Movenon writes:
I would support the right to self-determination, but I don’t like that Russia doesn’t apply the same to Chechnya, Circassia, Dagestan, Tatarstan, Karelia, Tuva, and all the other areas that have the same issue. To me this shows that Russia cares s**t about self-determination, and it was just an opportunistic garden variety land grab. Hell, some guy in Karelia was just handing out leaflets supporting a referendum on Karelian independence, and he was thrown in prison for subversive extremism.
And Russia nowadays is an ugly rat-race capitalist fascist Slavic supremacist hellhole nation anyway, albeit not in the Western US-led block. There’s already talk of confiscating land/apartments from Crimean Tatars to give them to loyal ethnic Russians (just like they did half a century ago), so it seems like they’re still into ethnic deportation and divide and conquer to gerrymander an ethnic Russian majority everywhere.
It wouldn’t be as big of a deal if native Chechens, Tatars, Tuvans, Chukchis, etc. were treated equally on the same level as ethnic Russians, but they’re looked down on as inferior by ethnic Russians (jokes mocking Chukchi as primitive are common, Turkics/Asiatics are seen as losers who can’t drink, Chechens are hated yet still not allowed to escape the Russian yoke, ethnic Circassians that got kicked out of their homeland during the genocide can’t return, etc.) so they essentially become 2nd class citizens in their own homeland, and tons of indigenous languages are dying out. At least Native Americans get some respect these days in America!
tl;dr I support self-determination, I’m against neoliberal fascism, but Crimean Tatars get the short end of the stick now, just like other non-ethnic Russians in Russia.
Given that Russia is an ugly rat-race capitalist fascist state, why doesn’t the US love them. Let’s go down the checklist:
- Rat race ugly capitalism? Check.
- Fascist state? Check.
- Ethnic supremacist state? Check.
I don’t get it. What’s not to love? Russia just met all of the US’ criteria for an ally. Looking down that checklist, what’s the difference between Russia and Israel, except that the Russians are less fascist and less ethnic supremacist?
Yes. Anyone on Russia’s borders who wants to break away and join Russia, go ahead! We welcome you! Right to self determination! Screw the right to territorial integrity!
No. Anyone inside Russia on the borderlands who wishes to break away and form an independent state, forget it! We will crush you! Principle of territorial integrity! Right of self-determination be damned!
It is all pretty sleazy.
Geopolitics is a dirty game run by sociopaths and legal criminals (And often not so legal criminals!). Russia’s enemies are playing hardball, dirty as Hell. You can’t play fair when the other side is cheating – if you do, you lose. The only way to fight against people who fight dirty is to fight dirty himself. Putin will only lose by playing fair because the other side won’t reciprocate and cheaters beat fair players every time.
But the non-Russians do rule in the republics of which they are a majority. Non-Russian languages are much better protected in Russia than in the US. For instance, in many parts of Russia, non-Russian languages, along with Russian, and the official languages of the Republics! In Chechnya, Chechen and Russian are both official languages. Also much education in Russia is in non-Russian languages. A Tuvan can go to K-12 school using Tuvan as his mode of instruction; Hell, he can even go to university using Tuvan as the language of instruction. Just try that in the US!
In many parts of Russia, ethnic media are huge. In Tuva and other places, most of the newspapers are in the non-Russian tongue and so are most of the TV stations.
This would all be so much easier of the enemies of Russia were not working overtime trying to chop it up. The very same idiots who are screaming “territorial integrity” in the Ukraine now have been working for years to chop Chechnya, etc. off of Russia. Realistically speaking, most of the republics you list do not want independence. Only the ones in the Caucasus really do. I am not sure what the Tatars want, and I doubt if the Tuvans want to break away. The Karelians probably do not have a big enough majority in Karelia to break away. I agree with you that the language law in Karelia is pretty bad though.
