The policy ramifications of the amendment

As the political scientist Sergei Markedonov13 rightly emphasizes in his blog, supporters of ethno-amendments find almost ‘a complete lack of rational motivation’, because it is not clear what practical tasks are addressed by the entry in the basic law on ethnic Russian majority. And everyone understands that this largely symbolic step is the first stage and the second should follow it. But what should be the second step, so far, not even the nationalists understand. As one of them, a researcher at the Irkutsk Museum of the Decembrists,14 Vsevolod Naparte,15 said at a round table, ‘we understand that this step should be taken because we need to start somewhere, but what will be our second step? Regarding the second step, no one can say anything definite, although it is much more important’.

      However, in order to answer this question, it is necessary to analyse the history of post-Soviet nationalist reforms in the post-Soviet space. In many of the former Soviet republics, these reforms began in the last years of the USSR: by the emergence of social movements for the preservation and development of the native language of the titular nations, and ended thirty years later by the destruction of the remnants of the federal structure, by the ban on education in the languages of national minorities, and by non-citizenship for those who were called “illegal emigrants of the Soviet period”. I admit that Russian constitutional nationalism will be more inventive, but the trends will still remain the same.

Moreover, no one calculates the possible consequences. ‘We are scolding Georgia and Ukraine (and rightly) for ethnicizing of their politics, but aren’t we preparing ourselves the same with our own ethno-amendments?’, Sergey Markedonov asks on Facebook.16 He continues: ‘What percentage of Abkhazians is in Georgia and (percentage) of Karabakh Armenians in Azerbaijan? Miserable! And they have the problems for a years! In our country, from Siberia to the Caucasus, there are a lot of autochthonous peoples who don’t know another homeland! We’ll we write about them in the list (in the constitution) or in a separate application? Why are the multinational people so bad? Not an ideal formula, but it is about civil and political loyalty, which is higher than the principle of blood. And it holds us together, but is not shared!’.

It is impossible to say better, but we should have in mind one more thing. The definition of an ethnic majority as state-forming people in the country’s basic law will mark the fact that Russia de jure will join the European constitutional tradition. Or, in other words, of the tradition of European constitutional nationalism, when norms included to the constitution put ethnic minorities in an unequal position.17

In this regard, it makes sense to consider the example of France. The country denies in principle the existence of ethnic, including autochthonous, minorities and even refuses because of it to join the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. For officials in Paris, in France there lives French people of different origins. This definition is the ideal one for many moderate Russian nationalists. Even the French secret service cannot find out the ethnic and religious origin of the people they are interested in. The maximum that they can obtain is the information about where the object of observation or its ancestors came from (if they are or were immigrants) to the country. In reality, ethnic minorities make up at least 10% of the population in France, but officially they do not exist. And if not, then there is nothing to protect the rights of what does not exist, in particular, secondary schools or religious schools for minorities are not needed, programs to support their cultural identity are not needed too. Integration programs in France are accelerated assimilation programs and nothing more. As a result, the vacuum was quickly filled with radical ideas, and France still holds the first place in terms of terror in Europe. Approximately 28% of Muslim emigrants living in the country of third or fourth generation do not like the idea “we are all French”, enthusiastically accepted by local liberals at one time.18 They still want to maintain their identity, and Islamists radicals, in conditions of self-elimination of the state, provide them with their own ways for this.

      In Russia, the situation is even more complicated. These are not just hundreds of small autochthonous peoples, originally living in the territory of a large country. This is including the people living compactly on its national outskirts. And the problems that can arise on an interethnic basis can very quickly transform into the problem of maintaining the unity of the state. This already happened in the 1990s and it is unlikely that any of the Russians want to repeat that situation.

Throughout the post-Soviet years, Russia has been balancing between the supra-ethnic model of the nation-state, which was adopted in the USSR and which exists today in several other countries, and the outdated European model, which implies the creation of a nation based on the traditions of the ethnic majority.19 The fact that discussion about Russian ethno-amendments resumed today not only in social networks, but also at the level of power, is another argument in favour of the fact that the country has not made its choice in thirty years.

Does anyone have doubts that the Russian people and Russian culture are systemically important in Russia? No, just like there is no doubt about the meaning of the English language and British colonization in the US. But there it does not occur to anyone to fix in the US constitution the role of ethnic Britons as a state-forming ethnos. The role of the Russian people is noted in the Strategy of State Inter-Ethnic Policy of the Russian Federation until 2025,20 a fundamental document reflecting the state’s policy in the field of interethnic relations. It says: ‘Russia was created as a unity of peoples, as a state, whose backbone core has historically been the Russian people. The civilizational identity of Russia and the Russian nation, as a civil community, is based on the preservation of the Russian cultural dominance, the bearers of which are all the peoples of the Russian Federation, formed not only ethnic Russians, but also incorporating the culture of all the peoples of Russia’.

      What would this really mean?

      In a document such as the Strategy of State Inter-Ethnic Policy, such wording is quite possible. But to declare the ethnic Russians like a state-forming people in the constitution means to take a certain