the new russian nationalismCrimea and Sevastopol, the Federation thus still consisted of no
less than twenty- six autonomies.^18
The debate on the federal structure is not dead in Russia. As
the Crimean euphoria began to subside, and the harsh realities of
a faltering economy began to sink in, some actors began to dust
off old plans for re- centralisation and de- federalisation. Former
Prime Minister Evgenii Primakov, for one, argued that autono-
mies where ethnic Russians form a majority ought to be abolished
and merged with ‘regular’ subjects (Primakov 2015). Still, even if
such plans should come to fruition, no serious politician would at
this stage dare to question the future of republics like Tatarstan
or Bashkortostan. A switch to a fully unitary state structure is
currently not an option. And as long as such republics continue
to form constituent parts of the Federation, these ethnic home-
lands will continue to serve as a constant reminder to their titular
populations about their ‘non- Russianness’. An ethno- federal state
structure may pair well with the old rossiiane identity, but is
harder to reconcile with a more Russian- centred identity project.
Second, the new identity project is not starting with a clean
slate. To the contrary: for seventy years, Soviet citizens were
taught that ethnic affiliation mattered. In the 1920s, during kore-
nizatsiia, Soviet authorities undertook an unprecedented project
of ethnic engineering – of consolidating and indeed also inventing
ethnic identities (Slezkine 1994). Not only did the Soviet authori-
ties sponsor minority- language education, media and cultural
institutions, they also intervened on the individual level, requir-
ing all citizens to have their ethnic affiliation written into their
internal passports, the standard ID document. This affiliation was
not based on self- ascription, but on the ethnicity of the bearer’s
parents. No- one was allowed to escape his or her ethnic roots.
At the same time, ethnicity opened doors, with jobs and privi-
leges being accorded in line with ethnic affiliation and quotas:
the Soviet Union has been described as an ‘affirmative action
empire’ (Martin 2001). This heritage has left a deep imprint also
on post- Soviet generations. Especially when such ethnic identities
are combined with – and reinforced by – ethno- federal political
and administrative structures, they may be quite well- positioned
to withstand assimilatory pressures.