During those tense days in early March when Vladimir Putin disappeared from public view, the Russian president issued only one official statement: He instructed his prime minister to prepare a blueprint for a new federal agency that would work toward “consolidating the unity of the multiethnic nation of the Russian Federation.”
The move passed relatively unnoticed, but it raises provocative questions. Why suddenly create a new arm of government when funding for other departments is being frozen or cut? And why did the choice to lead the agency fall upon Igor Barinov, a member of Parliament and a retired colonel of the Federal Security Service with experience in special operations in Chechnya and counterterrorism?
For Mr. Putin’s Kremlin, religious and ethnic diversity remains a troubling security concern. The new federal agency is charged with solving one of the major challenges of the Putin era: how to mold a unified Russia from such a vastly diverse population while Mr. Putin pursues his neo-imperial ambition to recoup large swathes of the old Soviet Union.
One possible reason for choosing Mr. Barinov is fallout from the assassination of the Russian opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov, on Feb. 27. Many people suspect that the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, widely believed to be behind other high-profile killings, set the hit in motion in another show of loyalty to Mr. Putin. If this is so, he may have gone too far. Mr. Putin, who has counted upon Mr. Kadyrov to keep the lid on his restive region, may now consider him a loose cannon. Mr. Barinov might be the best man to keep him under control.
More likely, however, the new agency was born out of the growing realization that the country is far less unified than the name of Mr. Putin’s party, United Russia, suggests. The fragmentation of Russia, with its multiple ethnic, regional and religious identities, is seen by the Kremlin as a growing threat.
Demographic trends fuel these worries. In the Russian Federation today, 78 percent of the people are ethnic Russians and the rest comprise over 190 minorities, most of them eager to preserve their distinct identities and the territorial integrity of their autonomous republics and districts. Moscow’s efforts to encourage higher birth rates among ethnic Russians have done little. By mid-century, the population of Russia is projected to fall to 120 million from 142 million today, a staggering drop. Some studies predict it will have a Muslim majority. Though this prospect may seem distant, it lies at the core of Russia’s identity and Moscow’s policies.
The issue of national identity has preoccupied intellectuals and government officials since the early 19th century. Is Russia a nation-state, a colonial empire, a multinational union? And who, exactly, is Russian?
The first post-Soviet government, under Boris Yeltsin, attempted to resolve these delicate questions by reserving the term “Russian” (Russkii) only for ethnic Russians, while both non-Russians and Russians became known as “Rossiane,” a word that implied an overarching national identity for all the citizens of the Russian Federation.
Yet this fine distinction meant little to most minorities. Mr. Yeltsin famously told non-Russians to “take as much autonomy as you can swallow.” And they did, vehemently promoting their own languages, history and culture. In some places, such as the Republic of Tatarstan, non-Russians secured an unprecedented degree of autonomy from Moscow peacefully, while in Chechnya the quest for independence led to two wars.
Mr. Putin reversed Mr. Yeltsin’s policy and trimmed the autonomy of the non-Russian republics and districts. Censorship and self-censorship came back. Regional histories, which in the 1990s emphasized the brutality of Russian conquest, reverted to the old Soviet canard of “voluntary” submission to Moscow’s benign rule. The Kremlin has generously funded celebrations marking the supposed centuries-old friendship of Russian and various non-Russian peoples.
But propaganda won’t make problems go away. Among the federation’s non-Russians, Muslims are the largest group, approximately 17 percent of the total population. They present a formidable challenge to the Kremlin in several ways.
The most restless and violent region is the North Caucasus, where Muslim peoples reside in ethnic enclaves and are poorly integrated into the country, even though they are totally reliant on financial subsides from Moscow. In many ways, Chechnya is practically an independent Islamic republic where Shariah law is widespread. Some neighboring republics have only a semblance of belonging to the federal structure.
Moscow exercises slightly better control over the mid-Volga region, where a large Muslim population is also showing signs of discontent. Since the Russian annexation of the Crimea in 2014, nearly 300,000 Crimean Tatars are now counted among Russia’s Muslims. But they remain staunchly loyal to Ukraine and resist accepting Russian passports. Moscow is persecuting their leaders but is keenly aware of their unspoken solidarity with other Russian Muslims.
Meanwhile, the greatest challenge lies within Moscow, where more than two million Muslims, mostly migrant workers, reside. It may well be Russia’s best kept secret that Moscow is the city with the largest Muslim population in Europe. Relegated to the outskirts of Moscow and suffering from the chronic shortage of mosques, the city’s Muslims have been for years subjected to stereotyping and violence. As the economy declines, so does Russian patience with large Kremlin subsidies to the non-Russian regions, and tolerance of the “foreign” population in the capital.
Several geopolitical ideas justifying ultra-nationalism have merged to form the backbone of the Kremlin’s chauvinist ideology. One is “Eurasianism,” which places Russia in opposition to Europe and justifies Moscow’s claims to the former parts of Russian and Soviet empires in both continents. Another concept, known as “the Russian World,” asserts Moscow’s concern for and authority over Russian-speaking populations regardless of their nationality. Proponents of both theories have supported expansion in former Soviet territories.
Late last year, the Russian Orthodox Church officially declared that only members of the church can be considered Russian and that the Russian world is a distinct civilization based on Holy Rus — Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Mr. Putin now declares that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.
So what is Russia today? The current occupants of the Kremlin have found their own cynical answer: It is a traditional autocracy in democratic garb, a promoter of virulent ethnic nationalism under the guise of restoring Russian dignity, and blatant old-world expansionism couched as a defense against trumped-up external threats.
Michael Khodarkovsky is a professor of history at Loyola University Chicago and author of Bitter Choices: Loyalty and Betrayal in the Russian Conquest of the North Caucasus.