In one of the largest expressions of social unrest since Moscow invaded Ukraine over three years ago, thousands rallied in Russia’s Altai Republic June 21 to protest Kremlin-organized “reforms” that end local self-government and attack the rights and cultural heritage of the indigenous Mongol people living there.
The Altai Republic, with less than 225,000 residents, is located in southern Siberia, where Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan meet. Its territory is roughly the size of Portugal. Altaians, an ethnic group indigenous to the region, comprise 33.9% of the population, while Russians account for 56.6%.
The substantial June 21 action in Gorno-Altaysk, the republic’s only city and its capital, demanded the resignation of Gov. Andrey Turchak and of Alexander Prokopyev, acting chairman of the regional government.
“Turchak is someone we didn’t elect. He is a person appointed to rule us,” Aruna Arna, a leader of the protests, told the crowd at the rally. “We have to tell the Kremlin that we don’t want to have people appointed. We want our own people in the government.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed St. Petersburg-based Turchak — whose father is a close associate and judo sparring partner of the president — acting governor of the Altai Republic in June 2024. A few months later he was declared the winner in the official election held there.
Turchak then moved to implement directives from Putin to dissolve the region’s long-standing rural municipalities and transfer their powers to higher-level administrators. He submitted a new law to do so to the Altai State Assembly in May.
He also enacted a series of unpopular constitutional amendments eliminating any reference to the Altai Republic’s “territorial integrity.”
This led to growing opposition by the indigenous Altaian people there to government preparations to merge the republic with neighboring Altai Krai region, which with a population of over 2 million, 93% of whom are ethnic Russians, is directly ruled by Moscow. Such a move had been attempted in the early 2000s, leading to mass protests.
Such a merger would drastically alter the conditions facing the Altai people, making them a very small minority in the new, vastly Russian, region. It would also deprive them of an array of national rights and benefits guaranteed by a republic, including special status for the Altai languages and funding for projects dedicated to the preservation of the indigenous languages and cultural traditions.
The vast majority of the population of the Altai Republic live in rural areas across the mountainous region. They breed red deer, sheep, horses and other animals and engage in agriculture. In some settlements there is no gas or electricity.
The mountainous area’s beautiful scenery attracts more and more tourists, over 2.7 million over the past year. That’s what outside capitalist investors, encouraged by the Kremlin, are eager to get their hands on, to make profits in building resort areas at the expense of pushing the indigenous population and their rights aside. “Moscow investors not only drove up land prices, making them virtually inaccessible for purchase by locals,” the Moscow Times reported, “but also appropriated the land using legally dubious schemes.”
Putin unable to quash protests
Given the overwhelming sentiment among the Altai population against Moscow’s intervention, the Putin regime has so far held back on quashing these protests. In fact, the June 21 action in Gorno-Altaysk was a rare officially authorized protest.
The protests began June 12, when demonstrators partially blocked traffic on the Chuya Highway. Government prosecutors declared the action an “unauthorized public gathering” and jailed the organizers and six of the most active participants, holding them for two weeks.
“But the arrests didn’t stop the movement,” Medusa reported. “Some Altai residents continued to stage solo pickets demanding Turchak’s resignation, while others posted protest slogans on trucks, including: ‘Oligarchs, hands off sacred Altai’ and ‘Let’s protect Altai for our children.’” The actions got a lot bigger a week later.
Three days after the June 21 demonstration, the Altai Republic’s State Assembly voted to approve the bill eliminating the region’s village councils.
“I think this is yet another reflection of how the authorities truly regard us,” Aruna Arna said in a video circulated after the vote. “We need to keep acting. This is just the beginning. We need to fight for our rights.”
Record of the Bolsheviks
The national issues posed here were crucial in the Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia in 1917, which supported self-determination for oppressed nations and nationalities. This was posed especially sharply in the peasant-based peoples of Ukraine and in the East.
The principles involved were outlined in a Declaration of the new Soviet government issued Nov. 15, 1917, just days after the revolution triumphed. It called for “the right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination up to and including the right to secede and form an independent state” and for the “unhampered development of national minorities and of ethnographic groups inhabiting Russian territory.”
At the 1920 First Congress of the Peoples of the East organized by the Bolsheviks and held in Baku, delegates from Eastern regions criticized deviations from this course in their areas. “Representatives of the center,” a resolution they submitted said, “failed to implement the ‘autonomies of the peoples of the East’ proclaimed by the Soviet government — in the sense of a genuine transfer of power to indigenous toilers from the exploiters.”
Under the leadership of V.I. Lenin, the Bolshevik-led government in Russia moved immediately to correct this. In the Altai area, they worked with native people to establish an autonomous province in 1922 that defended their language and culture.
The counterrevolution led by Joseph Stalin in the late 1920s reversed this course.