Recently, we wrote about how the Kremlin put the Ingush “economic tiger” on a chain, and then a “secret report” from former regional officials in Dagestan arrived.
As the report states, it turns out that Dagestan has significant, explored reserves of its own oil (an extension of Baku’s offshore fields). There are also many other points of potentially significant economic growth, which for some reason remain only potential.
Why? A similar conclusion suggests as in the case of Ingushetia: Moscow is artificially blocking the possibilities of economic development of another North Caucasian republic, planting in the minds of the people there a false myth-belief about the economic insolvency of Dagestan outside the borders of the Russian Federation.
Interestingly, the report was secretly passed to Putin “through the head” of the current (and already long-gone) head of the republic, Melikov. It is noteworthy that Melikov is considered a “parachutist” in Dagestan, that is, a non-local leader, dropped from the centre. His biography is typically Janissary: although his father was an ethnic Lezgin (one of the largest among the 20+ indigenous people of Dagestan), he was born in the Moscow region, served throughout the USSR and can hardly be considered a local.
But even in those North Caucasian subjects of the Russian Federation, where an ethnically non-Russian republic is governed by a conditionally local public, the economic model is very similar: the local “prince” enjoys unlimited power, his corruption is completely unpunished, and the unshakability of his position of power depends not on the socio-economic development of the region, but on his ability to provide the results necessary for the Kremlin in the elections. There are many such subjects of the federation, and Russian political science has long aptly classified them as “electoral sultanates” – with an abnormally high turnout (90%+) and equally abnormal support for pro-government candidates and parties. Such is Kadyrov’s Chechnya, and Karachay-Cherkessia, known for its recent high-profile exposure, where the local “under-Kadyrov” Arashukov “burned” on corruption. This is the case for the vast majority of the republics of the Russian Federation and in other regions (including Tatarstan and Bashkortostan), but many predominantly or exclusively Great Russian regions or territories of the Russian Federation also fall into the category of “sultanates.” Therefore, the key common features of this entire motley “sultanate” mosaic are not so much the ethnic “un-Russianness” of the subject, but the following:
subsidy, traditional-patriarchal or resource-dependent economy;
as a result, a relatively low percentage of the politically active and educated population;
as well as the low level of political culture and the underdevelopment of the relevant infrastructure (independent election observers, independent journalism and sociology, etc.).
Therefore, the statement that the Russian government benefits from the stupidity of the population does not seem abstract and generalized if you delve into the topic of “electoral sultanates” and understand how it works. Having delved into it, you can quickly conclude that the Kremlin is inherently uninterested in human development and the corresponding infrastructure. Logically, the idea suggests that the most obvious way out of this vicious circle, at least for the republics, is to remember their sovereignty and use it.
