the UN CLCS decision is likely to be both welcomed in Moscow as a recognition of Russian rights and lead some there to insist that their country has the right to act now lest others intervene against it.

            In short, the decision doesn’t end the dispute but may in fact raise the issue to a new level. (For the decision, its background, and possible consequences, see arctictoday.com/russia-gets-approval-for-the-data-behind-much-of-its-arctic-ocean-seabed-claim/,  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/08/moscow-plans-new-push-for-un.html, thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2022/12/canada-extends-continental-shelf-claim-increasing-overlaps-russia-arctic and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/11/moscow-should-act-unilaterally-if-un.html.)

 

Putin’s Successor Must Be Chosen by Matchsticks as No One Wants to Volunteer to Go to the Hague, Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 21 – The Kremlin faces a real problem in choosing a successor to Vladimir Putin, Russians say. No one wants to volunteer for a position that will ultimately lead to a bench in the international criminal court in the Hague. As a result, the Presidential Administration has decided to use matchsticks. Whoever draws the shortest …

            That is just one of the anecdotes now circulating in Moscow that have been collected and republished by journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/45196/-). The best of the rest include:

·       The best gift anyone can give a Russian man on defenders of the country holiday is a medical certificate showing he is unfit to serve in the ranks.

·       After the debacle with Lilith, God decided to give Adam no choice as far as Eve was concerned, thus setting the tradition that Putin has followed in Russian elections.

·       Moscow is building the largest pre-trial detention center with room for 4,000 inmates. But even it won’t be large enough to hold all the senior officials of the Putin regime when the time comes.

·       Russian governors are like those in ancient Rome: When they come to a poor one, they leave rich; and when they come to a rich region, they leave richer still.

·       The FSB is outraged that the British Academy didn’t give the agency an award for its role in Navalny’s life. That would only have been right, the FSB says, after the Academy gave an award to those who made the film. There wouldn’t have been a film with the FSB, its leaders say. Biden came to Kyiv because Putin allowed him to, but Putin did not come to the Ukrainian capital because Zelensky didn’t allow him to.

·       Putin’s declaration that Russian presidential elections in 2024 will be carried out in strict accordance with the law. In Russian that means, he will be the only candidate, will win, and no one should expect him to leave anytime soon.

·       Like Brezhnev, Putin spoke for a long time, was interrupted frequently by applause, but “thank God,” he didn’t say anything either.

Moscow has Transformed How Russian Cities Look to Propagandize Putin’s War, ‘Novaya Vladka’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 20 – The Kremlin’s propaganda effort has not been limited to messages on television and in social media. It has led to the appearance of all kinds of symbols of and messages about the war that have transformed the way in which Russian urban places now look, according to the editors of the Novaya Vladka portal.

            Russians walking through their cities are bombarded with ideological messages not so much from the media as from the environment with new signs going up and old ones modified to promote support for the war, materials that may do even more to “normalize” the conflict and generate support for it, the portal says (thenewtab.io/budto-v-chuzhom-gorode-zhivu/).

            The portal chose the city of Penza to see how things have changed in the last year and concludes with a remark by one of that Russian urban center’s residents that 12 months later it is “as if I live in a different city,” one in many cases completely at odds with the one he had lived in earlier.

            The article contains a large number of pictures of Penza’s urban landscape today, a useful supplement to the more common discussions of broadcast and print propaganda and a reminder of how powerful such urban refashioning can be. One Penza woman said that as a result of what has happened, “the city is not visible,” having disappeared under the cover of propaganda.

West Bears Some Responsibility for Russians’ Failure to Protest War in Ukraine, Filipenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 20  Atomization of Russian society, repression and propaganda by the Putin regime, and widespread poverty among Russians, one in four of whom don’t have indoor toilets, Belarusian writer Sasha Filipenko says, go a long way to explain why Russians aren’t protesting the war.

            But the writer, who now lives in Europe, says that the West by acts of commission and omission bears part of the responsibility as well and must face up to that fact if the situation inside Russia is going to change (nzz.ch/feuilleton/europaeer-sollten-nicht-fragen-warum-die-russen-nicht-gegen-den-krieg-auf-die-strasse-gehen-sie-wuerden-besser-selber-auf-die-strasse-gehen-und-fragen-warum-ihre-laender-mit-putin-weiterhin-handel-treiben-ld.1723789 in German; holod.media/2023/02/20/why-dont-russians-protest/ in Russian).

            After detailing the reasons usually cited for the absence of mass protests – atomization and the flight of many abroad, intense propaganda, the decapitation of groups that might have gone into the streets, widespread repression, poverty, and their bad experience with protesting in the past – Filipenko points to three foreign causes that he says are critical.

            First of all, the powerless that many Russians feel as far as their ability to influence Putin by protests is justified by many of them with the repeated observation that if the West can’t influence the Kremlin leader with all of the West’s enormous powers, how can anyone expect Russians to do anything.

            Second, Putin has been pursuing an ever more repressive course at home and an ever more aggressive course abroad over the last 20 years; but despite the outrage of some, most Western governments did not do anything even as tough as impose serious sanctions until a year ago. Had the West acted earlier, so too might the Russians.

            And third, and most important, Filipenko says, when Russians think about protests, their model is not Ukraine but Belarus. When there were mass protests in Belarus, the West celebrated them but then has imposed sanctions on that country as if it is just as guilty as Russia for what is going on in Ukraine and ceased to give Belarusians visas.

            Any Russian thinking about protest “understands all too well” that he is likely to face repression at home and that while Europe will celebrate him, it will quickly “forget about him” and leave him on his own. “You are a hero today but tomorrow we will not open bank accounts for you because you haven’t overthrown your dictatorship with which we continue to trade.”

            Those in the West who condemn Russians for not protesting need to look in the mirror, Filipenko says; because what the West has done explains why Russians aren’t in the streets almost as much as Putin’s propaganda and repression against a population he fears just as much as he fears the Ukrainians.