Paul
Goble
Staunton,
February 9 – This week, Vitaly Klichko, a leader of the Ukrainian, became the
latest in a long line of people, Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians alike, to argue
that even talking about the federalization of his county is “the path to its
destruction” and that those who do so “must not be called Ukrainians” (news.liga.net/news/politics/972586-klichko_federalizatsiya_ukrainy_eto_put_k_ee_unichtozheniyu.htm).
That argument rests on the widespread
belief that federalization would exacerbate differences between the
predominantly ethnic Ukrainian West and the predominantly ethnic Russian East
and that those would allow Moscow at a minimum to continue to interfere in
Ukrainian politics and could ultimately allow the Russian Federation to split Ukraine
in two.
But those who take that position
ignore two things. On the one hand, many, perhaps most ethnic Russians in
eastern Ukraine, as the absence of widespread support in that region for
efforts to oppose the Maidan, are loyal Ukrainian citizens for whom ethnic
identity is not more important than citizenship and who like other Ukrainians
want a better life in a European state.
And on the other, it ignores the
very real contributions federalism, political and especially budgetary, can
make to limiting the power of the central government in Kyiv and thus helping
Ukrainians of all ethnic groups to escape from the hyper-centralization that
they have inherited from the Russian and Soviet pasts.
If the first of these problems with
the anti-federalist arguments has received some attention, the second has not.
That makes a new article by Vadim Shteppa, a leading regionalist in the Russian
Federation and editor of the “Inache” journal, on the subject especially
important (rufabula.com/articles/2014/02/05/federation-or-malorussia).
After pointing out that Klichko’s
rhetoric on this point – treating “every political opponent not as an opponent
but as ‘an enemy of the country’” – corresponds to Russian official language,
Shteppa notes that the Ukrainian opposition figure ignores the fact that Mihail
Hrushevsky and Vyacheslav Chornovil supported federalism but are still honored
as Ukrainians.
Federalism, he says, “is one of the possible
projects of the state future of Ukraine which deserves free discussion,” and
that discussion must begin by acknowledging that federalism has not led to the
disintegration of countries like the US and Germany but rather has kept the
central governments of those and other federal states more limited and the
population more free.
Shteppa then cites a passage from
his own January 31 “Izvestiya” article (izvestia.ru/news/564995).
Because of
its relevance to any discussion of federalism in Ukraine in the future, it
deserves to be quoted in full.
“Leonid Kuchma at one time in his
book “Ukraine is Not Russia” attempted to show that his country is traditionally
more democratic in comparison with its northern neighbor. Howeveer, the 1995 Constitution adopted
during his presidency confirmed the harsh unitary nature of state
administration there.
“It is indicative that in
post-Soviet Ukraine in general there were never any gubernatorial elections.
With the exception of Crimea – but even there, the elections of a president of
the republic took place only once, in 1994, and then were disbanded together as
was the position itself.
“The situation did not change with
the arrival of Yushchenko who loudly proclaimed his pro-European orientation.
But at the same time he completely ignored the growth of regionalism in
contemporary Europe preferring as had others in the past to talk about Ukraine’s
‘unified power system.’
“The victory of Yanukovich and his
Party of the Regions in 2010 to a large extent,” Shteppa argues, “was a
reaction precisely to such unitarism. However, the name of this party turned
out to be a fake: under Yanukovich, the level of oblast self-administration did
not increase at all and the current president only installed in gubernatorial
chairs members of his own party. And now the Ukrainian bureaucratic vertical is
disintegrating.”
“Today,” he continues in his new
comment, “the majority of regional resources and taxes just as in Russia go to the
capital.” Indeed, in this regard, “the Ukrainian authorities are very much like
the Russian ones.
But what is especially disturbing is
that the Ukrainian “’democratic’ opposition’” just like its Russian counterpart
continues to think in just as much a centralist and unitarist way as do the authorities
they oppose, viewing any increase in the power and authority of the regions as
a threat to the territorial integrity of the country and to themselves.
The way to oppose centralism is not
to prohibit any discussion of it, Shteppa says, but to make it “meaningless”
from an economic point of view by ensuring that because of a high standard of
living and general political freedoms, everyone in the country will see
remaining within that state something valuable and worth defending.
In recent weeks, he continues, “the
ideas of federalism have suddenly began to be advanced by communists and
[members of the Party of the Regions],” a source that has led many civic
activists to view this as a plot to split Ukraine and allow for Russia to “swallow”
it piece by piece.
Some of these new supporters of
federalism may indeed have that goal, but the reality is, Shteppa argues, that
federalism, properly constructed, can in fact work against such goals because
it is based on “the mutual interests” of the subjects of the federation itself, a contribution that some
Maidan strategists like Aleksey Arestovich understand.
If one looks at what is happening in
Europe, the regionalist theorist says, one sees that the future is in
federalism and in the formation of Euro-regions, many of which cross existing
international borders. Such regions are
emerging between parts of Ukraine and adjoining parts of the Russian
Federation.
“Of course,” Shteppa says, “Russia
will seek to spread through this cross-border format its political and economic
influence. But what is there to prevent Ukraine from doing the same and promoting
its civilizational interests onto Russian territory?” Indeed, if Ukrainians are
confident of their future, they have every reason to believe they can do just
that.
For the time being, there exists “a
strange paradox” among the Ukrainian opposition. “Even as it rejects the
federal transformation of the country and supports the unitarism of the state,
the Ukrainian opposition by so doing in fact is supporting the ‘vertical’
Yanukovich” is relying upon.
If Ukraine does not move toward a federal
system, Shteppa argues, it “risks remaining ‘a Little Russia,’” a miniature
version of today’s “unitary Russia.” Besides that, it ensures that Ukrainian
politics will continue to reflect tensions between east and west rather than
moving toward one in which both places will have a vested interest in Ukraine
as a whole.
Shteppa concludes that Ukraine “of
course” shouldn’t copy what passes for federalism in Russia. Instead, the
country should look to Germany with its powerful lander governments. Indeed, he
suggests, a movement to federalism in Ukraine could be a way out of that
country’s political crisis and have a positive impact on Russia as well.
Obviously, any move to federalism in
Ukraine will be difficult, perhaps more difficult than Shteppa imagines,
especially given the histories of both Ukraine and its neighbor. Indeed, despite
their utility, federal systems are rare: there are fewer of them than there are
monarchies in the world today.
But if the regions of Ukraine see that they benefit
from the current state borders and view politics less as about capturing Kyiv or
exiting from a unitary Ukraine, that country will have a far greater chance of
returning to Europe than if it tries to continue with the discredited unitarism
of the current regime.
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