BAKUNINISM IS FEDERALISM

Moscow Allows One Kind of Federalism to Rise while Continuing to Suppress Another, Kolebakina-Uzmanova Says

Paul Goble

Monday, January 2, 2023

            Staunton, Jan. 2 – In its prosecution of the war in Ukraine just as was the case with its efforts to combat the covid pandemic, the Kremlin began by insisting that it could do everything on its own and then decided that it needed the involvement of federal subjects to be able to achieve its goals, Elena Kolebakina-Uzmanova says.

            That pattern, which has occurred even as Putin has sought to destroy the remnants of federalism as outlined in the Russian constitution means that Moscow is intentionally or not opening the way for a new kind of “spontaneous” federalism even as it has broken much of the existing federal system, the Kazan commentator says.

         Indeed, Kolebakina-Uzmanova says, “one can say that spontaneous federalism has been strengthened in the country” [emphasis in the original] because “ life itself has shown again and again that only such an arrangement works, even though by inertia, Moscow has continued to liquidate the former remnants of this very federalism” (business-gazeta.ru/article/578693).

            These two vectors are often at odds. The destruction of the remnants of federalism has attracted the greater attention; but the rise of spontaneous federalism has limited what Moscow can or at least chooses to do. The compromise on the title of president in Tatarstan is a clear example of this, the commentator says.

            Forced to give up the title “president” for the republic leader, Tatarstan forced Moscow to agree to the term “rais,” “a term which in Arab countries designates the head of government” and which highlights among other things the strength Kazan has as the bridge to the Islamic world, Kolebakina-Uzmanova says.

            In this way, both Moscow and Kazan “showed wisdom,” he continues, with each side recognizing the importance of cooperating with the other and not insisting that the other submit to its demands, at a time of military conflict. That may not be the federalism some would like to see; but it is hardly the end of federalism either.