Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 17 – The
deepening economic crisis in the Russian Federation has led ever more people
outside of Moscow to begin to talk about federalism and power-sharing, subjects
that had been almost forgotten during the fat years when the center could send
enough money back to the federal subjects to keep most reasonably happy and in
line.
But today as Dmitry Medvedev
notoriously said, “there is no money,” and so arrangements that determine who
gets how much and who has to pay for what are an increasing number of unfunded
liabilities are at the center of attention in regional capitals, according to
Tatarstan analyst Ilnar Garifullin (afterempire.info/2017/02/17/eurotatarstan/).
All
this is happening “with terrifying speed,” he says, adding that Moscow’s
unwillingness and inability to respond in an adequate way is causing ever more
people in the federal subjects to ask even larger and more fateful questions
not only about their relations with the center but their possible relations
with foreign actors in general and Europe in particular.
As
was true not only in Soviet times but since 1991 as well, Tatarstan has been
the place where these debates are the furthest advanced, Garifullin says,
because Kazan unlike all other subjects of the Russian Federation “didn’t sign
he Federative Treaty with Moscow and has maintained a power-sharing treaty with
the center since that time.
That
agreement, which is up for renewal later this year, is “’the last bastion’ of
republic sovereignty,” something that “the other republics of the Russian
Federation lost already long ago,” the analyst continues. And that accord has
allowed Tatarstan to pursue “an absolutely independent foreign economic policy,”
even against Moscow’s wishes as with Turkey after the shooting down of the Russian
warplane.
Tatarstan
turned out to be right, as subsequent events showed, but its action in htat
case and others showed the world that “Tatarstan still preserves its special
status within the Russian Federation and that it is possible to reach
agreements with it directly” rather than via the central government in Moscow.
And
Kazan has continued this course by very self-consciously choosing “’a European
path’” which involves federalism and the development of local self-government,
hallmarks of the EU and of Tatarstan but not of Russia. Indeed, Garifullin
continues, this path was marked out by Yusuf Akchura a century ago in his
classic essay, “Three Political Systems.”
Moreover,
it is rooted in the history of “the formation of the first territorial autonomy
of Tatars and other peoples of the Urals-Volga region, the Idel Ural Republic
which was proclaimed on November 20, 1917” and which was committed as the EU
and Tatarstan are today to a civic, multi-ethnic society.
One
indication of this commitment to Europe and at the same time a driving force
behind it in Tatarstan is the orientation of university students there, the
Tatar analyst says. In 2016, the Higher School of Economics found that students
in Tatarstan higher schools were more
oriented toward Europe than were students in the universities of St.
Petersburg.
To
promote these values and goals both within Tatarstan and among the other
regions and republics in the Russian Federation, a group of Tatar activists four
years ago created a collective political
experts group and blog (aurupatatarstan.org/).
Now that issues of federalism and power sharing are again at the center of
attention, its influence is growing.
Garifullin sums up what the group
believes: “The Republic of Tatarstan,” he writes, “is part of ‘the second
world,’ from which there are only two ways out: to the first world, developed
and rich or to the third world, poor and without prospects. And sooner or later and likely sooner rather
than later, we must make a choice between them.”
Depending on which choice those in
Moscow make, Tatarstan will be able to cooperate with them or alternatively
will be compelled to seek its own distinctive future.
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