According to the 1993 Constitution, its current name is the Russian Federation. At the same time, history raises questions about the correspondence of the description of Russia as a federation to its actual political situation both in Soviet times and today.
On the eve of the legal formalization of the formation of the USSR in 1922, the Bolsheviks created several autonomous republics and regions on a national basis (among them the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, formed in 1921 as part of the RSFSR), which was a manifestation of their ostentatious concern for the independent development of nationalities and its supposed guarantees preservation in the conditions of the new union state. V. Lenin, being one of the initiators of the formation of the USSR, saw this process as Russia’s “absorption” of other republics with the rights of administrative units. In practice, J. Stalin’s approach was implemented, according to which the subjects of the union were declared equal, but only on paper: in fact, the Leninist model was secretly implemented. In reality, according to the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR of 1922, all key issues were entrusted to the Union, and most of the republican authorities were part of the all-Union vertical. Over time, this trend only intensified, national autonomies in the 1940s and 1950s were almost all abolished under the pretext of the expediency of building an administrative-territorial system of the state based on the criterion of economic zoning, and a party dictatorship was established in the system of power.
Tendencies towards hypertrophied centralization of power have also persisted in modern Russia. The current Constitution of 1993 was adopted against the background of numerous attempts to declare independence by individual regions with a majority of indigenous nationalities in the local population (Tatarstan, Tuva, Mari El, etc.). In this connection, the political and economic autonomy of administrative units was maximally limited. It was precisely here that the tendency to consolidate all imperial conquests in one state by strengthening centralizing mechanisms manifested itself. Federation in the modern sense is one of the achievements of the liberation struggle of the New Age, which consists of the completely voluntary unification of independent entities into a single state to achieve a certain goal (a classic example is the union of the American colonies in the fight against Great Britain and the formation of the USA as a federal state; it is significant that in 1788 the magazine “The Federalist” was published there, where each state was considered as an independent subject in the process of making general decisions). Such an interpretation can hardly be extrapolated to the Russian reality, where the participation of subjects of the Russian Federation in international relations independently of the centre is essentially impossible, and national policy is built on a balance of openly ostentatious support for the development of the cultures of individual nations and their real assimilation. Along with these safeguards against obstacles in the centralization of power, the fact that some of the “subjects of the federation” are separated on a national basis, and others on a political basis, is quite revealing, and this significantly affects the inequality of their status. The process of accepting new entities into the Russian Federation is not coordinated with any international norms and customs and is essentially nothing more than a manifestation of the “highest will” of the state leadership. Such artificiality of the category of federalism in Russia causes a low level of stability in the system that works to maintain its existence.
The historical understanding of the features of the administrative-territorial system in the modern Russian Federation allows us to assert that the connections built between the centre and the regions are aimed at the situational suppression of manifestations of tendencies towards independence in individual regions. Inherited from the time of Tsarist Russia, the policy of forming a “united Russian people” is gaining more and more momentum. Cultures of individual nationalities are perceived as a local phenomenon, as something rare, interesting only from an academic point of view, but not at all suitable for use in everyday life. The predominance of efforts for external expansion over the maintenance of internal stability makes it necessary to limit manifestations of discontent on the ground as much as possible. Federalism in the Russian version essentially represents the appearance of regional freedom and masks the assimilation measures of the Kremlin leadership. So, for example, the Constitution of the USSR of 1936 was very democratic in its content, and provided for broad guarantees of human rights, but just after its adoption, the policy of “great terror” began. Modern Russia follows a similar path, giving on paper broad guarantees for the development of a “multinational society”, but in reality limiting all possible options for the participation of administrative units in state decision-making. If in the USA there is even a concept of competition between state and federal legislation, then in the Russian Federation it is a single system. Local government bodies at the level of “subjects of the federation” essentially resemble the feudal curias of the late Middle Ages, which were gatherings of the highest nobility and did not make effective decisions at all. The bourgeois revolutions caused by this situation completely broke the old state systems.
The weakness of Russian federalism, thus, lies in the artificiality of this category. It is nothing but a tool of the government to subjugate the people. Historical experience demonstrates the inevitability of the disintegration of such a system, however, at the present stage, sufficient prerequisites for this have not yet developed. The processes of the collapse of the Russian Empire and the USSR were caused by the discrediting of the ruling elite, which in the first case occurred due to heavy losses in the First World War, in the second – due to the loss in the “Cold War” and a deep systemic crisis. Weak ties between the centre and the “subjects of the federation” can be used to maintain a negative attitude towards the government in their social environment. This factor will be the impetus for grouping separate administrative units in opposition to the Kremlin according to the scenario of the anti-colonial struggle in Africa at the beginning of the 20th century. If this does not cause the disintegration of the territory of the Russian Federation, it will lead to a revision of its political orientations, both internal and external. The force scenario of taming such a situation is unlikely, since then a repetition of the course of the civil war of 1919 with the proclamation of local state formations and the formation of their troops to repel government punitive forces is possible.
SBU National Academy
Укрінформ
