Moscow Continues Efforts to Penetrate Circassian Diaspora
Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 20 Issue: 29
By: Paul Goble
February 16, 2023
Throughout its history, no country’s government has devoted more attention to its émigrés and diaspora populations than that of Russia. Nor has any other country taken more steps to try to disorder, penetrate and control them. The reason for this is simple: émigrés and diasporas from Russia have regularly played outsized roles in the country’s history, often serving as the only base from which its peoples can offer their dissent from the regimes in power. Sometimes, and most worrisome from the Kremlin’s perspective, some émigrés even return home and overthrow the ruling regime, as Vladimir Lenin did most famously in 1917 (Window on Eurasia, February 13). And while it has received less international attention than ethnic Russian emigration both past and present, the Russian government has not devoted as much attention to or worked harder to disorder and disarm any other diaspora than the Circassians, who number more than seven million worldwide, with a particular concentration in the Middle East. (To learn more about these Russian efforts, including the seizure of control over the International Circassian Association by individuals and groups working for the Russian intelligence services, see Window on Eurasia March 14, 2020, May 4, 2022; Zapravakbr.ru, December 19, 2022.) Read more
