No one is allowed to have an opinion about this post until they have carefully read the “Ethnic groups in Russia” Wikipedia page
Nobody really familiar with Russia or the USSR (who isn’t a racist) would blink an eye that she could be Tatar or Bukharan Jewish or whatever else you could ask for here
There weren’t many ethnic minorities in the KGB but it makes sense for minority groups to be targeted for physical reconditioning and brainwashing and so on, especially if it meant they couldn’t have children due to the Soviet Russian strategy of flooding regions with ethnic Russians in order to drown out the indigenous non-Russian populations, so who really cares
Plus her patronymic – meaning she has a part in her name that means ‘the daughter of Alian’ – isn’t Russian, Alian is definitely not a Russian name. I think her father has an Arabic name (according to googling around on runet it’s from Arabic) and many Muslims in Russia are Asian. Whoever her father was he wasn’t 100% ethnic Russian and his family did not identify with Russian culture.
In fact if I were told I was going to meet someone called Natalia Alianovna I would actually expect an Asian (or someone like Azerbaijani) to walk out
(Although I wouldn’t really be surprised by someone who is white passing either, people from Asian groups in Russia can look very diverse – but if she were played by an Asian actor it wouldn’t be pandering or erasure or nonsensical)
(yeah some ethnicties like Bukharan Jewish are extremely small in population but my opinion on this is if a single person could fit the bill it’s completely normal to have such a character)
This is a really cool and informative addition to this post, thank you!
knitting in the dark 