Russian, Soviet Forced Migrations, Deportations, and Ethnic Cleansing

h/t to anonymous. This is his work.

Wikipedia has acquired in the last two years an excellent collection of pages detailing Imperial Russian, Soviet and current Russian history in forced transmigrations, deportations, ethnic cleansing, and ethnic Russian colonisation of non-Russian areas of the Empire and later USSR. Links below.

Russian policy for almost 300 years followed the Roman model of dumping their own ethnic population into acquired territories, and supplementing this with transmigration of ethnic Ukrainians. The latter also included recruiting Ukrainian Cossacks as shock troops and militias to capture addition land in Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, the quid-pro-quo being settlement rights.

The attached maps are very enlightening, especially when considered against the genetic Y-haplotype maps for Scandinavian I, Slavic R1a and Hunnic Q genes, and the density maps. While the official number of self-identified ethnic Ukrainians in Russia is only 2 million, versus 110 million self-identified ethnic Russians in census data, the reality looks to be actually very different. Ethnic Ukrainians have tended to assimilate very quickly (this seems to be a historical trait for Scandinavian stock globally), and self-identify then as Russians (I have met a good number of “Russians” over the years who turned out to be multigenerational assimilated Ukrainians).

The Far East and Central Siberia had significant fractions of Ukrainians during the Tsarist Era, but the nominal percentage has declined since then, due to assimilation. The genetic maps show this quite well, at least out to the Urals – areas with overlapping high density of I/Q haplotypes and lower density of R1a show this, and also align quite decently against the 1897, 1926 and later maps showing ethnic Ukrainian populations across Russia. Included are various population density maps showing that Russia has relatively low density compared to Ukraine, and matches Ukraine only in some parts of Western / European Russia, specifically the South West and Moscow areas. The reality is that anything up to 10-20% of the “ethnic Russian” population of the Russian Federation may be assimilated ethnic Ukrainians, or Russians with significant Ukrainian ethnic heritage in their bloodlines. Russia may have between 11 and 22 million ethnic Ukrainians or descendents embedded in their population.

The other significant ethnic minority in Russia are ethnic Tartars (Turkic/Kipchaks), whom census data lists as 6.5 million in numbers, but huge numbers assimilated into mainstream Russian society over multiple generations since the schism with Kiev 800 years ago. Trying to even estimate their numbers is futile, and likely this could only be determined by testing DNA. Like assimilated Ukrainians, many ethnic Tartars self-identify as Russians – I know two of this ilk. It is likely ethnic Tartars or Russians with Tartar heritage outnumber ethnic Ukrainians in Russia.

Another major group are Russians of Ugro-Finnic heritage (Y-haplogroup N1), mostly now marginalised where speaking their own language, but also heavily assimilated across North-Western Russia.

Punchline is the myth of an ethnically homogenous Great Russian population as promoted by Moscow is bunk. Self identification as Russians in a chauvinistic and xenophobic culture as we see in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia will be high.

Of the nominal 110 million “ethnic Russians” how many are really ethnic Russians? Subtracting the likely number of assimilated Ukrainians and Tartars could reduce the actual number by 15 to 20 million. Impossible to be accurate.

The obsession with Pan-Slavism and the Greater Russian or All-Russian nation concepts, i.e. rejecting the unique cultural and genetic differences of Ukraine and Belarus, can be easily explained by a paranoid fear of losing cohesion in a disparate patchwork multi-ethnic state. The existence of both Ukraine and Belarus as distinct cultures and nations is an affront and challenge to these doctrines / ideologies.

The brazen and dishonest rejection of any unique Ukraine and Belarus culture, language and ethnicity may well be as much self-deception, as cynical deception, by Russians from the leadership caste down to the trailer trash.

Only a portion of Westernmost Russia actually fits their purist definition of a Slavic DNA dominant religiously Orthodox Russian speaker. The rest of the Russia by their own ideological definitions are not real Russians, or are contaminated with Ukrainian, Tartar and other peoples lacking the purity of Slavic descent.

The tragedy of Russia is that their obsession with absolute power and central control reflects the broken cultural paradigm of the “Russian World”, in which Russian ethnicity and Orthodox religion are chauvinistically promoted, and everybody else marginalised. Until the Russians accept they are a multi-ethnic polyglot more diverse than Europe, they will not be able to form a representative democracy, where everybody can have their say. As long as most Russians lie to themselves about who and what they are, how can they function as a society, let alone a democracy?

This is why Russia’s falsified foundation myth, and Pan-Slavist All-Russian nation ideologies and doctrines are about as relevant to the modern world as the ISIS delusion. Ultimately both lead to one place – misery, desperation, heartbreak and destruction. Like all deceptions, there is an immense element of self-deception.

The world at large needs to reject their Pan-Slavism doctrine, and All-Russian Nation doctrine, and declare these to be what they are – nasty jingoistic cultural chauvinism with an big element of toxic racism.