Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 7 – Vladimir Putin
is already planning to reduce the number of federal subjects after the
elections next year in a process that will go far beyond his actions in
2007-2008 when the number fell from 89 to 83 through the amalgamation of the
so-called “matryoshka” subjects and likely will take place over the six years
of his new term.
That prediction is contained in a
post on the Telegram site Metodichka by
an anonymous commentator who appears to have good access given the level of
detail he offers. (tlgrm.ru/channels/@
According
to the report, the reforms are to begin in the Volga Federal District under the
direction of Mikhail Babich who is close to Kremlin aide Sergey Kiriyenko and
will involve the future of republics and territories into new units based “not
on a national-territorial division” but on economic questions alone.
In
the Middle Volga, that will touch off a serious struggle “among the three main
aspirants” to head the new entity there: Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan and Samara. And
“everyone understands [already] that the new status of the region, equal among
equals” will have serious consequences for resources and for “the growing
political ambitions of local elites.”
According
to the Metodichka report, “a struggle
behind the scenes has already begun” with emissaries from existing entities
visiting Babich and Kiriyenko to lobby for their interests. Some hope that
Tatarstan will come out the winner and that this possibility will serve as “a
worthy compensation to the region for the failure to extend the bilateral
treaty” with Moscow.
But
if that is the case, the report continues, Kazan will have to pay a high price:
it will have to give up its “expressed national ideology” and the policies that
flow from it. Tatarstan would be the
most natural nucleus for such a new entity, but the issue is whether it can
take the ideological steps Moscow would require to allow it to remain such.
This
report is intriguing for many reasons. Three stand out. First of all, it may be
nothing more than a way to keep Kazan in line now that Moscow has failed to
extend the power-sharing accord. After all, any dramatic action to try to get
such an agreement would mean that the Tatar leadership would be excluded from
that of any new entity.
Second,
it may be an effort to keep other Russian regions and Russian nationalists
happy for the duration of the election campaign. After all, Putin has been
promising for a decade to reduce the number of federal subjects by combining
non-Russian with Russian ones and has not delivered. This could be a signal
that he at least plans to do so in his next term.
And
third, given the difficulties of combining regions and the growing resistance
even in places where it has already happened, this suggestion may be designed
to kill of the possibility by forcing someone near the center of power to
disown the Metodichka report and to
say that nothing of the kind is really on the table.
That
third possibility may seem unlikely, but it should not be written off. If the leaders of the regions and especially
the non-Russian republics believe they are threatened with losing their jobs
and their fiefdoms in the future, they may be far less willing to deliver for
Putin than many now are.
Indeed,
if many of them conclude that Putin really does want to redraw the borders of
the federal subjects in a radical way, that could change the political dynamic
of the campaign, transforming what has been a minor issue in recent years into
a central one for the campaign – and making it something where Putin has more
to lose than he may now imagine.
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