Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 27 – Russia does
not face any prospect of disintegrating in the way that the Soviet Union did –
Moscow has changed the situation too much for that to happen – but it needs to
form a new relationship among it regions and between them and the center if it
is to avoid stagnation or worse, according to Vadim Shtepa.
But for that relationship to
develop, one based on networks rather than a pyramid of power, the both the
regime and its opponents will have to change their understanding of the nature
of the challenges Russia faces and proceed to negotiate and sign a new
federation treaty (spektr.delfi.lv/novosti/raspad-rossii-kak-fantom.d?id=45022778).
In a commentary on the “Spektr”
portal yesterday, Russia’s most prominent regionalist writer says that both the
Putin regime and its opponents view the disintegration of the country as the
end of the world, with the only difference that the regime blames the
opposition for this and the opposition the regime.
Escaping from this dead end is now
especially difficult given the adoption of the “law against separatism, a
measure that has meant few are prepared
to discuss the challenges of disintegration lest they be accused of engaging in
propaganda for it – as if, Shtepa says, “prohibiting any discussion of a
problem will make that problem disappear.”
But
one place from which one can perhaps begin is to show that Russia might ever
disintegrate as the Soviet Union did is “in principle impossible.”
“The Union fell apart,” he says,
“because legitimately elected authorities arose in the republics which were no
longer subordinate to the CPSU ‘vertical.’ But today,” he continues, elections
have been eliminated or rendered meaningless, and regional political parties
have been declared illegal.
“It is thus quite impossible to
imagine any massive civic movement for independence of this or that region like
the Baltic Peoples Fronts in the USSR. The single separatist exception was
Chechnya, but it was successfully drowned in money from the sale of oil,” the
regionalist writer says.
In Russia today, power
at the center is personalized to an almost unprecedented degree, something that
in most places would open the way to disaster. But in the Russian Federation,
this concentration of power has had exactly the opposite effect: there are no
institutions left capable of existing on their own and thus being in a position
to challenge the supreme leader.
That does not mean that all is right with the world. Just
the reverse. What Russia needs for successful development is the replacement of
the current pyramid-style of governance with a network one which can be more
mobile and effective than any hierarchical one and that will benefit both those
in power and those in the opposition.
Hyper-centralization is a threat to the existence of such
network, but so too is constant talk about disintegration which keeps regions
from working with one another and prevents the center from seeing that such
inter-regional cooperation is not a threat but something from which it will
benefit as well, Shtepa says.
Unfortunately,
Moscow is seeeking to impose not less but total centralization as can be seen
by the way in which air routes are now structured. They are much more
Moscow-centric than they were even in Soviet times, something that irritates
the regions and does nothing for the country as a whole.
What
has to happen, Shtepa says, is a paradigm shift. Russians must stop thinking in
„imperial terms” and conceive of the country as „an equal network space made up
of a multitude of self-standing regions. Making such a shift won’t be easy
after 500 years of imperialism, but without it, „we will not see any prospects”
for the future.
A Russia which remains based on an imperial pyramid, he continues, will
remain „archaic” and will drive people away rather than attract them to it. Only
by making the shift to a network model, he says, will the Russian language and
Russian culture become attractive rather than offensive to others.
To
that end, Russia’s regions „must become full-fledged ‘subjects of the
federation” rather than mere decorations.
And that likely will require the adoption of a new Federation treaty not
promulgated by Moscow but agreed to among country’s regions and republics,
Shtepa says.
The
regions need to see a federation in which they will benefit rather than be
harmed. If they will benefit, they will want to be part of it rather than flee
from it. And such an attitude, Shtepa concludes, will only arise if there are
real benefits from being part of the Federation. It won’t appear if „someone is threatened
with repression for ‘separatism.’”
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