(Interfax / Religion – Moscow, May 15, 2013) The head of a Russian policy think tank has argued that immigrants and guest workers who have come to Russia from Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union are potentially a fertile environment for radical Islamist ideas and called for tighter restrictions on immigration and guest labor. “The migrants are hostile toward […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 9, 2013) Dmitry Demushkin,, the leader of the “Russians” political movement, says that “even Russian nationalists do not support the slogan ‘Russia for the Russians’ because it has to be qualified in so many ways that it is useless as a mobilizing tool and dangerous it if is applied in a […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 22, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/04/window-on-eurasia-ethnically-based.html) The clash between Chechnya and Ingushetia over the border between the two became possible and is more serious because the authorities in each, with Moscow’s approval, have formed units in their force structures that consist largely or entirely of people from the titular nationality. And because that […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Sergei Markedonov, special to RBTH – April 5, 2013) Sergei Markedonov is a visiting fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. The country’s authorities should undertake drastic reform of the nationalities policy. “The nationalities issue” remains a priority for Russia’s social and political development. In the 1990s-early 2000s, the […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, March 22, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/03/window-on-eurasia-136-national.html) Some 136 national languages of the Russian Federation are at or already beyond “the edge of extinction,” according to UNESCO. Many of these languages are subgroups of others, but the danger of disappearance exists for groups as large as Avars, Bashkirs and Chechens. According to the United […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – March 17, 2013) Around 250 languages are spoken in Russia, including Russian, which is spoken by some 150 million people. Russian, along with several Turkic-based languages, is doing fine. However, the linguistic situation for many lost tribes and Small Indigenous People in Russia is far more Dmitry Sukhodolsky, special to RBTH Russia’s many […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, March 17, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/03/window-on-eurasia-few-russians-want-to.html) More than 90 percent of ethnic Russians taking part in an online survey do not want to identify as “Rossiyane,” the non-ethnic civic identity President Vladimir Putin has been promoting as the primary self-designator for citizens of the Russian Federation, preferring instead to identify as ethnic Russians […]
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(RFE/RL -– rferl.org – Robert Coalson – March 1, 2013) Eighty-one-year-old Nikolai Khasig was born in Sukhumi in 1932. It was just one year after Soviet dictator Josef Stalin stripped Abkhazia of its short-lived status as a full-fledged republic of the USSR and made it a region of Soviet Georgia. At the end of 1936, Lavrenty Beria — at that […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, February 20, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/02/window-on-eurasia-putins-nationality.html) Both the five specific planks of his nationality policy that Vladimir Putin outlined yesterday and problems underlying his entire approach to this issue guarantee that the Russian president will offend both Russians and non-Russians and produce the very outcome he says he is trying to avoid […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, February 19, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/02/window-on-eurasia-having-released.html) President Vladimir Putin’s decision to give official support to some of the most reactionary and vicious groups in Russian society in order to counter the increase in the number of the middle class who are appalled by his policies in this regard carries with it great risks […]
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(Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 9, Issue 223 – Paul Goble – Dec. 6, 2012) According to recent census results, the rate of the overall decline in the population of the Russian Federation nearly doubled during the past decade compared to the rate over the course of the 1990s, but that trend obscures rather than […]
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(RFE/RL – Nail Khisamiev, Robert Coalson – Dec. 1, 2012) A potentially explosive political kettle has been simmering in Russia for months, and it may well boil over in the weeks to come. Shortly after his return to the Kremlin in May, President Vladimir Putin ordered the drafting of a new State Nationalities Policy. The document, which was to be […]
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