This is the editorial in this week's issue of the Sakhalin Times.

As much as the Soviet Union preached the equality of races and denounced racism, calling it a western colonial practice, one of the biggest mistakes it made was classifying its various ethnic groups into nationalities rather than classifying all citizens as having a common Soviet nationality. Russia did away the nationalities column in the internal passport but now we have the Sakhalin Duma petitioning the prime minister to reinsert it. This petition could open a Pandora’s Box in a country that is struggling to maintain its fragile inter-ethnic harmony.

Sakhalin’s Indigenous People are at the forefront of the movement to have their nationality stated on their passports. Small in number, the indigenous groups on the island have received both international attention and a very generous grant programme in the Sakhalin Energy-sponsored Sakhalin Indigenous Minority Development Programme (SIMDP). Given the mentality of a typical Russian bureaucrat, it’s understandable that people who are obviously indigenous may be asked to furnish irrefutable proof of their ethnicity. The solution to this lies in special identity cards issued by the Sakhalin Administration. The internal passport is a very important identification document in Russia but it’s not the only recognised document. Identification cards like driver’s licenses and student ID cards also establish identity beyond a doubt. Similarly a simple identity card stating that a person belongs to the Nivkh or Nanai community should be enough.

The Sakhalin Administration’s petition may just fuel those politicians in Russia with ultra-nationalistic tendencies to demand that all passports have that dreaded column again. This would achieve nothing but creating more divisions in a country where ethnic identities are becoming more relevant by the day. While there is absolutely no danger of inter-ethnic strife in Sakhalin, there are several flashpoints in Central Russia. It is in these flashpoints that classification of a citizen on the basis of nationality that can lead to a potentially dangerous situation.

There are several fringe elements in contemporary Russian society, all looking to blame their poor living conditions on “non-Russian nationals.” These elements are growing in number and threaten to destroy the unity of the Russian people. The government, which has openly denounced these groups, is looked upon as the main obstruction by extremists. It is in Russia’s best interests that the government maintain this stand and ensure that the constitutional rights of all Russian citizens are protected. The Russian Constitution guarantees equal rights for all citizens regardless of race and ethnicity. One of the essential requisites of enforcing that equality, at least in public life, is an official policy that pays no attention to a citizen’s ethnic or racial background.

Tailpiece: As ridiculous as this sounds, maybe the Federal Government should enact a law that states that all Russian Citizens be automatically classified as having Russian Nationality. There is no distinction between citizenship and nationality in any civilised country.

This is the editorial in this week's issue of the Sakhalin Times

These are three words that every Sakhaliner has become accustomed to hearing over the better part of the last decade. Every year, inspections conducted in late-October reveal that the Sakhalin Region is unprepared to deal with the onset of cooler temperatures. The municipal authorities stopped providing hot water and indoor heating from mid-May under the guise of maintenance work. It’s shocking that in 5 months, inadequate restoration work was carried out on the city’s crumbling pipeline system. If a large number of homes in the region’s capital don’t have heating, it’s not difficult to imagine how bad the situation must be in lesser inhabited parts.

The Sakhalin winter can be absolutely brutal and unforgiving. Temperatures with the wind chill factor tend to drop to almost 40 degrees (Celsius) below the freezing point. Southern Sakhalin witnesses relatively reasonable weather when compared to the north. It’s the northern part of the island that is most prone to major power cuts and heating shortages in the winter.

Every August, a minor warning is handed out to the Sakhalin Administration for inadequate winter preparations and all is forgotten by October. Then in late-December, the first blizzard strikes Sakhalin and the island gets cut off from the rest of the world and the authorities express shock at nature’s fury. This October, the Sakhalin Region seems to be falling into the same pattern that has made many a winter memorable for the wrong reasons.

The extremely prolonged 2005-6 winter with its series of snow storms only put further pressure on the utilities, communal infrastructure and social amenities. The 2005-6 winter marked a first in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk when it came to the sheer number of water cuts and cuts in heating supply. These kinds of things are a yearly feature in other parts of the region.

The past winter also had an alarming number of accidents in the city, the worst of those being the incident around the New Year when a schoolboy fell into a manhole and got boiled to death. A four year-old boy in the city escaped a similar feat by a stroke of luck. With the infrastructure crumbling in the city, more neighbourhoods may turn into death-traps for pedestrians this winter.

Whatever the hardships that the people of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk endure, they pale in comparison to other parts of the region, where people have been enduring conditions reminiscent of the 16th century. There are several so-called urban-type settlements in central and northern Sakhalin that have non-existent water, heating and electricity delivery systems. It is quite puzzling that the large number of officials, who inspect the region’s winter preparations each August, seem to think that all is in place.

The main problems when it comes to the region’s infrastructure are inadequate funding, misallocation of the existing funds and a disregard for maintenance of facilities. It is a crying shame that at a time when energy projects have helped to bring an enormous windfall to Sakhalin, the region’s infrastructure is in such a state. It will take a lot of political will to overhaul the infrastructure on the island. All the investment in the world will not be enough if those at the top don’t ensure that the utilities, civil amenities and infrastructure are in proper working condition and not just on paper.