Trends in Russian Nationalities Policy

Abstract

This article examines the structural level developments in the Russian nationalities policy, focusing on the (dis)similarities between the Yeltsin’s and Putin’s periods. Although Putin’s administration made certain interventions in the domain of nationalities policy, this approach cannot be compared with the Soviet time policy: recent developments cannot be interpreted as a new pro-assimilating policy. Finally, the authors examine the structural changes for the rise of latent nationalism using a structural equation modeling approach on a unique data set consisting of political and cultural nationalism indices for 21 Russian republics. These findings show that there is some consistency on the structural level of nationalities policy.

FUNDING

The article was prepared within the framework of the Academic Fund Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in 2015 (research grant No 15-05-0059) and supported within the framework of a subsidy granted to the HSE by the Government of the Russian Federation for the implementation of the Global Competitiveness Program.

Notes

1. Ethnic riots in December 2010, when thousands of young men, mostly football fans held a rally there.

2. An anti-immigrant riot in Moscow, after the murder of a 25-year-old Russian by a suspect from the Caucasus.

3. An anti-immigrant riot in the city of Pugachev (Saratov oblast), after the murder of a 20-year-old Russian by a suspect from Chechnya.

4. In 2005 Perm oblast merged with the Komi-Permyak AO into Perm krai; in 2007 Krasnoyarsk krai absorbed Khanty-Mansi AO and Evenk AO; in 2007 Kamchatka oblast merged with Koryak AO into Kamchatka krai; in 2008 Irkutsk oblast absorbed Ust-Ordyn Buryat AO; in 2008 Chita oblast merged with Agin Buryat AO into Zabaikal krai.

5. The 1993 Duma election: 28 single-member districts; the 1995 election: 32; the 1999 election: 32; and the 2003 election: 33.

6. “Russkii Mir” (the Russian World) is a concept that emphasizes the cultural and political unity of all Russians including those who live abroad. According to the Russkii Mir idea, Russians form a unique Orthodox Christian civilization that is opposed to the West, and the Russian state is the core of this civilization. This concept was used by Russian authorities to justify the intervention into the Ukrainian crisis.

7. Given a very small sample (21 republics), there is a probability of biased estimates of our coefficients. Therefore, we also ran the same model using the Bayesian statistics approach, which confirmed our results (see Figure 1S in Appendix).

Additional information

Funding

The article was prepared within the framework of the Academic Fund Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in 2015 (research grant No 15-05-0059) and supported within the framework of a subsidy granted to the HSE by the Government of the Russian Federation for the implementation of the Global Competitiveness Program.