First, a decolonial approach to Russia acknowledges the impressed and marginalized existence of non-Russian nations within RF borders. Acknowledgement is a first step in reckoning with RF for what it is: an empire.
And I don't mean an empire in kind of the postmodern sense, like American blue jeans or the EU acquis or some such, but a polity where political power is massed in and wielded by the titular majority over a multitude of nations dominated over time.
This imperial paradigm is not only a political reality, but a deeper principle reflected in its historiography. Botakoz Kassymbekova and Marlene Laruelle point to a „self-image of sacral martyrdom” on a kind of civilizing mission over non Russian peoples.
Though they may not acknowledge it as such, Russians project deeply imperial views over non-Russian regions, often referring to the historically restive North Caucasus, for example, as its „inner abroad.”
In his Captive and the Gift, NYU anthropologist Bruce Grant traces how Russian cultural and social forces reinforced this idea of Russian self-sacrifice in bringing „civilization” and orders to the „lawless” Caucasus peoples.
The irony here being that in subduing the „wild” Caucasus, Russia encounters, for example, two civilizations with far older histories of statehood and Christianity - Armenia and Georgia.
This irony has uncomfortable parallels to Russia's ongoing „denazification” war against Ukraine, and its denial of its statehood, despite Ukraine's far older history.
Of course, a nation need not be „older” or „younger” to be deserving of affirmation and agency, but it does reveal the poverty and inconsistency of this colonialist approach to non-Russian nations.
Any hope for Russian democracy must confront Russian colonial thinking. Historian Jane Burbank shows us how Russian imperial visions are inseparable from its political project, of which the brutal invasion of Ukraine is a natural extension.
And the same imperial, colonialist perspective that creates daily Buchas, Irpins, and Mariupols in Ukraine murdered hundreds of thousands of people in Chechnya; displaced a quarter million Georgians in the 1990s; engaged in mass atrocities against the Circassians; and etc.
More prosaically, but also importantly, that imperial perspective impedes Russian democracy. The idea that Russia can „skip” over decolonizing towards democracy is like saying the U.S. could have maintained slavery or Jim Crow and still be considered a modern democracy.
Or that the UK could repress and marginalize Ireland indefinitely but be considered liberal and democratic. Or France in North Africa. Belgium in the Congo, etc. Decolonization, in some genuine form, is not just a „nice to have,” but an essential part of a healthy democracy.
What can we do? We can start by acknowledging Russia's violently imperial foundations, as Botakoz Kassymbekova and Erica Marat note in their excellent piece.
This includes, as Susan Smith-Peter eloquently and introspectively considers, „a searching moral inventory to see the ways in which we have taken the Russian state’s point of view as a default.”
This should be considered more broadly beyond the confines of the ivory tower, though how we approach scholarship absolutely matters. How else have we wittingly or unwittingly centered the Russian state, or decentered local perspectives?
How often is reporting on the Caucasus, Central Asia, or Ukraine managed by bureaus in Moscow or St Petersburg? What languages do we prioritize for non-Russian but former Soviet places? Why are non-Russians routinely ignored or cartoonized in media depictions?
And what role do Western policymakers have in all of this? This brings us to Casey Michel's excellent piece on Decolonizing Russia, in which calls for a more robustly decolonial approach in U.S. policy towards Russia.
He says, explicitly and at some length, he does not necessarily call for the breakup of Russia. But we do need to take national movements in Russia seriously, which the U.S. government has not always done (often not, in fact), if nothing else as a truer reflection of Russia.
I'd say that while Russia's dissolution isn't the goal per se, a truly democratic Russia might go in that direction. It also may not, as national minorities in other places have found viable means for national expression in other political forms.
Alexander Etkind notes that this process of dissolution is already happening on its own essentially due to Russian cycles of imperial entropy, regardless of Western policies.
Decolonizing Russia is about (1) recognizing Russia for what it is, an empire, and engaging it as such; (2) speaking to a broader array of the population, and not the one projected by the Kremlin; and (3) preparing for risks that come with unwieldy imperium.
To recap: (1) Russia is an empire; (2) Russia can't be an empire and a democracy; (3) To democratize, Russia must decolonize; (4) Decolonization doesn't necessarily mean dissolution; (5) To promote democracy, West must promote decolonization.
