Putin Puts Ethnic Russians at Center of Nationality Policy

Putin Puts Ethnic Russians at Center of Nationality Policy

Executive Summary:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has put ethnic Russians at the center of Moscow’s nationality policy, demanding that non-Russians in his country identify as members of a civic Russian nation defined exclusively in terms of the ethnic Russian one.
• Such a change will encourage radical Russian nationalist groups, who will conclude that the Kremlin is now fully on their side, and anger non-Russians, who will see this as threatening their futures as anything more than folkloric groups.
• A new era of tension and classes between the two will be set—a situation Putin will be able to manage only by increasing repression and will ultimately threaten both ethnic Russians and non-Russians alike.

Moscow’s formal nationality policy has, up to now, focused on the non-Russians living within the borders of Russia rather than on the ethnic Russian majority. Some ethnic Russian nationalists have long complained about this policy, even when the Russian government pursued intensive linguistic Russianization and cultural and political Russification campaigns (see EDM, June 24). Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has changed this long-held policy. In the new nationality strategy paper he signed on November 25, which sets out his goals for the next decade, Putin has put ethnic Russians at the center of the country’s nationality policy (Government of Russia, November 25). The new strategy demands that non-Russians identify as civic Russians, a group Putin defines exclusively in terms of ethnic Russian values (Readovka; Vzglyad; Meduza, November 26). On the one hand, this will please many ethnic Russian nationalist groups and encourage them to become even more aggressive (see EDM, October 15, 2024). On the other hand, it will anger many non-Russians, who will view this as a further attack on their national institutions, leaving their cultures as little more than folkloric groups (The Moscow Times, May 11). This sets the stage for a new era of tension and clashes between the two groups, one that will ultimately threaten both ethnic Russians and non-Russians alike. Putin will be able to manage this tension only by increasing repression, and in the short term, he will need to create a new bureaucratic structure to manage the situation.

Putin’s new nationality policy replaces a very different doctrinal paper he first issued in 2012, and that has been amended twice since then. Key provisions of the new strategy include:

• The share of the population identifying as non-ethnic Russians is to rise to “more than 95 percent” by 2036.  This identity must reflect “the common cultural code based on the preservation and development of ethnic Russian culture and the Russian language,” as is only proper for the state-forming nation.
• Instead of spending almost all the money it devotes to nationality issues on non-Russians, Moscow will now spend a minimum of 50 percent on the cultural needs of ethnic Russians.
• The Russian government will develop new programs to counter Russophobic propaganda among non-Russians emanating from hostile forces abroad. Commentators on the document, however, recommend that the primary source of non-Russian challenges to Moscow come from domestic non-Russian elites and populations (Vzglyad, November 26 [1], [2]).
• Moscow will also increase its efforts to reverse the formation of ethnic enclaves in Russian cities that have arisen because of immigration. (On this problem, see Window on Eurasia, August 16.)
• Moscow will work to integrate the newly acquired regions of the Russian Federation in Ukraine’s Donbass and Crimea based on Russian values and seek to unify Russian emigration to help Russia at home.

According to the new strategy paper, these policies and others related to them will “reduce the number of conflicts on an ethno-national basis” by uniting all the country’s peoples around the ethnic Russian nation. The reverse, however, is more likely to be true. Unsurprisingly, Russian commentators are celebrating these changes, with one even suggesting they will prevent a repeat of the 1991 collapse (Vzglyad, November 26). Another further said that the Kremlin has put an end to “the non-Russian” Russia that the Soviets imposed on the country (Vzglyad, November 26). Many non-Russians are certainly alarmed by this major shift in Moscow’s thinking, a change that goes far beyond what Putin has sought before (see EDM, November 6).

As history shows, such Russian strategy documents often do not lead to all the specific policy changes they suggest. Instead, the Kremlin has taken steps that reflect its response to specific challenges as they emerge. This policy statement is important, rather, because it signals just how far Putin is prepared to go to mollify the Russian nationalist groups affiliated with his regime. The policy also shows how willing he is to continue his attacks on the non-Russian republics and cultures that he has worked to undermine in relation to predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krais (see EDM, September 18; Window on Eurasia, November 6). By issuing this policy statement, Putin will likely spark an even more intense effort by Russian nationalists to Russify the country by expelling migrants and suppressing non-Russian languages and institutions. That trend, in turn, is going to be met by non-Russians who oppose these policies and are likely to become even more radical in their positions and even more ready to listen to those who believe that only the dismantling of the Russian empire will save them (Window on Eurasia, October 12).

With his new strategy document, Putin has exacerbated both trends, whatever his intent, and he will almost certainly have to employ more repression to prevent them from becoming threats to his personalist rule. While the full impact of his new approach is unlikely to be felt immediately, one change is almost certain to take place soon. Moscow will have to revamp its institutional arrangements for managing nationality policy. That has never been an easy task (Window on Eurasia, April 4). Putin abolished the post-Soviet ministry for nationality affairs in 2001, only to set up a Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs (FADN) in 2015. The FADN, however, has overseen issues only related to the non-Russian nationalities and has generally avoided working on ethnic Russian issues. If the Putin regime is to have a structure overseeing nationality policy where ethnic Russians are at the center, FADN will either have to be revamped and expanded or, more likely, disbanded and replaced. One indication of this is the recent announcement that Moscow plans to create a new government commission on nationality policy (Natsional’niy Aktsent, November 24).

The structure of the new commission is still uncertain, and it is possible that Putin may try to do without setting up a new official agency, and instead return to a nationalities policy process similar to the one he used between 2001 and 2015. The Kremlin made all the decisions during that period, aware that nationality issues are so intertwined with the others that if Moscow were to set up a ministry strong enough to deal with them all, it could create a monster that might threaten the current leadership. By adding the ethnic Russians to the mix of nationality policy, however, Putin has compounded these problems on his own, something ethnic Russians and non-Russians alike will be watching.