Window on Eurasia: Moscow’s Hyper-Centralization Provoking Separatism, Analyst Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 11 – Separatist attitudes are intensifying in Russian as well as non-Russian regions of the country less because of the actions of regional or ethnic movements than because of the anger many people feel about the increasing centralization of power and wealth in Moscow, according to a Tatar analyst.

            In an article this week on the independent Chuvash journal “Irekle Samakh,” Nail Gilmanov, a Tatar from that Middle Volga republic, says that proposed legislation to impose criminal sanctions on “separatism” is so poorly drawn that it will be used in the first instance by the powers that be against their political opponents (irekle.org/articles/i57.html).

            Moreover, the draft laws clearly violate the Russian Constitution and basic human rights because they outlaw the discussion of self-determination, a concept that is far broader than simply about the pursuit of state independence.  And these bills, precisely because they do that and fail to address what is behind separatist ideas, very likely will provoke more of it.

            As Gilmanov points out, “the main thing for each people is to have the opportunity by a democratic path to define its future and independently decide questions which are vitally important to it. Among these are the right to the use of native language, the right to the use of the natural wealth of the region, the development of national culture, the system of national education and national media.”

            “If all these issues are resolved in the framework of a federative state, then there will be few demanding complete independence,” he says, pointing to the experience of many other countries. Indeed, “separatist slogan are an indicator that all is not well in the sphere of national or regional policy.”

            In many cases, people use them not to advance a cause but “only as a method of attracting attention to problems of national or regional development or as a response to the actions of federal authorities who have undermined the rights of residents of ‘the provinces.’” And that use must be clearly distinguished from others.

            According to Gilmanov, there are two main causes for the fact that separatist comments are becoming more common in Russia today.  First, in non-Russian regions, there has been a massive closure of non-Russian-language schools, calls for “the liquidation” of republics, and for “a Russia for the [ethnic] Russians.”

            People are angry, he continues, but at the present, “there are no political forces really preparing to seek the separation of any region from Russia or even legal mechanisms for that to happen.” Thus regional or national separatism can hardly “completely destroy” the country, but it “does represent a real threat to the imperial unitary system of power.”

            The second “and chief” cause of separatist attitudes lies in the nature of “Russian ‘federalism’” itself, Gilmanov says.  “The concentration of power and money in Moscow and the harshly centralized bureaucratic system of the administration of the state do not correspond to the interests of ordinary citizens beyond the borders of the capital.”

            At present, “the regional authorities politically and economically are controlled by the Kremlin, the lion’s share of taxes and oil and gas revenues go to the federal budget, and the majority of major regional companies belong to Moscow oligarchs,” he writes.

            “The basic function of the federal center thus involves the control over financial flows and the redistribution of incomes from taxes and the earnings from the export of natural resources” and the use of such money for “imperial projects like the Olympics in Sochi and the World Cup in 2018.”

            Regional leaders are forced to try to extract resources they’ve sent to the center back to their regions, an “extremely ineffective, corrupt and absolutely unacceptable” system that puts a brake on “the normal development of the regions” and cannot fail to generate “dissatisfaction, one of the forms of which are calls for the separation of the regions from Russia.”

            The current arrangements are stable only if prices for oil and gas are high, the political activity of the majority of the population is low, and the force structures are prepared to defend whatever the Kremlin wants.  But “genuine stability and the development of the country” is possible only with strong regions and real federalism, including fiscal federalism.

            The regime’s talk about separatism is intended to open the way for less federalism rather than more, but such a move will provoke even more discussions of it. Obviously, most of the Muscovite bureaucracy will support such efforts because they are the immediate beneficiaries. But not all are, and consequently, some discussion is still possible.

            Obviously, Moscow is not the only cause of separatism, Gilmanov says. Ethnic issues in places like the North Caucasus are contributing factors. “But these exception only underscore the main argument” he is making.  If a law imposing criminal sanctions on discussions of separatism passes, it will be used successfully against the opposition but not against separatism as such.

            Indeed, the Tatar analyst concludes, “in attempting to suppression national and regional movements,” Moscow will “be freezing natural political processes and blocking the development of the regions.” That, and not any calls for “separatism” as some in the Duma understand it “will lead Russia to collapse.”

Window on Eurasia: Putin’s Move against News Agency Said Inspiring Fear rather than Anger among Russians

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 11 – Russians have responded to President Vladimir Putin’s decision to abolish RIA Novosti in a very different way than they have toward many of his other recent moves, according to Tatyana Stanovaya. Instead of viewing the Kremlin’s leader’s actions as pointing to the demise of his system, many now feel open fear instead.

            That is a first, the Paris-based analyst of the Moscow Center for Political Technologies says. “Earlier all attempts of the authorities to ‘tighten’” the screws were viewed as “the next step toward a collapse. The stupider the authorities behaved, the sooner they would fall.” But reactions to the shuttering of Novosti have been different (politcom.ru/16884.html).

                Many Russians appear to feel that this latest and quite unexpected move “puts the country on the rails toward the Soviet Union” ad that it is “irreversible,” Stanovaya says.  As a result, people have “stopped joking” about what many had viewed as Putin’s “caricature authoritarianism” and now think what they are seeing is the real thing.

            The main question is why did Putin take this step now. Stanovaya suggests there are three answers. First, the “conservative wave” which Putin has promoted and ridden since returning to the presidency now needs more than “political correctness.” It requires much tighter control.  The new media arrangements give the Kremlin that possibility.

            RIA-Novosti was in part a more open, even liberal news agency, but its leaders understood the limits most of the time and obeyed them, Stanovaya says. Consequently, it would be a mistake to see it as a bastion of free media that has now been destroyed.

            Second, she says, Putin’s moves against Novosti are part of “the attack of the Kremlin on everything connected” with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, his aides and his ideas. For Putin, talk about modernization is a thing of the past. Now, the focus is on “war, the State Department, Russia’s enemies” and dividing up Ukraine to combat “the virus of an ‘orange revolution.’”

            And third, Stanovaya says, the events in Ukraine have played an especially critical role.  The 2004 Orange Revolution had “the deepest consequences for Russian domestic and foreign policy; “the current Euromaidan will have no fewer consequences.” Liquidating Novosti, she continues, is a sign that the Kremlin is reading to move in that direction.

            Stanovaya is clearly right overall, but there are two aspects implicit in her argument that she does not highlight. On the one hand, Putin is acting out of fear even as he is spreading it in the Russian population.  His latest moves to give him a totally controlled media outlet are intended to block any possibility of Maidan-like developments in Russia.

            And on the other, and precisely because the Kremlin leader is doing this not because he is confident but because he is anything but, the reaction of the Russian people or at least its most active elements and that of the West are going to be critical.  If both treat what Putin is doing as inevitable and irreversible, it may become so; if they don’t, this latest action doesn’t need to be.

            Because of the Internet, many Russians will continue at least for the time being to be able to get independent news and information even if Putin expands his repressive course. And because they have a vested interest in a democratic rather than dictatorial Russia, the Western powers have leverage against Putin if they are prepared to use  it.

Window on Eurasia: Moscow Expands Its Military Presence in the South Caucasus

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 11 – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to a Russian military base in Armenia nine days ago calls attention to Moscow’s expansion of its military presence in the South Caucasus, a presence that affects not only Moscow’s tightening of relations with Yerevan but also its ability to project force in the immediate region and beyond.

            In  1200-word commentary on the Politcom.ru portal, Sergey Minasyan, a researcher at Yerevan’s Institute for the Caucasus, says it is not yet clear whether Russia’s latest moves are only a response to short-term imperatives of the geopolitical chessboard or are “serious and for the long term” but that clearly they deserve close attention (politcom.ru/16873.html).

            On December 2, Putin visited the Russian military base at Gyumri and watched a demonstration of the new weapons systems that Moscow has sent there, including helicopters and MIG-29s which will allow the forces there to counter Turkey’s F-16C/D and the updated fourth generation plus planes that Azerbaijan has recently acquired.

             In addition, Moscow has also taken over several sections of the Erebuni air field for the basing of a mixed helicopter unit.  That “will allow also increasing the potential for the conduct of joint attack operations, which are especially important given the forest and mountain relief of localities in the South Caucasus,” Minasyan says.

            Moscow’s intentions to upgrade both facilities were signaled last summer, the Yerevan analyst continues, when Nikolay Bordyuzha, the secretary general of the Organization for the Collective Security Treaty, said that his group would be taking steps to improve all aspects of the state of air power in the region.

             Subsequently, at the Organization’s Sochi summit, the group announced that it would also be introducing drone units into Armenia. And it said that it would also be installing advanced rocket and artillery equipment and armored tanks to protect it.  There reportedly are such systems now at Russian bases in Abkhazia and South Osetia as well.

            “Finally,” Minasyan points out, the ratification by the Armenian parliament of an agreement with the Russian Federation on expanded military-industry cooperation means that Yerevan will be able to purchase arms and ammunition at concessionary prices on the Russian market.

            It is quite obvious, the analyst continues, that these developments are connected with Moscow’s promotion of Eurasian integration to counter any expansion of European influence in the area. Indeed, he says, “many experts consider that Russian pressure in this sphere was decisive for the decision of Yerevan” not to sign an association agreement with the EU.

            But more is involved as well, Minasyan suggests. On the one hand, Armenia remains concerned about the danger of Azerbaijani military action to force Armenian units out of its territory.  And on the other, Russia is interested in having such new capacity to put pressure on other states in the region and deal with broader threats from beyond the former Soviet border.

            The “big question” now, the Yerevan analyst say, is “how serious and long term is the process of reforming the Russian military presence in the South Caucasus” going to be? The answer, he suggests, depends on developments in the post-Soviet space “in the immediate future.”

But it also depends “on how and how seriously Moscow and its opponents and partners will react” to what is increasingly becoming “a ‘zero-sum’ geopolitical game” in the South Caucasus, where the presence of one power leads to or at least is intended to lead to the expulsion of others.

Window on Eurasia: West’s Failure to Insist Kremlin Respect Democracy is Why Russia is Not Ukraine, Moscow Activist Says

Paul Goble

Staunton, December 11 --Russia and Ukraine were in roughly the same situation with regard to civil and political rights until Ukrainians carried out the Orange Revolution in 2004, but that revolution would not have succeeded had it not been for “the uncompromising position” of the West which demanded that Kyiv respect democracy or face “very serious consequences.”

Ukraine also had the advantage, Vladislav Naganov, an ally of Aleksey Navalny says, both in that “part of the administrative resource of Ukraine already then was working for the opposition” with the Kyiv mayor and the heads of some regions backing the opposition and also in that Ukraine had an independent television (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=52A61D2838D62).

Russia in 2004, five years into the rule of Vladimir Putin, had none of those advantages. It did not face “uncompromising” demands with real teeth from the West, it could not count on part of the power vertical to support the opposition, and television if not the Internet was already under the tight control of the Kremlin.

In the years since, according to Naganov, “the development of Russia and Ukraine has gone along different paths. In Ukraine, for these nine years, there has been “an open and free political competition, and society is accustomed to these rules. It has been accustomed to freedom of speech and to an independent media.”

Ukrainian society, Naganov says, has become accustomed to its right to form whatever political parties it wants and to nominate candidates of its choice.  Elections are not falsified, at least “not so boldly and crudely as in Russia.”  And Ukrainian society “has become accustomed that it can freely meet on the streets” and no one from the authorities will try to stop that.

In Russia, in contrast, over this period, there has been a consistent “tightening of the screws,” the political system has been transformed” into a desert or a swamp, censorship has triumphed, “and society also has become accustomed to these rules,” not all of its members but most.  And elections have been falsified routinely.

“Finally,” Naganov writes, “the relationship of the European Union and the United States to the authorities of Russia and Ukraine was and remains different.”  The West has continued to make clear demands of the Ukrainians and to impose real penalties when Kyiv does not meet them; it has not done so in the case of Russia.  And the Kremlin has become accustomed to that.

Given this difference in treatment, no one should be surprised that “Putin does everything that he wants on the territory of the Russian Federation” while “Yanukovich cannot allow himself the same,” unless of course he no longer cares about the West because of increasing pressure from Moscow.

That is why there are millions of demonstrators in Ukraine and only a relative handful in the Russian Federation, but would that be the case if Ukrainians couldn’t be sure that opposition deputies would support them, the authorities restrained in moving against them, their national media open to cover them, and themselves unlikely to be accused of being “agents of the CIA?”

If Russians could be equally sure of these things, they would go into the streets in massive numbers as well, Naganov says.  Indeed, those who do so under current conditions are all the more remarkable.  They are showing the way, not only for what other Russians must do but also what the West must do as well.