Riot police disperse protesters in Baymak, Bashkortostan, on 17 January 2024. Photo: Anya Marchenkova/AFP via Getty Images via Foreign Policy
On Wednesday, a local court in the Orenburg region handed out prison sentences to four participants of peaceful rallies in support of Indigenous activist Fayil Alsynov.
Up to 5,000 people gathered in Bashkortostan’s southeastern Baymak district in January last year to protest the imprisonment of Alsynov, a prominent Indigenous rights and environmental campaigner. The protests were followed by sweeping arrests.
Aydar Yusupov, Ilnaz Makhmutov, Zaki Ilyasov and Vallyam Mutallapov, who will spend from three to four years in a penal colony, are among more than 80 men and women facing criminal prosecution in the “Baymak case,” the largest political trial in Russia’s history.
To mark the first anniversary of the Baymak events, Kremlin-installed authorities in Bashkortostan released a propaganda film “The Anatomy of Bashkir Nationalism. The Baymak Tragedy” produced by state-aligned journalist Timur Valitov.
In her piece for From the Republics, Bashkort social researcher Iliuza Mukhamedianova considers why regional authorities invested in the film and aired it during prime time, as well as how carefully crafted smear campaign against the protesters could impact Bashkortostan’s civil society.
Kremlin-Funded Propaganda Fuels Destabilization in Bashkortostan
By Iliuza Mukhamedianova
25 minutes. That’s how much time the creators of “The Anatomy of Bashkir Nationalism” dedicate to speaking about the local national organization “Bashqort.” This is almost a third of the entire movie.
But why pay such close attention to an organization dismantled back in 2020, long before the protests in Baymak?
Perhaps, that’s the easiest way to construct an image of an almighty enemy.
In the film, “Bashqort” — an organization that aimed to reinstate Bashkortostan’s sovereignty and preserve the Bashkort language and culture — is portrayed as the ultimate evil. The filmmakers place sole responsibility for the Baymak protests on “Bashqort” members, accusing them of “extremism” and collaboration with “foreign enemy states.”
Demonizing an organization that no longer exists helps to absolve Bashkortostan’s authorities of responsibility, legitimizes their actions, and justifies their brutal response to the protests.
The film also glances over the fact that protests in Baymak were not organized by a single group like “Bashqort” or one individual but were instead a grassroots action, an organic reaction to the sentencing of activist Fayil Alsynov.
Neither does the film mention who killed protester Rifat Dautov or who tortured the many Baymak detainees. And that’s truly a shame because these are the questions we, the people of Baymak, would like to have answered.
The Baymak protests would not have gained momentum without extensive media coverage — the authorities understand this well.
Dankhaiaa Khovalyg. Photo: Rinchinaaa/Baikal People
‘I was made from Russian anyway,’ 28-year-old Dankhaiaa Khovalyg writes in her story ‘Ayalga,’ published in early 2022. Its female protagonist tells a psychologist how she feels like a stranger in her own country. When Dankhaiaa was a teenager, she deliberately detached herself from her native culture. She was proud to speak Russian without an accent, and dreamt of leaving Kyzyl ‘to be with her own people’ in Moscow.
During her eight years in Moscow, Dankhaiaa was involved in decolonial activism, researched her own painful background, and launched a project about indigenous people from Russia’s six ethnic Asian regions —the podcast re.public_speaking.
Alina Golovina, a Baikal People correspondent based in Buryatia, spoke with Khovalyg about why it is important to talk about trauma, where decolonization begins, and whether Russia’s ethnic republics can unite for their own benefit. At Danhkaiaa’s suggestion, they spoke to each other using the informal second-person pronoun ty.
‘As soon as I would lеave home, the world would crash down on me with all its xenophobia‘
— Tell me about yourself, Dankhaiaa.
— I was born and raised in Kyzyl. After graduating from school, I went to study in Moscow and lived there for eight years. I worked as a client manager in an IT company and was involved in feminist activism. In 2021, I quit my job and realized my childhood dream: I enrolled in literature classes and took up writing. Since March 2022, I have been living in Berlin and doing podcasts and anti-war activism.
— You told me that up to ninety percent of the indigenous people in Tuva speak Tuvan and consider it their native tongue. Why have you prioritized Russian? Is it a problem?
— I’m a city girl: I grew up in Kyzyl. I was sent to a Russian-language kindergarten and, later, to a Russian-language class at school. That was how my mother showed that she cared about me: Russian-speaking classes were considered tonier. I was a bookworm and was engrossed in Russian literature. Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to a large amount of foreign literature at school, and at that moment, eighty percent of me certainly consisted of this great and beautiful Russian literature by the so-called Tolstoyevskys. I read all of that stuff and would dream of going to Moscow. I was a little proud that I spoke such beautiful Russian. Basically, I went through all that internalized colonial chauvinist crap that life was better there, that I was going to get out because I was more like them.
— Did it save you from ethnic discrimination? If not, when did you first encounter it?
— My experience of discrimination actually began long before I moved to Moscow. My mother found opportunities using travel vouchers to send me to summer camps in Krasnodar Territory, Khakassia, and other regions. I was eleven and twelve years old at the time. It didn’t matter whether I traveled five hundred kilometers from home or several thousand, because everywhere I went I encountered phenomenal bullying. I was labeled ‘China girl’ and ‘black.’ No one asked me to dance at dance parties. I was either totally ignored or talked to condescendingly and peppered with passive-aggressive insults. I had lived in my native Tuva in a groovy, comfortable bubble: most people spoke Tuvan, and we didn’t encounter any racism there. But as soon as I would leave home, the world would crash down on me with all its xenophobia. Whereas in Tuva I was considered pretty, smart, and cool, everything and everyone at those camps made it clear to me that I was second-rate.
— How did this affect you?
— These contrasts generated very unhealthy takeaways in my head: that Tuva’s overall level [of development] was much lower than the rest of Russia’s. This absolutely perverted assumption made me, as a teenager, condescend to Tuvan culture and my Tuvan side. It is quite painful for me to remember the instances when relatives addressed me in Tuvan, but I would reply in Russian, saying that I didn’t understand them, although that was a lie. Those memories now make me feel bitter. I feel sorry for that teenage girl.
— What happened later in life? How did Moscow welcome you?
— I often encountered micro-aggressions in public places. For example, I would be standing in the queue at a store, and a huge Russian guy would push me aside and go in front of me. There was no explicit verbal indication that this was because I was non-Russian, but I think this wouldn’t hae happened if I had been of Slavic appearance. I repeatedly had big problems finding a place to live because of my name and my appearance. Or, for example, I would be climbing the stairs to my floor, and neighbors descending the stairs would say, ‘The churkas have come and taken over the place’ when they would see me. They would not say it to my face, but under their breath as it were, and when they were already a flight below me, so I couldn’t even shout back at them as it happened. I would just stand there for a while, frozen on the steps. You always deal with this alone because when you are with your husband or a group of people, those very same neighbors keep their mouths shut. Every such episode of chauvinism really demoralized me, although I didn’t express it outwardly. Because no matter who I would tell, they would say, ‘Oh, don’t pay attention! Rise above it! We don’t stoop to their level.’ I swear that there has never been an instance when someone just shared my indignation for a second.
— Have you experienced physical violence? Have you been attacked?
— I didn’t encounter any actual boneheads (far-right skinheads): I moved to Moscow in 2013, by which time the most ardent supporters of that ideology had been jailed. The cases of physical violence that happened to me are difficult to categorize. The first time it happened was when I was in my first year at university. I was traveling from my part-time job in an empty train carriage to my dormitory. I had leaned my head against the window and fallen asleep with my legs stretched out. I woke up to an old man kicking me and saying, ‘Move your damn feet.’ I did and asked him what was the matter, and he said he wanted to sit down. I suggested he sit down in one of the other free seats, upon which he started kicking me again, saying that I was a churka and if I gave him any guff, he would beat the shit out of me. It was so horrible, because the old man spoke softly and looked like a harmless creature. I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to look weak. He stared at me point-blank the whole way and commented that I behaved very freely in Russia. It was forty minutes of violence.
The second incident happened on Leninsky Prospekt near the Oktyabrskaya subway station. It was summer, I was walking with headphones on in a crowd of people, listening to music. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that a man was walking in my direction and looking at me intently. Over the years, you develop something like a muscle that reacts to unwanted attention and makes you tense up and pull yourself together as if you’re getting ready to react. When the man walked by, he hit me over the head with a bottle. I fell down. He walked on. So there I was, lying propped up on my elbows, looking at the man walking away, and all the other people just passed me by. I thought at the time that it could have been a scene from a film, because only in a film can you get hit and nobody comes up and asks how you’re doing or tries to help you. And there were a lot of little situations — elbowing, pushing, kicking. Several times when I was putting away my dirty tray at a food court, I was told, ‘Hey, clean this up.’
Maria Ochir-Goryaeva and Christoph Heusgen, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, February 2023. Courtesy of RFE/RL
When Russia invaded Ukraine, national movements in Russia’s regions advocating secession from Moscow were given a new impetus. A number of analysts have seriously argued that Russia could break up if there is a turning point in the war and noted the particular role of the Caucasus in this process. Kavkaz.Realii spoke with Maria Ochir-Goryaeva, Doctor of Historical Sciences, corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute, and Distinguished Scholar of Kalmykia, about Kalmykia’s national movement, the Kremlin’s influence on the republic, and the republic’s current plight.
In 1999, Dr. Ochir-Goryaeva was awarded a competitive fellowship by Germany’s prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and continued her research at the Eurasian Department of the German Archaeological Institute. She has published four scholarly monographs, the first of which was published in German. Every year, the archaeologist would return to Kalmykia to carry out archaeological digs in her homeland.
• • • • •
– It is the done thing in Russia to speak negatively about the support that western nonprofits and scholarly foundations provided in the 1990s to Russian academics and the Russian education system. Allegedly, it was through grants and training programs that the west inculcated its values in Russia. Tell us about your experience and what such programs did for Russian scholarship.
– Russian propaganda in general and on this issue in particular cannot be termed anything but xenophobic. In the 1990s, when many state-sector employees, including researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences, were not paid their salaries for months on end, the grants allocated by western foundations literally saved them. In addition to the material aspect, they demonstrated the importance of researchers and their research. It was only thanks to the support of western and, later, Russian foundations that a number of academics, including me, remained in academia.
As for the “inculcation” of values, this is a distorted understanding of the purpose of such organizations. Each foundation has its own goals and values; if they are scholarly foundations, then their goals are scholarly. I have been living in Berlin for twenty-four years and I know that no one is subjected to “inculcation” here, but is given the opportunity to think and choose independently. Reality shows that people enjoy freedom of speech and the possibility of choice. These things work: everyone is eager to live in democratic countries, rather than in Iran, Afghanistan or Russia, which they leave at the first opportunity.
It is not western foundations that smack of “inculcation,” but Moscow’s imperial approach. Putin and his supporters are unable to adapt to a constantly changing world and are trying to adapt it to their needs by brute force and to make it conform to their outdated stereotypes.
– There is the opinion that this intellectual stagnation is displayed not only by country’s leadership, but also by many rank-and-file Russians, including those who disagree with Putin.
– I agree with this opinion. The wave of migrants from Russia, regardless of ethnicity, is no different from the populace who have stayed behind in Russia. Just as there, a small percentage of them are genuinely active in drawing attention to what is happening in Russia. Even here in Germany, many continue to fear for themselves, concealing their faces and names at protest rallies. The rest are either simply indifferent or they support Putin. Many have relocated in order to maintain their level of well-being and to be able to continue traveling around the world. They are, primarily, residents of Moscow who made good money.
Two things disappoint me about the new immigrants from Russia. The first thing is that few of them follow the news from the front and sincerely worry about Ukrainians. The topic never comes up in their conversations. Feelings of shame and guilt are probably unfamiliar to them. When I say something about bombing or war crimes, they immediately change the subject.
Maria Ochir-Goryaeva (left) at an anti-war protest in Berlin. Courtesy of RFE/RL
The second thing is xenophobia. Walking around Berlin, I have repeatedly heard indignation voiced by Russian speakers over why Germans tolerate the fact that Muslims here go about “in their headscarves.” Or, for example, Russians ask for help finding an apartment, but only in neighborhoods where “blacks,” as they say—meaning Arabs and Turks—do not live. This has shocked me as an Asian woman.
It seems to me that many immigrants do not assimilate the moral values of democracy and tolerance, but simply import Russia with all its stereotypes and ideology here. The problem is that Russians, with rare exceptions, are unable to understand the rationale and value of democracy. Otherwise, neither Putin, nor these decades of trampling on freedoms in Russia, nor the terrible war would have happened.
– At the same time, Putin and his entourage claim that the west has been trying to rewrite and distort history.
– We were all taught in school that in the early Middle Ages there was Kievan Rus’, a state centered around the city of Kyiv, that is, in present-day Ukraine. Then, three or four centuries later, the Grand Duchy of Moscow was formed, incorporating the lands in Moscow’s orbit. This name was the most accurate and reflects the essence of both the territory and its populace. Theoretically, it could be called Muscovite Rus’, but after its conquest of other peoples, it would be more correct to call this entity the Muscovite Empire. This state has its own history and traditions, like any other. The towns of the Golden Ring alone are worth so much! It is not that you mustn’t prize your own identity and your own statehood, but you should not appropriate someone else’s past.
Until a certain point, the Muscovites did not seek to appropriate Kievan Rus’ as part of their own history. This happened later, after Peter the Great declared himself Emperor of All the Russias. It was then that the temptation emerged to occupy not only the lands, but also the past of this foreign state.
Most of modern Russia consists of lands forcibly annexed to the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Tsardom of Russia: the Volga region, Siberia, the Far East, and the North Caucasus have nothing to do with Kievan Rus’. They are colonies of the Russian empire. So it is the inhabitants of the Kremlin who are engaged in distorting history for the sake of political ambitions and propaganda.
– In 2022, representatives of national movements from different republics condemned the war and stressed that the conflict did not serve the interests of the Russia’s ethnic minorities. There were isolated protests in Kalmykia, but there were no large-scale protests here. Did you expect this reaction?
– Attitudes to the war in Kalmykia, according to my information, are similar to what you would find among an average sampling of opinions Russia-wide. Why should it be otherwise if the empire has been pursuing a policy of Russification and unification for centuries, thus leveling ethnic differences? There are critically minded people in every region, but there are only a few of them. And almost all of them have left the country, especially since 2022.
It is clear that if the Oirats had reached the shores of the Atlantic in the distant past and stayed here, they would probably have been part of a democratic Europe. Since our ancestors founded their Torghut Khanate on the banks of the Ijil-Idel-Edel-Volga River[these are different names for the Volga River—KR], they shared the fate of the rest of the peoples in the Evil Empire.
We could talk for a long time about the pros and cons of the arrival of the Oirats in Europe, the foundation of their khanate, the migration to Dzungaria, the peasant colonization of the khanate’s lands, the Russian Civil War… History, as you know, does not operate in the subjunctive mood. And Kalmyks have to live in those conditions, which means they are inevitably a cross-section of the society in which they find themselves today.
– How realistic are hopes for the independence of Kalmykia now? What are the decisive factors? Are Kalmyks themselves ready for it?
– Independence has ripened for a long time; it is a necessity. There are always leveling processes within large states. So, the regions of Russia, not only the republics, have to become independent, and then function like the European Union. This means that everyone has their own state, their own rules and system of governance, but when it comes to general issues—for example, environmental protection and projects aimed at the future—they would act in concert.
Disintegration into independent states is vital to all the peoples of Russia, including ethnic Russians. After all, the interests and problems of ethnic Russians living in Siberia or the Far East are clearly different from the interests and problems of Muscovites. The capital is robbing all the regions, and so the Kremlin has a huge amount of money with which to wage a large-scale war and seize foreign lands. If the money of the regions stayed in the regions themselves, the country’s leadership would not have such massive resources, and people in Russia’s hinterlands would live much better! All segments of society suffer from this centralized system.
– At the same time, the situation in the republics differs from the situation in the regions and territories.
– The ethnic republics are, constitutionally, members of the Russian Federation. Moscow not only fleeces them, like the other regions, but also pursues a frankly colonial policy toward them. For example, it redraws their borders, grabbing the best lands for itself. The lands of the Buryats were divided into three administrative regions, while two districts were confiscated from Kalmykia to create the Astrakhan Region. Industrial facilities are built everywhere, just not in the republics. Accordingly, the economy there does not grow, professionals emigrate due to lack of work, and the populace is burdened with debt.
The project to construct the Iki-Burul water pipeline from the Levokum reservoir was imposed by Moscow to increase Kalmykia’s dependence on the outside world and force it to pay the Stavropol Territory for water, although it would have been easier for the republic to extend a branch line from the village of Tsagan Aman and pump water for free from the Ijil-Volga. The longest stretch of the Tengiz-Novorossiysk oil pipeline runs through Kalmykia, but the Krasnodar Territory receives the money for the rent. People from the Kalmykian government complained that they could not change the terms of the contract and they traveled back and forth to Moscow, but the officials there were unmoved.
They do not see the economic side, but the policy of the empire also leads to the loss of identity, language, and traditional culture.
– In your opinion, why did the population of the republics, not only Kalmykia, so easily abandon the sovereignty and even independence they had obtained in the early 1990s?
– Easily abandoned: that’s a good way of putting it! But what about the two terrible wars against independent Chechnya? Moscow forcibly and harshly resurrected the imperial approach, severely cracking down on all protests. No one wanted to be deported to Siberia again, so Kalmyks actually had no choice.
What happened to Gorodovikov back in Soviet times in Kalmykia? [Basan Gorodovikov was first secretary of the Kalmyk Regional Committee of the CPSU from 1961 to 1978—KR.] He, an old general, a decorated Hero of the USSR, was escorted from the CPSU Congress hall by KGB men and immediately booted from office because he dared to suggest that the two districts taken from Kalmykia be returned. That is why, in his wake, until 1990, only envoys from were tapped to run the republic. The desire for independence among the concerned part of our people has never faded.
– Kalmykia ranks last among Russia’s regions in almost all socio-economic ratings. This has been going on for many years—it was the same under Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and Alexei Orlov as it has been now under Batu Hasikov. In your opinion, why have none of the heads of the republic been able to achieve a breakthrough in terms of its growth? Could they have done it?
– Because the colonial policy has never stopped, and it is impossible by definition to make a breakthrough in such conditions. A colony is a colony, and its construction industry, infrastructure, and social services will be worse than in the metropole. The only thing that happens in a colony is the siphoning off of resources and professionals, and total Russification is carried out in all areas, from language to the rewriting of history. This is also an imperial policy. Nations are not allowed to study their own past: Moscow imposes on them the interpretation of the past that is beneficial to Moscow.
By the way, the regional elites are also well aware of this. The governors of the regions and the heads of republics are forced to go to Moscow to bow and scrape, begging for the money which they themselves sent there in the form of taxes. So the issue of disintegration has matured not only at the grassroots, in the minds of national movement activists, but also among local elites. The ethnic Russian hinterland must understand that Moscow takes advantage of their political naivety and forces them to live in ignominious poverty. The consequences of the war with Ukraine might just be the match that ignites this inevitable process.
Maria Ochir-Goryaeva (left) at archaeological digs of a Bronze Age settlement with colleagues from the State Archaeology Department of Schleswig-Holstein (Germany), 2012. Courtesy of RFE/RL
– There is the opinion that Russian society massively supports this war. In your opinion, as a person observing from the outside, is this the case?
– Of course, they massively support it: people need to survive somehow, this is their priority. Everything is decided by the state system and what values it promotes. During the Third Reich, the Germans also massively supported the war. But when the system changed, the same people turned democratic. The same change can happen to Russian society, and for this to happen the system has to change. And the people as a whole easily change its opinions and habits.
I will give you an example. I spent eight years on the border of Kalmykia and the Rostov Region digging up two fortresses from the era of the Khazar Khaganate. We lived for months in a small village where the entire population is ethnically Russian. We hired the local men to do the digging. They don’t just swear there, they practically speak in obscenities. I forbade them to swear at the digging site and joke about gender issues, otherwise I would kick them out without paying them their day’s wages. And they worked for me all day for months without swearing!
What is more, nearly everyone in this village was a nationalist, in the sense that they did not like Kalmyks. But since I treated them with respect and paid them for their work every evening, they treated me and the other researchers quite cordially. People everywhere, whether they are Russians or Germans or whatever, are masters of survival. So, I don’t think you have to convince them verbally. When conditions change, ordinary people themselves figure out how it benefits them. You shouldn’t condemn ordinary people. You should cherish them and foster conditions for them to lead decent lives, whatever their ethnicity.
• • • • •
Earlier this month, Kavkaz.Realii published a report on life in Kalmykia and the impact of the war in neighboring Ukraine on it.
In October 2022, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a resolution recognizing Chechnya as a territory temporarily occupied by Russia, and also condemned the “genocide of the Chechen people.” All 287 MPs present voted in favor of the resolution. Oleksiy Goncharenko was one of the authors of the resolution.
In late October 2022, the Oirat-Kalmyk People’s Congress adopted a declaration entitled “On the State Independence of the Republic of Kalmykia.” This is not the first call for self-determination for the Russian Federation’s ethnic republics since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. “Free Nations of Russia Forums” have been held in Warsaw, Prague and Gdansk, and representatives of ethnic groups “oppressed by the Kremlin regime” met in Kyiv.
On January 7, supporters of an independent Ingushetia met in Istanbul. The creation of the Ingush Independence Committee was announced at the meeting. The Committee’s goals include consolidating Ingush society around the idea of freedom and independence, preserving cultural and religious identity, creating the basis for building an independent Ingush state, and “preventing another deception of the people and another round of violence against them.”
The Asians of Russia team at an anti-war congress in Berlin, most of them wearing sweatshirts identifying them as “non-Russians.” Photo: asiansofrussia (Instagram)
Pyl spoke with Asians of Russia cofounder Vasily Matenov about how the campaign has been helping people despite hounding from the Russian Interior Ministry, and why the residents of Russia’s ethnic republics are the most vulnerable to the Russian state.
How a social media page about ethnic cultures grew into a mutual aid project
Asians of Russia came into being five years ago. I am Buryat myself, and my wife is Tuvan. We lived in Novosibirsk for a while. It’s a city where there are many migrants from Central Asia, and yet the locals often have a negative attitude to this. When you say that you come from Irkutsk, they don’t understand how that could be. Five years ago, we decided to create a social media page that would promote the culture of different nations, so that people could see which nations live in Russia and what their lives are like.
Asians of Russia cofounder Vasily Matenov: “Asians of Russia Against the War.” Photo: Vasily Matenov/Pyl
At some point, our social media followers started contacting us for help. We began raising money to treat children with serious illnesses, or to pay for tours by ethnic children’s ensembles. The posts that hit home with the public were reposted thousands of times. We recruited volunteers and raised money to fight the forest fires in Yakutia. People began to trust us more and more.
We somehow got the idea to help manufacturers of local products: furniture, clothing, and jewelry. We began traveling to the regions, filmed stories about their enterprises, talked about what products they produce, and how production is organized. This went on for several months. They paid us small amounts of money, and so we earned a little. But we didn’t have any funding or grants at all.
An anti-war rally outside the Russian embassy in the Mongolian capital, as reported on Asians of Russia’s Instagram page
How Asians of Russia helped its followers after the war’s outbreak
On February 24, I immediately started posting photos from the war, images of soldiers and prisoners, on our Instagram page. At first, users wrote that none of it was true. Then people from the regions began to recognize their relatives among the soldiers. A panic arose.
Lawmakers and officials wrote to us and threatened us. Then the law on “fake news” about the military was passed. One follower telephoned us and said that an acquaintance of his at the Interior Ministry’s Department K (which deals with information technology) had told him that they were very interested in us.
After some time, unknown people started knocking on our door. We didn’t open it: we pretended that no one was home. This went on for three days. On the third day, we exited the apartment late at night and left the country. The Zimin Foundation offered us help in getting out of Russia and a little financial support. My wife and I now live in Poland.
We do crowdfunding campaigns as needed. We raised money to pay the fines people had to pay for making anti-war statements and going to anti-war rallies. These fundraisers raised the amounts of money needed in a matter of minutes.
When the mobilization began, we raised money for buses so that people could leave for Kazakhstan or Mongolia. We were able to evacuate a lot of people in concert with other organizations: we joined forces with with both ethnic movements and the Feminist Anti-War Resistance. Together, we looked for taxi drivers or private carriers who would take people to the border.
We also hired lawyers to help contract soldiers legally refuse to do military service, and we helped conscientious objectors and those whose requests to be dismissed from military service were not approved. Over the past year, we have raised fourteen thousand dollars to pay lawyers and get people out of Russia.
Hello dear ones! You can publish my letter, because a lot of people look at your page and the problem I want to write about is very dire for all of us right now!
We live in a small village, and my husband and I have two underage children. My husband and I were orphans, so we live in a private house that we received from the state. I will not describe what terrible quality these houses are: I hope everyone knows and understands this.
During the mobilization, they tried to take my husband to fight. They were not stopped even by the fact that he has a group-three disability.
After consulting with friends, we decided that it would be better for him to go to Kazakhstan than to go to kill and most likely get killed. Our children love Dad very much, they just wouldn’t survive it. We’d rather he be alive far away than dead in the neighborhood cemetery.
He and a friend quickly packed and left for Kazakhstan. Our little ones call him every evening by video link. Everything has gone well for them in Kazakhstan. They found a job that provides them with a room in a hostel, for which I am very grateful to the Kazakhs!
Our small household has now fallen entirely on my shoulders. We have chickens and a cow, which is about to bear offspring. The house is heated by a stove. We burn coal, which costs about three thousand rubles per ton with delivery. There is no water in the house: we have to go to the nearest water pump for water.
I take the children to school myself, because I’m afraid of dogs. We have had several cases of dogs attacking children, it is very scary. The temperature here is now minus thirty degrees. It was minus forty the previous two weeks.
Don’t get me wrong. We are not in the habit of complaining. We were taught that one must endure no matter how hard life is. But if you think about it, do we deserve such a life?
The children and I like to watch travel shows on YouTube and see how people in other countries live. Watching such programs, you begin to realize that we too could have better lives.
I look at the children and imagine what awaits them, what the future will be like, and I cry at night. 😭 I want to give up everything and leave, but where can I go with two small children and with no money? It’s very scary.
I want to appeal to all those who have not yet lost their minds: may you have strength and patience. Take care of yourselves.
How the authorities have been trying to divide the ethnic community
We have always tried to produce high-quality content, to shoot high-quality videos. So, we initially attracted a very high-quality audience: there were almost no supporters of the war among them. The average age of our audience is between twenty-five and forty-five, and it has been growing even since Instagram was blocked in Russia.
There were bot attacks on our public page. At the same time, there was an influx of followers who would disappear after a couple of hours. They could write racist comments, about which they themselves might file complaints so that our public page would be blocked, or so that it would be subject to a shadow ban and would not show up in the feed.
I know people who are mixed up in such things. First, they organize bot attacks, and then they become aides to lawmakers.
The purpose of these bots is not just to block our profile, but to divide society so that there is no consensus on any issue. You can write any old nonsense. One of our followers admitted that he had worked in such a troll factory. They were told that they could even write that they opposed the authorities. What mattered was that they avoided coming to a unified stance in the comments.
Why Russia’s ethnic regions are the most vulnerable
The authorities understand that if there were a unity of opinion and a common cause in the ethnic regions, everything could flare up like a match. Therefore, propaganda is stronger here: there is not a single independent media outlet. We were in Georgia, and the Georgians said that god forbid the authorities would do something that the people did not like: everyone would immediately go to the parliament to protest. This happens because there is a national cause in Georgia.
There are very close family and friendship ties in the ethnic republics. It is customary in our part of the world to be in touch with fourth cousins and go visit them . It is vital for us to stand up for each other. The authorities have been doing everything possible to destroy this unity in the regions.
That is why all discontent and all protest in Russia is nipped in the bud. For example, when Dmitry Trapeznikov, who had been among the leaders of the “Donetsk People’s Republic,” was appointed acting mayor of Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, the whole region rose up to oppose him. The residents of Elista packed the city’s main square every day for a month. Consequently, Russian National Guardsmen from Moscow were brought to Kalmykia to break up the protest, and then all the protest leaders were put on trial. Since then, people in other regions have simply been afraid to take to the streets in protest.
The residents of the Russia’s ethnic republics are the most vulnerable part of the country’s population. They don’t know their rights well. There is no internet in the villages, and people speak Russian poorly. If the authorities go to the villages to mobilize young men for the war, how can they protect themselves? So, we must develop democracy in Russia, starting with the regions.
I’m not a politician or a political scientist. I don’t know exactly how to restructure Russia after Ukraine’s victory, or whether the ethnic republics will secede and how to do that. But I do know that, without independence, nations perish. For example, there are fewer than ten thousand Shors left in Russia, although they are an ethnic group that has existed for two thousand years, since before there were ethnic Russians.
If Russia wins the war, it will only get worse. We must not just turn out for rallies for a free Russia. We must make sure that Ukraine wins. Only then can we take up the vital task of preserving the independence of the nations living now as part of Russia.
Source: “Asians of Russia: ‘Without independence, nations perish,'”Pyl, 13 February 2023. Thanks to Maria Kol’tsova for the interview and the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader. I edited the sentence about Dmitry Trapeznikov so that it better reflected the facts of the conflict.
Shown here protesting a law bill that would make Russia’s minority languages an elective part of the curriculum, Circassian grassroots activist Martin Kochesoko was detained and charged with narcotics possession on June 7 in Nalchik, the capital city of the Kabardino-Balkar Republic. Will the nationwide grassroots movement that, allegedly, forced police in Moscow to drop identical charges against investigative reporter Ivan Golunov reemerge as forcefully to demand justice for Kochesoko? Photo courtesy of Radio Svoboda
Circassian Activist Martin Kochesoko Detained in Nalchik
Vera Zherdeva Caucasian Knot
June 8, 2019
On June 7, police searched the offices of the civic organization Habze, detaining its leader Martin Kochesoko and other activists, our sources have informed us.
The security forces arrived at Habze’s office at around eleven in the morning. They confiscated the office’s computers.
According to preliminary reports, Kochesoko has been remanded in custody on charges of drugs possession, a Habze activist told us.
The other Habze activists detained with Kochesoko were soon released, Kavkaz. Realiireports, citing its own sources.
In late May, Kochesoko reported his parents had been paid a visit by local officials, who told them their son should “slow down” his activism. The incident took place after Kochesoko had organized a round table on federalism in Nalchik.
“A man from the district council visited my parents. He told them he had been sent by the top bosses and I should slow my activism down. I know this man personally. He has my phone number and email address, and he and I could have met. I was taken aback he chose this way of doing things. I would thus like to underscore the fact I use only legal methods. I want the laws and the Russian Constitution to be obeyed. I am not hiding from anyone. I am constantly in the public eye,” Kosechoko wrote in an article, “Solving the Crisis of Federalism: Grassroots Activism,” published May 29 on Habze’s website.
Caucasian Knot has written about Kochesoko’s work. We have often cited his critical comments on controversial public issues.
In April 2019, for example, Kochesoko criticized the ban of an auto rally on Circassian Flag Day in Nalchik and the treatment of Circassian returnees by Russian officials. He also lambasted the controversial law bill to make the study of minority languages an elective rather than a mandatory part of the school curriculum. Activists and public figures from twelve of Russia’s ethnic republics, including Kabardino-Balkaria, denounced the law bill.
In his article for Caucasian Knot, “Kanzhal as a Knife in the Governor’s Back,”Denis Sokolov, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, discussed Kochesoko’s role as a peacemaker during the events in question, which occurred when residents of the Balkar village of Kendelen refused to let the riders pass through their town.
“Due to a willingness to compromise on the part of Kendelen negotiators, Kochesoko was on the verge of peacefully leading the Circassian march out of the Balkar village, but the crude actions of the security forces rendered their agreement null and void,” wrote Sokolov.
Thanks to Comrade GJ and Anna Etkina for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader. NB. The accounts of Mr. Kochesoko’s arrest here and on the Radio Svoboda-affiliated website Kavkaz.Realii differ considerably in their details. When and if a definitive account of Mr. Kochesoko’s arrest is published, I will update this post.
Tatarstan’s second largest city, Naberezhnye Chelny, is known as Yar Chally in Tatar. Photo courtesy of Realnoe Vremya
Minority Languages Ready for Third Reading State Duma Updates Standards for Teaching Official Languages
Viktor Khamrayev and Kirill Antonov Kommersant
July 25, 2018
On Wednesday, July 25, the State Duma should pass in its third and final reading a law bill that would make study of the Russian Federation’s official language, Russian, and the official languages of the country’s ethnic republics an obligatory part of the school curriculum. However, parents would freely choose the language their children study as their native tongue. MPs are confident they have defused the anxiety felt in the ethnic republics over the plight of minority native languages. Experts in a number of the republics, however, are still concerned minority native tongues will gradually outlive their usefulness.
On Tuesday, July 24, the Duma approved in their second reading amendments to the law “On Education.” During their first reading, the draft amendments had drawn criticism from the ethnic republics due to the fact they introduced the principle of choice when studying native languages.
Vyacheslav Nikonov, chair of the Duma’s education committee, told Kommersant two important provisions had been inserted into the law bill for the second reading. The Federal Education Standards “should guarantee the opportunity to be instructed in the native languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation” and, to this end, they should provide for the study of “the official languages of the Russian Federation’s republics, the native languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation, including the Russian language.”
According to Mr. Nikonov, this rule should diffuse “concerns in the republics that the study of minority languages would become optional.”
“The federal standard means mandatory inclusion in the curriculum,” Mr. Nikonov said.
At the same time, the law establishes the free choice of the language of classroom instruction, as well as the choice of what language children would study as their native tongue, as determined by their parents.
During its second reading, 371 MPs voted for the law bill. It should pass during its third reading on Wednesday.
Mr. Nikonov reported the education committee had already negotiated with the relevant parties to establish a fund to support native languages.
“We suggest establishing the fund through a presidential decree, making it a presidential fund with appropriate federal financing,” he said.
In addition, Mr. Nikonov said MPs had been asked to develop the basic concept on which the new Federal Education Standards would be based. The government has established a working group in accordance with the resolution adopted by the Duma after the first reading of the bill.
As approved by MPs, the draft law does not provide for a transitional period while the government elaborates the new concept and educational standards. The law would come into force as soon as it was signed by the president and published. In this regard, the republics are afraid of the consequences set in motion once the law has been adopted. The free choice of a native language would come into play in the absence of new federal standards.
Under current guidelines, pupils attend five hours of Russian classes a week, while minority language classes are offered only three hours a week, Svetlana Semyonova, director of the Ethnic Schools Research Institute, explained to Kommersant.
This means, Ms. Semyonova said, that “pupils who choose Russian as their native language will have eight hours of Russian class a week, while those pupils whose native language is Yakut will study Russian for only five hours a week.”
Given that the Leaving Certificate Examination (EGE) is administered only in Russian, Ms. Semyonova argues Yakut children would be more poorly prepared for it.
Due to the EGE, very few pupils would risk choosing a minority language as their native language, Marat Lotfullin, a researcher in ethnic education at the History Institute of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, told Kommersant. Even non-Russian children in Tatarstan would choose Russia as their native language. He fears the Tatar language will gradually outlive its usefulness.
Mr. Lotfullin draws attention to the fact that the new law stipulates the teaching of minority native languages and classroom instruction in these languages only for primary and secondary schools, meaning ethnic schools would function only until the ninth grade.
This is “a serious restriction of the rights of the peoples of the Russian Federation,” he argues.
“If we take Tatarstan, Tatars have always enjoyed instruction in Tatar all through secondary school, including the upper grades,” Mr. Lotfullin said.
Translated by the Russian Reader. See whether you can square this story with my previous post, about a young Khakas woman in Abakan who has been charged with “extremism” by the FSB for promoting Khakas language and culture, and publishing a blog post about the discrimination Khakas experience at the hands of ethnic Russians, who constitute the majority in the nominally “ethnic” Republic of Khakassia.
Tatarstan’s second largest city, Naberezhnye Chelny, is known as Yar Chally in Tatar. Photo courtesy of