Is Russia culling its ethnic minorities?

It was (EDIT - the Marxist rhetoric) of the USSR to promote ethnic harmony. The Soviet Union was portrayed as a model of comradeship regardless of ethnicity or religion. Reality was different.

Todays Russia is a different place. The predominant ideology is nationalism filtered through a strong centralized state focused on Putin and in effect working through oligarchical power structures at the local level. The Russian Orthodox church has replaced the communist party as the soul of institutionalized government. When people insist that Russia must make peace perhaps they neglect to investigate the ways in which this war serves the purposes of the Russian elite to consolidate power and wealth in their hands. If only non-Orthodox, poor, low skilled Asians are dying in the war then most Russians in St Petersburg or Moscow (who have not been heavily recruited) do not really care and so the war can go on as long as necessary.

At a public lecture in my local university I heard a lot of evidence about what was really going on in Russia today. Recruitment and casualties in the military are disproportionately located in ethnic minorities. Of course state propaganda conceals this as ethnic harmony is crucial to Russian unity. Recruitment is mainly by individual contracts but the push to join up can generate fabricated choices that serve the agenda of the elite. So ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in the criminal population for example. This is often because there are no opportunities in remote Siberian towns for poor, low skilled Asians. So they peddle drugs and get arrested - no one ever arrests the big bosses. They are then given choices about joining up. In the same way the average wages in Siberia are really low even by Russian standards but signing up gets you a sign on bonus, cheaper offers on housing and a decent salary. Also an appeal is made to the unemployed ex hunters and fisherman to show they are real men on the battlefield. So in this way the state can claim they chose to serve when in fact the pressure to serve is a clever strategy of playing the realities on the ground.

The result is massive depopulation in already run down rural communities exacerbating Russia's demographic crisis. Often these towns sit on large mineral deposits. The oligarchs and large corporations sweep in and buy up land and property at knock down prices to build their mines. Contractors come in from elsewhere in Russia but do not settle in these places. Corporations have quotas for recruitment which they can fill with the underperforming and political malcontents. The quota for oil companies is far lower than for other companies. In effect if you complain or resist you get sent to the front and culled on the battlefield. The regime is thereby only strengthened by a prolonged war even if the country as a whole is weakened by the numbers killed, wounded. skilled, networked workers who have fled the country, and the devastation of rural Russia communities.

My question is what can be done about this. If the elite does not benefit from peace, will it ever happen? If resistance is impossible then how can change occur?

Gene2memE said:

The USSR may not have always been a vehicle for Russian imperialism. But that's what it very rapidly became, ideological underpinnings notwithstanding.

The USSR's primary concern wasn't to promote ethnic harmony. Otherwise it wouldn't have engaged in long-term programmes of ethinc supression, forced relocations/expulsions, mass internal migration, Russification and the destruction of national, cultural and language groups.

That's not to even mention the accusations of ethnic cleansing, colonisation and man-made disasters like the Holodomor.

Click to expand...

The lecture was given by two Marxists who glossed over that fact. The Soviet rhetoric which they bought into and which I clumsily shared here was very different from the reality. So you are right and therefore what is happening in Russia now is a variation on the theme of a long running saga. Maybe that just makes the problem even deeper and harder to solve though.