Putin’s Abolition of Federalism May End with the Abolition of Russia, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 22 – Vladimir Putin’s abolition of federalism may have the unintended consequence of leading to the abolition of Russia itself if people in the regions and republics conclude that they cannot hope to gain any powers at all except by seceding from Russia and leading to its demise, Vadim Shtepa says.

            That is a lesson that the Kremlin should have learned because over the past three decades efforts to centralize and efforts to secede have fed on one another, with “the amplitude of such vacillations being too broad for the historical stability of this state,” according to the editor of the Tallinn-based Region.Expert portal (reforum.io/blog/2021/12/16/itogi-2021-regiony/ reposted at region.expert/defederalization/).

            If the center shared power and resources with the regions and republics, far fewer of them would be thinking about secession; but because under Putin, Moscow believes it must control all resources and decisions, the center is creating its own nemesis, movements might have been satisfied with federalism but conclude they must have independence.

            With the adoption of the public power law, Russian federalism has been “liquidated,” Shtepa says. Indeed, “the name ‘Russian Federation’ now remains only on paper.” It does not describe the political system in the country, a development not surprising because Russian federalism never had a firm basis.

            The 1992 federative treaty was between Moscow and the regions and republics rather than among the latter; and consequently, there was always the likelihood that the former would seize for itself ever more power at the expense of the latter. That is exactly what happened after Putin came to power.

            “The Kremlin lives under the illusion that the centralization of all authority and resources ‘strengthens the country.’ But as history teaches, such a policy in fact can lead to the directly opposite result,” sparking protests against the center and causing ever more people along the periphery to think about leaving.

            Protests against hyper-centralization continue to grow in frequency and size. The center’s response is not to share power and thus win over the population to a more real federalism but to use force and treat the population like the colonies of an empire. At some point, that approach will backfire and lead not to federalism but to disintegration.set

            But that is something Russia’s current rulers do not understand, Shtepa concludes. They do not recognize that doing away with federalism does not make the country stronger but rather sets the stage for doing away with the country they now govern as such.