The empire’s extensive development, socio-economic and political crises, and territorial mismanagement have repeatedly fueled separatist sentiments in the regions of Russia. Thus, separatism is not a new challenge for the Kremlin.
Earlier, the federal center handled separatism-related incidents in different ways, ranging from military intervention and police actions to bribing local elites and a systematic assimilation policy pursued among the indigenous population. However, in most cases the Kremlin has failed to resolve the problem fundamentally. After these unsuccessful attempts the separatist movements in the region became less active in order to revive with renewed vigor in a couple of years. In the 21st century the separatist movements’ activity in Russia is intensified due to the following factors.
Territorial mismanagement
The Kremlin is incapable to provide vast territories, especially in the non-European part of the Russian Federation, with an effective management. In this regard, the Kremlin’s policy more and more often reminds yasak collection (a tax in kind collected on the Russian Federation-controlled territories by the beginning of the 20th century); only now they use informal payments as a payment instrument. The Kremlin is tasked to ensure the interests of large corporations using the regional natural resources. As a rule, these corporations are closely linked to the local authorities and the Kremlin elite. Therefore,as a behavior pattern, they decided to exhaust the regional resources without taking into account the interests of local communities and environment protection standards. As a result, such a situation development is taken negatively by the natives. Weak and incompetent representation of the federal center and use of security officials and administrators who are not representatives of local elites to control the territories give another beef.
Fall of the socio-economic development level
During the Soviet era Russia extensively developed territories at the expense of cheap or virtually free workforce by taking advantage of high prices for natural resources and the closed planned economy. The same factors enabled to squander funds on the army and the military-industrial complex. After the USSR’s fall, such a policy could not be implemented; in its turn, it influenced the socio-economic condition of many territories, especially the ones located far from large agglomerations. Subsequently, there was no systematic modernization of the socio-economic infrastructure; many settlements just disappeared when military bases or unprofitable deposits and enterprises had been closed. To the greatest extent, it affected remote regions. As a result, the depopulation and living standards fall triggered the mechanism of rejecting central government that led to strengthening separatist sentiments among the natives.
Birth decline among ethnic Russians and birth increase among indigenous peoples
Analysis of the total fertility rate (TFR) counting the number of children born by one woman within the whole period (15-49 years) shows that nearly all subjects of the Russian Federation with dominating indigenous peoples have higher birth rates than the national average rate or the average birth rate in the relevant Federal District.
The most mentioned regions experience the language development burst among natives; however, social pressure on ethnic Russians is observed in the regions with a TFR of 1.8 and higher. Obviously, in a while the situation will intensify as the number of representatives of the indigenous population will grow and the number of ethnic Russians will decrease.
Religious factor
Over the past decade, Orthodox Christianity in Russia has been adopted as the state religion and, in fact, has completely merged with the state apparatus. At the same time, the Kremlin uses Orthodoxy as an assimilation tool in almost all regions except the Caucasus. However, this approach does not work everywhere. In the republics with a large proportion of citizens professing traditional beliefs such as Buddhism, Islam, Burkhanism and shamanism, the use of Orthodoxy as a governance method is opposed by local communities. In most cases, adherence to traditional religion is an integral part of the national identity. In particular, it concerns Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Tyva, Tatarstan, Mari El, Kalmykia, the Republic of Altai and Buryatia. Therefore, the confrontation between Russian and native population arises simultaneously when Orthodoxy-traditional religion issue is oppositional. The situation is a little bit different in the regions where Russia has significantly succeeded in Orthodoxy promotion: Sakha, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. However, even here a significant part of the population takes religious identification as a national identification.
Local elite dissatisfaction
The Kremlin’s incompetence regarding territorial development, the high level of the ‘shady economy’ and remoteness from the center gave a birth to local elite representatives who feel themselves as rightful owners of the territories. They see Moscow as a burdensome center that does not help them in any way in the development but exhausts resources and interferes in the personal wealth growth. If the Kremlin has chosen the tactics of betting on one local clan who keeps the entrusted territory under control, representatives of other groups treat either the clan or the Kremlin with hostility. A similar situation is typical for almost every region of Russia with separatism background. At the same time, if local elites have access to economic wealth, like Tatarstan, they pursue a broaden autonomy policy and revive social, cultural and religious traditions that make the region more remote from Moscow.
Geopolitical factor
The ineffective management of vast territories in the Asian part of Russia and increased interests in natural resources shown by neighboring states, in particular, China, Korea, and Japan, make these countries try to strengthen their positions in the regions. These attempts are framed in regional programs of economic, cultural, social cooperation, and establishment of close relations between the economic elites of these states and informal ‘owners’ of the regions. The same tendency is observed in the North Caucasian republics that are traditionally in the view of the Arab states and Turkey. In its attempts to strengthen positions in separatist-minded regions Russia cannot effectively compete with foreign states.
All the given above factors will lead to the further strengthening of separatism sentiments in Russia. Separatist movements will get a chance to intensify its activity in the following cases:
• political crisis in the Kremlin;
• Vladimir Putin’s step down from power without leaving the successor the main players would be fine with and,
• power and property redistribution in Russia.
Under such conditions local elites will have a chance to get additional opportunities to broad autonomy up to secession.‘A domino effect’, when an active start of separatist movement in one of the republics will cause a chain reaction, first of all, in the region, and subsequently all over Russia, is also worth mentioning. Under this scenario, the separatist movements will become especially active in Dagestan, Tatarstan and the Russian Far East.
