Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 11 –Mikhail
Gorbachev said this week there are “many Catalonias” within the Russian
Federation (charter97.org/ru/news/2017/10/10/265565/),
and Russian commentator Arkady Babchenko
said its peoples would be better off in ten countries rather than one (ixtc.org/2017/10/blog-arkadiya-babchenko-dnr-ot-morya-do-morya-kakoy-budet-rossiya/).
This recognition of the power of
regionalism and of the power of the narcissism of small differences among
peoples that others assume are far more uniform and united is especially
significant at a time when the Kremlin is doing what it can to crush the elites
of the existing republics and regions.
Indeed, they give new support for an
argument the current author made in December 2016 on the AfterEmpire portal, “Regionalism
is the nationalism of the next Russian Revolution,” because regions unlike
republics, krays and oblasts will be formed from below rather than imposed from
above (afterempire.info/2016/12/28/regionalism/).
Consequently, they may constitute a
challenge to the Kremlin even at a time when it appears that Vladimir Putin has
gelded or worse the leaders of the existing federal subjects, offering the
population of various ethnic and religious backgrounds a way forward
independent of the hyper-centralized Muscovite empire.
Tracking such trends has been made easier
by the editors of the After Empire portal (afterempire.info/)
and by those at the Free Ingria
organization site (freeingria.org) as well
as by regional outlets across the Russian Federation. But these have now been gained an important
addition, a site devoted to the idea of a Urals Republic (freeural.org/).
That
site, which has just gone live (freeingria.org/2017/10/nachal-informatsionnoe-veshhanie-sajt-svobodnyj-ural/)
does three important things: first, it builds on the ideas of Urals regionalism
of the 1990s, second, it provides a focus for regionalists in the middle of
Russia, and third, it links them with other regionalist groups elsewhere,
reinforcing and empowering both.
One of its first posts is entitled “Is
Moscow Afraid of the Urals Republic,” an article which argues that the central
government clearly is. It put one
activist in a psychiatric prison for backing the idea, and in the last year
alone, it has closed down 13 VKontakte groups that were promoting the idea (freeural.org/boitsja-li-moskovija-uralskuju-respubliku/).
Moscow is alarmed
by the support the idea of a Urals Republic now has, support that is growing as
the economic crisis gets worse, Moscow takes more and more from the people of the
region and gives back less and less. Recently, it has deployed its propaganda machine
against Urals activists on a regular basis. (On that, see ura.ru/news/1052264225).
In particular, the
post says, Moscow is afraid that a new generation of leaders will emerge who
will be prepared to go even further than Eduard Rossel did in the 1990s and
that a movement will emerge calling for “the independence of the Urals” and
that the center won’t be able to neutralize.
It ends with a declaration of the
ideas behind Urals separatism:
“We People of the Urals
are Free Peoples! When we are asked what do you Urals people want, we respond:
the separation of the Urals from Russia. We want freedom, independence, and the
construction of a just society. We want to decide for ourselves where we will
go and what we will do.”
“Our
movement,” it continues, “is not yet
so numerous … but it is gathering support.”
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