Russia Profile
www.russiaprofile.org
July 4, 2005
Weekly Experts' Panel: Could Russia collapse?
Peter Lavelle
Special to Russia Profile
Contributors: Sergei Roy, Dale Herspring, Robert Bruce Ware, Ethan Burger, Ira Straus, Gordon Hahn, Janusz Bugajski, Vlad Sobell, Patrick Armstrong, and Donald Jensen.
Peter Lavelle: Whether it is from President Vladimir Putin's harshest critics or from the president's inner circle, there is a near obsession that Russia will fall apart in some bloody cataclysm. But it hasn't. Why not? What's the glue that holds the place together? Just how fragile is Russia? Russia has certainly been severely and repeatedly tested since Mikhail Gorbachev started his reform policies during the late 1980s. What fuels these fears of cataclysm?
Sergei Roy, editor, www.intelligent.ru (excerpt)
Where does the biggest threat to the unity of Russia lie? What are the forces that have the potential to disrupt that unity, to split the country, say, along the lines penciled in on [former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew] Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard? I have a special word for these forces: baronial. It covers both the financial-industrial oligarchs of various sizes and the regional barons - governors, presidents of the 19 ethnic republics, and major criminal kingpins, all with their supporting mafias. Numerically, these forces comprise 27 billionaires (3.5 times more than B.P. - Before Putin) and 88,000 millionaires, but that's according to the Forbes Magazine so, knowing the nature of Russian society, you can double the figures, plus or minus lapot' (a bast shoe), as the saying goes. And these numbers only include the top bosses, each of them relying on a power base of his own.
These forces have sprung up in the last few years - since about 1994 or 1995 - mostly through outright thievery, a.k.a., privatization. Although they acted out of pure predatory instincts, they have a theory to support their ripping off of public assets - radical liberalism of the Gaidar brand, which places all its hopes on the market's "invisible hand." Well, the first thing that that "invisible hand" did was rip off all of the population's Soviet-era savings. For an encore, it put the same population through the mangle of the 1998 default. We are now in the middle of yet a third, rather milder, liberal project for keeping the population as downtrodden and exploited as possible - the replacement of social benefits with cash payments, with housing and utilities reforms still looming in the future. On a more general level, the "invisible hand" of the market has led to the population of Russia dying out at the rate of 1 million per year.
Will this situation lead to a bloody social cataclysm, as the question implies? I may be overly optimistic, but I do not believe so. No revolt of the masses is likely in a nation that is, for one thing, dying out. For another, it needs so little to survive that it can be bought off with a fraction of the baronial incomes - through the intervention of the central bureaucracy (although the latter is an active player in the baronial games itself, with its survival as a class, and on the individual level, being contingent on the continued existence of the unified - even unitary - Russian state). And, of course, the main thing is that the masses have no political organization that might lead them into a revolt with a glimmer of hope of success (as the Communist Party, [Vladimir] Zhirinovsky's [Liberal Democratic} Party, Rodina, and least of all that joke, the National Bolshevik party, are absolutely no good for this role, for reasons too numerous to list.). True, disturbances can be provoked by blackouts, runaway inflation, etc., all of which can be engineered by, say, oligarchic forces within and outside the country. Then it will take some skill on the part of the powers-that-be to handle these troubles. As the recent cash payments for privileges experience has shown, the government's skills in this respect are strictly limited, and the ruckus may be considerable, but nothing like the Ukrainian "orange revolution" is on the cards at all.
Dale Herspring, professor of political science, Kansas State University
This is a difficult question to answer. Indeed, I suspect that most Russians would find themselves hard pressed to come up with a comprehensive answer.
First, is there a concern on the part of the Kremlin? In my mind, yes. I see this as the most important reason for the second war in Chechnya. One can argue that it helped Putin win the presidency, and the polling numbers indicate that was certainly the case. However, I think the response would have been the same regardless of who was in charge. Moscow could not live with an independent Islamic Fundamentalist Republic on its southern border with the likely impact it would have had in the Caucasus.
On the other hand, the failure of the population of Daghestan to support the Chechen invasion in 1999 (except for a few small Whabbist villages) suggests that non-Russian republics are not as ready to separate from Russia as one might have assumed.
Second, there have been rumblings in other parts of Russia (in the non-Russian regions) about more sovereignty for these regions, but my reading is that it has been fueled by (1) economic concerns; a desire to get a bigger piece of the Russian pie, or (2) regional bosses who want to keep Moscow's fingers out of their fiefdoms and all that means for them and their families.
So where does that leave us? Moscow is concerned, and it should be. Ethnicity, more than any other factor led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, the Kremlin has shown that it is prepared to use military force if necessary to keep the country together. Furthermore, the fact that the Kremlin is worried about the issue means that it is more likely to take steps to deal with ethnic problems.
In sum, a problem, but not one that should send the Kremlin leadership to the barricades.
Robert Bruce Ware, associate professor, Department of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and noted expert on the North Caucasus
One of the reasons for the chronic concern about Russia's stability is that there isn't any "glue" holding it together. There is no binder that is homogeneous and evenly dispersed in the manner of a glue. Rather, Russia is a patchwork made of pieces large and small that were stitched together at different times for different reasons, with threads that remain stronger in some areas even as they fray in others.
The single most important cohesive force in Russia is Russian culture, including the spiritual and aesthetic appeals of the Orthodox Christian Church. Russian culture is a centripetal force that has never been fully appreciated in the West. We in the West know a good deal about Russian music and literature, but nothing illustrates our failure to grasp the full force of Russian culture than our lack of appreciation for the remarkable history of Russian painting. And, even if we are familiar with the landmarks of Russian literature, we often fail to grasp how Russian writers almost self-consciously willed the creation of the Russian national identity, especially after the 17th century. We also fail to appreciate the traditional appeal of Russian culture among the intelligentsia of even its remotest and most restive regions. For example, the Union of Allied Mountaineers of the North Caucasus (UAM) was an Islamic organization, founded in Vladikavkaz in 1917, that sought to strengthen cultural and political ties between Russians and North Caucasians, even as it solidified North Caucasian identity. Like the UAM, most of today's North Caucasian intelligentsia retains a strong commitment to Russian culture, though, just as in the UAM, that commitment is interlaced with distinctive nationalist and religious themes.
The second most important connector in Russia is history. Russians have shared an especially dramatic history, in which they have pulled one another up from the ashes time and time again, and these tribulations have forged strong bonds among them. Of course, Russians have also taken one another down in flames on more than one occasion, and history can also be a centrifugal force in some areas, as, for example, in Chechnya.
Yet, despite the weakness of their cultural and historical attachments, most Chechens do not wish to live apart from the Russian Federation. The reasons for this are partly economic, partly political and, of course, partly coercive. Yet the extremity of the Chechen case helps to illustrate why other remote and restive areas, with weaker cultural and historical attachments, nonetheless remain within the Federation. To these areas the Soviet Union brought pavement, plumbing, electricity, education, healthcare, elements of gender equality and general economic development that no one has forgotten and that nearly everyone wants to restore. The Soviet Union also brought political stability and security for most of its inhabitants. Russia is the successor state to the Soviet Union in all of these respects. Few people in its outlying regions can see any prospects for future economic development, political stability and security that are better than those offered by Russian citizenship.
But for the few who do see alternatives, as, for example, in cases of Islamist extremism, there is also the negative example of Chechnya. Unfortunately, some Chechens wish to remain within the Russian Federation simply because protracted conflict has made Russian citizenship appear to be the shortest path to stability and prosperity.
Western observers who focus only upon the last of these threads, while overlooking or underestimating the other genuinely centripetal features of Russian life, have tended to exaggerate prospects for Russia's disintegration.
Ethan S. Burger, Esq., scholar-in-residence, School of International Service, American University, Washington
Neither states nor borders are permanent. We have recently witnessed the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The Spanish Empire, with a few exceptions, ended over a 100-year period. The colonial empires of Britain, France, the Netherlands and Portugal largely disappeared after World War II. Earlier in the 20th century, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires disappeared (and created a huge power vacuum).
The United States (and Canada, to a lesser extent) were able to achieve its manifest destiny since most of the Native Americans died of the diseases brought from Europe and both countries killed a large share of those who survived. Still, both countries survive, since they are based on a belief in the rule of law and respect for the dignity of the individual. The bulk of the population is people, as well as their decedents, who uprooted themselves from the countries of origin to seek a better life.
Many of the world's problems today are a result of where the former colonial powers drew the borders of the territories abroad they controlled in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Russia's eastern expansion was the mirror image of that of Canada and the United States. While it holds itself out as a European and Asian state, Russia's history, political authority and a majority of its population, remain west of the Ural Mountains, though European colonies developed in the eastern two-thirds of the country. Russia expanded into inhabited territories. While over time, a large share of the original inhabitants perished, many of their decedents remain.
When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, he expected Alexander I to surrender when Moscow fell. Napoleon was never accepted by the monarchs of Europe as legitimate, so he had to wage war continually (with intermittent periods of peace) to survive - which he did not.
In the short-term, the "glue" holds Russia together is (1) the legacy of the Great Patriotic War, (2) "a large share of the Russian population unable to accept the break-up of the Soviet Union, (3) a long history as an empire, and (4) distrust of foreigners. In part, due to his credit as a person, Mikhail Gorbachev did not realize he was ruling a multi-national empire and could not transform the Soviet Union into a European Union-like structure (hence his mistake when he tried to install an ethnic Russian as head of the Kazakhstani Communist Party shortly after becoming General Secretary and his decision to make a Georgian the USSR's Foreign Minister). It seems that Gorbachev was largely free of ethnic/national prejudice: A person was a person and not principally a member of a particular nationality (though many Balts and others might dispute this).
The current Russian leadership operates with a different belief system. Only with the establishment of a political system based on the rule of law, integrated into the world economy, accepted as a country that upholds its international obligations and that recognizes the necessity for a federal system (as Former President Boris Yeltsin seemed to grasp) will Russia survive as a state. Matthew Evangelista, Anatoly Lieven, Aleksei Malashenko, Nicolai Petrov, Dmitry Trenin and others are asking the right questions - whether future generations will be able to reach an accommodation with the all the peoples who currently occupy "Russian" space and develop a new political and economic system.
Ira Straus, U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO
Expectations of Russia's break-up are promoted by:
Siloviki who use it to justify expansion of the role of power ministries and a further concentration of power in the executive "vertical."
A few ultra-liberals thinking the country would somehow be a better place, or more welcome in the West, or less of a threat, if broken into pieces.
And last - and least - ethnic and territorial nationalists who would like to break away.
All three groups are playing with fire.
1. Widespread expectation of a break-up can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
2. Any democrats who promote a break-up paint themselves into the corner as enemies of their society.
3. Secessionists bring war and civil war upon their own people. Look at Chechnya.
The underlying mistake of all three groups is that Russia is a far more stable entity than was the Soviet Union. It is 80-percent ethnic Russian - the figure for the Soviet Union was 80 percent. The analogy to the Soviet experience is false, but frequent, and quite effective as a rhetorical tool; it feeds expectations of break-up. People are aware that the current Russian Federation is still part-empire, and if the outer two layers of empire broke up, why shouldn't the inner empire, e.g. in the Caucasus? This point is true enough, except that the main shape and bulk of the country are not likely to change.
People who promote a break-up sometimes deny that they're promoting anything at all, saying they're simply describing an "inevitability," or an "objective" tendency (a dodge they learned when justifying the break-up of the Soviet Union). But they proceed to make a point of the good things they imagine would come out of a break-up. And there is little "objective" in their expectations.
In a recent edition of the Moscow News, an author held forth on dividing Siberia from European Russia. This would leave European Russia so small and poor, he argued, and so "European," that it would have no choice but to join the EU. And the EU would take it, since the main objection - that Russia is "too big" - would no longer be true. The EU's interest, after all, is in European Russia, not Asian Russia.
His hopes are almost comically misguided. European Russia, with 110 million people, would still be far too big for the EU. It would be worse off, not better, as a candidate than Russia Whole, because it would be lacking the mineral wealth that is Russia's only attraction for Europe. And it would be no more "European" than Russia already is today in its population.
The formulation that Russia is "too big" serves to foster this mistake. The real problem is that the Russian population is too "big and poor" at the same time (The same is the case for Ukraine.)
It would be in the interests of the EU to clarify this matter so there would be fewer destabilizing illusions in the East.
Mistakes like this can lead to the impression that the West wants Russia to break up and is working to this end. The impression is strengthened when a few ultra-Westernizers advocate a break-up and say that this is indeed what the West is waiting for from Russia. "Aha!" - the siloviki respond - "the West is plotting to tear Russia apart. We have to defend Russia by strengthening the executive vertical, keeping our neighbors out of NATO, and supporting counter-revolutionary measures by CIS governments."
And this is yet more foolishness. Painting the West as the organizer of break-up means slipping into a sentimental nationalism. The last thing Russia needs is to renew its phobia about the West as a mortal enemy.
Sober Russian leaders need to project expectations of national stability. Sober democrats and Westernizers need to support national territorial unity. Sober Westerners need to avoid giving any impression of wishing for the break-up of Russia.
Gordon Hahn, scholar at large
There is a real threat to Russia's territorial integrity posed by the radicalization of Russia's Muslims due to internal and external causes. External causes include the penetration of international Islamists, primarily into all the regions of the North Caucasus (not just the six titular Muslim republics), with the Chechen Islamists acting as their agents. Internal causes include President Vladimir Putin's ongoing war in Chechnya, de-federalization, limited re-authoritarianization, and assimilative policies, as well as growing Islamophobia in society and state, expressed by the latter in growing police harassment of, and brutality against, Russia's Muslims, the closure of mosques, etc. Yeltsin's concessions to the national republics held the state together. Their retraction adds another impetus to mobilization beyond the external influences.
In the North Caucasus, a Chechen-led network of militant combat "jamaats" (communities) is conducting a revolutionary terrorist war against the Russian state, toward the creation of Islamist 'caliphate' in the mega-region. This threat is real, despite some political analysts' desire to downplay it. It is immaterial whether Moscow is to blame in part for its growing strength in terms of the need for Western policymakers to take the threat seriously, especially as it poses grave risks for international and U.S. national security. The weakening or breakup of the Russian state risks WMDs falling into the hands of international Islamists and the establishment of a host state for such terrorists.
In the Volga area, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan are being destabilized for different reasons. In the former, the Tatar intelligentsia and moderate nationalists are in a period of deep re-thinking about strategy for achieving self-determination after Putin's betrayal of federalism and Tatarstan autonomy. The gradual radicalization of Tatar nationalism is a likely outcome, with the danger that radical Islamic, even some Islamist, elements can capitalize on instability. An indication was the recent arrest near Moscow of a Tatar member of a Tatarstan-based combat jamaat who was preparing a terrorist attack. In Bashkiria, President Murtaza Rakhimov's relatively hard authoritarian regime has committed mass beatings, falsified elections, and eliminated all free media, sparking a nascent 'orange revolution' in May. A similar pattern is present in the North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia.
The last year, there have been mass demonstrations protesting over various nationalist issues in all five of the non-Chechen Muslim republics in the North Caucasus. One only needs to read the excerpts from the presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, Dmitry Kozak, to President Putin to see that the mega-region is a tinderbox ready to flare into violence and perhaps nationalist and/or Islamic revolution.
The situation threatens the stability and integrity of the Russian state, the security of the world's largest stockpiles of NBC WMDS, and their nonproliferation.
Janusz Bugajski, director of the East Europe Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington
Russia's preoccupation with its own disintegration has several causes and effects. It is partly defensive, stemming from a deliberately exaggerated sense of victimhood, in which it is claimed that the West conspired to destroy the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. It is partly self-serving, as it enables Putin and his entourage to pose as the defenders of Russian national interests against external and internal enemies. And it is partly motivational, in that official warnings about cataclysms are intended to mobilize "patriotic forces," undermine the opposition, and reinforce public trust in the Kremlin.
Putin's critics also warn about Russia's fragmentation: the nationalists and communists because they favor a tighter dictatorship, and the liberals because they argue that Moscow's ultra-centralism will provoke centrifugal forces throughout the federation. Despite all these dire predictions, Russia has thus far held together, partly because Putin has proved to be more vertical than Yeltsin (pun intended), and partly because of inertia. However, Russia's potential disintegration could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Although Putin has calculated that too much democracy would encourage separatism, rising political, regional, and economic aspirations may not be containable by Russia's incompetent bureaucratic and security strata.
However, we should not uncritically assume that the dissolution of the patchwork Russian Federation will be a cataclysm or that the emergence of several new countries will be inevitably destabilizing. An independent Kaliningrad can make faster progress toward Europe, an independent Siberia and Far East may attract more substantial Japanese investment and Chinese entrepreneurship, and independent Muslim republics in the North Caucasus can reduce growing Islamic militancy within Russia. As a more compact and manageable state, Russia itself could undergo more impressive development. It is high time that a sober debate on Russia's future is initiated both inside and outside the country, rather than the incessant warnings of Armageddon by Russian and Western alarmists.
Vlad Sobell, senior economist, Daiwa Research, London
If I were in Putin's position, Russia's disintegration would be my underlying strategic worry. The Russian Federation is not a "country," but a complex multi-ethnic empire, which has evolved by adding new territories to its European heartland. The decades of thoroughly misconceived policies and the dysfunctional Soviet system have systematically weakened this inherently ramshackle structure, conceived for the vastly different imperial age. It now lies exposed and vulnerable, with its administration and security forces being eaten out by corruption.
More than any other country, Russia is also exposed to Islamist terrorism and the instability of failed states in the Caucasus and Central Asia. And Russia's immense natural resources and land mass must be very tempting to the awakening giant - China.
On the other hand, one can also point to factors working in favor of cohesion. Apart from Chechnya, there are no significant ethnically driven separatist movements, while history has shown that, despite appearances, Russia can summon more than sufficient strength to rebuff potential aggressors. The quality of Russia's governance has improved markedly since the advent of the Putin regime, with economic regeneration likely to boost the structure's resilience further.
Given these conflicting factors, the optimum strategy for the Kremlin would be to view Russia's disintegration as a potential, but not actual or even imminent, scenario. China will likely come to exercise its influence over Russia's Far East by peaceful economic, not political means, with the prospect of a military confrontation very unlikely. Nevertheless, the Kremlin must be vigilant in the same way as a captain of a massive oil tanker must be aware of his ship's structural weaknesses and the coming storms.
The regime's critics have alleged that the Kremlin is whipping up its concerns to justify its "authoritarianism". This may well be the case. However, when influential Washington lobbies harbor the Chechen terrorists or spare no effort to promote their favorite oilman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Kremlin's paranoia is probably not without foundations.
* Patrick Armstrong, defense analyst for the Canadian government
Andrei Amalrik wondered whether the Soviet Union would hang together until 1984. He concluded that it wouldn't - a catastrophic war with China would kill it. Since then, it has been fashionable to predict the bloody collapse of the Soviet Union or, today, Russia. There's been blood, to be sure, since 1991, in Georgia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Transdnestr and Chechnya. But, callous as it may sound, not as much blood as was shed in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire or the Austrian Empire. Or the Tsarist Empire. Who, outside Finland, remembers the Finnish Civil War? Twenty thousand people died in it. Imperial collapses are inevitably bloody, because newly independent peoples struggle for space. The collapse of the Soviet Empire is far from the worst.
So what holds Russia together?
As Adam Smith observed, there is a lot of ruin in a country: It takes a lot to produce real collapse. And it's clear that Russia hasn't arrived there. First, and perhaps most important, the average Russian is rubbing along. Opinion polls show that most Russians will grudgingly (Russians love pessimism) admit that life, for themselves and their families, is not too bad and getting a bit better. Secondly, Russia is not a country created by an international conference a few decades ago. A thousand years creates a real existence - Russia has been an international player for centuries. "Russia" actually means something. That's glue. Thirdly - and not trivial in the Russian case - there is no destroyer pushing them over - no Polevstians, Mongols, Poles, Swedes, Napoleon, Hitler. Finally: What's the choice? Everywhere you dig in Russia you find skulls. Russians have lived, tasted and mourned real collapse.
Russia will overcome its present difficulties, as it has before, and re-appear as an important country, united from Gospodin Veliky Novgorod to Vladivostok.
*Donald Jensen, director of communications, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The way you pose the question reflects an important, but unfortunate tendency: Russia usually defines itself in terms of its geographic expanse rather than by values, institutions or even, recently, culture. That many Russians dread a "bloody cataclysm" shows that they are unified by fear and history, as well as by language, kinship, economic ties, and coercion.
None of these factors ensures Russia's viability in the 21st century. Russia's socioeconomic decline, which began in the 1980s and is measured by indicators such as declining life expectancy and social equality, continues. State power, noteworthy for its corrupt, uncoordinated bureacraticization, is mired in a crisis of effectiveness. More than ever, the state appears not only incapable of mobilizing the country for national purposes, it appears unable to understand the difference between national purpose and private aggrandizement.
Vladimir Putin came to power ostensibly to slow or reverse this decline. He could have tried to manage the inevitable ebb of power from the Center and pushed it in a more democratic direction. This would have meant helping to redefine Russia in a way that would accommodate the society's emerging centers of power, strengthening the rule of law, and ending its traditional, imperial, mindset. Instead, he has tried to recentralize power, in the process making the state responsible for more, even as it delivered less. This has not only enhanced the authoritarian elements at the top, but - since the re-centralization has been ragged and incomplete - pushed the Russian state from a crisis of effectiveness toward a crisis of legitimacy.
At the end of the Yeltsin period, Thomas Graham wrote an article which enraged many Russians, "World without Russia," which argued that the country's decline, already a long-term trend, might be permanent due to the pace of political, economic and military change in the modern world. What is noteworthy today, well into the second Putin term, is that the problems Mr. Graham raised remain or, in some cases, have deepened. Russia need not fall apart as a result of these trends, but Putin's squandering of his opportunity to reverse them increases the odds that Russia's decline will be permanent.