Unintentional diversity

The usual treatment of Russia in the media is of a xenophobic backwater with opinions about race and gender close to the Nazis. Occasionally the American media will focus on the many national minorities within the Russian Federation. The most recent example was the collective head scratching over Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Since the Tsarnaev brothers spoke Russian and Tamerlan had gone to Russia before the Boston marathon bombing, it wasn't a stretch to report them as immigrants from Southern Russia. Russian immigrants in America were quick to point out that the two were not Russian, but rather, ethnic Chechens. Regardless, Russia's ethnic makeup is a very complex subject that rarely receives any treatment beyond Russia itself.

What's surprising about the American or European media's non-interest in Russia's minorities is how, for lack of a better word, diverse Russia's top leadership is. The Minister of Defense is Sergei Shoigu who is half-Tuva from his father. The Tuvans are a Siberian people in Russia's Far East who resemble and are related to Mongols and Manchurians. An American equivalent would be if Sarah Palin had been half Alaskan Inuit. The head of the Russian Central Bank is Elvira Nabiullina, a Volga Tatar from the Republic of Bashkortostan. It's fascinating how the names of these places alone conjure up Borat-like images of fake Central Asian countries. But they are real, and people from them hold some of the highest offices in Russia.

In sports, it's remarkable how many "Russian" athletes aren't full blooded ethnic Russians. Adelina Sotnikova, who won a gold medal in figure skating at the Sochi Olympics, is part Chuvash, a Turkic ethnic group indigenous to the Volga region. Aliya Mustafina, a gymnast who won four medals at the London Olympics, like Elvira Nabiullina, is a Volga Tatar. Ruslan Provodnikov, an up and coming welterweight boxer, is half Russian and Mansi, an extraordinarily remote Siberian ethnic group from the Urals.

To one familiar with Russian history, little of this would be new. Catherine the Great was originally a German princess, Stalin was a Georgian, and even Lenin was partly Tatar. The most successful rock group in the Soviet Union was headed by a Korean, Viktor Tsoi - "Tsoi" being the Russian transliteration of the Korean "Cho". In fact, part of the criticism aimed at Russia by its Central European neighbors is that it's too "Asiatic" and insufficiently European. The Nazis, and sometimes some modern European politicians, were especially keen on demonizing Russia as an oriental despotism that had more in common with Genghis Khan than civilized Europe.

Since diversity and multiculturalism is celebrated in the United States, "Russian" diversity poses an interesting counterpoint. Russia has no affirmative action and Russians remain strongly ethnocentric and traditional. Yet the facts remain - women and minorities, and better yet, female minorities, have reached the highest positions in Russia without any assistance. Shoigu received no preference because of his ancestry, if anything, it was more likely to count against him. Of course, because of the sheer obscurity of many of these groups, Americans or Europeans would be little interested in Russian "diversity". And because they are Turkic, Siberian, or generally Asian minorities, that too would also be of little interest in an American diversity head count.

This is not to suggest Russia is secretly a multicultural paradise. As always in a multi-ethnic federation, some groups have influence out of proportion to their size and others are disadvantaged. In general, Tatars do particularly well. To add one more Tatar to those listed, Rashid Narguliev headed the Interior Ministry during Putin and Medvedev's presidencies. Indigenous Siberians, specifically Tuvans, Yakuts, Mansi, Komi, and others, tend to be treated equally in Russian society. On the other hand, the far larger Central Asian peoples, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Turkmens, are looked down on and seen in the same light as Mexicans and Central Americans in the US. The most disliked are Caucasus peoples, Chechens, Dagestanis, Ossetians, and others. An exception to the rule with Caucasians are Armenians, who, like Tatars, have reached the highest levels of the government and the military. Anastas Mikoyan was a Soviet politician of extraordinary influence and longevity, along with Marshal of the Soviet Union Hohvannes Bagramyan. Today, an ethnic Armenian, Margarita Simonyan, heads Russia Today, the "propaganda bullhorn" of the Russian state according to John Kerry.

Perhaps the disinterest in Russia's diversity is due to the corruption of the word's meaning in Europe and America. In the West, diversity is the promotion of favored groups at the expense of others with overtly political motives. The Soviet Union, to a lesser degree, promoted a similar kind of diversity that emphasized how all fifteen of its republics and hundreds of ethnic minorities lived together in harmony. Ironically, the Soviet Union's leadership was much more closed to minorities than the modern Russian Federation. Russia makes none of the same pretensions to diversity or openness of the modern west. Yet perhaps because of that, minorities in Russia thrive more easily in an environment that doesn't seek to use them as political props.