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Is not Russia the biggest multiethnic state on European soil? Aren’t there millions of non-russian people with their own languages, religion and habits living within the borders of Russia? Is this a success story in your opinion?

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RT's avatar

Certainly I'm not in the position to answer on behalf of the author and of course i'm not replying to the post, but it seems to me a very good and interesting point worth being further expanded and examined in the light of the article.

To contribute with some food for thoughts, my immediate reactions would be two: one leading to an explanation based on a cultural issue and the other one based on a political issue.

First: are we sure that Russia can be actually considered as part of Europe in this respect?

Also in China there are millions of non-Chinese people with their own languages, religions and habits ... and the same might at certain extent be said for India, I guess ... so is it there a "peculiar" concept of nationalism when we look at European populations, which is not shared by those cultures that are settled and living in Asia, for example within Russia or China, or India borders? Can we say that the way to deal and feel with nationalism in Europe is because of historical and cultural reason that are profoundly different from the way nationalism is dealt and felt elsewhere?

Second reaction is that maybe multiculturalism and multinationalism work in Russia because, all in all and throughout its history (even during the Soviet rule), it was, it has been and still remains an empire; and like all empires (for example the A-H empire from the article) it is by definition multinational. So, it might be possible that something works better in the Russian case than what happened in Yugoslavia, because the way of making and enforcing policies over there is the one proper of the empires while this way of policy making was not possible to be enforced within the Yugoslavian federation.

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