Heads of Russian Republics, Krays and Oblasts Remain Active Abroad, Stremoukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 1 – Ramzan Kadyrov has attracted much attention for his forays into foreign affairs including most recently his criticism of French President Emanuel Macron, but he is much less unique in this respect than many assume, St. Petersburg political analyst Denis Stremoukhov says.

            The scholar points out as well that such activities are not evidence of “a failure of the federal center or a loss of its control over regional elites.” They often serve Moscow’s interests and are “an absolutely normal phenomenon for such a complex state as Russia which de jure remains a federation.”

            In fact, Stremoukhov suggests, the decline in the number of such diplomatic sallies by federal subject heads after 2000 and especially after 2014 is a greater worry because it costs Moscow and Russia a potentially useful channel to seek economic assistance and resolve geopolitical conflicts (ridl.io/ru/mezhdunarodnaja-aktivnost-rossijskih-gubernatorov-mezhdu-avtonomiej-i-zavisimostju/).

            Most actions by heads of federation subjects are about attracting investments, an entirely natural goal. That is utterly consistent with Moscow’s overall goals, but it and other actions on occasions may be at odds with the policy of the center by giving the republics and regions more freedom of action practically and symbolically.

            Regions and republics in Soviet times engaged in foreign policy actions, often promoting the cross-border links that Moscow saw as fundamental to extending its influence. But after the USSR disintegrated, many federal subjects inside the Russian Federation felt free to engage in all kinds of contacts, including ones very much at odds with Moscow.

            The central authorities were not able to rein such things in until 1996 when Boris Yeltsin gave the Russian foreign ministry responsibility for coordinating such activities. The MFA organized meetings and sought to ensure that the federal subject heads would not stray from Moscow’s position.

            But despite this centralization, “the regions have retained sufficient room for maneuver,” especially in economic areas, Stremoukhov continues.  On the basis of a statistical analysis of their activity, he concludes that “the heads of the ethnic republics have been more active in the international arena than their colleagues from the krays and oblasts.”

            Tatarstan and its leaders Mintimir Shaymiyev and Rustam Minnikhanov, stood out among the republics for most of the last 20 years. Between 2005 and 2015, they visited foreign countries 75 times and met with representatives of foreign states in Russia itself on 161 occasions.

            That compares with all-Russian figures of 14 and 20 respectively. Chechnya’s Kadyrov is rapidly catching up with Tatarstan, however.

            Tatarstan used these meetings to boost its economic well-being and its independence from the center. Sometimes, it ignored what Moscow wanted; and Moscow discovered later that this very independence worked for the center as when Kazan helped overcome some tensions with Turkey.

            According to Shemoukhov, “ethnicity and religion give the heads of the republics a pool of ‘natural’ international partners and legitimate active relations with ‘related’ countries.” Buryatia works with Mongolia, for example, as the Finno-Ugric republics do with the three Finno-Ugric countries. And those factors also promote work with diaspora populations.

            But in their pursuit of advantage, the leaders of the non-Russian republics haven’t limited themselves to these two kinds of contacts. Instead, they have been at least as active or in many cases even more so than predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays in reaching out to other countries with which they have no such linkages.

            What is intriguing over the last five years, the analyst says, is that for all its talk about centralization, the Putin regime itself is promoting such contacts by naming outsiders to head regions and republics. Such officials are far more prepared than those promoted from within to seek new entrants into the local economies.

            They thus are working harder to make contacts with foreign countries and businesses than are the latter who often don’t want to have new entrants in the economy of their territories, thus contributing to greater independence of mind in some capitals where it is commonly assumed they are working in exactly the opposite direction.