New Ukrainian Study Says Eight out of Ten Russian Regions Capable of Rapidly Becoming Independent Countries Once Moscow Collapses

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 10 – Eight of the ten republics and regions in the Russian Federation that Ukrainian scholars have examined are capable of rapidly transforming themselves into independent countries once the imperial center in Moscow collapses, according to a new report on the prospects for their independence discussed at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.  

            Valery Pekar, head of the Decolonization organization and one of the authors of the report, observed that Moscow “constantly uses arguments about the economic, humanitarian, political and other shortcomings of its own regions to justify its colonial policies” (abn.org.ua/en/analysis/arguments-for-decolonization-of-russia/).

              But notes that UN Resolution 1514 of December 1960 explicitly states that “insufficient economic or political readiness cannot be used as a reason to postpone independence” and urges that everyone look beyond Moscow’s arguments regarding how “prepared” Russia’s regions and republics are to stand on their own.

              According to another author of the republic, Ukrainian economist Andriy Dligach, the widely reported insolvency of Russia’s regions is Not a natural fact but a constructed reality” because “a region can receive more from the center than it earns” not because it is poor but because of the disproportionate “rents” Moscow extracts.

              The Ukrainian scholars selected ten regions for the first “wave” of this study: Ingria, Kuban, Oirat-Kalmykia, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, the Urals, Komi, Siberia, Sakha-Yakutia, and Buryatia, a deliberately “diverse” group of rich and poor, northern and southern, large and small, non-Russian and ethnic Russian, and with high and low protest activity.

              The Ukrainian team examined each of these in terms of “three indices of regional well-being: economic, humanitarian and political” and concluded that all ten could exist independently once Moscow disappears as the imperial center and that “at least eight … are capable of quickly transitioning to independence.

According to the Ukrainian investigators, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Buryatia, and the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) have “the highest political capacity” to move quickly to independence.  But others can follow because the money and fear that Moscow has used to hold things together are both quicky running out.

But the report doesn’t idealize the future. According to Pekar,  “some states will embark on the path to democracy. Others will become democratic republics. Still others may turn into dictatorships.” After all, that has been the experience of Ukraine and other non-Russians who escaped Russian rule in 1991. Others who do now will be the same.