The House of Cards of the "Russian Empire". Who Will Initiate the Disintegration Process?

Primaries are being held in five Russian regions. The list of candidates is diverse, ranging from imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny and Wagener arms company owner Yevgeny Prigozhin to showman Sergei Svetlakov and opposition blogger Alexander Nevzorov. The "voters" are offered to read the biographies of the candidates and immediately cast their vote for one of them. In this way, the organizers of the initiative invite the audience to choose the leaders of the "free republics of post-Russia".

“We, the representatives of the independent republics: Königsberg (Kaliningrad and the region), Ingria (St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region), Kuban (Krasnodar region), Siberia and the Urals, announce the beginning of voting for the leaders capable of heading the transitional governments of the new states on the territory of post-Russia. At the voting stage, it will be possible to cast a vote for only one candidate in a region.”

Although candidates are often unaware that they are running for office and the vote has no legitimate force, some consider the initiative useful, at least in terms of collecting data on the attitudes of ethnic communities themselves regarding their place and role in the Kremlin-led Federation.

Earlier, the initiative announced a "National Online Referendum on Self-Determination of the Republics of the Russian Federation." Voting took place between February 16 and 28, 2023 on the referendum website with 5.6 million people casting their votes. The results provided by the Free Republics of Post-Russia initiative are as follows:

• Königsberg: 72.1% supported independence from Moscow, 27.9% opposed
• Ingria: 66.2% supported independence, 33.8% opposed
• Kuban: 55.7% supported independence, 44.3% opposed
• Siberia: 63.9% supported independence, 36.1% opposed
• Ural: 68.2% supported independence, 31.8% opposed

"The results of the online referendums showed two important trends. Firstly, the idea of regional independence has taken root in the society of the peoples inhabiting the 'Russian Empire'. Secondly, the Russian authorities are afraid of us, free citizens, and the results of our will. Successfully held referendums are only the first signs of self-determination of the republics. Ingria, Königsberg, Kuban, Siberia and the Urals will be free!" – said the organizers and announced the next online referendum on Chuvashia, Karelia, Belgorod, Novgorod, and Voronezh regions.

Is a new anti-imperial political discourse really emerging among the ethnic groups of the Russian Federation? 

The Russian Empire has never been loyal to colonized ethnic groups. It has traditionally used genocide as a tool to force complete obedience, and more likely direct extermination.

The genocide of the Circassian people 

One of the worst crimes committed by Russians in their history of countless atrocities is the more than 100-year genocide of the Circassian people in 1763-1864.

The researcher Vitalii Ohienko notes that the Russians did not consider the possibility of vassalage relations with the Circassian peoples, as was customary at the time, but demanded full and comprehensive integration. The Circassians "not only had to accept Russian laws, and abandon their customary law, but also to give up their way of life, which they had led for centuries and millennia. As General Aleksey Yermolov, appointed commander of Russian troops in the Caucasus in 1816, once put it, "the word of a Russian official is sacred and the highlanders must follow it more than the Koran."

The cynical extermination of the ethnic group has yielded results. If at the beginning of the nineteenth century there were at least 2 million Circassians, after the genocide only 3-5% of this figure remained on their historical lands. All the rest were killed, deported or fled.

Extermination of the Kalmyks

The Kalmyks have been in colonial dependence for over 250 years, and during this time, Russians have twice tried to exterminate this ethnic group. Thus, in 1910, according to the census, there were 210,000 Kalmyks, and by 1930 only 93,000 survived. The sharp decline in population was caused by famine, disease, executions, and collectivization.

The second genocide began in 1943 after Zhukov accused the Kalmyks of treason. A decree was issued to liquidate the Kalmyk ASSR, and people were massively deported to the Taiga. Unadapted to living in such conditions, the whole families of the "steppe people" died of hunger, cold, and hard labor. There were neither warm clothes nor medical care.

Conquering Ichkeria

In 1994, Russia launched a military campaign against the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. As a result of the hostilities, a large number of Chechen settlements were destroyed, about 120,000 Chechen residents were killed during the war, most of them children. About 200 thousand were wounded. Almost half of the Chechen population was forced to become refugees.

During the war, Russian troops carried out targeted mass extermination of ethnic Chechens both in the form of ethnic killings and through the use of the most brutal methods of warfare, inappropriate to the operational situation. In particular, those were massive air strikes, artillery shelling, which maximized the number of civilian casualties and completely destroyed infrastructure.

The indigenous peoples of Russia and the territories it colonized also remember well the targeted policy of Russification, the destruction of minority languages, an educational process based on imperialist propaganda, harassment, deportation bans, and the expropriation of valuable natural and productive resources, the exploitation and destruction of ecosystems - without any contribution to their restoration.

United by a common enemy

One of the last Forums of the Free Peoples of Post-Russia brought together representatives of many peoples, who suffered from the brutality of the Russian Empire. Representatives from Tatarstan, the Oirat-Kalmyk people, the Republic of Komi, Udmurtia, Bashkortostan, Buryatia, Ichkeria, the Kuban, Siberia, the Far East, along with participants from Belarus, Ukraine, and the Crimean Tatar people, discussed ways to peacefully and non-violently decolonize Russia. They also discussed the further reconstruction and territorial organization of free states on the former territory of the Russian Federation.

"Our goal is to convey to the international community the idea that the collapse of Russia is a matter of the nearest future. There should be no illusions about the liberalization of the regime, about the transformation of the empire into a democratic state. It is necessary to prepare for the transformation of the imperial space into a post-imperial one," the panelists said in a joint statement.

Here are the four main ideas of the forum:

• Russia poses a threat: an external one, primarily to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and an internal one to the peoples inhabiting it. Russian regions are forced to pay huge rents to support the corrupt Putin regime and its imperialist wars;
• After the defeat in the war, Russia should not maintain its current structure and borders. Otherwise, sooner or later, imperialism will revive and threaten peoples and states;
• The West should avoid past mistakes. In the 1990s, it was not prepared for the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia, which led to tragic consequences. We need to work on a strategy for decolonizing and reconstructing Russia now. This will help avoid its chaotic disintegration with subsequent internal wars and the threat of nuclear proliferation. This will open the way to a controlled and peaceful disintegration; 
• It is necessary to choose the optimal win-win scenario. This will eliminate the geopolitical threat from the Russian Empire, and the newly independent states will have the opportunity for successful development, in particular through direct economic and trade relations with Western countries.

The Forum participants are still discussing what kind of structure the Russian Federation might have following the inevitable transformation. The options include a federation, a confederation, a union of independent states, or no formal unification at all.

The visionaries who take the courage to lead the movement to defederalize Russia will be able to discuss all of this very soon. After Brussels and Washington, the Forum of the Free Peoples of Post-Russia will take place in Japan.