The beginnings of imperial colonization
The presence on the territory of the present Russian Federation of about 200 ethnic groups is primarily attributable to the territorial conquests of the Tsarist Empire. Since the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible in 1552, Russia has been constantly expanding, incorporating more and more territories and populations in the East, South and West into the imperial administration. The watchword was territorial continuity: unlike European overseas empires, Russia expanded only by conquering adjacent regions by land. Siberia was integrated into the Empire through the Cossack peasant-soldiers as early as the 17th century, and not without fierce resistance from the indigenous peoples (notably the Chukchi, a Paleo-Siberian people from the far north-east, and the Evenks, a Tungus people from central Siberia). Central Asia, at the time "Russian Turkestan", became a colony of the Empire in the 19th century. In the context of the "Great Game" which took place in the region opposing it to England, the Tsarist Empire seized the khanates of Kokand and Khiva and the emirate of Bukhara, which were populated by ancient Turkic nomadic tribes who had come from the Altai more than a thousand years earlier. At the same time, the conquest of the Caucasus put the Tsar's armed forces in difficulty on the southernmost flank of the country. The integration of the South Caucasus into the Empire follows a relatively classic pattern: Russia gains (and loses) territories at the rate of the wars against the Ottoman Empire and Persia. This is how the Georgians and part of the Armenians and Azerbaijanis became subjects of the tsar.
But the conquest of the North Caucasus is much more complicated. In this predominantly Muslim territory populated by tribes with no real state organisation, the tsar's troops and the Cossack colonists, as they advance southwards, are violently fought by the indigenous peoples they are trying to subjugate. In particular, the Imamat of the Dagestani Chamil and the fierce resistance of the Chechens will leave their mark - including that of Tolstoy, a young officer sent to the front and who will devote several books to the military campaign and the Caucasian resistance fighters. This is also how the Chechen identity will be built around the act of rebellion, a historical symbolism which will be widely mobilised during the wars of independence in the 1990s.
However, Russia's expansion eastwards and southwards remains less turbulent than its expansion westwards, where the Empire regularly clashes with European empires. The peoples of Central and Eastern Europe are therefore regularly divided between the different regional powers: the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg, the Kingdom of Prussia, but also the Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita and the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of the 19th century, after the failure of the Napoleonic campaigns, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia definitively shared Poland-Lithuania. At that time, it is estimated that about 80% of the world's Jewish population lived in Poland, and a large part of the Jews of Central Europe became subjects of the Czar. Since all previous attempts at forced conversion to Orthodoxy had failed, the Jews of the Empire would be confined to a "residence zone" that ran along the western border of the Empire. At the beginning of the twentieth century, they represented about 40% of the population of Warsaw and 45% of the population of Vilnius. Anti-Semitism developed in the Empire throughout the 19th century, reaching a critical level after the assassination of Alexander II, for which Jews were first accused. The Tsarist power is more and more openly hostile to Judaism and pogroms multiply at the end of the century. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were written (probably by an agent of the Czar's secret police, the okhrana) and published for the first time in Russia. This forgery, the most famous in the world, evokes for the first time a "Jewish conspiracy" directly threatening the Tsarist Empire in particular and Christianity in general. The pamphlet will first feed the theses of a "Judeo-Bolshevism" and then Nazi ideology.The USSR, between spring and prison of the people
The end of Tsarism in 1917 was a critical upheaval in the country's internal geopolitics. Not only was the mode of government changed, but also the ideology: the Russian Empire was a colonial empire, which the Bolshevik communist doctrine advocating the liberation of oppressed peoples could not accommodate. However, the new Soviet state could not afford to lose the lands conquered by the Empire by granting independence to the groups that populated them. On the one hand, this means that Russia would lose more than half of its territory and on the other hand, the Revolution with a capital R is a concept that is supposed to be exported in order to unite the proletarians of all countries: erecting national borders therefore makes no sense in the long term. The solution has been found: Soviet "postcolonialism" will be synonymous with positive discrimination in favour of so-called "national" minorities in the face of the cultural, demographic and geopolitical domination of the "Great Russians" (ethnic Russians). In 1923, the Soviet government launched a vast political programme called "indigenization" (korenizatsiya). The languages of all the peoples of the USSR were made literate and taught in schools, as well as national history, but revisited in a Marxist-Leninist style. This is supposed to arouse communist enthusiasm from the bottom up: in everyone, and according to everyone's codes. The national peoples are granted ethno-territorial autonomy, which comes in several formats: first there are the SSR (Russia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine...) which form the Union, and then, within it, like a matriochka, autonomous regions, autonomous districts, and even national kolkhozes. The Soviet minorities are thus experiencing an unparalleled national springtime, which is characterized in particular by great cultural activity. But Stalinism quickly took the opposite direction: in the 1930s, minorities, especially those on the borders, were suspected of being enemies from within. As such, many Poles and Koreans were deported to Siberia during the decade. After the war, some Caucasian (Chechens, Ingush), Turkic (Karachais, Balkars), or Volga Germans and Kalmyks are accused of having collaborated or attempted to collaborate with the Nazi armies during their advance towards the Russian South. All of these populations were deported to Central Asia and Siberia, creating a trauma that is still very much alive today and is transmitted from generation to generation. They were not allowed to return until 13 years later, when Khrushchev partially rehabilitated them by initiating destalinization.
First perestroika and then the fall of the USSR awakened the nationalisms of the Soviet peoples. Although the SSRs were able to gain independence and become fully-fledged countries, this was not the case for the smallest structures (autonomous republics in particular). Thus the 1990s saw an increase in the number of independence conflicts in the former USSR: Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians in Azerbaijan, Abkhazians and South Ossetians in Georgia. In Soviet Russia, it was the Tatars and Chechens who, from the end of the 1980s onwards, sought to make their autonomous republics fully-fledged SSRs. The collapse of the Soviet Union makes this solution impossible and we are therefore faced with classic separatism. The "à la carte" federal system of early Yeltsinian Russia continues the Soviet ethno-territorial doctrine by retaining autonomous republics. This will allow the Tatars an increased autonomy that satisfies the demands of the population while remaining within the federal framework: Tatarstan has consular representations abroad!Multiculturalism... and Putinism
But this is not enough in Chechnya, where the path to full independence continues. Thus, the first Chechen war broke out at the end of 1994 and pitted the independence fighters against the Russian armed forces. A ceasefire agreement was signed two years later, which put a theoretical and temporary end to the clashes. However, in 1999, attacks in Russian regions, allegedly by Chechen terrorists, provoked a second Russian military intervention in Chechnya. The second war will last at least four years and will allow Vladimir Putin to establish his authority over the country. Officially, however, it is only an "anti-terrorist operation". In the meantime, several Chechen warlords have become radicalised and the independence conflict has become an armed jihad, a holy war against Russia. In addition to attracting Muslim fighters from abroad, the Chechen conflict is recruiting the autonomous republics of the North Caucasus among others. Dagestanians, Ingush, Kabards and others are fighting alongside their Chechen neighbours and the region is sinking into chaos.
The gap between the North Caucasus and the rest of the country is widening: the Caucasians are victims of aggression from a Russian society that is becoming increasingly racist; they are nicknamed tchernye jopa, the "black asses". Even after the end of the war and the process of Chechenisation, which began with the coming to power of the loyalist Kadyrov dynasty, the region is sinking into an economic slump from which it is still unable to extricate itself. Putin's satraps at the head of the Caucasian republics are heavily financed by federal subsidies, but endemic corruption intercepts the money before it can finance local development. The phenomenon angers the Russians even more, as they are saturated with public money financing regimes that fail to improve the country's security. In 2011, major demonstrations are calling for a "stop feeding the Caucasus". These events are an opportunity for Putin to affirm his attachment to this Russian-style multiculturalism: "the North Caucasus is part of Russia, and those who say otherwise deserve to have a small piece of their heart amputated. For the "pacified" North Caucasus is proving to be a rich electoral resource: the authoritarian governors installed by the Kremlin systematically arrange for the ruling party (United Russia) to win the elections hands down (we have seen 98% in Chechnya). And, the takeover of the religious sphere by figures affiliated to the State has allowed the emergence of a "pro-Putin Islam", making the North Caucasus, at least in figures, a Putinian bastion.Demographic differences
It is common knowledge today that Russia is a country with a declining population: more people die there than are born. However, the statement should be qualified: although remaining low, the birth rate (i.e. the number of births in relation to the total population) is in fact constantly increasing in Russia. But it fell so much during the nightmarish 1990s that it is expected to fall again in the coming years, when children born between 1990 and 2000 will in turn have to become parents. The birth rate also depends on mortality. Although life expectancy in Russia is slowly beginning to rise, it was for a long time in freefall. This is due to the terrible living conditions of the 1990s, when alcoholism, drug addiction, cancer, HIV and depression spread without anything being done to curb these "social" epidemics. In addition to the lack of resources and medicines, the origins of the problem can also be traced to the Soviet medical legacy. Therapeutic practices focused exclusively on the biological and chemical aspects of diseases, neglecting psychological and social determinants, and psychotherapy was then considered "bourgeois". Slowly, the fertility rate of Russian women is also increasing, although it has not reached the generational renewal threshold of 2.1 children per woman. However, there is a cultural element to be taken into account here: the number of children per woman varies from region to region. It is still particularly low in regions historically populated by ethnic Russians (1.66 in the North-Western district, 1.58 in the Central district) and particularly high in the Urals and the North Caucasus. The Urals includes the Khanty-Mansis Autonomous Okrug, which is one of the best places to live in Russia, as revenues from local oil exploitation finance both quality public services and a high standard of living for individuals. In the North Caucasus, the religious and traditionalist revival has boosted fertility, with early marriage and less contraception. The richest and poorest regions have the highest number of children in Russia. The conservative mores in predominantly Muslim regions also explain the galloping demography: risky behaviour is less frequent, alcohol consumption is reduced and family ties are very close, which to some extent limits the spread of "social epidemics".
Migration: persistence of Soviet circuits
Migratory movements are a crucial element to be taken into account in understanding the composition of Russian society. Although the fall of the USSR erected borders between the former republics of the Union, it did not change their economic geography. Thus, the migratory circuits linked to the (often seasonal) work that punctuated the lives of young Soviet men have not disappeared. They even intensified, while many of the former Soviet republics saw their economic situation plummet in the 1990s. While the phenomenon is tending to slow down for the countries of the South Caucasus, this is not yet the case for the countries of Central Asia, whose populations are flocking to Russia's urban centres in large numbers to take up generally unskilled jobs: on building sites, in cleaning services or as taxi drivers. For 8 million Tajiks in Tajikistan, for example, it is estimated that there are one million in Russia. Most often, migrants live in an illegal situation: particularly vulnerable and replaceable at will, they do not bother to establish a work contract. Unlike the large numbers of migrants from the South Caucasus and Ukraine, Central Asian workers are very poorly integrated into Russian society, which generally sees them as undesirable. They are, however, necessary for the Russian labour market, and they can be worked to death. As a result, the government does not make a particularly anti-immigration statement, but it does nothing to facilitate the endless bureaucratic procedures that are a precondition for a legal stay.
