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#19 - JRL 9131 - JRL Home
Subject: Window on Eurasia: Putin's Regional Policies Seen Threatening Moscow's Control
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005
From: "Paul Goble" <Paul.Goble@ecs.ec.ut.ee>

Window on Eurasia: Putin’s Regional Policies Seen Threatening Moscow’s Control
Paul Goble

Tartu, April 26 – President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to rein in the regions of the Russian Federation by placing them under his own personal representatives or by reducing their number through the enlargement of some may be creating conditions for more serious challenges to Moscow in the future, according to a growing number of Russian analysts.

In an article entitled „The Conspiracy of the Polpredy,” Moscow analyst Kirill Zubkov suggests that Putin’s use of seven regional plenopotentiary representatives to oversee the regions has had the unintended consequence of weakening the central government’s hand (http://www.apn.ru/?chapter_name=print_impres&data_id=320&do=view_single).

Because the Kremlin did not think through how it could exercise „control over the controllers” before it created this sytem, Zubkov writes, „the appartuses of these representatives instead of representing the interests of the center have begun to represent their own interests.”

The federal districts, he continues, have their own procuracies and their own tax and financial administrations. In fact, „in the federal districts are being formed and act complete governments” – and this is happenig without „any effective mechanism of control from the center” over these bodies.

Up to the present, Zubkov acknowledges, no one could label any of the polpredy as leaders of „regionalist” or even more „separatist” movements. „But that is today.” What will happen tomorrow, he asks, if the power and authority of the center should decline or collapse? And if the regional leaders decide that there is no reason to fear Moscow?

Over their four years of existence, he writes, „the apparatuses of the plenopotentiary representatives have been carrying out in the regions that work which by definition the presidential administration ought to be carrying out – the role of mediator” between various bureaucracies and regions.

If that continues and if the authority of the center declines further, Zubkov argues, people within these apparatuses and the regions over which they hold sway may begin to ask „And just what do we need this Moscow for? We can resolve in a quite good way all the problems among ourselves.”

And that trend could lead to a situation in which what Zubkov calls „’district’” regionalism could represent „ a much more real threat” to Moscow’s control and the territorial integrity of the country.” That’s because „any of the federal districts have the capacity to survive independently, something „not one oblast, kray or republic is in a position to do.”

But given Putin’s present drive to create larger and more economically effective regions, that limiting factor may be declining in importance as well. (For a survey of this process, see http://lenta.ru/news/2005/04/15/unite/.) At least that is the argument of several Moscow authors considering the fallout from the results of the April 17 referendum that will fold in the Taymyr and Evenk autonomies into a supersized Krasnoyarsk kray.

In an essay posted last week on the Russian Civilization website, Vasiliy Ansimov argues that the way in which Moscow has gone about reducing the number of federal subjects by combining regions puts is not strengthening Moscow but instead may be putting the country on „the path toward disintegration” (http://www.rustrana.ru/print.php?nid=8666).

On the one hand, he notes, the current push is based „not on a general optimization of the administration of the country but only on the local, horizontal-economic optimization of each of the regions individually.” As a result, the reform further fragments the country rather than unites it, by creating more self-standing, if not independent areas.

And on the other hand, it creates increasingly powerful regional leaders who may not pursue separatism – doing so in any obvious way could cause the central government to move against any one of them -- but could under certain conditions come to an agreement and form „a common front” against Moscow at a critical time.

But as Vladimir Kaganskiy and Sergei Biryukov have observed in two general surveys of this process (posted respectively at http://www.russ.ru/culture/20050305_kag-pr.html and http://www.apn.ru/?chapter_name=print_advert&data_id=452&do=view_single), it already entails some more immediate threats as well.

First, the Kremlin is having to pay a high price both politically and financially to get its way. On the one hand, Putin has had to promise local leaders that they will continue in office if they approve the new combination and also that special arrangements will be made for those whose units are slated to disappear (http://www.ancentr.ru/portal/prinout3033.html). On the other, the Russian president has had to provide continuing subsidies to the regions – 12 billion rubles for the Perm case last year and seven billion more for Krasnoyarsk this month – despite Kremlin claims that the creation of such super-regions will end that practice (http://lenta.ru/news/2005/04/13/unite/_Printed.htm).

Second, because Russia’s economic growth generally has been centered in its cities, the reduction of the number of political capitals, Biryukov argues, may very well have the effect of reducing the number of cities with the greatest rates of growth and thus depress the economy more generally as well.

Third, the pursuit of ever larger regions – something that Biryukov suggests recalls the „gigantomania” of Soviet times – is likely to be counterproductive, creating unmanageable areas. To counter that, he calls for subdividing some areas – such as Sakha (Yakutia) – even though that would as he admits disrupt transportation links and infuriate local elites.

Fourth, the very process of change is more generally destabilizing, breaking apart longstanding administrative and political arrangements and thus guaranteeing that in many cases there will be a relatively long „transition” period during which most regions and Moscow as well will have to learn how to cope. And fifth, the plan, at least so far, has not addressed in a systematic way the differences in statusb etween ethnic Russian oblasts and non-ethnic Russian republics. Efforts to do so in the North Caucasus have backfired, with Russians backing the plans and non-Russians increasingly alienated as a well. As a result of these and other factors, various writers suggest, the current regional reform plan should be scrapped or at least rethought from square one: Kaganskiy even suggests that the whole plan is based on the misperception that fewer regions are better. He for one suggests that the Russian Federation might benefit from having as many as 400! Moreover, some regions not on Putin’s listing are already exploring the possibility of invoking his own policy to advance their own interests despite the risk of creating even more administrative and political problems. An example of this has appeared in the Moscow oblast. See http://www.politcom.ru on April 20.

Valeriy Tishkov, the director of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology and a supporter of the Kremlin’s approach to the regions, adds a new dimension to this debate by suggesting that Moscow should use the threat of including the non-Russian republics into larger ones to force the former to include more ethnic Russians in their leaderships. (http://www.apn.ru/?chapter_name=print_impres&data_id=339&do=view_single).

But the one thing that virtually all Russian analysts considering the regionalization plans have concluded is that the existing plans show that the Kremlin is not interested in advancing federalism where power is divided and shared but rather in promoting central control over regions that it will unlilaterally define. However, there are reasons to think that that may be a problem in and of itself. On the one hand, as Ren TV reported on April 18, separatism is on the rise in Russia’s Far East among Russians who believe that Moscow simultaneously has too much power over them and is too little concerned about their welfare and security.

And on the other, as Mazir Mirikhanov, the permanent representative of the Republic of Tatarstan to Moscow, put it in a comment published in the current issue of „Politicheskiy zhurnal” (no. 13(64) (April 11) at http://www.politjournal.ru/preview.php?action=Articles), the Kremlin today is creating an entirely new situation. „Such centralization as exists now,” he said, „Russia did not know even in the harshest imperial period or in Soviet totalitarian times,” adding that he is convinced that „such a situation” because it involves „stagnation in the economy and in the social and other spheres” „cannot continue to exist for long.” A return to federalism, he suggests, is the best way out of this impasse given that „humanity has not yet thought up anything better.” But of course, he implies there are other outcomes as well, many of which would not be to Moscow’s liking.