In This Crisis, Russian Regions Taking Tougher Line Against Moscow than are Non-Russian Republics, Alpaut Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 8 – Most people assume that the predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays are reliable supporters of Moscow and that it is the non-Russian republics and districts that are the most likely to oppose the center and represent a problem or even a threat to the Kremlin.  But in this crisis, that pattern isn’t holding, Ramazan Alpaut says.

            That shift has been concealed by the attention that inevitably gone to Chechnya and its outspoken and flamboyant leader Ramzan Kadyrov, but a survey of the Russian Federation shows, the IdelReal journalist says, that it is the Russian regions that are the angriest and taking the most steps Moscow doesn’t like (idelreal.org/a/30538853.html).

            Were any non-Russian republics (other than Chechnya) taking these steps, such actions almost certainly would be interpreted as “a manifestation of separatism” (eadaily.com/ru/news/2017/08/04/tatarstan-govorya-o-federalizme-podrazumevaem-separatizm and nazaccent.ru/content/5998-opros-nacional-separatizm-v-rossii.html).

            But because they are being taken by predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays, many Moscow commentators are talking about a new federalism, even though some telegram channels, as Alpaut points out, are characterizing these actions by the Russian regions as “anti-Moscow” in the first instance (t.me/olen_nn/1143).

            And these actions, the IdelReal journalist continues, are not simply the work of Moscow-appointed officials who feel they have more latitude to resist without danger to their careers. They reflect attitudes among their ethnic Russian populations that Moscow is their enemy (anews.com/p/127223955-begut-kak-krysy-regiony-vozmushheny-ponaehavshimi-moskvichami/).

            Alpaut provides more than a dozen examples of these trends.  They deserve to be followed up by means of the examination of what is going on in the other predominantly ethnic Russian regions. But even more than that, his underlying point needs to inform the way in which analysts approach the Russian Federation.

            Ethno-national self-determination is not the only and perhaps in Russia’s case not the primary threat to the Muscovite state, and just as Boris Yeltsin and the RSFSR played the major role in the demise of the USSR thirty years ago, so too now it seems possible that some or perhaps even many of the predominantly ethnic Russian regions will play an analogous role now.

            More than almost any other nationality in the world, the Russian nation is state-centric. People who identify as ethnic Russians do so because they also typically identify as part of the Moscow-centered Russian state. But if those bonds are loosening or have in fact always been overstated, then Russia’s future is likely to be shorter than many now think.

            Unless Moscow recognizes this and modifies both Russian statehood and the ethnic Russian identity linked to it, the greatest threat to the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation may not be the non-Russians Putin and others sometimes hold up as a danger but precisely the Russian regions they see as their base.