Russian society is atomised
Russia is home to members of various indigenous peoples. For example, the Itelmen in Kamchatka. Itelmen human rights activist Dmitry Berezhkov, who lives in exile in Norway, explains how they are oppressed in Vladimir Putin’s empire.
BY MICHAEL LEH
Dmitry Berezhkov comes from the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Far East of the Russian Federation. The 47-year-old belongs to the small indigenous Itelmen people, of whom only about 2,500 remain today following the Russian colonisation of Kamchatka at the end of the 17th century. Before the arrival of the Russians and Cossacks, there were an estimated 25,000 Itelmen people. Several uprisings by them were brutally suppressed, women and children enslaved and deported. Diseases brought in from outside, to which they were not immune, also decimated the indigenous peoples of the Far East.
Kamchatka is also home to the Koryaks, Evens, Chukchi, Kamchadals and Aleuts. The distance from Germany to the region's capital on the Pacific coast, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, is around 8,000 kilometres as the crow flies. Founded in 1740, the city has a population of 180,000 and is an important base for the Russian Pacific Fleet.
Dmitry Berezhkov. Photo: Michael Leh
Tjan Zaotschnaja, chairperson of the International Committee of Indigenous Peoples of Russia (ICIPR). Photo: GfbV
Fleeing abroad
Dmitry Berezhkov is an opponent of Putin. He was already active in the indigenous movement in Kamchatka as a teenager. After studying education, he worked for several years as a geography teacher and at the Information Centre for Indigenous Peoples in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Since 2004, he has been vice-president of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON). Due to threats and interrogations by the Russian secret service, he was forced to flee abroad in 2011. He was granted political asylum in Norway and has since continued his work from Tromsø, Norway. Tromsø, located 344 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, is the seat of the Arctic Council, which also promotes the interests of indigenous peoples in the region.
In response to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in March 2022, Berezhkov and others founded the International Committee of Indigenous Peoples of Russia (ICIPR) in exile. Its chairperson is Itelmenin Tjan Zaotschnaja a trained meteorologist who now lives in exile in Munich. She had moved from Kamchatka to Moscow, married a Soviet dissident and published underground newspapers with him. Today, she is a member of the Munich regional group of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) and is particularly committed to preserving the Itelmen language and culture.
God in the form of a raven
Outstanding early accounts of the life of the Itelmen people were provided by Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709–1746), a German physician, naturalist and ethnologist from Middle Franconia. In his extensive work Description of the Land of Kamchatka, he also reports on the religion of the Itelmen people. According to their beliefs, a god in the form of a raven named Kutka created the world. However, the Itelmen noted that Kutka made many mistakes in the process, which is why they often cursed, insulted or laughed at him. According to the Itelmen's beliefs, Kutka's clever wife Chachy often had to correct his mistakes.
Itelmen people celebrating the traditional Alchalalalaj festival in the village of Kovran, Kamchatka (1997). Photo: Tjan Zaotschnaja
Umbrella organisation under Putin’s control
In Berlin, Dmitry Berezhkov describes to this newspaper the situation of Russia’s indigenous peoples, the discrimination they face and how they are still being used by Putin’s propaganda machine. The official umbrella organisation for indigenous peoples in Russia (RAIPON) has long been under the complete control of the state apparatus. Its representatives had already signed a declaration in March 2022 stating that the indigenous peoples of Russia supported Putin’s war against Ukraine. These propaganda lies were being spread internationally and also to the ‘global South’. ‘In reality, however, the indigenous peoples of Russia do not support the war, at least not all of them,’ Berezhkov emphasises. A March 2022 declaration by the ICIPR already stated:
‘We, the undersigned representatives of the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East, who live outside Russia against our will, are outraged by the war that President Putin has unleashed against Ukraine.’ The entire population of Ukraine is in grave danger. ‘Old people, women and children are dying. Cities and communities of an independent country are being destroyed because their inhabitants did not want to submit to the will of a dictator and tyrant,’ the declaration continued. And: ‘As representatives of indigenous peoples, we express our solidarity with the Ukrainian people in their struggle for freedom and are extremely concerned about the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples during the war on Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean Peninsula, which continues to be illegally occupied by Russia.’ The ICIPR appealed to ‘the international community to no longer recognise RAIPON as the legitimate representative of the indigenous peoples of Russia’.
As Maria Vyushkova from Buryatia demonstrates with figures in the magazine for human and minority rights published by the Society for Threatened Peoples, members of Russia’s ethnic minorities are dying disproportionately often in the war against Ukraine. ‘They have the highest per capita death rate and are conscripted or recruited more often than other groups,’ says Vyushkova.
Not many want to know the truth
‘We are only a small NGO,’ Berezhkov explains about the ICIPR, ‘but the Russian government has also classified us, along with others, as an “extremist organisation”.’ Berezhkov is also editor-in-chief of the online magazine Indigenous Russia, which has been in existence since 2019. On 2 February, he reported on the arrests of indigenous human rights activists in Moscow in December: ‘Among those arrested was Daria Egereva, a woman known in the international indigenous community for her consistent human rights work in UN forums, including on climate, biodiversity and indigenous women’s rights.’ Daria Egerova is in prison because of her ‘years of open, conscientious and professional work defending the rights of indigenous peoples, one of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in Russia.’
What do people in distant Kamchatka know about the war in Ukraine? What can they learn despite state propaganda and surveillance, even on the internet? ‘It has become more difficult for ordinary people to get information,’ Berezhkov explains to the Tagespost, ‘but those who want to know the truth can find it out.’ However, not many people want to know it at all. ‘In any case, I know people even in Kamchatka who know full well that the war against Ukraine is a crime. And that the Ukrainians are only defending their national independence.’ But some of his acquaintances have also lost their lives in the war in Ukraine. It has become more difficult to flee to Europe. In rural villages, it was easier to recruit men. Many indigenous people were poor and were tempted with money to go to war.
Berezhkov explains that there is not much public resistance in Russia, unlike in Iran, for example, because of the Soviet Union’s ‘completely crazy 70-year-long communist experiment’. This has ‘atomised’ Russian society. People only speak openly to those they know very well; anything else is too dangerous. As in the past, change is only expected when there is a change at the top of the state – ‘usually through the death of the ruler’.
An Itelmen woman peeling the bark from a bear’s claw plant to eat the sweet stem, central Kamchatka. Photo: Tjan Zaotschnaja
This article by Michael Leh appeared on 26 February 2026 in the German Catholic weekly newspaper Die Tagespost. Leh is a journalist in Berlin and a member of the board of the German Section of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR). We publish his contribution here with the kind permission of the author.
Leave A Comment