Paul Goble
Vienna, January 19 – In the wake of the Manezh Square violence, many Moscow commentators have talked about what a future Russian “bunt” (revolt) might be, but a careful recounting of what happened in Grozny 64 years ago may provide the best example of what it might look like and why the use of force alone against it won’t solve the problems.
In an article on Newsland.ru, Oleg Matveyev describes what happened in Grozny in 1957. After the 20th Congress of the CPSU, he recalls, “the rehabilitation of both individual citizens and whole peoples who had suffered in the years of lawlessness began,” often leading to unforeseen and uncontrolled developments (news.babr.ru/?IDE=91108).
On January 6, 1957, Moscow issued a decree “on the restoration of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR within the RSFSR,” a measure that anticipated the gradual return from Central Asian exile of the peoples sent there but not the “more than 200,000” who flooded back over the course of 1957 alone.
The problems this created were not limited to numbers alone, Matveyev says. There was “the mass acquisition of arms,” blood feud murders, rapes, other violent crimes and “attacks on the residents of the republic who represented other nationalities.” And the Chechen leaders, he continues, sought to promote both the practice of Sufism and the establishment of Shariat law.
By the end of the year, “anti-Russian leaflets were being distributed in Grozny,” and Chechen young people attacked both teachers and even “officers of the Soviet Army.” According to one Russian there at the time, “the situation is so bad” that “the people are in a panic. Many have left,” she said; “and the rest are meeting” to decide what steps they should take.
According to official statistics, during 1957, some 113,000 ethnic Russians, Osetins, Avars, Ukrainians “and citizens of other nationalities” left the newly re-established Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic. But those who did not leave participated on August 26-27 in an even which is “a classical example” of a “Russky bunt.”
Matveyev provides enormous detail on what occurred, but even the broad outline of events is suggestive of what can happen. On August 23, a Chechen got into a fight with an ethnic Russian and killed him. Russians around the city demanded that the Chechen be severely punished, and on August 25-26, they called for the public execution of the Chechen.
On the 26th, more than 3,000 people marched on the center of Grozny and staged a demonstration in front of CPSU headquarters. “But,” Matveyev notes, “neither in the oblast committee nor in the city committee of the party did anyone consider it necessary to enter into a discussion with the city residents or give it any explanations.
Instead, the party officials simply remained behind “a militia cordon” and assumed the crowd would disperse. But the crowd didn’t go away. Instead, a group of its younger members “broke into the offices of the obkom and attempted by force to bring into the square” senior government and party officials.
The young Russians succeeded in getting the officials to come out, but instead of entering into a serious discussion, these officials limited themselves to “a call to stop the disorders,” even as voices from the crowd shouted “’Chechens out of Grozny!’ “Let N.S. Khrushchev come to Us, We will Talk to Him;’” and “’Long live Grozny oblast!’”
More and more people came into the square even after officials sent into Soviet soldiers. And rumors that there would be another meeting early the next day which would include representatives from the Soviet government and the CPSU Central Committee caused even more Russians to arrive and make their feelings known.
But no one came from Moscow, and new leaflets appeared, denouncing the failure of the local officials to do anything and pointing out that the powers that be seemed more interested in protecting the Chechen murderer than in listening to the relatives and friends of the ethnic Russian victim.
By noon on the 26th, there were “approximately 10,000” people in the square. The leaders of the demonstrators demanded that the authorities release the young people who had been arrested for breaking into the obkom and “send the Chechens out of Grozny.” Stimulated by their words, “another group tried to break into the offices of the KGB.”
As this was going on, some in the crowd “turned their anger on any individuals of Chechen nationality who appeared on the square,” beating several of them so severely that one of the Chechens died. Then the crowd marched on the CPSU city committee headquarters and broke in, carrying out what Matveyev describes as “a pogrom.”
And the crowd adopted a resolution demanding that Moscow reverse course on restoring the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, limit the number of Chechen and Ingush returnees to “no more than 10 percent” of the total population, “and resettled advanced progressive Komsomol youth of various nationalities from other republics” in Grozny.
The demonstrators demanded that officials appear before them, threatening them with bodily harm if they did not, and repeated their demands that the Chechens be expelled from the republic. As the crowd was adopting that resolution, 500 Russians broke into the post office and then into the inter-city telephone office.
Russian demonstrators put up signs saying that “in Grozny, the Chechens are killing ethnic Russians and the local authorities are not taking any measures.” Finally, just before midnight, Soviet military forces arrived to disperse the crowd, but “participants in the meeting threw stones at them.”
The next day, the militia and KGB “began intensive searches for the active participants of the disorders,” with wave after wave of arrests. Ninety-one of those arrested were charged with “mass disorders” and promptly convicted. But these repressive steps did not have “the expected” result, Matveyev says.
Those arrested were not cowed, and one of them declared “the working class of the city correctly rose up, the counterrevolutionaries were not in the square; the counterrevolutionaries were sitting in the oblast committee of the CPSU.” But because of Communist ideology, “neither the central nor the local authorities were able to objectively assess” what had happened.
Instead, “the powers that be were agitated by only one thing: who wrote, who hit, who ordered … The Communist leaders in this way froze the resolution of the problems of inter-ethnic relations in Checheno-Ingushetia,” problems that nearly a half century later were to break out in “a bloody drama.”
Given how much greater Soviet control was then than Russian control is now, this portrait of ethnic Russians enraged by non-Russian actions and official non-action is likely to be especially worrying to the current rulers. If Russians were prepared to defy the CPSU over these issues, how much easier it is likely to be for them to defy the current powers that be.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Georgia Now Dominated by ‘Golden Youth’ of Brezhnev Era
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 19 – The young people who now dominate politics and economics in Georgia are the representatives of the Brezhnev-era “golden youth,’ who themselves the children of the Soviet nomenklatura nonetheless grew up hating the falsehood, social demagogy and limitations of that era, according to a Tbilisi analyst.
In “Vestnik Kavkaza” yesterday, Georgy Kalatozishvili notes that Georgia has one of the youngest political, bureaucratic, and economic elites of any country in the world, a pattern that reflects Georgian history and one that helps to explain the behavior of that elite, including its leader Mikhail Saakashvili (www.vestikavkaza.ru/analytics/obshestvo/31735.html).
According to a recent study, he says, the average age of Georgian bureaucrats is now 28, thsat of ministers and members of parliament 32, and that “among successful businessmen, managers, university heads, experts and journalists [in the Georgian republic] there are today almost no people older than 40.”
Most analysts, Kalatozishvili says, date this process to the Rose Revolution of 2003 which brought to power Saakashvili who was 36 and thus the youngest president in the world. And they note that his coming to power resulted in the reduction of the age of cadres “in all spheres” because the young leaders found it easier to work with people of their own generation.
“As often happens” in such circumstances, the Tbilisi analyst says, the results have been mixed. On the one hand, the youthful leaders “increased the budget by eight times … and implemented the most complex reforms in all directions. On the other, their radicalism meant that they often gave little thought to “’costs’ and consequences.”
Not only has it led to crises like the social explosion of November 2007 when Saakashvili was forced to impose martial law, but it has meant that some of these younger people, precisely because they lack the experience of the more senior people they have displaced, have made decisions that Tbilisi has sometimes been forced to reverse.
This extraordinarily youthful face of today’s Georgia has sparked many questions, Kalatozishvili says, including most often the following: How can it be that in a Caucasus country, historically patriarchal with “the unqualified priority that is given to family values,” that such a youth revolution could happen.
The answer, the Tbilisi analyst says, is “simple: family values did not disappear at all. The family, which consists of three generations, is up to now indestructible. But it turns out that family values need not be extrapolated to social political life, and given a certain combination of factors, they generally are losing the possibility of influencing social processes.”
Another reason for that conclusion, Kalatozishvili argues, is that the rise of young people in the Georgian elite did not begin in 2004 but in fact had started under Eduard Shevardnadze. After he came to power in 1992, the former president promoted “in all institutions precisely that social group which could guarantee him legitimacy in the new post-communist period.”
That was the young, but more than that, these new people were examples of something more than just youth. They were examples of “a particular social stratu8m which was formed in the second half of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s … the capital ‘golden youth’ who grew up in families of the Soviet nomenklatura.”
Saakashvili himself, Kalatozishvili says, “is a typical representative of [this] generation which hated the communist regime. These young people entered life at a time when audio-video machines or Levi jeans were considered a mark of social superiority” by members of a group that by most standards had everything the system could provide but “wanted a lot more.”
Such people, the Tbilisi analyst points out, travelled to the border with Turkey in order to watch on Turkish television the European Cup matches, they hijacked planes to the West … and at night they listened to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd,” all things that contributed to their view that everything Soviet was bad.
Their self-confidence and instinctive dislike of Russia “as the inheritor of the hated USSR” are among the chief characteristics of the mindset of these people. And because of that it is clear that “no other social group would have been capable of doing what the Saakashvili command has done, changing Georgia beyond recognition.”
Today, Kalatozishvili concludes, “this group is neither better nor worse” than those around who formed it. “It is simply different,” and that difference, given the age of the members of this group and their current dominance, promises to characterize Georgian actions for a long time into the future.
Vienna, January 19 – The young people who now dominate politics and economics in Georgia are the representatives of the Brezhnev-era “golden youth,’ who themselves the children of the Soviet nomenklatura nonetheless grew up hating the falsehood, social demagogy and limitations of that era, according to a Tbilisi analyst.
In “Vestnik Kavkaza” yesterday, Georgy Kalatozishvili notes that Georgia has one of the youngest political, bureaucratic, and economic elites of any country in the world, a pattern that reflects Georgian history and one that helps to explain the behavior of that elite, including its leader Mikhail Saakashvili (www.vestikavkaza.ru/analytics/obshestvo/31735.html).
According to a recent study, he says, the average age of Georgian bureaucrats is now 28, thsat of ministers and members of parliament 32, and that “among successful businessmen, managers, university heads, experts and journalists [in the Georgian republic] there are today almost no people older than 40.”
Most analysts, Kalatozishvili says, date this process to the Rose Revolution of 2003 which brought to power Saakashvili who was 36 and thus the youngest president in the world. And they note that his coming to power resulted in the reduction of the age of cadres “in all spheres” because the young leaders found it easier to work with people of their own generation.
“As often happens” in such circumstances, the Tbilisi analyst says, the results have been mixed. On the one hand, the youthful leaders “increased the budget by eight times … and implemented the most complex reforms in all directions. On the other, their radicalism meant that they often gave little thought to “’costs’ and consequences.”
Not only has it led to crises like the social explosion of November 2007 when Saakashvili was forced to impose martial law, but it has meant that some of these younger people, precisely because they lack the experience of the more senior people they have displaced, have made decisions that Tbilisi has sometimes been forced to reverse.
This extraordinarily youthful face of today’s Georgia has sparked many questions, Kalatozishvili says, including most often the following: How can it be that in a Caucasus country, historically patriarchal with “the unqualified priority that is given to family values,” that such a youth revolution could happen.
The answer, the Tbilisi analyst says, is “simple: family values did not disappear at all. The family, which consists of three generations, is up to now indestructible. But it turns out that family values need not be extrapolated to social political life, and given a certain combination of factors, they generally are losing the possibility of influencing social processes.”
Another reason for that conclusion, Kalatozishvili argues, is that the rise of young people in the Georgian elite did not begin in 2004 but in fact had started under Eduard Shevardnadze. After he came to power in 1992, the former president promoted “in all institutions precisely that social group which could guarantee him legitimacy in the new post-communist period.”
That was the young, but more than that, these new people were examples of something more than just youth. They were examples of “a particular social stratu8m which was formed in the second half of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s … the capital ‘golden youth’ who grew up in families of the Soviet nomenklatura.”
Saakashvili himself, Kalatozishvili says, “is a typical representative of [this] generation which hated the communist regime. These young people entered life at a time when audio-video machines or Levi jeans were considered a mark of social superiority” by members of a group that by most standards had everything the system could provide but “wanted a lot more.”
Such people, the Tbilisi analyst points out, travelled to the border with Turkey in order to watch on Turkish television the European Cup matches, they hijacked planes to the West … and at night they listened to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd,” all things that contributed to their view that everything Soviet was bad.
Their self-confidence and instinctive dislike of Russia “as the inheritor of the hated USSR” are among the chief characteristics of the mindset of these people. And because of that it is clear that “no other social group would have been capable of doing what the Saakashvili command has done, changing Georgia beyond recognition.”
Today, Kalatozishvili concludes, “this group is neither better nor worse” than those around who formed it. “It is simply different,” and that difference, given the age of the members of this group and their current dominance, promises to characterize Georgian actions for a long time into the future.
Window on Eurasia: Medvedev’s Words Point Either toward a Russian Federation with Russian Autonomies or toward a Russian National State, Analyst Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 19 – President Dmitry Medvedev’s words about Russians this week recognize the difference between the ethnic and non-ethnic definition of Russians and point toward either the formation of ethnic Russian autonomies within the Russian Federation or the transformation of that country into a Russian national state, according to a Moscow analyst.
But whatever Medvedev’s intentions, Sergey Kornyev argues, his words highlight “a well-known algorithm of contemporary feudal statehood: the rights of each social group are recognized to the degree it manifests force and brutality,” a reference to the Manezh violence but also an indication of what may happen next (www.inright.ru/blogs/id_4/post_6296/).
And consequently, Kornyev’s logic suggests, Medvedev and the Russian state will be forced in one or another direction depending on whether there are more radical protests by Russians or not and on whether other groups feel compelled to respond in kind, thus opening the way to more clashes rather than fewer regardless of what Moscow chooses to do.
“Russians in the form of sports fanatics, school children and a few political activists,” Kornyev begins, have forced the powers that be to talk “about [ethnic] Russians in a neutral-positive key” rather than ignore them or criticize them as has been the case for most of the last two decades when the state only wanted to talk about non-ethnic Russians.
One can interpret Medvedev’s remarks as the start of the campaign for votes given that the Russians forma majority, he continues, but such comments have the effect of changing “the position of Russians in the framework of ‘the Multi-national’ [state and society]” and thus must be seized on to promote ethnic Russian interests.
In Kornyev’s interpretation, Medvedev acknowledged with his words “three important things.” First, the president admitted that “the ethnic Russian people exists and is something distinguished from the multi-national non-ethnic people.” Second, his words indicate that “ethnic Russian national culture is different from the multi-national non-ethnic Russian culture.”
And third, they represent an acknowledgement that “ethnic Russians in Russia dominate by number, culture, language and religions. Thus, in cultural-linguistic relations, the multi-national non-ethnic Russia is built around the ethnic Russia. In essence, the State Russia is established by ethnic Russians.”
These three theses, Kornyev says, do not all point in the same direction. Theses one and two point to the need for the formation of ethnic Russian autonomy within the Russian Federation, while thesis three points “the reformation of Russia into an ethnic Russian national state.”
If Moscow follows the first and second thesis, the analyst continues, five things follow. First, Someone must “have the right to speak in the name of ethnic Russians and not just all the citizens of Russia.” Second, ethnic Russians must have the right to autonomy and this must be guaranteed by the Constitution.
Third, if ethnic and non-ethnic Russians are different, then it must be acknowledged that ethnic Russians have their own distinctive interests and problems. Fourth, ethnic Russians must have the right to show “solidarity with ethnic Russians living abroad.” And fifth, ethnic Russians at home must have their own cultural outlets.
If, however, Moscow follows the third thesis, the one that points toward redefining the Russian Federation as a Russian national state, several very different things follow, Kornyev argues. Such a change does not mean, as some fear, an attack on “the equality of all citizens before the law independent of origin.” But it does mean something else.
Specifically, he says, it means that “the equality of all cultures, languages and ethnic groups (as integral collectives) … is an absolutely unreal thing for any, even the most tolerant country.” It is clear, Kornyev says, that “no real ‘equality of languages and cultures’ can existin Russia.”
The Constitution recognizes the Russian language as the state language, and consequently, “all remaining languages and cultures of Russia re in a situation of natural and inevitable discrimination … because they are forced to study Russian in addition to their native language … [in order to] avoid discrimination in other spheres of life.”
“As a result of the natural order of things,” Kornyev says, “’everything ethnic Russian’ in Russia is (and must be) ‘at the center,’ and ‘everything non-ethnic Russia just as necessarily is (and must be) at ‘periphery’ and ‘exotic.’”
In fact, he argues, “Russia is not ‘Multi-national,’” however much some insist upon that idea, but rather ‘a country of ethnic Russians and the Russified.’” That means that “’citizens of Russia’ are ethnic Russians by origin and those who unite with them into a unified civic nation, into an ethnic Russian civic nation.”
“To this ‘ethnic Russian civic nation,’” he continues, “any Russian-language citizen of Russia who is loyal to the ethnic Russians and who ‘plays with ethnic Russians on one team.’” This does not diminish the rights of small peoples, Kornyev insists but rather represents “a formula for the only possible path of the construction of the nation.”
From this it follows, he suggests, that “to be a citizen of Russia in the full sense of the word, [individuals] must master ethnic Russian norms of behavior, ‘Russify’ themselves, and show respect to the civic majority, that is to the ethnic Russians,” something that some living within the Russian Federation have not done.
Indeed, “as a result of the mistaken conception” of Russia as a multi-national civic nation, Kornyev says, people from the North Caucasus and elsewhere have not had this clearly explained to them, and from that lack of an explanation have arisen “all the problems” that Russia now faces in ethnic relations.
According to this analyst, “ethnoses as integral groups can be ‘equally important’” only if they make an equal “contribution to the population, GDP and defense capability of the country.” In a democratic state, all this is even simply to understand because ethnic Russians bsides everything else are also a democratic majority.”
In that situation, democracy means Russian rule, and to be “for democracy means to be for the power of the ethnic Russians. To be against the power of the ethnic Russians means to be against democracy,” and “sooner or later” to have a regime like that of Saddam Hussein ruling over the country.
Thus, “even a tolerant conception of respect for minorities is in fact not a denial but a form of the same conception of ‘the Elder Brother,’” assuming of course that that nation is as Medvedev insists the Russian are kind and generous. “Therefore other peoples have nothing to fear from an ethnic Russian national statehood.”
Kornyev devotes a great deal of attention to the fact that Medvedev in his remarks talked about the Germans and about the status of Germans in Germany. After 1945, it did not come into anyone’s head to create “an FRG nation.” Instead, the German nation continued and continues, with ethnic membership primary and territory secondary.
This is not just a question of terminology, Kornyev insists. Rather it shows that the Germans continued to view the German nation as “the nucleus or center of the civic nation of the Federal Republic,” an arrangement the Moscow analyst argues “allowed the defeated Germany to so quickly restore itself and again become a leader.”
That raises a completely logical question, he says. “Who defeated whom in the Great Fatherland War if the Germans were permitted to built a multi-national Germany as a German national state and the Russians were not permitted to build Russia as an ethnic Russian national state?”
Now, Medvedev as a lawyer must know that having said A, B will follow. According to Kornyev, there are only two possibilities: autonomy for ethnic Russians within an ethno-federal state or “the reformation of “all of Russia (except perhaps the Caucasus) into a Russian national state, ‘a Russia for the Russians and those who are with [them] in one boat.’”
But of course there is a third possibility, and Kornyev hints at it himself. And that is this: if the ethnic Russians insist on making their country an ethnic Russian national state, it is possible and even likely that at least some of the more than 30 million non-ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation may decide that the only way to defend their rights is to seek independence.
Vienna, January 19 – President Dmitry Medvedev’s words about Russians this week recognize the difference between the ethnic and non-ethnic definition of Russians and point toward either the formation of ethnic Russian autonomies within the Russian Federation or the transformation of that country into a Russian national state, according to a Moscow analyst.
But whatever Medvedev’s intentions, Sergey Kornyev argues, his words highlight “a well-known algorithm of contemporary feudal statehood: the rights of each social group are recognized to the degree it manifests force and brutality,” a reference to the Manezh violence but also an indication of what may happen next (www.inright.ru/blogs/id_4/post_6296/).
And consequently, Kornyev’s logic suggests, Medvedev and the Russian state will be forced in one or another direction depending on whether there are more radical protests by Russians or not and on whether other groups feel compelled to respond in kind, thus opening the way to more clashes rather than fewer regardless of what Moscow chooses to do.
“Russians in the form of sports fanatics, school children and a few political activists,” Kornyev begins, have forced the powers that be to talk “about [ethnic] Russians in a neutral-positive key” rather than ignore them or criticize them as has been the case for most of the last two decades when the state only wanted to talk about non-ethnic Russians.
One can interpret Medvedev’s remarks as the start of the campaign for votes given that the Russians forma majority, he continues, but such comments have the effect of changing “the position of Russians in the framework of ‘the Multi-national’ [state and society]” and thus must be seized on to promote ethnic Russian interests.
In Kornyev’s interpretation, Medvedev acknowledged with his words “three important things.” First, the president admitted that “the ethnic Russian people exists and is something distinguished from the multi-national non-ethnic people.” Second, his words indicate that “ethnic Russian national culture is different from the multi-national non-ethnic Russian culture.”
And third, they represent an acknowledgement that “ethnic Russians in Russia dominate by number, culture, language and religions. Thus, in cultural-linguistic relations, the multi-national non-ethnic Russia is built around the ethnic Russia. In essence, the State Russia is established by ethnic Russians.”
These three theses, Kornyev says, do not all point in the same direction. Theses one and two point to the need for the formation of ethnic Russian autonomy within the Russian Federation, while thesis three points “the reformation of Russia into an ethnic Russian national state.”
If Moscow follows the first and second thesis, the analyst continues, five things follow. First, Someone must “have the right to speak in the name of ethnic Russians and not just all the citizens of Russia.” Second, ethnic Russians must have the right to autonomy and this must be guaranteed by the Constitution.
Third, if ethnic and non-ethnic Russians are different, then it must be acknowledged that ethnic Russians have their own distinctive interests and problems. Fourth, ethnic Russians must have the right to show “solidarity with ethnic Russians living abroad.” And fifth, ethnic Russians at home must have their own cultural outlets.
If, however, Moscow follows the third thesis, the one that points toward redefining the Russian Federation as a Russian national state, several very different things follow, Kornyev argues. Such a change does not mean, as some fear, an attack on “the equality of all citizens before the law independent of origin.” But it does mean something else.
Specifically, he says, it means that “the equality of all cultures, languages and ethnic groups (as integral collectives) … is an absolutely unreal thing for any, even the most tolerant country.” It is clear, Kornyev says, that “no real ‘equality of languages and cultures’ can existin Russia.”
The Constitution recognizes the Russian language as the state language, and consequently, “all remaining languages and cultures of Russia re in a situation of natural and inevitable discrimination … because they are forced to study Russian in addition to their native language … [in order to] avoid discrimination in other spheres of life.”
“As a result of the natural order of things,” Kornyev says, “’everything ethnic Russian’ in Russia is (and must be) ‘at the center,’ and ‘everything non-ethnic Russia just as necessarily is (and must be) at ‘periphery’ and ‘exotic.’”
In fact, he argues, “Russia is not ‘Multi-national,’” however much some insist upon that idea, but rather ‘a country of ethnic Russians and the Russified.’” That means that “’citizens of Russia’ are ethnic Russians by origin and those who unite with them into a unified civic nation, into an ethnic Russian civic nation.”
“To this ‘ethnic Russian civic nation,’” he continues, “any Russian-language citizen of Russia who is loyal to the ethnic Russians and who ‘plays with ethnic Russians on one team.’” This does not diminish the rights of small peoples, Kornyev insists but rather represents “a formula for the only possible path of the construction of the nation.”
From this it follows, he suggests, that “to be a citizen of Russia in the full sense of the word, [individuals] must master ethnic Russian norms of behavior, ‘Russify’ themselves, and show respect to the civic majority, that is to the ethnic Russians,” something that some living within the Russian Federation have not done.
Indeed, “as a result of the mistaken conception” of Russia as a multi-national civic nation, Kornyev says, people from the North Caucasus and elsewhere have not had this clearly explained to them, and from that lack of an explanation have arisen “all the problems” that Russia now faces in ethnic relations.
According to this analyst, “ethnoses as integral groups can be ‘equally important’” only if they make an equal “contribution to the population, GDP and defense capability of the country.” In a democratic state, all this is even simply to understand because ethnic Russians bsides everything else are also a democratic majority.”
In that situation, democracy means Russian rule, and to be “for democracy means to be for the power of the ethnic Russians. To be against the power of the ethnic Russians means to be against democracy,” and “sooner or later” to have a regime like that of Saddam Hussein ruling over the country.
Thus, “even a tolerant conception of respect for minorities is in fact not a denial but a form of the same conception of ‘the Elder Brother,’” assuming of course that that nation is as Medvedev insists the Russian are kind and generous. “Therefore other peoples have nothing to fear from an ethnic Russian national statehood.”
Kornyev devotes a great deal of attention to the fact that Medvedev in his remarks talked about the Germans and about the status of Germans in Germany. After 1945, it did not come into anyone’s head to create “an FRG nation.” Instead, the German nation continued and continues, with ethnic membership primary and territory secondary.
This is not just a question of terminology, Kornyev insists. Rather it shows that the Germans continued to view the German nation as “the nucleus or center of the civic nation of the Federal Republic,” an arrangement the Moscow analyst argues “allowed the defeated Germany to so quickly restore itself and again become a leader.”
That raises a completely logical question, he says. “Who defeated whom in the Great Fatherland War if the Germans were permitted to built a multi-national Germany as a German national state and the Russians were not permitted to build Russia as an ethnic Russian national state?”
Now, Medvedev as a lawyer must know that having said A, B will follow. According to Kornyev, there are only two possibilities: autonomy for ethnic Russians within an ethno-federal state or “the reformation of “all of Russia (except perhaps the Caucasus) into a Russian national state, ‘a Russia for the Russians and those who are with [them] in one boat.’”
But of course there is a third possibility, and Kornyev hints at it himself. And that is this: if the ethnic Russians insist on making their country an ethnic Russian national state, it is possible and even likely that at least some of the more than 30 million non-ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation may decide that the only way to defend their rights is to seek independence.
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