Staunton, May 20 – Hajimurat haji Gatsalov, the mufti of North Osetia, says Russia and Osetia must “not miss the historic chance” created by Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and more quickly to unite the two Osetias into a single federal subject of the Russian Federation as because “the national and cultural social-unity of the people […]
Staunton, May 20 – With the active support of the Federal Migration Service, Moscow’s mosques are going to start free courses in the Russian language for immigrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus as part of a broader program to help them adapt and to raise their general educational level. Tatyana Dmitriyeva, the head of […]
Staunton, May 5 – By annexing Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, Moscow appears more likely to have acquired “a second Dagestan,” the most unstable republic in the North Caucasus, than “a second Tatarstan,” the stable, wealthy and influential republic in the Middle Volga, according to Russian experts. In a survey of the parallels between Crimea and Dagestan […]
Staunton, April 22 – In what is becoming a defining feature of the Putin regime, the Russian authorities are saying things that many people want to hear at exactly the same moment that they are doing things that directly contradict what they say. Today, the victims of that are the Crimean Tatars, a Moscow commentator […]
Staunton, April 20 – Residents of the Republic of Tatarstan are now paying Moscow every year 4557 times more than did medieval Muscovy when it was under the so-called Tatar Yoke that Russians continue to describe as an unbearable burden and one they blame for many of the shortcomings of their political culture. That difference […]
Staunton, April 17 – If current trends continue, half of the population of the Russian Federation in its current borders will consist of immigrants, according to a new Moscow study, a conclusion clearly intended to feed anti-immigrant feelings and, more speculatively, designed to promote a discussion of what can and should be done, including the […]
Staunton, April 14 – Ethnic tensions are high in many parts of the Russian Federation and will continue to do so, according to a study carried out by the Club of the Regions and the Center for the Study of Ethnic Conflicts, until Moscow recognizes that focusing on organizations rather than ideas — as it […]
Staunton, April 13 – Vladimir Putin has attacked Muslims in the Russian Federation to divert attention from his goal: “the final solution of the nationality question” in that country “on the basis of [Stalin’s] well-known dictum that where ‘there is no person (in this case, a group of people or nation), there is no problem,” […]
Staunton, April 13 – Non-ethnic or civic Russian [rossiisky] nationalism isn’t nationalism at all but rather is a means to hold back genuine ethnic Russian [russky] nationalism and to keep it under the control of an authoritarian and pre-modern political system, according to the editor of Sputnik i Pogrom. In an article entitled Ethnic Russians […]
Staunton, April 12 – The Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church has always used priests from Russia to spread its influence and that of Moscow more generally in the former Soviet republics, but now the Moscow Islamic University has announced a new twist on that tactic: it will train Russian-speaking mullahs for the Muslims […]
