Erzyan Inyazor asks PACE to estimate national policy of Russia

In the city of Turku, Erzya activists brought flowers and commemorative postcards to the building of the Russian consulate, the IdelReal website reports.

he self-immolation of Albert Razin on September 10 intended to attract attention to the problems of the Udmurt language has certainly done that, but it has also drawn enormous attention to the man himself. One of the most moving is a commentary of Galina Sakharevich on Moscow’s Takiye dela portal.

On the day last month that hundreds paid their last respects to Albert Razin, the 79-year-old activist who burned himself to death in support of his native Udmurt language, the Moscow newspaper Izvestia published an op-ed column by a prominent scholar and Kremlin adviser on minority issues.

Syres’ Boliayen’, Inyazor (chief elder) of Erzya people, appealed to government of Republic of Mordovia with a requirement to establish an Erzyan gymnasium in Saransk. He is convinced that Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia on the verge of total extinction because of Moscow’s aggressive assimilation policy.

The police investigators were insistent and very pointed in their questions, according to Yulia Razina: Why did her husband douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire in this central Russian city’s main square?