Mikhail Matveyev, the KPRF deputy who is deputy chair of the Duma Committee on Regional Policy and Local Self-Administration, has proposed replacing the term “national-cultural autonomy” with the term “national-cultural union” and allowing the government to ban any of these groups which received financing from abroad.

Not only would the passage of this proposal represent a serious downgrading in the only formal status that more than 200 ethnic........

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