Bolshevik Failure to Speak about Rights of Regions a Problem Russia Still Living With, Bekbulatov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 3 – To win power, the Bolsheviks talked about the right of nations to self-determination but never about the rights of regions, a failure that means any suggestion that the USSR was a federation false and that explains both the problems which arose in 1991 and which will arise still further when the Russian Federation collapses, Semyon Bekbulatov says.

            Indeed, the Russian historian says, “this limitation on even the theoretical federalism of the Bolsheviks affected the nature of the statehood they established,” one that had no respect for parliamentarianism or democracy in general. Had Russia adopted a different approach, the events

            In 1991, it meant that many were prepared to accept the independence of those nations who had been given the status of union republics but no others and that few were concerned about the implication of that for democracy. What happened is what would one could have predicted: many of the parts replicated what the whole had been in terms of governance.

            As to the future, the consequences are even more obvious and disturbing, Bekbulatov says. “You can chop up Putin’s Russian Federation into as many pieces as you like. But each part will begin to reproduce the former system, albeit within a smaller territory. These pieces will then engage in wars with each other … and some will form alliances to defeat other alliances.”

            As a result, he argues, “the former militaristic Russian Federation will revive automatically. For those who want to avoid that, the question is not about ‘dismantling the empire’ or de-imperialization, which by itself won’t solve any problems, but rather about dismantling the entire vertical of power from top to bottom.”

            According to the historian, “one can’t get rid of the feeling that ‘regional independence’ will be for many of Putin’s current Gauleiters the only way to preserve much of the power vertical to which they belong.” To avoid that from happening, “a certain level of control from the center is desirable and even necessary.”

            But even if the center is transformed, there is the very real danger that those who occupy its positions will be tempted to reconstruct the same kind of power vertical now in place – and even that they will have allies in doing so among the regional elites, however much the latter proclaim their commitment to separation and independence.

            Twice in the last century, in 1917 and again in 1991, some at the center tried to destroy the old system from above, but “it is a matter of record how both these attempts ended up.” And that is because neither was able to “’de-imperialize” the country from the center because the center itself had not been “de-imperialized.”

            The only way forward that gives any promise of success is a thoroughgoing democratization of the center and the regions, Russian and non-Russian alike, a recognition that democracy has to be institutionalized in both or any disintegration will lead both to more authoritarianism, recentralization and aggression.