Igor Chubais Calls for New State in Place of Russian Federation: ‘The United Regions of Russia’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 9 – Arguing that the disintegration of Russia would be a disaster that would solve nothing but that the current Kremlin regime is a violation of the country’s organic unity, Igor Chubais calls for the Russian Federation to be replaced by a new state, The United Regions of Russia.

            In a speech prepared for delivery to the Free Russia Forum in Lithuania that the Moscow scholar and commentator was not able to present in person because of illness, Chubais suggests that in such a state, “the Center would decide issues of defense, intelligence and foreign policy” but everything else would be decided by agreements between the regions and the center.”

            He also calls for setting up a new civic organization, the House of the Future of Russia, to serve as a research and discussion center for the preparation and dissemination of studies about Russia and its future, including the preparation of “’a road map’ for the peaceful and legitimate transition to democracy” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5CFC276089728).

                Such “a House,” Chubais continues, could organize itself as “’an alternative government’ which would support or on the contrary subject to well-argumented criticism of social-economic projects offered by the official powers that be.” And it could become the basis for “an independent information system of Russian civil society.” 

                Chubais’ proposal will strike many as the latest in a long history of utopian ideas, but it is important for two reasons, even if it never carried out. On the one hand, it highlights the increasing recognition among opposition leaders that Russia’s territorial integrity is not threatened by real federalism, as Putin imagines, but can only be secured by it.

            And on the other, his proposal flows from his understanding of the nature of Russia and of the ways in which Putinism, because it is yet another case when the Kremlin is seeking to hold things together by force rather than relying on  the organic unity that must be the basis for development, represents a most serious threat to Russia’s future.

            “Any organic and self-supporting community of people,” Chubais says, “is a union on the basis of norms and values cultivated and formed by this community itself. Correspondingly, a unity built on non-organic values, for example, a totalitarian state, is a unity maintained by force. Such a unity is unstable” and regularly suffers crises.

            All of pre-Soviet Russian history, he continues, “is an era of great achievements,” but one that the Soviet and post-Soviet rulers have done everything they can to discredit.  This “anti-national myth,” Chubais says, is contradicted by the facts. Between 1325 and 1880, Russia grew from a small marginal state into the largest country on earth, and at the end, it experienced the highest rates of economic growth in the world.

            Only twice between the 9^th and 19^th centuries did Russia fall into a crisis as a result of internal factors.  One occurred when the country was “forced to live according to the principle: ‘Russia is Ivan the Terrible, and if there is no Ivan the Terrible, there is no Russia.’” But after his death began the time of troubles, a period of chaos and disintegration.

            The second crisis arose as a result of the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917, Chubais argues.  It rejected God and “led to the disintegration of the state,” which was reassembled not on the basis of any organic unity but by military force. The ultimate fragility of that was shown in 1991 when the new entity simply came apart.

            If after Putin, Russia begins to come apart as it did after Ivan the Terrible or as it did in 1991, the result will be even more horrific. Because there is no mechanism as there was in 1991 for the departure of republics, what will occur will truly be a war of all against all, with the destruction of the country and the flight of millions abroad.

            Such a disintegration “will not solve a single problem,” Chubais insists. “Our misfortune is an ineffective system of administration and that is what must be changed.” If it isn’t, then Russia will disintegrate and disaster will ensure. Russia will fall behind Europe “not 20 years” as now “but forever.”  And Russia itself may come to the end of its historical existence as such.

            That must be opposed not by force as Putin is doing but by a return to the organic ties within society and the formation of a federal state.  “When our political system is changed, when Russia becomes not something alien to its people but something they see as their own,” we really will be able to achieve miracles.