Putin has Left Russia’s Regions with Neither Money nor Freedom of Action, Zubarevich Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 2 – Moscow’s “extraordinarily cynical policy” toward the regions and republics of the Russian Federation, Natalya Zubarevich says, involves reducing help to most federal subjects, taking money from the richer to help Moscow meet its budget deficit, and transferring funds where “the political risks” of not helping appear greatest.

            But what the Kremlin is not offering, the director of regional programs at Moscow’s Independent Institute for Social Policy argues, is something an increasing number of regions seek but that Moscow won’t give: in the absence of money, they want greater flexibility and freedom of action (vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2016/12/29/671648-deneg-net).

            And that sets the stage not only for greater conflicts between the center and the regions but also for stagnation rather than growth in ever more parts of the country, something that the leaders in Moscow do not yet appear to appreciate or display any willingness to take steps to address.

            There has been some good economic news over the last year, Zubarevich says. Agriculture has shown real growth, and the collapse of industry has slowed or stopped, although in processing it has continued. But despite the efforts of the regime to suggest otherwise, there is far more bad news than good.

            Real incomes of the population, consumption and investment have all continued to fall, trends that mean that “the main victims of the crisis are the population of Russia and its future,” the economist says. The regions which are now responsible for most social spending have been cutting back on social spending, something that may leave Russia without a future.

            Thirty-nine of Russia’s federal subjects ran a budget deficit in the first nine months of last year, and when the results come in for the year as a whole, Zubarevich says, that number will be much higher given that the regions have to go into debt to pay their obligations to their state employees. In some places, this has already reached crisis proportions.

            And Moscow is making their situation worse: During the first three quarters of 2016, Moscow cut transfer payments by eight percent compared to the year ago, and 69 of the federal subjects received less than they had in 2015. Even those identified as “geopolitical priorities” saw cuts: central assistance to Sevastopol fell by 50 percent and to occupied Crime by seven.

            There were a few that remained “in favor,” the economist continues. Kaliningrad saw its transfer payments rise by 3.4 times, Ingushetia by 31 percent, and Chukotka by 25 percent.  And Chechnya after Ramzan Kadyrov protested against any cuts at all saw federal subsidies fall by only one percent.

             Many regional leaders are angry but few protested because “such are the rules of the game” in Putin’s Russia, she says.  However, there is increasing awareness in the regions that no one in Moscow cares how things are going in this or that region; those at the center are worried only about covering the federal deficit – and they are quite prepared to take more from the regions where they can.

            The regions are struggling to adapt to “the worsening economic conditions and the reduction of federal assistance,” and they vary widely as to the strategies they have adopted, Zubarevich says. As a result, “federalism in Russia” has been reduced to the wide variety of means they have come up with to adapt to Moscow’s will.

            The city of Moscow, for example, has shifted money from social needs to making the city more attractive, a strategy that inevitably will lead to a further degradation of “human capital” in the city. Others, like Mordvinia, which is an extreme case, have kept spending up, hoping against hope that Moscow will come to their rescue before everything collapses.

            This “quasi-federalism in the spending policies of the regions is helping them to survive,” Zubarevich says; “but it is not stimulating development.” What it is doing is stimulating new questions form the leaders of the regions and republics: “If there is no money,” they are asking, “perhaps they can be given freedom of action?”

            And in political terms that question takes the following form: could the power vertical Putin has invested so much in creating nonetheless be softened so that the regions could live up to their responsibilities to the population?  Up to now, “the answer of the federal authorities is clear” and it is a firm “no.”

            All must march in the direction Moscow orders, and the wealthier regions must share.  That may work for a time, Zubarevich says; but as things get worse in 2017, it is quite likely that it will become obvious to all that it is not only soldiers who are tired of drill; the regions and republics of Russia are tired as well.

Increasing Linguistic Diversity Helps Rather than Hurts Numerically Smallest Languages, Expert on Chuvash Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 2 – Many people assume that increasing linguistic diversity will lead those who find themselves in that situation to look for a common language and that it will thus work against those who speak the numerically smaller language, but in fact Hector Alos Font argues, the reverse may turn out to be true.

            In a Facebook post yesterday, the Catalan linguist who works in Chuvashia argues that “individual languages survive better in milieus where there are many languages than where there are few and thus the preservation of linguistic diversity … works in favor of each of the local languages” (facebook.com/notes/hèctor-alòs-font/укрепление-других-родных-языков/10153955607592000).

                That diversity, he points out in comments that he says he has submitted to the Chuvash authorities who are developing a concept paper on teaching the national language there can be either based on long-standing patterns or be “the result of new migration processes,” which bring speakers of other languages into the republic.

            What that means, and this may seem counter-intuitive to many, is that Chuvash benefits when non-Chuvash minority languages are promoted because speakers of those languages can see why learning Chuvash as well is useful for them in their daily lives, more useful perhaps than learning some lingua franca like Russian.

            One of the implications of Alos Font’s argument is that the presence of other linguistic minorities in a particular territory or the increase in such minorities as a result of immigration puts the local titular nationality in a better position to survive than does a situation in which there is only that nationality and Russian speakers.

            And from that arise another: If his point is accepted, those in non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation may come to welcome the presence or the arrival of other minority languages as important allies in their efforts to maintain their national language and national identity rather than viewing them as many do now as adjuncts to Moscow’s efforts at russification.

           

           

Where Russia is Already Beginning to Collapse – the Permafrost Zone in the Far North

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 1 – The Siberian Times newspaper has called attention to a study showing that the melting of permafrost in the northern two-thirds of Russia is already beginning to undermine infrastructure in the northern portions of the country and will lead to “the collapse” of many buildings and pipelines over the next several decades. 

            The study, prepared by a group of Russian and American scholars, appears in the current issue of The Geographical Review (Vol. 107, no. 1 (January 2017), pp. 125-144, available online at onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gere.12214/full). The Russian paper has summarized it and provided pictures of the collapse so far (siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/features/f0280-warning-of-collapse-of-buildings-in-siberias-permafrost-cities-in-next-35-years/).

                According to the study which examined four Siberian cities in detail, the paper says, several of them are at risk of collapsing infrastructure within the next decade and that under “a worst-case scenario” there could be “a 75 to 95 percent ‘reduction in bearing capacity throughout the permafrost region by 2050.” 

            That would have a “devastating” impact not only on the ability of people to live and work in the Russian north but also on efforts to extract oil, gas, and other natural resources from the region or to maintain control over the region and the adjoining Northern Sea Route in which Moscow has placed so much hope.

            The scholars examined the situation in Salekhard, Norilsk, Yakutsk, and Anadyr, but argues that their findings in these locations can be extrapolated to others and that they underscore the need to adopt new construction methods, some of them extraordinarily expensive, to prevent infrastructure collapse.