Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 4 – “When there
was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went,” W.H. Auden wrote;
and consequently, one can only ascribe a certain continuing importance to what
those loyal to those in power now said when they were being loyal to those in
power at another.
But such things often do provide an
insight into the minds of such people. A
clear example of this is a document from July 1990 that St. Petersburg
historian Aleksandr Puchenkov has unearthed from the Russian State Archives
that contains the arguments of ethnographer Valery Tishkov on what Moscow
should do to save the Soviet Union.
Tishkov posted this on his Facebook
page three days ago. Because he “unfriended” the author of these lines some
time ago, I did not see it immediately; but several people who are still Facebook
friends with the former director of the Moscow Institute of Ethology and
Anthropology and Russian nationalities minister were kind enough to forward it
to me.
Below is a translation of this most
interesting document as Tishkov posted it three days ago:
Petersburg
historian Aleksandr Puchenkov, who is studying the history of the
disintegration of the USSR, has found in the State Archive of the Russian Federation
my not ‘to those above’ (just exactly to whom I do not remember) on the issue
of the preparation of a new union treaty in 1990. It was interesting for me
personally to read through it.
GARF, F. 9654, Op.
7, D. 1062, l. 13-15.
On the position of
the Union delegation to talks on the new treaty:
I.It is important
to define again the arguments in favor of the preservation of the Union. The
old ones which are primarily about the past (victory in the war with fascism,
the antiquity of the establishment of the Russian state and so on) or emotions
(‘We still do not live in a real federation,’ ‘it is immortal to leave the
Union at a difficult time’) in fact aren’t working.
Under present-day
conditions, the preservation of the Union is justified above all for three
reasons:
A)
Historical: Too
deep historical-cultural interrelationships of peoples of the country which
already long ago do not have precise ethnic borders along which one could carry
out a national-state delimitation, the desire of the republics to engage in
self-determination up to separation in their current territories and form
nation states, that is, as the self-determination of the ‘indigenous’ nation is
a path to conflicts or general transfer of populations. Dozens of peoples are
settled in a dispersed way. Tens of millions of citizens have mixed origins. It
is impossible to ‘turn back the clock’ on all these processes.
B)
Economic. An
effective economy, even more markets and private entrepreneurship do not
recognize national borders. Not all peoples have a sufficient ‘critical mass’
to ensure a full-blown system vitality. It is in fact impossible to destroy the
already existing ties: they are dictated not only by the will of the Center but
also by natural resource factors. The most important conditions of progress, the
mobility of the population, are possible only in the Union.
C)
Political. In the currently
existing differences in the world, questions of security have not been
eliminated and a common defense is needed. The ‘Balkanization’ of the union can
lead to ‘Lebanization’ and transform entire regions into hearths of civic and
religious-ethnic conflicts. The Union is an almost prepared form for the
inclusion in the structure of world governance, for bringing the peoples of the
country into the world community, and for easing access to the achievements of
world civilization and culture.
II.It
is thus wise and tactically correct to adopt the following initial position: It
will be more profitable and easier for the center and it sincerely desires to
transfer as much power to the republics or other components of the Union as
possible. The basic responsibility for the organization of civic (and not just
national-cultural) life must be transferred from the federal authorities to the
republics. An effective market economy
and privatization will relieve the Center and the republics of the need to
divide up territories and property.
The
Center is above all the highest guarantor of all-civic bases, an arbiter and a moderator;
it is a structure which makes the functioning of the Union easier. It is the
intersect point of republic ties and the focal point of voluntarily delegated
authority and thus is in a position to adapt to rapidly changing conditions in
the international community.
Only
such a philosophy as a starting point (although this is not the most idea from
the point of view of world experience and scholarship) can be perceived as
possible now. We are compelled to take
into consideration both the heritage of the empire and the negative part of the
Soviet experience. The limits of freedom undere conditions of the preservation
of unity are far from exhausted even if one gives a level of sovereignty like
that of the states in the US or the lander in the Federal Republic of Germany,
this will be an enormous step forward.
III.The
Center must search for new sources and levers of its utility.
V.A.
Tishkov, 4 July 1990
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