Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 1 – The
budget-driven, top-down, authoritarian consolidation of the institutions of
rural Russia will accelerate the demise of Russia outside of its major cities,
transforming the country in negative ways and creating problems that Moscow has
not yet been willing to face, according to Lev Shlosberg.
In remarks to the Pskov Oblast
Assembly of Deputies on Thursday, Shlosberg, a member of that body, said that
this danger is very much in evidence in the announcement by the Pskov oblast
authorities of “an ultimatum” to society and especially to its rural members,
an ukaz prepared without any input from local officials (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=54533F70381F1).
If the regional government’s plans
go forward, Shlosberg pointed out, the number of rural settlements will be
reduced by several times over the next two years, there will be a unification of
many of the existing districts, and the future of Pskov oblast as a federal
subject will be put in doubt.
Invoking budgetary shortages, the oblast
authorities are seeking to impose “a radical simplification of the
administrative-territorial division” of Pskov and “the liquidation of a
significant part of the carcass of local self-administration,” a move that will
open the way to “the destruction of the region” as a whole.
Over the last century, Pskov kray has
been subjected to several administrative reforms. Many of them have destroyed
the infrastructure of the region to the point that one can say, Shlosberg said,
that “where local self-administration has been liquidated, life itself burns
out” because the people perish.
In 1958, Velikii Luki oblast was liquidated
and part of its territory was transferred to Pskov. Dozens of regions were “quickly
and insanely liquidated,” and “he former regional centers which were not given
that status [in the newly expanded oblast] were reduced from worker settlements
to villages.”
That is because, Shlosberg said, there were almost no hospitals,
schools or libraries or even banks and post offices in the downgraded regional
centers, and as a result, they rapidly lost population. Life became ever less attractive and people fled
to the cities. “This was a cleansing of the territory from people,” he argued.
In 1961-63, Moscow artificially experimented
with creating larger industrial and agricultural districts in Pskov and
elsewhere, and the number of districts in Pskov oblast fell by almost
half. Fortunately, Shlosberg said, the
mistaken nature of these Khrushchev reforms was recognized and over three years
reversed.
Since that time, the
administrative-territorial map of Pskov has been stable. “No one over the
course of half a century thought to touch it,” he said, and it withstood the
rise and fall of the USSR, the turmoil of the 1990s, and the illegality and
indifference of the last 15 years. But now, officials are playing with fire
once again.
What they do not seem to recognize, the deputy continued, is that
this latest destruction of local self-administration may prove in Pskov oblast
to be the last.
In order to block this move, Shlosberg said,
he is establishing a public Resistance Movement to consist of all those who are
“ready to fight for their small Motherland” and to provide “the necessary
legal, informational and human assistance” in an unselfish way to those who
will work against what the authorities are trying to do.
Everyone needs to remember, he said, that “according
to the Russian Constitution, organs of local self-administration are not part
of the system of organs of state power.” Instead, they are “defined by the
population independently and a change in the borders of the territory in which
local self-administration occurs are allowed only if the opinion of the
population of that territory is taken into account.”
Clearly, Shlosberg said, “someone wants to
rewrite not only history but also the Constitution.” But they won’t get away
with it easily if “the citizens of their own kray” stand up and insist on their
rights. Tampering with the existing
districts is not something anyone but the people has a right to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment