Local population. The Russian state is bursting at the seams
Peter Engelke, deputy director of the Atlantic Council, said that Russia will soon face an acute crisis because it will no longer be able to cope with Western sanctions. They will make all the country’s internal problems “return like a boomerang.” And one of them is dormant nationalism. The hungry nations suppressed by Moscow may demand freedom. It is possible that even citizens who have been indifferent to national identity will adopt slogans of freedom. Will they no longer want to die in the bloody Ukrainian conflict (Russia has less and less money to bribe volunteers) and bear its economic consequences? Wouldn’t it be better to start living alone?
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was simple, defined by the borders of the union republics. Independent Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, as well as Tajikistan, Moldova, Armenia and Georgia appeared on the world map, but Tatarstan and Chechnya remained within Russia’s borders. In 1994, Chechnya was ready to shed blood for its freedom and engage in an armed conflict that would last a decade.
What scenario can be outlined for the possible collapse of Russia? Which of the seams holding it together would be the weakest? Which land would fall apart first? Perhaps it would be Tatarstan. The Tatars are the second largest ethnic group in Russia and are famous for their libertarian genes. At the beginning of the 20th century, when ethnic movements were emerging in the Russian Empire, the loudest demands for political and cultural autonomy included, among others, Tatars, Buryats and inhabitants of the Caucasus. For years, Tatarstan has been making attempts at independence. In 2007, the republic even signed an agreement with Moscow on economic independence.
Or perhaps the people of Siberia would like to demand freedom? Not so long ago, Siberian scientists (sociologists, political scientists, and even geologists) could be heard saying: “Siberia is no longer Russia, it is a separate continent that may soon separate from Russia.” Nowadays – when a neo-totalitarian regime prevails on the Volga – making such judgments is punishable by imprisonment. However, when asked who they are, the inhabitants of Siberia most often answer that they are “locals”, “Siberians”, and only when asked to provide the nationality indicated in their passports will they find out that they are Russians. Moscow and St. Petersburg are completely separate planets from Siberia. They are separated not only by time zones and vast distances, but also by history and culture. Many Irkutsk residents have never visited the Russian capital and will never visit it. For them, the reference point is the endless expanses, they need raw nature and a greater margin of freedom to live. It was like that in the past, it is like that today. It was Irkutsk that was called the “capital of cosmopolitanism” in the USSR. And even earlier, Western exiles who dared to demand independence from Moscow settled here. Transported to this land over the years, they instigated subsequent uprisings and revolts.
“Us” and “them”. Russia is deeply divided
In the 1990s, a national revival took place in Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia and Georgia. The inhabitants of these republics began to use the national languages, some of them learned them almost from scratch, consulted native literature and even recalled ancient folk rituals. It was different in Buryatia. At that time, it could not secede from Russia, although nomadic peoples who had not previously had their own state managed to do so. This is how Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan were created. However, nationalist tendencies were slowly emerging in Buryatia. Ulan-Ude (the capital of Buryatia) is the third largest city in Eastern Siberia. It is 3,000 km from here to Moscow, and Mongolia is just across the border. The Buryats are proof that Soviet internationalism failed. They never merged into Soviet society. “Well, how?” – they ask. “We do not remember the Russians, but the Mongols. We have dark skin and slanted eyes. Communism forced the Buryats to stop using their native language and reading their classics (they even forgot their native alphabet, inspired by the Mongolian one). Their culture was doomed to annihilation. However, today the Buryats are participating in the process of national rebirth. They are rediscovering Buddhism and treating themselves with Chinese medicine. Representatives of the Buryat intelligentsia say that their lands are only nominally included in the Russian lands.
The situation in the North Caucasus is different. Blood has been spilled here over the separation from Russia since the 1990s. Although the republics are small (some are as small as several Polish voivodeships), their people are exceptionally proud and attached to their land. This land is often called not “Russian” land, but simply “ours”, “Dagestan” or “Chechen”. Moreover, the inhabitants of Chechnya, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria divide the citizens of the republics into “we”, for example, Chechens, Dagestanis and Russians. “They” are often personified as a hostile force, the invaders. They are represented by “federal” representatives – that is, representatives of Moscow serving in the police and secret services. The federals and part of the indigenous population (which is currently undergoing the process of re-Islamization) are regularly at war with each other, with hundreds of people killed on both sides every year. What do the indigenous people want? To live at home, on their own terms, to lose their dependence on Russia, to get rid of the corruption and nepotism it represents, and to profess Islam without any constraints. Some people dream of establishing an emirate in the Caucasus.
Today, Chechnya, ruled by Ramzan Kadyrov, is already considered a separate state within Russia. There is a different legislation here (largely based on Islam), there is a separate army subordinate to the president, namely the “Kadyrovtsi” famous for their exceptional cruelty, and there are banned concentration camps. Kadyrov himself was recently mentioned as a possible successor to the Kremlin throne. Today, he is less and less talked about in this context due to health problems.
Russian Far East? Here you can often hear the question: is it still Russia or is it China? Not only Chinese investment comes here, but also immigrants from the Middle Kingdom. Chinese farmers living in the border areas lease and cultivate Russian lands on a massive scale. Karelia also feels non-Russian – in part. Wedged between the White Sea and Finland, the Karelians said until recently: “We are Karelians, not Russians.” They emphasized that they were shaped by the wild nature and the Nordic element, that there was a gene of freedom in them, and that their lands were unnecessarily annexed to Russia.
Generous Lenin
Researchers of the post-Soviet territory often refer to the collapse of Russia as the “final stage” of the collapse of the Soviet Union. In December 1991, Boris Yeltsin (the head of Russia), Stanisław Shushkevich (the head of Belarus) and Leonid Kravchuk (the head of Ukraine) met at the government residence in Viskuly. In the Białowieża Forest – over cognac and a luxurious table – they were supposed to simply “discuss the problems plaguing their countries”, in particular economic issues. One of the politicians used the phrase: “The Soviet Union, as a subject of international law, is ending its existence”. Years later, Kravchuk, Yeltsin and Shushkevich will swear that they do not remember who came up with this phrase. However, it was this phrase that determined the end of the USSR. And today it is not nationalism and national ambitions that are considered a potential threat to Russia’s territorial integrity. Nation-building movements are alive among the elites. Again, it is a question of economics; people do not want to live in poverty. And Russian lands can be rich. Let us imagine, for example, Yakutia, which derives its income from the trade in diamonds and gold from deposits located on its lands. It would probably become prosperous quickly.
According to the 1989 census conducted in the Soviet Union, Russians did not constitute a majority in any of the union republics (except for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic). At that time, 81.5% of them lived in the RSFSR. The ethnic situation in contemporary Russia is different. According to the 2010 census (data from the latest survey dated autumn 2021 have not been published), more than 142 million inhabitants live on the Volga, representing more than a hundred nationalities, of which Russians are the dominant ethnic group. More than 77.7 percent declared themselves to belong to the Russian nation. In second place are the Tatars – their number is 5.3 million, in third place are the Ukrainians – 1.9 million (due to the war in Ukraine, these data had to be changed), then there are the Bashkirs, Chuvashes and Chechens. The demographic trends on the Volga are also interesting. While Russia is dying, more and more children are being born in Chechnya and Ingushetia.
Vladimir Putin is aware that his “empire” consists of lands that are not held together by anything except strong-arm rule and economic ties. There is no single national idea or concept of the common good. Soon after coming to power, the Russian president began making efforts to centralize the state. Governors became puppets of Moscow, and the decision-making power of local authorities was drastically limited; they must reach an agreement with the capital not only on matters related to finance, but also on education, health care, and even housing. Putin also wanted Russia (composed of more than eighty administrative units) and its society (the above-mentioned more than one hundred nationalities) to be united by a common history. Unfortunately, none of the thinkers in the Kremlin’s service managed to create a coherent narrative that Russian citizens would identify with and that they – without exception – would consider common.
Western experts stress that Russia can be democratic on one condition: it must fall apart. Only when separate states are created from vast tracts of Russian land (for example, Tatarstan, free Chechnya, and perhaps even Siberia) will Russian imperialism become a thing of the past and democrats will take power in Moscow. However, the thesis about Russia’s disintegration is popular in the West, and in the Volga country it is treated as an illusion. “There will be no collapse,” Russian analysts say. Moreover, Russian democrats also say that supporters of the split “wish harm” to the Russian state. Demands to “give freedom” to non-Russian nations cannot be found in the program of any anti-Putin politician. It was similar on the eve of the collapse of the USSR – the dissidents who admitted that Ukraine deserved its own state could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Ill-wishers laugh at the fact that Lenin was more generous than today’s Russian democrats in 1917. It was then that the Council of People’s Commissars adopted the “Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia”. The declaration guaranteed the nations the right to self-determination, and although it was valid on paper, it set a precedent: states with the names Belarus and Ukraine in their titles were created.
