Ethnofederalism in Russia and Circassian Autonomy

Stephen D. Shenfield, April 2011

Introduction

To the extent that Circassians (among many other peoples) have

managed to preserve their language, culture, and identity in Russia, this is

thanks above all to the existence of “autonomous ethnic territories” (AETs)1

within the framework of the Soviet and post-Soviet system of

ethnofederalism. An ethnofederation is a particular type of federation in

which some or all of the federal units have a formally recognized status as

homelands considered to “belong” to specific ethnic groups.2 Thus, the

future prospects of Circassian autonomy are inextricably tied up with those

of the ethnofederal system in Russia as a whole. The purpose of this essay is

to assess these prospects, drawing on recent writings by Russian political

scientists.

A few terminological points. I distinguish between pure or symmetric

ethnofederations, in which all federal units are based on ethnicity, and mixed

or asymmetric federations, in which only some federal units are based on

ethnicity. The Russian Federation, like the former USSR, is an example of

the second subtype. I also follow Russian practice in referring to the ethnic

group(s) to which a territory “belongs” as the titular group(s) (because the

title of the territory is related to the name(s) of the group(s) concerned).

Finally, in the Russian Federation, again as in the former USSR, AETs are

subdivided into categories according to their status in the federal structure

and degree of autonomy. The highest-level AETs are called “republics” and

are headed by “presidents”3; lower-level AETs are called autonomous

provinces or autonomous districts.

Section A sets the general international and historical context of the

phenomenon of ethnofederalism and traces the evolution of the ethnofederal

system in Russia from its origin in the early Soviet period up to the early

post-Soviet period. Section B assesses the drive to weaken the ethnofederal

system under Putin and its implications for the future of Circassian

autonomy in Russia.

A. Background and context

A1. International context

Pure ethnofederations are very rare. I cannot think of any present-day

examples, and the only historical example that comes readily to mind is the

former Yugoslavia.

Asymmetric or mixed federations are somewhat more common. For

historical reasons, most examples are to be found in the (post-)communist

world. Besides the Russian Federation and the Chinese People’s Republic,

they include Uzbekistan (due to the special status of Karakalpakstan) and

Tajikistan (due to the special status of Gorno-Badakhshan).4 In recent years,

however, two Western federations have evolved toward asymmetric

ethnofederalism: Spain (due to the special status granted to Catalonia and

the Basque Country) and Canada (due to the special status granted to

francophone Quebec and the creation in 1999 of Nunavut as an Inuit

(Eskimo) homeland).5

We might also note that recently there has been considerable debate

among Western policy experts concerning the advantages and disadvantages

of applying ethnofederalist ideas to the design of constitutions for the

Western client states of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. For the first two

countries the advocates of ethnofederalism have in mind the creation of pure

ethnofederations,6 while in the case of Iraq they tend to think in terms of a

mixed federation with a special status for Kurdistan.7

 A2. Historical origin of ethnofederalism

The origin of ethnofederalist ideas can be traced to political debates

that took place in the years before World War One in two of the three vast

multi-ethnic empires that then still dominated the landscape of Eastern

Europe—tsarist Russia and Austro-Hungary. The best-known participants in

these debates were theorists of the international socialist (social democratic)

movement, but people representing other political tendencies also took part.

What most of the participants shared was the aspiration to avert

disintegration of the empires into independent ethnic states by transforming

them into democratic federations of a kind that would give some scope to

ethnic self-expression. This set of goals set them apart from imperial

conservatives, from the growing ethnonationalist movements of the day, and

also from socialists like Rosa Luxemburg who championed a “pure”

working class politics overriding ethnic loyalties.

Some pre-WWI ethnofederalists sought to satisfy ethnic aspirations by

creating autonomous ethnic territories (this was Lenin’s position). Others

argued that territorial solutions ignored the ethnically mixed composition of

many or most geographical areas and advocated alternative extraterritorial

schemes for autonomous ethnic institutions in the fields of education and

culture (the so-called “Austro-Marxists”).

The feared disintegration of Eastern Europe into ethnic states

occurred, rendering the old debates much less relevant—although

ethnofederalist ideas remained popular among dispersed ethnic minorities

(in particular, Germans and Jews). In Russia, however, the Bolsheviks

succeeded in reconstituting most of the empire in a new form. One of the

reasons for their success was the fact that they won widespread support

among non-Russian ethnic minorities by offering them territorial autonomy

within an ethnofederal framework—a concession that their White

adversaries in the civil war were unwilling to make. It was this situation that

gave rise to the Soviet ethnofederal model that still exists in certain parts of

the (post-)communist world, including the Russian Federation.8

A3. Evolution of ethnofederalism in Russia

The Soviet ethnofederal model has varied over time and space in

complex ways. The most important variable is the extent to which the formal

autonomy of ethnic territories has been filled with real content. In the 1920s

the administration of AETs was largely entrusted to indigenous Bolshevik

elites (where such elites existed) who were allowed considerable autonomy.
Under Stalin many members of these elites were repressed as “bourgeois

nationalists” and the real autonomy of AETs was restricted almost to

vanishing point. The post-Stalin period saw the gradual emergence of new

indigenous elites and a concomitant expansion of autonomy. Gorbachev’s

reform of the Soviet system led to acceleration of this trend, with many

AETs claiming “sovereignty” (which meant something less than complete

independence, though not much less).9 The process of autonomization

reached its peak under Yeltsin in the early 1990s, when many AETs were

able to negotiate special relations with the federal government that were

embodied in “federal treaties.” In the 2000s, Putin has put the process into

reverse and reduced the real autonomy of AETs to the lowest level since

Stalin. Nevertheless, the ethnofederal model has not been formally

abolished.

This overall picture of evolution over time conceals broad variation

among AETs. Thus, under Stalin some AETs were abolished altogether

when their titular peoples were deported to Central Asia, while others

survived relatively unscathed. Under Putin, again, some but not all AETs

have been eliminated (this time through absorption into larger federal units,

without deportations). In the post-Stalin period, some AETs acquired new

indigenous elites but others did not.10 And so on.

 A fair amount of evidence suggests that many members of the central

political elite in the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods have regarded the

ethnofederal system as an inconvenient and “irrational” encumbrance

inherited from the past and contemplated its complete abolition. Thus, it

appears that Yuri Andropov was considering this possibility; LDPR leader

Vladimir Zhirinovsky has always openly advocated elimination of the

AETs; and (as argued below) this was an unavowed goal of Putin’s

campaign to amalgamate existing federal units. Russian political scientist

Alexander Kynev argues that the aversion to asymmetric federalism is

largely psychological and emotional in nature, although it does have a

political dimension:

The “nonstandard” character of some regions is perceived as a defect

that violates symmetry. By the very fact of their existence, they seem

to justify the right of regions to develop their own political and

institutional mechanisms, thereby ... threatening the unity of the

country.11

One indirect reflection of elite hostility to territorial ethnic autonomy

in the post-Soviet period has been a revival of the “Austro-Marxist” idea of

extraterritorial ethnic autonomy. Widely dispersed ethnic groups like the

Tatars have been encouraged to form nationwide associations, which have

then been presented in the media as more genuinely representative of the

ethnic group concerned than the leadership of its AET in an attempt to

delegitimize the latter.

B. The Putin period

B1. The drive to weaken federalism

Putin’s drive to recentralize governance in Russia has greatly reduced

the autonomy not only of AETs but of all federal units. In order to

strengthen central control, he first installed “plenipotentiary representatives

of the president” in seven super-regions called “federal districts” over the

federal units. He refused to recognize the validity of the federal treaties

concluded by Yeltsin. The crucial step came in 2004, when popular elections

of heads of federal units (regional heads) were replaced by what amounted

to a system of presidential appointment following consultations with

members of the regional elite. The Council of the Federation (the upper

chamber of the Russian parliament) was also reformed in such a way that
regional leaders lost an important channel of influence over national policy.

These changes are leading toward the emergence of a new generation

of regional heads who function as bureaucrats, answerable solely to the

central authorities, rather than as politicians responsive to local pressures. It

should be emphasized, however, that this is a gradual process and remains

far from completion.

Thus, for a couple of years after acquiring the power to appoint

regional heads Putin used this new power with great caution. In almost all

cases, incumbents were confirmed in exchange for ritual expressions of

loyalty. These people still acted informally as representatives of local

interests. Only in 2007 did Putin start to use his power of appointment more

decisively to weaken regional elites by imposing “outsiders” as regional

heads—either unexpected local candidates lacking strong ties with the

established elite or people brought in from outside the region concerned.12

Let us take a few examples from the ethnic republics. Arsen Kanokov

was appointed president of Kabardino-Balkaria in 2005; he is a Circassian

(Kabardian) and was born in Kabardino-Balkaria, but had made his career as

a businessman and politician in Moscow. Similarly, Boris Ebzeev was

appointed president of Karachai-Cherkessia in 2008 after having pursued a

legal career outside the republic since the 1970s. He is a Karachai and lived
in Karachai-Cherkessia in his youth (he was born in Kyrgyzia following the

deportation of his people in 1944).13 A more extreme case is that of

Vyacheslav Nagovitsyn, an ethnic Russian from Tomsk who was appointed

president of Buryatia in 2007—the first non-titular president to be imposed

on an ethnic republic. A republic with a relatively weak ethnic elite was

chosen for this “experiment”: the Kremlin evidently fears the political

destabilization that might follow such a step in a republic with a stronger

ethnic elite (e.g., in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, or the North Caucasus).14

Nevertheless, even republics with well-entrenched ethnic elites have

been subjected to steady pressure to dilute their ethnic character. The

position of the languages of titular groups in the education system has been

weakened: they are still taught as special subjects, but their use as vehicles

of instruction in other subjects has been restricted. Hours of radio and

television broadcasting in these languages have also been reduced. Action

has been taken to block moves to replace the Cyrillic-based alphabets

imposed on these languages under Stalin by Latin-based alphabets.15

B2. The amalgamation campaign

Over the period 2003—2008 the Putin administration waged a

campaign to induce contiguous federal units to merge to form larger units.

The avowed rationale for reducing the number of federal units stressed

considerations of administrative convenience and economic efficiency, but

in fact all the mergers sought by the Kremlin involved the absorption of

AETs into larger neighboring non-ethnic territories, revealing that the

amalgamation campaign was actually a covert attack on ethnofederalism.16

The goals of the campaign were rather modest, its results even more

so. Ten AETs were slated for absorption—all nine of the autonomous

districts (the lowest level of AETs) plus one ethnic republic—Adygeia,

which was targeted because like the autonomous districts (ADs) but unlike

the other ethnic republics it was completely surrounded by a non-ethnic

territory (Krasnodar). When the campaign was abandoned in 2008, six ADs

had been eliminated, reducing the total number of federal units from 89 to

83. In the other three ADs as well as in Adygeia,17 resistance at both popular

and elite levels was sufficiently strong and persistent to thwart pressure from

the Kremlin.

The peoples that lost AETs as a result of this campaign—the Komi of

northeast European Russia, the Dolgans and Evenk of northern Siberia, the

Koryaks of Kamchatka in the Far East, and the Buryats of eastern Siberia18

—were all quite weak in terms of their low demographic weight and meager
economic resources. The three ADs that managed to survive (Nenets,

Khanty-Mansi, and Yamalo-Nenets) did so in part because the rich mineral

deposits under their soil placed their elites in a stronger economic and

political position.

It is also worth noting that the indigenous peoples of three of the

abolished ADs—the Koryak AD and the two Buryat ADs—did retain certain

rights under the terms of amalgamation, including reserved seats in the

regional legislatures and a special status for the areas that used to constitute

the ADs. Basically, their autonomy was reduced to a lower level rather than

totally abolished.19

B3. Implications: a half-sleeping institution

The weakening of federal (including ethnofederal) institutions in

Russia under Putin raises the question of whether Russia “really” remains a

federation (or ethnofederation). Has it not been reduced to a unitary state in

all but name?

Andrei Zakharov, a Russian expert on federal systems, answers this

question by resorting to the political-science concept of “sleeping

institutions.”20 A sleeping institution is an institution that has been rendered

inactive or emptied of substantive content but that maintains a formal legal

existence and may therefore be reactivated (or “reawakened” or “defrozen”)

under certain circumstances. Federalism, he argues, is currently such a

sleeping institution in Russia, but as the Putin regime loses its grip on power

—a development that Zakharov, like many other Russian analysts, expects

in the not too distant future—federalism can be expected to reawaken.

In light of the slow pace of the de-federalization process and the

limited success of the amalgamation campaign, it seems to me somewhat of

an exaggeration to say that Russian ethnofederalism today is “sleeping.”

Perhaps we could call it a “half-sleeping institution.” If so, we can be even

more confident that ethnofederalism and the system of autonomous

territories for indigenous ethnic groups will survive and eventually recover

when the pendulum of Russian politics swings back from centralization to

decentralization.

The Putin regime, while by no means democratic, is also far from

being a monolithic dictatorship. Power remains fairly widely diffused among

various national and regional political and economic elites with diverse and

often conflicting interests. Moreover, great care is taken to maintain the

appearance of legality and democracy. Thus, although the amalgamation

campaign was actually initiated by the Kremlin, the law of 2001 on which
the campaign was based21 required the initiative for each specific

amalgamation to come from the federal units concerned; consequently, even

passive resistance was capable of thwarting the Kremlin’s designs.

Zakharov’s explanation of the durability of ethnofederalism in Russia

is worthy of note. He observes that “theoretically” the Russian Constitution

could be radically revised to eliminate federal principles, and yet despite all

the “centralist rhetoric” of the Putin years this idea has never even been

seriously considered:

Much as it may wish to, the Russian elite today is in no position to

finish off the sleeper before he awakes. The main reason is that a

hypothetical suppression of federalism would unavoidably exacerbate

the so-called “ethnic question.” In terms of relations among Russia’s

ethnic groups, the imperial regime did not succeed in creating a

homogeneous nation-state, nor did the Soviet regime... This

circumstance ... has left a marked imprint on Russian federalism in

both its Soviet and its post-Soviet version. It sharply reduces the

number of options at the disposal of those who would like to reform

the administrative-territorial system, which constantly tends toward

the same solution—that of combining the territorial with the

 ethnoterritorial principle [i.e., asymmetric ethnofederalism—SS] in

organizing the country’s political space... In other words, we cannot

abolish Russian federalism.22

In other words, the determination of indigenous ethnic groups,

including the Circassians, to defend their territorial autonomy protects not

just that autonomy but Russian federalism in general.

Notes

1. I have coined this term because there is no official term that applies to all

types of AETs. Unofficially they are often referred to simply as

“autonomies.”

2. A single AET can be shared by two or even more specific ethnic groups.

The crucial feature that distinguishes it from a non-ethnic federal unit is that

it is not considered to belong to all resident citizens irrespective of ethnic

affiliation.

3. Heads of “non-ethnic” provinces are called governors. Heads of lower-

level AETs do not have a special title.

4. The autonomy of Karakalpakstan is purely formal in nature, and the

autonomy of China’s ethnic territories is also of course extremely limited.

Nevertheless, in legal-constitutional terms Uzbekistan and the PRC are

asymmetric federations. I have not included Ukraine, because although the

Crimea enjoys a special status it is not considered to belong to one or more

specific ethnic groups.

5. For more on the emergence of an ethnofederation in Spain, see:

http://www.queensu.ca/iigr/working/asymmetricfederalism/Agranoff2006.pd

f.

I do not count India and Pakistan as ethnofederations because

although both are federations containing many federal units with names that

refer to ethnic groups (Nagaland, Tamil Nadu, Balochistan, etc.) such units

have no special status and are not officially considered to belong to their

titular groups.

6. The leading advocate of ethnofederalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan is

Henry Hale (PONARS Policy Memo 208, Ethnofederalism: Lessons for

Rebuilding Afghanistan, Preserving Pakistan, and Keeping Russia Stable,

CSIS, November 1, 2001). For more critical views, see: Christa Deiwiks,

“The Curse of Ethnofederalism? Ethnic Group Regions, Subnational

Boundaries and Secessionist Conflict,” February 8, 2010, at

www.allacademic.com; Philip G. Roeder, “Ethnofederalism and the

Mismanagement of Nationalism,” at www.iis-db.stanford.edu.

7. See: Brendan O’Leary, John McGarry, and Khaled Salih, eds., The

Future of Kurdistan in Iraq (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).

8. There is an enormous literature of widely varying quality on the origin

and evolution of Soviet ethnofederalism and “nationalities policy.” On the

early Soviet period, I recommend: Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action

Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923—1939 (Cornell

University Press, 2001) and Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations:

Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Cornell

University Press, 2005).

9. This phenomenon came to be known as “the parade of sovereignties.”

10. In my essay “Tataria and Chechnya,” I contrast the position of Tataria

(now Tatarstan), which acquired a strong indigenous elite and significant

autonomy in the post-Stalin period, with that of Chechnya, which was not

allowed to do so (see the section entitled “Soviet Nationalities Policy” at

http://www.circassianworld.com/new/north-caucasus/1366-tataria-

chechnya.html).

11. Aleksandr Kynev, “Nedostizhimaia simmetriia: ob itogakh

‘ukrupneniia’ sub_”ektov Rossiiskoi Federatsii” [Unattainable Symmetry:

On the Results of the “Amalgamation” of Subjects of the Russian

Federation], Neprikosnovennyi zapas, 2010, no. 3.

12. These appointees are unofficially known as “Varangians”—the

Scandinavian Vikings who according to legend were summoned by the

warring Slavic tribes to establish the first Russian state in 862 (“Come and

rule over us!). For a more detailed account of the evolution of the practice of

appointing regional heads, see: Rostislav F. Turovskii, “How Russian

Governors Are Appointed: Inertia and Radicalism in Central Policy,”

Russian Politics & Law, January—February 2010, Vol. 48, No. 1, pp. 58-79.

13. For a survey of the character of ethnic elites in the AETs of the North

Caucasus and their relationships with appointed regional heads, see: Maksim

Vaskov, “The Upper Echelon of the Russian North Caucasus: Regionally

Specific Political and Sociocultural Characteristics,” Russian Politics &

Law, March—April 2010, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 50-67.

14. Perhaps the large-scale disturbances throughout Kazakhstan that

followed Gorbachev’s imposition of an ethnic Russian outsider as party boss

of the republic in December 1986 have not been completely forgotten.

15. Latin-based alphabets were favored in the early Soviet period. For more

on the “alphabet wars” in Tatarstan, see: Anthropology & Archeology of

Eurasia, Summer 2007, Vol. 46, No. 1.

16. For a detailed analysis of the amalgamation campaign and its results,

see: Aleksandr Kynev, “Nedostizhimaia simmetriia: ob itogakh

‘ukrupneniia’ sub_”ektov Rossiiskoi Federatsii” [Unattainable Symmetry:

On the Results of the “Amalgamation” of Subjects of the Russian

Federation], Neprikosnovennyi zapas, 2010, no. 3.

17. On the campaign to annex Adygeia to the Krasnodar Territory, see:

Matthew A. Light, “Territorial Restructuring in the Russian Federation and

the Future of the Circassian Republics,” JRL Research & Analytical

Supplement, No. 42, May 2008 (reproduced at

http://www.circassianworld.com/new/articles/1137-the-circassians-

ras.html#territorial). As Light notes, although Adygeia survived as a federal

unit its administration was weakened by the transfer to Krasnodar of offices

of key ministries such as customs and transportation.

18. The Buryats had a republic, Buryatia, plus two ADs (Ust-Ordyn Buryat

and Aga Buryat). They lost the ADs but kept (at least formally) the republic.

19. These arrangements are reminiscent of the old “autonomous counties”—

a level that used to exist below the autonomous districts. An example is the

Shapsugh autonomous county, comprising a small number of surviving

Circassian villages near Sochi, that existed in the early Soviet period.

20. Andrei Zakharov, “Rossiiskii federalizm kak ‘spiashchii’ institut”

[Russian Federalism as a Sleeping Institution], Neprikosnovennyi zapas,

2010, no. 3.

21. The Federal Constitutional Law No. 6-FKZ “On the Procedure for the

Admission or Internal Formation of a New Subject of the Russian

Federation.” The law was passed in December 2001 and amended in

November 2005.

22. Zakharov, op. cit..