Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 7 – A truly contemporary
Russia cannot be an empire, Gary Kasparov says. “Other countries long ago and successfully
overcame their imperial consciousness but it remains in Russia up to now and
pushes it in the direction of various adventures.”
In an interview with the After
Empire portal at the Fourth Forum of Free Russia in Vilnius, the extra-systemic
opposition leader says that the only positive way forward is to reconstitute
the state as a parliamentary democracy with a genuinely federalist system (afterempire.info/2017/12/07/restart/).
But Kasparov acknowledges that if such a
federation is to be real, it must be voluntary; and if it is voluntary, it is
likely not to include all the regions and republics now within the borders of
the Russian Federation given the enormous diversity among them and the
continuing impact of centralist ideas in the state.
The differences between Wyoming, on the
one hand, and Massachusetts, on the other, in the US are far less than the
differences between St. Petersburg and Chechnya. Indeed, he argues, keeping the
latter two together would be an extraordinary challenge for any federal system,
let alone one with Russia’s heritage.
And there is another fundamental
difference between the states of the US and the regions of the Russian
Federation, Kasparov says. “In all the states of the US, despite their legal
differences, an understanding that they form one country all the same predominates.”
But Kasparov says he has no similar confidence about Russia’s regions.
He agrees with Vadim Shtepa, the editor of
After Empire, that any separatist tendencies in parts of Russia are the
products of the imperial and hyper-centralized Russian state and says that “in
a normal federation, this capital super-centralism would be liquidated. It is possible that would lead to a certain
reduction in the standard of living in Moscow.”
Speaking more generally about federalism,
Kasparov says that “a normal federation in general must be build not on ‘verticals’
but on horizontal ‘net’ connections among regions on the basis of their mutual interests.
And of course, underlying everything must be the principle of voluntariness.”
That means, he continues, that as Russia
reconstitutes itself as a modern state, “it is possible that this territory
will be less but in it will come precisely those regions which are interested
in a common economic, cultural and legal space.” The others may very well go their
own ways.
Unfortunately, Kasparov continues, when
the Russian had a chance to reconstitute itself in 1991, it didn’t make use of
it, and “therefore the Russian Federation remained only a continuation of the
USSR with the very same nomenklatura and special services, an outcome which in
the final analysis led to the restoration of the empire.”
To move forward, Russia must return to the
principles of the Constituent Assembly of 1917, a body which might have
achieved much but which was destroyed by the Bolsheviks who then proceeded to
build “the most horrific totalitarian regime in the world.” Everything connected with that regime must be
discarded.
For example, Kasparov says, “the Kremlin
should be a purely tourist site and not a center for those in power, because if
the reverse is true, the specters f the past will as before rule over us.” It is even possible that a new Russia will
need a new and different capital city, one that will epitomize not an empire
but a genuine and free federation.
It will be based on a recognition that “the
interests of people in the Moscow region are no more important than the people
in Novgorod or Siberia, just as the residents of the smallest US state Rhode
Island have in no way fewer rights than those in gigantic New York,” Kasparov
continues
As for a future parliament, it must be
entirely new. The current Duma isn’t a real parliament and the parties in it
are not real parties. They will all pass away when real political competition
begins, and their departure will thus open the way to the construction of a
genuinely free and federal Russia.
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