#6162
[Second Issue of the Day]
#2
Vremya MN
March 29, 2002
WHY HASN'T RUSSIA FALLEN APART?
Ten years of the Russian Federation: trends and remedies
Author: Sergei Markedonov, directorate of problems of ethnic
relations at the Institute of Political and Military Analysis
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
THE FEDERAL TREATY WAS SIGNED A DECADE AGO, MARCH 31, 1992, AND BORIS YELTSIN SAID HIS FAMOUS WORDS: "TAKE AS MUCH SOVEREIGNTY AS YOU CAN SWALLOW." WE NOW KNOW THAT PREVENTION OF DISINTEGRATIONIST PROCESSES AND TENDENCIES REQUIRES SUPPORT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL INITIATIVES FROM BELOW.
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, analysts and politicians predicted that Russia was going to follow suit. These predictions were not entirely groundless: the all-but-independent Ichkeria appeared in the autumn of 1991, Tatarstan organized a referendum on sovereignty, and relations between the Chechens and Ingushes deteriorated... Numerous opinion polls and sociological surveys also bred the fears that the integral state would not hold together much longer. Russia became a "community of regions" but escaped the fate of the Soviet Union. Why?
Centrifugal tendencies were assisted by liberalization accompanied in ethnic republics (and to a smaller extent in regions and territories) by ethnic mobilization and a search for self- identification. "Why shall we copy the Russian reforms? Cannot Tatarstan follow its own road to the reforms that answer the interests of its population? Or there is only one way in the world, the one suggested by Moscow?" Shaimiyev's state adviser Rafail Khakimov asked in 1995.
Russia's transformation into a "community of regions" was also assisted by simultaneous processes like the dual power in the center (the president and the Supreme Council) in 1991 - 1993. Without a decision made first on the strategic way to be followed by the state formed in the August revolution, any attempt to begin to pacify the provinces would have been a height of political folly. That was probably what Yeltsin was thinking when he told the regions to take as much sovereignty as they could swallow. In other words, Yeltsin faced an alternative - to buy regional barons (at a costly price) or subdue them by force. The president opted for the former. Outward loyalty and the ability to handle the ethnic-communist opposition was what counted. regional leaders could be counted to accomplish that much (how successfully is irrelevant). Blaming Yeltsin for his policy of encouragement of regional sovereignty has been fashionable but who can honestly say that he knows the resources the first president of Russia could use to subdue the regions by force? The Russian pie sliced up, every regional leader got his share. Opposing the president in minor matters, they nevertheless never seriously contemplated another Byelovezhskaya Puscha.
The road to milder positions of post-communist regional leaders and eventually to the policy of "power vertical fortification" became possible to a considerable extent due to the peace Yeltsin made with regional leaders in the early 1990's. In this light, it is possible to look for differences in Yeltsin's and Putin's regional policies. Putin's decrees on the institute of plenipotentiary representatives and reorganization of the Federation Council rest on Yeltsin's reliable foundation of checks and balances.
But is the period of disintegration of the country finally over?
Presidential decree on presidential envoys (May 13, 2000) created certain conditions. First and foremost, it destroyed the regional leaders' power monopoly.. Introduction of the institution of presidential envoys created (on a bureaucratic basis) competition on the regional political market. From this point of view, it is certainly not a return to the past but is actually an element of democratization. Businesspeople and ordinary citizens get an opportunity to defend their interests at the local level, without the necessity of appeals to the center.
At the same time, presidential envoys are not a universal remedy. They themselves are restricted by red tape. The tendency of their bureaucratization is dangerous indeed. It is clear in the meantime that getting the regional elites in line merely promotes a solution to tactical tasks only.
Prevention of disintegrationist processes and tendencies requires support of the presidential initiatives from below. Otherwise the "people's support" will be lacking and the Kremlin's ideas will fail to become a system.
(Translated by A. Ignatkin)
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