After Russia Disintegrates, Three Russian Oblasts -- Samara, Saratov and Ulyanovsk -- Should Form a Volga Republic, Mulyukin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 31 – After Russia disintegrates, Aleksandr Mulyukin says, three Russian oblasts – Samara, Saratov and Ulyanovsk – should come together and form a new Volga Republic so as to be in a position to repel any challenges from a revived Muscovite state and the danger that local elites will take over and suppress democracy.

            The democracy activist, who fled Samara in 2019 to avoid persecution, argues that these regions like others need to avoid both of those threats and lays out his idea for a Volga Republic in a 6400-word article in Wschody, a Russian émigré journal published in Poland (wschody.net/povolzhskaya-respublika-shansy-na-uspeh-i-glavnye-lovushki-postimperskogo-perehoda/).

            What makes Mulyukin’s article so important is that it is a rare example of how predominantly ethnic Russian regions may cooperate to escape from Moscow’s rule and a proposal that seeks to address both threats from a surviving Muscovite state and from local elites who may seize power in the name of the people but rule for themselves.

            He begins with a proposition that is all too often ignored. “Independence,” Mulyukin argues, “is the beginning and not the end of history.” Past post-imperial transitions show that “the disappearance of the former political power center does not mean the disappearance of the former ways of organizing power.”

            Consequently, those who succeed in breaking away must “simultaneously protect their new statehood from the possible restoration of external domination and from a situation in which those who take power will not turn it into their own property in the early years of transition.”

            Creating an entirely new republic with new borders and a new capital city is a way to do both, Mulyukin argues, and indeed, its lack of a history is an advantage rather than the disadvantage many assume.  It can create a new world for itself and its people and thus will be more likely to survive and survive as a democracy.

            He continues: “If the Volga Parliamentary Republic is composed mainly of the Russian and Russian-speaking population, it may well define itself as a Russian national republic, a definition isn’t necessarily anti-democratic or imperial, since a nation state can be based on the cultural identity of the majority, without invoking that to rule other peoples.”

            Mulyukin makes and develops a variety of other points about such a Volga Republic and its potential analogues on the current territory of the Russian Federation. Among the most important of these are the following:

·       The greatest danger to such a new state is not military aggression by Muscovy but the privatization of state power into the hands of existing elites.

·       That means that institutions must be the focus of development because they are “more important thana strong leader” and are necessary to “change the culture of power itself.”

·       International cooperation is essential but they “cannot be a substitute for statehood.”

·       Security must be guaranteed both by cooperation and by the development of the new country’s military.

·       And finally “historical memory should not be allowed to become a new state religion.

But perhaps the most significant of Mulyukin’s arguments is that Russian identity isn’t “an obstacle to such a project because a Russian and Russian-speaking population may well create a Russian national republic for itself if self-determination is understood as the right to organize its own political life rather than a license to decide the fate of others.”