De-Colonization Broader and More Important than Other Terms Used to Discuss Russia’s Future, Orlova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 2 – De-Colonization subsumes de-imperialization, sovereignization, federalization, and decentralization and allows for addressing all the questions they raise at one and the same time, Vasilina Orlova says. It is thus the most useful term to employ in discussing the future of the peoples now within the borders of the Russian Federation.

            “De-imperialization,” an anthropologist from Vladivostok now in the US says, “is about the abandonment of empire and imperial domination. Sovereignization concerns the acquisition of political subjectivity. Federalization focuses on a certain way of distributing power within a common state; and de-centralization is about the emergence of new centers of power” (wschody.net/federalizacziya-ili-dekolonizacziya-kto-reshaet-gde-periferiya/).

            According to her, de-colonization involves not only all of these issues but “also calls into question why a number of meanings have a culturally established and unquestioned primacy, one that can be explained only by established traditions, norms and values as dictated by colonial history.” As a result, de-colonization is the best framework to think about the Russian Federation.

            “De-imperialization,” Orlova continues, “is probably closest to the concept of de-colonization” given that as Russia arose as an empire, “it is natural to assume that the dismantling of the empire and its imperial implications should take place” to allow for all the peoples of the region, including Russians, to find a new place in the sun.

            She argues that it involves “the state’s rejection of imperial claims from the right to establish the boundaries of foreign subjectivity, from the idea of neighboring countries being within a sphere of its special interests, and from viewing some peoples as parts of a single historical whole which as a result of misunderstandings were split apart by state borders.

            De-imperialization is thus “a necessary part of de-colonization;” but it is far from all that is covered by the later term. That is because “the empire may disappear as a political struggle but the relations and perceptions it created will continue to exist.” That has certainly happened in Russia since 1991.

              Sovereignization is also close to de-colonization, Orlova writes; but it too is not the same thing. It is about who has the right to make decisions and thus may or may not involve the pursuit of independence by a group but also consider possibilities of federation or confederation.

              Those two concepts are also involved in such discussions especially as the Russian state is “already called ‘the Russian Federation.’” But most of those who advocate this do not challenge Moscow as the center of that state that will make the decisions for all other centers.

              Instead, she says, “federalization usually begins within the context of an already pre-existing map, one that says here is the Russian Federation and its subjects. Now, it is necessary to distribute power more fairly among them. The de-colonial view allows us to see that this map itself is the result of colonial history.”

              “Federalization can give the periphery more power,” Orlova continues; but “declonization calls into question the very right of the center to determine who is the periphery” and insists that “the center does not have some natural right to decide the fate of the territories because it has been able to govern them historically.”