Those in Moscow who want Russians and non-Russians within the borders of the Russian Federation to give up their ethnic identities in favor of a political identity as ‘Rossiyane‘ often suggest that they are doing no more than copying the kind of political identity the United States has promoted.
But a Ukrainian portal has pointed out how wrong they are because Americans are and even are encouraged to be proud of their ethnic heritage and instead of shifting from their ethnic identities in becoming Americans combine the two and proudly declare that they are both ethnic and American.
Unfortunately, ethnic Russians continue to be denied this opportunity because to speak of their ethnic origins is to highlight their diversity and the fact that the word “Russian” is an adjective rather than a noun that modifies but doesn’t replace the underlying ethnic communities it has been applied to.
“Practically EVERY American knows his or her nationality and as rule is proud of it: there are numerous ethnic festivals and parades.” There are a few who “consider themselves simply Americans [but] as a rule, these are children of mixed marriages who are not particularly interested in their genealogy.”
The writer continues that he has never met anyone in the US who was not proud of both his ethnic background and his citizenship.
“WHY?”
Five hundred years ago, there were no ethnic Russians, the portal continues. “The name RUSSIANS appeared after the Moscow princes beginning with Ivan the Terrible decided to build an empire” by engaging in wars of conquest and then calling the conquered peoples “RUSSIANS” even if they were Bashkirs or Chuvash or Buryats or Chukchis or Eskimos.
Some, but far from all of these primordial peoples, were able to retain their culture and even something of their identity, but the appearance of the name “RUSSIAN” which was thought up by Moscow tsars and forcibly applied to the population didn’t provide an adequate substitute for the content that was lost.
As a result, many who call themselves Russians found themselves without a clear definition of what that meant, and the 1917 revolution only made things worse by promoting “a new synonym for Russian: the SOVIET MAN or SOVOK.” And many have not been able to escape from that because they don’t know what they could replace it with.
And that leads to others: “why are [Russians], who are in fact representatives of various peoples and tribes turning away from their ethnicity, betraying in this way their ancestors, their historical roots and their national uniqueness? Why are [they] continuing to remain one” with few rights and many divisions? “Isn’t it time to change something?”
To ask those questions, of course, explains why Moscow is trying to impose the new political identity without any real ethnic content because to do otherwise would bring the entire falsity of the Russian identity as currently constructed into focus not only for others but for the Russians themselves.
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