U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

75–011 DTP WASHINGTON : 2001

S. HRG. 107–126

THE PUTIN ADMINISTRATION’S POLICIES

TOWARD NON-RUSSIAN REGIONS OF

THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JULY 18, 2001

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware, Chairman

PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin

PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota

BARBARA BOXER, California

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

BILL NELSON, Florida

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia

JESSE HELMS, North Carolina

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana

CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska

GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon

BILL FRIST, Tennessee

LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island

GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming

EDWIN K. HALL, Staff Director

PATRICIA A. MCNERNEY, Republican Staff Director

(II)

CONTENTS

Page

Balzer, Dr. Marjorie M., research professor and coordinator of Social, Ethnic,

and Regional Issues, Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European

Studies (CERES), Georgetown University, Washington, DC ........................... 22

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 25

Dunlop, Dr. John B., senior fellow, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution,

and Peace, Stanford University, Stanford, CA .................................................. 15

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 18

Goble, Paul A., director, Communications Department, Radio Free Europe/

Radio Liberty, Washington, DC .......................................................................... 31

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 35

Helms, Hon. Jesse, U.S. Senator from North Carolina, prepared statement ..... 3

Solnick, Dr. Steven L., associate professor of Political Science, Columbia University, New York, NY ......................................................................................... 5

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 8

(III)

(1)

THE PUTIN ADMINISTRATION’S POLICIES TOWARD NON-RUSSIAN REGIONS OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 2001

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m., in room

SD–419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

(chairman of the committee) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank my colleague, Senator Helms, and the

distinguished witnesses we have today for their patience. The Amtrak Metroliner was 20 minutes late today, and I do apologize.

Today we will consider the topic that is fundamental to an understanding of the Russian Federation, that is the policy of the

Moscow-based Federal Government toward the non-Russian regions of the country.

Russia, as everyone knows is, in geographical terms, by far the

largest country in the world. East to west, it spans 11 time zones.

North to south, it goes from the frozen Arctic Tundra to the subtropical Black Sea coast. In terms of nationality, the Russian Federation is equally diverse. Although the breakup of the Soviet

Union in December 1991 removed huge blocks of non-Russian peoples from Moscow’s rule, nearly 19 percent of the Russian Federation’s population remains non-Russian, and their birthrate exceeds

the Russian.

Many of these nationalities have small populations. Others, like

Tatars and Ukrainians, still number in the millions within the borders of the Federation, but there is not necessarily a direct correlation between their population size and their importance to the

Kremlin. The Yakut population of Sakha in eastern Siberia is relatively small, but their vast homeland contains extremely valuable

natural resources. More well known has been the ability of the

Chechens, a small group of people in the Caucasus, to bring the entire Russian military machine to its knees.

Our distinguished witnesses today will examine how the Putin

administration’s policies toward the one-fifth of its citizens that is

ethnically non-Russian differs or, in some respects, resembles pre1991 Soviet nationalities policies. This hearing is the first in a series that the full committee plans to hold on what we are terming

‘‘Putin’s Russia.’’ Later this summer and in the fall, we will hold

hearings on political conditions, on economic reform, on civil society, culture, and religious life, and on Russia’s foreign policy.

2

Throughout my 29 years in the Senate, I have consistently maintained that there is no international relationship, no bilateral relationship, more important to the United States than that with Russia. Much has changed in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet

Union, but I believe the importance of the bilateral relationship endures. I hope today’s hearing will constitute an outstanding beginning for an important new venture on this hearing regime that we

plan on moving forward with.

I now yield to my friend, and again apologize to him for keeping

him waiting.

Senator HELMS. Mr. Chairman, to the contrary, I genuinely appreciate your scheduling this meeting. We had requested this.

And before I begin, let me point out, as I have done many times,

that this committee welcomes the young people who attend these

hearings. We have several in the back there and I want to be sure

that they can hear what’s going on? Nod if you can. Do you want

us to cut it off?

No. Well, you are welcome. And these witnesses are great patriots, and they have done a great deal of work on the subject, as you

will understand as they proceed. Now, I welcome, of course, the

four people there, the lady and three gentlemen. I’m grateful for

the enormous amount of research and writing that every one of you

has contributed to the field of Russian studies and U.S./Russian relations. And I am certainly aware that some, if not all, of you have

traveled to Washington from all parts of America to share with us

this morning your views regarding relations between the Kremlin

and the Federation’s non-Russian regions.

Now, how the Kremlin addresses the cultures and potentials and

grievances and aspirations of its non-Russian peoples is not merely

a measurement of the state of democracy in Russia, or the lack

thereof. What the Kremlin does also affects the evolution and longterm prospects of democratic reforms in that country. Repression

and political and cultural heavy-handedness can unavoidably leave

the non-Russian populations of the Russian Federation

disenfranchised and resentful, and that is an obvious recipe for unrest and instability, both within and beyond the Federation’s borders.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in Chechnya, where

President Putin continues to execute a savage, indiscriminate war

against the Chechen people. This bloodthirsty campaign includes a

systematic and obvious effort to strip Chechnya of its cultural heritage. Russian forces have obliterated Chechen religious and historic sites in an effort to transform Chechnya into a physical and

cultural wasteland.

Since 1999, Russian forces have caused the deaths of more than

30,000 non-combatants. The dislocation of 600,000 civilians has

been caused by the Russian forces, as well as the illegal incarceration of 20,000 Chechens, of which the Russian forces boast. They

brag about that. And the countless reports of rape and torture and

summary executions committed by the Russian forces complete this

ugly scenario. And all this bloody carnage has been imposed upon

a population of just one million people. Today, the vicious Putin

war in Chechnya continues unabated with no inclination even to

try to bring this tragic war to a negotiated and peaceful end.

3

For a comparative measure of what Mr. Putin has done in

Chechnya, one has only to look to Kosovo where Milosevic’s ethnic

cleansing has caused at least 10,000 deaths—at least 10,000—and

the illegal detention and torture of thousands of Albanians.

So, Mr. Chairman, this hearing is well timed. And, again, I appreciate your scheduling it, because 3 days from now, on Friday,

the G–7 will meet in Genoa, Italy. The G–7 leaders are certain to

celebrate the recent incarceration of Mr. Milosevic; and when they

do, I prayerfully hope that, when they sit across the table from the

Russian President in the so-called G–8 summit, they will not forget

that Mr. Putin’s unjustified war against the Chechen people has

been far more savage and far more devastating than the destruction Milosevic—bad as he is, and he is terrible—has wreaked upon

Kosovo.

As today’s witnesses are, no doubt, aware, the Union of Councils

for Soviet Jews has issued a report documenting official discrimination and mistreatment of Chechens throughout the Russian Federation. The report makes a simple, but profound, point: If a government mistreats one ethnic or religious group, that same government is likely to subject other groups to similar persecution in the

future. In light of what is happening in Chechnya, that is spinechilling.

I ask that the balance of my statement be made a part of the

record, and I thank the Chair.

[The prepared statement of Senator Helms follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JESSE HELMS

Mr. Chairman, I genuinely appreciate your accommodating our request to schedule this hearing this morning.

Obviously, I, too, welcome the members of our panel to this morning’s session of

the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

I am grateful for the enormous amount of research and writing each of you has

contributed to the field of Russian studies and U.S.-Russian affairs. I am certainly

aware that some of you have traveled to Washington from all parts of the country

to share with us this morning your views regarding relations between the Kremlin

and the Federation’s non-Russian regions.

How the Kremlin addresses the cultures, potentials, grievances and aspirations of

its non-Russian peoples is not merely a measurement of the state of democracy in

Russia or lack thereof; what the Kremlin does also affects the evolution and longterm prospects of democratic reform in that country.

Repression and political and cultural heavy-handedness can unavoidably leave the

non-Russian populations of the Russian Federation disenfranchised and resentful—

and that is an obvious recipe for unrest and instability both within and beyond the

Federation’s borders.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in Chechnya, where President Putin

continues to execute a savage, indiscriminate war against the Chechen people. This

blood thirsty campaign includes a systematic, and obvious, effort to strip Chechnya

of its cultural heritage. Russian forces have obliterated Chechen religious and historic sites in an effort to transform Chechnya into a physical and cultural wasteland.

Since 1999, Russian forces have caused the deaths of more than 30,000 non-combatants, the dislocation of 600,000 civilians, and the illegal incarceration of 20,000

Chechens of which the Russian forces boast. The countless reports of rape, torture

and summary executions committed by Russian forces complete this ugly scenario.

All this bloody carnage has been imposed upon a population of just one million

people. Today, the vicious Putin war in Chechnya continues unabated, with no inclination to even try to bring this tragic war to a negotiated and peaceful end.

For a comparative measure of what Mr. Putin has done in Chechnya, one only

has to look to Kosovo were Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing has caused at least

10,000 deaths and the illegal detention and torture of thousands of Albanians.

4

So Mr. Chairman, this hearing is well timed. Three days from now, on Friday,

the G–7 will meet in Genoa, Italy. The G–7 leaders are certain to celebrate the recent incarceration of Mr. Milosevic.

When they do, I prayerfully hope that when they sit across the table from the

Russian President in the so-called G–8 summit, they will not forget that Mr. Putin’s

unjustified war against the Chechen people has been far more savage and devastating than the destruction Milosevic has wreaked upon Kosovo.

As today’s witnesses are no doubt aware, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews

has issued a report documenting official discrimination and mistreatment of

Chechens throughout the Russian Federation. The report makes a simple, but profound point: If a government mistreats one ethnic or religious group, that same government is likely to subject other groups to similar persecution in the future.

In light of what is happening in Chechnya today, that is spinechilling.

We have genuine humanitarian and strategic interest in this conflict. The West,

including the United States, should apply all the political and economic leverage

that can be mustered to encourage, and if necessary leverage, President Putin to

peacefully and immediately end the war in Chechnya.

This war is not only perpetuating and exacerbating a humanitarian crisis, it is

sowing the seeds of hatred that will poison relations between the Kremlin and the

Federation’s non-Russian peoples for generations to come. Each day this war proceeds, it further harms the prospects for democracy and rule of law in Russia.

For all these reasons, I look forward to the testimonies of our witnesses. I know

they will share with us their insights into what President Putin’s treatment of

Chechnya portends for Russia’s struggle to evolve into a stable democracy.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it will be. And I might add

that the reason we are having this hearing today, and the reason

we have started with Chechnya is because of the distinguished

Senator from North Carolina and his intense interest and his request that this be done, and I happen to agree with him.

Senator Lugar, would you like to make an opening statement?

Senator LUGAR. No, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to

hearing the witnesses.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me say a brief word about our witnesses

today. We are fortunate today having four of this country’s outstanding experts on the nationalities of the Russian Federation. In

the interest of time, I am not going to recount their impressive professional histories, except to say that the witnesses represent three

leading American universities—Columbia, Georgetown, and Stanford—as well as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an indispensable

broadcasting and research organization.

I am told that there has been some prehearing coordination

among the witnesses and with the committee’s staff, so we will proceed in the order that they have suggested.

We will begin with Dr. Solnick, associate professor of Political

Science at Columbia University; then Dr. Dunlop, a senior fellow

at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University; and Dr. Balzer, research professor and coordinator

of Social, Ethnic, and Regional Issues in the Center for Eurasian,

Russian, and East European Studies at Georgetown University;

and an old friend—and it is good to see you again, Paul—Mr. Paul

Goble, who is the Director of the Communications Department of

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, here in Washington.

So if we begin in that order, I would appreciate it, and we will

hear all of your testimonies, and then we will move to questions.

Thank you.

5

STATEMENT OF DR. STEVEN L. SOLNICK, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,

NEW YORK, NY

Dr. SOLNICK. Thank you Mr. Chairman, Senator Helms, members of the committee, I would like to thank you for inviting me

to address this topic this morning. It is a great privilege to be here.

When many observers of Russia think of policy toward non-Russians in the Russian Federation, the first image that does come to

mind is of the senseless carnage in Chechnya. Russia’s war there,

of course, has been cruel beyond measure, as Senator Helms was

just commenting, and it has taken a heavy toll on both Russian

and Chechen lives. In my remarks this morning, however, I would

like to try and place Chechnya in context. I would like to discuss

how the Federal Government, beyond Chechnya, in Russia, has

fashioned a surprisingly effective policy of carrots and sticks aimed

at holding together the multi-ethnic patchwork inherited from the

Soviet Union. I will suggest the deadlock and violence that has

characterized the Chechen conflict almost from the start are the exception rather than the rule in Russian regional politics today.

Throughout much of the rest of Russian Federation, non-Russian

enclaves continue to be recognized by the Russian constitution despite their dubious historical and demographic foundations, and

non-Russian elites continue to enjoy significant power and prestige

within the Russian Federal structure. Ironically, the disconnectedness of the Chechen problem from the rest of regional policy in

Russia today simply underscores the pointlessness of the war in

Chechnya.

In the prepared statement I brought to the committee, I have

tried to provide some details of the Soviet origins of Russia’s Federal structure, Yeltsin’s policy of cooptation, Putin’s steps toward

recentralization. Rather than summarize those remarks here,

though, I would like to focus on just three main points, and to

make them a bit livelier, I would like to present three common misconceptions about non-Russians in the Russian Federation.

First, as you all know, Chechnya is just one of 21 autonomous

republics within the Russian Federation. Russia inherited a complex Federal structure from the Soviet Union: 21 republics, 11 autonomous districts, and 57 other predominantly Russian administrative units known as oblasts or krais. This Federal structure is

a direct legacy of Bolshevik nationality policy which had declared

that each of the major ethnic groups in the Soviet Union had its

own homeland within the Soviet federation; but, of course, the centralized institution of the Communist Party made that federation

something of a sham.

When the Communist Party collapsed at the end of the 1980’s,

however, the leaders of these ethnic republics within Russia found

themselves in a position to play Boris Yeltsin off against Mikhail

Gorbachev to win concessions for themselves. And ultimately, in a

phrase he would come to regret, Yeltsin told the leaders of the ethnic enclaves to ‘‘take as much sovereignty as you can swallow,’’ and

he preserved their special status in a Federal treaty in 1992 and

subsequently in the Russian Constitution of 1993. The resulting

state structure, in the words of one Russian observer, left 23 milVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:47 Sep 26, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 75011 SFRELA1 PsN: SFRELA1
6

lion Russians living in a federation—that’s the ethnic enclaves— and 124 million living in a unified state.

Now, a common misconception about this period, however, the

late 1980’s and early 1990’s, is that these ethnic territories were

hotbeds of separatism during this period. With the notable exception of Chechnya—and even that is a qualified exception—none of

the leaders of these ethnic republics demanded independence from

Russia during this period. Instead, what they demanded was higher status and special privileges within the Russian Federation.

Furthermore, it is even misleading to speak of these republics as

non-Russian territories. A single non-Russian nationality comprises

an absolute majority in just five of the 21 republics; and in 12 of

them, Russians are the largest ethnic group.

A second misconception concerns the relationship between

Yeltsin and the leaders of these republics under the 1993 constitution. Once that constitution was ratified, Yeltsin began signing additional bilateral agreements, commonly referred to as ‘‘treaties,’’ with the leaders of several republics. The first of these, with

Tatarstan, granted the Tatars constitutional and fiscal privileges

that offended many of the Russian regional leaders in the oblasts.

It also opened the floodgates to similar deals with other leaders of

republics. The failure to agree on a similar treaty with Chechnya

helped trigger the first Chechen war.

The misconception about this period, in my opinion, is that

Yeltsin and the Federal Government were essentially powerless to

resist the regional elites during the 1990’s. In fact, I believe, the

Federal Government was employing a rather sophisticated strategy

of coopting individual regional leaders through selective distribution of economic and political benefits. The scheme was improvised,

and it was complex. For instance, when interbudgetary transfers

became more transparent, under pressure from the IMF, the Federal Government shifted to delivering subsidies within the Federal

budget by paying some regional debts on time and leaving others

unpaid. Eventually, the potential for solidarity among regional

leaders in the Federation to oppose the Federal Government was

eroded by this divide-and-rule strategy employed by the Kremlin.

Eventually, as the Kremlin began signing treaties with oblasts as

well as republics, the Russian/non-Russian distinction began to lose

its importance within the Federation. And by the time of the 1999

elections, when regional leaders tried and failed to create a political

party to capture the Federal Government, the most important division among regions within the Russian Federation was between

rich and poor, not between Russian and non-Russian.

That brings me to the final misconception I wish to address, that

Vladimir Putin has launched a campaign of re-centralization at the

expense of regional power. It is certainly true that one of the first

issues addressed by Putin after becoming President in March 2000

was the strengthening of the ‘‘vertical of Federal control,’’ as he put

it. There were three main components to this. First, under the reform of the Federation Council, regional Governors, both Russian

and non-Russian, no longer automatically sit in the Council; and

the Council is, in effect, Russia’s Senate. Second, under a new procedure for removing elected regional officials, Putin can dismiss regional Governors or republic Presidents who issue decrees in violaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:47 Sep 26, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 75011 SFRELA1 PsN: SFRELA1
7

tion of the Federal constitution or who face criminal charges. Finally, a new districting plan has created seven super-regions headed by Presidential representatives whose job it is to ensure that

Federal laws take precedence over regional laws. Five of the seven

men that Putin has appointed to be these representatives in these

regions come from the KGB and the military.

While Putin is certainly keen on strengthening vertical accountability within Federal institutions, however, he has continued

Yeltsin’s strategy of coopting regional leaders wherever and whenever possible. He has changed Federal law to allow certain regional

leaders, including the President of Tatarstan, to run for third or

even fourth terms. He has limited success in promoting his own

candidates in gubernatorial races, ultimately working with, rather

than defeating, financial and industrial elites in the more powerful

territories.

In the sole instance where he forced a corrupt Governor out of

office, he did so not by invoking his new powers to fire the Governor, but by offering him a powerful and lucrative job as head of

the Federal Fisheries Committee. That is Yevgenii Nazdratenko in

Primorskii Krai. So while Putin’s team has prosecuted a number of

deputy Governors on corruption charges, he, the President, and his

seven envoys have not moved to redistribute property at the regional level in any meaningful way. And so the political and economic machines remain intact.

By allowing non-Russian elites in these republics to preserve

their political, economic, and media power bases in the regions, he

has reduced the level of center-regional conflict significantly since

coming to power, and he has assembled a regional consensus behind his drive to consolidate power at the center.

This should not be confused with democracy or federalism as we

know it. The emerging political structure in Russia preserves the

power of elites, in large part by disenfranchising large segments of

society, undermining civil rights, and curtailing media freedoms.

What I want to suggest here is that this project has lately become

a cooperative effort, by Federal and regional elites, Russian and

non-Russian, rather than a project directed by the Federal leaders

against regional leaders.

One concluding thought. The emerging consensus between Federal and regional elites over the nature of the Russian state only

deepens the tragedy of Chechnya. There can be and should be no

illusion that the Russian Government’s actions in Chechnya are

necessary or even useful for preserving the territorial integrity of

Russia. The Russian Army is not making an example of Chechnya

for the benefit of other non-Russian regional leaders. Those leaders

have long since made their peace with the Kremlin. As an

antiterrorism campaign, the second Chechen war has been counterproductive; but, even worse, as a political statement, it has been

pointless. As it has been for over a century, Chechnya remains a

special case in Russia, and it merits a special solution to end the

conflict there.

Let me thank you again for the invitation to appear, and I look

forward to the discussion.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Solnick follows:]

8

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. STEVEN L. SOLNICK

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the invitation to discuss the current state of Russian

policy toward the non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation. It is a great

privilege to appear before this committee.

The post-Soviet Russian Federation—with its vast territorial scope, complex political structure and volatile ethnic mix—faces state-building challenges that should

not be underestimated. Over the last 7 year as, much of the world’s attention has

focused on Russia’s brutal and senseless war in Chechnya as the most visible symbol of Moscow’s continuing oppression of non-Russian minorities on Russian

territority. While the carnage in Chechnya merits this scrutiny on its own terms,

it would be a mistake to treat Chechnya as either an example or a harbinger of Russia’s broader policy toward its non-Russian regions.

In my statement today, I will attempt to place Chechnya in context. I will suggest

that the irreconcilable differences and endemic violence that has characterized the

Chechen conflict almost from the start are the exception rather than the rule in

Russian regional politics today. Throughout much of the rest of Russia, non-Russian

enclaves continue to be recognized by the Russian constitution, despite their dubious

historical and demographic foundations, and non-Russian elites continue to enjoy

significant power and prestige within the federal structure. Ironically, the disconnectedness of the Chechen problem from the rest of regional policy in Russia

today simply underscores the pointlessness of that bloody conflict.

I will begin by briefly reviewing the origins of the ‘‘republics’’ that survive as nonRussian enclaves in modern Russia, and sketching the outlines of Yeltsin’s strategy

of co-opting regional elites—Russian and non-Russian alike. I will then discuss in

a bit more detail Putin’s attempts to recentralize the federal structure, with particular attention to implications for the non-Russian regional elites. I will conclude

with a few thoughts about the future of Russia’s federal system and the significance

of the Chechen wars.

ROOTS OF RUSSIA’S ASYMMETRIC FEDERAL STRUCTURE

The federal structure of the Soviet state was based upon a detailed hierarchy of

federal sub-units: 15 union republics, contained 20 autonomous republics and over

120 administrative-territorial ‘‘oblasts’’ and ‘‘krais.’’ As a legacy of Bolshevik nationality policy, it was a multi-ethnic federation in which major ethnic groups were associated with particular national ‘‘homelands’’ that received varying degrees of formal self-rule and cultural autonomy. In reality, however, Russians constituted the

majority in many of these autonomous ‘‘ethnic’’ territories, and the Russian-dominated Communist Party never sacrificed its absolute control.

In June 1990, the Russian Federations newly elected legislature followed the lead

of the Caucasian and Baltic republics and declared Russia to be ‘‘sovereign.’’ The

most important implication of this declaration was that Russia’s laws were to take

precedence over Soviet laws, and that Russia was to control the disposition of natural resources on her territory.

This action was quickly mimicked by the 16 ‘‘autonomous republics’’ within the

borders of the Russian Federation, eager to seize the opportunity to gain greater

control over their own affairs. Yeltsin encouraged them, reluctant to provide Gorbachev with any precedent for recentralization; in August 1990, he famously told the

leaders of the republics to ‘‘take as much autonomy as you can swallow.’’ By October

of 1990, eleven of these sixteen republics had passed their own sovereignty declarations, and by the beginning of 1991 all had followed suit. This ‘‘parade of

sovereignties’’ appeared at the time—and has been interpreted since—as a direct

threat to the territorial integrity of Russia, though the declarations generally

stopped short of declaring ‘‘independence’’ from Russia.

Viewed in their historical context, the sovereignty declarations were actually quite

limited. In April 1990, the all-Union Supreme Soviet had passed a law intended to

serve as the blueprint for a new Federal Treaty sought by Gorbachev. According to

the new law, the ‘‘autonomous’’ republics were granted equal status to union republics in the economic and socio-cultural spheres, and were instructed to sign bilateral

and multilateral ‘‘treaties’’ with their parent union republics to clarify the consensual nature of their subordination. Perhaps most important, the autonomous republics were invited to take their seats alongside the union republics as equal parties

in negotiating the new Federal Treaty to preserve the Soviet Union.

Thus, the sovereignty declarations of the autonomous republics appear to be an

attempt to upgrade their status within a federal structure rather than any bid to

leave a federal structure. The omission of any mention of Russia in Tatarstan’s declaration, for instance, which is often taken as a sign of Tatar separatism, is more

accurately seen as a bid for Tatarstan to join the new Soviet federation on equal

9

footing with Russia. Yeltsin’s encouragement of these declarations was a clear attempt to outbid Gorbachev; Yeltsin proposed his own ‘‘Union Treaty’’ in January

1991 in an attempt to foreclose Gorbachev’s options.

For their part, the autonomous republics were able to goad the Russian and Soviet governments into a high stakes bidding war. In 1990, for instance, Yeltsin

promised the government of Sakha/Yakutia, home to most of the Soviet Union’s diamonds, that it could keep a share of its diamonds for independent sale. Sakha subsequently accepted Russian sovereignty and ceased diamond shipments through Soviet channels. Eleven regions sought and received ‘‘free enterprise zone’’ status, offering tax and regulatory concessions. Tatarstan, for its part, began negotiating a

bilateral treaty with the Russian Federation, as dictated by the April 1990 law.

The abortive coup of August 1991 put an abrupt end to the bidding free-for-all.

The December 1991 agreements establishing the Commonwealth of Independent

States effectively ended any hope for a confederation retaining a Soviet center. From

this point on, the Russian government bargained directly with provincial leaders

over the institutions of the new Russian state.

YELTSIN’S REGIONAL POLICY

When Russia became independent at the end of 1991, it consisted of twenty-one

autonomous regions (all but one of these were ultimately reclassified as autonomous

republics), ten autonomous okrugs, and 57 additional administrative units (oblasts,

krais, and federal cities) for a total of 88 subnational units. While the Soviet state

had accorded ‘‘autonomous’’ status to regions based on their designation as national

homelands for specific ethnic groups, these subnational units did not represent indigenous islands in a Russian sea. On the contrary, Russians constituted a plurality

of the population in twelve of the ‘‘ethnic’’ republics, and an absolute majority in

nine of these. In only five republics did a single titular nationality comprise an absolute majority of the population. The national composition of the republics is shown

in Table 1.

TABLE 1: ETHNIC CHARACTERISTICS OF REPUBLICS (C. 1992) 1

Territory Pop. (,000) % Russian % Titular (and Other) Nationality

Dagestan .................. 2,098 9.2 Avar 28%, Dargin 16%, Kumyk

13%, Legzin 11%, etc.

Ingushetia ................ 304 13,3 74.5

Chechnya (Ichkeria) 862 24.8 66.0 (NB: Pre War figures)

Chuvashia ................ 1,338 26.7 67.8

North Ossetia .......... 664 29.9 53.0

Tuva ......................... 309 32.0 64.3

Kabardino-Balkaria 790 32.0 Kabardin-48.2/Balkar-9.4

Kalmykia ................. 318 37.7 45.4

Bashkortostan ......... 4,080 39.3 21.9 (Tatar: 28.4)

Karachai-Cherkessia 436 42.4 Karachai-31.2/Cherkess-9.7

Tatarstan ................. 3,642 43.3 48.5

Mari-El ..................... 764 47.5 43.3 (Tatar 6)

Sakha ....................... 1,094 50.3 33.4

Komi ......................... 1,172 57.7 23.3 (Ukranian 8.3)

Udmurtia ................. 1,640 58.9 30.9 (Tatar 6.9)

Altai Repub. ............ 202 60.4 31.0

Mordovia .................. 950 60.8 32.5 (Tatar 4.9)

Adygea ..................... 450 68.0 22.1

Buriatia .................... 1,050 69.9 24.0

Karelia ..................... 780 73.6 10.1 (Belorussian 7.0)

Khakassia ................ 584 79.5 11.1

1Data from ‘‘Political Almanac of Russia’’ (Moscow Carnegie Center 1997). The table does

not include the 10 autonomous okrugs. Most of these territories, while vast, are sparsely populated (150 thousand or fewer residents). Two exceptions are the Khanti-Mansi AOk, with its

vast oil reserves, and the Yamalo-Nenets AOk with its natural gas fields. Both are subordinated administratively to Tyumen oblast. Khanti-Mansi has a population of 1.3 million, of

which fewer than 2% are Khanti or Mansi. Yamalo-Nenets has a population of 480,000, of

which just 5% are of the Nentsi people (the vast majority of the population in both okrugs is

Russian).

Since the late Gorbachev era, relations between Yeltsin’s administration and Russia’s 89 regional administrations have been characterized by extensive and proVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:47 Sep 26, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 75011 SFRELA1 PsN: SFRELA1
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tracted negotiation. Central and provincial leaders have bargained over division of

budgetary funds, natural resources, policy jurisdictions, personnel appointments,

and other questions of fiscal and policy competence. This period can be divided into

two distinct phases, marked by different strategies pursued by federal leaders.

While non-Russian regions received certain privileges as a group in the first phase,

by the end of Yeltsin’s first presidential term the dominant cleavages in the Federation were between rich and poor regions rather than between Russian and non-Russian regions.

1990–1994: Collective Bargaining

Beginning with the declarations of sovereignty of the Russia’s ethnic republics in

1990, the federal government in Moscow pursued a strategy of bargaining collectively with groups of regions. In 1992, it signed three ‘‘Federation Treaties’’ to serve

as the basis for a new Russian constitution. Similar but distinct documents were

signed with Russia’s ethnic republics, predominantly Russian oblast/krais, and

sparsely populated autonomous okrugs. In doing this, federal authorities effectively

defmed three major groupings of regions which it would recognize in subsequent collective bargaining.

During 1992 and 1993, the heads of Russia’s ethnic republics met regularly and

defined a coherent bargaining bloc in their relations with the federal center. Oblasts

and krais were unable to match their coherence, despite abortive efforts to define

analogous oblast-centered ‘‘republics’’ (like the Urals Republic led by Sverdlovsk oblast or the Far Eastern Republic led by Primorskii krai). Unlike these ad hoc collaborations based on geographic proximity, the collective bloc formed by the ethnic

republics had readily-identifiable markers of membership: regions defined constitutionally as ‘‘republics’’ could easily recognize their stake in the success of the bargaining unit. When Moscow granted a concession to one ‘‘republic,’’ all other republics could and did claim it as their constitutional entitlement as well. As a consequence, ethnic republics retained a disproportionate share of both fiscal subsidies

and policy autonomy through 1993.

1994–1998: Bilateralism

After the ethnic republics failed to collectively support Yeltsin in his showdown

with the Russian parliament in 1993, the center moved to dismantle the structural

advantages enjoyed by ethnic republics. It did so by attacking the unifying principle

of their bargaining unit—their common stake in securing collective privileges.

Beginning with the 1994 Bilateral Treaty with Tatarstan, the Kremlin began distributing resources and autonomy to regions based on individual rather than collective deals. Beginning first with selected republics, and then extending the practice

in 1996 to selected oblasts and krais, the federal government began defining its relations with specific regions through direct bilateral negotiations. As a consequence,

it was able to restrict the privileges enjoyed by some republics without incurring the

ire of other republics fearing their privileges were also at stake.

Thus, in 1997, the Kremlin was able to restructure Sakha’s highly lucrative diamond marketing concession without encountering any protests of solidarity from

other resource-rich regions. Perhaps most strikingly, the Kremlin was able to prosecute its brutal war against Chechnya (with whom treaty negotiations broke down)

without encountenng united protests from other Islamic republics. In instances like

these, it was clear than regions were conceiving and structuring their relations with

federal officials bilaterally rather than collectively. By June 1998, more than half

of the 89 subjects of the Russian Federations had signed bilateral ‘‘treaties’’ with

the federal government.

1998 and the Limits of Bilateralism

Beginning in 1998, the Kremlin’s reliance on bilateral bargaining with the regions

became increasingly costly. By the spring of 1998, the central government was already losing access to the policy levers it needed to maintain a strategy of bilateral

bargaining with regions. The fiscal collapse of August 1998 thus created a political

as well as economic crisis by depriving the federal center of the few resources it

could dole out to keep regional leaders in line.

Especially troubling to the Kremlin was the emergence of ‘‘governors’ blocs’’ as players in the 1999 parliamentary election. While these were essentially loose alliances with overlapping memberships, parties like ‘‘Gobs Rossiia’’ and ‘‘Vsia Rossiia’’ amount to regional blocs defined not by inherited constitutional status (like the

heads of republics) or accidents of contiguity (like Urals or Far Eastern associations). Instead, these new unions of governors represent political alliances specifically aimed at influencing the post-Yeltsin succession. The most successful of them

was the OVR bloc—Otechesvlo-Vsia Rossiia—led by Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov

and former Prime Minister Yevgenii Pnmakov. Several non-Russian republican

11

‘‘presidents’’ including Shaimiev of Tatarstan, Rakhimov of Bashkortostan, and

Aushev of Jngushetiia—were prominent in the formation of this bloc, along with

leaders of such rich regions as Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Nizhnii Novgorod. Their

cooperation underlined the degree to which Russian/non-Russian cleavages no

longer defined the federal landscape in Russia.

A bloc of regional leaders, united across geographic areas and ethnic differences,

represented the Kremlin’s worst nightmare as the 2000 presidential elections approached. With few carrots to offer those regional elites who remained loyal, the federal center instead used sticks to disrupt the emerging solidarity of the periphery.

The Center’s Response: A Bloc of its Own

Yeltsin’s response to the new regional threat was swift and dramatic, and it led

directly to the emergence of Vladimir Putin as a national politician. It came in two

phases, as two challengers ‘‘from then regions’’ commanded the attention of the

Kremlin.

Lebed: In early 1998, the election of Alexander Lebed as governor of Krasnoyarsk

krai raised the first real specter of a credible presidential challenge mounted by a

‘‘regional leader.’’ Lebed’s election led swiftly to the dismissal of Victoria Mitina,

Yeltsin’s deputy chief of staff for regional policy.

In Mitina’s place, Yeltsin elevated Vladimir Putin from his post as head of the

fiscal oversight Control Commission of the presidential administration. Putin’s previous responsibilities had included the investigation of misuse of budget funds by

regional leaders, and his appointment raised fears of an imminent vendetta against

regional opponents of Yeltsin. So palpable was this fear that Putin’s first act in his

new job was to hold a press conference to avow that he considered no governor to

be ‘‘enemies’’ of the administration, regardless of their views.

Putin’s next major initiative, however, signaled a new strategy by Yeltsin’s team.

Yeltsin presided over a meeting of the heads of the non-Russian republics, the same

body coopted by Yeltsin during the early days of his presidency. According to published reports, Yeltsin made a ‘‘separate deal’’ with the republic heads, promising

additional transfers of federal property and a renewed dedication to protecting privileges granted in earlier negotiations. The meeting foreshadowed a return to the cooptation model of the 1990-94.

Luzhkov: By early 1999, the chief presidential challenger ‘‘from the regions’’ was no longer Lebed but Yurii Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow. Luzhkov’s bid was more

threatening to the Kremlin, since it linked a charismatic politician to a bloc of governors—Vsia Rossiia—formed to contest the 1999 parliamentary elections. His failure to derail the Luzhkov-Vsia Rossiia alliance in August 1999 cost Sergei

Stepashin his job as Prime Minister.

Stepashin’s replacement—Putin—wasted little time in defusing the momentum

generated by the Luzhkov-Primakov OVR bloc. Shortly after replacing Stepashin,

Vladimir Putin attended a meeting of the ‘‘Siberian Accord,’’ an inter-regional association in which Lebed has played a prominent role. Putin assured the Siberian

leaders that the federal government would give priority to Siberian development.

More significantly, he signaled that regional policy was and would remain near the

top of his agenda.

By the end of September, Putin’s supporters had launched a new governors’ bloc,

labeled Yedinstvo, or Unity, to provide what he termed ‘‘an alternative’’ to OVR.

More significantly, by the end of September the Russian army was once again on

the move in Chechnya, no longer on a mission to preserve the Federation but rather

to combat domestic terrorism. As Yeltsin’s poll numbers began to climb, driven by

the Chechen war, the invincibility of the OVR alliance looked less and less certain.

Throughout the fall, regional leaders quietly withdrew their support from OVR and

began to climb aboard the Unity bandwagon, reluctant to be buried under what increasingly looked like a Putin landslide. After the December 1999 Duma elections,

Luzhkov retreated from the national political scene, eager to reach some modus

vivendi with Putin that would allow him to protect his economic and political power

base in Moscow. After Yeltsin’s surprise resignation at the end of 1999, OVR failed

to offer its own candidate for the presidency, and the regional alliance that looked

so threatening to Yeltsin six month earlier faded into the background of the Duma.

CENTER-REGIONAL RELATIONS UNDER PUTIN

As one of his first acts as president, Putin moved to restructure the institutions

that regulate center-periphery relations in the Russian Federation. In part, Putin

has expressed a straightforward concern that the ‘‘vertical’’ dimension of power

must be strengthened if federal laws are to be implemented. More subtly, however,

he has also warned of the dangers of a fragmented legal or economic space in Russia. Putin has forcefully argued that foreign investors will continue to shun Russia

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unless it presents itself as a unified market and an arena in which property rights

are equally respected in all regions.

To these ends, Putin has begun dismantling the patchwork of bilateral agreements and treaties concluded by Yeltsin with many of Russia’s regions. One of

Putin’s first acts as President was to pressure Bashkortostan’s president Rakhimov

to relinquish that republic’s special tax status and to reintegrate itself into unified

national fiscal system. According to Putin, president Shaimiev of Tatarstan similarly agreed to forego some of the benefits granted to the republic in its landmark

1994 treaty, though negotiations between Tatar and federal officials have been contentious over the past year.

More formally, Putin has introduced a series of laws and decrees that alter the

essential relationship between regional governors and the federal government. Laws

on the Federation Council and on removing elected governors from office encountered some resistance from the Federation Council (the upper house of the legislature, composed ex officio of the governors and regional assembly speakers of each

of Russia’s 89 regions) but were finally passed at the end of July 2000. A May 2000

decree reorganizing the structure of the federal bureaucracy in the regions went into

effect immediately, but the new structures it created are still taking shape.

Many Russian and Western analysts view these reforms as heralding a recentralization of power at the expense of regional leaders—Russian and non-Russian

alike—but this interpretation of the reforms is not consistent with the details of the

new structures.

Restructuring the Federation Council

Under the law finally signed by Putin on 5 August, the new Federation Council

(FC) will have two representatives from each region, one from the executive side

and one from the legislative side (as stipulated by the Russian constitution). Current FC deputies are to serve out their terms, or yield their seats by 1 January

2002.

The FC delegate from the legislative side is to be nominated by the Speaker of

the regional assembly. The FC delegate from the executive side is appointed by the

governor directly, by decree. That appointment is subject to a potential veto by a

vote of two-thirds of the regional assembly. The new FC delegates will serve terms

that run concurrently with the terms of their respective appointers: the executive

delegate serves as long as the governor/president of the region; the legislative delegate serves as long as the regional legislative session.

Crucially, delegates are subject to recall by the same organs that appointed them.

This provision casts doubt on the conventional wisdom that the Federation Council

reform will diminish the power of the regional leaders. On the contrary, the FC delegates who replace the current governors will serve only as long as they retain the

support of the governors. In addition, the new FC delegates will not concurrently

hold responsible positions in their home territories, and will therefore be able to remain in Moscow—and in session—far longer than the previous FC norm of one or

two days per month. As a consequence, the new Federation Council may prove to

be a more significant legislative institution than its predecessor.

Removing regional leaders from their automatic seats in the Federation Council

will deprive them of a regular opportunity to meet and find common ground in their

dealings with the center, however. Many of the regional alliances formed for the

1999 Duma elections were hatched in the corridors of the Federation Council. Some

Russian observers have also complained that many of the new delegates to the FC

are Muscovites rather than individuals living in the regions they represent. This

may have the consequence of diminishing the representation of non-Russian interests in the parliamentary process.

Removing Governors and Regional Legislatures

Another common misconception is that Putin has won the right to ‘‘fire’’ regional

governors and disband regional legislatures. This is a drastic overstatement. According to the new law on the structure of regional authorities, signed 29 July, Putin

can essentially impeach regional authorities found to be acting in violation of the

constitution. But the new law makes extensive provisions for federal courts and the

Duma to play a role in regulating the process.

Putin’s objective in this reform is to create a mechanism to force regional authorities to comply with federal law. Under some estimates by the Russian Ministry of

Justice, as many as half of all laws and decrees passed at the regional level prior

to 2000 were in violation of the federal constitution or other federal laws. Since regional executives and legislatures became elected starting in 1995, there has been

no clear mechanism for removing authorities who openly refuse to comply with federal law. On several occasions—most notably Moscow mayor Luzhkov’s refusal to

13

enforce court orders to scrap the capital’s residence-permit system—regional authorities have remained in violation of federal court orders for years.

Under the new law, if a court finds a regional law (or set of laws) to be in violation of the federal constitution, the regional assembly that passed it has three

months to fix or annul the law (unless the court provides a different deadline). If

it fails to change the law, the President issues a decree putting the regional assembly on ‘‘warning.’’ If the regional assembly ignores the ‘‘warning’’ for a further three

months, the President can introduce a law into the Duma to dismiss the regional

assembly. If it passes and is signed by the president, the regional assembly is

stripped of its powers on the day the law goes into effect. When an assembly is disbanded, new elections are scheduled.

For governors (or republic presidents, as the law makes no clear distinction for

republics), the President exercises more discretionary authority. If a governor issues

decrees in violation of the federal constitutions there are two alternative responses

by the center. First, a court can fmd the act unconstitutional, and the governor then

has two months to annul it or face a Presidential decree putting him/her on ‘‘warning.’’ Alternatively, if the executive act is annulled by an act of the Russian president rather than a court, the governor has two months to comply with the presidential order or appeal to a court, or else face a ‘‘warning.’’ If the warning has no

effect after a month, the President can remove the governor (or republic president)

from office. The decree removing the governor has a ten-day waiting period before

taking effect, and during that time the governor can appeal to the Russian Supreme

Court, which must act within 10 days.

On the recommendation of the General Procurator, however, the President can

also temporarily remove a governor (or republic president) if there is evidence s/he

has committed serious crimes and the procuracy attests that an indictment is

planned. In the event the chief executive is dismissed by the president, s/he is replaced according to the procedures specified in the regional constitution/charter. If

the charter/constitution makes no provision for an acting chief executive, the President appoints one to serve until new elections are held.

It is important to note, however, that in the most prominent case to date of a regional leader forced out of office by Putin—that of Primorskii Krai’s Yevgemi

Nazdratenko—Putin did not make use of his new powers to oust Nazdratenko. Instead, after ratcheting up the pressure on the governor though a serious of auditors

and emissaries dispatched to respond to the region’s heating crisis, Putin won the

governor’s agreement to resign. Shortly thereafter, Putin appointed him to chair the

federal fisheries committee. Just as Yeltsin had done for years, Putin relied at the

crucial moment on the carrot rather than the stick.

REDISTRICTING FEDERAL ADMINISTRATION

A final reform, this one accomplished by federal decree on 13 May 2000, reorganizes the federal bureaucracy into seven ‘‘federal districts’’ each headed by a Presidential representative. Some observers in Russia and the West have called this reorganization the beginning of a radical redrawing of Russia’s federal map. As with the

laws discussed above, however, this evaluation is also unsupported by the limited

facts currently available.

Proposals to reorganize the federal bureaucracy in Russia along regional lines

have been in circulation since the 1920s, and a plan at ‘‘regionalization’’ of the economic planning system contributed to Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964. More recently,

however, two arguments for redistricting have become confused in Russia. On the

one hand, some advisors and politicians have called for a replacement of the current

map of 89 federal subunits of varying status (oblast, krai, okrug and republic) with

a simpler system of 10-20 ‘‘gubemiyas’’ of comparable size and equal status. This

plan would directly threaten the power bases of virtually all regional politicians in

Russia and would eliminate the distinction between Russian oblasts and non-Russian ‘‘republics.’’ On the other hand, as early as 1997, Yeltsin considered reforming

the moribund system of ‘‘presidential representatives’’ which placed a presidential

appointee in each region as to serve as the center’s ‘‘eyes and ears.’’ The presidential

representatives in place since 1990 had played almost no role in regional politics

and had generally been ‘‘captured’’ by local governors upon whom they depended for

support. Under the reforms first considered in 1997, Yeltsin would designate one

representative to oversee a group of regions rather an individual region, diminishing

the likelihood of their capture by an individual governor.

Putin’s reorganization represents a revival of the original Yeltsin plan of 1997-

not the more radical ‘‘guberniya’’ plans occasionally discussed. Putin himself has disavowed any intent to change the federal map of Russia or abolish the current territorial divisions into oblasts, krais and republics. Instead, far more modestly, Putin

14

intends for the newly appointed presidential representatives—or ‘‘governors-general’’—in the seven new federal districts to have complete oversight authority to supervise the functioning of regional branches of federal institutions. To ensure that

these new overseers are loyal to him, Putin has relied heavily of appointees with

a military or security background: five of the seven new governors general come

from the armed forces or KGB.

The exact role the new governors-general will play remains highly uncertain, even

a year after the system went into effect. Certain prominent law-and-order ministries—notably Interior and Justice—are explicitly reorganizing their field operations along federal district lines. While the governors-general may have different

powers in different districts, Putin’s intent seems to be to interpose the governorsgeneral between regional governors and the Moscow officials. Rather than lobbying

federal officials in Moscow for subsidies or tax breaks, governors are already finding

their calls redirected to the governors-general. Laws and regulations in need of regional input are now sent to governors-general for comment, rather than to regional

governors directly. Nominations for appointments to vacancies in the regional

branches of federal ministries now go to the governors-general rather than the Presidential administration.

Not all federal ministries are embracing the district reorganization. The federal

treasury system, which has opened branch offices in each of Russia’s 89 regions, has

not reorganized along the seven-district model. This means that while governorsgeneral will have oversight power in the area of law-making and personnel appointments, they will not have institutional mechanisms to interrupt or rechannel the

flow of federal expenditures to the regions. Under the new Tax Code, however, the

flow of tax revenues will be significantly more centralized. Governors-general have

also been reviving the Soviet-era (and tsarist) position of ‘‘inspectors’’ who will have

the power to conduct audits of regional administrations within the federal districts.

One symbolic element of the reorganization was widely noted by Russian observers: none of the seven district ‘‘capitals’’ are in non-Russian republics. Instead, by

basing the federal redistricting on the existing model of militaiy districts rather

than economic associations, Putin has signaled that these are to be institutions of

control rather than mechanisms of representation or self-govermnent.

Two of the seven appointees to the posts of governor-general played significant

roles in the Chechen war. The Southern District, encompassing Chechnya and the

rest of the North Caucasus, is the most volatile of the seven. The federal envoy

there is Viktor Kazantsev, a general in the Russian Army who was commander of

Russian troops in Chechnya until April 2000. Muslim and other non-Russian minorities in the region expressed concern that the district capital was located in

Rostov, a Russian oblast capital, rather than in an ethnic republic. The choice of

Kazantsev, whose role in the Chechen campaigns was prominent, only served to inflame tensions. In addition, Konstantin Pulikovsky, the federal envoy to the Far

Eastern district, is a retired Lieutenant General in the Army. Pulikovskii directed

Russian troops assulting Grozny in the summer of 1996. In addition to Primorskii

Krai, Pulikovskii’s district includes the vast republic of Sakha.

Regional Political Machines

Many governors and republic presidents who secured re-election to office in 1996-

97 have been coming to the end of their second terms in 2000-2001. Federal law

imposes a two-term limit on regional leaders, but manipulations of the election law

have already been commonplace. In Tatarstan, President Shaimiev seems intent on

pushing the envelope of electoral law manipulation. In February 1996, Shaimiev defied federal election requirements that no candidate run unopposed and won 97 percent of the vote as the only name on the ballot. In 2000, he began to fight against

a two-term limit on regional leadership that was due to take effect in 2001.

Shaimiev at first framed the issue as a test case in the primacy of republican over

federal law, since republican election legislation contains no limit on the number of

terms served. Ultimately, Putin supported a change in federal law that would have

removed the bar to Shaimiev’s reelection—and open the door to dozens of other regional leaders to seek third or even fourth terms. Once again, Putin opted for a concession that he could use to neutralize regional opposition, in this case from a leader

on the non-Russian republics.

Even in regions where the Kremlin manages to intervene successfully, its control

over events is limited. While Konstantin Pulikovskii, the governor-general in the

Far East, was able to orchestrate the ouster of Primorskii governor Nazdratenko,

he failed miserably in his bid to have his deputy elected as Nazdratenko’s replacement. In other regions over the last year, the backing of Putin and the Kremlin has

been insufficient to guarantee the election of gubernatorial candidates favored by

the center.

15

Beyond their ability to manipulate electoral laws, incumbent regional leaders

have secured their hold on regional power by consolidating economic and political

mechanisms of control. In many administrations, especially in the non-Russian republics, large enterprises are now partly owned by regional administrations, which

secured stakes in payment for tax debts. This gives regional leaders control over significant cash flows and leverage over large labor forces who are also voters. In addition, in many regions, local media are heavily dependent on financing by regional

administrations. Local media independence has been waning across Russia for the

last five years. Taken together, these factors have resulted in a much higher reelection rate for incumbent governors in the 1997-2000 elections than during the initial

1995-97 election season. In 1999, for instance, 9 of 13 incumbent governors who

stood for reelection won.

Implications

The reforms of center-regional relations have diminished the governors’ presence

in Moscow, but have yet to decisively limit their grip on power at home. Since they

will still exert significant control over federal legislation through the new Federation Council, and as the functions and staffing of the new governors-general offices

are still being worked out, regional leaders—Russian and non-Russian—seem poised

to continue their dominance of political life within their regions, even if their ability

to influence federal policy may diminish under Putin.

CONCLUSIONS

This review of Russian regional policy over the last ten years highlights two important trends. First, with the exception of Chechnya, non-Russian republics within

the Russian Federation have retained their peculiar constitutional status but increasingly are treated on an equal footing with other components of the Russian

Federation. The ‘‘ethnic factor’’ in federal politics is not entirely gone, but it is certainly less prominent at the federal level than it was even five years ago. (It remains a factor at the local level, especially in ‘‘republics’’ where Russians are in the

majority.)

Second, despite his campaign of strengthening vertical accountability, Putin has

continued Yeltsin’s strategy of co-opling regional leaders—Russian and non-Russian—wherever and whenever possible. By allowing non-Russian elites in the ethnic

republics to preserve their political and economic power bases in the regions, he has

reduced the level of center-regional conflict significantly and assembled a regional

consensus behind his drive to consolidate power at the center. This should not be

confused with democracy or federalism as we know it: the emerging political structure preserves the power of elites in large party by disenfranchising large segments

of society, undermining civil rights, and curtailing media freedoms. What I have

tried to suggest here is that this project has lately become a cooperative effort by

federal and regional elites—Russian and non-Russian—rather than a project directed by the federal leadership against regional leaders.

Finally, the emerging consensus between federal and regional elites over the nature of the Russian state only deepens the tragedy of Chechnya. There can be, and

should be, no illusion that the Russian government’s actions in Chechnya are necessary or even useful for preserving the territorial integrity of Russia. The Russian

army is not ‘‘making an example’’ of Chechnya for the benefit of other non-Russian

regional leaders—those leaders have long since made their peace with the Kremlin.

As an anti-terrorism campaign, the second Chechen war has been counterproductive, but even worse, as a political statement it has been pointless. As it has

been for over a century, Chechnya remains a special case in Russia. It merits a special solution to end its agony.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, doctor. Dr. Dunlop.

STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN B. DUNLOP, SENIOR FELLOW, THE

HOOVER INSTITUTION ON WAR, REVOLUTION, AND PEACE,

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, STANFORD, CA

Dr. DUNLOP. Thank you, Senator Biden, Senator Helms, Senator

Lugar.

The current war in Chechnya has lasted 2 months longer than

did the previous 1994–1996 conflict, and there appears to be little

chance of a negotiated settlement occurring in the foreseeable future. The term ‘‘Khasavyurt Accords,’’ signifying the August 1996

16

peace settlement which put an end to the fighting, has now become

a term of abuse, both for the Putin leadership and the Russian

military and police. ‘‘No more Khasavyurts!’’ is a rallying cry frequently heard in statements by regime representatives and by their

supporters. Russian opinion polls show that the public has, by now,

grown weary of this stalled and costly military campaign.

President Putin, however, has made it clear that he intends to

carry on with the war for as long as it takes to achieve an unconditional victory. In mid-March of this year, he indicated that Stalin’s

postwar campaign against anti-Soviet partisans in western

Ukraine and the Baltic could serve as a relevant precedent, suggesting that he, like Stalin, is prepared, if necessary, to continue

this war for 10 years or longer, for as long as it takes.

It should be underscored that the economic costs of this war have

been and remain very high. In April of this year, economic specialist Boris Vishnevsky calculated that in 1999 and the year 2000,

the Russian Government had spent approximately $8.8 billion on

military activities in Chechnya, thereby exceeding the annual

budgets of the capital cities of Moscow and Petersburg.

In light of the Putin regime’s apparent commitment to soldier on

with the war, despite these appalling human and economic costs,

what should the representatives of the G–7 countries be saying to

Mr. Putin at the upcoming Genoa summit? In my opinion, they

should, inter alia, talk to him about war crimes and about the apparent impunity of the Russian forces stationed in Chechnya.

Recently, a number of high-ranking pro-Moscow Chechen officials

have begun to complain vigorously about lawlessness and marauding on the part of the Russian forces based in Chechnya. On 9th

of July, for example, the pro-Moscow head of administration for the

republic, Mufti Akhmad Kadyrov, maintained that ‘‘large-scale

crimes against civilians’’ had been committed, while ‘‘not a single

bandit was arrested, not a single rifle was confiscated, and no explosive substances were found.’’ In similar fashion, Shamil Beno,

until recently Kadyrov’s official representative in Moscow, confided:

‘‘Chechen civilians are being killed on a daily basis. Our estimates

show that an average of from 15 to 20 civilians are being killed

every day, and these are the cases that become known.’’ Statements such as these from well-informed pro-Moscow administrators, are important. If even such officials claim that war crimes are

taking place in Chechnya, then one can be quite sure that they are.

From such accounts, which could easily be multiplied many times

over, it seems obvious that a breakdown of discipline and of elementary order has taken place among the Russian forces based in

Chechnya. Sent into the republic to combat bandits, they have

themselves become bandits who prey lawlessly on the civilian populous. To date, these marauders have been acting with virtual impunity.

This question of the impunity of the Russian Federal forces

based in Chechnya should be raised by the G–7 leaders when they

meet with President Putin in Genoa at the end of this week. On

the 12th of this month, Lord Russell-Johnston, president of the

Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, or PACE, stated

in Strasbourg: ‘‘In recent weeks, there has been mounting evidence

of a rapidly deteriorating human-rights situation in Chechnya.

17

There is little doubt that the conduct of the Russian forces is largely to blame for this. I expect all human rights violations to be condemned at the highest levels by the Russian authorities.’’ And Russell-Johnston continued: ‘‘The reports of human-rights abuses come

against the background of the Russian authorities’ deplorable lack

of willingness to properly investigate allegations of past abuse. The

failure to bring to justice those responsible for crimes constitutes

a blatant violation of Russia’s obligations as a member of the Council of Europe and as a party to its most important conventions.’’ Noting that a PACE delegation would be visiting Chechnya in

mid-September and that the dreadful situation in the republic

would be discussed in detail at an assembly session that month,

Russell-Johnston added: ‘‘By September, we expect to receive evidence of concrete and substantial progress with regard to both the

present conduct of Russian security forces and the investigations of

past abuses.’’ This message, one would think, is one that should

also be delivered to the Russian President by G–7 representatives

at the upcoming Genoa summit.

The recent transfer of former Yugoslav President Slobodan

Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, an

action sharply criticized by President Putin, has prompted several

leading Russian democrats to envisage a similar fate awaiting

those responsible for committing war crimes in Chechnya. ‘‘I affirm, and I am prepared to prove,’’ Duma deputy and former Russian Human Rights Commissioner Sergei Kovalev observed recently, ‘‘that the losses taking place among the civilian population

of Chechnya are not simply the result of clumsiness or imprecision

by the Federal command. I affirm, rather, this a conscious and purposeful policy.’’ The issue of Chechen refugees represents one facet of the present

conflict which deserves to be highlighted. Currently, there are at

least 150,000 to 160,000 Chechen refugees seeking shelter in the

autonomous Republic of Ingushetia. The Putin leadership has made

it clear that it wants this entire populace relocated to Chechnya,

even though it cannot conceivably guarantee their physical safety.

The Chechen refugees do not want to be sent back into a war zone,

an action which would furthermore constitute a violation of the Geneva Conventions. As one refugee woman put it, ‘‘I have three children. Do you think that we are being kept here in Ingushetia

against our will or that we are living here for humanitarian aid,

for moldy macaroni? I would be glad to live in my own home in

Chechnya, but I am responsible for my children and I cannot subject them to danger. If the war ends, then we will immediately go

home.’’ This sentiment appears to be that of a weighty majority of

the refugees.

I was asked to add a few comments concerning the position of

other minority peoples living in Russia, but, due to lack of time, let

me only say that, in my opinion, we do appear to be seeing a retreat from federalism in Russia today and a desire to recreate a

unitary state such as existed under the Communists, though this

process is ongoing and far from complete.

I conclude my paper with two policy recommendations. First, the

U.S. Congress should require an annual report from the State Department detailing the status of human rights and the violations

18

of international law in Chechnya. And, second, the State Department should be asked to appoint a special coordinator for Chechnya

who would coordinate the logistical work among different bureaus

and areas: human rights, refugees, Russia, North Caucasus, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. A key focus for this coordinator would be the

Chechen refugee tragedy. And, finally, let me offer support for the

concurrent resolution which will be shortly introduced by Senator

Helms concerning the tragedy in Chechnya and other recent Russian political developments on the occasion of the upcoming G–7

meeting. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Dunlop follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN B. DUNLOP

RUSSIA’S UNDECLARED WAR AGAINST CHECHEN CIVILIANS

The current war in Chechnya has lasted two months longer than did the previous

1994-1996 conflict, and there appears to be little chance of a negotiated settlement

occurring in the foreseeable future. The term ‘‘Khasavyurt Accords,’’ signifying the

August 1996 peace settlement which put an end to the fighting, has now become

a term of abuse both for the Putin leadership and for the Russian military and police. ‘‘No more Khasavyurts!’’ is a rallying cry frequently heard in statements by regime representatives and by their supporters.

Russian opinion polls show that the public—which, at the beginning of the conflict

in 1999, enthusiastically embraced the war effort, thus propelling Vladimir Putin

into the Russian presidency at the time of the March 2000 elections—has by now

grown weary of the stalled and costly military campaign. A Russia-wide survey conducted last month by the independent research center ROMIR found only 33.7% of

Russian citizens to one extent or another supporting the actions of the federal forces

in Chechnya, while 53.5% opposed those actions. The poll also found that 20.2% of

respondents wanted a full withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya and a recognition of the independence of that republic. ‘‘A tectonic shift,’’ the well-known sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky commented earlier

this month, ‘‘is occurring in [Russian] society now, as an anti-military mood is not

only becoming widespread, but actually predominant. This mood is already, in my

estimation, stronger than it was at the end of the first Chechen war.’’ Kagarlitsky

went on to note that, ‘‘The recent state attacks on the [Russiani press have been

largely motivated by its military failures. Not able to achieve results on the battlefield, the Kremlin can only double and redouble its propaganda effort. . . . This

means opening a second front—at home, against journalists.’’ (Moscow Times, July

9)

Despite the ‘‘tectonic shift’’ in public opinion to which Kagarlitsky refers, few in

Russia expect President Putin or his team to be seriously concerned over this decline in public support for the conflict. Russia now possesses what has been described as an ‘‘elective monarchy,’’ and a Russian sitting president must briefly focus

upon public moods only when an election draws near (the next presidential election,

of course, is scheduled for March of 2004). The Russian public is aware of this situation. When, at the end of last month, Ekho Moskvy Radio asked its listeners if the

war in Chechnya would end soon, 90% of those who phoned in with a comment predicted that the conflict would not end soon; only 10% believed in an early end to

the war.

President Putin has made it clear that he is prepared to carry on with the war

for as long as it takes to achieve an unconditional victory. In mid-March of this

year, during a conversation with the editors of four leading Russian newspapers,

Putin cited Stalin’s postwar campaign against anti-Soviet partisans in western

Ukraine and the Baltic as a relevant precedent, suggesting that he, like Stalin, is

prepared, if necessary, to continue the war for ten years or longer—for as long as

it takes. (Izvestiya, March 22)

It should be underscored that the economic costs of the war have been and remain

very high. In April of this year, economics specialist Boris Vishnevsky calculated

that, in 1999 and 2000, the Russian government spent approximately $8.8 billion

on military activities in Chechnya, thereby exceeding the annual budgets of the capital cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. (Novaya Gazeta, no. 29) The war has also

been costly in terms of human life. On the sixth of this month, sources in the Russian Defense Ministry told Interfax that 3,433 servicemen had been killed to date

in the conflict, and that 10,160 had been wounded. The Soldiers’ Mothers’ ComVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:47 Sep 26, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 75011 SFRELA1 PsN: SFRELA1
19

mittee of Russia believes that these figures are far too low and estimates that to

date approximately 10,000 soldiers have been killed and 12,000 wounded. (New

York Times Magazine, 8 July)

In light of the Putin regime’s apparent commitment to soldier on with the war

despite these appalling human and economic costs, what should representatives of

the G-7 countries say to Mr. Putin at the upcoming Genoa summit? In my opinion,

they should talk to him about war crimes and about the apparent impunity of the

Russian forces stationed there. Whether or not he is prepared to admit it, Putin

faces a growing political and social crisis in the form of the massive loss of discipline

by and the disintegration and criminalization of the Russian military and police

forces based in Chechnya. In the 26 June issue of the Boston Globe, journalist David

Filipov reported the widespread practice of Russian officers’ selling the bodies of deceased Chechens to their relatives at an exorbitant price. One woman with whom

Filipov spoke, the mother of five children, was offered the body of a nephew by a

Russian officer for the sum of $1,000, plus a $200 gold necklace. Military and police

shakedowns, Filipov notes, take place non-stop at the numerous checkpoints set up

throughout the republic. ‘‘Everyone in Chechnya,’’ he writes, ‘‘must pay bribes to

pass military checkpoints, some of which have ‘cash register’ signs pointing out

where to pay. Nearly everyone has had property or valuables confiscated during document checks.’’ At the beginning of this month, as correspondent Patrick Tyler reported in the

11 July issue of the New York Times, hundreds of Russian Interior Ministry troops,

backed by helicopter gun-ships, swept into two villages—Assinovskaya and

Sernovodsk—lying close to Chechnya’s border with the neighboring autonomous republic of Ingushetiya. They arrived in more than one hundred armored personnel

carriers, whose identification numbers had been intentionally smudged over. All

Chechen males between the ages of 15 and 55 were then forcibly taken away to filtration points. In the village of Assinovskaya. which Tyler personally visited, soldiers had kicked down the doors of a school, thrown grenades into empty classrooms, and blown open three safes, from which they had appropriated the equivalent of $2,000 in cash, funds earmarked for the payment of teachers’ salaries.

Recently a number of high-ranking pro-Moscow Chechen officials have begun to

complain vigorously about such lawlessness and marauding on the part of the Russian forces based in Chechnya. On 9 July, for example, the pro-Moscow head of administration for the republic, Mufti Akhmad Kadyrov, maintained that ‘‘large scale

crimes against civilians’’ had been committed, while ‘‘not a single bandit was arrested, not a single rifle was confiscated, and no explosive substances were found.’’ Kadyrov accused the Russian troops of robbing hospitals as well as the already-mentioned school in Assinovskya. (Gazeta.ru, 9 July)

In similar fashion, Shamil Beno, until recently Kadyrov’s official representative

in Moscow, confided to Ekho Moskvy Radio on 9 July: ‘‘[Chechen] civilians are being

killed on a daily basis. Our estimates show that an average from 15 to 20 civilians

are killed every day. These are cases that become known.’’ In the village of Novyi

Sharoi, Beno went on to report, all males between the ages of 14 and 55 had been

detained by Russian troops and subjected to electric shock torture while they were

being interrogated. Chechen detainees, he said, were required to pay 500 rubles to

keep their cars from being smashed and 1,500 rubles to avoid being physically beaten.

Lastly, Rudnik Dudaev (no relation to the late Chechen president), who is currently the secretary of the pro-Moscow security council of Chechnya, told Moscow

News a week ago: ‘‘They [Russian soldiers] move about in armored vehicles carrying

black flags upon which a skull and crossbones have been emblazoned. Many of them

also have a skull and crossbones on the [ski] masks they wear. . . . Almost all of

the armored vehicles they drive have their numbers smeared over with dirt: in case

of an incident, and such incidents occur often, the vehicle cannot be found.’’ The

Russian military and police, Dudaev went on to assert, are heavily involved in—indeed they effectively control—the vast illegal transport of Chechen oil out of the republic. (Moskovskie Novosti, no. 28)

Statements such as these from well-informed pro-Moscow administrators are important. If even these officials claim that war crimes are taking place in Chechnya,

then one can be quite sure that they are. Significantly, the commander of the Russian Combined Group of Forces in Chechnya, General Vladimir Moltenskoi, himself

admitted a week ago: ‘‘Those who conducted the searches [in Sernovodsk and

Assinovskya] did so in a lawless fashion, committing numerous outrages, and then

pretending that they knew nothing about them.’’ (Quoted in the New York Times,

11 July) Later on the same day that he had made this admission, however,

Moltenskoi began to backpedal and to qualify his remarks. (Washington Post, 12

July)

20

The crimes committed by Russian forces in Chechnya have been confirmed and

amplified by other sources of reliable information. Thus, the office of the leading

human rights organization, Memorial, in Nazran, Ingushetiya reported that one

man, Salambek Amagov, had died of liver failure after being harshly beaten by Russian soldiers in Sernovodsk. In that village, Memorial also reported, 700 people had

been herded together: ‘‘The rates were made clear: boys cost 200 rubles, older people

from 500 to 1,000 rubles depending on whether they had local registration.’’ (Moscow Times, 9 July)

From the above accounts—which could easily be multiplied many times over—it

seems obvious that a complete breakdown of discipline and of elementary order has

taken place among the Russian forces based in Chechnya. Sent into the republic to

combat ‘‘bandits,’’ they have themselves become bandits who prey lawlessly on the

civilian populace. To date, these marauders have been acting with virtual impunity.

The national chair of the human rights organization Memorial, Oleg Orlov, recently

pointed out that, in Chechnya, 212 criminal cases in which Russian soldiers were

suspects had been quashed by the pro-Moscow Chechen procuracy, allegedly because

that entity had been unable to determine which soldier had committed a specific

crime. (Interfax, 10 July)

This question of the shocking impunity of the Russian federal forces based in

Chechnya should be raised by the G-7 leaders when they meet with President Putin

in Genoa at the end of this week. On the twelfth of this month, Lord Russell-Johnston, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE),

stated in Strasbourg: ‘‘In recent weeks, there has been mounting evidence of a rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in Chechnya. There is little doubt that the

conduct of the Russian forces—as manifested during the recent ‘‘mop-up’’ operations

in Assinovskaya and Sernovodsk—is largely to blame for this. I expect all human

rights violations to be condemned at the highest levels by the Russian authorities.’’ And Russell-Johnston continued: ‘‘The reports of human rights abuses come against

the background of the Russian authorities’ deplorable lack of willingness to properly

investigate allegations of past abuse. The failure to bring to justice those responsible

for crimes constitutes a blatant violation of Russia’s obligations as a member of the

Council of Europe and as a party to its most important conventions, notably the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.’’ Noting that a PACE delegation would be visiting Chechnya in mid-September and

that the dreadful situation in the republic would be discussed in detail at an Assembly session to be held in late September, Russell-Johnston added: ‘‘By that time

[September], we expect to receive evidence of concrete and substantial progress with

regard to both the present conduct of the Russian security forces and the investigations of past abuses.’’ (Council of Europe Press Unit, 12 July) Russell-Johnston concluded by inviting European and world leaders who have developed close and cordial

relationships with President Putin to ‘‘use their influence to bring to bear effective

pressure on the Russian authorities to change their present unacceptable conduct.’’

This message, one would think, is precisely one that should be delivered to the Russian president by G-7 representatives at the upcoming Genoa summit.

The recent transfer of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague—an action sharply criticized by President

Putin—has prompted several leading Russian democrats to envisage a similar fate

awaiting those responsible for committing war crimes in Chechnya. ‘‘I affirm and

am prepared to prove,’’ Duma deputy and former Russian human rights commissioner Sergei Kovalev observed recently, ‘‘that the losses taking place among the civilian population of Chechnya are not simply the result of clumsiness or imprecision

by the federal command. I affirm, rather, that this is a conscious and purposeful

policy.’’ (Russkaya Mysl’ [Paris], 28 June)

In similar fashion, a leading Russian military journalist, Pavel Felgenhauer, recently wrote in a hard-hitting essay entitled ‘‘An Echo of Groznyi in the Hague’’:

‘‘It has already been proven that, during the course of the present Chechen campaign, the Russian military have massively infringed international conventions

which have been ratified by Russia and have been employing forbidden forms of

weaponry.’’ Citing a report by Colonel General Leonid Zolotov, commander of the

prestigious Frunze Military Academy, Felgenhauer remarked that incendiary bombs

and so-called vacuum bombs had been employed by the Russian air force on the city

of Groznyi at a time when it contained ‘‘up to 100,000 peaceful inhabitants.’’ In

Groznyi and other Chechen cities, ‘‘there were killed thousands of women, the elderly and children.’’ Such actions manifestly violated the Geneva Conventions.

Felgenhauer thus foresees a day when ‘‘[military] staffs and ministers and many individuals’’ in Russia will find themselves ‘‘on an international wanted list.’’

(Moskovskie Novosti, no. 27)

21

The issue of Chechen refugees represents one facet of the present conflict which

deserves to be highlighted. Currently there are at least 150,000-160,000 Chechen

refugees seeking shelter in the autonomous republic of Ingushetiya. Indeed the

numbers of these refugees seem to have swollen as a result of recent marauding by

the Russian military and police. The Putin leadership has made it crystal clear that

it wants this entire populace relocated to Chechnya, even though it cannot conceivably guarantee their physical security.

On 6 June, at a meeting held at the Andrei Sakharov Museum in Moscow, Ruslan

Badalov of the Chechen Committee for National Salvation, presented a representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) with an appeal which had been signed by 10,000 Chechen refugees living in Ingushetiya.

‘‘Today,’’ Badalov said, ‘‘the Russian government has unveiled a new campaign, the

goal of which is, at any cost, to return the refugees to Chechnya.’’ This is being

done, Badalov said, because ‘‘Russia fears complicating its relations with the West

and is therefore prepared to hide the human tragedies far away from everyone.’’

(Kommersant, 7 June)

The Chechen refugees, as was repeatedly stressed at this meeting, do not want

to be forced back into a war zone, an action which would, furthermore, constitute

a violation of the Geneva Conventions. As one Chechen refugee in Ingushetiya,

Zareta Sembieva, put it to a Russian newspaperwoman: ‘‘I have three children. Do

you think that we are being kept here [in Ingushetiya] against our will? Or that

we are living here for the humanitarian aid—for moldy macaroni? I would be glad

to live in our own home [in Chechnya] . . . But I am responsible for my children

and cannot subject them to danger. If the war ends, then we will immediately go

home.’’ (Novye Izvestiya, 25 May) Sembieva’s sentiments appear to be those of a

weighty majority of Chechen refugees.

I have been asked to add a few brief comments concerning the position of other

minority peoples living in Russia. Obviously the tragedy of the Chechens is unique,

but other Russian minorities, too: are feeling the effects of the Putin regime’s retreat from democracy and from its apparent desire to reconstruct a de facto unitary

state. In Ingushetiya less than a week ago, President Ruslan Aushev felt required

to publicly condemn the ‘‘barbarism and vandalism’’ of Russian troops stationed in

his republic. The troops had shot up an ancient funeral vault, dating back at least

to the sixteenth century, and had desecrated a twelfth century Christian church

(‘‘Khaba-Erdy’’ church). An ancient tower had likewise been razed. Russian soldiers

had been stunning fish by throwing hand grenades into the Asa and Aramkhi rivers; had been wantonly chopping down local forests; had fired with automatic weapons at and had killed livestock belonging to the local populace; and had set fire to

hay gathered by local farmers. The Ingush populace were understandably said to

be enraged at this wanton behavior. (Strana.ru and NTV.ru, 13 July)

In its manifest retreat from federalism and in its clear-cut desire to recreate a

unitary state such as existed under the communists, the Putin regime, backed up

by a generally subservient judiciary, has been repudiating provisions contained in

forty-two treaties signed by the Russian government during the Yeltsin period with

autonomous republics and other subjects of the Russian Federation. The republics

of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Sakha-Yakutiya, and Tyva were reported to be especially unhappy over these developments. In another recent change, the heads of republican ministries of internal affairs have been made directly subordinate to President Putin rather than to local regional heads. The movement back toward a Sovietstyle unitary state continues.

I conclude my paper with two policy recommendations:

1. The U.S. Congress should require an annual report from the State Department detailing the status of human rights and of violations of international law

in Chechnya.

2. The State Department should be asked to appoint a special coordinator for

Chechnya who would coordinate the logistical work among different bureaus

and areas: Human Rights, Refugees, Russia, North Caucasus, Azerbaijan and

Georgia. A key focus for this coordinator would be the Chechen refugee tragedy.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Dr. Balzer.

22

STATEMENT OF DR. MARJORIE M. BALZER, RESEARCH PROFESSOR AND COORDINATOR OF SOCIAL, ETHNIC, AND REGIONAL ISSUES, CENTER FOR EURASIAN, RUSSIAN, AND

EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES (CERES), GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC

Dr. BALZER. Thank you. It is an honor to be here.

I am a cultural anthropologist, and I spent 10 of the last 12 summers in the Sakha Republic, but I will try to be broader than that

for this talk and discuss federalism in Russia, or Rossiia, as people

there often call it, implying the multi-ethnic dimensions of the Federation. And the question is: From above, from below, or nowhere?

As economic, political, and military crises inside the Federation

of Rossiia worsen, debates intensify over whether central, Moscow,

policies and practices aggravate the fissures of separatism and nationalism. To probe issues underlying this still-unfolding process,

diverse ways that republic representatives have been responding to

chaos and attempts to reassert central control should be explored.

Through the study of the crisis-driven 1990’s, enormously painful

to victims of war and economic deprivation, we can learn much

about the dynamics of polarization and the politics of social and national identity.

The secession attempts of the Chechens from Russia have a long

history aggravated by two 1990’s brutalizing wars that have not

subsided despite President Putin’s protestations of peace at hand.

While President Putin’s handling of Chechnya is the opposite of a

reasoned Federal strategy, other aspects of his policies do come

closer to a negotiated federalism and also represent his attempts

to become a populist President. Images of President Putin piloting

a fighter plane in Chechnya contrast with his smiling participation

at the annual Turkic Sabbantui summer festivals of Tatarstan and

Bashkortostan where he went to court and cajole the Presidents of

these republics in 2000 and 2001, respectively.

These public displays were noticed by my friends in the Parliament of the Sakha Republic where surprised deputies, seeing

President Putin in shirt sleeves and knowing his KGB background,

proclaimed, ‘‘He has gone to the people. He is appealing to the public.’’ Like President Yeltsin, President Putin has been using a combination of carrots and sticks to attempt to manage the unwieldy

Federation he inherited. But, to continue Steve Solnick’s metaphor,

unlike President Yeltsin, President Putin has shortened the carrots

and strengthened the sticks. Leaders in the republics have been

put on notice that all the carrots have sticks behind them.

The main message of this testimony is that most of the republics

inside of Russia are not secessionist and not likely to become dominoes in a potential aftermath of any successful Chechnya negotiated secession. However, the potential for radicalization and polarization does exist, depending on center policies and on center-republic dynamics.

The region where radicalization is greatest is the North

Caucasus, especially among the neighbors of Chechnya where the

outpouring of Chechen refugees, as we just heard, including embittered, unemployed, and poorly educated youth, has become a serious destabilizing problem made worse by recent Russian military

atrocities in villages near the unstable Chechen-Ingushetia border.

23

1The tables referred to by Dr. Balzer in her oral presentation can be found in her prepared

statement on page 30.

By way of introduction—I can skip some things because Steve

has already explained—history matters. The ‘‘matrushka-doll’’ Federation that President Putin inherited is multi-leveled, complex,

asymmetrical, and quite entrenched. My table 1 1 gives you a lineup of all of these. The idea behind it is to show you the complexity

that he inherited. Borders involving ethnic-based territories are

nearly impossible to change without dangerously violating various

ethnic groups’ understandings of what constitutes their rightful

homelands. The legacies of the Federation adapted from the Soviet

Union mean that the geographic structure of the Russian Federal

politics—and ‘‘Federal,’’ in this case, may be in quotes—is only

poorly analogous to the multi-cultural United States, with possible

exceptions of our Native American treaty-based reservations and

Puerto Rico.

Demography also matters. Steve explained that only five republics have majorities inside their own republics of non-Russians. In

addition, one could put it this way, in most of the ethnic-based republics of Russia, the local ‘‘titular’’ ethnic group has a demographic plurality, but not a majority. These kinds of proportions

are outlined in table 2. These are ‘‘swing-vote,’’ as I call them, republics such as the Sakha Republic, Altai, Kalmykia, Marii-El, and

Udmurtia, where referendums on central policies could matter and

where electoral candidates backed by the Putin administration can

be contested. These are areas where the zigzags of center-republic

dynamics are especially sensitive and where ethnic relations are

very important with tensions potentially magnified by policy mistakes or local inter-ethnic discrimination scandals.

I also want to point out that names and cultural symbols matter.

These are republics, in their 1990’s incarnations, that have specific

names for themselves, and there is a sensitivity over their new

names. President Putin recently acknowledged name sensitivities

by signing a decree endorsing Chuvashia as the Chavash Republic,

for instance. But he has acknowledged such politically sensitive

name changes unevenly and has not supported the rights of republic citizens to state their nationalities in their passports. A compromise was recently found for Tatarstan to have a separate page

in the Tatar language in Tatarstan passports. Each of these republics has its own seals and flags, many generated through competitions among local artists. Most have local-language names for their

newly constituted parliaments and new language programs to compensate for past unbalanced bilingualism that favored Russians.

In my next section, I discuss managing federalism or, in some

cases, mismanaging it, and I want to just outline, without going

into details, the major points of contention, as I see it, between the

republics and President Putin’s administration. These include resource competition and the related demise of bilateral treaties,

changes in republic constitutions, electoral politics at multiple levels, and administrative redistricting.

Let me turn to the debates about administrative redistricting. As

outlined in my chart, and by Steve, instead of appointing republic

Presidents, which President Putin threatened to do, the 2000 redisVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:47 Sep 26, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 75011 SFRELA1 PsN: SFRELA1
24

tricting created seven mega-districts over-seeing the republics

using larger regional military districts as the basis for their borders. Debates abound as to whether the mega-districts are working

or represent a new layer of potential bureaucratic confusion, at

best, and corruption, at worst. Republic authorities are nervous

about their loss of direct lobbying access to the Kremlin and angry

about which cities have been chosen as capitals of the districts. The

only silver lining concerning these districts, given both blatant and

latent opposition to them in the republics, is that they may satisfy

President Putin’s taste for redistricting from above.

He has, in several speeches, suggested even more radical redistricting: that the asymmetrical federation would be better off as a

more controllable, symmetrical country of 30 to 50 regions. Such

statements, the execution of which would involve extensive boundary changes, are deeply frightening to many non-Russians living in

their established ethnicity-based republics and smaller districts.

In my conclusions, I want to point out that President Putin just

recently addressed an assembly of the peoples of Bashkortostan, in

June 2001, proclaiming proudly, ‘‘Rossiia has an absolutely unique

place on Earth with its enormous number of nations, nationalities,

languages, and cultures. Its uniqueness consists in that, over the

centuries, practically 1,000 years, this mixture of peoples and different ethnicities have lived harmoniously.’’ He sounded like a Soviet official, propounding the friendship of the peoples. Indeed,

interethnic harmony, including high rates of interethnic marriage,

has been part of the history of the peoples of today’s Russian Federation, but these romanticized friendships have been sorely tried

by experimentation that began with Russian imperialism, continued with many of Stalin’s nationality policies, and have been inflamed by the Chechnya war and its cover-up. As my colleague

Paul Goble has said, ‘‘The best antidote to chauvinist brands of nationalism is a well-managed federalism.’’ What can the United States do to encourage Rossiia to practice

what President Putin preaches about mixtures of peoples living

harmoniously? We can only influence on the margins, but we do

have some leverage. While Russians are understandably averse to

being lectured by Americans, we can encourage more civic and less

nationalist chauvinist behavior on the part of central and regional

authorities by investing directly in those regions and republics

where relatively greater efforts are made at civil society.

First, we can attempt to deal directly with regions and republics,

sometimes bypassing Moscow entirely, although taking care that

this not be perceived as a new round of espionage or secessionmongering. While some authorities on Russia’s regions and republics, including some of President Putin’s advisors in Moscow, tend

to think of the republics as, in general, more corrupt ‘‘ethnocracies’’

than the Russian-led regions, corruption seems to be an equal-opportunity phenomenon. We can try to reward both Russian-led regions and ethnic-based republics for greater transparency in economic relations.

Second, we can encourage our allies in Europe to reinforce calls

for negotiation and to address major human-rights complaints. The

recent call of the OSCE for negotiations to resume over Chechnya,

including with the elected President, Aslan Maskhadov, is a step

25

in the right direction. A political settlement is crucial, possibly including phased independence for Chechnya. At the same time,

good-faith reconstruction efforts should be made in Chechnya to

help bring refugees home and to start the painful process of educating a whole generation of young people who have been left behind and radicalized after years of war. Chechnya without

Chechens is unacceptable policy.

Third, the Chechnya war has caused a hemorrhaging of not only

blood, but money. A reasonable argument to Russian authorities in

the economic summit is that if the war stopped, enormous sums of

money would be freed for the Federation-wide health and education

programs that Rossiia badly needs. Incentives to reinforce peace

negotiations could be promised by suggesting future backing for humanitarian support, for social programs, and for emergency relief

throughout the North Caucasus and in selected other regions: for

instance, aid for recovery from the Sakha Republic’s recent flooding.

Fourth, and finally, Rossiia is likely to remain an asymmetrical

quasi-federation for a long time. We should somehow convince Russian colleagues and Duma parliamentarians that one of the fastest,

most polarizing ways to stimulate secession is by redistricting from

above. Changes in republic, regional, and district borders at all levels must be negotiated and not decreed. We also should diplomatically make clear that it is not in our interest to have Rossiia break

into numerous or even seven regional parts.

In sum, the single most dangerous scenario for Rossiia is polarization resulting from unilateral, from above, radical ethno-national homeland boundary changes. Instead of regularization, it can

result in subversion, chauvinist nationalism, susceptibility to radical religious influences, and the very chaos President Putin has

been trying to avoid. So far, federalism has been from above, from

below, and nowhere.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Balzer follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. MARJORIE MANDELSTAM BALZER

FEDERALISM IN RUSSIA [ROSSIIA]: FROM ABOVE, BELOW OR NOWHERE?

Introduction

As economic, political, and military crises inside the Federation of Russia [Rossiia]

worsen, debates intensify over whether central Moscow policies and practices aggravate the fissures of separatism and nationalism. To probe issues underlying this still

unfolding process, diverse ways that republic representatives have been responding

to chaos and attempts to reassert central control should be explored. Through study

of the crisis-driven 1990s, enormously painful to the victims of war and economic

deprivation, we can learn much about the dynamics of polarization and the politics

of social and cultural identity. Understanding how groups shape and reshape their

nationalism in times of travail, on multiple levels, involves listening to how politicized voices shift and adapt within various social and cultural contexts.

The secession attempts of the Chechens from Russia have a long history, aggravated by two 1990s brutalizing wars that have not subsided, despite President

Putin’s protestations of peace at hand. While President Putin’s handling of

Chechnya is the opposite of a reasoned federal strategy, other aspects of his policies

come closer to a negotiated federalism and also represent attempts to become a populist president. Images of President Putin piloting a fighter plane in Chechnya contrast with his smiling participation at the annual Turkic Sabbantui summer festivals of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, where he went to court and cajole the presidents of these republics in 2000 and 2001 respectively. These public displays were

noticed by my friends in the parliament of the Sakha republic, where surprised deputies, seeing President Putin in shirt-sleeves and knowing his KGB background,

26

proclaimed ‘‘he has gone to the people, he is appealing to the public.’’ Like President

Yeltsin, President Putin has been using a combination of carrots and sticks to attempt to manage the unwieldy federation he inherited. Unlike President Yeltsin,

President Putin has shortened the carrots and strengthened the sticks. Leaders in

the republics have been put on notice that all of the carrots have sticks behind

them.

The main message of this testimony is that most of the republics inside of Russia

are not secessionist, and not likely to become dominoes in a potential aftermath of

any successful, negotiated Chechnya secession. However, the potential for

radicalization and polarization exists, depending on central policies and on centerrepublic dynamics. The region where radicalization is greatest is the North

Caucasus, especially among the neighbors of Chechnya, where the outpouring of

Chechen refugees, including embittered, unemployed, and poorly educated youth,

has become a serious destabilizing problem made worse by recent Russian military

atrocities in villages near the unstable Chechen-Ingushetia border.

History matters. The ‘‘matrushka-doll’’ federation that President Putin inherited

is multi-leveled, complex, asymmetrical and entrenched. (See table 1.) Borders involving ethnic-based territories are nearly impossible to change without dangerously

violating various ethnic groups’ understandings of what constitutes their rightful

homelands. The legacies of the federation adapted from the Soviet Union mean that

the geographic structure of Russian federal politics is only poorly analogous to the

multicultural United States, with the possible exceptions of our Native American

treaty-based reservations and Puerto Rico. Thirty-five ethnic-based political-administrative divisions (Republics and Okrugs) take up about one third of Rossiia’s territory, while non-Russians are less than one fifth of the country’s population. This

awkward position has evolved because of the local histories of indigenous homelands, where large influxes of Slavic peoples became normal during the Russian imperial and especially the Soviet periods.

Demography matters. In most of the ‘‘ethnic-based’’ republics of Russia, the local ‘‘titular’’ ethnic group has a demographic plurality but not a majority. (See table 2.)

These are ‘‘swing vote’’ republics, such as the Sakha Republic, Altai, Kalmykia,

Marii El, and Udmurtia, where referendums on central policies could matter and

electoral candidates backed by the Putin administration can be contested. These are

areas where the zig zags of center-republic dynamics are especially sensitive and

where ethnic relations are very important, with tensions potentially magnified by

policy mistakes or local inter-ethnic discrimination scandals. In the 21 republics,

only 5 had majority titular populations as the Soviet Union broke up, and more recently one of these, Chechnya, has been nearly emptied of its civilian Chechen population. The others are the Chavash Republic (Chuvashia), Tyva (Tuva), and

Kabarda-Balkaria, listed in the order of their majorities. By the 2002 census,

Tatarstan is likely to be included in this list, with many Tatars coming home to

their republic in the 1990s. In 16 of the republics, non-Russians are considerably

less numerous than the Russians. However, this did not stop some republics, such

as Karelia, Khakassia and Komi, from being in the forefront of the so-called ‘‘parade

of sovereignties’’ in 1990-1991.

Names and cultural symbols matter. The official name the Federation of Rossiia,

which signals its multiethnic composition, is preferred here instead of Russia, with

its more monocultural connotation. Many non-Russians call themselves ‘‘Rossiany,’’

citizens of Rossiia, not ‘‘Russkie,’’ Russians, a distinction lost in English. They also

have specific, sometimes recently politicized, names for their republics, and deserve

to have these names used. This includes the Sakha Republic, often called by Russians in the Putin administration Yakutia, and Tyva, usually called Tuva. President

Putin recently acknowledged name sensitivities by signing a decree endorsing

Chuvashia as the Chavash Republic. But he has acknowledged such politically sensitive name changes unevenly, and has not supported the right of republic citizens

to state their nationalities in their passports. A compromise was recently found for

Tatarstan to have a separate page in the Tatar language in Tatarstan passports.

The Altai Republic (formerly Gorno-Altai) is surveying its population to decide if an

insert in the Altai language is worth the expense. Each of the republics has its own

seals and flags, many generated through competitions among local artists. Most

have a local language name for their newly constituted parliaments and new language programs to compensate for past ‘‘unbalanced bilingualism’’ that favored Russians.

Theory matters. A premise of this testimony is that the Russians, in the multiethnic negotiated community of Rossiia, are ‘‘ethnic’’ too, since they are subject to

some of the same tensions and striving that the non-Russian minorities within the

fledgling federation have been feeling. Indeed, the term ‘‘ethnonationalism,’’ merging

a distinction between nationalism and ethnicity, as discussed by Walker Connor

27

(1994) and Leokadia Drobizheva (1999), may be appropriate for the mild, nonchauvinist nationalism of many of the groups inside Rossiia. While many Russian actions

potentially labelled as nationalism have been consolidation-oriented and defensive,

others, most clearly those involving Chechnya, have been counter-productively aggressive and chauvinist against non-Russian minorities. The rekindling of the

Chechnya war puts debates about justifiable ‘‘patriotism,’’ ‘‘nationalism’’ and ‘‘defense against terrorism’’ into sharp relief. With Russian nationalism increasing, it

becomes harder for President Putin to stimulate policies enabling a civic-society to

develop in both the ethnic-based republics and the Russian-led regions of the federation.

(Mis)managing Federalism

Major points of contention between the republics and President Putin’s administration include resource competition and the related demise of bilateral treaties,

changes in republic constitutions, electoral politics at multiple levels, and administrative redistricting. Questions of corruption, emergency aid programs, and the

ramifications of legal reform cross-cut these issues and sometimes enter into the

rhetoric of mutual reproach.

Resource competition. While in the Soviet period, so-called ‘‘autonomous republics’’ within the Russian Union Republic got less than a 5% share of their own resources,

the increasingly self-assertive republics negotiated far greater shares in the 1990s,

in some cases by playing brinkmanship tax withholding games. Bilateral treaties became a major mechanism under President Yeltsin, starting in 1994, for negotiating

distributions of resources, with industrialized Tatarstan leading the process, and energy rich Bashkortostan and diamond rich Sakha Republic gaining important concessions as well. By the time the treaty process ended in 1998, 46 Russian-led regions and ethnic-based republics had garnered varying degrees of advantages.

Norms for allocations of revenues going to federal and regional budgets before 2000

became approximately 51% and 49%, but under President Putin the federal share

increased to 63%. More republics subsequently became ‘‘donors’’ within the budget

process, meaning they are not receiving federal equalization transfers after taxes.

In 2000, these included Komi, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Sakha.

Recently the leader of the Republic of Marii-El, hoping to curry favor with President Putin, unilaterally rejected his republic’s power-sharing treaty with the central

government (along with the heads of three Russian-led regions). He could see that

the 2001 commission established by President Putin to divide powers among governmental levels has as one of its goals the cancellation of these treaty arrangements.

A warning of this policy came in 2000, when President Putin renounced significant

aspects of the bilateral treaties with Tatarstan and with the Sakha Republic. (I was

sitting at what felt like a ground-zero, the Sakha parliament, when deputies heard

of his announcement and ventilated bitterly. But the next day, several admitted

that the treaty was due to expire and would have to have been renegotiated anyway.)

Cross-cutting the new budget trends have been emergency funds flowing back to

the republics, including extensive subsidizing of Dagestan (given its proximity to

Chechnya) and the support of refugee camps in Ingushetia. In this category should

be substantial reconstruction money for Chechnya. Several plans (including one created by former Nationalities Minister Valery Tishkov) are circulating, but monies

have been notoriously diverted or not forthcoming.

Relief expenditures also include the support of programs through-out the North

to help Russian out-migration from previously subsidized towns with collapsed

economies, as well as humanitarian reconstruction for flood victims suffering, for example, in the Sakha Republic in 1998 and, especially, in 2001. Sakha and Russian

leaders of the Sakha republic, in a good example of civic mindedness and interethnic

cooperation, have jointly appealed to central authorities. President Putin made a

personal and effective trip of solidarity to the main flood-devastated town of Lensk,

which is mostly ethnically Russian. His attempt to place some of the burden of funding on the selling of diamond company ALROSA stock was less appreciated, however.

Reconciling Constitutions. President Putin has made the identification and rectification of legal discrepancies between the Federation of Rossiia’s constitution and

the republic constitutions a top priority. Contrary to some conspiracy theories, many

of these discrepancies occurred for the relatively simple reason that many of the republic constitutions were written and ratified in the early 1990s, before Russia managed to get its constitution passed by its Duma. The acceptance of republic constitutional changes recommended by Russia’s supreme court has been relatively smooth

in many cases, which is why President Putin’s preoccupation with the formal legal

aspects of this has puzzled some participants in the process. Kalmykia, Altai, and

28

Tyva, among others, have been named in the local press as having revised their constitutions quite quickly.

Other republics have been less compliant, including Chavashia, Tatarstan,

Bashkortostan, and Sakha. In the Sakha Republic case, a huge 63 of 144 articles

were declared nonbinding by Russia’s supreme court. The Sakha parliament (optimistically called Il Tumen, or Council for Accord) discarded aspects deemed minor

and has appointed yet another committee to reconcile the constitutions ‘‘on the basis

of federal norms.’’ However, the main points seen as unjustified meddling in the internal affairs of the republic center on the wording of Sakha’s declaration of sovereignty, the ability of Sakha Republic to have its own citizenship together with the

citizenship of Rossiia, and, predictably, the ownership of underground resources,

given the enormous mineral wealth of the republic. A further issue is qualifications

for republic president, on the basis of age, residency length, and language ability.

Electoral politics. President Putin has attempted to change the rules of the game

of how elections are run at multiple levels of the federation. He has done this

through legal reform of how parties are defined (their membership must cross-cut

republics and regions), and through declarations concerning qualifications of the

presidents of the republics, including their rights to third terms. He or his representatives have also publicly backed specific candidates, not all of whom have subsequently won their elections.

One relevant issue concerning republic politics has been debate and back tracking

on the question of which republic presidents may run for a third term, a deviation

from the Federation of Rossiia constitution. In Spring 2001, Duma deputies passed

a Putin-backed law enabling a huge number (69) of regional and republic leaders

to have this right, but the Duma subsequently reduced the number to a handful.

Some theorized that quid pro quos for republic president cooperation had been negotiated behind the scenes. In the process, interesting discrepancies emerged. For example, President Mintimer Shaimiev of Tatarstan was endorsed for a third term in

a post-facto exercise, after his republic parliament had also ensured his legal right

to a third term. President Mikhail Nikolaev of the Sakha Republic, who had not gotten his parliament to endorse a third term, was first supported and then dropped

in the political maneuvering.

In President Putin’s millennium 2000 address, he appeared to advocate two contradictory principles: democracy for the republics and regions, including their continued right to elect their own officials at multiple levels, and a more authoritarian

right of the president to remove elected officials from office. While the right of removal must now be backed by a criminal conviction, this is one reason why some

in the republics are calling his rule creeping authoritarianism. When he was first

elected, he also tested a possible trial balloon by suggesting that republic presidents

and regional governors be appointed by the president. This provoked enough of an

uproar to be quietly dropped, since it is notoriously difficult to take away a democratic right once it has been enjoyed.

Administrative redistricting. Instead of appointing republic presidents, in 2000

President Putin created his famous 7 mega-districts, using the larger regional military districts as a basis for their borders. The districts are (moving from East to

West to South): Far East, Siberia, Urals, Northwest, Central, Volga, and the North

Caucasus.

Each district has a president appointed governor-general, who answers directly to

President Putin. Nearly all the first appointees have military or intelligence backgrounds, with the exception of one former diplomat (Leonid Drachevski to the Siberia district) and one former prime minister-economist (Sergei Kirienko to the crucial

Volga district). Their roles, Putin insists, are carefully delineated and contained.

Most have been busy following orders concerning the reconciliation of the constitutions and the stream-lining of economic relations in their regions. Critics, including

some of President Putin’s own nationality advisors and ministers, have pointed out

that eventually such meta-districts could become the basis for viable secessionist

tendencies. The argument emphasizes that smaller, economically and politically

powerless regions and republics would have less chance of becoming full-fledged

independent states, and most would have no external borders.

Debates abound as to whether the mega-districts are working or represent a new

layer of potential bureaucratic confusion at best and corruption at worst. Republic

authorities are nervous about their loss of direct lobbying access to the Kremlin, and

angry about which cities have been chosen as capitals of the districts. The only silver lining concerning these districts, given both blatant and latent opposition to

them in the republics, is that they may satisfy President Putin’s taste for redistricting from above. He has in several speeches suggested even more radical redistricting: that the asymmetrical federation would be better off as a more controllable,

symmetrical country of 30-50 regions. Such statements, the execution of which

29

would involve extensive boundary changes, are deeply frightening to many non-Russians living in their established ethnicity-based republics and smaller districts

(okrugs). Again, it is dangerous to remove existing rights.

More organic, ‘‘from below’’ or negotiated redistricting may be possible, however.

The strategically located Altai Republic, on the border with Kazakstan, has rejected

its larger, neighboring Altai Krai’s greedy, energy pipe-line oriented call for a merger. But a process of merging budgets already has begun between one of two Buryat

districts (Ust-Orda) with its encircling Irkutsk region. This negotiation should be

seen in the larger historical context of the gerrymandering of Buryat territory, according to Stalin’s nationalities policies. Some Buryats have also called for a merging of the three Buryat territories (Buryat Republic, Ust-Orda, and Agin-Buryat).

Conclusions

President Putin, addressing an Assembly of the Peoples of Bashkortostan in June,

2001, proclaimed proudly ‘‘Rossiia [Russia] has an absolutely unique place on Earth,

with its enormous number of nations, nationalities, languages, and cultures . . . Its

uniqueness consists in that over the centuries, practically 1,000 years, this mixture

of peoples and different ethnicities have lived harmoniously.’’ He sounded like a Soviet official propounding the friendship of the peoples. Interethnic harmony, including high rates of interethnic marriage, has been part of the history of the peoples

of today’s Russian federation. But these romanticized friendships have been sorely

tried by experimentation that began with Russian imperialism, continued with

many of Stalin’s nationalities policies, and have been inflamed by the Chechnya war

and its cover-up. As my colleague Paul Goble has said, the best antidote to chauvinist brands of nationalism is a well-managed federalism.

What can the U.S. do to encourage Rossiia to practice what President Putin

preaches about mixtures of peoples living harmoniously? We can only influence on

the margins, but we do have some leverage. While Russians are understandably

averse to being lectured by Americans, we can encourage more civic and less nationalist, chauvinist behavior on the part of central and regional authorities by investing directly in those regions and republics where relatively greater efforts are made

at civil society.

1) We can attempt to deal directly with regions and republics, sometimes bypassing Moscow entirely, although taking care that this not be perceived as a

new round of espionage or secession-mongering. While some authorities on the

regions and republics, including some of President Putin’s advisors in Moscow,

tend to think of the republics as in general more corrupt ‘‘ethnocracies’’ than

the Russian-led regions, corruption seems to be an equal opportunity phenomenon. We can try to reward both Russian-led regions and ethnic-based republics for greater transparency in economic relations.

2) We can encourage our allies in Europe to reinforce calls for negotiation,

and to address major human rights complaints. The recent call of the OSCE for

negotiations to resume over Chechnya, including with the elected president

Aslan Maskhadov, is a step in the right direction. A political settlement is crucial, possibly including phased independence for Chechnya. At the same time,

good faith reconstruction efforts should be made in Chechnya, to help bring refugees home and to start the painful process of educating a whole generation of

young people who have been left behind and radicalized after years of war.

Chechnya without Chechens is unacceptable policy.

3) The Chechnya war has caused a hemorrhaging of not only blood but

money. A reasonable argument to Russian authorities at an economics summit

is that if the war stopped, enormous sums of money would be freed for the federation-wide health and education programs that Rossiia badly needs. Incentives to reinforce peace negotiations could be promised by suggesting future

backing for humanitarian support for social programs and emergency relief

through-out the North Caucasus and in selected other regions.

4) Rossiia is likely to remain an asymmetrical, quasi-federation for a long

time. We should somehow convince Russian colleagues and Duma parliamentarians that one of the fastest, most polarizing ways to stimulate secession is by

redistricting from above. Changes in republic, regional, and district borders at

all levels must be negotiated, not decreed. Just as President Putin has said he

needs a public consensus to move Lenin’s body, so too a public consensus is

needed for boundary changes. We also should diplomatically make clear that it

is not in our interests to have Rossiia break into numerous, or even 7, regional

parts.

In sum, the single most dangerous scenario for Rossiia is polarization resulting

from unilateral, radical ethnonational homeland boundary changes. Instead of reguVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:47 Sep 26, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 75011 SFRELA1 PsN: SFRELA1
30

larization, it can result in subversion, chauvinist nationalism, susceptibility to radical religious influences, and the very chaos President Putin has been trying to

avoid with his ominous phrase ‘‘the dictatorship of law.’’ So far, federalism has been

from above, from below, and nowhere.

TABLE 1: POST-SOVIET INDEPENDENT STATES AND RUSSIAN FEDERATION (ROSSIIA)

ETHNIC COMPONENTS

Post-Soviet

Independent States

Republics Signing The Federal

Treaty, Bilateral Treaties

Ethnic-Based Regions,

Districts

Armenia [C=Commonwealth] Adigei Agin-Buryat

Azerbaijan [C] Altai (Gorno-Altai) Ust-Orda Buryat

Belorus [C] Bashkortostan Chukotsk

Estonia [B=Baltic] Burya Evenkt

Georgia [C] Chavash (Chuvashia) Eveno-Bytantaisk

Kazakstan [C] Dagestan Evrei

Kyrgyzstan [C] Ingushetia Khanty-Mansi

Latvia [B] Kabarda-Balkar Komi-Permiak

Lithuania [B] Kalmykia Koryak

Moldova (Khalmg Tangch) Nenets

Russian Federation [C] Karachai-Cherkess Yamalo-Nenets

Tajikistan [C] Karelia Dolgan-Nenets

Turkmenistan [C] Khakassia Taimyr

Ukraine [C] Komi (Nganasan)

Uzbekistan [C] Marii-El (Mari)

Mordva

North Ossetia

Sakha (Yakutia)

Tatarstan

Tyva (Tuva)

Udmurt

Major Disputed Areas: Abkhazia, Chechnya (Republic of Ichkeria), Crimea, Dniester,

Nagorno(ny)-Karabakh, North and South Ossetia, North Kazakstan.

Ethnic Representation Dynamics: Five districts (Adygei, Gorno-Altai [now Altai], lngushetia

without Chechnya, Karachai-Cherkessia, and Khakassia) were upgraded to republic status in

the 1992 Federal Treaty. This included an lngushetia border delineation. Many ethnic groups,

such as the Kurds of the Caucasus or the Nivkh of the Siberian Far East, are not represented

here because they do not have official territorial jurisdictions. In Soviet censuses, 26 ‘‘smallnumbered peoples of the North’’ were usually grouped (in order of size): Nenets, Evenk

(Tungus), Khanty (Ostiak), Even (Lamut), Chukchi, Nanai (Goldy), Koryak, Mansi (Vogul),

Dolgan, Nivkh (Gilyak), Selkup, Ulchi, Itelmen (Kamchadal), Udegei, Saami (Lapp); Eskimo

(Yupik); Chuvansty; Nganasan; Yukagir; Ket; Orochi; Tofalar; Aleut; Negidal; Enets; Orok.

Some Federation components were legally constituted since 1989. For example, the EvenoBytantaisk district (raion) was created within the Yakut-Sakha Republic as a homeland for the

Even people in 1989.

President Putin’s 7 Mega- [Meta-, Military] Districts: Far East, Siberia, Urals, Northwest,

Central, Volga, North Caucasus (Southern) (each with Presidential appointee administrators).

TABLE 2: DEMOGRAPHY AND ETHNICITY

Republics of Rossiia in

Sovereignty Declaration Sequence

Percent Titular

Nationality

Percent

Russians

North Ossetia .................................................................... 53.0 29.9

Karelia ............................................................................... 10.0 73.6

Khakassia .......................................................................... 11.1 79.5

Komi ................................................................................... 23.3 57.7

Tatarstan ........................................................................... 48.5 43.3

Udmurtia ........................................................................... 30.9 58.9

Sakha (Yakutia) ................................................................ 33.4 50.3

Buryatia ............................................................................. 24.0 70.0

Bashkortostan ................................................................... 21.9 39.3

Kalmykia ........................................................................... 45.4 37.7

Marii El (Mari) .................................................................. 43.3 47.5

Chavash (Chuvashia) ........................................................ 67.8 26.7

Gorno-Altai ........................................................................ 31.0 60.4

Tyva(Tuva) ......................................................................... 64.3 32.0

31

Republics of Rossiia in

Sovereignty Declaration Sequence

Percent Titular

Nationality

Percent

Russians

Karachai-Cherkess ............................................................ 40.9 42.4

Checheno-Ingushetia ........................................................ 70.7 23.1

Mordova ............................................................................. 32.5 60.8

Karbarda-Balkaria ............................................................ 57.6 31.9

Dagestan ............................................................................ 27.5 (Avars) 9.2

Adegei ................................................................................ 22.1 68.0

Number Percentage

Russian Federation; Russians ...................................... 119,865,946 81.5

Russian Federation; Non-Russians .............................. 27,155,923 19.5

Largest groups:

Tatar ........................................................................... 5,522,096 3.8

Ukrainians .................................................................. 4,362,872 3.0

Chavash ...................................................................... 1,773,645 1.2

Bashkir ........................................................................ 1,345,273 0.9

Belorusans .................................................................. 1,206,222 0.9

Mordva ........................................................................ 1,072,939 0.8

Chechen ...................................................................... 898,999 0.7

Sources, Explanations, 2002 census projections: Natsional’nyi sostav naseleniia SSSR (1991),

from the 1989 census; Argumenty i fakty (March 1991). The Chechen-Ingush Republic split in

1992. Many ethnic groups have substantial populations living outside their republic, especially

the Tatars, and, with the Chechnya wars, the Chechens. Since 1991, Russian influx into the

federation as a whole has raised their proportion to about 83%, Russian outflow from specific

ethnic-based republics, especially Chechnya and Tyva, also should be noted. By the 2002 census, Russian percentages in most of the ‘‘ethnic-based’’ republics will have decreased, with percentages of the titular nationalities substantially increased. However, as the order of the ‘‘parade of sovereignties’’ in 1990-01 indicates, non-Russian demographic dominance in a republic

is not necessarily a predictor of radicalism.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Paul Goble.

STATEMENT OF PAUL A. GOBLE, DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT, RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY,

WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. GOBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has regularly insisted

that he has had to act with vigor and dispatch against the Chechen

drive for independence in order to prevent the disintegration of

Russia. That argument has served him very well. It has both generated support among Russians for what he is doing and, at least

equally important, it has restrained Western criticism of Russian

actions in the North Caucasus. But an examination of his claims

suggests that it is not only false, but that his campaign against

Chechnya and the West’s failure to hold him and Russia accountable may ultimately very well contribute to the problem he says he

is fighting against and, even worse, to other far more serious problems. That is my subject here, and I want to praise you, Mr. Chairman, and the committee, for holding this hearing on such an important subject and also to thank you for inviting me to take part.

I have entitled my remarks, ‘‘Are there more Chechnya’s ahead for

Russia?’’, and I’ve submitted them for the record. I will summarize

them here.

This morning, I would like to look at three different aspects of

this problem. First, I want to examine the nature of Mr. Putin’s

32

claim. I cannot do that without recalling the events of the late

1980’s when we were regularly told that we could not support the

Baltic drive for the recovery of independence because it might undermine Gorbachev and that, of course, the Balts had to work out

a staged development to independence and that we must not criticize. In fact, by holding the Baltic countries in as long as he did,

Gorbachev lost all the other republics. But since it has been mentioned about the dangers of ethnic engineering, perhaps this committee should recall that, on the very day that Boris Yeltsin, in the

presence of Belorussia and Ukraine, effectively dismembered the

Soviet Union at Belovezskaja Pusha, Mikhail Gorbachev issued a

call for redrawing the lines inside the USSR to make it have 50

States. Originality was never one of his long suits.

Second, I want to argue that the threat Putin has outlined is not

a real one, at least not real now in the sense that he and his

spokesman usually claim. And third, I want to suggest that Putin’s

actions and, even more, the West’s restraint in criticizing them, are

having the unintended consequence of ethnicizing Russian life and,

thus, undermining the chances for stability and progress toward

democracy in the country as a whole.

More than any other issue, Chechnya has been Mr. Putin’s issue.

He has used it to generate support for his election as President and

then to maintain his popularity at home and gain grudging respect

from abroad. By arguing that the Chechen drive for independence

threatens the disintegration of Russia as a whole, Putin has, of

course, played on the deepest insecurities of a Russian public that

has suffered a great deal over the last decade. He has used it to

revive an us-versus-them attitude between Russians and the West,

to generate the kind of surrogate national enthusiasm for an increasingly authoritarian approach to the media and elsewhere, and

he has used it to restrict Western criticism of his new toughness,

arguing that, ‘‘You must allow me to do this because I am working

for you.’’ But Putin has implicitly acknowledged the factual weakness of

his own claims by constantly coming up with yet newer arguments

as to why he is using overwhelming force in the way that he is in

the North Caucasus. Over the past year, he has gone from talking

about the disintegration of Russia to invoking the bogeyman of Islamic fundamentalism to insisting that he is defending the West

from Islamic terrorism. Each of these arguments, of course, has

found some supporters in both Russia and the West, but Putin’s

apparent need to come up with more than one justification for what

he is doing are just like my children’s explanation for why they

have screwed up the latest time. When you have to come up with

more than one reason, the odds are good that none of them are the

truth. And I think in Putin’s case, that is certainly true.

Now, Putin has been wrong about Chechnya and about Russia as

a whole on this issue because he fundamentally does not understand that Chechnya never wanted to be part of Russia, never

wanted to be part of the Soviet Union, and never wanted to be part

of the Russian Federation. But his errors that Chechnya must remain part of Russia lest some other non-Russian entities leave,

have been aided and abetted by the attitudes and public positions

of Western governments.

33

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many of those in the

academic and policy communities, who insisted that the Soviet

Union would never disintegrate on the basis of ethnic aspirations,

immediately reversed themselves and said that the future of the

Russian Federation would be the past of the Soviet Union; namely,

it would come apart along ethnic lines. That argument was superficially attractive, but, for some of the reasons you’ve heard already

this morning, it is not real. Most of the other entities did not have

the numbers, did not have the location, and did not have the historical background that would drive them to seek independence.

But—and this is the more important thing—this Western assumption led the West to approach Putin in ways that have made

the situation worse, because we have come to define the success of

the post-1991 Russian enterprise in terms of border stability.

Chechnya was the exception. Its leaders aspired to independence

precisely on the model of the Baltic States. Djokhar Dudaev, the

first President of Chechnya, had spent 3 years in Estonia immediately before becoming President of his own country in the

Caucasus, and he assumed that Chechens had an equal moral right

to be a country, as did the Estonians.

The consequences of the West’s acceptance of Putin’s view on territorial integrity has led many to assume that we must defend territorial integrity no matter what. That argument was made to defend the existence of the Soviet Union. But unfortunately, since

1991, several things have happened that have made it worse. While

we talked about the end of the Soviet Union initially in terms of

the self-determination of the nations, we suddenly shifted to no-secession from secession, which had the effect of trivializing what the

non-Russian peoples had achieved in 1991 and put the West on

record against any further independence. In short, we became the

last guarantor of Stalin’s nationality policy.

Second, it led another earlier administration into becoming almost a cheerleader for Russian actions against Chechnya. American officials, as you know, compared Yeltsin’s actions in the first

Chechen war to President Abraham Lincoln’s actions during the

American Civil War, which was an obscenity. But worse, it recalled

the situation in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s when the international community, in the name of border stability in Africa, tolerated and even aided the genocide of the Biafran people so that they

could not become a country on their own.

And third, the fact that we have not criticized openly, harshly,

and specifically what Putin and his regime have done in Chechnya

has contributed to a new and growing Russian sense that the West

will not hold Russia accountable to anything. And that is triggering

a kind of Russian exceptionalism that will make it difficult, if not

impossible, to integrate Russian into the modern democratic world.

But Putin’s obsession with Chechnya does reflect a more fundamental problem, one that I think should be attracting more attention in the West than it has so far, and that is the problem of the

Russian community. When we talk about ethnic groups in the Russian Federation, the first and most important ethnic community is

the Russian community, and it is very special. The tragedy is that

Russian integration, as a community, is much less strong than the

integration of the Chechens or others. And that flows back from a

34

historical record in which the Russian state became an empire before the Russian people consolidated as a nation, as a result of

which the Russian state has never been a nation state, but the

Russians have remained a state-defined nationality, one whose

strength tracks with the power of the state rather than acts as a

counterweight to it.

Putin’s actions in Chechnya have not and will not end the

Chechen drive for independence. Chechnya will be an independent

country. But his brutal military campaign there has had three effects; one that he said he hoped for and two that entail risks for

the future of Russia and its relations with us. By using force

against Chechnya, Putin has, in fact, intimidated many of the

other non-Russian peoples in the Russian Federation. Many of

their leaders have told me that what they understand from

Chechnya is, you can pursue all the independence you want as long

as you don’t declare it. As long as you do not say, ‘‘We are going

to leave,’’ you can act as independently from Moscow as possible.

That is certainly the calculation behind people like President

Mintimir Shaimiev, of Tatarstan, who is taking a very tough line

and reminding Moscow, even today, even as we speak, that

Tatarstan did not sign the Federation treaty either. And the stripping of its Federal—its power-sharing arrangement, which Putin

has talked about, could end its relationship with Russia.

That is problematic enough, but there are two other things which

I would like to end with. The first is that Putin’s policies in

Chechnya have led to that republic’s Afghanization. By destroying

so much of the republic’s infrastructure and by killing or driving

out so many of its people, Putin and his government have effectively destroyed the basic cultural transmission mechanisms there.

That has led to a rise of young men who know little of anything

but fighting, who have not been acculturated to the Chechen nation

and who are available for radicalization. That is what happened in

Afghanistan. That is why the Taliban happened.

I happen to know President Djokhar Dudaev, of Chechnya, and

he once told me that he was a good Muslim who prayed three times

a day. I did not point out that a good Muslim prays five times a

day, but he had been a member of the Communist Party from the

age of 18 and had been a major general in the Soviet Air Force,

so perhaps that was not in the officer instruction manual.

But the image of Chechnya as an inevitably Islamic force is

wrong. It is being converted into that by the brutality of the Russian Government. And, as a result, Russia now faces a more intractable and dangerous enemy than it would have had it either allowed the Chechens to go for independence in 1991 or, if Moscow

had at least observed the provisions of the 1996 Khasavyurt Accords. It did neither, and it is going to lose this war.

The other consequence of Putin’s approach is likely to be far

more dangerous for Russia’s future, and that is the ethnicization

of political life and the revival of the cult of force. In recent days,

as you know, there have been reports that anti-Semitism is on the

wane in Russia. That is great news. But it has been replaced by

antagonism to people from the Caucasus, in general, and Chechens,

in particular.

35

* The views expressed here are Mr. Goble’s own.

The demonization of the Chechens by the Russian Government

and the Russian media have contributed to acts of discrimination

and violence that are not punished. Indeed, they are excused or

praised. And I wonder how we would react to any other government in the world whose Defense Minister said, ‘‘I am sympathetic

and understand a Russian colonel who is on trial for killing a

Chechen woman.’’ Even non-Russians, who have never heard of

Pastor Niemoeller and his observation about the ways violence

against one group can spread to another, have got to be worried.

And that is the risk that Mr. Putin has invited by his actions, a

risk that increases as the demographic realities change.

You have been given some numbers which are snapshots of

where Russia is today ethnographically. The reality is that the

Russian community is declining by almost a million a year, and the

share of non-Russians in some of these areas will increase over

time. I submit to you that those changes may matter more than the

figures that we have at the present.

I, personally, am very pleased that this committee, the Congress

in general, and the American Government have begun to speak out

more vigorously to demand that Russia seek a political solution in

Chechnya. Many, of course, are still urging caution, lest we drive

Putin supposedly into more nationalist or authoritarian directions—I find it difficult to understand what those might be—but we

need to recognize that it is his actions and our failure to speak out

vigorously that threatens the territorial integrity and political

progress of Russia, far more than anything any Chechen or other

non-Russian inside the Russian Federation has ever dreamed of

doing. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Goble follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PAUL A. GOBLE *

ARE THERE MORE CHECHNYAS AHEAD FOR RUSSIA?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has regularly insisted that he has had to act

with vigor and dispatch against the Chechen drive for independence in order to prevent the disintegration of Russia. That argument has served him well: it has both

generated support among Russians for what he is doing and even more important

it has restrained Western criticism of Russian actions there. But in fact, an examination of his claim suggests that it is not only false but that his campaign against

Chechnya and the West’s general failure to hold him and Russian accountable may

very well contribute to the very problem that he says he is fighting against.

That is my subject here, and I want to praise you, Mr. Chairman, and the committee for holding a hearing on this important subject and also to thank you for inviting me to take part.

This morning, I would like to look at three different aspects of the problem: First,

I want to examine the nature of Mr. Putin’s claim and compare it with claims made

by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union and

by Putin’s predecessor, Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Second, I want to argue

that the threat Putin has outlined is not a real one—or at least not real in the sense

that he and his spokesmen usually claim. And third, I want to suggest that Putin’s

actions and the West’s restraint in criticizing them are having the unintended consequence of ethnicizing Russian political life and thus undermining the chances for

stability and progress toward democracy. Moreover, it reduces the likelihood that

Russia will be able to prevent more ethnic violence and more moves toward national

self-determination in the future.

36

A Politically Effective Claim

More than any other issue, Putin has exploited the Chechen conflict first to generate support for his election as president and then to maintain his popularity at

home and grudging respect from abroad. By arguing that the Chechen drive for

independence threatens the disintegration of Russia as a whole, Putin has played

on the deepest insecurities of a Russian public buffeted by more than a decade of

unpredictable developments that have left an ever greater number of them impoverished and angry. He has used it to revive an ‘‘us versus them’’ attitude between

Russians and the West, to generate a kind of surrogate national enthusiasm for his

increasingly authoritarian approach to the media and other aspects of Russian life.

And he has used it to restrict Western criticism of his new toughness, playing on

Western weariness about the political upheavals in Russia and Eurasia.

But Putin has implicitly acknowledged the factual weakness of his own claims by

putting out a variety of other arguments as to why his use of overwhelming force

in Chechnya is not only justified but must be supported by Russians and the international community. Over the last year, he has routinely invoked the bogeyman of

Islamic fundamentalism as a reason for his actions. And most recently he has said

that Russia is fighting the West’s battle against terrorism by its actions in

Chechnya.

Each of those arguments has found some supporters in both Russia and the West,

but Putin’s apparent need to shift the justification for his actions simultaneously reflects his broader needs—after all, he has proclaimed this spring that he has ended

the threats to the disintegration of Russia despite the ongoing fighting in

Chechnya—and the fact that his original argument was never as impressive as he

and his supporters in both Russia and the West often suggested.

Why Putin is Wrong on Chechnya and Russia as a Whole

Putin has been wrong about Chechnya and about Russia as a whole on this issue,

but his errors—that Chechnya must remain part of Russia lest other non-Russian

entities within Russia leave—have been aided and abetted by the attitudes and public positions of Western governments.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many of those who had insisted that

the USSR would never disintegrate on the basis of ethnic aspirations immediately

changed course and insisted that the future of the Russian Federation would inevitably be the past of the Soviet Union: namely, it would be threatened with disintegration along ethnic lines.

The argument was superficially attractive: After all, the Russian Federation,

while more ethnically homogeneous than the Soviet Union had been, included 22

non-Russian autonomous state formations within it. Although these included only

about 18 percent of the population, they covered some 53 percent of the territory

of Russia as a whole. And many of them, especially in the immediate aftermath of

the end of the Soviet empire, aspired to greater autonomy or even ultimate state

independence.

But this Western assumption was not only wrong on the facts of the case but carried with it some dangerous political implications that Putin continues to exploit

and that appear to guide the thinking of many in the West. With regard to the facts,

the non-Russian entities within the Russian Federation were less interested in, less

capable of, and less able to appeal to the West for help. Only six of the 22 had nonRussian ethnic pluralities. Most were located in areas where the pursuit of independence was largely precluded either because they lacked access to the outside

world or even were surrounded by ethnic Russian territory. Few of them had any

recent experience with independence, and most concluded early on that independence was not an option, especially because of changed attitudes in Moscow and in

the West.

Chechnya was the exception: its leaders aspired to independence on the model of

the Baltic States, it had suffered in ways that had created a genuine national movement, and it had a well-organized secular nationalist leadership that appealed to

the world on the same basis that the non-Russian union republics of the former Soviet Union had done. But just as many in the West refused to demand that Gorbachev allow the Baltic countries to acquire de facto independence lest such demands

drive him from his reformist path on other issues, so too many in the West have

made the same calculation with Yeltsin and now with Putin.

But with regard to the implications for the West, the assumption that Russia was

threatened with immediate territorial disintegration that had to be countered had

three dangerous consequences. First, it lead many in the West to assume that the

maintenance of Russia’s territorial integrity was necessary for progress on other

issue. That led one earlier administration to shift its rhetoric on what had happened

to the Soviet Union from a discussion of the end of empire to an insistence that

37

there be ‘‘no secession from secession,’’ a shift that trivialized what happened in

1991 and put the West on record against any further independence. In short it put

the West in the position of being the last guarantor of Stalin’s nationality policy.

Second, it led another earlier administration into becoming almost a cheerleader

for Russian actions against Chechnya. American officials compared Yeltsin’s actions

in 1994-96 to President Abraham Lincoln’s actions during the American Civil War.

Worse, it effectively returned the West to the position it had adopted in the late

1960s and early 1970s when it sanctioned a genocide of the Biafran people in Nigeria in the name of border stability in Africa.

And third, this focus on territorial integrity had the effect of leading some in the

West to excuse behavior in Chechnya first by Yeltsin and more recently and especially by Putin, thus contributing to a Russian sense that the West would not hold

Moscow to the same standards it holds others to and thus helping to power precisely

the kind of Russian exceptionalism that has made it difficult for Russia to integrate

into the broader international community so often in the past.

But Putin’s obsession with Chechnya does reflect a more fundamental problem,

one that should be attracting more attention than it has so far both in Russia and

here. That is the problem of the Russian community itself. Strange as it may seem

to many, it is the lack of integration of the Russian nation that explains much of

Putin’s fears and approach. Because the Russian state became an empire before the

Russian people consolidated as a nation, the Russian state has never been a nation

state but the Russians have remained a state-defined nationality, one whose

strength tracks with the power of the state rather than serves as a counterweight

to it.

That puts Russia at odds with the situation in European countries and is ultimately why Russians find it difficult to accept the loss of the outer empire and fear

that the disintegration of the Soviet Union will inevitably spread to the Russian

Federation itself.

A Dangerous Precedent

Putin’s actions in Chechnya have not ended the Chechen drive for independence.

Instead, his brutal military campaign there has had three effects, one that he and

some others hoped for and two that entail risks for the future of Russia.

By using force against Chechnya, Putin has in fact intimidated many of the other

non-Russian peoples in the Russian Federation. Many of their leaders have concluded from the events in Chechnya that they can seek as much autonomy as possible but that the price of doing so is avoiding any moves that look like a drive to

independence. That is the calculation behind the actions of Tatarstan President

Mintimir Shaimiev and many others. But if these nations are intimidated, they are

also offended, as Shaimiev and others have suggested. Indeed, some are angry and

may now be more inclined to pursue an independent course should future circumstances allow.

That is problematic enough. But there are two other consequences of Putin’s actions in Chechnya with respect to Russia’s future that are even more frightening.

Putin’s policies have led to the Afganization of Chechnya. By destroying so much

of that republic’s infrastructure and by killing or driving out so many of its people,

Putin and his government have destroyed the basic cultural transmission mechanisms there. That has led to the rise of a new group of young men who know little

of anything but fighting and who have not been acculturated into the Chechen nation. And they have become available for mobilization by extremist groups, often

acting in the name of Islam.

I knew and respected Chechen President Djokar Dudaev. In an earlier incarnation, he helped prevent Gorbachev from visiting on Estonia the kind of violence the

Soviet president inflicted on Lithuania and Latvia in January 1991. Dudaev, who

had been a major general in the Soviet air force and a communist from a young

age, told me once that he was a good Muslim in that he prayed three times a day.

Of course, good Muslims pray five times a day, but he was sufficiently secular that

he did not appear aware of that. Dudaev’s approach defined the Chechen national

cause until the Russian military actions first of Yeltsin and especially now of Putin.

And the Islamist and terrorist threats that Moscow regularly complains of are—just

as is the case in Afghanistan—the product of Russian actions rather than arising

somehow naturally out of the Chechen milieu.

As a result, Russia now faces a far more intractable and dangerous enemy than

it would have had it either allowed the Chechen’s national self-determination in

1991 or observed the terms of the 1996 Khasavurt accords. It did neither, and it

is going to lose this war, just as almost every other colonial power has done. Unfortunately, the Chechnya that is likely to emerge just like Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion or Algeria after the French colonial war there will be a very different

38

and less pleasant place than would otherwise have been the case. And equally unfortunately, the world is likely to blame the victims rather than the victimizers.

The other consequence of Putin’s approach in Chechnya that is likely to be even

more dangerous for Russia’s future is the ethnicization of political life there and the

revived cult of the use of force. In recent days, there have been reports that antiSemitism is on the wane in Russia. I for one celebrate that progress. But these reports have pointed out that there is a new enemy in Russia, the Chechen people.

The demonization of the Chechens by the Russian government and the Russian

media have contributed to acts of discrimination and violence by Russian officials

and citizens against ethnic Chechens and others from the Caucasus. Few of these

actions are ever punished, and many of them are justified, excused or even praised,

as witness the outrageous remarks of Russian officials about a colonel who is accused of killing a Chechen woman.

Even non-Russians who have never heard of Pastor Niemuller and his observation

clearly understand about the ways violence against one group can spread to another. And that is a risk that Putin has invited by his actions.

I am personally very pleased that this committee, the Congress in general, and

the American government have begun to speak out more vigorously to demand that

Russia seek a political solution in Chechnya. Many are still urging caution against

doing so lest we drive Putin into even more nationalist and authoritarian directions.

But in fact, it is his actions and our failure to speak out vigorously about them that

threatens the territorial integrity and political progress of Russia far more than

anything any Chechen or other non-Russian inside the Russian Federation has ever

dreamed of doing.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. We will start with 10-

minute rounds here. Let me pick up my questioning where you left

off, Paul. As a result of this war, are the republics in regions with

sizable Islamic populations becoming more critical of Putin, and is

there a possibility they will attempt to gain independence?

Mr. GOBLE. In 1991, there were no regions except Chechnya that

were talking about independence. At the present time, there are a

number of officials in Tatarstan—not the top officials, but a number of officials at lower levels—who are saying, ‘‘You know, if this

gets much worse, we will have no choice.’’ In many ways, we are

watching a recapitulation of the process of radicalization that took

place in Soviet times. As has been properly pointed out, these

places are not in the best position, you know, geographically or demographically, to pursue it, but there has been a radicalization of

views.

If you look at the debates over the last 6 months about whether

you have an insert in the passport, whether you maintain your

power-sharing treaty, and then you look at what is being said in

the local press, there is a process of radicalization. I am not prepared to say that next week or 6 months from now the Tatars are

going to declare that, ‘‘We’re out of here.’’ What I’m suggesting is

that the ethnicization of political life, where attacking people on

ethnic lines becomes acceptable, which is, in fact, what is going on

in Russia because of the Chechen war, more and more non-Russians—and I would say the people of the Tatar-Bashkortostan area

in the middle of the Volga are the first candidates for this and, second, some in Buriatia—are beginning to say things that suggest

they are very disturbed about the future of the Russian Federation

and what their place will be in it. Many of them wish the Chechens

had never tried for independence, because they think they are suffering as a result. Again, repeating the kinds of things you have

heard among Ukrainians about the Balts in 1989 and 1990.

I am not suggesting there is a simple repetition. I am more worried about the poisoning of Russian political life than I am about

39

the changing of borders, except that I believe Chechnya will be

independent. I think no one has won a colonial war, effectively, and

Putin is not going to be the first. But what you are seeing is a lowgrade, below-the-top leadership discussion. I happen, for professional reasons, to read the Tatar and Bashkir press each day, OK,

and I can tell you that there are articles and statements in there

today that would not have been there 6 months ago and that there

is a process of radicalization just below the official level.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Solnick, you spoke of the uniqueness of

Chechnya within the Federation. Would you expand on that? Why

is it so different from any of the other areas?

Dr. SOLNICK. Well, on my right here is someone who is more of

an expert on Chechnya than I, but I think many of the problems

that we encounter in Chechnya stem from that moment in 1994

when the Federal Government—and Yeltsin, in particular—had

managed to get his constitution ratified. There were two republics

that were not yet on board the new Federal structure: One was

Tatarstan, the other was Chechnya. And many of his advisors

urged that he use a treaty process to basically strike a deal with

Tatarstan and strike a deal with Chechnya. And he went and did

that with Tatarstan, and then it broke down with Chechnya. And

the breakdown of that negotiation with Chechnya essentially got

the republic off the rail.

Now, why did that happen? I think a lot of that has to do with

the geostrategic position of Chechnya—it sat atop a pipeline

route—with internal politics in Chechnya—there was not an interlocutor for the Federal Government in Chechnya—with the clan

politics internal to the political structure in that republic. According to some accounts, the people that they were close to reaching

agreement with were unable to deliver that agreement, and the

Ministry of Defense wanted to display its ability to use force, and

that was a lethal combination at that time. And once the action

was made, there was no turning back because of the baggage that

Chechnya brings.

I will conclude with this—it took more czarist troops to incorporate Chechnya into the Russian empire than it did to repel Napoleon. So there is a long, long history here.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Dunlop, would you like to comment on that?

Dr. DUNLOP. Yes, I think Steve has accurately described the

background to the breakdown of relations, especially in 1994, between the Russian Republic and Chechnya. I do think—and I have

written a book on this, on the antecedents to the first war; I published it in 1998—I do think that a deal could have been struck

with General Dudaev, President Dudaev. As Paul has mentioned,

he was very much a Soviet man. And he, all along, indicated that

he wanted a negotiated settlement. I do fault the Russian side

more than the Chechen side in that case. I think some kind of an

associated arrangement could have been worked out. And when you

think of the two wars fought since then, at enormous human and

economic cost, one can say that Yeltsin and his team made a horrible mistake in 1994, and that that mistake is continuing today.

The CHAIRMAN. One of the things I find as I travel Europe is the

same kind of characterization of Chechnya that I have found with

regard to the Balkans, namely Islamic fundamentalism and the

40

radicalization of society. In other words, this is as much a religious

uprising as anything else. Would any of you speak to that for a moment?

Mr. GOBLE. If I might. The Chechens were Islamicized very late.

They were Islamicized by Avar missionaries between the 14th and

16th centuries. The Islamic overlay of the tight ‘‘clannic’’ system

meant that Islam was domesticated very heavily. The

Naqshbandiyya and to a lesser extent, the Khalidi tariqyat of

Sufism had an influence, but it was something where Islam became

the basis for political unity under only one condition, and that was

when you were attacked from the outside.

As far as deep attachment—you know, the whole Middle Eastern

idea of what Muslims are, something straight out of the popular

press in this country—this was not a heavily Islamic place. This

was not even like that in Daghestan, next door.

There is an unfortunate tendency, in Europe and here, to think

that once you have invoked the word ‘‘Islam,’’ you’ve explained the

world. It is a kind of acceptable racism, I am afraid. If anyone explained European history by reference to the fact that almost everyone was a Christian, people would laugh. But if you say Islam

causes something, this is considered scholarly insight. It is nonsense.

The Chechen national movement, in 1989, 1990, and 1991, was

entirely secular. They were not interested in promoting an Islamic

state. Dudaev, as has been said, was a Soviet man. He was a very

good Soviet man. He prevented Gorbachev from killing people in

Estonia the way he had done in Lithuania and Latvia. He closed

down the air-traffic control over Estonia to prevent Soviet paratroopers being sent into Tallinn on the third weekend in January,

and he was responsible for saving Boris Yeltsin, who went to

Tallinn on January 13, 1991. He got him driven back to the airport

in St. Petersburg to avoid his plane being blown up. This was a

secular movement. It was modeled explicitly on the Baltic aspirations.

It was only once Russia started the killing, the massive killing,

in 1994, 1995, and 1996, that you began removing the traditional

elders of these type communities and people became available for

mobilization by others, the same thing that happened in Afghanistan. Afghanistan, historically, was not a very Islamic place. The

Taliban happened because of the Soviet destruction of the community in Afghanistan. And we find ourselves—and the Europeans,

even worse, I would suggest—find ourselves blaming the victim. In

other words, the Afghans are responsible for the Taliban. No, the

Taliban happened because of what the Soviets and the Russians

did in Afghanistan.

What is happening in Chechnya, the Islamization of Chechnya,

is exactly the same. It is an extraordinarily unfortunate thing. The

image of the enemy, of Islam, has been put out by a number of people in Moscow because, guess what, they found it works. They

found that if you say that here, it works. And it does.

Dr. BALZER. Let me add a footnote to what Paul just said about

Islam. The range of available Islams within the Russian Federation

is quite great, including a brand of Islam that is a reformist Islam

that blends European and Eastern philosophies. It’s called ‘‘The

41

New Way,’’ Jadidism. It was part of the turn of the 20th century

politics. And it was born in Tatarstan. There are many different

kinds of Islam—Islamic fundamentalism is not all one word. Therefore, it is possible that some of the more reformist Islamic tendencies can be grown—and, indeed, in Tatarstan, are being grown

locally by new community centers, with mosque-centered, politics

that are not radical. In other words, there is a way to look at the

development of religion that is not necessarily fundamentalist

when you do talk about Islam.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Senator Helms.

Senator HELMS. Mr. Chairman, I think that we have four distinguished, articulate witnesses here. And, for my part, and for my 10

minutes, I wish that you would interrupt me or each other and let

us have a discussion among you four, with me sort of sitting up

here cheering you on or whatever.

Now, first thing before I do that, I turned around the chart. And

on there, it has Milosevic’s war in Kosovo and Putin’s war in

Chechnya. Now, Milosevic—death toll by war: 10,500—and that’s

five-tenths of 1 percent, a half of 1 percent. Putin’s war: 30,000–

35,000—three percent of the population. Detentions during the

war: 2,000 for Milosevic; 20,000 for Putin. Displaced persons

caused by war: 1,500,000 people, 75 percent of the population; and

Putin: 600,000–700,000, and that is 60 to 70 percent of the population. And the pre-war population: two million—that was the estimation in 1999—and one million in Chechnya in 1999.

Milosevic’s War in Kosovo Putin’s War in Chechnya

Deaths Caused by War 10,500 (00.5% of pop.) 30-35,000 (3% of pop.)

Detentions During War 2,000+ 20,000+

Displaced Persons Caused by War 1,500,000 975% of pop.) 600-700,000 (60-70% of pop.)

Pre-War Population 2,000,000 (estimated 1999) 1,000,000 (estimated 1999)

Senator HELMS. Now, my question to any of you—my understanding is that Russian forces have destroyed some 85 percent of

Chechen historic and religious sites in Chechnya, not to mention a

library that was the central repository of Chechen historical documents. What do you believe is the strategy behind this destruction;

and, further, is this destruction compatible with international obligations concerning the conduct of war? Anybody that wants to grab

that one, I would like to hear.

Mr. GOBLE. Senator, there have been suggestions in the Russian

press that, ‘‘If we cannot defeat the Chechens, we can destroy

them.’’ Destroying cultural artifacts, destroying cultural transmission mechanisms, is, under international law, genocide. This is

an act of genocide by the Russian Government. It is incompatible

with the undertakings Russia has signed with the United Nations,

with OSCE, and a bunch of other places. It is—to destroy a nation’s

culture is genocide under international law. To destroy this many

people is genocide under international law.

If this action had been committed by any government that did

not have nuclear weapons, the country that did it would be outside—would be considered beyond the pale. But a government that

has nuclear weapons that does things like this is usually in a posiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:47 Sep 26, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 75011 SFRELA1 PsN: SFRELA1
42

tion to insist that it not be criticized too much. And we have now

watched—in the last week, following the statement by Lord Russell-Johnston at PACE, which has been referred to several times

this morning—Russians complaining that, ‘‘PACE is putting too

much pressure on us, and if the Europeans don’t stop, we’ll find a

way to respond.’’ I mean, that is the—you know, that is the response you are getting. As long—I think the Russians have violated

all kinds of international agreements. I think if we do not hold——

Senator HELMS. All right. All right. Dr. Balzer, I saw you shaking your head. Tell my why.

Dr. BALZER. Well, my reaction to this comparison is that it does

a good deal of credit to the late human rights worker in Chechnya

and the Balkans, Fred Cuny, who was murdered in Chechnya. And

he began pointing out these kinds of comparisons that——

Senator HELMS. Are you saying it is false—that it is not accurate?

Dr. BALZER. No, I am not at all. On the contrary, I am saying

it does honor—the idea behind the comparison is an important one,

and it does honor to the spirit of what Fred Cuny did, because he

started making these comparisons precisely in order to show how

much more violent Chechnya has been. And it also blows away

stereotypes, because there was an assumption that our involvement, which was so much greater in the Balkans, was because the

intensity of the war in the Balkans was so great.

Senator HELMS. I see. Dr. Dunlop, do you have a comment?

Dr. DUNLOP. Yes, I would like to make a couple of points, Senator. First, I recently published a study of human losses in the first

war, the 1994 to 1996 war, in ‘‘Central Asian Survey,’’ and I concluded, in a very rough estimate, that 46,500 people had died in

that war, about 35,000 of them civilians. So we could add those figures to these new figures and get an even more catastrophic total.

And second, I wanted to mention that the Lam Center for Pluralism in Grozny-Nazran, which works with the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, recently issued a report on the fate of

Chechnya’s architecture and natural treasures in which they provide in great detail information on the destruction of the traditional tower monuments in Chechnya dating from the 11th to the

17th century. These are ancient architectural monuments, many of

which have been destroyed or damaged as a result of the military

operations in Chechnya.

Senator HELMS. Dr. Solnick.

Dr. SOLNICK. I just want to add one thing. While Chechnya is a

predominantly Chechen republic, one of the more concentrated nonRussian Republics, I just want to emphasize that the population in

the cities, particularly Grozny, was heavily mixed. And when the

war came, especially the first war, but also the second war, the casualties were not only on the Chechen side, but on the Russian population living in the cities, especially the Russian population of

Grozny. So while I think I agree with my colleagues that there is

a racist character to this war, it is also true and consistent with

the general brutality of the Russian Armed Forces, that the deaths

have been seen on both sides.

43

Senator HELMS. Yes or no, a question I had. Do you think Mr.

Putin will ever, ever be able to establish control over Chechnya,

short of a genocidal outcome?

Dr. DUNLOP. No.

Mr. GOBLE. No.

Dr. SOLNICK. No.

Senator HELMS. No, no, no. Dr. Balzer?

Dr. BALZER. There is a school of thought that discusses low intensity—and I’m not sure Chechnya really is so low intensity—

wars that go on for a long, long time. And if Chechnya becomes

something like Northern Ireland or other places that have had protracted multi-generation wars, then it is extraordinarily difficult for

us to predict what will happen. However, the degree of destruction

of the small Chechen people is so great that the only answer, short

of that kind of horrifying long-term war, is negotiation.

Senator HELMS. Thank you, ma’am. Now, by the year 2015, it’s

estimated that as much as 20 to 25 percent of Russia’s population

will be Muslim. Now, what does the war in Chechnya today portend for a country where Muslims will, in the not too distant future, if that estimate is accurate, amount to nearly a quarter of the

population? That is to say 25 percent. What’s the future for Russia?

Mr. GOBLE. As has been pointed out, Senator, there are many

kinds of Muslims, and there will continue to be many kinds of Muslims. Some of the Muslims are going to be radicalized. It is worth

noting that, in the last 3 months, President Putin has spent a great

deal of time trying to sort out the internal contradictions within

the leadership of the Russian Muslim community. There are two

claimants for the top spot, and Putin desperately wants to establish a single Muslim entity, if you will. Islam not being a clerical

religion, that’s a little problematic, but the Russians and the Soviets did it, so Putin is trying to have one. It is not clear that the

Muslims will not become increasingly important and, it is worth

noting, Putin is——

The CHAIRMAN. Putin what? I’m sorry, Paul.

Mr. GOBLE. I’m sorry?

The CHAIRMAN. You said it’s not—they won’t become increasingly

what?

Mr. GOBLE. Well, it’s not clear that they will become increasingly

radical.

The CHAIRMAN. Right.

Mr. GOBLE. But they will necessarily be increasingly important.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand.

Mr. GOBLE. Mr. Putin has been involved, also, in the organization of the Eurasian movement, the Refrock party and a—to try to

have some kind of party that will rope in the Muslims. Whether

that’s going to work, we don’t know, but these people are not happy

about what’s going on in Chechnya, and there is more draft resistance among Muslims.

Senator HELMS. Dr. Balzer, I noticed you, this time, were nodding your head. Do you agree with that?

Dr. BALZER. Yes, indeed. Islam is increasingly important, and Islamic people have been organizing themselves. Whether this new

Eurasian movement will come to pull in those Islamic leaders is

44

another question. I think the Eurasian movement, and even in its

past, has been more a Russian phenomena than a non-Russian one.

Senator HELMS. Thank you. Dr. Dunlop.

Dr. DUNLOP. I wanted to add one point which I don’t think we’ve

addressed sufficiently so far, which is the percentage of Muslims in

the North Caucasus region. This is a particularly volatile area, and

there are very few Russians there. I believe, in Ingushetia, I read

recently, there’s only 2 percent Russians. And in Daghestan, 5 percent?

Mr. GOBLE. Maybe as much as eight.

Dr. DUNLOP. Eight percent? Five to eight—there are very small

numbers of ethnic Russians in these regions. And, of course, the violence, the fighting, is right on their doorstep. These are areas

which are subject to more volatility, perhaps, than Muslim regions

in central Russia and elsewhere. So what happens in Chechnya,

and the resolution of the crisis there, directly impacts the other

North Caucasus regimes. Furthermore, numerous Russian troops

are based in these republics. And, according to recent reports,

they’ve been behaving as badly in Ingushetia as they have in

Chechnya. Recently, the President of Ingushetia, Ruslan Aushev,

had to complain officially against what he called barbarism being

perpetrated by these Russian troops in his own republic. So I think

the Muslims in the North Caucasus region should be a subject of

particular attention for us.

Senator HELMS. Mr. Chairman, would you allow Dr. Solnick to

answer the question?

The CHAIRMAN. Sure.

Dr. SOLNICK. I just wanted to note that we may be more discriminating in distinguishing Caucasian and Muslim and North

Caucasian than the Russian people are. This war is generating a

lot of prejudice against dark-skinned Russian citizens. Not all darkskinned Russian citizens are Muslims. So the social tensions generated from this war are not quite so neatly compartmentalized as

we might portray them here.

Senator HELMS. Anybody want to say anything, in a sentence or

two, further on this question?

Mr. GOBLE. Could I just add one sentence?

Senator HELMS. Yes, sir.

Mr. GOBLE. Last week, the leader of the Tatar community of

Moscow pointed out that the Russian Government should not treat

the Muslims in Moscow as immigrants because, as he said, ‘‘We

were here when this city was founded.’’

Senator HELMS. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Lugar.

Senator LUGAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I join Senator Biden

and Senator Helms in their compliments on four extraordinary papers—each tremendously helpful for our understanding and for all

who may be listening to this hearing.

I’m going to have two sets of questions. First of all, to prey upon

your expertise to get a finer point on the economic effects on Russia

of this war in Chechnya. And, second, the morale factor—which

would include draft evasion. You have touched upon that with the

Muslim community, but it seems much more widespread, including

45

the phenomenon of living off the land and the violations that may

be occurring in other sectors.

In addition to this, I’ll phrase the economic issue in this way: as

commonly portrayed in our press it’s suggested the Russian budget,

as a total budget of the country—the Duma adopted a budget of about $50 billion in U.S. dollar terms and about $8 billion in defense spending. When Americans hear that, they think there must

be a misprint—single-digit—because we’re talking about $300 billion-plus for our defense budget. But nevertheless, some would say,

well, you’ve masked this, because there’s a lot of demonetization

here, the living-off-the-land factor, barter and so forth. But nevertheless, it’s a very small budget for the country and a very small

budget for defense, yet there’s a pretty big war going on. Can anybody characterize how much of this budget is consumed in the war,

or what the effects are upon the economy of Russia from the prosecution of this war?

Dr. DUNLOP. Well, Senator, as I mentioned, one—there was an

article in a well-known Russian journal recently which calculated

that $4 billion a year is being spent on the conflict. Much of this

is presumably off the books—magic, if you want—but the money

comes across. Pavel Felgenhauer, a leading Russian military journalist, a specialist in military affairs, also came up with the figure

of about $4 billion a year, and that’s just for the military operations. Obviously, if they try and restore anything in Chechnya,

that’s an additional expense. So given the annual budget you’ve

cited, it’s clear that an enormous sum of money, in Russian terms,

is going for this war, more than—as the journalist I cited remarked, more than is being used to pay for the budgets of Moscow

and Petersburg.

Mr. GOBLE. Senator, as you have been one of the pioneers in

costing out what the real expenses are in Russian budgets and Soviet budgets so that we’d have some basis for knowing about aid,

so you know that translate—if you talk about the replacement

cost—in other words, what it would cost us to do the same thing— the fact is that the number is several orders of magnitude, really,

bigger than this. I think I’d like to address the morale issue. This

week, it was reported that there are currently 5,000 Russian soldiers deserting every year, of whom about 80 percent are deserting

from the North Caucasus military district. Prime Minister

Kasyanov said last Friday that the brutalization of young men in

the military—— The CHAIRMAN. Hazing.

Mr. GOBLE. But it’s worse than hazing. This is not fraternity

house stuff. This is beating people to the point of killing them—I

suppose there are fraternities where that happens, too, but never

mind—is increasing to the point that, and along ethnic lines, that

the army is doing the same thing it did in Soviet times, which is

radicalizing the non-Russians rather than integrating them, which

is what the expectation was. In addition, because the soldiers are

often not paid—one of the ways you get your budget down there is

not to pay them. So what happens? The military sells weapons. It

sells equipment. The Chechens were proud for a while on their

Websites to tell you how many bottles of vodka it took to get a

tank. And they figured that when it got down to one bottle of vodka

46

for one tank, the Russians would go home, but it never got below

two. So we’re getting there, but not quite. This is having enormous

morale problems. This is not a war the military wanted; this was

a war the military got sucked into. The commanders were very unhappy about it. This was an FSB forced conflict in 1994 and again

now. It was not what the army wanted. Armies do not like this

kind of fighting. And one of the reasons there was the discussion

by Nemstov and others about stopping at the Tarik, is that is when

you stop before you get in the mountains. It is really easy to fight

in the lowlands if you are an organized military force. You go into

the mountains, you start taking casualties big time, and that is

where they are, and they are not happy either. The army would be

thrilled to be pulled out, and that is something which has an effect

on the ability of the Moscow political leadership to use the Russian

military for other things.

Dr. BALZER. Let me add a footnote on morale and also on the

draft. A lot of the republics, especially as the first cycle of the

1990’s Chechnya war got started, said they weren’t going to send

their sons. Part of the points of contention with the center was that

republics drafted laws saying, ‘‘Our folks aren’t going to go there.

We don’t want to fight our non-Russian brethren, to fight the

Chechen people.’’ In the small Republic of Tyva, it was worded

slightly differently. They said, ‘‘We need all of our sons to help police our serious criminal activity in our own republic.’’

Dr. SOLNICK. If I could just add to that, I think Paul’s comment

may have left the impression that the Soviet Army was a brutal,

hazing, violent institution that then got better and is now getting

worse again.

Mr. GOBLE. No, it has continued to be bad, but it has perhaps

gotten worse in the North Caucasus.

Dr. SOLNICK. Yes, I want to emphasize that. Just to put this in

scale, this became an issue in the Soviet times during the Afghan

war, and we’re seeing a lot of the same syndromes now. In the late

1980’s, there were on the order of 10 to 20 non-combat deaths—and

this is a conservative estimate—in the Soviet Army every day.

These are people being beaten to death within brigades. These are

people killing themselves to avoid being beaten to death. It’s ethnic

conflict. It’s generational conflict. It’s senior officers beating up

young recruits. Now they are professional soldiers and conscripts

who are violent toward each other. The morale is horrific in the

Russian Army, and Chechnya is making it worse, not only because

there doesn’t seem to be a lot of regard for the lives of Russian soldiers there, but as the New York Times reported a couple of weeks

ago, there seems to be an active trade in Russian soldiers themselves bartered from the army to the Chechens and then bought

back by their mothers in some cases.

Senator LUGAR. Let me ask another line of questioning now. This

one is based upon President Putin’s comment the other day. There

was an anti-NATO expansion expression, for example, but he really

broadened that to say that, essentially, NATO is trying to exclude

Russia, and is trying to have something less than Europe whole

and free. This begs the question again and again, should Russia

ever become a member of NATO. Under the circumstances we’re

discussing today, probably not, because the eligibility criteria really

47

wouldn’t permit that. Taking a more friendly view down the trail,

however, clearly we’re going to be discussing in this country as well

as with our European friends, the Baltic States and their inclusion

in NATO next year. The argument will be, once again, that this

would antagonize Russia and make it unstable. On the other hand,

leaving aside the Russian attitude, what would it take or what criteria are there for Russia to become a member so that they don’t

feel that anybody is carving up their territory and that, as a matter

of fact, we want them. As historians of Russia, is this simply inconceivable. The cultural traditions, the institutions that are there

don’t really permit a realistic appraisal of Russian membership.

Mr. GOBLE. Senator, it’s worth noting, the next sentence in Mr.

Putin’s comment about NATO. He said, ‘‘We had hoped that the

OSCE would become the basis for a pan-European security arrangement in place of NATO, but the OSCE has turned into nothing more than a venue for criticizing us and criticizing our central

Asian friends.’’ If Russia wants to live by the rules of an organization, it can join. The tragedy is that Russia has insisted that it

doesn’t have to follow the rules in order to get in, and that’s been

true at the Council of Europe, that’s been true a whole lot of times.

The Russians have said, ‘‘We’re important. And besides, if you don’t

take us in, we’ll be unhappy.’’

Dr. SOLNICK. I must confess, when I think about this, I find it

as close to an intractable problem as one can find, and I’m reminded—during the NATO bombings of Kosovo, when Russia objected and said, ‘‘You have been saying that NATO is not an offensive force, and here you are using it in an offensive manner,’’ the

American response at the time—or the NATO response at the time

was, ‘‘Well, yes, but this is a European matter. You need not fear,

we would never intervene in a case that is clearly within your

sphere of influence. For instance, let us say, Chechnya. That would

be off limits.’’ So I think it’s just an illustration of the sort of constraints on American policy that would come along with conceding

of that enlargement of NATO.

Dr. DUNLOP. I would add that I think that the Russia we see

today isn’t inevitably the Russia that would have emerged from the

early 1990’s from the independence of Russia. I personally think

it’s a tragedy what’s happened. But I think that Mr. Putin is a person who is capable of instituting change if he feels that it’s to his

advantage and that of the country. That is, I believe he could be

induced to recognize international law. But very heavy pressure

has to be brought to bear on him. On the otherhand, to give way

to what he’s doing, to countenance it, is entirely the wrong approach, in my opinion.

Senator LUGAR. Maybe such as our giving criteria, one of which

would be to stop the war in Chechnya.

Dr. DUNLOP. Exactly.

Senator LUGAR. Or stop brutalizing people or—in other words,

you may be right that he’s effectively a good leader. But without

the right guidelines, they’re unlikely to get to the right conclusions.

Dr. DUNLOP. Right, and that’s why I supported Senator Helms’

concurrent resolution.

Senator LUGAR. Thank you.

48

The CHAIRMAN. Let me followup with a couple of questions, and

anybody on the panel here as well as my colleagues can please interrupt.

Assume for the moment that Chechnya, by whatever means,

achieves its independence. Chechnya’s off the table. Is the Russian

Federation, as presently in place, capable of being governed? I look

at the way in which it came about after the demise of the Soviet

Union and think to myself, as a student of government, how, in

God’s name, could you possibly govern under the set of relationships that exists among the various republics, autonomous regions,

and the central government, even on something as simple as taxes?

I mean if you sit down, as a political scientist, and try to figure out

how you’re going to make this country work, this Federation work,

is it possible?

Mr. GOBLE. Senator, if you are saying, can a country move along

and make compromises and constantly have to adjust itself, Russia

should be capable of doing that. If——

The CHAIRMAN. No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying, as the

Federation is presently——

Mr. GOBLE. I would suggest that—when we say ‘‘as presently,’’

I don’t think there’s one thing there. There are a bunch of different

arrangements, and this is a country that Putin is trying to have

one arrangement for. The great French Sovietologist Alain

Besancon once said that Russia’s tragedy is that it was three empires, not one, and that it had to govern them all in the same way.

It was an Austro-Hungarian in the west, it was an overseas empire

in central Asia, and it was like the American empire in the east,

in the Aboriginal populations in Siberia. If you govern them all the

same way, you create one kind of political tension. If you govern

them differently, you create another kind of political tension. But

that does not mean that it is not possible to have a complex way.

I believe that the stronger the regions are, the stronger Russia can

become. Putin, unfortunately, I think, believes the weaker the regions are is the only way for the future. I think he’s wrong, and

I think trying to take power back from the regions, which he’s trying to do, is going to create political instability. I don’t think there

is a snapshot. That’s what I’m trying to say.

Dr. SOLNICK. If I may, I think it’s important to remember that

we’re 10 years on from independence in Russia. Ten years on from

American independence, if there were to have been a hearing at

the court of the czar, they would have concluded that the United

States was a country unable to collect taxes, unable to break down

interstate trade barriers, clearly pulled in different directions. The

south was under the influence of the Spanish empire. There were

problems with Canada in the north. The British were making inroads once again. It looked pretty close to a hopeless situation. The

nation reinvented itself a year later. The nation reinvented itself

again under Jefferson.

So I think it’s important to remember, in the scope of these sort

of post-imperial transformations, that it’s very, very early in the

Russian case. And the centrifugal forces that would fragment Russia are really not all that great—again, in world historical terms.

It’s a badly governed country, no doubt. It’s a mess, but it’s not exactly flying apart at the seams.

49

The CHAIRMAN. Anyone else?

Dr. DUNLOP. Yes, I would add that I consider it unfortunate that

there appears to be a kind of a rollback—we can disagree to what

extent it’s happening, but there’s definitely a rollback away from

federalism occurring, I think, at this point under Mr. Putin—and

I believe that’s unfortunate for Russia, because a country that size

needs decentralization. It obviously has to be able to collect taxes

and do other normal things that a modern state does. But to have

elected Governors, to take one example is an excellent idea. Many

in Putin’s entourage, however, believe that’s a bad idea and that

they should have appointed Governors from Moscow. To run that

vast country with bureaucrats appointed in Moscow, in my view,

would be a very negative phenomenon. And therefore, I think that

the tendency, which is in its beginning stages, that we’re seeing

now, is an unfortunate one.

Dr. BALZER. I would very much agree with what John Dunlop

just said—what everyone has said—but also add that the struggling of Federal rights and powers is being discussed and negotiated right now. We can sympathize with what President Putin inherited. And there are some really almost ironic incidents. Recently, the leader of the Republic of Marii-El, hoping to curry favor

with President Putin, unilaterally rejected his republic’s powersharing treaty with the central government, along with the heads

of three Russian-led regions. He could see that a new commission

was formed to do exactly what you are calling attention to, to discuss the divisions of powers. It has just been established in 2001

and has, as one of its goals, the cancellation of these treaty arrangements. So he was trying to get a jump on that.

This is a very interesting commission to watch. A lot of what

worked in the past, in the 1990’s, was calculated ambiguity as arrangements were fought out or contended. And now they’re trying

to——

The CHAIRMAN. Don’t use the word ‘‘ambiguity.’’ My colleague

doesn’t like that word.

Dr. BALZER. Oh, dear.

Well, what I’m actually trying to say is that people were trying

to use it then, but it has come back to haunt them. They’re trying

now to be more specific about what those power-sharing arrangements really will be. So that is a commission to watch, as is all of

the negotiation process going on currently. It is unwieldy, but it is

happening, including some arrangements, even for changing borders and tax structures. Some local area arrangements are being

negotiated inside particular regions—Altai Krai with Altai Republic. Well, the republic just rejected an overture. But in the case of

Buriatia, Buriatia has merged its taxation with its wider Irkutsk

region. This seems to be an agreement that is actually working on

the ground and not started by the center.

The CHAIRMAN. We have only scratched the surface here today.

That is why I want to have a series of these hearings. I am reminded by Dr. Haltzel behind me that in 1997, I was meeting in

Moscow with General Lebed and he was pounding the table, you

know, being very tough. I will never forget what he said about

Chechnya, where he was given credit for ending the first war, and

he said—I am paraphrasing, but it is close to a quote—he said, ‘‘I

50

don’t care if it is independent. It doesn’t matter to me.’’ Now, he

came out of that Afghanistan experience. He was a military guy,

and I remember being impressed by what I believed to be the earnestness of his comment. I left there thinking he really did not care

whether or not Chechnya was independent.

I would also note for the record, as the fellow who has been held

primarily responsible in the Senate for our involvement in the Balkans, I would point out that 250,000 people were killed in Bosnia,

which is 5 percent of the population. I do not in any way denigrate

the point being made here. I just do not want people leaving here

thinking that the Balkan wars and Milosevic’s efforts quote, ‘‘only

killed 10,500 people.’’ They are responsible for over 300,000 people

dead. That does not in any way undercut the point that Senator

Helms is making about what is going on in Chechnya. Do you have

any comments?

Senator HELMS. Yes, you said something about ambiguity.

I don’t think Washington could survive without ambiguity.

It is sort of like that old expression, ‘‘When promulgating your

esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities,

beware of platitudinous,’’ et cetera.

Now, having said that——

The CHAIRMAN. Well said.

Senator HELMS [continuing]. Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling

this hearing. Thank you, gentlemen and lady, for coming. Now,

please—you are going to get questions in writing from the Senators

who were not able to come. I hope you will answer them, because

we are going to make it part of the record. And I ask unanimous

consent, Mr. Chairman, that the proceedings of this hearing be

printed.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, they will be. And I myself

have additional questions to ask. I really do know that this is not

easy. I mean, you do not come here just off the top of your head

and plop down here—as much as you know about this subject—and

we do appreciate the effort and the commitment, and I can assure

you we will be calling on all of you again. That is both the good

news and the bad news.

Thank you very, very much. We are adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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