The Russian people, perhaps, will receive a law about themselves

We are publishing the original article published in English in the Moscow Times on November 2, 2016. The Russian version is a little more complete.

A meeting of the Presidential Council on Interethnic Relations on October 31 brought a rather unexpected fruit: the former minister for these very relations, and now one of the main official experts on them, Vyacheslav Mikhailov, proposed the adoption of a law “on the Russian nation and the management of interethnic relations,” and President Putin agreed. This means they will prepare a bill.

But it is not yet known which one. In principle, such a law could have three purposes.

The first and most obvious from the discussion at the council is the redistribution of powers and funding between government bodies. The Federal Agency for National Affairs claims to expand, wants to deal with the integration of migrants, the affairs of “compatriots” (apparently, instead of the current Rossotrudnichestvo), etc., but also to finally launch full-fledged monitoring of real and potential ethno-religious tensions, since the protection of security in This area is the main task of FADN. Of course, there will be a hardware struggle, but FADN will win something, that’s already clear. Whether this will make things better for migrants, “compatriots” and the bulk of Russian citizens cannot be guessed in advance.

The second task is symbolic. In 2012, an official Strategy in this area was adopted, provoked by the riots on Manezhnaya Square at the end of 2010. The essence of that document is that the state supports the understanding of the Russian nation as a political unity (the term “civil nation” is not used) on top of ethno-religious characteristics and on the basis of the “civilizational” core of this unity – namely Orthodox and Russian. Apparently, the task now is to remind citizens of this principled position of the state. Russian nationalists have been dreaming of a “law on the Russian people” for decades, and those of them who still hope in the Kremlin will be ready to get their hopes up now. The Kremlin, which traditionally opposes all ethno-nationalists, is unlikely to play along with them, but any attempt to translate the Strategy’s ideas about the Russian-Orthodox core into a normative plane is fraught with something discriminatory, so it is possible that there will be, at least a small, celebration on the street of Russian nationalists . And it is even more likely that there will be a small holiday at the Russian Orthodox Church.

It can be assumed that the government will be interested in constructing the law more as a new symbolic act designed to strengthen the political unity of the nation in support of the existing government and against its enemies. This unity, which became something tangible after Crimea, is still successfully maintained by the confrontation with the West (in our country, “National Unity Day” was established in memory of events understood as a victory over the West). Escalation here has understandable limits, and we need to prepare to diversify the tools for mobilizing support. In other words, the law can be prepared slowly (and no documents in this area are prepared quickly) and adopted when the need for such a gesture arises.

Finally, the third task, rather hypothetical, is to put into law certain instruments that are really intended to change politics, domestic or foreign. Changes in internal ethnopolitics are hardly to be expected, unless they are provoked in the future by some upheavals from below, but you cannot write a law for this in advance. If we expect any changes, it will be in foreign policy. This idea is suggested by the fact that of the many proposals made, the president at the end of the meeting singled out the topic of granting citizenship to “compatriots.” Everyone remembers that the mass admission of South Ossetians to Russian citizenship played a certain role in the future “five-day war.” I don’t think anyone has any plans yet, but the topic of “compatriots” is explosive as such.

Of course, it is impossible now to guess what exactly the new law will be like if this project is not pushed forward by some more pressing issues. But if the law is nevertheless adopted, it will almost certainly concentrate more ethno-religious themes around the theme of protecting security, and it will almost certainly lie in line with the vague ideological quests that, since 2012 and especially since 2014, have been somewhat complimentarily called the ideology of new state nationalism.

Sources

• Verkhovsky A. On The Russian Nation? // The Moscow Times. 2016. November. 2.