Paul
Goble
Staunton,
April 28 – Russian opposition leader Aleksey Navalny says that Russia does not
need federalism and should become a unitary state in which cities rather than
the current federal subjects would be the fundamental political link between
individual Russian citizens and the Russian state.
In
an interview published in the May issue of the Russian version of “GQ” magazine,
Navalny, who currently faces what many view as politically motivated criminal
charges but who many believe will eventually run for president, laid out his views
on this most sensitive issue (www.gq.ru/magazine/featured/40667_aleksey_navalnyy_byt_luchshim_oppozitsionnym_politikom_v_rossii_eto_ochen_prosto.php?PAGEN_1=4).
Navalny
said that “in general [he] considers that Russia is a unitary state” and that
federalism “is unnecessary” and only “interferes with” the development of the
country. “The existing subjects of the
Federation” including their borders and leadership are indefensible because no
one knows “from where they came or who needs them.”
Instead,
power should be given to the cities. “Everyone
shouts that if power is given to lower-level officials, then little tsars will
appear and separatism will flourish. But
it isn’t necessary to give power to the governors. This isn’t going down [very
far]. Down is when the major of Naberezhny Chelny has power and the president
of Tatarstan has much less.”
(The idea of a unity Russia based on
regional urban agglomerations has been pushed by some within the Russian
government but has been denounced by urban specialists like Aleksandr Boroznov as
a step that will help Moscow but not the population. For his criticism, see chaskor.ru/article/aglomeratsiya_-_mera_razumnosti_31791
as discussed at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/04/window-on-eurasia-agglomeration-of.html).
The non-Russian republics and
predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays would not be the only ones to
lose power under his scheme. Navalny said that the federal government should
devote its attention to ensuring that “elections are not falsified, judges are
normal, and profits from the sale of oil are distributed justly and evenly.”
Navalny’s remarks on federalism this
time around are already attracting attention both positive and negative. (A
Yandex search this morning found 96,000 hits.) Some who favor his ideas are
doing so for the pragmatic political reason that they will be popular with some
Russians, but many who oppose them, Russians and non-Russians alike, are
certain to be furious.
The opposition leader has waded into
this area of controversy before, and on those occasions, Navalny’s words
attracted some support at home and abroad but also withering criticism both
from non-Russians who view them as a threat but from Russian experts who have
been if anything even more disturbed about their consequences.
Yevgeny Gontmakher, a leader of the Moscow
Institute of Contemporary Development, argued that Navalny’s suggestions about
making Russia a nation state rather than a federal and multi-national one could
put the Russian Federation on the path toward a Yugoslav-style disintegration (echo.msk.ru/blog/gontmaher/845502-echo/ as discussed in windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2012/01/window-on-eurasia-navalnys-nationality.html).
The
territory of the Russian Federation, he pointed out, includes many places where
the Russian people have not lived from time immemorial but others have: “Tatars
and Bashkirs, Chuvash and Mordvins, Chechens and Ingushes, Yakuts and Chukchis
live on territories in which not so long ago there were no ethnic Russians at
all.”
That
justified the formation of the state as a federation. Gontmakher conceded that “it
is possible that it was a mistake to split the truly ethnic Russian (Slavic)
lands into numerous oblasts and krays … but the presence of national republics
and districts is the only chance to escape from the imperial arrangement” that
Russia had earlier and still remain a single country.
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