‘Regional Separatism hasn’t Disappeared’ Despite Putin’s Efforts, Russian Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 12 – Non-Russians in the republics and Russians in the regions regularly complain about the ways in which Vladimir Putin’s drive to create a common legal space across the Russian Federation has left them with ever fewer rights and powers, but the view of many in Moscow is very different.

            There, commentators see the enormous variety of laws and regulations which still exist as being evidence of “regional separatism” and an echo of “the parade of sovereignties” of the late 1980s and early 1990s and are calling for the imposition of an even more Procrustean bed of Moscow laws.

            One commentator who takes this position is Regnum’s Nataliya Nikolayeva for whom the proximate cause of concern is the fact that in the Chuvash Republic, the legislature is working on legislation that will establish an entirely different state insurance program than those which Moscow has approved or than exist in other places (regnum.ru/news/polit/2745936.html).

            Three things make Nikolayeva’s words worthy of note. First, it is yet another indication that when Moscow speaks of “separatism,” it is using the term in ways that are far in excess of its denotative and connotative meanings. For the center, any divergence from what Moscow orders is now to be considered “separatism.”

            Second, Nikolayeva suggests that even the Chuvash people will be upset with how their legislators are acting and will rise up at the next election and throw out those who are misspending their tax money, an indication that the center may now be counting on its ability to mobilize the populations of regions and republics against their nominal rulers.

            And third, and most important, her article suggests that the center may now be preparing for a new campaign to bring all regional and republic laws into correspondence with those adopted by the federal government, a possibility that if true will increase tensions in many places where the ability to adopt laws at least slightly at variance with Moscow’s remains something important.

            Indeed, if Moscow pushes too hard in the direction of suppressing this pseudo-separatism in the regions and republics, it may create the real thing.