Staunton, April 22 – In what is becoming a defining feature of the Putin regime, the Russian authorities are saying things that many people want to hear at exactly the same moment that they are doing things that directly contradict what they say. Today, the victims of that are the Crimean Tatars, a Moscow commentator […]
Staunton, April 20 – Residents of the Republic of Tatarstan are now paying Moscow every year 4557 times more than did medieval Muscovy when it was under the so-called Tatar Yoke that Russians continue to describe as an unbearable burden and one they blame for many of the shortcomings of their political culture. That difference […]
Staunton, April 19 – In a demonstration of principled toughness, Mustafa Cemilev, the longtime leader of the Crimean Tatars and a member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, has very publicly returned to his homeland after declaring that he remains a Ukrainian citizen and that some in Moscow are thinking about a new deportation of his people. […]
Staunton, April 13 – Vladimir Putin has attacked Muslims in the Russian Federation to divert attention from his goal: “the final solution of the nationality question” in that country “on the basis of [Stalin’s] well-known dictum that where ‘there is no person (in this case, a group of people or nation), there is no problem,” […]
Staunton, April 8 – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s promise to secure the full rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatars, a promise made to obscure Russian aggression and to try to attract the support of some in that nation for his occupation of their homeland, is echoing not only among the larger and more organized of the […]
Staunton, April 6 – “Russianness” is a “synthetic category,” one in which the father of a family can be Mordvin, the mother a German, and the children ethnic Russians, a reflection of the floating quality of identity in that country, government policies, and personal choices, according to a leading Moscow ethnographer. In an interview with […]
Staunton, April 5 – Russian nationalists in Crimea and in Russia are expressing their outrage at and opposition to what they see as Vladimir Putin’s “Tatarization” of Crimea, a policy that they argue does not reflect the ethnic balance on the peninsula and that calls into question Moscow’s portrayal of itself as a defender of […]
Staunton, April 5 – The annexation of Crimea is already becoming “a powerful catalyst” for serious changes in Moscow’s nationality policy and even on the current principle of the national-territorial division of the Russian Federation, according to Margarita Lyange, head of the Guild of Inter-Ethnic Journalism. In an essay on the Nazaccent.ru portal yesterday, Lyang […]
Staunton, April 4 – Vladimir Putin’s exact plans for Crimea now that Russia has annexed it are as yet uncertain, but the Kremlin leader’s willingness to talk about restoring a Crimean Tatar Republic within the Russian Federation is already sparking discussion — precisely because of the far-reaching consequences of such a step. One Russian commentator […]
Staunton, March 31 – Russia’s Anschluss of Crimea and Moscow’s various declarations about the right of nations – or at least some of them – to self-determination continue to echo through the Russian Federation, most recently among the Russian Germans who, viewing the Crimean events, want rehabilitation and the possible restoration of their republic. On […]
