But more telling still is the assumption of a necessary connection between federalism and ethno-national separatism. More than a quarter of Russia’s subunits are ‘republics’ or ‘autonomous regions’ named after ethno-linguistic groups indigenous to them. Russian nationalists see the very existence of these federal forms as a threat – Dugin, for example, has proposed their elimination.{22} Yet in many of these ‘ethnic’ republics, the majority of the population are ethnic Russians. In these cases, ‘national’ names and symbols are a historical residue of conquest and assimilation, rather than a draft project for independence. Elsewhere, to be sure, the titular nationalities are numerically dominant: in the Sakha Republic in the Far East, in Tatarstan, in much of the North Caucasus. But as a whole, the non-Russian peripheries are far outweighed by the country’s enormous ethnic Russian core: 60 per cent of the territory, containing 80 per cent of the population. This raises an important, largely unspoken question: if the reason for killing federalism is to suppress ethno-national separatism, why does this in practice overwhelmingly apply to territories that are inhabited by ethnic Russians?
One answer is that the actual purpose of Russia’s anti-federal federalism is to maintain centralized political control over a vast territory, while shielding that power from democratic scrutiny at all levels. It is telling, from this point of view, that Putin’s response to the Beslan atrocity of 2004, when Chechen Islamist militants seized a school and took hundreds of children hostage – only for the vast majority of those present to be killed when Russian security services stormed the building – was to do away with elections for regional governments nationwide. If there were any connection between state security and degrees of local democracy, Putin should have done the opposite. In 2014, though Moscow furnished the rebellion in the Donbass with arms and troops, and to begin with noisily promoted the rebels in official media, its enthusiasm had limits: besides being pro-Russian, the Donbass militias were strongly anti-oligarchic, a stance that might potentially have popular appeal well beyond eastern Ukraine. When it came to it, the Kremlin knew which side of the barricades it would rather be on.
These reflexive moves to defend the system of ‘imitation democracy’ demonstrated that the real threat posed by federalism was not ethnic rebellions but political ones. Annexing the Donbass would have set an especially dangerous precedent, and not only in terms of international law: it would also have shown Russia’s own majority Russian-speaking regions that rebellion paid off, and that they could seize control of their own destinies through acts of political will. This was a potential chain reaction the Kremlin had to avoid setting off at all costs. The underlying risk here was not territorial fragmentation, but democratization.
At bottom, the main points of contention in Russia’s federal system derive not so much from dynamics of ethnic difference as from disagreements over the distribution of power and resources, and over the forms and character of government itself. The federal structure provides an arena in which those questions can be raised and contested, which is why the Kremlin must keep it under tight control. But as long as the federal forms exist, the possibility of such an opening remains. Political scientist Andrei Zakharov has called Russian federalism a ‘dormant institution’.{23} What would happen if it were someday to awaken?
The guiding assumption of Kremlin policy for the past three decades has been that real federalism leads to national disintegration. But this purposely ignores the potentially democratizing aspect of federalism: its capacity to make government reflect and cater to the specificities of each territory, and to bring power closer to its popular sources. In other words, though it is often seen as a challenge to the existence of Russia itself, federalism could be the site of a struggle between different kinds of Russia. It may be that the possibilities for a more democratic polity there will demand a revival and deepening of federalism, rather than its continued sedation. This might not redraw the map of Russia, as is commonly feared, but instead open up new roads for the country to travel.
The place where all of the forces and factors laid out here converge – where geopolitical pressures meet demographic trends, where economic constraints collide with questions of federal form – is in the political system. What kind of country Russia will be depends partly on who rules it, and for whose benefit. Although its options are limited in various ways, much nonetheless hangs on how the current system of government in Russia, whether under Putin or his eventual successors, responds to changing circumstances. The spike in tensions with the West has for the moment given the Putin-led system a certain amount of leeway, since it can ascribe many of the problems the country experiences to foreign enemies. It helps that this is not, factually speaking, incorrect: the sanctions regime imposed in 2014 prolonged Russia’s economic difficulties, and in the wake of Crimea and especially the 2016 US elections, Western media, pundits and politicians eagerly fanned a hostility to Russia that mirrored the hysteria of Russia’s own pro-Kremlin outlets.
But how long can this state of affairs continue? In the immediate future we are unlikely to see a dramatic improvement in relations between Russia and the West. Again, some kind of rapprochement is certainly possible. But beneath the mutual suspicions of the present, and beyond any potential pragmatism in future, the interests of the two parties remain fundamentally incompatible, and the West has no reason to alter its course. Ironically, its very hostility to Russia, and to Putin in particular, is the best insurance policy for the ‘imitation democratic’ regime. For now, the entwinement of the Kremlin’s domestic fortunes with its foreign policy choices is a bonus for the system rather than a liability. But although the Kremlin’s appeals to patriotism have enjoyed a certain success among the Russian public, they have also been largely defensive in nature, producing reflex responses rather than generating positive attachments or ideals. For the Putin-led system, nationalism is a default ideology, a means of legitimizing the continuation of its power, rather than an active political project. This is what has made its propaganda ultimately so hollow: the frenzied imaginings of state media are a sign of the weakness of their grip on the popular imagination, rather than its strength.
Yet the very character of the system – a predatory, authoritarian elite presiding over a vastly unequal society – will inevitably generate further social tensions, sparking recurrent crises which cannot all be resolved by patriotic mobilizations or military adventures abroad. ‘Imitation democracy’, and the post-Soviet capitalism it was built to defend, will no doubt be able to survive many upheavals. But it seems unwise to bet on its indefinite continuation, given the speed with which the USSR unravelled over the course of 1991, and the Romanov empire before it a century ago. These twin spectres of disintegration have haunted the imagination of Russia’s rulers since the fall of Communism, and they stalk the corridors of the Kremlin still, waiting for another of those rare, history-shattering moments when they can take on solid form.
Epilogue
TO SAY THE RUSSIAN presidential election of 18 March 2018 was not a contest would be a gross understatement. Everything unfolded according to the Kremlin’s script. Not only was Putin re-elected by a crushing majority – he won 77 per cent of the vote, compared with a mere 12 per cent for his nearest rival, the Communist Party’s Pavel Grudinin – there was also a satisfactory 68 per cent turnout, dispelling Russian officialdom’s fears that voter apathy would undermine the legitimacy of the poll. Independent observers reported hundreds of instances of ballot-stuffing and other irregularities, but these were breezily dismissed by the Central Election Commission.{1} To no one’s surprise, Putin effortlessly secured another six-year term, extending his hold on power to 2024.