But in fact, she could very well BE Russian. She’s quite possibly a Russian citizen, and nobody is interested in whether she is nor not. What’s she’s not for sure is SLAVIC. A “Russian” should properly be understood not as a racial term but as a term of citizenship. The fact that people in Russia equate the terms “Russian” and “Slavic” is one of the saddest and most outrageous realities of Russian life (there are two different words in the Russian language for “Russian” — one meaning “Slavic” and the other meaning “not Slavic” and really meaning “not really Russian).

When Chechens ask for their freedom, Slavic Russians say “you can’t have it, you are part of Russia.” But when Slavic Russians speak about Chechens, they speak about them as different in every way and unequal to Slavics in every way. This fundamental contradiction is destroying Russia from the inside out.

Interesting thing about Kononenko – I went to his new blog and realized he deleted the old one at roughly the same time he joined up with a new (or newly active) political party, Svobodnaia Rossiia.

Could be a coincidence (his deleting the blog at the same time as apparently taking steps towards a life in politics), but an embittered SPS leader wrote a piece in Rossiiskaia Gazeta talking about Svobodnaia Rossiia and mentioning the blog’s deletion, and Kononenko felt the need to quote from it and respond by attributing some uncharitable words to the SPS guy.

That’s a debate I’m definitely to far from Russia to have anything intelligent to say about, so I’ll just mention that I think one of Kononenko’s comments to that post would be appreciated by GVO readers: “ЖЖ – моя российская газета” – “ZheZhe is my Rossiiskaia Gazeta.”

Or maybe that doesn’t translate so well.