Russian federalism: Continuing myth or political salvation?

Daniel R. Kempton is associate professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at Northern Illinois University. He wishes to acknowledge the kindness of the late Daniel Elazar who encouraged his work during a 1999 trip to Northern Illinois University. A preliminary version was presented at the Association for the Study of Nationalities Annual Conference, New York, NY, 13-15 April 2000.

Like its Soviet predecessor, Russia is the world's largest state and one of its most diverse. Historically, great size and diversity have intensified a number of challenges that all states face. The more diverse the state, the greater the potential sources of religious, ethnic, or racial separatism. Larger states also face greater challenges with such mundane tasks as collecting taxes, building transportation and communication networks, and maintaining educational facilities throughout the state. Thus, the threat of disintegration is generally greater for large, diverse states such as the current Russian Federation.

At independence in 1991, the further disintegration of Russia appeared inevitable. The dismemberment of the Soviet Union unleashed the centrifugal forces of ethnic nationalism, religious animosity, and regional self-interest. Once the principles of centralized rule and the immutability of borders were abandoned, a Pandora's box had been opened. The resulting centrifugal forces had no predetermined or natural endpoint. From within the fifteen designated successor states numerous ethnonationalist groups made varied claims for sovereignty, autonomy, or complete independence. The validity of the successor states' claims to independence rested not on any objective criteria but on the sometimes whimsical Soviet system of rewarding and punishing ethnic groups as they historically fell into or out of favor with Moscow. Not surprisingly, therefore, Russia faced a number of early challenges to its territorial integrity, Chechnya and Tatarstan being the most serious.

Despite numerous dire predictions, Russia has survived its first decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union. One obvious explanation is that Russia is smaller and considerably more homogeneous than was the Soviet Union. While the Soviet Union was only 50 percent Russian, Russia is more than 83 percent Russian. Russians are an outright majority in more than half of its components (known as subekty in the 1993 constitution). However, size and homogeneity alone cannot explain Russia's survival. Smaller and more homogenous states are regularly torn apart by their diversity. Thus, if we are to fully explain Russia's survival, serious consideration must be given to Russia's creation of a federal political system.

At first glance, Russia's adoption of federalism may seem less a conscious choice than a part of the Soviet legacy. The Soviet Union was officially a complex and multitiered federal state. Major Soviet ethnic groups were typically given their own territory, in which they lived as the privileged titular population. However, Soviet federalism was at best a myth and at worst a fraud. The federal components never had real power. In practice the Soviet Union was one of the most centralized states in history. Therefore, although Russia inherited a federal structure, it did not inherit a federal tradition. Russia's adoption of federalism should instead be conceived as a conscious effort to deal with its postindependence dilemmas.

Russia's choice of federalism was not unusual. A century ago, federalism was seen as a weak and inherently temporary form of government. English constitutional authorities such as Lord Bryce characterized federalism as "no more than a transitory step on the way to constitutional-governmental unity." 1 In the 1930s, Laski saw federalism as a pragmatic but temporary way for Britain and other colonial authorities to shift power to more local authorities within their empires. Friedrich believed the process more frequently moved in the opposite direction, but portrayed federalism in a similar fashion. Federalism arose when a group of previously autonomous states, typically driven by the defense imperative, formed a single central government. All three saw federalism as a transitory step rather than as an end goal. 2 Today, however, federalism is considered the hallmark of a stable, diverse state. It is a feature of many modern democracies including Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. It has been adopted to manage ethnic and religious tension in Canada, Belgium, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Spain, and South Africa.

Federalism has become fashionable because of its perceived benefits. It can accommodate diverse minority groups within a single state. Federalism provides religious, ethnic, and cultural minority groups with a safe political base in which they can control cultural and educational policies. Second, by giving multiple minorities an entrenched political base federalism can promote pluralism and thus democracy. Third, as with early federations and leagues, the component regions receive the benefits of common defense without fully sacrificing their autonomy to the center. Fourth, like members of a free market area, the components of a federal system receive the benefits of a common market without fully surrendering economic autonomy. Finally, because federalism is based on the assumption of continual negotiation and renegotiation--among the components and between the components and the center--it provides a highly adaptable and flexible form of government. If federalism can provide even a few of those benefits to contemporary Russia, it may well prove to be Russia's political salvation. It may explain Russia's survival. The question, then, is whether federalism is Russia's political salvation or merely a continuing myth?