Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 3 – The Ukrainian
crisis and Moscow’s insistence on the federalization of that country have “awakened
the interest of Russian society in federalism,” with some predominantly ethnic
Russian oblasts and krays now as committed to achieving real federalism in
Russia as any of the non-Russian republics.
And if Moscow does not agree to
living up to the federalism enshrined in the Russian constitution, there is a
very real chance that some of them either singly or in groups will seek to
secede from the country, a challenge that the central authorities have largely
ignored on the assumption that only the non-Russian republics present any such
threat.
In an essay on Nazaccent.ru
yesterday, Ulyana Ivanova argues that recent events in Ukraine have for many
Russians “yet again demonstrated that a unitary state is not in a position to
deal with the contradictions between the center and the regions,” regardless of
the ethnic composition of the population (nazaccent.ru/content/11891-sibirskij-separatizm.html).
Most specialists agree, she writes,
that Russia “made the correct choice” by putting a federal model in place in
1991 in order “to preserve the integrity of the country.” One of its additional advantages was shown by
the ease of the annexation of Crimea: “Any federation is a union which is able
to accept those who want to join if they correspond to certain requirements.”
“On the other hand,” Ivanova
continues, “the very essence of federalism – the division of power between the
center and the regions for more effective administration” is very much an issue
in Russia. Some see the system as “a fiction because in their opinion, the
central authorities in fact directly order the regions as to what economic and
social policy is to be conducted.
However that may be and however much
Russians may want to block ethnic separatism, “there is nothing good in
excessive centralization,” Ivanova says.
“If territories are not allowed to exercise self-administration, then
they will be begin to seek it” regardless of their ethnic composition, either
because they oppose central policies or don’t want to “’feed’” other regions.
The classical example of regionalism
growing over into separatism is provided by the Siberian “oblastniki” of the
nineteenth century. They were true
regionalists, but because the center treated their demands for more local
control as extremist, some of them began to turn to separatism usually as a
tactic but sometimes as a real goal.
One characteristic of this shift was
the promotion of the idea that those most had long assumed to be ethnic
Russians like any others were in fact a distinct identity, in this case, “Sibiryaks.” Nikolay Yadrintsev, one of the leading “oblastniki,”
in his book “Siberia as a Colony,” went so far as to contrast the Siberian to “the
Russian man.”
But because it was “obvious” to most
that “the Siberians remained Russian in spirit and culture,” the regionalists “never
played ‘the ethnic card.’” As Grigory
Potanin, another “oblastnik” put it, people like him “used separatism not as a
goal but as a means.” But the imperial authorities did not make that
distinction.
They viewed the Siberian
regionalists as secessionists and even labelled the case against them “Concerning
the Separation of Siberia from Russia and the Formation of a Republic like the
United States.”
That had one curious consequence,
Ivanova says. After the “oblastniki” were convicted, the imperial authorities
were unsure were to exile them given that the usual place of exile was Siberia.
Finally, they decided to exile Potanin to the Sveaborg fortress on the Baltic
and Yadrintsev to Arkhangelsk gubernia!
During the Russian Civil War, the “oblastniki”
were briefly able to articulate a country of their own, but after the defeat of
the White Movement, the Bolsheviks crushed them and refused to take into consideration
any regionalist ideas in their national-territorial division of the Soviet
Union.
“But today,” Ivanova points out, “certain
scholars and politicians assert that the division of the country on an ethnic
basis has lost its important and contains within itself a threat of ethnic
separatism.” And they argue that the
elimination of the non-Russian republics will thus eliminate any challenge to
the center.
In some respects, their arguments “to a
certain degree” recall those of the first Siberian regionalists, but that
should be a wake-up call for the country because the nineteenth century history
shows that regionalism can become separatism if the demands of its supporters
are ignored or suppressed.
If Russia is to be a genuinely federal
state, its leaders must recognize that doing away with the non-Russian
republics does not have “any relation” to the issue of federalism because “today
any oblast is an historically evolved region with its own social and economic
ties, self-consciousness, and often territorial solidarity.”
Redrawing borders without taking the
opinions of those who live in the areas involved is dangerous and wrong,
Ivanova says. On the one hand, “the liquidation of republics could push
national activists to struggle for independence” because they see these republics
as the only guarantee of the survival of their peoples.
And on the other, it will only reinforce
the growing importance of regionalism and of demands based on it. “The leaders
of the territorial subjects of the federation,” Ivanova says, “ever more often
are expressing their dissatisfaction about the preferences which the
ethnically-based subjects have.”
But they are also unhappy about the
failure of the center to live up to the constitutional requirements for
federalism. This is having an
interesting consequence: it is leading some regionalist leaders to promote the
idea that regional identities are in fact or should be ethnic ones so that they
can claim their rights.
The clearest example of this is again in
Siberia. Despite official opposition, in the 2010 Russian census, 4116 people
declared themselves to be “Siberian” by nationality, 400 times as many as did
so only eight years earlier. “It is quite obvious” from that, Ivanova
concludes, that Russian federalism is going to be transformed and in way few
expect.
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