Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 15 – Valentina Matviyenko,
the speaker of Russia’s Federation Council, says that it is time to restart the
amalgamation of the country’s federal subjects because there are too many of
them. But like President Vladimir Putin in December, she suggested that nothing
will happen overnight and that the largest non-Russian republics may not be
affected.
Speaking in Kazan on Wednesday, Matviyenko
said that the current number of federal subjects – 83 – is “too large” and that
the differences in economic and social terms among them are too great.
Consequently, some of them should be combined together by referendum, although
she refused to say which ones (www.kommersant.ru/doc-y/2126614).
“Kommersant,”
in reporting the speaker’s remarks yesterday, queried Valery Tishkov, the
director of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology and one of the
co-authors of the country’s new nationality strategy document about where
amalgamation is likely to take place and, more important, where it is unlikely
to.
He
said that it would be useful to “unite small oblasts which today are in a poor
condition,” and he gave as examples Lipetsk, Penza and Ivanova oblasts, and the
Jewish Oblast and Chukotka district, both of which should be “returned to those
regions” in which they were in Soviet times.
But Tishkov said, in the words of “Kommersant,”
that “the national republics have nothing to fear.” They have the ability to “mobilize
local peoples,” and thus talking about amalgamation should take place “not in
Kazan” where Matviyenko did “because Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia and
Mordvinia are one of the most dynamically developing regions.”
As it often does on controversial issues,
Regions.ru surveyed four parliamentarians about their feelings on this issue.
Their comments, which that news agency reported yesterday, shed some additional
light on this issue and on how difficult it is likely to be to amalgamate more
regions if referenda are required (regions.ru/news/2445823/).
Maksim Rokhmistov, the LDPR deputy
who is first deputy chairman of the Duma’s committee on the budget and taxes,
said he was pleased by Matviyenko’s words and believes that regions with fewer
than three million residents should be combined with others in order to cut
administrative costs and burdens on the taxpayer.
He added that he was also “convinced
that issues about the unification of this or that region cannot be resolved on
the basis of referenda.” Plans for an enlarged regions should be drawn up by
experts and then the federal parliament should approve them “in each specific
case.”
Nikolay Kharitonov, a KPRF deputy
who chairs the Duma committee on regional policy and the problems of the North
and Far East, said that “at the present time [he] does not see any need for
amalgamation of regions. Today this
clearly is not the main issue for the country” and changing the number of
regions “will hardly make conditions in them radically different.”
Mikhail Nikolayev, a United Russia member
of Kharitonov’s committee, said that the fact that ten subjects produce more
than 50 percent of Russia’s GDP while another ten produce “only one percent” is
why the country needs to begin talking about amalgamation again. But he said he
agreed with Matviyenko that this could be done only on the basis of referenda.
But he added that he favored
proceeding very cautiously not only because of the current problems in the economy
but also because “first of all there is a need to analyze the experience of theose
Russian regions which at one time have already passed through amalgamation.” It
must be determined whether they have benefited or not.
(Nikolayev doesn’t say so, but
complaints from the small non-Russian districts which were subjected to
amalgamation during Putin’s earlier presidency suggest that amalgamation has
not benefited them in the ways they were promised and in many cases has made
their situation even worse than it was.)
Finally, Bato-Zhargal
Zhambalnimbuyev, a member of the Federation Councils’ committee on budget and
financial markets, said he agreed that a new wave of amalgamation would be a
good thing but added that “the main thing is not the number of federal subjects”
but rather “arranging things that the remaining subjects will get a boost for
stable growth so that they will become more self-sufficient.”
The
country must “seek to create a situation in which all regions will be
developing more or less in the same way” so that people will be able to get
what they need at home rather than by moving to Moscow. That will reduce migration. After all, “why
go to some capital city, if you can eat the same thing in your village?!”
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