Appointed Governors Locked in Battles with Elected Mayors in Russian Regions

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 5 – The Nakanune news agency suggests that conflicts between governors and mayors increasingly resemble those of the 1990s when cities and regions squared off against each other in order to stake out their power (nakanune.ru/articles/115597/). But this trend contains within it of a more dangerous development in the late 1980s.

            In the 1990s, both governors and mayors were elected and thus had democratic legitimacy. Now, most of the governors are de facto appointed by the Kremlin, while a large number of the mayors still are elected by the people. The latter officials thus retain more legitimacy in the eyes of the population than do the former.

            That echoes something that happened at the very end of Soviet times: Mikhail Gorbachev who probably could have been elected Soviet president had he gone to the people earlier instead had himself proclaimed president even as the leaders of some of the republics, Boris Yeltsin of Russia most prominently, did gain legitimacy via elections in the republic supreme soviets.

            That tilted the balance of power away from Moscow and to the republics, ultimately leading to the demise of the USSR.

            The situation in Russian regions is fundamentally different, but contests between those who have been legitimated by real elections and those who have not are likely to have a profound impact on the political situation in the Russian Federation unless or until Moscow can arrange things so that the mayors too will be appointed and lose this trump card.

            A new report by the Agency for Political and Economic Communications concludes that tensions between officials at the regional level and those at the municipal level have been increasing. And Oleg Matveychev of the Higher School of Economics says that they in some ways remind one of what occurred in the 1990s – but with a fundamental difference.

            At that time, he says, the Kremlin backed the mayors in order to weaken the governors, something it is unlikely to do again at least in most cases.  But the fact that tensions are growing again and between elected and non-elected officials is something the powers that be at the center have to be concerned about lest it provoke protests that could present a political problem.