[lg policy] Kremlin to Do Away With Non-Russian Republics, Presidential Representative Says

Thu Dec 21 19:56:13 UTC 2017

Kremlin to Do Away With Non-Russian Republics, Presidential Representative
Says Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 159 By: Paul Goble
<https://jamestown.org/analyst/paul-goble/>

December 7, 2017 06:31 PM Age: 2 weeks
Presidential plenipotentiary for the Volga Federal District Mikhail Babich
(Source: Business-Gazeta)

Ever since President Vladimir Putin began his regional amalgamation
campaign in 2003, and especially since he launched his attack on
non-Russian languages last summer (see EDM
<https://jamestown.org/program/language-fight-in-tatarstan-set-to-ignite-political-explosion-across-russia/>,
September 19), many non-Russians have regularly declared that the Kremlin
leader is plotting to destroy the non-Russian republics and submerge them
into regional entities in which Moscow and the ethnic Russians will be
predominant (Business-Gazeta, December 2
<https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/365714>, 3
<https://www.business-gazeta.ru/blog/365755>; Apn-spb.ru
<http://www.apn-spb.ru/opinions/article27249.htm>, November 28).

Most Moscow commentators and any government officials who have chosen to
weigh in on this issue, however, have suggested that such charges are
overheated nonsense and that the Kremlin has no plans to move so far with
its language policy. But such statements, in turn, have angered some
Russian nationalists who want to see the non-Russian ethnic republics
destroyed and who believe that their existence represents a threat to the
territorial integrity of the Russian Federation. At the same time, those
assurances have further infuriated many non-Russians who see Moscow’s
statements as yet another effort to conceal the Kremlin’s real intentions.

Now, however, there can be little doubt that the Kremlin has decided to do
away with the non-Russian republics and is simply in the process of
deciding when, where and how to do it. Mikhail Babich, the presidential
plenipotentiary for the Volga Federal District, admitted as much in
remarkably frank public comments that were reported by Kazan’s
*Business-Gazeta* (Business-Gazeta
<https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/365961>, December 5). The Kremlin’s
man said bluntly that the new language policy Putin announced last summer,
which makes the study of non-Russian languages voluntary while the study of
Russian remains compulsory, was under discussion for two years before it
was announced. Moreover, he added that “the amalgamation of regions”—the
Kremlin’s preferred term for doing away with non-Russian republics—has
“always been under discussion.”

Babich alleged that both the language policy and moves to amalgamate
regions reflect the desires of the population and the imperatives of
defending the rights of all citizens of the Russian Federation, wherever
they live.  These issues represent “a problem of our post-Soviet history,”
one that has only grown in size and become ever more threatening, he
claimed, leading many Russians to file protests with the center, which
Moscow is now responding to.

While some may think that “the main achievement” of the 1993 Russian
Constitution was its declaration that the subjects of the country have the
right to “establish state languages,” the plenipotentiary said, Russians
need to remember that “in no other country in the world is there such a
notion as ‘the state language of a region.’ ” That has existed only in
Russia, and it has created real violations of real rights.  “Of the 22
republics,” he continues, in 21, this right has been implemented with state
languages established.” In 17, it is the language of the titular
nationality; in 3, two [regional state languages were established]; and in
others, like Dagestan, more than that. In many, these languages have been
taught as is appropriate, he declared, on a voluntary basis; but in others,
they have been imposed on an unwilling population. That is wrong, and Putin
has now ended that practice, Babich stated.

Asked about discussions regarding the amalgamation of regions and
republics, Babich gave the clearest indication yet that Moscow has already
gone a long way in in the planning process and that its decisions will be
based on economic and national security concerns rather than the views of
the population. To ensure that, he said, Moscow is even now changing how it
measures the economic strengths of republics so that it can change the
balance between the weak and the strong—a fundamental premise that Putin
has stressed in the past—as it moves forward (Windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com
<http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/12/a-regional-amalgamation-moscow-will.html>,
December 5).

Responding to former Russian finance minister Aleksey Kudrin’s proposal to
combine Tatarstan and Bashkortostan in a regional agglomeration including
Kazan, Samara and Ulyanovsk,  Babich argued that such an idea violates all
the principles of amalgamation. According to the Kremlin plenipotentiary,
what Moscow must do is combine weak regions with strong ones, regardless of
ethnicity and the interests of the population; it should not seek to
combine the strong with the strong and leave the weak to fend for
themselves or remain dependent on subsidies from the center.

“Many regions have passed through the procedure of amalgamation,” Babich
claimed, an exaggeration given that fewer than a dozen in fact have and
many of those are currently trying to reverse those decisions (
Windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com
<http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/08/997-percent-of-taymyr-people-say-life.html>,
August 17). Nonetheless,  he contended that this program has had only
positive consequences and not been as dangerous or risky as many in the
republics have suggested.

President Putin’s plenipotentiary to the Volga Federal District clearly
supports further amalgamations, which would require not the folding of
autonomous regions into surrounding Russian regions, as the program has so
far, but also the combination of entire non-Russian republics with
predominantly Russian oblasts and krais.  Yet, most importantly, he stated
that Moscow will now insist that the republics not be able to count the
wealth produced on their territory by companies with headquarters in Moscow
as part of their economy, a change that will shift the balance between
places like Tatarstan and surrounding ethnic Russian regions. In practice,
the hyper-centralization of Russian corporations means that the non-Russian
republics will be treated far worse in future amalgamations than they would
if the old measures were retained.

Babich has clearly fired an opening shot at the republics, and many Russian
nationalists and centralizers will be delighted. But his words are likely
to provoke a sharp reaction in all the non-Russian republics whose elites
will see their fiefdoms at risk and whose populations will face being
submerged in a largely undifferentiated Russian cultural milieu. That
reaction has the potential to create a serious threat to the Russian
Federation. As Putin and Moscow tend to forget, the Soviet Union did not
fall apart because of Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalization, but rather
because the Communist leader tried to take everything back after his
liberalizing steps—and the union republics refused to acquiesce.

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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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