Between and approximately 11, Meskhetian Turks emigrated to the United States thanks to a resettlement programme. The stateless persons who remain in Krasnodar Krai suffer from widespread discrimination: in addition to Meskhetian Turks, other minorities have suffered a similar fate — Batumi Kurds, Hemshils and Yezidis.
Diversity is entrenched in the very structure of the Federation, with 21 ethnic republics in which local languages are recognized as official alongside Russian. Despite this, under President Vladimir Putin an emphasis has been placed — in official discourse, the education system and the media — on national unity and Russian patriotism.
This has been reflected in the increasing attrition of a range of rights for minorities and indigenous peoples in the country, from language and land rights to freedom of expression and security. This is against a broader backdrop of state repression that has seen many basic rights rolled back in recent years, particularly in areas where the state is actively engaged in conflict.
The Russian authorities, who now hold primarily responsibility for the protection of Ukrainian citizens in Crimea due to their de facto control of the region, have instead contributed to the deteriorating security environment by actively targeting activists, particularly those belonging to the indigenous Tatar population. The autonomous republics of the North Caucasus, an ethnically diverse, Muslim majority region home to a total of roughly 15 million people, have been the site of ethnically and religiously-based insurgencies since the fall of the former USSR.
Meanwhile, human rights organizations have documented a systematic campaign by Chechen authorities to arrest, torture and even kill anyone suspected of homosexuality. Political struggles in the North Caucasus, including extended periods of conflict in Chechnya and security operations in neighbouring republics, have also stoked hostility and conflict against North Caucasians migrating within the Russian Federation.
Migrants from other minority communities face similar hostility, reinforced by nationalist rhetoric in political and public discourse that draws a divide between ethnic Russians and other ethnic groups. As a result, there have been regular incidents of violence targeting mainly non-Slavs, including migrants from the North Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as people of African origin. According to the Moscow-based SOVA Center, around 5 people were killed and 66 wounded in racist and neo-Nazi attacks during ; while this represents a decline from the last few years, the patterns of attacks nevertheless highlights the persistent prejudice that minorities and migrants face.
Most of the victims were of Central Asian origin, though attacks on people of Middle Eastern and sub-Saharan African origin were also recorded. While there is much demand and reliance on foreign workers in the Russian market, especially in light of the demographic decline of the Russian population, there are high levels of immigration that are not legalized due to the highly bureaucratic and burdensome nature of the procedures to obtain work permits and residence registration.
In recent years, the conditions for migrant workers have continued to deteriorate: regulations are continuously modified and are becoming increasingly restrictive.
In addition to the bureaucratic hurdles involved in obtaining work and residence permits, since law enforcement officials have used particularly repressive means to crack down on illegal immigration.
The absence of registration or even identity documents has made migrants — and some particularly disadvantaged minorities such as Roma — vulnerable to police abuse, leading to illegal searches, arbitrary detention and extortion of bribes.
This official persecution has emboldened ultranationalist groups to carry out their own attacks on migrants and ethnic minorities in a form of vigilantism seeking to combat crimes allegedly perpetrated by these groups. The right to freedom of religion of some minorities in Russia is at times restricted, through arbitrary application of legislation and discrimination by the government, judges and the police.
There have also been instances of harassment of Muslim communities practising non-traditional forms of Islam, particularly in the North Caucasus. Some Muslims and members of other religious communities have been detained and tried on criminal charges of extremism. In the North Caucasus region, security agencies have raided Salafi mosques and detained hundreds of congregants at a time.
The federal authorities continue to update the Federal List of Extremist Materials: according to the SOVA Centre, it was updated 33 times during , with the addition of items reaching a total of 4, proscribed materials.
Law No. The law foresees the banning of organizations engaging in such activities and the prosecution of Russian activists or organizations involved with them, including those in receipt of their funding. The provisions thus threaten the funds of minority and indigenous organizations from foreign entities.
As a result the organization decided to cease activities in August There is often limited consultation with indigenous peoples on matters of interest to their communities and insufficient access to effective remedies in case of rights violations.
In some cases, the judiciary has targeted indigenous human rights defenders. In October , for example, authorities in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region re-zoned a nature reserve at Lake Numto, a holy site for the Khanty people, to allow oil drilling, despite reported local opposition.
The elimination in of a legal requirement for oil and gas companies to perform official consultations with indigenous populations before starting drilling projects on land vital to their livelihoods paved the way for the re-zoning. The poverty and exclusion of many indigenous communities takes a heavy toll. While Russia has one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world, indigenous youth in Siberia and the Far North, including the Buryat, Mari, Tuvan, Evenk, Udmurt, Altai and Yakut people, are disproportionately at risk.
Siberian regions with large indigenous populations were the clear leaders in this grim statistic, with one, the Republic of Buryatia, posting a nearly 70 per cent per cent increase in youth suicide.
The reasons for elevated suicide rates among these groups are unclear, but past studies have cited damage to ancestral lands by extractive industries, causing the loss of traditional cultures, and the difficulties of adapting to urbanization, in addition to factors like widespread unemployment and alcoholism.
Roma settlements have been targeted by law-enforcement officials. Furthermore, community members face serious problems in securing employment due to negative stereotyping and obstructions to renewing temporary residence permits. Lacking representatives in positions of authority, their political concerns have remained unheard: the economic, social and cultural rights of Roma are also violated through blocked access to housing, health care and education.
Against this backdrop of profound discrimination, Roma are frequently the victims of racist violence. The consolidation of the Russian state by Ivan the Fourth the Terrible in the 16th century was brought about by the conquest of the Muslim Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan on the river Volga.
The Tatar elite retained their language and religion on condition that they served the Tsar. Thus, Russia has since that time had a large Tatar population, Tatars are now the largest ethnic minority in Russia after Ukrainians. The conquest of the Kazan Khanate in opened the way to Russian expansion into Siberia, which brought new communities under Russian control. The conquest of the Caucasus region in the nineteenth century, accompanied by the incorporation of a variety of Central Asian populations, further shifted the ethnic composition of the empire.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the expansion of the Russian Empire had brought several hundred different ethnic communities and a variety of religious minorities under Russian control. Although incorporation into Russia marked the end of independence for the conquered peoples, initially little was done to extinguish their separate identity.
Indeed, provided these groups were prepared to accept the authority of the Tsar, representatives of the minority communities could advance to high positions within the imperial order. For the first time, local identities and ways of life faced a serious challenge. From the s, the Russian authorities began to promote Russification and conversion to Orthodoxy, especially among Muslim Tatars. This initial drive led to civil unrest and the policy was moderated.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, Russification was again pursued, although, at this stage, the idea of creating a specifically ethnically Russian order was balanced by the aim of building a powerful imperial state.
Growing national sentiment among many of the minority populations in the Russian Empire was accelerated by the collapse of the tsarist order in In the civil war that followed, the Bolsheviks developed a pact with leading ethnic groups that offered these groups territorial advantages in return for their allegiance. With the eventual triumph of the Soviet forces, the practice of granting ethno-territorial autonomy to leading ethnic groups was institutionalized as an organizing principle of the Soviet state.
Within it a wide variety of groups were awarded varying degrees of territorial autonomy, marking an important distinction from the imperial administrative structure.
In place of the pre-revolutionary arrangement of provinces guberniya , the Soviets introduced an administrative system built around a structural asymmetry based on ethnicity. Although this system underwent a prolonged evolution, ethnicity remained a central principle at the heart of the Russian administrative order. By the s, the RSFSR was organized into 88 administrative components subjects of higher than city and district level. These subjects were divided into two categories.
First, ethno-territorial units: 16 autonomous Soviet socialist republics ASSRs — based around sizeable non-Russian ethnic groups and considered the embodiment of the national statehood of their titular populations; 5 autonomous oblasts regions AOs — smaller ethnic-based units; 10 autonomous okrugs districts AOks — the lowest level ethnic units, situated within an oblast or krai province. Second, the remaining areas of the RSFSR, comprising most of its constituent members and accounting for about 70 per cent of its territory and more than 80 per cent of the population, was divided into territorial formations: six krais mostly large and lightly populated areas , and 49 oblasts — largely ethnically homogeneous, Russian-populated districts.
In addition, Moscow and Leningrad now St Petersburg were given a status broadly equivalent to that of an oblast. Regional and minority interests were subordinated to the security, economic and diplomatic concerns of the Soviet government. Steps were taken to ensure that the ethnoterritorial units did not develop as centres for nationalism. A wide variety of minority populations were subject to deportations — notably peoples of the North Caucasus and Volga Germans — and to forced assimilation to the prevailing Russo-Soviet culture.
From the s, teaching of Russian became compulsory and many native languages disappeared from schools. The migration of Russian-speaking Slavs to the previously non-Russified regions reinforced the process of Russification.
Despite these measures, from the s a growing ethnic and then national awareness came to characterize many of the minorities in the RSFSR.
In the s, the combination of growing nationalist sentiment, the emergence of a reformist General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev , and the ethno-territorial arrangement of the Russian Federation provided the conditions for minority issues to assume central significance in the RSFSR.
In the latter years of perestroika, the nominally federal structure of the RSFSR assumed a real significance for the conduct of domestic politics. Following the elections for the Russian Supreme Soviet in , a strong movement for increased regional powers, built on an alliance between regional economic interests and local nationalist groups, developed in the ethnic territories, especially the ASSRs.
Emboldened by the new freedoms of the period, this movement was further encouraged by the struggle for power between Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. As a result, substantial autonomy was granted to the republics by Yeltsin and the Russian parliament.
Gorbachev, too, sought to use the republics, but his plan was to enlist them against the Russian democrats and thereby prevent the disintegration of the Union. The first draft of the Union treaty November put the ASSRs on a par with the Union republics — both were described as republics and as sovereign states.
The opportunity for increased autonomy created by the political struggle at the centre accelerated moves to assert local control. The drive for greater autonomy was led by the ethnic republics, particularly Tatarstan, with Bashkortostan and the Republic of Sakha Yakutia close behind.
The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of marked a new phase in the development of the minorities issue in Russia. The final demise of the Soviet system led to the creation of a new Russia but this was not a nation state, rather a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural state. After independence, Russians and minority populations faced two principal and interrelated challenges.
First, the position of ethnic Russians, Russian culture and history, and the Russian language in the new Russia needed to be determined. In the late s, while powerful ethno-national popular fronts emerged in the Union republics, the multi-ethnic nature of Russia militated against this in the RSFSR.
Instead, a Russian democratic movement was formed around a civic notion of Russia. After independence, growing ethno-nationalism induced the disintegration of the democratic movement.
Determining the nature of Russian national identity — whether it is to be centred on ethnic Russians or incorporate the diversity of peoples and cultures of the Russian Federation RF — became one of the central issues in Russian politics. The issue of who has a right to an ethnic territory and the rights and obligations of these regions became a dominant theme in Russia. In response to these challenges, a formal constitutional process developed to try to remake Russia and to define the position of the minority populations.
This process involved changes in the rights of some ethnic territories and peoples, the negotiation of a federation treaty, the April referendum and December parliamentary elections and a new Constitution, and the negotiation of a series of bilateral agreements between Moscow and the republics. Change has involved large-scale migration and bloody conflict. After independence the central authorities were committed to the idea of moving the foundation of the federation onto a territorial, rather than ethno-territorial, basis.
However, the conflict between the executive and the legislature in Moscow from early in initially encouraged a further disintegration of the federation. Both branches of central government offered increased rights to the regions in return for their support. The first republics to challenge Moscow were Chechnya-Ingushetia and Tatarstan. In November , the leadership of Chechnya- Ingushetia declared independence from Russia and immediately set about consolidating its independence and securing international economic and political support.
As the drive for autonomy gathered pace in the RF, the fight for ethnic territories became more intense, particularly in the North Caucasus. In its final form, the federation treaty consisted of three sets of agreements reflecting the unequal distribution of power between levels of administrative units. Each agreement outlined a different distribution of power between Moscow and the regions, with the ethnic republics receiving the greatest autonomy. At the end of March , the treaty was signed by all the subjects of the Russian Federation, except Chechnya, Ingushetia and Tatarstan.
Overall, the new federation treaty did little to clarify the division of powers between the centre and the regions. The delegations from the republics of Bashkortostan, Karelia and Sakha only agreed to the treaty when President Yeltsin and Ruslan Khasbulatov, Speaker of the Supreme Soviet, signed bilateral addenda granting them additional rights.
By January , the politics of ethno-regionalism had produced a situation in which the Russian central authorities had recognized the special nature of most ethnic-based administrative units within the RF and had given some of the AOs the status of republics.
Republican status had been reached by 21 units, leaving six krais, 49 oblasts, one autonomous oblast and 10 autonomous okrugs. Tatarstan won a series of special treaties with Moscow, giving it a very high degree of autonomy.
Following fighting between North Ossetians and Ingush November , the first signs of a change at the centre began to emerge. Sergei Shakhrai, a specialist on ethnic issues, was placed in charge of regional and nationalities policy and a more directed and coordinated policy began to develop.
The foundation of this new approach was to be a new Russian Constitution. In early , when a constitutional assembly convened to work out the final draft of the new Constitution, one of the central issues was the distribution of powers between the centre and the regions. Following the use of force against the White House, Yeltsin moved against the regions, disbanding the local soviets and transferring power to the head of the local administration. The system of executive power was then used to generate support for the new Russian Constitution, which was meant to institutionalize a shift in power from the regions back to the centre.
The disintegration of the Soviet order, coupled with the radical political, economic and social reforms instituted in Russia since the late s, exacerbated inter-ethnic tensions and highlighted the complex ethno-political inheritance from the Russo-Soviet imperial order.
After independence, minority communities had simultaneously to redefine their relationship with Moscow and begin to come to terms with the Russian colonial past. Negotiating the process of building a new multiethnic, multicultural Russia has generated a wide variety of problems and, on occasion, violence. The Constitution, which was adopted in December , contained important changes from the draft produced by the constitutional assembly in the summer.
The principle of equality for all regions, which aimed to stem the disproportionate drift of power to the ethnic republics, was established. The Constitution also guaranteed the language rights of the non-Russian populations, thereby reinforcing the Declaration on the Languages of the Peoples of Russia 25 October , which granted all peoples the choice for their language of education and upbringing. However, the previously guaranteed position of minority representatives in the legislature was ended when the Council of Nationalities was replaced by an upper chamber with each subject of the federation electing two representatives.
In fact, the new Constitution failed to clarify the precise division of powers between the federal centre and the provinces.
Despite the equality among the subjects of the federation institutionalized in the Constitution and the apparently clear delimitation of authority, relations between the centre and the regions continued to be characterized by a struggle for power. This situation led Moscow and some of the republics to conclude bilateral treaties. The first treaty to delineate responsibilities and powers between the federal and republican authorities was signed with Tatarstan in and was followed by treaties with other republics.
Following treaties with the republics, Moscow concluded bilateral agreements with many of the oblasts. From the early s, the struggle for power between the federal authorities and the ethno-territorial units gradually transformed the RF from a unitary empire into something that resembles a federation.
However, although the struggle for a genuine federation fostered a transfer of powers to the ethnic republics, it also reinforced the link between control of territory and the power and rights that minorities can enjoy. Faced with these problems, the federal authorities repeatedly stressed the need to move the basis of the federation away from the ethnic principle and on to an arrangement in which all subjects would have equal status.
Such a change would, however, require groups to abandon their aspirations for nationhood. The ethnic republics fiercely resisted any moves to undermine their position.
The conclusion of a series of bilateral treaties with the republics indicates that federal authorities have accepted that these areas cannot be forced to participate in the federation. The continuing struggle between Moscow and the ethnic republics, especially the decision to invade Chechnya in , suggested however that basic problems remained.
Determining the federal structure of the RF will not, however, solve the basic question about the dominance of Russians. In many of these regions, however, the numerical dominance of ethnic Russians and other Slavs ensures that ethnic autonomy is largely a fiction. For those without an officially recognized homeland, the pressures to assimilate was even greater.
While the struggle for power between the ethnic republics and Moscow was taking place, there was also a general revival of the linguistic, cultural and ethnic practices of minority populations in the RF. Religious organizations also emerged in all the main minority groups. The North Caucasus was annexed by tsarist Russia in the early nineteenth century but not fully pacified until the s.
In the twentieth century the region has been subject to a range of turbulent developments ranging from the civil war to deportations s. Since the demise of the Soviet system, the North Caucasus has emerged as the most ethnically volatile region in the RF. The area is riven with territorial and border disputes involving many of the more than 60 distinct national, ethnic and religious groups Christian and Muslim in the region.
The aim of the congress was to work towards the creation of a Caucasian Federal Republic. The emergence of this organization was a sign of the growing discontent of the local leaders with the RF and a response to the emergence of Cossacks as an organized force.
At the end of its Third Congress in November , the congress became the Confederation of the Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, incorporating 16 nations. In October it became the Confederation of Peoples of the Caucasus. The Congress created a Confederation of Caucasian Republics — continuing the tradition of the Union of Mountain Peoples created in Despite efforts to present a unified political front, it has proved difficult to establish a common agenda and internal rivalries over territory and relative influence in the region remain intense.
Beyond the Caucasus area, people from the region have faced popular prejudice and harassment by the Russian authorities, in part because of the conflicts in the Caucasus and in part reflecting the widespread perception that people from the region are involved in criminal activities.
The republic declared its sovereignty in May The complexity of minority issues in Dagestan — there are at least 32 separate ethnic groups within its borders — and the close identity between many of these groups and certain territory led to calls for the republic to become a federation.
Russian Federation remains an amalgam of widely varying ethnic groups and cultures. In fact, the differentiation among groups has increased since the demise of the Soviet Union. The much less repressive grasp of Russia's central government has encouraged both cultural and political autonomy, although ethnic Russians constitute about 80 percent of the population and about 75 percent of religious believers are Russian Orthodox.
Many minority groups maintain their ethnic traditions, continue wide use of their languages, and demand economic and political autonomy partially based on ethnic differences.
The total population of the twenty-one ethnic republics, all designated for one or more of the minority groups in the federation, was about 24 million. However, only in eight of the republics was the population of the titular group or groups, in the case of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachayevo-Cherkessia larger than the population of Russians, and Russians constitute more than half the population in nine republics. One other ethnic jurisdiction, the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region in the West Siberian Plain, has a population of more than 1 million; however, two-thirds of the autonomous region's population are Russian settlers, and the Khanty and Mansi, the tribes for which the region is named, together constitute less than 2 percent of the population.
In the s, Islam, which has the second largest body of religious believers in Russia, has prospered among many of the ethnic groups. The Russian Orthodox Church also has experienced a renaissance after emerging from Soviet repression; the church's membership, secular influence, and infrastructure expanded rapidly in the s.
Russia is a multinational state that has inherited many of the nationality problems that plagued the Soviet Union. The last official Soviet census, conducted in , listed more than nationalities. Several of those groups now predominantly inhabit the independent nations that formerly were Soviet republics. However, the Russian Federation--the most direct successor to the Soviet Union--still is home to more than national minorities, whose members coexist uneasily with the numerically and politically predominant Russians.
Besides the Slavs Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians , who account for about 85 percent of Russia's population, three main ethnic groups and a handful of isolated smaller groups reside within the federation.
The Altaic group includes mainly speakers of Turkic languages widely distributed in the middle Volga, the southern Ural Mountains, the North Caucasus, and above the Arctic Circle. The Uralic group, consisting of Finnic peoples living in the upper Volga, the far northwest, and the Urals, includes the Karelians, Komi, Mari, Mordovians, and Udmurts.
The Caucasus group is concentrated along the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains; its main subgroups are the Adyghs, Chechens, Cherkess, Ingush, and Kabardins, as well as about thirty Caucasus peoples collectively classified as Dagestani.
When the Russian Federation proclaimed its sovereignty in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse in late , many of those entities also declared their sovereignty. Of the thirty-one, sixteen were autonomous republics, five were autonomous oblasts provinces , and ten were autonomous regions okruga ; sing.
During the Soviet era, the autonomy referred to in these jurisdictions' official titles was more fictitious than real--the executive committees that administered the jurisdictions had no decision-making authority. All major administrative tasks were performed by the central government or, in the case of some social services, by industrial enterprises in the area.
In postcommunist Russia, however, many of the autonomous areas have staked claims to more meaningful sovereignty as the numerically superior Russians continue to dominate the center of power in Moscow. Even in the many regions where Russians are in the majority, such claims have been made in the name of the indigenous ethnic group or groups.
According to the Soviet census, Russians constituted The next-largest groups were Tatars 3. Other groups totaling more than 0. In an estimated 7. With a few changes in status in the post-World War II period, the autonomous republics, autonomous oblasts, and autonomous regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic retained the classifications assigned to them in the s or s.
In all cases, the post-communist Russian government officially changed the term "autonomous republic" to "republic" in According to the Soviet census, in only fifteen of the thirty-one ethnically designated republics and autonomous regions were the "indigenous" people the largest group. They do have some characteristics in common: many are nomadic or seminomadic, practice animism, and have lifestyles based on hunting, gathering, fishing, and reindeer herding.
In many of these groups, an adherence to traditional lifestyle has become even more important since the collapse of the Soviet economy. The languages of the Indigenous groups of Russia are numerous, but most of them belong to one of three main ethno-linguistic groups: Uralic, Altaic, and Paleo-Siberian. We highly encourage you to look into the amazing cultures of the individual tribes — this website provides a great starting point with introductions to each group.
Unfortunately, the Indigenous peoples of Russia also share many common problems. Russia has not ratified ILO Convention Though Indigenous Peoples are protected under Article 69 of the Russian Constitution, the implementation of protective laws and regulations are often not adequately enforced or are complicated by government decisions regarding natural resource use in the North. There are currently 70 places of potential conflict between local groups and extractive projects — for example, nickel mining has intruded on many reindeer pastures and sacred sites.
In November , the Committee of the Federation Council on Northern Affairs and Affairs of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples, the only federal legislation body specializing in Indigenous Affairs, was dissolved, along with several regional specialized government bodies. Many Indigenous groups also suffer from insufficient fishing rights — in an amendment to federal law removed provisions of priority for access to fishing grounds for Indigenous peoples, and stipulated that Indigenous peoples may only fish for their personal needs.
This excludes obshchinas , or Indigenous cooperatives — in many territories, the largest providers of income and employment for Indigenous peoples. There are over 2, obshchinas across Russia. It is also very difficult for nomadic fishers to obtain licenses, and they face heavy fines for fishing without a license.
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