On 20 September 2026, elections were held for the Council of Representatives of the Peoples of the Udmurt Republic—a body created by Udmurt civil society outside Russian state institutions. According to the organizers, 1,026 people voted. On 21 September, the Organising Committee approved the results and announced the elected representatives.
The organisers describe them as the first free Udmurt elections. Voting was conducted remotely using the U.S.-based OpaVote platform, while an international group of eight representatives of civic and political organisations and experts observed the process. The elections were not elections to an official Russian state body and did not give the elected representatives governmental powers. The organisers describe the Council as a representative body of Udmurt civil society.
That distinction is important — as is the political signal.
While Moscow conducts its own elections according to federal rules, part of Udmurt civil society has created a separate mechanism of political representation.
The date was also symbolic. On 20 September 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Udmurt ASSR adopted the Declaration on the State Sovereignty of the Udmurt Republic. It proclaimed Udmurtia a sovereign state with full authority within its territory, affirmed the principle of self-determination, and stated that territorial changes should be decided by the will of the people through a referendum.
The 1990 declaration still envisaged Udmurtia maintaining treaty relations with the RSFSR and the USSR. Yet its central principle was already significant: Udmurtia possesses a political subject of its own — its people.
Thirty-six years later, that principle has taken a new form.
The “Udmurtia — Eriko Shaer!” initiative explicitly advocates a free, democratic and independent Udmurt Republic. Its participants describe the new Council as an initial step toward building democratic institutions for a future Udmurtia. This is the position of a particular national political movement, not evidence that all Udmurts support independence.
This is where the decolonial dimension becomes visible.
Political agency does not begin with a declaration of statehood. It begins when people and institutions assert that a nation’s future should not automatically be decided by an imperial centre.
For Udmurtia, that is particularly significant. Its 1990 sovereignty declaration was part of the wave of national self-determination at the end of the Soviet era. Today, a civic initiative is returning to that political legacy under conditions of war, repression and centralisation of power in Moscow.
Moscow may not recognise this Council. But its creation demonstrates that Udmurtia’s political future is no longer being discussed only in the offices of the Moscow centre — Udmurt political forces are increasingly seeking to articulate it themselves.
