The World Today
October 1998

Regional Meltdown?

By Graeme Herd

Russia is in systemic crisis, perhaps even close to collapse. The Moscow malaise has underlined the importance of the regions to the continued viability of the Russian Federation. Russia’s deep south crackles like tinder-wood, sparks in Chechnya and Dagestan threaten to set the North Caucasus aflame once again. Sweeping east across the Urals into the heartland of Siberia, General Lebed, newly appointed Governor of Krasnoyarsk Territory, marshals his forces for a renewed bid for the presidency. Does Russia face a de facto disintegration of the Federation, the creation of a ‘commonwealth’ of states within Russian territory?

 

Russian centre-periphery relations have been suspended in a state of ‘uneasy equilibrium’ for the past year and power could haemorrhage from the federal centre into the 89 regions. These regions have assiduously created autonomous space, buttressing their independence with six central pillars, the first of which is constitutional legitimacy.

Regional governors have created power bases that are underpinned by local constitutions which invariably contradict that of the Russian Federation. Regions habitually ignore Federal legislation and so act unconstitutionally. For example, Tatarstan’s State Council passed a law this year on citizenship which contradicts Russian law—a resident of Tatarstan can hold the republic’s citizenship without retaining that of Russia.

Governors have also perfected the creation of ‘rotten boroughs’. Local regional councils are routinely packed with the Governors’ supporters, effectively allowing the governor to monopolise political power within his ‘principality’.

In some regions elections for key costs are uncontested or rigged. Indeed, in the June 1998 presidential election in Bashkortostan, the incumbent Rakhimov, barred three other candidates from standing against him. He was following the example of Tatarstan’s President Mintmir Shaimiyev.

 

Buying influence

Another indicator of regional power is military disintegration. The Federal budget has been unable to pay for basic provisions such as food, accommodation and energy and Federal troops have become dependent for survival upon regional-handouts. This creates de facto alliances between local military commanders and provincial politicians and further fragments the integrity of units within the Federation.

The starkest example is in the Russian Far East. Here Governor Nazdratenko is paying wage arrears for the Russian Pacific fleet from regional budgets in return for ensuring that only those officers born in the region serve in it.

The acquisition or creation of ‘independent’ regional communication and informational networks further enhances regional autonomy. The more powerful amongst the regional governors and presidents support the building of international airports—Ingushetia and Kursk regions are examples. This allows them direct access to foreign states and the ability to by-pass Moscow power centres and ministries. By increasingly fragmenting the role of Russia in international relations, this widens the gulf between governmental policy statements and actual practice.

The line between territorial unit and Russian federation or state foreign policy is being blurred, with regions becoming foreign policy actors, signing agreements with foreign countries—Tatarstan with Ukraine, for example. This complements the growing regionalisation of the policies of individual foreign states towards Russia. Japan has been increasingly enthusiastic about establishing direct links with neighbouring regions—the Russian Far East receives the largest share of Japanese aid.

Governors have sought to control their own ‘information space’, clamping down on dissenting independent presses and radio stations. In early June Larisa Yudina, the editor of Sovetskaya Kalmykia Segodnyia, was murdered after a Russian TV broadcast in which she claimed that democratic liberties and human rights in the Republic of Kalmykia were flouted, the local press was censored, and money intended for the republic has been diverted to personal presidential accounts. Larisa Yudina argued: ‘Kalmykia today is Chechnya in 1993. On the basis of what parameters? On the basis of the following parameters: human rights are being violated; budget funds are disappearing; the republic is saturated with weapons.’ ₁

 

Living without them?

The see-sawing of power between the regions and the capital has been a central feature of Russian political history. Centre-periphery tensions remain a reassuringly evolving dynamic, a thread of continuity between past and present. It is misleading to concentrate on provincial identity without highlighting the bonds that both unite the Federation and uphold its territorial integrity.

The regions have no tradition of independent statehood and would be unwilling to break from Moscow’s control. Psychological, linguistic and cultural affinities which bind the Russian people together—both ethnic Russians and Russian speakers—further undermine separatist tendencies.

When the economy improves, the ability of Federal mechanisms of control—such as the military—to impose their presence within recalcitrant regions will increase.

Whilst central power may be presently weakened, it receives strong support from the international system and international institutions which relate to Russia as a sovereign and integral state. This provides Moscow with powerful external legitimacy.

These arguments are not as persuasive as they appear and are open to refutation. The counter-arguments are based around the idea that the Federation lacks internal rationale.

 

A fragmented people

For many Russians there is already a feeling—Chechnya apart—that the country’s territorial integrity has been breached. Such an understanding compares the Soviet Union to the Russian Empire in terms of territorial equivalence, and argues that the Federation is an artificial, ahistorical creation, which fragmented the Russian people, leaving large Russian communities stranded in eastern Ukraine, the Baltic States and Kazakhstan. Before 1991, what was the difference in the eyes of the majority of Russians, and not least the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and KGB elite’s—Chernomyrdin and Primakov’s political hinterland—between the status of Kiev, Minsk and Vladivostok?

Thus, the Federation is neither a nation nor a state but territories upon which some Russian peoples live. To further fragment that territory through a confederative arrangement or declaring, in effect, sovereignty does not represent a qualitative difference in actualité or a step-change in perception. Moreover, communities living on Russian territory are already fragmented. Russian Cossacks in the North Caucasus are different entities from Russian Cossacks living in Siberia. The security environments and survival dynamics differ radically between these regions.

To talk of economic resurgence in the near or medium future is to ignore painful current realities. The export branches of the economy—oil and gas and natural resources—are productive and known reserves are massive. However, this is the only sector of the economy that is subjected to any order. Industrial, electronic and operations are destroyed, with no investment forthcoming or likely because of the crippled Federal budget.

Mass industrial protests over wage and pension arrears and unemployment are rampant, in all sectors, including the power structure and the military. According to the Ministry of Railways, the transport delays brought on by the ‘rail wars’ have created a critical situation at atomic power stations, nuclear centres and even missile installations.

 

Russian Confederation?

Relatively strict budgetary federalism, a feature of the Kiriyenko government, will not be sustained in economic freefall. Net donor (or producer) regions will now be less willing to pay their twenty percent tariff into the cash-strapped Federal budget. As a result net receiver or consumer regions will find themselves under great pressure, probably forced to up the political ante by blackmailing the centre with the threat of public disorder or separatism to maintain current levels of federal funding and subsidies.

Russian centre-periphery relations would then be governed by a vicious spiral of vice: as Federal subsidies dry up, tensions between opposing factions in consumer regions are exacerbated; competition for control of limited hand-outs becomes more intense.

Such developments could break regional cohesion. Chechnya’s Caspian neighbour, the ethnically diverse Dagestan, for example, is ripe for civil war. Intra-regional fragmentation centres around a heady mixture of radical wahhabitism (a Sunni orthodox version of Islam), inter clan rivalry, mafia struggles to control the distribution of federal subsidies, and the spillover of kidnapping and arms acquired from Chechnya. With political paralysis at the centre, the weakening of federal control mechanisms, and no clear Russian policy to combat regional tensions in the North Caucasus, Dagestani separatism or implosion would destabilise the whole of the North Caucasus.

The regions will be central to possible scenarios arising from the present quagmire. Governors, besieged by a series of critical problems within their regions, might be forced to declare regional states of emergency, following the leads of Krasnoyarsk and Kaliningrad regions. The President might then declare a pan-federation state of emergency, dissolve the Duma and hammer out a confederative constitution with regional heads of administrations. Such a constitution would emerge by default, not design and by and large would reflect existing tendencies, rather than any radical new departure. The Federation would become a confederation; Russia would cease to exist.

This first scenario represents the most stable unfolding of events—a nightmare world would include particular Russian regions insisting on full sovereignty, the dragging of Russian communities in adjacent states into the maelstrom, or loss of federal command and control over nuclear assets.

But the most likely outcome at present is that the centre will muddle through. The current federation will retain its patchwork ‘unity’, as stagnation, disintegration and democratisation continue to coexist, with no one ingredient able to provide a definitive flavour in the short or medium term. The stakes are high; the plight and power of the regions remain vital.

 

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Endnotes

Note 1: ‘Yudina alleges corruption, rights abuses in last TV interview’, SWB, SU/3215 B/5, June 12 1998—Russian TV Channel, Moscow June 10 1998. Back.