Putin Can Name Outsiders as Heads of Federal Subjects but in 'Almost a Quarter' of Them, He Never Has, Russian Specialist Says

 Paul Goble

    Staunton, Mar. 3 -- Vladimir Putin has sufficient power to appoint the heads of all the federal subjects of the Russian Federation, Vitaly Ivanov, a specialist on federalism in Russia, says. But despite that, in "almost a quarter" of them, he has never named an outsider but instead has always turned to local people in making such appointments.

    For a list of the 21 federal subjcts into which Putin has not yet inserted an outsider as head, see club-rf.ru/news/63888;  for Ivanov's explanation of why thee bu tnot others have avoided that fate, see his remarks on that subject contained in an interview at club-rf.ru/detail/7609.

    The Russian historian who has written a two-volume history on gubernatorial arrangements in Russia says that it is important to define precisely what one means by outsider. Someone with no connections to a region is clearly one, but there are some who may have been born in a region or served there early in their careers but who have never worked near the top who are as well.

    According to Ivanov, there is no rule as far as the appointment of outsiders is concerned. Non-Russian regions are now just as likely to have one as are predominantly ethnic Russian regions and krays. The only real exception among the latter is St. Petersburg, whose local elite is so large and well-known to Putin that the Kremlin leader feels no need to go outside for its governor.

    In Ivanov's view, "there are only two regions" elsewhere where the appointment of an outsider is "unlikely -- Tatarstan and Chechnya. But that is because of events which took place in the 1990s, including not signing the federation treaty and in Chechnya's case fighting a war with Moscow. These continue to cast a shadow on Moscow's approach to Kazan and Grozny.

     Most people in most places don't like outsiders, he continues; but the reality is some outsiders seek to boost the regions they are assigned to more than locals, either to curry favor with the Kremlin or to win friends locally. Consequently, the impact of the presence or absence of outsiders is less clear-cut than many imagine.