Eye on Eurasia
By Paul Goble
Tartu, Estonia, Mar. 31 -- Russian analysts this week argued a Ukrainian or Kyrgyz-style revolution in their country will begin in one or more of the country's far-flung regions and then spread to Moscow rather than the other, and historically more typical, way around.
Most Russian commentators continue to downplay the possibility of an Orange-style revolution in Moscow (see, for example, the sampling of opinions in Nezavisimaya Gazeta March 28). Muscovites are significantly better off than people elsewhere. And the Kremlin is more attentive to the city and has the resources at hand to deploy against any threat.
But the recent challenges to the authorities in Bashkortostan and Ingushetiya has sparked concerns it may be "easy" to organize a revolution in the Russian Federation "not along Ukrainian lines but rather according to the Kyrgyz model and not in Moscow but in the regions," according to Ivan Yartsev this week (politkom.ru).
The protests in the Bashkir capital, Ufa, last week attracted particular attention because protesters there employed slogans eerily similar to those used by the Georgian, Ukrainian and Kyrgyz opposition. They demanded the local president be removed from office, that social services be improved, and that the authorities acknowledge that Bashkortostan is a "Political Gulag".
But the continuing pressure on officials in Nazran, Ingushetia, have also led many in Moscow to worry that things there could get out of hand and quickly spread to other regions. Discussion of these individual events has led some Russian analysts to consider precisely the way that might happen first in Muslim areas and then in ethnic Russian ones and to ask just what resources Moscow has or might need to develop in order to retain its grip on power.
Aleksandr Yeliseyev, who writes frequently on regional issues, agrees with those who say there is little chance of a revolution breaking out in Moscow, but he argues "the regions (whether Russian or non-Russian) are a different matter".
He points out that in many regions people are furious both at their local rulers and at Moscow. Anger at the first sometimes takes the form of popular demonstrations, and anger at the second, either directly or when local officials try to deflect popular unhappiness, sometimes takes on a "separatist" character.
That is especially the case in Muslim regions, Yeliseyev continues. In addition to the anger other citizens of the Russian Federation feel, the country's Muslims increasingly view the authorities both local and central as Islamophobic or worse. And in some cases, they are prepared to follow those who want to challenge the government.
Yeliseyev cites the words of Kirill Frolov, the press secretary of the Union of Orthodox Citizens, about Ukraine to suggest how an ethnic element might lead to a revolutionary explosion in the Russian Federation.
In Ukraine, the revolution emerged as a result of the combination of the Uniate Ukrainian western regions and the educated elites in Kiev. An analogous situation, Yeliseyev suggests, could emerge in the Russian Federation, either directly because of a Muslim challenge or because of a possible ethnic Russian response to that challenge.
And Yeliseyev concludes somewhat ominously with the observation that now "a new 1905 is already dawning." The question, he says, is whether there will be "a new 1917."
Other analysts share his perspective if not his rather hyperbolic language. On March 29, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that five of the six "most volatile" regions in the Russian Federation now are Muslim: Chechnya, Daghestan, North Ossetia, Karachai-Balkaria and Bashkortostan. Kalmykia, the sixth, is the exception: it is historically Buddhist.
That list of regions will surprise few observers either in Moscow or in the West. Muslim regions have long been viewed as a threat, albeit a marginal one, except for Chechnya. But other analysts have begun to look at the situation in the ethnic Russian regions and have concluded that secessionist and revolutionary sentiment is growing in some of them as well.
In an article in the Internet publication Politicheskiy Zhurnal, a St. Petersburg-based specialist on regional affairs argues that in the Russian Federation, more regions are quietly but ever more definitely opposing the central government in Moscow. (politjournal.ru , March 28).
Daniil Kotsyubinskiy notes both Russian officials and ordinary Russian sense this. President Vladimir Putin, he points out, keeps talking about working to prevent the disintegration of the country. That has not reassured Russians but rather led more of them to conclude the country's territorial integrity is at risk -- though fewer of them see this challenge coming from Chechnya.
Under Putin, Moscow has taken back from the regions an ever greater share of resources and has imposed a variety of unfunded mandates on the leaders of the regions, an approach Kotsyubinskiy argues means more regional leaders are prepared to challenge the center and to exploit popular anger.
He cites the words of Valentin Fedorov, the deputy director of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Europe, that "today the problem is not in the Russophobia of (former U.S. national security adviser) Zbigniew Brzezinski and those who share his views but rather in the extremely shortsighted policy of the central government toward the regions."
Kotsyubinskiy suggests the following ethnic Russian regions are increasingly influenced by separatist ideas, a trend with revolutionary implications for the country as a whole. Among these regions are Siberia, several portions of the Russian Far East, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Rostov where there is talk about a Cossack Republic.
Even if none of these projects goes very far -- and it is far from clear any of them will -- the simultaneous existence of and discussion about non-Russian and Russian challenges to Moscow means each will feed off the other with some non-Russians viewing Russian assertiveness as a reason for their own and some Russians seeing non-Russian actions as the reason for rallying around the center or moving further away from it. Several Russian nationalists are proposing the organization of popular militias to oppose the non-Russians , and others argue Moscow can rely on veterans of the war in Chechnya to put down any challenge .
As the latter source put it, "The principal distinction of Russia from Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and other post-Soviet states consists in the following fact: none of the above named countries have fought for 10 years." Russia has, he continues, and the Caucasus war can provide the foot solders for "a future Russian counterrevolution."
Such assertions will do little to calm the situation. And the central Russian government is likely to find it increasingly difficult to cope with it. As a result, the Kremlin almost certainly will be tempted to move even further in an authoritarian direction, something that could quiet things for a brief period but would likely lead to an even greater explosion later.
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(Paul Goble teaches at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia.)
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