the new russian nationalismof discrimination, repressions and horrific, murderous wholesale
deportation of the ethnically related Crimean Tatars under Stalin?
Top regional analysts at the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Tatar- Bashkir Service – its director Rim Gilfanov and senior cor-
respondent Merkhat Sharipzhan – in fact raised this and related
questions on the air in April 2014.^2
As yet, these concerns would appear misplaced. Putin has faced
practically no ethnic minority backlash over his Ukraine policy
since the autumn of 2013. No survey or other systematic data on
the issue have been available, but the reputable Levada Centre
poll of 20–23 March 2014 showed that 88 per cent of Russia’s
population (+/− a sampling error of 3.4 per cent) backed what
the questionnaire described as ‘Crimea’s joining of Russia’. Only
6 per cent of those surveyed opposed it (Levada Centre 2014b).
In a telephone ‘megasurvey’ of 48,590 Russians in eighty- three
provinces, conducted on 14–16 March 2014 by the independent
but government- loyal Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) and the
Kremlin- run VTsIOM service, 91 per cent of the respondents sup-
ported, and only about 5 per cent opposed, Crimea’s annexation.
In all but one of the predominantly non- Russian ethnic republics
(Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-
Balkaria, Karachaevo- Cherkessia, Mari El, North Ossetia,
Tatarstan and Tyva) residents polled in the megasurvey supported
Crimea’s annexation at about the same rate as residents of Russia
did on average, plus or minus three percentage points. The sole
exception was Chechnya, where support was somewhat lower –
yet, at 83 per cent, still overwhelming. In all republics the number
of those who opposed the annexation was within about 2 per cent
of the Russian average (FOM 2014; VTsIOM 2014a).^3
Meanwhile, Putin’s approval rating in Levada polls surged from
61 per cent in November 2013, the month the pro- EU protests
erupted in Ukraine, to 80 per cent in March 2014, when Russia
annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. By June 2014, Putin’s
approval climbed to 86 per cent. And by May 2014 the number
of Russians saying they were willing to participate in public anti-
government protests had sunk to an all- time low of 14 per cent.^4
In Tatarstan, challenges to the Kremlin on Crimea have been
mostly restricted to the separatist blogosphere. Some public pro-