Tatarstan Calls for Allowing All Federal Subjects to Have Their Own Academies of Sciences

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 3 – Tatarstan’s State Council has called on the Russian Duma to amend the 1996 education act and allow all federal subjects to have the right to form their own academies of sciences, yet another move by Kazan to defend the remnants of federalism in the Russian Federation and to give both republics and regions more authority.
    Taking advantage of the right of its government to make proposals to the Duma for laws or amendments to existing laws that could affect the entire country, the State Council has quietly proposed a move with potentially far-reaching consequences (kommersant.ru/doc/7344750 and milliard.tatar/news/tatarstan-predlozil-regionam-sozdavat-svoi-akademii-nauk-6582).
    Tatarstan has its own academy of sciences but neither most other autonomous republics nor oblasts and krays do. Instead, Moscow has created regional centers of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Dagestan, KBR, Karelia, Kola, Samara, St.Petersburg, Troitsk and Ufa. (In at least two cases (Tatarstan and Bashkortostan), these exist alongside republic academies.)
    It is likely that Kazan has made this proposal not only to promote the authority of other federal subjects but to protect its own republic academy of sciences which otherwise might be under pressure to close as part of Putin’s “optimization” program to save money on educational and other functions so as to have it available for war.