Russia Beyond the Russians Dr. Asya M. Pereltsvaig ([email protected])

This course will focus on recent events in Russia and the post-Soviet space, many aspects of which are a result of enduring ethnic tensions: Russian Federation alone is home to 180 nationalities, many of which have long been at odds with each other. We shall see that many groups have been significantly diminished by the uniformity-seeking policies of the Russian state, first under the Tsars, then under the Soviets, and most recently under President Vladimir Putin. Many groups still carry the collective memories of the atrocities that were committed against them in the past and most such groups seek to gain recognition, autonomy, or even full independence. This quest ranges from the peaceful Circassian movement to the much more violent Chechen resistance. To shed light on the current events, we will review the history of Russia and its various ethno-linguistic groups and examine elements of contemporary Russian culture such as music, cinema, cuisine, ethnic jokes, and more. The course will consist of lecture and discussion.

Outline:

1. Russia as a multi-ethnic country. What is ethnicity for Russians? Russians and non- Russians. Language-less ethnicities: Yezidis, Kazaks, Pomors. How did Russia become multiethnic? Brief historical overview. The birth of Russia and the Finnic peoples: assimilation of “middle Finns”, Veps culture and their influences, Middle Volga Finnic peoples, Udmurt pop sensation “Buranovo Grannies”, the Russian-Finnish borderlands. 2. Russia and its East Slavic and Finnic neighbors. Ukraine: ethnicity, language, and geopolitics. Language Laws and language politics. Language, religion, and ethnicity. Surzhyk. The Rusyns and their language. Belarusians and their language. Crimea: a hotspot today. The latest annexation of Crimea. History of Crimea. Crimean Karaim. Crimean Tatars and their deportation. Soviet-era ethnic deportations: Baltic peoples, Ukrainians, Finns and Karelians, Koreans, Volga Germans. Korean-Russian dissident songwriters Yuliy Kim and Viktor Tsoi. The GULAG system: Political prisoners in Tsarist Russia, Soviet political prisoners, Magadan. 3. Russia as “the prisoner of the Caucasus”: the Caucasus as a multiethnic hotspot in a historical perspective. Peoples, genes, languages of the North Caucasus. Northwest Caucasus: Circassians and the Sochi Olympics. The last of the Ubykh. Northcentral Caucasus: Ossetians and their language. Northeast Caucasus: Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan and their peoples. The bloody history of Chechnya. Russia and the Caucasus. 4. Siberia and its peoples: reindeer herders and whalers. The impact of the oil economy. Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Far East: traditionalism and assimilation, their languages, and interaction with the Russians. The Ugric and Samoyedic peoples: Khanty and Mansi, Enets and Nenets. The Altaic peoples: Mongolic peoples and Buddhism in Russia, Turkic peoples in Russia (Yakut, Tatar), Tungusic peoples. The Paleo-Siberian groups: Chukchi, Koryaks, Itelmen — and Russian ethnic jokes. Other peoples of Siberia: Yukaghir, Ket, and more. Problems experienced by indigenous peoples of the Far North. 5. Russian Jews: Why are Russian Jews not Russian? Khazars and Judaism. Ashkenazi Jews and Yiddish. Are there Sephardic Jews in Russia? The partitions of Poland and the Pale of Settlement. Birobidzhan: the new Jewish Republic? Birobidzhan today. Anti-Semitism in Russia. Whence Russia? The future of the multiethnic empire.