Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 6 – To win support for their political goals, Lenin and then Yeltsin enlisted the non-Russians as allies, a narrowly ethnic approach that undermined attempts at federalism and led to the revival of a hyper-centralized empire, Vadim Shtepa says. And there is a risk that non-Russian movements now by their focus on secondary issues may lead to the same outcome.
In a programmatic article for MostMedia, the editor of the Tallinn-based Russian regionalist portal, Region.Expert, argues that to avoid that outcome, the non-Russian movements must become broadly political rather than narrowly ethnic and also recognize that the various Russian regions are allies rather than a unitary enemy (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/pochemu-rossia-ne-smogla-preobrazovatsja-iz-imperii-v-federaciju-i-vozmozhno-li-eto-teper).
According to Shtepa, “a real, equal federation will be built not on the ethnic origin of its residents but on how much its subjects have genuine civic self-administration and free elections of their own authorities.” The Russian state failed to do that in 1917 and in 1991, he says; and it will fail again if ethnicity rather than citizenship becomes secondary.
When ethnic movements “concentrate on narrowly ethnic problems,” they not only open the way for conflict with other ethnic groups on the territory of their republics but they “deprive themselves of possible allis in Russian regions and krays, many of whose residents also are dissatisfied with Moscow’s hyper-centralism.”
Some in the non-Russian republics recognize this, Shtepa says, citing as an example Mark Shishkin of Tatarstan who called for a regionalist approach by the current non-Russian republics six years ago (region.expert/tatarstan-regionalism/ discussed at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/kazan-can-solve-its-nationality-problem.html).
But most haven’t, a tragedy not only for them but also for the various Russian communities inside the current borders of the Russian Federation. The latter are enormously varied, Shtepa says. Indeed, in many respects, “the residents of Kaliningrad (Koenigsberg) and of the Far East differ approximately as much as Canadians from New Zealanders.”
By pursuing a narrow ethnic approach themselves, the non-Russian movements unwittingly provide aid and comfort to the Kremlin by suggesting sometimes quite openly that all Russians are imperialist allies of Moscow, something which is not the case but which Putin among others is all too glad to make use of.
“Real decolonization” of the space now occupied by the Russian Federation, Shtepa continues, will be “impossible without the involvement of residents of various Russian regions and krays many of whom have their own regional interests” and without cooperation between the non-Russians in the republics and the ethnic Russians who live within them.
But at present, many of the leaders of the non-Russian national movements don’t understand that. Instead, they treat the Russian language itself as an inevitable ally of the Kremlin, leading to ridiculous situations as when some of their representatives in “émigré forums” complain about ‘Russification’ in Russian because they haven’t mastered English.”
This reflects a broader and deeper problem, Shtepa says. Many of the leaders of the national movements within Russia today “do not have any political dimension,” because under current conditions, “politics is above all the struggle for the right of the free election of those in power in their own republics.”
If these leaders had such a political dimension, they would be looking for allies within their own republics and beyond rather than engaging in wishful thinking and helping their opponents in the Kremlin by continuing to suggest that such alliances are impossible in principle, suggestions that will block them from any possibility of achieving their goals.
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