Russia is a very small nation to some

A public action under the slogan "Stop Feeding the Caucasus" took place in Moscow on Saturday. The meeting was organized by the national and democratic movement "Russian Civil Union."

Up to 200 people, reporters inclusive, gathered for the meeting to demand an end to social payments to Muslim republics of the Caucasus. The meeting did not attract much attention despite its promotion on Russian blogs and a beautiful sunny day.

One could not see much enthusiasm among the participants of the meeting either. The people chanted their slogans weakly.

As for the organizer of the rally - the Russian Civil Union - there is nothing interesting behind the title. This is just a group of people, who do not seem to be able to attract many others to their public actions.

Why would anyone pay attention to them at all? The ideas, which the organization promotes, are not harmless at all. The Russian Civil Union was established in November of 2010. The goal of the movement is to transform the Russian Federation from the multinational state into the Russian democratic national state. The movement pays special attention to the Northern Caucasus and claims that Russia must put an end to the funding of the republics of the Caucasus. They also want to revise the borders of the republics of the Caucasus to separate the territories where the Russian-speaking population is predominant.

To put it in a nutshell, the ideology of the movement is based on a combination of nationalism and democracy - Russia only for Russians.

It is easy to notice that the subject of corruption in the republics of the Northern Caucasus is actively used by both nationalists and national democrats. The best solution of the problem, as they see it, is the one outlined above. Those people are certain that their lives will become better if the Caucasus is no longer a part of Russia. This idea was popular in Estonia and Latvia in the beginning of the 1990s.

Strangely enough, the people, who call themselves nationalists, do not know the history of their own country, whose interests they are supposedly trying to protect. In the long run, Russia can alienate from everyone and go back to its borders of the 15^th century - Moscovia. It may just so happen that some people in Moscow's neighboring regions, in Novgorod or Tver, for example, may claim independence as well. They may start saying that they do not want to be united under the rule of Moscow. Some already say that Moscow and St. Petersburg must be separated from the rest of Russia.

It all sounds like a joke, but such sentiments may pose a threat to such a country as Russia. National democrats and nationalist movements develop "the small nation complex" for the Russians. The Russians can be humiliated by anyone - this scenario is familiar to those who remember the situation in post-Soviet republics at the end of the 1980s. Now they offer the country to go back and try it all over again.

Oleg Artyukov
Pravda.Ru

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