ABSTRACT
In post-Soviet Russia, although some basic provisions for minority participation exist, they are not buttressed by guarantees that bottom-up initiatives are effectively elevated to decision-making levels. The prevalence of informal practices in Russian society means that mechanisms that ought to enable minority participation are immersed in such practices and thus lack institutionalisation. It has already been noted that minority issues have been linked principally to cultural programmes rather than to civil and political rights, while also perpetuating the Soviet legacy of actively promoting patriotism and containing ethnic nationalism. Ethnicity has played a minor role in post-Soviet Russian politics, with the exception of a short period of ethnic revival in the 1990s. Since then, ethnicity has rarely been politicised despite the fact that ethnic identities are felt among the members of national minorities, and in the presence of an ethnicity-based form of federalism. For national minorities United Russia's predominance in the Duma has consolidated the overwhelmingly descriptive nature of minority representation.
