Preamble
Russian President Vladimir Putin supported the idea of creating a separate federal law O Russian nation
During a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations, which President Vladimir Putin held on Monday in Astrakhan, the head of the department Russian Academy of the national economy and civil service, Vyacheslav Mikhailov proposed “to move from strategy to federal law,” which should incorporate all the innovations related to interethnic relations and be called “On the Russian nation and the management of interethnic relations.” Putin supported the idea, TASS reports.
“It’s a good offer,” the agency quotes the president as saying.
“But what is definitely absolutely possible and needs to be implemented - we need to think about it directly and start working on it in practical terms - this is the law on the Russian nation,” Interfax quotes Putin.
According to the president, such a law could develop into a strategy for the development of national relations in Russia. “Our strategy, which you and I developed together, can be transformed - but we just need to work hard on this too,” he said.
Putin also supported the proposal of the meeting participants to celebrate a year of unity of the Russian nation. “But you just need to choose this year,” the president noted, explaining that the year of the unity of the Russian nation must be chosen so that it does not overlap with the already announced all-Russian thematic annual events.
“This could be a big, significant, consolidating event that would affect almost every ethnic group, every people living in Russia,” Putin added.
In March 2015, on behalf of Putin, the Federal Agency for Nationalities Affairs was created in Russia. Its tasks include the implementation public policy in the field of interethnic and interfaith relations, “strengthening the unity of a multinational people Russian Federation", protection of the rights of national minorities and indigenous peoples of the country, prevention of any forms of discrimination based on race, nationality, religion or language and prevention of attempts to incite racial, national and religious hatred, hatred and enmity.
In 2012, Putin approved the Strategy of the state national policy for the period until 2025, which speaks, in particular, about the “spiritual community of the multinational people of the Russian Federation (Russian nation), the need to “preserve and develop the ethnocultural diversity of the peoples of Russia” and “successful social and cultural adaptation and integration of migrants.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations in Astrakhan, approved the idea of creating a separate federal law dedicated to interethnic relations.
“Good proposal,” he commented on the corresponding idea.
In particular, a proposal was made to “move from strategy to federal law,” which should absorb all the innovations related to interethnic relations. The author of this idea is the head of the department of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration Vyacheslav Mikhailov. He also proposed the name of the law - “On the Russian nation and the management of interethnic relations.”
Putin also supported the idea of holding a Year of Unity of the Russian Nation.
Earlier, journalists asked Putin what he considered the national idea of Russia. “The American dream of a car and a paid loan is not enough for us,” he replied. According to the president, “a sense of patriotism and national identity is very important for Russia, which is now being lost in some countries, unfortunately for them.” “We have this inside us, in our hearts - love for the fatherland. One of our national ideas is patriotism,” he added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin supported the idea of creating a law on the Russian nation. It is assumed that the law will regulate interethnic relations.
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“But what definitely can and should be implemented - we need to think about it directly and start working on it in practical terms - is the law on the Russian nation,” the president said at a meeting of the Council for National Affairs.
In addition, Putin supported the idea of holding a Year of Unity of the Russian Nation. “This could be a very big significant consolidating event that would affect almost every ethnic group, every people who live in Russia,” the head of state noted, pointing to the need to choose this year.
As REGNUM news agency reported earlier, the State Duma has repeatedly stated the need to adopt a law on nationalities in the Russian Federation. In addition, the initiative to return the mandatory “nationality” column in the passport was discussed.
Illustration copyright AFP Image caption What exactly the final version of the law will look like is still not very clear
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday supported the idea of developing a law on the Russian nation. In his opinion, the law could come from a strategy for the development of interethnic relations in Russia.
This was expressed by the head of the Federal Agency for National Affairs Igor Barinov and the head of the department of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration Vyacheslav Mikhailov at a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations in Astrakhan.
Russia has already developed a “Strategy of State National Policy”, adopted four years ago.
Article 3 of the Russian Constitution states that “the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in the Russian Federation is its multinational people.” Paragraph 2 of Article 19 notes that the state guarantees equality of rights and freedoms of man and citizen, regardless of nationality.
Vyacheslav Mikhailov’s abstract comments about the need to include in the law “all innovations related to interethnic relations” did not greatly clarify the initiative, opening up wide scope for interpretation.
Alla Semenysheva, Advisor to the Head of the Federal Agency for Nationalities:
There is nothing particularly worth being afraid of; this is an already existing strategy of national policy. Vyacheslav Mikhailov’s proposal for the name of the law is his personal proposal, he is the developer of the formulation “Russian nation”, and everyone latched on to it, but the point is not in the name, but in the need to adopt a sectoral law, since such a law exists both in the field of education and in others.
This topic has already been discussed more than a year in the professional community. The rules of law in the field of state national policy are determined by more than a dozen laws and decrees, but there is, for example, no specific body that would be responsible for the sociocultural adaptation of migrants. Of course, the law should assign greater powers to government bodies; it is necessary to establish a structural vertical in the sphere of state national policy.
We have a state program according to which we have been working and living since 2014, but we need to go further and consolidate the conceptual apparatus, delineate powers between government bodies different levels. In the state national policy strategy, paragraph 12 says that the diversity of the national composition is the property of the Russian nation, and the Russian nation is a civic identity. And this does not cancel national identity, but goes in parallel with it - you can be a Chukchi and a Russian at the same time. The name of the law is a secondary matter, but all experts say that the need for its adoption is ripe.
Work on the law has not yet begun; we are talking about a document that does not exist. The law is not written in two days.
Based on this clarification, the BBC Russian Service asked experts whether such a law is needed at the moment and in principle, and also what the Russian nation is in general.
Egor Kholmogorov, nationalist publicist:
A law on a certain “Russian nation” is no more needed than a district police officer’s order to rename me Yuri or Igor. This is an absolutely senseless idea, which is lobbied by Mr. Barinov: someone wants to build a highway, railway and to have government contracts, so here too - we are only talking about nation-building.
This will not lead to anything good, it is written in our constitution that Russia is a multinational country, where there are many nations, and among them is the Russian one, which created this state, and there are others who, with varying degrees of voluntariness, became part of it, exist certain relations between them: national autonomies, assimilation processes, and, unfortunately, manifestations of separatism, when Russians were killed in the 90s, and now they are being gently squeezed out of some regions.
Illustration copyright AFP Image caption Representatives of several dozen nationalities live in RussiaAnd now the only thing on which the state can be built is that the absolute majority of residents absolute majority regions - Russians, be it the former German Kaliningrad or the once Japanese Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. In fact, it is proposed: let's put everything into one pot, declare it the Russian nation and let's build it. But it is not clear on what basis to build it - purely logically, it must be built on a Russian basis, as on the basis of the majority of the population, and if on some kind of neutral basis, then there is a danger that the Russians will be artificially separated from their roots.
There is a danger that other peoples will not want to turn into Russians, and Russians will be forced to follow this comb. But Tatarstan, for example, can reduce the hours of the Russian language in schools and force students to study Tatar language Russian residents and talk about the great Genghis Khan. That is, this stupid project will not give anything but chaos in interethnic relations.
For me, as a Russian nationalist, there are many problems in the existing concept of national harmony, but it has one obvious advantage - it does not question the existence of the Russian nation. But the concept of the Russian nation presupposes this denial; the title already excludes any agreement for a person of nationalist sentiments.
From a purely hardware point of view, this concept is a colossal setup, when for the last two years the president has been wearing the laurel wreath of the conqueror of Crimea and the winner of ISIS, and here he says something that inevitably turns a lot of people away from him.
Alexey Chesnakov, director of the Center for Political Conjuncture:
Approaching presidential elections. For a significant part of conservatives and conservationists, the Russian people’s theme is a favorite one. Putin acts electorally competently. He "cements" his supporters.
Kirill Martynov, Candidate of Philosophy, Associate Professor at the School of Philosophy at the National Research University Higher School of Economics:
This very construction by the author of the concept is a paraphrase of a similar construction of Soviet times, when the Khrushchev-Brezhnev nomenklatura was concerned with imposing “imaginary communities” and securing their existence. Now this has become relevant due to the non-trivial situation before the presidential campaign: on the one hand, the ratings are still high, on the other, the economic situation in the country continues to deteriorate, and it is not very clear how to mobilize the electorate if everything goes according to plan and the president can easily do without this human support.
One of the theses that slipped through Putin’s comments is to organize a “year of national unity,” and it can be assumed that this will coincide with the election year, and if so, then funding may be allocated for this, and this will become one of the points of the presidential campaign.
Illustration copyright Getty Images Image caption Under Leonid Brezhnev, the definition of “Soviet people” was fixed in lawIf we take funding out of the equation, I think that the law has practically no real content - maybe this is a question of delimiting cultural policy in national republics, this is an old problem and one of the reasons why these ideas were torpedoed earlier: either you give an ethnic interpretation of the Russian nation, and then it is defined as Orthodox with the priority of the Russian ethnic group, or you give a civil interpretation of the Russian nation, then you return to the constitution with its words about a multinational people and you have no room for maneuver - it cannot be said that Russian culture can have priority over other cultures, since we have a multinational people.
Nations cannot be fixed by decree from above. What we encountered in modern history, - formally reverse process. [The initiative] sounds absurd: it is a social contract in reverse, as if it is not the nation that creates the state, but the state that forges the nation.
I am somewhat wary of the idea of a nation, since it is easy to move from a political nation to an ethnic one, overplay the rhetoric and start fighting for the “purity of our ranks.” In Russia, unfortunately, there is no political nation, and perhaps in modern world it is too late to form them, but Russia has not done this work, which has been done by European states, some countries outside Europe, and the United States.
This political nation did not materialize for us for two reasons. Firstly, the borders of the Federation do not coincide with the borders of the “Russian World”, which is generally unclear where it ends. Without being a nationalist, it is clear that outside the Russian Federation - including in Central Asia, there was a problem of the Russian diaspora and nothing was done for this part of the political nation - it is not a matter of ethnicity, but of cultural background.
Illustration copyright Reuters Image caption The definition of a nation by some thinkers comes down to an ethnic componentOn the other hand, within Russia itself there is a huge number of diasporas that other residents do not consider as their own. There is a high level of xenophobia, especially towards people from the Caucasus when they come to the central part of Russia: when renting an apartment, many people demand that the renters be of Slavic ethnicity. The situation is even worse with the peoples in the east of the country - the Buryats, Tuvans, and partly the Yakuts, who are constantly subject to discrimination at the everyday level, despite the third article of the constitution and the Russian passport.
But the main problem is that the Russian nation does not see itself as a political institution in isolation from the state, in the form of what is called civil society - a key agent of the nation. If it is considered hostile and alien, then a political nation does not exist. This manifested itself well on, which for many people became, for various reasons, an unnecessary thing. And the instrument with which one can organize a nation is unclear, since in the modern world the state cannot do this, and the procedure itself looks the opposite.
Will there be a law on the Russian nation? August 12th, 2017
To be honest, it’s very difficult for me to insert the word Russians into my speech. Usually, when telling something about the inhabitants of Russia, I say Russians. Of course, I understand that our country is very multinational, but it’s difficult to do something about it. And is it necessary? After all, Russians are the fundamental and binding nation in Russia. It used to be the USSR, so no one says “USSR-Yans”? Until now, almost all residents of the USSR republics are called “Russians” abroad.
Did you know that there is a bill on the Russian Nation? However, as they say, “due to society’s unwillingness to accept the idea of a single nation,” they decided to rename this law to the law “On the Fundamentals of State National Policy.”
That's exactly the point.
“It’s calmer this way. It turned out that society is not very prepared to perceive such a concept as a single nation uniting all nationalities. Considering that the president also proposed translating the strategy of state national policy into the language of law, we decided to change its name,” the head of the initiative group for preparation of the concept of the bill by academician Valery Tishkov, who announced the decision to change the name of the document after the first meeting of the group.
At the end of October 2016, at a meeting of the Presidential Council on Interethnic Relations, the former head of the Ministry of National Policy, Vyacheslav Mikhailov, proposed developing a law “On the unity of the Russian nation and the management of interethnic relations,” the initiative was supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the document to be prepared by August 1 .
However, the development of the law on a single political nation caused significant public outcry. In particular, representatives of various ethnic groups expressed concerns.
At the same time, the working group itself to develop the concept of the law told the newspaper that they are still studying the proposals of experts. According to Tishkov, the concept, which will be presented in a month, will spell out the conceptual apparatus and mechanism for delimiting powers between the federal, regional and local authorities. The document will most likely have a special section devoted to the Russian nation.
The idea of a bill on the Russian nation was received critically in the regions. Thus, in December 2016, the head of Dagestan Ramazan Abdulatipov said that such a bill “cannot exist in nature,” and “it has not been adopted in fact in any state in the world,” since the formation of a nation is “an objective historical process.”
The head of the Tatarstan State Council Committee on Education, Culture, Science and National Issues, Razil Valeev, noted that for the implementation of national policy in Russia there is a Constitution, strategy, state national policy and other “good laws.”
Another former Minister of National Affairs, Vladimir Zorin, said that the working group is still studying the proposals of experts. One of the working options for the name of the bill, he noted, is “On the fundamentals of state national policy in the Russian Federation.” The main thing, in his opinion, is “to consolidate once again at the legislative level the ideas of the state national policy strategy that have entered real life.”
In December 2016, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Education and Science Gennady Onishchenko stated the destruction of the mental unity of Russia. As an example, he cited the Far East, where distinguished students are sent not to Moscow, but to Seoul ( South Korea). “It’s already a mentality that they don’t live in Russia,” he noted.
In October, Putin called the unity of the people key condition to preserve the statehood and independence of Russia, as well as the existence of the country as “a single and native home for all the peoples who inhabit it.”
According to the 2010 All-Russian Population Census, about 200 different nationalities live in Russia, with almost 80 percent of citizens being Russian.
At one time, the famous historian, student of Lev Gumilev and simply a wise man, Vladimir Makhnach, said that one of the key mistakes of the communists in the USSR was a superficial attitude towards national politics. He consistently criticized the Soviet leadership for neglecting the enormous heritage of Russian thought in the field of national identity, and insisted on respect for the people's principles.
The Soviet nation existed at least since 1941, and with all the recognition of the greatest contribution to the victory of the Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Kazakh and any other people of the USSR, it won the Great Patriotic War exactly she. It would be strange, however, to consider that it was not a socio-political, but an ethnic community.
By the 1980s, the foundations of this nation as a result external influence and internal decay turned out to be significantly undermined, and it was unable to maintain the unity of the country. In turn, the Russian people, as a community both ethnic and cultural-historical, were not endowed with the proper status and resources in the USSR to carry out the mission of “holding” on the territory of the entire country.
There were no unified political nations in any of the newly independent states. Therefore, in all of them there was a potential for interethnic conflicts. Somewhere they found an intermediate solution, somewhere they found no solution at all and, judging by a number of signs, they are unlikely to find one if the political circumstances in general in the territory former USSR will remain unchanged.
Developing the right formula for national unity, based on respect for the identity of all the peoples inhabiting our country, will not be easy.
Without love for your people, without respect for their traditions, there will be no love for other peoples inhabiting your country, no respect for their traditions. Accordingly, there will be no sincere love for the country as a whole, respect for the political nation as a community of citizens of one state, but children different nations. National identity and patriotism are not contradictory, but complementary phenomena.
During the existence of our country in the form of the USSR, the emphasis was on the socio-political basis of national unity. Complete denationalization, however, did not happen, and could not have happened, since ethnicity is not so much a cultural-historical and social category as a natural one.
Sources:
The law on the Russian nation was announced in Astrakhan
Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking yesterday in Astrakhan at a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations, proposed the creation of a Federal Law on the Russian Nation. “But what is absolutely absolutely possible and necessary to be implemented is something that we need to think about and start working on in practical terms – this is the law about the Russian nation,” said Vladimir Putin, commenting on the corresponding initiative. According to him, such a law could develop into a strategy for the development of national relations in Russia. “Our strategy, which you and I developed together, needs to be transformed – but we just need to work hard on this too,” said the head of state.
In addition, the president supported the idea of holding a Year of Unity of the Russian Nation. “It seems to me that a good event could be with the involvement of everyone who has gathered here today in this room so that we can work together. You just need to choose a year. We already have some plans for the year, we need to ensure that some events do not overlap with others. This could be a very big significant, consolidating event that would affect almost every ethnic group, every people living in Russia,” the Russian leader said.
Putin complained that not everyone still understands what a beautiful country they live in, so for many it would be interesting to get to know the peoples and ethnic groups inhabiting Russia. The full transcript of the meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations can be found.
The author of the idea of creating a federal law on the Russian nation, who expressed this initiative to V. Putin, was the head of the department of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), former Minister of Nationalities Affairs Vyacheslav Mikhailov. He also proposed the name of the law - “On the Russian nation and the management of interethnic relations.” Later in an interview with TASS he details his initiative.
According to Mikhailov, the law on the Russian nation and management of interethnic relations will allow top level consolidate the concept of the Russian nation as a “political fellow citizen” and determine the goal of the state’s development. Mikhailov pointed out that in the Constitution of the Russian Federation the concept of “multinational people of the Russian Federation” is not deciphered; everyone interprets it in their own way. “Some believe that this is a civil nation, others that it is a nation of nations, a multi-ethnic people,” he explained. “At the same time, the State National Policy Strategy for the period until 2025, approved in 2012, already includes such a concept as the Russian nation.” According to Mikhailov, the disadvantage of the strategy is that it is limited by time frames. “I believe that we need to move from strategy to the law on the Russian nation,” Mikhailov said, pointing out that the legislation different countries there is a concept of a nation, “for example, British, American, French.”
The scientist believes that the law will mark a “national line.” “This is a decoding of the concept of “Russian nation” not only as a “civil nation”, but also as special kind civilization. When we say “Russian nation,” this means co-citizenship in a country with clearly defined borders.” According to Mikhailov, the concept of “Russian nation” “does not have any ethnic basis, it is purely political co-citizenship.” "The Russian nation in in this case is a union of all citizens. We connect the civil, political nation with ethnic communities,” he believes.
Expert assessments
Nikolay Starikov:
“Based on the information that was announced in the media on October 31, it is still difficult to talk about the meaning that will be included in the law on the Russian nation. The name is quite broad, so we need to wait for this law to be filled with some meaning. But before we receive this information, some time will pass. Therefore, now I would like to outline my vision of this problem.
At the moment, it is obvious that the severity of interethnic relations has largely subsided - thanks to the situation of unprecedented external pressure on the Russian Federation, economic sanctions, attempts to be drawn into war, which every citizen of Russia feels, regardless of his nationality. As soon as we feel that we are being attacked, we unite. It is very good that we in no way lost this feeling, this opportunity, this ability to unite the citizens of our state after the collapse of the Soviet Union and along the path of so-called reforms. This is the first.
Second. In order to understand how we can develop our state, we must ask ourselves the question: how did it develop? For anyone who studies with an open mind historical facts, it is obvious that Russia is a free union of Eurasian peoples that has developed around the Russian people. It is the three components of this definition that are important: a free union; Eurasian peoples; around the Russian people. This means that the Russian people, of course, are the state-forming people in the Russian Federation. But at the same time, the uniqueness of our state association lies in the fact that not a single non-Russian people (nationality) included in Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, was never subjected to any extermination or attempts to deprive it of its national identity. This is a rich mosaic, where each of the parts is equally valuable, and together they make up the palette that is the value of the Russian world. This means that a “nationality” column should appear in the passports of Russian citizens. Even in our Constitution it is written that our people are multinational. This corresponds to what you and I know even without the Constitution. But you and I cannot write and cannot read a person’s nationality in a citizen’s passport. This happened in the Soviet Union. There is nothing to be ashamed of here. To those who say that we have interethnic marriages and it will be difficult for someone to determine their nationality, I would like to say that I have not seen a single person who does not know his nationality, even if his parents belong to two different ethnic groups .
Therefore, in my opinion, the legislative initiative that was announced yesterday is an attempt at a new level to begin to designate in terms, to fill with meaning the same concept as the “multinational Soviet people” once was. It is wrong to say that the Soviet people did not exist. a great victory 1945 was carried out precisely by the great Soviet people.
The overwhelming majority of Soviet people lived together and did not even think about national problems. We were forced to think about this after 1991, when a number of small nations were instilled with the idea of their suppression by the Russians, and many Russians began to acutely feel the infringement of their national identity. In the USSR, all this was overcome. But it is completely unclear on what ideological basis - if in modern Russia there is no announced project for the future - are they going to build a new unity of ethnic groups in the Russian Federation?
After all, the state project, the civilizational project, is built by a community of people called the people. And in order for this nation to take shape, there must be a certain base - a commonality of views, culture, ideology. Today we see attempts to build this state project, stimulate development, and fill the Russian World project with a certain meaning. And the complexity of this process lies precisely in the fact that there is no ideological basis. The ideas that Russia should bring to the world have not yet been formulated.
Let's remember our own experience, The Russian Empire was an Orthodox empire that brought certain ideas to the surrounding space. And she carried them quite successfully - just look at geographical map. The Soviet Union also had a super idea that it brought to the surrounding space. But the ideas that Russia should bring to the world today have not been fully formulated. Because ideas market economy, liberal dogmas, human rights, which in no way correlate with the responsibilities of the same person, are absolutely secondary to the same ideas that we, unfortunately, learned from our American and all sorts of other partners.
Therefore, in Astrakhan the correct direction is indicated, but the wheels have not yet been attached to our state car, without which it is very difficult for it to move further. You can, of course, carry it in your arms, but such a path of movement in metaphysical space cannot be distant and successful. That’s why I said that we must now wait, giving the authors of the idea that was expressed yesterday the opportunity to present to society a little more than the name of the bill in question. Because it can be breakthrough, new and truly lay the foundation of the civilizational idea that our state will bring to the world. But, unfortunately, there is a possibility that this may not happen.
Couldn’t the message from Russia to the rest of the world be precisely our unique Eurasian ability to live without suppressing, the ability to live in the world in the most different ethnic groups and even races - that which unites and Soviet experience, and imperial experience, and medieval, and pre-Christian experience? The ability to live in peace has a name. This is justice. It is justice that has always been inscribed on the banners of Russia. And we must return her name to our modern banners. By the way, this is precisely why Russia is so popular in the world today, our national leader’s rating is so high, because the actions that Russia takes in the foreign policy arena are just. We are on the side of justice. We stand for the preservation of international legislation, for its observance, for the impossibility of the strong arbitrarily robbing, destroying, and bombing the weak. All this causes a serious response in the world, because the lack of justice there is acutely felt. Probably, Russia’s highest mission is to convey the idea of justice to the whole world.
When we act in the way that God’s providence originally laid down in the meaning of existence Russian state, then everything works out great for us, we develop. As soon as we try to play other people's games by someone else's rules, we enter a difficult period in our history. I think that every effort should be made to fill this new legislative act with the meaning necessary for the development of the state. We must also remember not only Russian experience, which is certainly rich, but also global. Let's remember how states developed and how they fell into decline.
You don’t have to look far for examples; you can remember Byzantium. When in the Eastern Roman Empire everyone was Roman, when there was a superidea of Orthodoxy, the state developed, grew stronger and not only remained afloat, but existed perfectly for many centuries, unlike the destroyed Western Roman Empire. As soon as interethnic conflicts began, as soon as the Romans began to divide within themselves into Greeks, Armenians, Italics, Syrians, Jews, Slavs, and so on, the state was destroyed, and this had a rather sad effect on almost all the peoples that were part of the then Eastern Roman Empire . We see exactly the same thing in the example of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire. As soon as division into national enclaves began, the state collapsed, weakened and disintegrated. Here we can debate for a long time what came first: first the collapse of the state, and then a surge of nationalist sentiments, or vice versa, but for me personally it is obvious that if the historical community “Soviet people” had been as strong in 1985 as in 1945 -m, the state could not disintegrate. Therefore, first they attack ethnic unity, then the destruction of the state inevitably begins.
To summarize, I want to say that the authors of the idea of creating a law on the Russian nation understand what happened to Soviet Union. And that is why they are trying today to create a new community, which, of course, exists, but is not yet fully expressed in the senses that are required today. Therefore, we must make every effort to ensure that these meanings appear, and then under our state car we will be able to attach the wheels necessary for its movement forward.”
Representatives of which nations should receive Russian citizenship in a simplified manner? How to adapt migrants and is it worth taking an example from Europe in this matter? These issues were discussed at the Council on Interethnic Relations, which was held in Astrakhan. The meeting was chaired by Vladimir Putin. And before that, the president launched oil production at one of the largest Russian fields on the Caspian shelf.
The Astrakhan school named after Heydar Aliyev is preparing for the Day national unity. A border region inhabited by people of 147 nationalities. The mother of one of the school students is Tatar, married to an Azerbaijani.
- Have you learned Azerbaijani?
“I learned it, since I’ve been married for 10 years, I already know this language,” admits Ralina Nasirova.
“Is he Tatar? Does he know at least a few words?” – asked the correspondent.
“These languages are very similar to each other, so we understand each other,” Ralina assures him.
People of different nationalities living in Russia have been able to understand each other for as long as the country has existed.
“It never even occurred to me to think about nationality, who my husband should be - Russian, Bashkir, Tatar. After all, the secret of family happiness is love,” the woman admits.
At a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations, President Putin states: the national policy strategy approved 4 years ago is working.
“Almost 80% of the country’s citizens, I note this with satisfaction, consider relations between people of different nationalities to be friendly or normal. Several years ago, as surveys show, only 55% of our citizens gave such an assessment,” noted Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This, however, according to Putin, is not a reason to reduce attention to the issue. Moreover, interethnic and interregional contradictions have sharply worsened in the world, and tensions are growing due to the flow of migrants. At the same time, for their compatriots, the Council participants said, it is necessary to soften the rules when obtaining citizenship. To do this, they proposed compiling a specific list of the peoples of Russia.
“Who is ours, who is a stranger, who is ours, who is a stranger, at least, roughly speaking, determine. I proceed from that European world experience,” suggested one of the council participants.
“Let’s rely on our own. The European experience is not the best right now,” Vladimir Putin warned.
"Yes, yes, yes. But for a good one. There is good experience“, although they have a lot of nonsense, but what is good is at least this,” the council member continued the thought.
“Listen, this is nonsense,” Putin was surprised. “In general, you saw what was happening. An emigrant raped a child in one of the European countries. The court acquitted him on two grounds: he speaks the language of his host country poorly and did not understand that the boy, and it was a boy, was objecting. I can't imagine what they are doing there. This is the result of the erosion of these traditional national values. And I don’t even know how to explain it, a feeling of guilt towards these migrants or what else. It’s not even clear what’s going on there. But a society that cannot protect its children today has no tomorrow, no future. Therefore, their experience, frankly speaking, is not the best. And we have - thousand-year history formation of a multinational state."
At the same time, in the country last years According to experts, the “civil nation” began to strengthen - the feeling of being part of Russia, part of a country with achievements both in the past and in the present. People of various nationalities are proud to be Russians. Crimean Tatars are also proud to be Russians. A participant in the meeting, who came from Crimea, said that over the past two years, so much has been done for the Crimean Tatar people that has not been done for 25 years: the key decree on rehabilitation is only a part.
“We’ve decided on the location for the mosque, right?” – Vladimir Putin asked him.
“Yes, we have already laid it. We are very pleased, of course,” admitted a guest from Crimea.
“Everyone is happy, the place suits me, as I understand it,” Putin said.
“Of course. You know how many places for this mosque were chosen over the course of 10 years. They gave it, then they took it away. Now it has already been laid, they have begun laying the foundation. Thank you very much,” a council member thanked Putin.
Putin supported the proposal to hold a year of unity of the Russian nation, to create a law on the Russian nation - it will help in the development of interethnic relations.
The Astrakhan region, where the council meeting took place, is also a region with a powerful oil and gas complex. On October 31, the President launched oil production at the largest oil field in Russia discovered over the past 25 years. Despite the fact that the platform is located directly in the sea, the principle of zero discharge applies here.
“Nothing ends up in the sea,” the miners emphasize once again.
“Excellent. Nikolai Nikolaevich, begin,” Putin commands.
“The Filonovskoye field has been put into operation,” is heard from the loudspeaker.
“I congratulate you. There is a lot of work, Vagit Yusufovich (Alekperov) said, for 50 years. I hope you will continue to work actively and with the same quality,” Putin continued.
Offshore ice-resistant platforms are being built here in Astrakhan. So sanctions and restrictions on technology do not bother anyone here.
The support of the offshore platform can only be seen now. Then piles will be driven into the niches, and the support will lie on the seabed. The huge structure will hold the offshore platform in any weather, in any storm and in any ice.
“For the next 20 years, we plan to build almost 15 platforms annually. Until 2021, we build one platform every year,” Vagit Alekperov, president of PJSC Lukoil, proudly stated.
“This means that there will be orders for metallurgists, for those who produce pipes and cables. And of course, this is a significant contribution to the development of the country’s economy as a whole,” Vladimir Putin emphasized.
This field alone will produce 6 million tons of oil per year.
