More than Half of Muscovites Back Matviyenko's Call to Block Those from Russia's Regions from Attending the Capital's Universities

 Paul Goble

    Staunton, Mar. 13 -- Federation Council head Valentina Matviyenko says that Russia should block students from federal subejcts from studying in the universities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kazan because these students so often fail or get degrees in subjects they want but that the country doesn't need. 

    According to one survey, a majority of Muscovites agree with her; but while in some in the regions are happy to keep their best students at home, many are outraged with some even now suggesting that Muscovite clearly see themselves as already being a separate country (nemoskva.net/2025/03/13/poka-odni-regiony-hotyat-chto-to-zapretit-drugie-ne-proch-na-etom-zarabotat/ and rosbalt.ru/news/2025-03-13/ilya-graschenkov-a-mozhet-u-rossiyan-na-periferii-voobsche-otobrat-pasporta-5345178).

    Matviyenko's outrageous suggestion reflects a broader pattern in which some regions are adopting restrictions on abortions or alchol sales while others are not, leading to the rise of abortion and alcohol tourism while transforming Russia into a crazy quilt of regulations (jamestown.org/program/abortion-tourism-on-the-rise-in-russia-as-regions-adopt-different-policies/ and t.me/kostromama/1187). 

    Mostly such developments are the subject of mirth or the occasion for anger, but more seriously, they highlight the ways in which the various federal subjects of the Russian Federation are pulling in separate directions despite all the efforts Putin has made to centralize power and homogenize the country.

    And that trend recalls what happened in the early 1990s when regions, often finding it impossible to get the things they needed from other regions, imposed controls on the expot of their own goods to other parts of the Russian Federation, a practice that contributed to fears at the time that this would lead to a "parade of sovereignties" within that country.

    That something analogous should be happenig now after almost 25 years of Putin's rule is striking. To be sure, the center is far stronger and the regions far weaker tan they were. But the fissiparousness of the earlier period is once again echoing through the Russian Federation, however effective Putin's moves against federalism have been.