PUTIN ON “SELF-DETERMINATION OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE”
The Russian prime minister publishes a policy article about the national question
26 January 2012
By Mykola SIRUK, The Day
Оn January 23 the prime minister and presidential candidate Vladimir Putin published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta another policy article called ‘Russia: the national question. Self-determination of the Russian nation: a multi-ethnical civilization sealed with the Russian cultural core.’ It seems that Putin covets Lenin and Stalin’s laurels, known in the post-Soviet space as “experts” in solving national questions. It is known that Lenin wrote the article called ‘Working Class and the National Question’ and Stalin wrote the article ‘The National Question and Social Democracy.’ Everyone remembers well the results of this national policy whose consequences are still felt by all the countries put into the “prison of nations.”
Just like his predecessors Putin thinks that the national question “is fundamental for the country.” He admits that the national question in Russia is a burning issue, first of all, because of the “expenditures caused by the mass migration.” In his characteristic style the prime minister starts the article by criticizing the “multi-cultural project” in the West. “Actually, they suggest speaking about the compulsory assimilation,” he warns and starts discussing the Russian question with a preliminary declaration that “despite the similarity of appearance our situation is absolutely different.”
Putin writes that Russia cannot be a mono-ethnical state; however, he remarks that “today people are seriously worried and even irritated by large expenditures caused by the mass internal and external migration.”
Then he moves to one of his favorite topics: the catastrophic consequences of the USSR collapse. “Our national and migration problems are directly connected to the collapse of the USSR, that was actually Great Russia and whose base was formed back in the 18th century,” this is a starting point of Putin’s article.
The Russian prime minister thinks that the Russian people and the Russian culture have to become the “pivot and bonding agent of this unique civilization.” “Various provokers and our enemies are doing their best to tear this pivot out of Russia, holding insincere conversations about the Russians’ right for self-determination, ‘racial purity’ and the necessity to ‘finish the work of 1991 and finally destroy the empire scrounging off the Russian people’ in order to finally make people destroy their homeland with their own hands,” Putin notes.
