WindowonEurasia: Kremlin Victory in Transbaikal Vote Carries a Price

Paul Goble

Vienna, March 13 – Voters in the Aga-Buryat Autonomous District and Chita oblast on Sunday gave overwhelming approval to the amalgamation of the small non-Russian region and the larger and predominantly Russian one into a new Transbaikal kray.
Local officials, at Moscow’s behest, used a variety of what Russians call “administrative measures” to ensure that the Kremlin would gain its fifth straight victory since December 2005 in votes to reduce the number of federal units by folding non-Russian regions into Russian ones.
But in addition to casting doubt on the democratic legitimacy of the outcome – for details on how officials managed the election, see the report in the Transbaikal News Agency at http://www.zabinfo.ru/print.php?sid=30066 -- the referendum process in this case has entailed two consequences the Kremlin clearly does not want.
On the one hand, in the run-up to the voting, Buryat opponents of the move succeeded in staging four small demonstrations – ranging in size from a handful to more than 100 activists in Ulan-Ude, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Ulan-Bator – despite official pressure against their efforts (http://pressa.irk.ru/number1/2007/10/001008.html).
Organizers were harassed and their leaflets confiscated in ways that recall Soviet moves against human rights activists a generation ago, but more important is the fact that members of the far-flung Buryat diaspora showed the ability to unite, something that has not been the case in the past, and even to reach out to the closely related Mongolians.
And on the other hand, by calling into question existing territorial divisions within the Russian Federation, Moscow has opened the way for discussions about the possibility of changes that could threaten the central government’s interests and even its control of the periphery of the country.
The New Region news agency reports that the leaders of the Buryat Republic, having watched as two Buryat regions outside its borders were absorbed by ethnic Russian ones, is pressing for the creation of a new and much larger Baikal Region (http://www.nr2.ru/policy/108459.html).
Such a territory would include Buryatiya itself and the newly expanded Irkutsk and Chita oblasts. Because of its location and size -- it would sit astride transportation links between Siberia and the Russian Far East and might be expected to develop key ties with China and Mongolia – this kray almost certainly would be enormously powerful
Not surprisingly, as the news agency reports, Moscow and many local officials view this idea as “premature” at best.
But the Buryats are not the only people in that region thinking about combining territories into larger units that could have greater influence within the Russian Federation or even challenge Moscow’s control of a strategically important part of its periphery.
Last week, a journal in Irkutsk organized a roundtable discussion on “Federalism and the Baikal Region (http://babr.ru/news/print.php?IDE=36432). Two of the participants – political scientist Yuriy Pronin and historian Sergei Shmidt – viewed Sunday’s referendum as a normal and even rational step forward in Russian governance.
But the third participant, Mikhail Kulekhov who heads the Irkutsk regionalist [‘oblastnik’] organization suggested that this vote and all the changes in the Russian political system under Vladimir Putin were leading the country toward a dead end from which escape could be extremely difficult.
Although there is no basis for concluding that Kulekhov speaks for a significant portion of the population in the Transbaikal, his ideas are intriguing and deserve a hearing because they suggest that at least some in the Russian Federation are considering more radical changes in the federal system.
First, he suggests that the federal districts could represent a “preliminary” delimitation of the borders of entities that could emerge as independent actors. Indeed, he reports, Tomsk Governor Viktor Kress told a Kremlin representative “it is time for the Siberian Federal District to be structured as a subject of the federation.”
Such a devolution, Kulekhov continues, would resemble the division of the Soviet Union. “Anyone who think that nationalists destroyed the USSR is deeply mistaken. The USSR was divided for the preservation in one set of hands of all resources and in order to ‘throw overboard’” those republics that were costing Moscow too much money.
Second, Kulekhov argues falling oil and gas prices could cost Moscow its control of the country. When the center either under Yeltsin or in the future under someone else has enough money, it can control the situation. If there is no money, he continues, then the center will have to say as Yeltsin did “take as much independence as you like.”
And third, he says that while “the separation of Siberia” is “inevitable, there are two very different ways in which it might occur. If Siberia becomes a unified whole as the result of careful organization, it could remain within the framework of some kind of federation.
But “if it takes place in an uncontrolled manner, then an uncontrolled division will begin.” Russians may display “a certain inertness in such matters, but it important to recall that once things begin to move in an “uncontrolled” way, then the country may shift in ways no one predicts.
“In the spring of 1991,” Kulekhov notes, 76 percent [of Soviet voters] called for the preservation of the Union, but in December everything fell apart. Now separatism is latent,” he continues. “In polls, 20-30 percent are for the separation [of Siberia], 60 percent for autonomy [but] only ten percent are for maintaining the current situation.”
Given that, further Kremlin pressure to combine regions could be the occasion for pushing the country into a more uncontrolled and uncertain direction, especially if the referenda themselves continue to be, as was the case in the Transbaikal two days ago, so obviously controlled and scripted from above.