The “Question of the Ethnic Russians” in the Context of Ethnic Relations in the Russian Federation

Abstract

The author examines the current and likely future position of the Russian ethnic group within Russia's systems of interethnic and ethnofederal relations. He also examines the meaning of the term nationalism as used in Russian politics and warns about the danger of growing imbalances in state regulation of federal and ethnic relations. He proposes a new federalism that would eliminate asymmetries in relations between ethnic Russians and other ethnic groups inhabiting the Russian Federation.

This article is the republished version of:

The "Question of the Ethnic Russians" in the Context of Ethnic Relations in the Russian Federation

Notes

English translation © 2014, 2015 from the Russian text © 2013 “Politicheskie issledovaniia.” “‘Russkii vopros' v kontekste etnonatsional'nykh otnoshenii v RF,” POLIS: Politicheskie issledovaniia, 2013, no. 3, pp. 74–86.Sergei Petrovich Peregudov is a Doctor of Historical Sciences and a chief research associate at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences.Translated by Stephen D. Shenfield. Translation reprinted from Russian Politics and Law, vol. 52. no. 1, doi: 10.2753/RUP1061-1940520101

^1. The “special role” of Orthodoxy in relation to other confessions is laid down in the Preamble to the Federal Law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations,” which came into force on 26 September 1997.

^2. More precisely, up to 1986, when it became increasingly clear in a number of union republics that both the leadership and a substantial part of the population were striving toward independence as nation states.

^3. For all its apparent simplicity, the name “republic” that forms part of the “title” of this category of subjects of the Russian Federation in reality may and does have the most diverse interpretations. By introducing this concept into the constitutional field of the Soviet Union, its founders hoped to demonstrate their special attitude toward the ethnic groups that were being incorporated into the Soviet state. But even at that time, some of the republics were recognized as “union republics” while others—including almost all the current republics of the RF—were relegated to the status of “autonomous republic.” In the 1990s, however, the process of so-called sovereignization raised their status to the level of sovereign states (as directly reflected in the constitution of the RF). In fact, the status of the former autonomous republics of the RSFSR as sovereign states conflicts with the essential nature of federalism and is, in my view, no more than a historically conditioned anachronism.

^4. See Petukhov (2012) and Vyzov (2012). Both authors are associates of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IS RAS) and base their works on the results of studies of contemporary Russian youth conducted by this institute.

^5. For example, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (MAII), the National-Bolshevik Party, and the Slavic Union.

^6. See articles on “Russian Nationalist Organizations” and “Russian March” on Wikipedia (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki).

^7. See Levada-Tsentr 2012. Almost the same figures are given in the research of the IS RAS and cited in Russkii reporter (Lonskaia 2012).

^8. They were expressed most openly by the leaders of the LDPR, who called for the “leveling” of the status of the republics and the regions, and by the leaders of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, who conducted their election campaign under the motto “For the ethnic Russians!” (Za russkikh!).

^9. Among a whole series of politicians who, following the adoption of the new law concerning political parties, are not shy about putting themselves forward as leaders of new national parties are Sergei Baburin, Igor Shafarevich, Vladimir Kvachkov, and a number of other less well-known but extremely active people.