Külügyi Szemle - A Teleki László Intézet Külpolitikai Tanulmányok Központja folyóirata - 2003 (2. évfolyam)
2003 / 3. szám - EURÓPA - Sáfi Csaba: A Few Words on the Federal Law on State policy of the Russian Federation with regard to Fellow Countrymen Abroad
A Few Words on the Federal Law on State Policy of the Russian Federation foundation of various endowments and funds with the purpose of providing (financial) assistance and aid to fellow countrymen (Article 23). Summary In the light of the debates that evolved around the Act on Hungarians Living in Neighbouring Countries, better known as Status Law, it might be worth looking at the law with the help of which Russia, as the mother country with the most numerous national community living outside its borders in Europe, seeks to assist and help its own fellow countrymen abroad. The spirit of the law is a true reflection of the confusion reigning with regard to fellow countrymen. For the dissolution of the Soviet Union and, as a consequence, the problem of the several tens of millions of fellow countrymen outside the borders caught the Russian political elite so unprepared that they failed to elaborate an unified platform with respect to the management of the problem even on a theoretical level. Emotional and rational arguments clashed at the same time within and outside the borders which, naturally, delayed the formation of the official concept for long. The shaping of the policy with regard to fellow countrymen was further hampered by the power struggle between the executive and the legislative authority. The view of the divided but more or less pragmatist governments of the second half of the 1990s opposed the disintegrated but, still, unified nation concept of a Duma of nationalist majority. Looking at the text of the law, the clash brought the victory of the latter, in part due to a series of government reorganisations. Considering the often undeniably miserable and controversial situation of the Russian population in the successor states, the adopted law reflects good intentions in many instances in vain if many of the Russian nationalists, although covertly, would like to regard it as the first step of an attempt to restore the Soviet Union or the empire. True, considering the reality in Russia and the successor states, this attempt seems merely a vain hope. Yet, it might have been due exactly to the impossibility of this pipedream that none of the successor states attacked the law and its provisions so fiercely as certain neighbours of Hungary did and still do with respect to the Status Law. No such events occurred despite the fact that the law makes a separate mention of sensitive issues like e.g. national-cultural autonomy and the certificate on one's belonging in the group of fellow countrymen. At the same time, the law brought about just the opposite effect by extending its effect not only to fellow countrymen in the "Near Abroad" but also to those in "Far Abroad". On the one hand, it managed to prevent attacks concerning the restoration of the empire and, on the other, it tried to deal with the problem of fundamentally different groups of fellow countrymen under the scope of a single law. 2003. ősz 49
