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RFE/RL Newsline
April 4, 2005
PUTIN'S REGIONALIZATION PLAN SPARKS TERRITORIAL DISPUTES
By Paul Goble
Copyright (c) 2005. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org

Russian President Vladimir Putin's plan to reduce the number of subjects of the Russian Federation from the current 89 by combining some of the existing ones has had the unintended consequence of reopening several old territorial disputes among the regions, and sparking new demands by some regions for transfers of territory.

Last week, voters in the far-northern Taimyr Autonomous Okrug began voting on a proposal to fold the Taimyr and Evenk okrugs into Krasnoyarsk Krai. Voting in that referendum, which is expected to pass easily, will be largely completed on 17 April (http://www.nr2.ru/siberia/21146.html).

That vote, like an earlier one in Perm Oblast, has attracted attention to the question of just how many federal districts will exist when this process is completed and what their borders will look in the end. So far, however, Putin has not provided any specifics of an overall plan and that, in turn, has led many in the regions to make their own demands.

An article in "Novye izvestiya" on 29 March argued that Putin's approach has "sharpened territorial disputes" across the country. The one that has attracted the most attention to date has been the very public demand by the Republic of Ingushetia that the Prigorodnii Raion -- which was was transferred to the Soviet-era North Ossetian ASSR after the then Checheno-Ingush ASSR was abolished following the mass deportation of Chechens and Ingush to Central Asia on Stalin's orders in February 1944 -- be returned to them.

The parliaments of the two republics involved recently appealed separately to Moscow to specify just where the border between the two republics should be. But the history of this area suggests that whatever decision Moscow makes is likely to be contested on the ground, quite possibly with violence.

Other challenges to existing borders are heating up as well, "Novye izvestiya" reported.

A group of Adygeya leaders have organized to demand the creation of a single Cherkess (Circassian) Republic, which they believe should include, in addition to the Adygeya Republic, the territory of Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, and about half of Krasnodar Krai, whose leader in turn is pushing for the absorption of the Adygeya Republic into his territory.

Nearby, long-simmering disputes have reemerged over the Kalmyk Republic's borders with Astrakhan Oblast and Daghestan.

Krasnoyarsk officials, meanwhile, are making demands for border adjustments with the neighboring Republic of Khakasia, whose leader, Aleksei Lebed, said a few days ago that he hopes to resolve these issues "via dialogue between the governments of the regions."

But the daily reported that might not be possible. Some in Krasnoyarsk are urging that their krai absorb all of Khakasia, as well as the neighboring Republic of Tyva. Indeed, referendum supporters in Krasnoyarsk have distributed a map showing their territory including both and extending from Mongolia to the Arctic.

In Primorskii Krai, ethnic Koreans, with the support of a group of South Korean businessmen, are pushing for the creation of a Korean autonomous formation that would encompass some 850,000 hectares and ultimately have a population of 250,000.

Even as the Kremlin moves to reduce the number of federation subjects, officials in Moscow are concluding that territories controlled by the country's Atomic Energy, Defense, and Justice ministries already represent a sort of 90th subject of the federation. Dmitrii Oreshkin, who heads the mapping center in the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Geography, placed the blame for this on the Soviet past. Until 1991, he told the paper, "if the state in the form of its administrations -- the Interior Ministry, the Defense Ministry, or the KGB -- wanted to build or move something, it just did so" with little or no regard for borders.

Now, territory has become important because land has value, Oreshkin continued. But unfortunately, the Russian Federation today has neither accurate nor agreed-upon maps, and that in turn means that "for the immediate future, territorial disputes will only become more intense."

This is only one of the problems that Putin's plan, precisely because of the Kremlin's failure to specify exactly what it intends, has intensified. (For a useful survey of the entire issue of why expanding regions is likely to be dangerous and counterproductive, see Vladimir Kaganskii, "Ukrupnenie regionov?" at http://www.russ.ru/culture/20050305_kag-pr.html). But as these disputes continue to bubble up around the Russian Federation -- and there is no indication that any of them will subside soon -- it would seem impossible to disagree with the conclusion offered in the title of the "Novye izvestiya" article: "Ambiguity Of Administrative Borders Is A Threat To Russia's Stability."

(Paul Goble, former publisher of "RFE/RL Newsline" and a longtime Soviet nationalities expert with the U.S. government, is currently a research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia.