Russian Liberalism Ends Far Before Ukraine: It Ends inside Russia, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 5 – Many Russian commentators and politicians are convinced that the chief threat to the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation are the asymmetrical federal arrangements under the terms of which the non-Russian republics and districts have more powers on paper than do the predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays.

            Some have urged that the Russian regions be raised in status so that they will have powers equal to the republics; but in the era of Vladimir Putin, far more want the republics to be suppressed in the name of the power vertical, the formation of a single civic nation, and the defense of the territorial integrity of the country. 

            That Russian nationalists and imperialists should take such a position is hardly surprising: such people believe that the USSR came apart only because Lenin and Stalin divided Russia up into union republics. If the Soviet leaders hadn’t done that, “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20^th century” would have been avoided.

            But what is disturbing, regionalist commentator Vadim Shtepa says, is that some liberals who appear to believe that the federalization of Russia is necessary are now proposing “a federation without republics,” one that in fact would set the stage for even more hyper-centralization than Russia has now (region.expert/no-republics/).

            The latest demonstration of the fact that Russian liberalism stops long before reaching the Ukrainian issue, the Tallinn-based regionalist says, is an article by Alekandr Vvedensky on the Kasparov portal (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5CA65CC28CCDE) that argues for federalism but whose proposals in fact reflect the Moscow-centric approach of most liberals.

            Vvedensky quite sensibly argues that only federalism will allow Russia to become a law-based state guaranteeing its population rights and freedoms and living as a country at peace with the rest of the world. But “in the middle of the article,” he suddenly begins to sound like “an imperial-centralist” thinker, Shtepa says.

            “The transition to a single civic nation and the replacement of national republics via the establishment of super-national states (subjects of the federation will,” in Vvedensky’s view, “liquidate the ethnic tensions which exist in Russia, including separatism,” Shtepa continues. But two things mean that the state he wants to create won’t be a genuine federal system at all.

            On the one hand, Vvedensky wants to make all the natural resources of the country, its chief source of wealth, the common property of all rather than of those on or under whose territory they are found. In reality that would mean that Moscow and no one else would have full control over them.

            And on the other, the Russian liberal author does not say how this new federalism would be realized.  If it were based on the agreement of the component parts as federal systems normally are, the non-Russian republics would not be suppressed. Clearly, he intends it to be introduced top-down from Moscow and thus imposed on the country.

            Again, this will subvert any positive meaning that federalism might have. It would in fact make the current situation worse, the editor of Region.Expert argues. Thus, “in his demand to ‘do away’ with national republics, the liberal Vvedensky is in no way distinguished from the liberal-democrat Zhirinovsky.”

            Indeed, “Zhirinovsky looks in this case even more honest – he doesn’t mask his imperial centralism by beautiful rants about ‘a new federalism.’”  Real federalism in Russia would require raising the rights of the oblasts and krays to those of the republics, and allowing all these entities to decide on what relationships they will have with each other and the center.

            Otherwise, Shtepa concludes, “the liquidation of the national republics which [Vvedensky] proposes, won’t be capable of extinguishing [ethnic tensions]. On the contrary, it will raise such tensions to the level of inter-ethnic wars” without giving anyone in Russia the rights and freedoms federalism could.

            “This Moscow-centrism today united the Kremlin powers that be and the ‘federal’ opposition, the majority of liberals, communists and Russian nationalists,” the regionalist writer says. “Just like in the old anecdote, whatever they intend, they end by coming up with a machine gun.”