Russian Regions Now Such a Serious Problem for Moscow that Its Leaders Can’t Talk about Them, Fayzrakhmanov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 14 – Sometimes leaders ignore certain questions because they are so unimportant that neglecting them is appropriate, but often they do so because the issues have become so serious that they either do not know what to do or are afraid that talking about them will only make them worse.

            One of those issues for the Moscow elites, Tatarstan commentator Ayrat Fayzrakhmanov says, is what to do with the country’s regions, something that neither the head of the Russian Constitutional Court nor the prime minister mentioned in their recent programmatic articles about the future of the country (business-gazeta.ru/article/398848).

            On the one hand, he says, given the issue of keeping the current elite in office despite declining ratings, “the issue of changing the federal arrangements of the country has been pushed off to a third-tier one” because while the desire to amalgamate regions remains in place, doing this without destroying the foundation is impossible.”

            But on the other, Fayzrakhmanov argues, “the regions are becoming a headache for Moscow;” and it is easier for people within the ring road to ignore them than to address their concerns and problems even though that almost certainly will ensure that the headache will only grow worse.

            For many in the center, “relationships of the center and the regions are reduced to the following questions: whom of the technocrats to appoint and should the heads of the remain subject to election?”  But with the decline in the ratings of those in power, “the legitimation of selective appointments is ceasing to work.”

            In reality, Fayzrakhmanov continues, “we are at a fork in the road,” one in which the country could do away with elections and use force alone to impose order or allow of elections that would result in a sharing of power.  Moscow may want the first, but “the demand for change at the local level is enormous.”

            If one listens to Moscow officials, the Kazan analyst argues,“interethnic relations are glorious,” a view that permits some to think that it will be “enough to leave peoples with national cultural autonomy, ensembles, songs, language courses, and ethnic festivals”  and that the population is on the way to becoming a single Russian people.

            But people in Soviet times thought that all the peoples were on the way to becoming a single Soviet people – until the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev showed that was far from the case – and the non-Russians each moved off in their own directions away from Moscow. Today, something similar is brewing, Fayzrakhmanov suggests.

            “The conflicts in Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabarbino-Balkaria, and Bashkortostan clearly show that ethnic and regional self-consciousness constitutes to be an important factor in the life of society,” however much some in Moscow would prefer to think otherwise. “It hasn’t gone anywhere and is trying to acquire political status for itself.”

            In Russia today, he concludes, “people are ready to fight for their land, for their people, and for their republics. And thus it is obvious that changing the status of republics or changing borders or amalgamating the regions won’t happen as simply” as some in the country’s capital believe.

            That they are not talking about this suggests, however, that some of them are beginning to recognize reality even if the rhetoric of Moscow television suggests otherwise.