Paul Goble
Staunton, March 22 – Mintimir Shaimiyev, the longtime president of Tatarstan, has laid down a broad challenge to Moscow not only by announcing his decision to resign from the leadership of the United Russia Party which he helped to found but also by reaffirming his belief that Russia must remain a federation in which all its indigenous nations have a voice.
Not surprisingly, Shaimiyev’s resignation from the leadership of United Russia has attracted the greater attention from Moscow analysts who have speculated about the possible impact of that step on the upcoming elections, but in reality, Shaimiyev’s views on federalism and support for the nations within Russia may have a greater impact.
That is because Shaimiyev and the republic he long headed and whose current leadership he formed has often served as the bellwether of attitudes and policies in the other non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation and also and perhaps equally importantly on the position of the heads of predominantly ethnic Russian regions as well.
On Friday, Shaimiyev announced his resignation from the leadership of United Russia and laid out his ideas in a major interview with the Tatar-language newspaper “Tatar gazite” (www.tatargazeta.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70:-q-q&catid=4:2010-11-04-15-26-09&Itemid=11. A Russian translation has now appeared (etatar.ru/20/39572).
Asked to evaluate his time in politics, the Tatarstan leader said that “our greatest success was raising the authority of our nation” because “we were able to radically change relations toward the Tatars,” often during periods of extraordinary political and economic changes and challenges.
Shaimiyev said that he did not have any major regrets about his time in office, although he conceded it was sometimes difficult to work when other Tatars demanded “freedom” and “independence” and suggested that he was “a weakling” in comparison with Chechnya’s Dzhokhar Dudayev.
He explained his relationship with United Russia in the following way: “I am the co-president of the Supreme Council of United Russia because I was one of the organizers of the party” rather than because he joined something that others had created. But now, Shaimiyev suggested, circumstances have changed.
“Unfortunately,” he said, neither United Russia nor any other party in the country supports “a multi-national and federative state system in Russia.” And consequently, “I do not intend to remain a co-president.” Others, who are in the presidium of that party can continue to work, “but I am in retirement.”
But Shaimiyev said he was disappointed that the party he helped found “cannot exert sufficient influence on the economic and political situation in the country.” Despite its dominance, it has not acted as “the center-right” party he backed. Instead, it has played with certain “leftist” ideas.
But Shaimiyev rejected the idea that Russia was facing the kind of political challenges now shaking the Arab world. “The situation with us is not like their situation. It is not surprising that peoples who have nothing to lose have begun” to act in this way. “In Russia the situation is different … In our history, there have been a sufficient number of revolutions.”
The Tatar leader then turned his attention to nationality problems and policies. Arguing that “the roots of this problem are deep,” Shaimiyev noted that he has “always said that … Russia needs a nationality policy more than other countries,” something that many in Moscow do not appear to understand.
Moscow must focus on these issues because “under conditions of democratic development,” it and the rest of Russia have no choice. “And one should not compare us with the United States,” “an entirely different world” whose residents called themselves Americans whatever their ethnic background.
“In our situation,” he said, it is “an absurdity” to declare that Tatars are “[non-ethnic] Russians of Tatar origin.” “If we want to live in a democracy, there must be a federation in the true sense … There cannot be democracy in a unitary Russia. My native language and my nationality are my right, given from birth, and no one can take them away from me.”
And Shaimiyev concluded with two further observations that challenge Moscow. On the one hand, he said that the law directing heads of republics to be called presidents is not indisputable. And on the other, he said that Moscow leaders have failed to consult with regional leaders the way Boris Yeltsin did in the early 1990s. The issue is not just “elections.”
This interview has sparked numerous commentaries in Moscow. Writing for Polit.ru yesterday, forexample, Mikhail Zakharov suggested that Shaimiyev’s declaration was an unwelcome “signal” to the leadership in the Russian capital, one that represents a threat of “sabotage” of the upcoming elections (www.polit.ru/event/2011/03/21/6aimiev.html).
Zakharov noted that the way in which Shaimiyev delivered his message is instructive of the Tatar leader’s political skills: in a Tatar language newspaper rather than in a Russian one in Kazan or in a central news agency. Nonetheless, he said, “in the center such signals are noted” if with a certain delay.
And Andrey Polunin of “Svobodnaya pressa” today offered a survey of reaction. Yevgeny Minchenko, the director of the International Instituteof Political Expertise, said that Shaimiyev’s remarks showed that “there is a chance that Shaimiyev will try again to play a role in [Russian Federation] politics” (svpressa.ru/politic/article/40766/).
“It is obvious,” Minchenko noted, “that today there is dissatisfaction on the part of regional elites with the politicies of the federal center,” given Moscow’s ongoing centralization drive and its discounting of the role of national minorities, other than those in the North Caucasus.
Members of the Tatar diaspora in Moscow have told him, Minchenko continued, that “we do not understand, given that there are far more of us than representatives of other nationalities and that we made an enormous constribution to the establishment of Russian statehood why the Chechens have such a disproportionate influence.”
Aleksey Mukhin, the director general of the Center of Political Information, focused on another aspect of Shaimiyev’s critique. He noted that Shaimiyev’s “accusationthat the party has noface is a seirous thing which can be interpreted as an attack on the leader of the party and its senior functionaries.”
Vladimir Pribalovsky, the president of the Panorama Research Center, in turn said that Shaimiyev’s remarks only reinforced the Tatar leader’s reputation for political sophistication and care. Shaimiyev isn’t going into opposition; instead, he is seeking to preserve his power in the Kazan “tandem” of which he is a part together with Rustam Minnikhanov.
But Dmitry Orlov, the director generalof the Agency of Political and Economic Communications, suggested that no one should make too much of Shaimiyev’s remarks because his decision to leave the leadership of United Russia had obviously been agreed upon in advance with Moscow and reflected his lower status as a former republic head.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Power Vertical ‘No Panacea’ against Russia’s Disintegration, Academy of Sciences Expert Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 22 – Despite the claims of Vladimir Putin and his supporters, the creation of a power vertical is “no panacea” against the possible disintegration of the Russian State, according to a legal specialist at the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Indeed, Mekhti Sharifov argues, the idea that unitarism will save Russia and ensure its greatness reflects a failure to understand that neither the Russian Empire northe USSR were ever “unitary states in the classical sense” (www.peoples-rights.info/2011/03/rossiya-i-nadnacionalnoe-setevoe-federativnoe-soobshhestvo/).
And in fact, the legal scholar suggests, the untrammelled pursuit of a unitary state to prevent the disintegration of the Russian Federation may by ignoring the diversity of the country and the need for horizontal as well as vertical ties create conditions that will lead to precisely the opposite outcome that its backers hope for.
“Ever more frequently,” Sharifov writes in a heavily footnoted, 5300-word article, “the question about the fate of the federation in Russia is being raised,” with “the crisis in federative relationsgiving many a basis to advance demans for the transformation of the country into a unitary republic.”
The supporters of this view, the Moscow scholar points out, “assert that periods of the greatest glory of Russia were those when the country had a unitary form of state structure. However, history testifies to the reverse: the Russian Empire and the USSR were never unitary states in the classical sense.”
Before 1917, autonomy was “a form of the effective administration” of many non-Russian borderlands in the Russian Empire, a form adopted because “the autocracy recognized htat it is impossible to ‘administer in one and the same ways’ peoples as different as the Turkmens, Finns, and Poles, Sharifov says.
Such arrangements did not make the Russian Empire a federal state, but “one must not ignore the elements of federalism” which did exist, and the same thing is true, the Institute of State and Law expert argues, with regard to the USSR, “which was formed as a confederation but with time was transformed into a federative state.”
Paying attention to this aspect is important, he continues, because “excessive centralization of power and the unjustified unification of the system of state administration undermined the foundations of the state by provoking crises (the revolutions of 1905-06, 1917, and the Brezhnev ‘stagnation’) and the breaking away of national borderlands (Poland and Finland at the start of the 20th century and the republics of the USSR at its end).”
Efforts over the last decade to strengthen “the vertical of power” have “led to the deformationof the federal system,” creating a system which is “formally a federation but de facto a unitary state.” Nevertheless, these efforts have not had solved the problem – separatism -- that their authors pointed to as the reason for moving in that direction.
“The problem of separatism in the North Caucasus” in fact, Shafirov argues, “has entered a new stage.” Separatist challenges by the Chechens and Ingush remain “unresolved,” and they have been joined now by a new separatism challenge from the Circassians, at least in part in response to the growth of the power vertical.
Russia’s “federative structure is a weakly hierarchical structure which in the early stages of its establishment has not given visible results and requires significant resources,” again at least in part because the powers that be have failed to understand the nature of the challenge before them and have preferred to focus on separatism or “’the parade of sovereignties.’”
The “harsh” power vertical they have put in place, that is “a harshly hierarchical system of administration, is not effective as a long-term strategy since it requires significant resource support for its functioning,” and thus prevents Russia from addressing its most pressing problems domestically and internationally.
Federalism can provide a way out of this dilemma, Sharifov argues, by giving “a politicaland legal opportunity” to the regions for “participation in the adoption and realization of state-wide issues,” allowing both citizens and the subjects of the federation to play a role in both cases.
Unfortunately, he continues, “existing Russian legislation does not contain the institutional instruments through which the subject of the federation could participate in the formation of the state-wide expression of will,” thus limiting the utility of these structures for the state and indeed transforming them into a threat to it.
“The main cause of the failure of the course of strengthening the vertical of power lies in its lack of correspondence with the tendencies of the development of the state as a social-political institution,” Sharifov says, tendencies that require both vertical and horizontal “redistribution” of authority.
“The vertical redistribution of authorities presupposes the transfer of sovereign rights to super-national (international organizations) and subnational levels (civil society),” Sharifov argues, while “the horizontal redistribution requires the transfer of rights to regional and municipal organs of power.”
These two “vectors,” he suggests “can be combined in one term – federalism,” a concept which is “much broader than the term ‘federation.’” Federalism may exist even “without a federation.” Indeed, Sharifov shows in a survey of various countries, including the US, Israel, the European Union and China, it is a precondition of modernity in the post-industrial world.
Indeed, Sharifov insists, “democratization and the development of civil society on the one hand and the broadening of the authority of international organizations on the other is a manifestation of federalization respectively at the national and super-national levels” in the post-Cold War environment.
But in addition to federalism, there is a need for an ideological self-definition, he suggests, something Russia also lacks, thus putting it at a disadvantage domestically and internationally because “federalism and an ideological imperative are the two foundations of the formation of the basic players on the international arena of the 21st century.”
To get out of its current difficulties, ones that have left Russia at the level of many failed or failing states, Russia’s leaders must show the kind of political courage that has not been much in evidence and change directions both domestically and in their approach to international affairs.
Among the steps these leaders need to take domestically, Sharifov argues is the conclusion of a new federal treaty, the elimination of the ethnic basis of federal units while reducing the number of the federal structures, and the provision of a clear definition of the competence of all levels of the state.
Internationally, he says, Moscow must “distance itself from the political elites in post-Soviet republics who are inclined toward authoritarianism,” focus on improving the standard of human life, create firm ties “with the civil societies of the post-Soviet republics, and create its own analogues to the Euroregions with the CIS countries.
Sharifov does not hold out much hope that anyone in Moscow will take these steps anytime soon, but he suggests that if the leadership does not take them, the power vertical won’t save the country and Russia will fall further and further behind the rest of the world which is moving toward federalism and democracy domestically and internationally.
Staunton, March 22 – Despite the claims of Vladimir Putin and his supporters, the creation of a power vertical is “no panacea” against the possible disintegration of the Russian State, according to a legal specialist at the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Indeed, Mekhti Sharifov argues, the idea that unitarism will save Russia and ensure its greatness reflects a failure to understand that neither the Russian Empire northe USSR were ever “unitary states in the classical sense” (www.peoples-rights.info/2011/03/rossiya-i-nadnacionalnoe-setevoe-federativnoe-soobshhestvo/).
And in fact, the legal scholar suggests, the untrammelled pursuit of a unitary state to prevent the disintegration of the Russian Federation may by ignoring the diversity of the country and the need for horizontal as well as vertical ties create conditions that will lead to precisely the opposite outcome that its backers hope for.
“Ever more frequently,” Sharifov writes in a heavily footnoted, 5300-word article, “the question about the fate of the federation in Russia is being raised,” with “the crisis in federative relationsgiving many a basis to advance demans for the transformation of the country into a unitary republic.”
The supporters of this view, the Moscow scholar points out, “assert that periods of the greatest glory of Russia were those when the country had a unitary form of state structure. However, history testifies to the reverse: the Russian Empire and the USSR were never unitary states in the classical sense.”
Before 1917, autonomy was “a form of the effective administration” of many non-Russian borderlands in the Russian Empire, a form adopted because “the autocracy recognized htat it is impossible to ‘administer in one and the same ways’ peoples as different as the Turkmens, Finns, and Poles, Sharifov says.
Such arrangements did not make the Russian Empire a federal state, but “one must not ignore the elements of federalism” which did exist, and the same thing is true, the Institute of State and Law expert argues, with regard to the USSR, “which was formed as a confederation but with time was transformed into a federative state.”
Paying attention to this aspect is important, he continues, because “excessive centralization of power and the unjustified unification of the system of state administration undermined the foundations of the state by provoking crises (the revolutions of 1905-06, 1917, and the Brezhnev ‘stagnation’) and the breaking away of national borderlands (Poland and Finland at the start of the 20th century and the republics of the USSR at its end).”
Efforts over the last decade to strengthen “the vertical of power” have “led to the deformationof the federal system,” creating a system which is “formally a federation but de facto a unitary state.” Nevertheless, these efforts have not had solved the problem – separatism -- that their authors pointed to as the reason for moving in that direction.
“The problem of separatism in the North Caucasus” in fact, Shafirov argues, “has entered a new stage.” Separatist challenges by the Chechens and Ingush remain “unresolved,” and they have been joined now by a new separatism challenge from the Circassians, at least in part in response to the growth of the power vertical.
Russia’s “federative structure is a weakly hierarchical structure which in the early stages of its establishment has not given visible results and requires significant resources,” again at least in part because the powers that be have failed to understand the nature of the challenge before them and have preferred to focus on separatism or “’the parade of sovereignties.’”
The “harsh” power vertical they have put in place, that is “a harshly hierarchical system of administration, is not effective as a long-term strategy since it requires significant resource support for its functioning,” and thus prevents Russia from addressing its most pressing problems domestically and internationally.
Federalism can provide a way out of this dilemma, Sharifov argues, by giving “a politicaland legal opportunity” to the regions for “participation in the adoption and realization of state-wide issues,” allowing both citizens and the subjects of the federation to play a role in both cases.
Unfortunately, he continues, “existing Russian legislation does not contain the institutional instruments through which the subject of the federation could participate in the formation of the state-wide expression of will,” thus limiting the utility of these structures for the state and indeed transforming them into a threat to it.
“The main cause of the failure of the course of strengthening the vertical of power lies in its lack of correspondence with the tendencies of the development of the state as a social-political institution,” Sharifov says, tendencies that require both vertical and horizontal “redistribution” of authority.
“The vertical redistribution of authorities presupposes the transfer of sovereign rights to super-national (international organizations) and subnational levels (civil society),” Sharifov argues, while “the horizontal redistribution requires the transfer of rights to regional and municipal organs of power.”
These two “vectors,” he suggests “can be combined in one term – federalism,” a concept which is “much broader than the term ‘federation.’” Federalism may exist even “without a federation.” Indeed, Sharifov shows in a survey of various countries, including the US, Israel, the European Union and China, it is a precondition of modernity in the post-industrial world.
Indeed, Sharifov insists, “democratization and the development of civil society on the one hand and the broadening of the authority of international organizations on the other is a manifestation of federalization respectively at the national and super-national levels” in the post-Cold War environment.
But in addition to federalism, there is a need for an ideological self-definition, he suggests, something Russia also lacks, thus putting it at a disadvantage domestically and internationally because “federalism and an ideological imperative are the two foundations of the formation of the basic players on the international arena of the 21st century.”
To get out of its current difficulties, ones that have left Russia at the level of many failed or failing states, Russia’s leaders must show the kind of political courage that has not been much in evidence and change directions both domestically and in their approach to international affairs.
Among the steps these leaders need to take domestically, Sharifov argues is the conclusion of a new federal treaty, the elimination of the ethnic basis of federal units while reducing the number of the federal structures, and the provision of a clear definition of the competence of all levels of the state.
Internationally, he says, Moscow must “distance itself from the political elites in post-Soviet republics who are inclined toward authoritarianism,” focus on improving the standard of human life, create firm ties “with the civil societies of the post-Soviet republics, and create its own analogues to the Euroregions with the CIS countries.
Sharifov does not hold out much hope that anyone in Moscow will take these steps anytime soon, but he suggests that if the leadership does not take them, the power vertical won’t save the country and Russia will fall further and further behind the rest of the world which is moving toward federalism and democracy domestically and internationally.
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