The Kremlin is destroying the Soviet system of protection against separatism and does not see a problem in this

In the summer of 2018, it was announced that the retirement age would be raised, Shaninka’s accreditation was revoked, and a bill was passed abolishing compulsory teaching in native languages ​​in the republics of Russia. While the first two government decisions were widely and openly discussed, there is little talk about new rules for native languages. Unfortunately, the indignation of the Tatars and Udmurts is of little concern to other Russians.

Russia includes twenty-two national republics. Each has its own constitution, parliament, head and state language. In addition to the republics, the Russian Federation, as stated in its Constitution, includes territories, autonomous districts and one autonomous region. According to the latest census, there are 26 million non-Russian citizens living in Russia. Amendments to the federal education law concern each of them.

Forced use of native languages

Bill No. 438863-7 “On the study of national languages” was adopted by the State Duma on June 19 in the first reading. The explanatory note states that the new law is intended to “bring clarity” to the rules for teaching and learning the state languages ​​of the republics of the Russian Federation. From the authors’ point of view, studying is possible only “on a voluntary basis” and “not to the detriment of teaching and learning the state language” (that is, Russian). At a meeting of the working group, the first deputy head of the United Russia faction, Andrei Isaev, explained that the authors sought to take into account the opinion of the president, who stated that “a person cannot be forced to learn a language that is not native to him and which he does not want to learn.”

Commenting on the bill, Chairman of the Committee on Education and Science Vyacheslav Nikonov clarified: if parents want their children to study their native language, they will need to submit a written application twice, before the 1st and 5th grades. Nikonov also admitted that the bill should be finalized. Adoption of the final version is scheduled for the spring session.

From the explanations of the deputies it follows that in twenty-two constituent entities of the Russian Federation, for a number of years, Russian children have been forced to learn non-Russian languages. How is this possible?

The Russian Foreign Ministry regularly protests against the infringement of the rights of Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine and the Baltic states. Why did Moscow pay attention to a similar situation within the country only now?

Nothing is said about by what right the republics forced Russian schoolchildren to learn their languages. Was it arbitrariness? Have the republics gone beyond their powers? If yes, then why are their languages ​​called state languages?

Judging by the recordings of President Putin's speeches in Tatar, until relatively recently the problem of coercion did not seem to exist. Why did it suddenly appear now?

Bolsheviks and “foreigners”

If we look at history, the state languages, republics, constitutions, presidents and flags were inherited by the Tatars, Udmurts and others from the USSR. "The right of nations to self-determination up to and including secession " was the cornerstone of Soviet nationality policy. Lenin, and after him Stalin, starting from the programs of the Austrian Marxists Otto Bauer and Rudolf Springer, believed that helping the peoples of Russia in building their own states would solve the problem of separatism.

In disputes with the “left deviationists” led by Georgy Pyatakov, Lenin argued: so that the Tatars and Udmurts do not leave the country after the Finns, Moscow should help them build their own republics. Lenin, citing Marx, believed that eventually all nations would have their own states. The national bourgeois state is an inevitable stage in the development of any society; after feudalism, before socialism. Lenin was confident that empires containing dozens of nations were doomed to collapse. He considered Russia a typical empire. In order for the Moscow government not to lose control over the territories, the country will have to change.

According to Lenin, Moscow should have seized the initiative from the nationalists. Inevitably, having come to power, they will move the outskirts away from Moscow.

If Moscow gets ahead of them, if it takes their place, the national myth created under its control will tie the outskirts to the center.

Professor of Russian history at Harvard University Terry Martin, author of the book “The Empire of Affirmative Action.” Nations and nationalism in the USSR, 1923–1939,” believes that Lenin’s calculations generally justified themselves. Thanks to Moscow, Martin argues in his book, the peoples of the USSR did not have to fight for their language and borders. Red Moscow, often ahead of demand, printed school textbooks in their languages, replaced Russian officials with local ones, and assigned quotas for non-Russian students.

The resulting republics, “national in form and socialist in content,” were firmly tied to Moscow as the source of their national statehood.

Explaining coercion

From the point of view of Soviet nationality policy, the compulsion to study local languages, which legislators talk about, was a payment for the integrity of the country. Terry Martin compares it to the “affirmative action” policies pursued by the United States after desegregation in the 1960s. Thanks to affirmative action, more non-white children were able to overcome racial divisions, get good education and get good-paying jobs.

Positive discrimination leveled American society, made it fairer, and weakened internal conflicts.

In addition to equalization, positive discrimination against the Great Russian majority in the USSR carried an additional burden, Martin believes. Russian schoolchildren studied Tatar in Tatarstan and Udmurt in Udmurtia, so that Tatarstan and Udmurtia would not think about secession from the country. Coercion showed non-Russians that their right to self-determination was not in danger and there would be no return to the late Romanov policy of assimilation. This should also include Moscow’s demonstrative recognition of constitutions, presidents and parliaments within the country.

The current bill obviously destroys the Soviet system of protection against separatism.

Its authors, as far as their meager explanations suggest, do not consider this a problem. If legislators are confident that the threat of national liberation uprisings, which was widely written about in Soviet times, has disappeared, where are their arguments? The justification, as Andrei Isaev admitted, is one phrase from the president. This is clearly not enough.

Minister-theorist and the French way

The stinginess of the authors of the bill forces them to look for answers in other sources. For example, in the publications of the former Minister of National Policy of the Russian Federation Valery Aleksandrovich Tishkov. Unlike the authors of the bill, he willingly wrote a lot about how the Russian Federation should be reformed. Including in order to avoid a repetition of “the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”

Valery Tishkov has his own original (to the point of extravagance) vision of Russian history. Contrary to general opinion, he believes that Russia has never been an empire. From Tishkov’s point of view, starting with Peter I, a civil nation was being formed in Russia.

Russia was divided not into a “white” metropolis and “colored” colonies, like Great Britain, but into those who had already adopted Russian culture and became citizens of Russia, “Russians”; and on those who have not yet learned and did not become, but are about to do so. The same situation was in France, Tishkov believes. Back in the 19th century, residents of its European outskirts understood French poorly and preferred to call themselves Burgundians, Gascons, Bretons, etc.

Over time, the outskirts learned French, adopted “high French culture” and began to call themselves French. Tishkov is confident that Lenin made a mistake. It seemed to Lenin that he had destroyed the “prison of peoples,” the “empire” consisting of the oppressed “foreigners” and the ruling “Great Russians.” In fact, the former minister is sure, he broke the emerging civil nation into pieces.

If Lenin had managed to do the same in France, in its place there would now be separate Brittany, Normandy, Corsica, and Burgundy. Russia must abandon the Leninist project and return to the path of France, Tishkov believes: push local identities into the background and put national identities first. Only a single national identity - from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean - is a reliable remedy against separatism, the former minister is sure.

Tishkov is aware that he is proposing a return to pre-revolutionary practice. He believes that

The Romanovs guessed the direction, but, unfortunately, did not guess the means.

The brute forceful assimilation to which they regularly resorted did not turn the motley Russian Empire into a monochromatic France. On the contrary, it became one of the reasons for the revolution. Modern Russia, Tishkov is sure, should follow the path of the Romanovs, but using humane means.

Dismantling Soviet nationality policy

Tishkov does not seem to be involved in the creation of the bill. On the other hand, the project to abolish compulsory teaching of the state languages ​​of the republics of the Russian Federation fits well into the logic of his reasoning.

Leaving Russian as the only compulsory language is an obvious step towards the very “Russian nation”, as the former minister understands it.

Apparently, Moscow is going to build a “civil nation” by dismantling the Soviet system of national republics. To prevent possible discontent, funding for cultural “identity” has been prepared. It is assumed that twenty-two subjects of the Federation will easily exchange the status of republics with their own separate constitutions for new textbooks at the expense of the budget. Little has been said about the basis for this assumption. As if we are talking about a tertiary topic. At the same time, the national issue is the most important for Russia. It would be correct if there were at least no less explanations than the Soviet administrators.

In addition, it would be good if citizens paid as much attention to the national issue as to the issue of pensions. In the end, if the decision made turns out to be wrong, God only knows with whom and in what language today’s thirty-year-olds will discuss the regularity of pension payments in the 2060s.

REFERENCE

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After resignation from the post of minister in 1992, V.A. Tishkov headed the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology named after N.N. Miklouho-Maclay RAS. Since 2006, he has been the general director of Ethnoconsulting LLC, created on the basis of the institute. The organization accepts orders from the state and private companies to monitor the “ethno-confessional situation” in the regions. This is the largest public organization advising the state on national issues. Tishkov's deputy as director of the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography V.Yu. Zorin was then one of his successors in the Ministry of National Affairs, and is now a member of the Russian Presidential Council for Interethnic Relations.