"Russian World" in the era of a new Cold War

By “Vestnik Kavkaza”

For a year Russia has had very strained relations with the West. How, against this background, Russians living abroad, what Moscow does, and what must Moscow do to support them? These questions are answered by the director of the Foreign Ministry Department for Relations with Compatriots Abroad Anatoly Makarov, chairman of the Duma Committee on CIS Affairs Leonid Slutsky and a member of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs Igor Morozov.

According to Makarov, “the injection of anti-Russian hysteria, the adoption by Washington and its allies of sanction measures against our country, have not had a negative impact on the interaction of constructively-minded Russian compatriots with their historical homeland. On the contrary, the reunification of Crimea with Russia, as a result of the democratic will of the inhabitants of the peninsula, has had a positive impact on the consolidation of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious Russian diaspora. We have seen this in numerous reports which came to us from abroad. And I think that it is very gratifying to see the position of patriotic compatriots supporting the line which we hold.”

Makarov said that Moscow's position regarding the situation in Ukraine is finding growing understanding and support among compatriots, but such a position of the diaspora is of concern to the authorities of Western countries and in the Baltic States: They create artificial barriers to organizations of compatriots, inflate Russophobic public sentiment, and the intelligence agencies put strong psychological pressure on members of compatriot orgainizations. Our opponents have deliberately formed quasi-organizations of compatriots, pseudo-leaders appear from nowhere, inciting provocative actions and scandals, and thus damaging our foreign policy in respect to compatriots. In general, trying to create these scandals and draw our missions abroad into them, and even embassies.

However, Leonid Slutsky speaks about inadequate funding of work with compatriots: The Federal Agency Rossotrudnichestvo continues to receive government support as a residual. We took a ruling in the State Duma: 'On measures to support the Russian world in the context of the Eurasian Economic Union'. We talked about the fact that supporting the program activities of Rossotrudnichestvo does not require any huge investments. There is, if I'm not mistaken, about 9 billion rubles for her. For Rossotrudnichestvo, today the support from the state is hardly enough for staff salaries, maintenance of buildings, funds for program activities, there is very little left.

However, according to Slutskiy, Rossotrudnichestvo has opened new centers in the Eurasian space, including Brest, and held hundreds of events for the consolidation of Russian World. But this work is not comparable with the scale of the activities being undertaken by other countries in the world to support their compatriots abroad.

“Alliance Francaise, the British Council, the Goethe Institute, the Cervantes Institute, the Confucius Institute… In these structures, a prestigious employer hires graduates from leading universities. This is a huge structure that, despite the crisis which is present there, like us receive priority government support, priority funding. The Goethe Institute and related infrastructure in Germany managed to achieve unique results - almost all Germans who wanted to return to Germany went back in the early 2000s. Several things prevented the situation here with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, it was necessary to invest in the economy of East Germany, but nevertheless, always and still there is the direction, support for the Goethe Institute in Germany remains a priority.”

Meanwhile, according to him, in the late 1980s 350 million people spoked Russian, and today it is only 270 million: We risk a situation where during the lifetime of our generation in some countries the younger generation will not speak Russian. Even before the civil crisis in Ukraine, 650 Russian schools were closed in Ukraine from 2008 to 2013. Today in Turkmenistan there is only one Russian school - №1 n.a. Pushkin in Ashgabat. This situation is threatened in a number of other countries, especially in the Central Asian region.

However, as stated to Vestnik Kavkaza by a member of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, Igor Morozov, the Russian World has historical roots everywhere, and in the South Caucasus as well. Therefore, those relationships that develop among all Russian-speaking mixed families living in the Caucasus, I think, are normal. And today we can talk about Russian foreign countries living in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan - being, so to say, very interesting and in contact with each other, the Russian World, which is structured into groups in society, compatriots, a lot of them, dozens of them. And we are pleased when the government of the country in which they live in and that is a homeland for them treats them with a full understanding of humanitarian work, the cultural activities that engage our compatriots in the South Caucasus. And this gives us a sense of pride in the understanding of the South Caucasus countries of this important humanitarian issue, which we support together and are trying to build a very interconnected, cultural folk world.