Federalism Could Help Keep Russia Together While Decentralization Alone Won't

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 7 – There are two polar views on the role of federalism in Russian history. One view, associated now most closely with Vladimir Putin, holds that federalism opened the way to the disintegration of the USSR and, if not blocked and ultimately eliminated, will have the same impact on the Russian Federation.

            The other, associated with historians and regional analysts like Vadim Shtepa of the Region.Expert portal, holds that federalism was what allowed the Soviet Union to hold together as long as it did and that expanding federalism now will prevent the eventual coming apart of the Russian Federation.

This debate is often joined. This week former Putin speech writer and commentator Abbas Gallyamov said that “federalism is inevitable” in Russia, however much the Kremlin doesn’t want it. But the longer and harder the center resists it, the greater the risk that it will trigger the disintegration of the country (business-gazeta.ru/article/470569 discussed at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/06/politicization-of-russian-population.html).

Gallyamov’s words have prompted a rejoinder from Shtepa who argues that “obviously, Gallyamov doesn’t feel the contradiction in his words: It is impossible to simultaneously call for federalism and call the subjects of the federation somehow ‘the backwoods’ and ‘the provinces.’ This is typical imperial discourse” (region.expert/galliamov/).

Shtepa points to another problem with Gallyamov’s argument. The latter suggests that decentralization is only something local elites want rather than being an arrangement that benefits both the regions and the center. In large measure, Gallyamov’s argument reflects three semantic confusions.

First, the commentator views federalism and decentralization as almost one and the same thing when in fact they are not. Decentralization is a gift from the center that can at any moment be taken back, whereas federalism is a compact or agreement among territorially organized populations as to who does what.

Second, Gallyamov does not recognize what Shtepa highlights: Russia was and remains an empire, with the center making all the decisions about who has power and how much. Anything that challenges that power thus challenges the empire and its territorial integrity whereas federal arrangements are often put in place by the parties to preclude that.

And third, as Gallyamov fails to acknowledge, there is an enormous difference between creating a federation from territories that have a self-standing existence and doing the same thing with units that the center defined and controlled how much power they have. The first is the normal pattern; the second, exceptional and rare.

As Shtepa has pointed out on other occasions, Mikhail Gorbachev tried to do exactly that, but was blocked by the combined efforts of those who saw decentralization as a way out of the empire and those who saw any decentralization as a threat to the territorial integrity of their country and hence their power.

This debate is likely to intensive in the coming weeks and months as Moscow tries to take back some of the powers it ceded to the regions and republics to combat the pandemic, creating a situation that some have mistakenly called “coronavirus federalism,” and one that may in fact threaten the survival of the absurdly misnamed Russian “Federation.”

That is because, as all too many have forgotten about what happened just 30 years ago at the end of Soviet times, the USSR did not fall apart because Mikhail Gorbachev gave too much power to the republics and regions but because he gave that power and then, in an attempt to save his position, tried to take it back.

That latter effort, which Eduard Shevardnadze warned about, was the real trigger of the demise of the Soviet Union as those who had gained power by Gorbachev’s grand came to see that they could lose if he changed his mind. Undoubtedly, if Putin tries something similar, their successors will draw some of the same conclusions.

Just as there are two competing visions of the impact of federalism, there are two images about how the state centered on Moscow might have in the past or could now transform itself, both of which are suggestive of just how difficult moving from a hyper-centralized empire to real federalism is going to be.

According to the wise observation of many at the end of Soviet times and the beginning of the period after, anyone can transform an aquarium into fish soup; but it is very, very difficult to transform fish soup into an aquarium. And similarly, many now say Putin has succeeded by gradually heating the water a frog is swimming in rather than bringing it to a boil all at once.  

In the latter case, such people say, the frog feeling the heat intensify would jump out rather than allow himself to be cooked.  But Putin now faces a challenge from his own decentralization that he may try to reverse too quickly. And if he does, more than one “frog” is likely to jump out.