On January 31, 2023, the European Parliament in Brussels is hosting a somewhat special event within its walls: that of the fifth Forum of Free Peoples of Russia, an organization bringing together representatives of Russian ethnic groups. His credo: the Russian Federation is a failed project and the disintegration of present-day Russia could only improve the condition of the hundred peoples who make up Russia. Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, this collective has called for the dislocation and “decolonization” of the “empire”. On the organization’s website, a map has been published. We see Russia divided into 34 independent states. Some correspond to existing republics of the Russian Federation (Buriatia, Tatarstan, Yakutia), others seem straight out of a fanciful political fiction, like these hypothetical “United States of Siberia”, whose flag, painted by Siberian artist Damir Muratov, looks like a green-toned version of the one in the United States of America.
If the European Parliament has lent its premises to the Forum of Free Peoples, it is because the idea, long marginal, of a break-up of Russia is gaining ground thanks to the war in Ukraine. Because the invasion popularized a reinterpretation of Russian and Soviet history as that of a colonization by Moscow of the territories of Siberia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this light, the war waged by Vladimir Putin is a colonial war against a people in the process of emancipation.
second-class citizens
“We understand the Ukrainians”, explained Alexandra Garmajapova, leader of the Free Buryatia Fund, in an interview granted to the Russian-language edition of RFI: “We all lived in the Soviet era, during which we were told that our language was a language of peasants and that we were second-class citizens.” The disproportionate tribute paid in war by soldiers from Russia’s ethnic minorities also contributes to this rise in anti-Moscow sentiment among indigenous peoples. Finally, the “derussification” of Ukrainian culture led by forced march by kyiv gives ideas to all these militants. “It’s as if a post-Soviet Black Lives Matter is happening in Russia and in all the countries that have suffered from Russian aggression”, illustrated last April the Russian sociologist of Korean origin Sofia Jung Shin An. in the independent media Holod.
The Russian Federation: contrasting regional dynamics.
© / Legends Cartography
Russia, the disunited empire
Except that this movement remains in Russia confined to a small community of online activists, many of whom live abroad and have little grip on the reality on the ground. Especially since, in many of these territories, the indigenous population is now a minority compared to ethnic Russians. This is the case of Buryatia, where people claiming to be of Buryat ethnicity now represent only 30% of the total population. The Nenets are only 18% of the population of the oblast of the same name and the Komis, less than a quarter in their own Republic. As for national identities, after several centuries of Russian domination and assimilation, there remains little more than a “Potemkin varnish”, made up of folk dances and traditional costumes.
Does this mean that the United States of Siberia and the Republics of Lapland and the Urals will never see the light of day? Even. Russia is not a unified nation-state. “The Caucasus was not conquered until the 19th century, after decades of very violent fighting, underlines historian Galia Ackerman. They are mountain peoples, warriors, Muslims, with their own way of life. , they have tried several times to recover their independence. It is more or less certain that they will try again.” Ingushetia, Dagestan and above all Chechnya, which had declared its independence in 1991 and was brought back into the bosom of Moscow only at the cost of two bloody wars, will they try their luck to separate from Moscow, in the hypothesis of a fall of Vladimir Putin? In any case, this is what the Chechen satrap Ramzan Kadyrov seems to be waiting for, who carefully avoids sending his troops to the Ukrainian front, preferring to preserve them for “the aftermath”.
And what about Tatarstan, also self-proclaimed independent at the fall of the USSR, whose sovereignty has been gradually eaten away by Moscow? Of Yakutia, whose population is still more than 60% indigenous? “The current regional elites have been bought off, but if the center falters, if there are no more unifying figures like Putin, if the money no longer arrives as in the past, revolts are possible, considers Galia Ackerman. Chechnya thus receives huge sums of money from the Kremlin. If the manna dries up, what reason would this Republic have to remain close to Russian power, especially if its army is defeated in Ukraine?