Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 13 – Opposition
presidential candidate Aleksey Navalny may offer a variety of positive ideas
for the future of Russia compared to those of Vladimir Putin. But in one
critical area, he does not represent a break from the current Kremlin leader:
he is just as opposed to real federalism as Putin is and just as committed to a
Moscow-centric approach.
Two commentaries on the AfterEmpire
portal make this point clearly. In the first, Tatyana Vintsevskaya argues that
while Navalny says some of the right things about the dangers of
hyper-centralism, he shows no interest in promoting genuine federalism or the
institutions that would make that possible (afterempire.info/2017/03/01/navalny/).
Indeed, she continues, Navalny’s
recent interview to the ZNAK portal shows that “many views of ‘the main
opposition figure’ remain the same and are practically indistinguishable from
the point of view of the authorities, especially when they touch on federalism”
(znak.com/2017-02-25/v_ekaterinburge_aleksey_navalnyy_rasskazal_o_svoey_prezidentskoy_kampanii_v_regionah).
On the one hand,
she says, Navalny says some of the right things when he speaks in generalities.
Thus, he says “super-centralism is idiotism.” But on the other, when he talks
about specifics, he sounds like Putin: He’s opposed to changing the way profits
from firms are handled, opposed to new power-sharing arrangements, and opposed
to Russian republics within Russia.
Navalny praises the Urals as “’the
Russian Texas’” but calls the idea of a Urals Republic “some kind of devilish
extremist action.’” Cities should have
more power, but apparently, Russians should haven’t more rights to organize
their lives as they see fit.
Indeed, Vintsevskaya continues,
Navalny’s support for cities appears to be driven by his concern that only
stronger cities can “exclude separatism” by the regions. “Competition must be
not between Sverdlovsk Oblast and Perm Kray but between Yekaterinburg and
Nizhny Tagil,” he told ZNAK.
And she concludes
by pointing out that “neither in this interview … nor in his pre-electon
program has Navalny mentioned even once the need for signing a new federative agreement
in Russia.” Instead, he has made comments that suggest he believes, like Putin,
that Moscow must hold all the reins in its hand or face the prospect of
separatism.
In the second commentary on Navalny,
entitled “The Muscovite in ‘the Provinces,’” Ilnar Garifullin extends
Vintsevskaya’s observation noting that while visiting Kazan, the opposition
leader went out of his way to say that he believes that “bilateral treaties
between the federal center and the subjects of the federation are an
anachronism” (afterempire.info/2017/03/13/muscovite-in-province/).
“Federalism in Navalny’s
understanding,” the Tatarstan analyst says, “doesn’t consist of agreements
about joint existence between various peoples and regions of the Russian
Federation. For him, federalism is first of all the redistribution of financial
resources” by the center from one region to another.
Moreover, despite being in
non-Russian areas, Navalny “said nothing about the problem of the status of
state languages in the national republics.” He clearly doesn’t want to lose any
ethnic Russian support, but he isn’t going to pick up any non-Russian support
with such dismissive attitudes.
Navalny says many fine and necessary
things about the struggle with corruption and even “in principle” the need for
decentralization, Garifullin says. But at the same time, he doesn’t seem
capable of moving beyond the status of “’a Muscovite visiting the provinces’”
and to think about Russia of the regions and republics and not just of Moscow
and everything else.
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