Who is a Russian?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

In English, we sometimes differentiate between people’s ethnicity and citizenship, especially when talking about “homeland” nation-states. For instance, we may refer to someone as an “ethnic Hungarian” in Romania, or an “ethnic Croat” who is a Serbian citizen.

And we’ve certainly heard a lot lately about “ethnic Russians” in Ukraine.

The names of such countries are synonymous with the historic majority nationalities that created them, and if other peoples live in them, they are distinct minority groups and usually identified as such.

Immigrant countries that are a melange of different groups are not ethnically-based, at least no longer, so there are no “ethnic Americans” or “ethnic Brazilians.”

Multinational states often have names that don’t specify any group’s ethnicity. “Soviet” and “Yugoslav” was a state identity; no actual peoples were Soviets or Yugoslavs.

The same holds true for many polyglot African countries. There are no “Nigerians” by ethnicity, only members of groups such as the Igbo or Yoruba.

Things get more complex when a multi-national state, with territorially concentrated peoples, is named after the dominant nation within it. We speak of “Russia,” but it is in reality the “Russian Federation,” and of its 143 million people, only 81 per cent are ethnic Russians.

The country’s political divisions include 22 ethnic republics, such as Chechnya, Ingushetia, or Tatarstan, where the indigenous ethnic nationality (known as the “titular nationality”) runs its own internal affairs in its own language.

These peoples are citizens of “Russia,” but are not “Russians.” And Russians acknowledge the distinction. The Russian language distinguishes between “ethnic Russian” (“russkiy”) and “citizen of Russia, regardless of nationality” (“rossiiskiy”).

Is Russia to be a nation of Russian citizens (“rossiiskaia natsiia”) or of ethnic Russians (“russkaia natsiia”) only? Because this remains unsettled, there is no consensus on whether Russia’s present-day borders should be accepted as given. Those who subscribe to an ethnically-based Russian state might seek to annex territories with large ethnic Russian populations, such as the northern part of Kazakhstan or eastern Ukraine; the Crimea has already been absorbed.

President Vladimir Putin has taken to calling much of eastern and southern Ukraine “New Russia,” a historical term referring to territories previously controlled by Muslim entities that were conquered and settled by ethnic Russians beginning in the 18th century.

At the same time, ethnic nationalists might see the need for Russia to rid itself of certain so-called “undesirable” territories that are currently part of the country, such as the Muslim areas in the north Caucasus.

In official, “politically correct” language “rossiiskaia natsiia” is considered the norm. But this is not always the case in everyday speech, where people see Russia in ethnic terms, or even religious ones, in which Orthodox Christianity becomes a component part of Russian identity.

A civic Russian nation, one whose identity is not simply ethnic, can only be a “rossiiskaia” nation. But Russian history is not very encouraging for those who see this as a necessity if the country is to become a modern pluralistic and democratic entity.

Critics of the old tsarist empire referred to it as a “prison house of nations,” and the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia retains many elements of autocracy. So there’s still a long way to go.