Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

60 Andreas Heinemann-GrüderDuma Law on 16 March 2005, declared in December 2006 its willingness tosupport the secessionist regions of Abkhasiya (in Georgia), Transnistria (inMoldova), South Osetiya (in Georgia) and Nagorno Karabakh (inAzerbaijan). Ninety per cent of the people of Abkhasiya, Transnistria andSouth Osetiya have reportedly received Russian passports in recent years. 24 Therhetorical and political support for ethnic minorities beyond one’s own stateborders on the one hand, and the growing negligence vis-à-vis non-dominantgroups in Russia itself on the other, would seem to be contradictory – both arethe result of an instrumental policy on minorities and power calculus.3 The hierarchy of ethnic groupsRussia is ethnically and regionally very heterogeneous. Some 170 differentgroups live in the federation. The autochthonous people of Russia cameunder Russian rule by the territorial expansion of the Tsarist Empire; otherpeople belong to Diaspora groups who have a ‘motherland’ outside Russia. 25Ethnic groups are categorized according to their size, settlement pattern, andthe presence of a written language, the language tradition, the degree ofnational consciousness, and the active use of the ‘mother tongue’ as well asother languages. 26 The factual asymmetry of ethnic groups was translatedinto a de jure asymmetry of ethno-territorial regions and minority rights.However, it was impossible to create a complete or even far-reaching correspondenceof objective criteria with the hierarchy of political or socioeconomicrights. In practice, ethnic groups are actually not required to fitstrict criteria in order to be recognized or afforded certain rights. At certainpoints in time former sub-groups of larger ethnic groups were recognized asindependent groups. Thus, new ethnic groups emerged; others disappeared,as evidenced, for example, by the last countrywide census of 2002 – expectedbenefits obviously played a role in ethnic self-identification.During the 1990s, out of 89 regions of the Russian Federation, 32 existedas ethnic autonomies – among them 21 republics, 10 autonomous districts(avtonomnyi okrug) and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Some of therepublics were only elevated from autonomous districts to this status in thecourse of the re-foundation of Russia after the dissolution of the SovietUnion (Adygeya, Altai, Karachaevo-Cherkessiya, Khakasiya). Most republicsand autonomous districts are strongly ‘russified’. In some of the ethnicregions the proportion of autochthonous people is very small, for example inthe case of Kareliya with a portion of only 9 per cent ethnic Karelians. Atthe time of the last census among the non-Russian ethnic groups were 41‘titular’ ethnic groups, who individually or together with others provided thename for a region of the federation. The status as a ‘titular’ ethnic groupdoes not necessarily coincide with a certain absolute or even relative size orany other structural characteristic.Apart from the nominally strongest group of ethnic Russians (79.8 percent) four autochthonous groups have more than one million people: the