Paul Goble
Staunton,
September 24 – At a time when Moscow is mulling a new approach to the regions,
one that may very well involve redrawing the administrative-territorial borders
of the federal subjects (iarex.ru/articles/60237.html),
this week has brought three calls for fundamental change – one from above, one
from below, and one from abroad.
First,
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant head of the LDPR, has called for cutting the
number of federal subjects from the current figure of more than 80 to 40,
eliminating any ethnic basis for any of them, and beginning his process in the
North Caucasus by combining all the republics there into two new regions: the
Mountain Kray and the Caucasus Kray.
The
first of these would include Daghestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia and have its
capital in Khasavyurt; the second, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachayevo-Cherkessia,
and North Ossetia with a capital at Vladikavkaz (egnum.ru/news/2487657.html and nazaccent.ru/content/28269-zhirinovskij-predlozhil-sdelat-iz-severokavkazskih-respublik.html).
According
to Zhirinovsky, the current arrangements threaten to lead to “division and
separatism,” but his proposal is more likely to provoke exactly that by leading
republic leaders and populations to conclude that Moscow is rapidly moving from
an attack on their language rights to their very existence as state-forming
populations.
His
ideas about the North Caucasus are especially likely to be disturbing to people
there. None of the republics would be happy with this situation, and Moscow
almost certainly would be against creating the Caucasus Kray because, except
for North Ossetia, it would represent a major step to the restoration of
Greater Circassia – and thus threaten Russian control in another way.
The
second move, this time from below, involves moves to promote the economic,
cultural and educational “integration of three subjects of the Russian
Federation” – Tuva, Krasnoyarsk Kray, and Khakassia – into “Yenisey Siberia” (tuvapravda.ru/?q=content/tonkaya-materiya).
The leaders of the three have already had at least two meetings
to promote this idea. What makes it
interesting and important is not that it will lead at least anytime soon to the
redrawing of the borders of federal subjects but rather that it is a move from below, without Moscow’s sanction, and
will change the meaning of those borders.
Such
efforts have not been much in evidence since the late 1990s when plans to create
broader regional organizations via agreements in Siberia and elsewhere
threatened to undercut Moscow’s control. That they are re-emerging now suggests
that the regions are once again exploring such possibilities.
And
the third, this time from abroad, involves efforts in Ukraine by the various diasporas
of nations from the Middle Volga to promote a common identity and to call for a
single Idel-Ural Republic. They have
published a map of that broader union in 1000 copies and distributed them to
schools and libraries to promote the idea (idelreal.org/a/29506451.html).
This
is the latest product of the social movement Free Idel-Ural that was set up in
Ukraine in March of this year by Rafis Kashapov, a member of the All-Tatar
Social Center (VTOTs). Moscow will oppose this vigorously – and to blame it on
Kyiv and the West – because dividing up the peoples of the Middle Volga was the
Soviet Union’s first great act of ethnic engineering in 1920.
But
the appearance of the map highlights something more important than these
attacks will suggest: when peoples from the Middle Volga find themselves in a
freer country than Russia, they unite on the basis of Idel-Ural rather than
remain in, as Stalin put it in 1913, “their separate national tents.”
Over
time, such cooperation abroad can play back into relationships within the
Russian Federation.
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