This evasive species of ethnic Russians

During a press event at the White House in early June a spokesman for the US National Security Council John Kirby was asked this question about the war in Ukraine by an Al Jazeera journalist Kimberly Halkett.

Question: ‘Does it seem believable to you that Russia would destroy a dam and flood ethnic Russian villages and cut off a water supply to Crimea?’

The answer of Mr. Kirby was not definitive, and later this piece of the press briefing was produced as a short video clip for wide distribution over social networks. And it was wide indeed, several instances of this video were viewed millions of times.

The problem? It is pretty hard to explain who the above-mentioned ethnic Russians are. I ventured to address this question to Kimberly Halkett in a Twitter thread, however, she ducked the issue. Not the first time it happened to me.

The definition of an ethnic Russian is quite evasive. It is a term many people throw around a lot, professional journalists among them, without attributing a specific meaning to it. Trying to be the devil’s advocate I could try conjuring one of my own. The widespread use of the term ‘ethnic Russians’ in Western media usually tends to describe Russian-speaking communities outside Russia itself. It is usually employed to imply that these people have a strong cultural and political affinity with Russia, which is not necessarily the case. I still find it deeply flawed and erroneous, however.

The term ‘ethnic Russians’ is not a definition of ethnicity, but rather a vague and subjective label that ignores the diversity and complexity of the post-Soviet space. Is it a dangerous term? I believe it is. Imagine there are ethnic Russian people living abroad, i.e. not in Russia, and one feels they are oppressed. Then this could be used as a motive to invade a foreign state. This has happened already in Ukraine and could happen again elsewhere in Europe.

Another explanation of the term comes from BBC Monitoring journalist Vitaly Shevchenko. When asked to elaborate on who ethnic Russians are on a podcast Ukrainecast he went on to say that this phrase can only be applied by a person to himself. It is a mere idea of self-identification. I, and only I, can appoint myself to be ethnic Russian or not. It is not a label that someone can apply to me.

To that end, I am pretty sure no sociological research was conducted in Ukraine for example to identify how many ‘ethnic Russians’ are living there. If this is an idea that a researcher is contemplating, while doing a study, I would suggest including the questions, detailing how the study group has arrived at the conclusion they are ethnic Russians and what it really means to them. This could be an intriguing piece of research to ponder over but not a definitive one.

When I state that a lot of Western media and public personalities use the term, I do it from my own experience.

I know for a fact it was used in audio reporting to describe Russian speakers outside Russia by The Voice of America notably. In one report on Latvia’s Russian minority struggles, a piece is compiled by Ricardo Marquina, but processed editorially and voiced by a different person. Again, it mentions ethnic Russians. I contacted the author, and he told me quite a different story, and here is what Ricardo had to say: ‘In my original script for that piece, for TV in Spanish, I always refer to the Russian-speaking minority, and don’t make any ethnic connotations. In any case, I have heard many times in the Baltic countries or Moldova, for example, people who consider themselves “ethnically Russian”, I suppose that is done to oppose some identity communities.’

Actually, this is an interesting point. Whenever I contacted Russian-speaking journalists notably from the BBC to clarify what they meant by the word russky in their reporting (translates as ethnic Russian, as in russky mir), they acknowledged it was a poor choice of words.

Even the Russian state polling agency VTSYOM declaring that the majority of Russians support the war in Ukraine also doesn’t use the term ethnic Russians. Instead, they use the term Russian-speaking.

This is not the case with some other journalists. In his audio piece for Deutsche Welle, or DW, Benjamin Bathke is referring to a famous Russian film critic Anton Dolin as a person who belongs to an ethnic Russian community, while just minutes later Anton confesses he could easily apply for Israeli citizenship because he is a Jew. I, personally, was shocked to know that ethnic Russians include Jews.

In one of the latest episodes of the podcast Foreign Office, journalist, and author Michael Weiss slips into mentioning ethnic Russians. He was not available for comment, however, I am sure his understanding of the term would hugely enrich my perspective on the topic.

A prominent Russian Anthropologist Dr. Alexandra Arkhipova confirmed in an email conversation that the term itself got contaminated because the Russian government widely used it during the last ten years to voice a lot of concern about discriminatory policies applied to ethnic Russians abroad. Thus creating a platform to defend them, although the term cannot be blamed for these attitudes.

Dr. Arkhipova reiterates that the term ethnic Russians has been used in research to define groups of people who believe themselves to be ethnic Russians and usually, however, do not necessarily speak Russian. As a rule, this definition is used when this group has different citizenship, and their status needs to be defined further.

But while I can take this into account, the term ethnic Russians still sounds contradictory to me. The main criticism is: the definition is not ultimate and comprehensive, it is hard to translate it to the concrete numbers, it is not exclusive, and the value of using it in a research context is not well determined.

Circling back to the question posed by Kimberly Halkett, the problem becomes even more severe as ‘ethnic Russians’ spread from groups of people to villages and territories and thus translates into policy choices.

When criticizing, offer something, as they used to say in the old Soviet days. If we would envisage improving reporting on Russians abroad, my suggestion is to try two parallel avenues. We could either call them, well, Russians, if and when they hold Russian citizenship or use the term ‘Russian speaking’ if they are citizens of another country.

I do not quite see how adding ‘ethnic’ to ‘Russian’ makes our lives necessarily better. Whoever uses the term should try explaining it, first, to themselves, and then to others. The term might sound harmless for some, but is potent for bringing tears and blood.