Russia’s Regions, Not Just Its Non-Russian Republics, have Right to Pursue Independence via Referendums, Ukrainian Deputy Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 10 – The right of the non-Russian republics within the current borders of the Russian Federation to seek independence via referendum is increasingly recognized in principle if not only in practice, but up to now, few have acknowledged that Russia’s oblasts, krays and regions have such a right.

            That has three consequences. First, it means that most believe that the departure of the non-Russian republics whose population inside the Russian Federation forms less than half of the share of the population the titular nationalities of the union republics of the USSR did in 1991 is at best a marginal phenomenon, one Moscow can suppress and thus unlikely to be realized.

            Second, it means that most both in Russia and the West accept the notion that only the non-Russian republics have any interest in pursuing independence, an idea that overstates the strength of Russian national identity and implicitly accepts the view that Moscow’s division of the country is both natural and inevitable.

            And third, it means that most both in Russia and the West ignore the power of regional identities and interest in independence even if they do acknowledge that the non-Russian republics might have such identities and independence, a classic case of the notion that analysts like generals often fight the last war rather than think about the new one.

            That is beginning to change not only because of the activism of regionalist groups like those which are part of the Free Peoples of Russia movement but also because of the support Ukrainian officials have been giving first to non-Russian peoples like the Chechens, the Tatars, the Mordvins and others but also to ethnic Ukrainian and Cossack regions.

            Now, Oleg Dunda, a Verkhovna Rada deputy who is a member of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People faction, says that “in addition to the national republics, there are no less significant regions [in the Russian Federation] which may want independence” and deserve support (youtube.com/watch?v=OwVvQexAiJo and glavcom.ua/country/politics/nardep-anonsuvav-provedennja-referendumiv-na-okremikh-teritorijakh-rf-894370.html).

            In remarks to the latest Congress of the Free Peoples of Russia, he points to five such regions – Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad), Ingria (St. Petersburg), the Kuban, the Urals and Siberia – and suggests that they should be able to pursue independence via referendums that could be conducted electronically and carried out with the help of Western governments.

              Dunda’s statement builds on argument of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleva that the international community must “not be afraid of Russia falling part. Instead of thinking how to help Russia survive and become a normal member of the international community, it’s time to accept the fact that ‘this’ Russia cannot be a normal member of the international community” (news18.com/news/world/dont-fear-russias-collapse-kuleba-says-ukraine-has-right-to-strike-its-neighbour-to-defend-itself-6580453.html).

            The author of these lines is pleased that ever more people are accepting that idea and making such arguments as he was one of the first to advance those positions in a December 2016 article for the Tallinn-based portal Region.Expert (in Russian; region.expert/regionalism-next-nationalism/). Below is the English original of that essay:

REGIONALISM IS THE NATIONALISM OF THE NEXT RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

 

Paul Goble

 

            There are three reasons why regionalism is neglected by those who study politics in the Russian Federation. First, most have overlearned the lessons of 1991 and conclude that any future challenge to the center will be based on non-Russian nationalism rather than anything else. After all, that was the case 25 years ago. Second, all too many have accepted an idea promoted by the Soviets and supported by many now that all nations in the Russian Federation including the Great Russians are homogeneous and are not subject to any other divisions.  And third, because regionalism is about federalism in the first instance rather than about independence, it has been neglected as a social and political force.

 

            It is long past time to overcome these obstacles to an adequate understanding of the situation in Russia today.  First of all, as many are coming to understand, the events of 1991 were about regions and not just nations.  Many ethnic Russians in the non-Russian countries supported nationalist goals only because the sclerotic leadership in Moscow was not prepared to yield power to them and those they lived among on any other basis. And many ethnic Russians across the Russian Federation had regional agendas that took the form of things like the Siberian Agreement, the Urals Republic, and so on.  It is significant that the Russian government was more worried about what the success of these movements would lead to than it was about the independence of the non-Russian countries and worked hard to destroy them not only to maintain the much-ballyhooed “territorial integrity” of the Russian Federation but to destroy any chance that Russia could become a federation.

 

            Second, the notion that each nation in the former Soviet space is homogeneous is nonsense. None is. All vary enormously and none varies internally as much as does the one Moscow designates as the Great Russians.  The Kremlin and its supporters, however, can never really acknowledge that because if they do, they set the stage for two things they fear most of all. On the one hand, they would then have to acknowledge the possibility of the rise of other identities, many such as the Siberian, the Novgorodian, or the Koenigsberger far stronger than the one they are associated and risk facing what would then be national movements within what they can’t admit is an incompletely formed common Russian nation, civic or ethnic.  And on the other, if they recognized the diversity, they would have to take steps to deal with it. Lacking the power to homogenize the nation that they seem to think is already homogeneous, they would have to make the kind of concessions that would lead to decentralization and the genuine federalism that the Russian constitution calls for but that the Kremlin has never supported.

 

            And third, if one looks across the world today, one can see that regionalist challenges are far more common than national secessionist ones and that only where the central authorities are unwilling to meet regionalist demands do national secessionist groups emerge.  Few regional movements want secession: they simply want to be able to make decisions about their own lives on the basis of their knowledge of what conditions are like.  If they have that opportunity, which involves devolution of decision-making and taxation powers and the holding of genuine competitive elections involving parties of all kinds, they will not shift to the more radical position.

 

            As Russia heads into 2017, the anniversary of two revolutions, it faces a situation in which groups lumped together under the rubric of the Russian nation and people and regions considered homogeneous across its 11 time zones are becoming ever more assertive even as the Kremlin becomes ever more centralist and restrictive.  That creates a new kind of scissors’ crisis, one that opens the way to a revolutionary situation.  In that situation, the center cannot hope to keep all the powers it now has without slipping ever further behind the rest of the world; and the regions are thus a revolutionary force: They can transform Russia without changing its borders if the center is clever but with that outcome a possibility if the center is not.  As such, regionalism is set to place the role of nationalism in the next Russian revolution.