Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 30 – The most important
lesson of the Khabarovsk protests is that separatism doesn’t threaten Russia
now but could if the central government continues to try to make all the
decisions, consolidate all the power and wealth, and ignore the aspirations of
Russians in the regions, Ildus Yarulin says.
The director of the Vladivostok
Institute of Political Technologies and Communications argues that “when Vladimir
Putin came to power, he faced a super-important task: not to allow the country
to fall apart into principalities. Such a threat existed,” and Putin dealt with
it successfully (regnum.ru/news/polit/3023700.html).
“But
today before the president and before all of us stands a yet more important
task: to listen to the aspirations of the people in the regions and bring the
regions together because strong regions as we know are the basis of a strong
Russia,” Yarulin continues. If Putin is willing to listen, that is all
possible; if he isn’t, then to the dangers he suppressed earlier could return.
How
the Kremlin leader chooses to respond will determine who will emerge as the
leaders of regional movements and parties, the political analyst says; and who
these people are will determine whether they move toward separatism or become
participants in the strengthening of the state.
Discussions
about new regional parties have been taking place for some time, despite the
legal ban against them, Yarulin points out.
And now given the failures of both the systemic and extra-systemic
parties at the center, many people are talking about creating replacements for
them as well.
One
thing about the latter discussions is especially troubling: no one involved in
those discussions is talking about regional problems, “even though all the
problems are in the regions: poverty is in the regions, and illness, and death,
and disintegrating housing, and lack of roads and access, and ‘the black hole’
of municipal services – everything is in the regions.”
If
neither the old nor the new parties will talk about these things, then regional
parties will emerge, including across the entire Russian Far East; and the
longer the parties at the all-Russian level ignore the problems of the regions,
the more radical these regional parties are going to become.
“The
regions, especially in the Far East, are ever more angry that they do the work
and the federal center distributes their earnings.” Some are given more, others
less, but the decisions are made behind closed doors at the center. Khabarovsk didn’t invent this issue but the
city’s protests have attracted new attention to it.
The
center and the regions must function so that each can trust the other, Yarulin
argues. If they don’t, “nothing good” is
in prospect. Perhaps the country needs a new federative treaty or an elected
Federation Council. At least, such things need to be discussed because the
current ones are viewed in the regions as meaningless.
In
the current situation, various groups are appearing, including in Khabarovsk,
in the form of The Voice of the Far Easterner. It may have some influence on
the upcoming elections but largely because of the weakness of the other
parties. But it will be effective only
if the center works with rather than against it.
Will
that movement become “a real force”? “Will there appear in the Far Eastern
Federal District new movements oriented
not at protests but at development?” Positive answers to these questions are
needed and needed now. Otherwise, the situation could deteriorate in very
threatening ways.
“The
protests in Khabarovsk Kray continue,” but “sooner or later these marches will
end. But will the protest end? How will it end? And who will head the new
movements?” The future of the Far East and of Russia as a whole depend on those
answers: Moscow needs to start listening and the regions need to start focusing
on becoming strong parts of a strong Russia.
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