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—-—--———_—.——_..

STRIKING THE FEDERAL BARGAIN IN RUSSIA:
COMPARATIVE REGIONAL GOVERNMENT STRATEGIES

By

Kathleen M. Dowley

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fiilfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Political Science

1997

ABSTRACT

STRIKING THE FEDERAL BARGAIN IN RUSSIA: COMPARATIVE REGIONAL
GOVERNMENT STRATEGIES

By

Kathleen M. Dowley

This dissertation investigates variation in the expressed positions of the eighty-nine
state governments and their publics within Russia with regard to their preferred federal-
constitutional order. The positions of the state leaders and their constituencies are
classified along a regional autonomy continuum, ranging from complete independence to a
unitary state. Events data are gathered from two sources for the period 1991-95 to
classify the behavior of state elites and their publics along this five-item index.
Propositions derived from essentialist, instrumentalist, relative deprivation and resource
mobilization schools are tested to determine which have the most explanatory power in
predicting the behavior of both elites and the masses in the regions. Multinomial logit is
used because the dependent variables, median scores on the autonomy index for both elites
and the masses, are bounded and categorical.

While none of the theories is powerful on its own, a combined model predicts
nearly two-thirds of state elite behavior. The combined model suggests that leaders of
states with natural resource wealth and a high potential for the development of a separate
national identity yet, are still critically depressed, are most likely to demand high levels of
autonomy from the Center. Among the masses, the most interesting findings were the

non-findings. There was little congruence between the preferences of the masses and their

governors, and mass preferences were not a significant factor in explaining elite behavior.
Additionally, economic stagnation had a non-monotonic effect on the masses. Among the
Russian publics, it pushed them to express preferences for a strong Center. Among the
non-Russian peoples, however, stagnation pushed them in a more radical, autonomy-
seeking direction.

The final chapter investigates the role of the Center in the formation of these
regional government strategies. This examination revealed some fluidity in the expressed
positions of leaders in response to Central actions, indicating the need to include factors

such as issue area and the ambitions of local leaders in future analyses.

To Matt and Ben, thanks for waiting for me.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and support
of several people at Michigan State University. I would like to thank the members of my
committee, Gretchen Hower, Nicolas van de Walle and Linda Racioppi, for their
comments and help throughout this long process, and especially my Chair and mentor,
Brian D. Silver for his endless patience and encouragement during the course of this
investigation. Philip Roeder and Steven Solnick additionally read versions and portions of
this work, and I am indebted to them for their insights.

I must also thank my peers for their help as well, for continually supporting me and
acting asboth sounding boards and critics throughout my graduate career. Special thanks
to the other graduate student participants at the Harriman Institute Conference on New
Approaches to Federalism in Russia, to Debra J aveline for organizing the AAASS panel
on methodology and to my fiiends and colleagues, Michelle Arsneault, Susan Silberman,
Philip Alderfer, John Davis, Kimberly Ludwig, Mark Hurwitz, Sara McLaughlin and
countless others for frequent comments and all-around hand-holding.

And last, but not least, I would like to thank my husband and my son, for their
boundless patience, love and support. Without them, this might have been possible, but

not nearly so worthwhile.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................................... viii
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................. x
CHAPTER 1
Introduction and Central Research Question ............................................................................. 1
Federalists, Anti-Federalists and Nationalists ............................................................. 3
Soviet and Russian Federalism .................................................................................... 7
Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................... 16
CHAPTER 2
Measuring Federation Members’ Preferred Federal Arrangement ......................................... 26
Using Events Data to Understand State Positions ..................................................... 28
Sources ....................................................................................................................... 30
Indexes ....................................................................................................................... 31
Confronting Problems of Source Coverage and Bias ............................................... 36
Operationalizing the Theoretical Models: The Independent Variables ..................... 39
Essentialist Model ........................................................................................ 39
Instrumentalist Model ............................ 40
Relative Deprivation ..................................................................................... 41
Resource Mobilization .................................................................................. 41
CHAPTER 3
Regional Elites and the Federal Bargain ................................................................................. 43
Regional Differences in the Federation ...................................................................... 50
Regional Elite Behavior, 1991-95 ............................................................................. 54
Explaining Regional Elite Behavior .......................................................................... 57
Essentialism .................................................................................................. 57
Instrumentalism ............................................................................................ 59
Relative Deprivation .................................................................................... 60
Resource Mobilization .................................................................................. 62
Operationalizing the Models ..................................................................................... 64
Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 68
Essentialism .................................................................................................. 69
Instrumentalism ............................................................................................ 73
Relative Deprivation .................................................................................... 78
Resource Mobilization .................................................................................. 81
Multivariate Analysis ................................................................................................. 82

CHAPTER 4 '
The Masses and the Federal Bargain ....................................................................................... 89

Mass Preferences and the Federal Bargain ................................................................ 92
Explaining Mass Preferences and Behavior .............................................................. 94
Essentialism ................................................................................................. 95
Instrumentalism ............................................................................................ 96
Relative Deprivation ..................................................................................... 98
Resource Mobilization ................................................................................. 99
Multivariate Analysis ............................................................................................... 100
Essentialism ................................................................................................ 100
Instrumentalism .......................................................................................... 101
Relative Deprivation ................................................................................... 102
Resource Mobilization ................................................................................ 103
The Combined Model ................................................................................. 103
Are Mass Preferences the “Missing Link” in Understanding Elite Behavior? ....... 104
CHAPTER 5
The Other Half of the Bargain ............................................................................................... 107
The Center and the Federal Bargain ........................................................................ 11 1
Examining Variation in the Strategies of State Elites .............................................. 119
Variation in Response to the Center’s Shifiing Strategies ...................................... 125
Summer 1990 .............................................................................................. 126
Spring l99l-March 1992 ........................................................................... 127
Federal Treaty through September 1993 .................................................... 129
The Democratic Coup of September-October 1993 .................................. 131
December 1993 through December 1994 .................................................. 132
Post-Chechen War ...................................................................................... 133
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 138
CHAPTER 6
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 142
Findings .................................................................................................................... 144
Implications and Avenues for Future Research ....................................................... 149
APPENDIX A
Figures ................................................................................................................................... 156
APENDIX B
Tables ..................................................................................................................................... 160
LIST OF REFERENCES .................................................................................................................... 204

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1-1, Autonomous Republics, Oblasts and Okrugs in the RS.F.SR ....................................... 160
Table 2-1, Sample of Events Data and Autonomy Scores Republic of Karelia, 1991-95 ................. 162
Table 2-2, Comparing Source Differences on the Autonom Index ..................................................... 164
Table 2-3, Correlation of Autonomy Scores Between the Two Sources ............................................ 166
Table 3-1, Regional Executives in the Russian Federation ................................................................. 167
Table 3-2, Mean and Median Score of Regional Elites, 1991-95 ...................................................... 170
Table 3-3, Past Serious Grievance by Cultural Distance From the Center ........................................ 172
Table 3-4, Correlation Between Median Autonomy Score and Essentialism Index ......................... 173
Table 3-5, Potential for Separate Identity by Elite Autonomy Scores .............................................. 174
Table 3-6, Net Gainers and Losers in the Federal Budget, 1992 ........................................................ 175
Table 3-7, Natural Resource Base by Median Autonomy Score ........................................................ 176
Table 3-8, Percentage of Local Budget Obtained fi'om Center 1992 ................................................. 177
Table 3-9, Essentialism Model Empirical Estimates .......................................................................... 178
Table 3-10, Instrumental Model Empirical Estimates ........................................................................ 179
Table 3-11, Relative Deprivation Model Empirical Estimates ........................................................... 180
Table 3-12, Resource Mobilization Model Empirical Estimates ........................................................ 181
Table 3-12, Combined Model Empirical Estimates ............................................................................ 182
Table 4-1, Mass vs. Elite Autonomy Scores for Each State ............................................................... 183
Table 4-2, Difference Between Elite and Mass Autonomy Scores ..................................................... 185

viii

Table 4-3, Correlation Between Essentialism Index and Mass Autonomy Scores ............................ 186

Table 4-4, Correlation Between Instrumentalism Indicators and Median Autonomy
Score for Mass Actors ..................................................................................................... 187

Table 4-5, Correlation Between Relative Deprivation Indicators and the

Median Autonomy Score for Mass Actors ...................................................................... 188
Table 4-6, Income Growth by Autonomy Position of Mass Actors ................................................... 189
Table 4-7, Past Administrative Level by Mass Autonomy Scores ..................................................... 190
Table 4-8, Essentialism Model Empirical Estimates .......................................................................... 191
Table 4-9, Instrumental Model Empirical Estimates .......................................................................... 192
Table 4-10, Relative Deprivation Model Empirical Estimates .......................................................... 193
Table 4-11, Resource Mobilization Model Empirical Estimates ....................................................... 194
Table 4-12, Combined Model Estimates ............................................................................................ 195
Table 4-13, Mass Predicts Elite Behavior Empirical Estimates ............................... V .......................... 196
Table 4-14, Combined Model Empirical Estimates ............................................................................ 197
Table 5-1, Rank Order of the Variation in the Positions of State Elites From 1991-95 ................... 198
Table 5-2, Variance in Elite Positions by Administrative Division .................................................. 200
Table 5-3, Median State Responses to Shifting Center Strategies ..................................................... 201
Table 5-4, Responses to the Use of Force in Chechnya ..................................................................... 202
Table 5-5, Trends in Regional Variation Over Time .......................................................................... 203

ix

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1-1--Classification of Regional Elites .................................................................. 156
Figure 3-1--Map, The Russian Federation, 1993 ............................................................ 157
Figure 3-2--Independent Variables By Model ................................................................ 158

Figure 5-1--Median Autonomy Positions of Center, Ethnic States and Territories
Over Time ......................................................................................................... 159

CHAPTER 1:
Introduction and Central Research Question

October 1991 -- General Dzhokar Dudayev wins controversial election to the new Chechen Republic
Presidency. His first decree proclaims the sovereignty of the Chechen state. His first press release
expresses his readiness to engage in a conflict with Russia, since he “does not intend to betray the
freedom and sovereignty of the new state entity.” (CDSP, Vol. XLIII, No. 43).

March 1992 -- President Shaimiyev of Tatarstan holds popular referendmn on sovereignty, which
61% of the voters supported. Shaimiyev announces he cannot sign Federal Treaty with Russia, and
demands a separate treaty as befits relations between two independent states. (CDSP, Vol. XLIV,
No. 16).

July 1993 —- “Carrying out the will of the multinational people of Sverdlovsk Province, striving to
create an efl‘ective federal structure for Russia based on equal rights for its members, and defending
the rights of citizens of all nationalities, the Sverdlovsk Province Soviet of People’s Deputies
declares the elevation of the status of Sverdlovsk Province to the level of a republic within the
Russian Federation (Urals Republic)” (CDSP, Vol. XLV, No. 27).

October 1993 -- President Yeltsin issues Decree 1617 demanding that all members of the federation
disband existing Soviets and bold new elections to new assemblies, with the federal administration
overseeing it. The decree does not apply to the Republics, who are merely “encouraged” to reform
their local bodies of power. (CDSP, Vol. XLV, No. 41).

February 1994 -- Russia and Tatarstan sign a separate bi-lateral treaty, in which Tatarstan agrees to
drop the clause “sovereign state subject to international law,” in exchange for very generous tax
terms. (CDSP, Vol. XLVI, No. 10).

December 1995 -- 10,000 plus Russian Interior Ministry troops enter Chechnya to halt armed
resistance to its membership in the federation.

As the events described above demonstrate, the disintegration of the multinational
Soviet Empire has afforded the numerous distinct ethnic and regional formations in Russia
a new range of opportunities for increased autonomy and for some, the possibility of self-
rule. Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms not only unleashed separatist forces in the fifteen

union republics, but within Russia itself as well. Some observers believe these centrifugal

2
forces will result in the break-up of the Russian state as they did the Soviet one, while
others suggest that the spectre of such a possibility will in and of itself bring about a return
to authoritarian rule to rein in regional demands.
In considering the relationship between transitions to democracy and the territorial
integrity of the state undergoing such transitions, Przeworski et al., argue that
“institutional failure at the center provides a context in which regionally based nationalists

can effectively mobilize to promote an autonomy movement.”l

Certainly the collapse of
the main centralizing organization of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union provided
just such a context for nationalists in the former Union Republics, and each of them
successfully took advantage of it and achieved independence at the end of 1991. The
rebels in Chechnya have not been as successful in their bid to attain independent status
from the newly formed Russian Federation.

Yet the choice of "opting out" of a federation with Russia remains only one choice
for the various ethnic and regional formations in Russia, and in fact, the majority of the
administrative units within this vast territory have not sought independence in the wake of
the center's collapse. So while Przeworski may be right to suggest that institutional
collapse at the center is a necessary precondition to predicting the rise of peripheral

nationalism, it is not a sufficient condition. To borrow from the language of Charles Tilly

(1978), institutional collapse at the Center may provide “opportunity” but not necessarily

 

lPrzeworksi, Adam, et al., eds., Sustainable Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),
p. 22.

3

“mobilization,” which depends on group “resources” and “organization.”2 And indeed,
most of the members of the former Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
(R.S.F.S.R.) have instead chosen to negotiate, largely in terms of political and economic
decision-making autonomy from the new center. Secessionist wars, then, are one
potential form of conflict among groups competing for power, but they are not the most
common form we observe.

The central research goal of this project is to identify the factors related to a state's
"federal bargain" with the center. Why, for example, has Buryatia remained a relatively
loyal ethnic republic, with few public demonstrations for increased autonomy or elite
demands for concessions from the center, while Chechens have waged war to defend their
light to independence? Why have the political elite in Sverdlovsk pushed so hard for
greater local political and economic autonomy, continuously defying decrees from the
Center, while the Kursk territorial elite consistently supports arrangements akin to the
centralized rule of a unitary state?

In her thoughtful, qualitative assessment of center-periphery relations in Russia
since 1991, Gail Lapidus asserts that “...no single indicator is available for assessing the

seriousness of the challenge to the center from a particular area.”3

This project challenges
that assertion, and at the very least, seeks to falsify it empirically with data gathered from

the regions in Russia.

 

2Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution, (Englewood Hills, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1978), p. 7.

3Gail W. Lapidus and Edward W. Walker, “Nationalism, Regionalism and Federalism: Center-Periphery
Relations in Post-Communist Russia,” in Gail Lapidus, ed., The New Russia: Troubled Transformation,
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), p. 104.

FEDERALISTS, ANTI-FEDERALISTS AND NATIONALISTS

Bargaining between the Center and the periphery refers to bargaining between the
central executive authority under Boris Yeltsin and the regional governments of each of
the constitutionally defined 89 “members” of the federation over the distribution of power
and authority between the Center and the regions. Historically, during state-building
“constitutional assemblies” or “conventions,” some actors argue for a strong union while
others argue for the primacy of the state over the center. In his case study of the origins of
American federalism, Riker (1964) argued that the state actors who supported federal
arrangements did not do so out of a philosophical desire to guarantee social freedom or to
promote democracy in the ideal, as is ofien suggested by the early American theorists.
Instead, Riker argues, proponents of federalism advocated it as a strategy to protect the
territory from an external military threat, or as a means of territorial expansion.4 For him,
the elites interested in strengthening the power of the federal center were not
"ideologically" concerned with liberty and freedom per se, but with practical issues of
national security or economic well-being. While Riker’s work attempted to get at the
origins of federal states and federalism in existing states, his framework is useful for this
investigation as it provides a means for understanding and interpreting the actions of state

elites and their publics vis—a-vis the center elsewhere.

 

4Riker suggests that the center offers the bargain in order to expand without the use of force, usually because of
a perceived threat. Those who accept the terms of the bargain, giving up some autonomy at the time, do so
because they, too, perceive themselves strengthened against some military threat. He argues these conditions
are ”necessary” though not sufficient for the striking of the bargain. See William Riker, Federalism: Origins,
Operation, and Significance (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1964), pp. 12-13.

5

A fundamental assumption in Riker is that those political elites who negotiate a
federal bargain do so out of a belief that their interests are better served by some kinds of
federal arrangements. Expanding and reworking Riker, Burgess (1993) argues that the
advocacy of federalism over confederalism or unitary government represents the pursuit of
self-interest, and reflects the self-interest of those representatives making the case.5
Federalism, then, is not an end in itself, but a means to promote and defend interests.
Advocates of certain types of federal arrangements posture, lobby, cajole, threaten and act
to establish a particular constitutional arrangement because they see it as the preferred
political order.

Within the context of Russia, following the collapse of the old Soviet regime and
the unifying presence of the old C.P.S.U., the question becomes, Who benefits from
federalism? What interests are being defended or promoted? And how are those interests
being artiCulated and aggregated? Likewise, who benefits fiom unitarism and re-
centralization? And who benefits from complete independence from the federation?

Alternatively, one could make the case, as Publius did over two centuries ago, that
federalism remains a means by which the rights and liberties of individuals and minorities
(religious or ethnic) are best protected from “the violence” of majority factions. In its
ethno-territorial form, such as the one adopted by the USSR in 1922 and the former
Yugoslavia after World War I, federalism remains a potential institutional solution to the

problems of governing a large, diverse multinational state, such as India and today, Russia.

 

5 Michael Burgess, "Federalism as Political Ideology," in M. Burgess and Alain-G. Gagnon, Comparative
Federalism and Federation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), p. 104.

6

Ethnofederalism has, however, received a bad reputation of late in the wake of the
collapse of the previously ethnofederal U.S.S.R., Yugoslavia, and even Czechoslovakia, as
a potential institutional barrier to national integration and effective state-building.

In many ways, the renewed debate over the benefits of federal, confederal,
ethnofederal and unitary state insitutions parallels that which the Bolsheviks confronted
from 1917 to 1922. Though Marxism taught that national identity would disappear in the
socialist state, or at least become secondary to one’s socialist identity, Lenin initially
supported the right to self-determination for the non-Russian nationalities of the Empire,
and he codified this in the Soviet Constitution. He similarly came to accept the necessity
of ethnofederalism in the new Soviet state (“National in form, socialist in content”), and he
did so because he believed it would serve to, as Goldhagen suggests, “nip the desire for
independence in the bud.”6 National republics and federal forms of political organization
could persist, as long as they helped to fulfill socialist goals conceived in Moscow. With
the disintegration of the Soviet state along the ethnic republic lines drawn by the Soviet
state, this logic has been called into question.

My investigation will contribute to this ongoing debate on the merits of strong
versus weak federations, and of ethnofederalism versus territorial federalism, as I examine
the constitutional debates occurring during the years when new federal bargain was struck
in Russia. Prior to any such analysis, however, I need to understand the preferences and

strategies of the actors involved in the bargaining process. This investigation will focus

 

6Erich Goldhagen, Ethnic Minorities in the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1968), p. x.

7

primarily on the aspirations of the states, though the final chapter will also examine the
degree to which these aspirations are related to the bargain being offered by the Center.
Which regions and republics in Russia are "federalists"~ and which are "anti-
federalists," and why? In which states is ethnonationalism a force to be reckoned with,
and in which others is it virtually absent? And perhaps more importantly for democratic
theory and constitutional engineers in transitioning societies; what are the implications of
various types of federal arrangements for the stability of the regime? To what extent are

past institutional arrangements a prologue to current and firture secession crises?

Soviet and Russian Federalism

Because Russia was at least nominally federal prior to 1991 within the Soviet
Union, most actors expected it to remain federal after 1991. But as in the former British
colonies separately administered under the Crown prior to 1776, there remained a lot of
room for negotiating the terms of the federal bargain alter the collapse of the previous
governing center.

The national-territorial structure of the Soviet Union evolved over a number of
years, but had not, with the exception of the forcible annexation of the Baltic states in
1940 and Tuva in 1944, been territorially altered since the 1936 Stalinist Constitution,

though changes in the status of particular territories did occur.7 In 1989, the country was

 

7After the annexation of Tuva in 1944, the only territorial changes resulted from the war-time policy of
deporting entire nationalities out of their ethnic homelands. Additionally, some autonomous entities were
”demoted” and "repromoted' throughout the Soviet era. An example would be Karelia, which from 1940-56
existed as the Karelo-Finnish SSR, and was later demoted to an ASSR after 1956. See Ann Sheehy, "The
Etlrnodemographic Dimension," in A. McCauley's Soviet Federalism (London: Leicester University Press,
1 991), p. 63.

8

vertically divided between the 15 national union republics, 20 autonomous ethnic
republics, eight autonomous Oblasts (provinces), and ten autonomous Okrugs (districts), in
descending order of status and privilege under the Constitution. The Russian Soviet
Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) contained 16 of the autonomous republics, five of
the autonomous Oblasts, and all ten of the autonomous Okrugs, in addition to forty-nine
non-ethnically defined Oblasts and six krais (regions). Table 1 lists the thirty-one

“autonomies” (avionomii) within the R.S.F.S.R. and the date each was formally created.
[TABLE 1-1 ABOUT HERE]

Altogether some 58 of the over 100 nationalities that were contained within the
former USSR. had some form of administratively recognized autonomy under the old
system. The criteria for receiving this recognition seem somewhat arbitrary when examined
today. The “major” nationalities were granted formal autonomy in the shape of constituent
republics to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. While the autonomy granted seems
spurious when examined today, one should not underestimate the symbolic and real
importance such a status had on the lives of those in the national republics.

During the 1920s, the regime encouraged the use of native languages in local
administration and schools, and deciphered written alphabets for unlettered peoples. While
the early regime limited political autonomy, within the confines of the Union national identity
was given considerable fi‘eedom to develop.8 This was all to change dramatically during the

Stalin years, but the memory proved impossible to banish.

 

8Goldhagen, (fn. 6), p. ix.

9
Defining which were “major” nationalitiesuthose deserving of national republic status-
- presented the regime with a new challenge, and the new Soviet leaders were not always
consistent in their response. In some instances, a divide and rule policy seemed to prevail.
In Central Asia in particular, union republics were set up for groups that had not yet
developed into self-proclaimed "nations". But rather than create one large "Muslim" or

“Turkic” state, several entities were created with separate identities.9

The nationally
conscious peoples of Armenia, Azerbaidjan and Georgia were given what they had once
already possessed, “sovereignty” in an existing federation.

And while status in the four-tiered hierarchy was largely based on population,
sometimes this, too, was overlooked, as the Tatars were granted only autonomous republic
status though they outnumber Georgians, Tajiks and Turkmeni peoples, all of which were
granted union republic status. 10 According to Tatar nationalists, the only reason they were
denied “mq'or” nationality status was because they shared no external borders with a foreign

state.1 ‘

This was the oflicial line as well, which said, quite simply, that a region had to be
able to secede “in principle” from the Union in order to be granted Union Republic status in
the administrative hierarchy. In other cases, special recognition was provided to very small,
seemingly insignificant groups, such as the Abkhazi in Georgia who number fewer than

100,000 and who make up less than 20% of the population of the Abkhaz Autonomous

Region. The grounds were purely political as the Bolsheviks attempted to dampen the very

 

9 Sheehy, (fn. 7), p. 67.

10See Sheehy, (fir 7) for a discussion of how Lenin and Stalin determined which groups were to be granted
which status under the Constitution.

llSee Lapidus and Walker, (fn. 3), p. 94.

10

strong sense of national identity which existed among Georgians, Armenians and Azeris by
carving out autonomous formations for small groups within these existing nations. ‘2

Only the union republics were granted the nominal right to secede from the Union,
though the mechanism for taking such an action was never specified in any of the Soviet
Constitutions. Autonomous ethnic republics had markedly fewer rights than union republics.
For example, in most autonomous republics, education in the native language above the level
of primary school has been available much less frequently, and they were allotted a smaller
number of deputies in the federal parliament than the union republics.l3 But they were
granted more autonomy than provinces, and special political opportunities were created for
ethnic elites in the autonomous republics and oblasts, opportunities not created for elites
representing the non-ethnic provinces (Oblasts) and territories (krais) of the R.S.F.S.R.

This asymmetry in the treatment accorded the ethnic statesl4 versus the purely
territorial formations has become an issue in Russia's transition and the current negotiations
over the terms of the federal bargain. Despite the special status granted the ethnic

autonomous republics, however, 70% of Russia's territory and 80% of her population are

contained within territorial formations (6 territories, 49 provinces, 2 federal cities), much in

 

12For more on this subject, see Ronald Wixman, Language Aspects of Ethnic Patterns and Processes in the
North Caucasus, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

13See Brian D. Silver, “Language Policy and the Linguistic Russification of Soviet Nationalities” in Jeremy
Azrael’s Soviet Nationality Policy and Practices, (New York: Praeger, 1978) and Barbara A. Anderson and
Brian D. Silver, “Equality, Efficiency and Politics in Soviet Bilingual Education Policy: 1934-80,” American
Political Science Review, vol. 78, no. 4 (December 1984), pp. 1019-39.

14For purposes of clarity, I will use the term "state" whenever referring to any or all of the members of the
Federation without reference to their administrative status or ethnic composition. The term ethnic state will
refer to any of the three ethnic administrative units (ASSR’s, Autonomous Oblasts or Autonomous Okrugs).
The term region or territorial formation will be used generically to refer to any of the non-ethnic states in the
Federation.

ll

remote parts of Siberia, all of which have traditionally received even fewer political and
economic rights than the ethnic republics and autonomous formations.

In his attempt to build an independent base of support-from which to challenge the
authority of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin played the ethnic card as far back as 1990 in
campaigns for the Russian parliament, for the chairmanship of that parliament, and even in his
bid to become the first popularly elected president of the R.S.F.S.R.. When the Russian
Parliament followed the lead of the Baltic republics in adopting a declaration of state
sovereignty, they confirmed the need to “broaden substantially the rights of the autonomous
republics, autonomous oblasts, and autonomous Okrugs, along with RSFSR krais and

Oblasts. 15

And in 1990, while on a tour through Tatarstan, Bashkiria and the Komi
Autonomous Republic, Yeltsin told local elites to “take all the sovereignty you can
swallow.”l6 But less than a year later, he opposed Tatarstan’s appeal to be a signatory to the
new Union Treaty as an equal to the other fifteen Union Republics.

Relations between the Center (now identified with Boris Yeltsin and his administration
of the Russian government) and the regions deteriorated after the attempted coup against
Gorbachev in August of 1991, when Yeltsin moved to dissolve the local elites that had

supported the State Committee for the State of Emergency (SCSE) in their attempt to

overthrow Gorbachev. He even heard debates among his central advisors, such as Minister

 

”See Lapidus and Walker, (fn. 3), p. 82.

16Bill Keller, New York Times Sunday Magazine, September 2, 1990.

12

for Nationality Affairs, Valery Tishkov, about thoroughly reconstituting the administrative
boundaries of the existing states along territorial, not ethnic, lines. 17

But by March of 1992, resistance at the local level proved too strong, and the Center
offered its first of several federal bargains in the form of three hastily conceived treaties
known collectively as the Federation Treaty. All representatives of the member states within
Russia's borders signed the treaty except Tatarstan and Chechnya. It "confirmed and
consolidated" the ethnic republics' special status, in granting them a number of political and
economic rights not accorded the non-ethnic territories, such as the right to conduct a limited
foreign policy and foreign trade independent of Moscow.18 It also stated that the land and
natural resources of the ethnic republics belonged to the people living there and that issues
regarding disposal of these resources would be regulated by both the Russian and republican
governments. That the other territorial units were not granted as much autonomy in foreign
policy, trade or, most importantly, natural resources, signaled that the asymmetry in the
federal structure would continue. While the treaty granted that the republics were
“sovereign,” no right to secession was stipulated and the treaty stipulated that republican
consititutions could not conflict with the federal consititution.

Other issues, such as taxation policies, remained unresolved. Regions and republics

are expected to pass on taxes to the federal budget which then distributes subsidies to the

members. This process, as it evolved under the communist system, was intended to help

 

17See the article in Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, October 28, 1992.

18 Sharlet, Robert, "The Prospects for Federalism in Russian Constitutional Politics," Publius, Spring 1994,
l 19.

l3

equalize development across the regions and republics; however, it degenerated into a means
of political patronage. Most of the ethnic republics are net gainers from the system, that is,
they pay to the Center less than they receive in subsidies, in contrast to the non-ethnic
regions, who have regularly paid in far more than they received back.19 These issues were
allowed to fester alter the signing of the Treaty, given Yeltsin's preoccupation with the
Parliamentary challenge to his authority in Moscow.

Indwd, most of the Constitutional debates from April 1992 through July 1993 focused
on the division of powers between the executive and the parliament, and not on the
unresolved question of the federal division of powers between the center and its member
states. Ethnic conflict in Ingushetia and North Ossetia over a disputed border territory, the
Prigorodny raion, and the increasingly militant rhetoric pouring out of Chechnya exacerbated
tensions and signalled trouble ahead, but the debate did not receive national attention until the
summer of 1993, when Yeltsin unveiled his draft Constitution for the Russian Federation at
the June Constitutional Convention. Republics and territories continued to pressure the
Center for more autonomy, by issuing declarations of sovereignty, holding referenda on
upgrading their administrative status, and withholding taxes from the federal center. All of
these the Yeltsin Administration seemed willing to tolerate in return for support from the
regional elite, as the administration continued its struggle for control with an uncooperative

national parliament. Only four of the forty appointed regional administrators audited by the

 

19Radio Liberty Research Reports, 3 December 1993, p. 3.

14
Chief State Inspector were “fired” through March of 1993, and these were instances of
official corruption, not defiance.20

When the executive-legislative struggle culminated in the bloody, forcible ouster of
the National Parliament by Yeltsin-loyal forces in October, Yeltsin then turned quickly to new
elections for the parliament and a referendum on its new Constitution. Unfortunately, the
manner in which the referendum and draft were designed did not resolve many of the issues
raised at the summer Constituent Assembly.

The new Russian Constitution was adopted by a slim majority of the voters in a
referendum held on December 12, 1993, though the results were far from a sweeping mandate
for its provisions. This version of the Constitution, unlike the draft proposed by the
Constitutional Assembly in July of 1993, fails once again to establish clearly the powers of
the member states of the Federation vis-a-vis the center, and did not include any of the text
of the Federal Treaty signed the year before.

Article 5 of the latest Constitution does seem, however, to resolve the structural
asymmetry of the former Russian federation by acknowledging that, "The Russian Federation
consists of republics, territories, provinces, federal cities, an autonomous province and
autonomous regions, all of which are equal members of the Russian Federation." Each state

is to have equal representation in the Upper House of the federal legislature, the Council of

the Federation. But Section 2 stipulates that each republic is to have its own Constitution and

 

20Reported in Darrell Slider, “Federalism, Discord and Accomodation: Intergovernmental Relations in
Post-Soviet Russia,” in J. Hahn and T. Friedgut, eds, Local Power and Post-Soviet Politics, (London: ME
Sharpe, 1994).

15

legislation while every territory, province, federal city and autonomous region is to have its
own charter and legislation, which already implies a juridical difference in the status of each.

The equality provision was designed to alleviate the problems associated with the
asymmetries under the old system of power, asymmetries which led some oblasts and krais
to try to legislatively "upgrade" their position to republic status in order to share in the
benefits promised to those holding republic status under the terms of the 1992 Federal Treaty.
But while the powers of the federal government are detailed quite clearly in Article 71, Article
73 states merely that anything not covered by the Federal government, or by the "joint-
jurisdiction" areas detailed in Article 72, falls under the authority of the member states.

Leaders of several vocal ethnic autonomous republics (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan,
Karelia and Komi) refused to endorse the December Constitution because they argued that
it did not guarantee them enough autonomy, and that it represented a loss of autonomy
granted them under the Federal Treaty, all references to which were obliterated in the new
Constitution. The 490,000 eligible voters from the republic of Chechnya boycotted the
referendum in April 1993 as well as the final December vote, while only 14% of the eligible
voters participated in Tatarstan, rendering the election null and void there.” And the current
republic constitutions of Sakha (formerly Yakutia), Tatarstan, Tuva and Bashkortostan clearly
contradict passages of the new Russian Constitution.

Among the most important areas of contention remain the rights to dispose of republic
and regional natural resources, taxation policies, as well as the right to secede from the

federation by virtue of a vote by only the individual state's population. With the Russian

 

”Radio Liberty Research Reports, 8 April 1994, p. 26.

16

attack on renegade Chechnya in late 1994, the debate was renewed, not resolved. The
carnage there has generated among some member states the desire to see central power more
constrained and among others, the desire to see it expanded and Strengthened. The current
ceasefire negotiated by former Presidential National Security Chief Alexander Lebed promises
the Chechens a referendum on independence after five years. This, along with the long-
awaited direct election of regional governors in the fall of 1996, seems certain to renew

economic and political debates between the Center and its constituent members.

Theoretical Framework

To explain the variation in the expressed positions of the eighty-nine states, I examine
propositions derived from several competing theoretical traditions. Many scholars of the
USSR. and its successor states were initially stunned by the important role ethnicity has
played in mObilizing individuals in the political sphere to bring about the collapse of the
Marxist-Leninist state.22 They had argued that Soviet success in achieving increased social
development and greater equality between republics would bring about assimilation and the
weakening of ethnic appeals. Among those scholars long interested in the national question
in the USSR, however, there were those who identified nationalism as the greatest potential

threat to the stability of the Soviet state”, and Richard Pipes (1977) went so far as to suggest

 

2 2 See the following quotation attributed to Martin Malia in Frederic F leron and Erik Hoffman, “Communist
Studies and Political Science,” in Fleron and Hoffinan, Communist Studies and Political Science, (Boulder:
Westview, 1993): “It is precisely because during the past twenty-odd years mainline Western Sovietology has
concentrated on the sources of Soviet “stability” as a “mature industrial society” with a potential for “pluralist
development” that it has prepared us so poorly for the present crisis...”

238cc Therese Rakowska-Harmstone, “The Dialectics of Nationalism in the USSR,” Problems of
Communism, 23 (May-June 1974).

17

that “sooner or later the empire will disintegrate roughly along the lines of the existing
republics.” Since the collapse of the Soviet state and the independence of the former union
republics, the most visible and aggressive autonomy seekers within. Russia have, in fact, been
the former ethnic autonomous republics of Tatarstan, Chechnya, Tuva and Bashkortostan.
While I want to address the question of elite strategies in all 89 states, not merely the ones
administratively defined as "ethnic" republics, I must at least address the problem of visible,
politicized ethnicity in the new federation.

Numerous theories have been advanced in political science to explain away the
phenomenon of "ethnopolitics" as either a hangover from "primitive" societies that would
disappear with modernization, or as itself a product of disruptive modernizing tendencies.
On the left, Marxist scholars have suggested that ethnicity is one of the many tools used by
elites to distract individuals fiom their true class identity. In this sense, individuals who enter
politics to pursue "ethnic" goals are suffering from a sense of "false consciousness, " imposed
upon them, most likely, by a colonizing elite.24 According to both Lenin and Stalin, nations
and nationalism were a product of capitalist development, and once capitalism was eradicated,
these, too, would disappear.25

In contrast, modernization theorists posited that "nationalism" or the ideological

manifestation of politicized ethnicity, was an artifact of traditional societies which had not yet

been integrated into the Western, liberal way of conducting politics. As these societies

 

24See Marx on "The National Question in Ireland and Poland," and "Imperialism in India," in The Marx-Engels
Reader, Robert Tucker, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978).

25 Stalin, Josef, The National Question and Leninism (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1950), p.
16.

18

became more "modern," the phenomenon of politicized ethnicity would ultimately disappear
with the arrival of modernization, with greater access to education and more social mobility.26
Ethnic attachments will then be weakened by the process of modernization, and replaced by
cross-cutting cleavages and a convergence of new cultural values compatible with social
modernization.

The fall of the Soviet Empire and the resurgence of ethnopolitics in the developed and
less developed world suggest that all of these explanations are inadequate to explain the
waxing and waning of ethnicity as a mobilizing political force in the world. In fact,
nationalism survived or outlived Marxism in the USSR, and for the most part, was just as
evident in the most developed and "modern" of the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania, in contrast to what early modernization theorists would have predicted.

In studies of ethnonationalism, Gurr (1993) describes the two competing perspectives
as "primordialist" (or “essentialist”) and “instrumentalist.” The first “regards ethnic
nationalism as a manifestation of a persisting cultural tradition based on a primordial sense
of ethnic identity,”27 where ethnic and cultural cleavages are more “objective” than those of
interest or class.28

Essentialists posit that the multinational “empire” or “prison of nations” was destined

to come apart when the “nations” finally “awoke” to reclaim their identities, and their

 

26See Clifi'ord Geer'tz, Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modemity (New York: Free Press, 1963).

27Tedd Robert Gurr, Minorities At Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflict (US Institute of Peace,
1993), p. 124.

28Harry Eckstein, cited in Przeworksi, Adam, Sustainable Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge
Unviersity Press, 1996), p. 20.

19

sovereignty. In fact, as Beissinger (1996) notes, the “general consensus” now appears to be
that Soviet Union was an empire and for this reason, it broke up. The worst-case scenario
sees old ethnic hatreds and rivalries reemerging out of the ashes of the former Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe, with the civil war in Yugoslavia providing a tragic rennaisance for
primordialist scholars discredited during the late 19703 and 1980s.

“Instrumentalists” view ethnicity as one of a variety of identities that can be created
and subsequently recreated in response to conditions which favor its emergence.29 It was
neither inevitable nor "natural" for the many suppressed ethnic groups to demand autonomy
after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Again, as Beissinger (1996) notes, many “self-avowed
empires eventually evolved into states,” suggesting that there is an inherent contradiction in
suggesting that the Soviet Union broke up because it was an empire, and then defining it an
empire because it broke up! Empires, states and nations are, in his words, “fuzzy concepts”
deserving of more attention than many primordialists are willing to giventhem. Simple
primordialist explanations fail to explain, for example, why only some of the ethnic groups
in the former USSR have mobilized politically in the name of greater national autonomy. In
contrast, instrumentalists, as Gurr (1993) suggests, interpret ethnic/communal movements as
an “instrumental response to difi‘erential treatment.”30 The Soviet Union, then, is a failed state
because it failed at the project of national integration of various ethno-linguistic groups. This

failure was not, in the instrumental view, pre-ordained.

 

29See Robert Bates, “Modernization, Ethnic Competition and the Rationality of Politics in Contemporary
Africa,” in Donald Rothchild and Victor Olor'unsola, eds., The State versus Ethnic Claims (Boulder:
Westview Press, 1983).

300m, (fn. 27), p. 124.

20

This view parallels that of the relative deprivation school of conflict analysis, which
argues that peoples’ fiustration about “perceived” unjust deprivation relative to those around
them is the primary motivation for political action by communal groups. This approach would
then argue that those states most likely to opt out of a federal bargain with the Center are
those that have not benefitted fiom such a bargain in the past. Those states that are
considerably worse off than their neighbors, but with the expectation of doing better, are
more likely to resist recentralization of power at the Center because they fared so poorly
under such an arrangement in the recent past. In terms of regional actors, this cost-benefit
evaluation of remaining in a federal relationship with the center would likely come down to
this; what did we put into the relationship and what did we get out of it, relative to other
states in the federation? Did we pay more into the federal budget than we received back in
subsidies and investment? Is the standard of living in our state significantly better or worse
than that of states around us? In relative deprivation theory, the “perceived discrepancy
between men’s value expectations and their value capabilities” is more important than any real
world measures of such discrepancies.31

Although the most strident autonomy-seekers have been the elites from the ethnic
republics in Russia, their demands have not been as overtly ethnic as the demands made by
elites within the former Union republics of the USSR, in that language rights and citizenship
issues have not been debated in most of these states. The exception would be the three

republics of North Caucasia, i.e., Chechnya, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia. The most hotly

contested issues in both ethnic and non-ethnic states are undoubtedly local control over

 

31Gur'r', Ted Robert, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 13.

21

natural resources, percentage of taxes collected to be kept at home, and ability to negotiate
separate foreign investment and trade agreements.

The economic nature of most of these demands lends some credibility to an
alternative, purely “rent-seeking” explanation of autonomy-seeking behavior by elites in the
regions, which would predict that only the resource-rich states will demand autonomy and
potentially independence fiom the center in the hopes of capturing greater rent than had been
possible before. This is similar to the argument posited by Margaret Levi (1988) in her
analysis of the “predatory” state. According to the logic of her argument, we can expect
rulers to “...design institutions that they believe will be efficient in promoting their interests.
More specifically, within the limits of the constraints upon them, they will design revenue
production policies that maximize revenues to the state.”32 Rulers will be better able to do
this the “less they depend on others and the more others depend on them.” Governors of
states with vast natural resource wealth and potential for high levels of economic development
are less dependent on the Center for benevolence, and are in fact, much needed by the other
members of the federation as a continued source of these same resources.

Alternatively, Roeder (1991), among others, argues that the most useful approach to
evaluating the strength and weakness of the various ethno-national movements in the USSR
is a political institutional approach. He suggests that the particular federal, institutional
arrangements of the Soviet state, that is, the granting to territorially defined ethnic groups

formal "autonomy" within the state, contributed to the potency and rationality of ethnicity as

 

32Margaret Levi, 0f Rule and Revenue (University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988), p.
16-17.

22

a mobilizing identity by local elites during the center's collapse. Within the “mobilization”
school of political conflict, Roeder’s political institutional explanation suggests why only
some of the elites in the 89 states, those privileged under the-old regime, were able to
mobilize group resources in response to the changing political and economic environment.

Elites in the ethnic autonomous republics and national level republics were appointed
to represent the ethnic group interests in the larger state, and thus, their natural political base
of support was supposed to be the ethnic group. Other political appointments in these regions
were made on the basis of ethnicity, a Soviet form of affirmative action for the formally,
institutionally, recognized ethnic groups referred to in the early years of the Soviet Union as
korenizatsiia or nativization. Anderson and Silver (1990) found, for example, that Soviet
language policy towards its minority populations was very much based on the institutional
level of recognition 21 group had achieved in the federal hierarchy. In other words, the
availability of native language training was based on status of the group in the federal
hierarchy. Similarly, assimilation rates for ethnic groups in the USSR were highest among
the groups that had not received institutional recognition and lowest among the Union
republic status groups.33

According to Suny (1990), the "affirmative action" programs of the center ". . .

promoted cadres from the titular nationalities, often to the detriment of more urbanized and

 

33Groups without their own administrative unit which experienced a net decline in ethnic identification from the
1959 census to the 1970 census are groups such as the Germans, Jews and Poles. The Union republics all
experience close to zero loss of population through the process of ethnic reidentification, while the ASSR
republics fall somewhere in between, with the Tatars experiencing no loss, compared to the Karelians, who
lose the most of the 26 groups considered in this study. For more details, see Barbara A. Anderson and Brian
D. Silver, ”Some Factors in the Linguistic and Ethnic Russification of Soviet Nationalities," in Lubomyr Hajda
and Mark Beissinger, The Nationalities Factor in Soviet Politics (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990).

23

educated Russian populations". Thus in 1970, for example, Georgians made up 82.6% of the
students in higher education, though Georgians represented only 66.8% of the population in
Georgia.34

This kind of political, institutional advantage provides these recognized groups with
greater mobilizational resources in the wake of the center’s collapse compared to those groups
that were not recognized under the old regime. Thus, we have fewer reported cases of ethnic
groups which were not granted previous administrative status under the old regime mobilizing
to demand autonomy or independence under the new federal bargain.35

The Communist Party elite, under Brezhnev's collective leadership especially, often
debated the impact that such national-territorial arrangements had on the development of the
Soviet state. In the early 19605, official doctrine supported a new policy, a sblizhenie
(coming together) leading to eventual sliianie (merging) of national differences. The debate
after Khrushchev's fall centered on the nature and future of the nationality units, given their
apparent lack of relevance to a socialist path to development.36 Brezhnev’s terminology
concerning the eventual movement of nationalities to “complete unity” (edinstvo) did not
speak about concrete steps to be taken, or any timetable for implementation. Indeed, it

represented a more moderate position than the previous one.

 

3‘ See Ronald Suny, 'Transcaucasia,” in Lubomyr Hajda and Mark Beissinger, The Nationalities Factor in
Soviet Politics (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990).

35The exception to this might be the Crimea in Ukraine, but it is somewhat unique because it had republic
status at one point but this status was taken away from them in 1940. The same might also be said of the
Soviet Germans, who have continued to lobby for restoration of the German state that was abolished under
Stalin’s rule.

36See Grey Hodnett, “The Debate Over Soviet Federalism,” Soviet Studies, 18 (4), pp. 458-481.

24

Political structural theorists like Roeder posit that these ethno-federal institutional
arrangements and the policies that accompanied them may have led not to any kind of ethnic
fusion or merging, but to the maintainance strong, separate politiCal identities. In addition
to providing administrative resources to local ethnic elites that might not have been there had
the Bolshevik government of 1917 adopted a unitary structure, contributes to the later rise
of nationalist movements along lines already drawn into the Soviet federal-constitutional
arrangements.

Together, these arguments represent four separate classes of explanation surrounding
the behavior of regional politicians in the new Russian state. Essentialism emphasizes the
importance of primordial attachments to a separate national identity, independent of the
Russian Center, hypothesizing that collapse at the Center will allow these repressed identities
to reassert themselves once more. Instrumentalism emphasizes the importance of the rational
calculations Of individual leaders to changes in their opportunity structure to capture greater
rents by bargaining instrumentally for greater local control over resources. Relative
deprivation focuses on the perception by groups of individuals that they are suffering relative
to comparable groups due to some policy action or inaction by the Center. Resource
mobilization, argues that the different resources and organizational capacity of governors will
influence their bargaining strategy vis-a-vis the Center. The four approaches fall into two
broader approaches to the study of political behavior. While instrumentalism and resource
mobilization offer political approaches to the question, relative deprivation and essentialism

emphasize more sociological explanations.

25

I draw on each of these theoretical approaches to inform this study of the variation
in the preferred constitutional arrangements of both regional elites and their publics in the
evolving Russian Federation. I derive specific, propositions frOm each of the four main
approaches discussed above and test them using events data fiom all regions of the Russian
Federation in forthcoming chapters. In Chapter 2, I discuss the research design of the project,
including how I conceptualize and measure demands, and the data and sources used.

In Chapter 3, I focus exclusively on the behavior of the regional elite (governors) since
1991, empirically evaluating a number of models to explain the variation in their expressed
positions vis-a-vis federal arrangements. Chapter 4 will then contrast this to the behavior and
demands of the masses, investigate whether or not the masses are more extreme than their
leaders, or less, and evaluate empirically hypotheses predicting which kinds of arrangements
the masses in each state ought to prefer. In Chapter 5, I examine whether or not the
expressed positions of the regions vary over time and the degree to which” they change in
response to the bargain being offered by the Center

In the final chapter, I present the major findings of the data analysis and reflect upon
the conclusions to be drawn from this work for the future prospects of the Russian federal
system, and to federal systems in transition around the globe. I also examine the filll
implications of the findings, especially as they relate to the major theoretical debates in the
nationalist and political conflict literatures, and conclude with some thoughts about what

kinds of filrther research need to be done.

CHAPTER 2: .
Measuring Federation Members' Preferred Federal Arrangement

One of the primary tasks of this project is to classify the states, their leaders and
their publics, according to their expressed preferences for political and economic
autonomy. The first step to explaining variation in state leaders’ and public’s preferences
for one constitutional arrangement over any other is to correctly describe or measure the
range of possible positions. One means to conceptualize the range of potential positions
of the 89 Russian states regarding the federal division of power is to use Albert
Hirschman's (1967) "exit, voice and loyalty" typology of potential consumer strategies.
Gurr (1993), for example, used such language in his discussion of the causes of communal
and ethnic rebellion during periods of democratization.l

Since elites in the regions are potential consumers of the federal institutional
division of power, as are their constituent publics, their attitudes toward the 1992 and
1993 proposed “bargains” or arrangements could be classified as one of complete
rejection, qualified acceptance of the proposed arrangements while constantly pressuring
for more, or complete satisfaction and acceptance of them. They could have opted for

"exit" from the federation, exercised "voice" to garner as much autonomy as possible

 

1Ted Robert Gurr, Mm grjn'es at Risk; A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflict (Washington: US Institute of
Peace, 1993), p. 135.

26

27

while remaining within the federation, or demonstrated "loyalty" to the bargain offered by
the center.

Initially, I attempted to use this typology as the central construct of my autonomy
scale, but interviews conducted in Moscow with federal policy analysts suggested that it
inadequately captured the range of positions observed among the states.2 In fact, a
number of states are extremely critical of the Center's Federal Treaty and even the new
Constitution, not because they offered too little autonomy to the states, but because they
offered too much. The “voice” option failed to capture whether the states were exercising
voice in order to push for greater decentralization or for the recentralization of political
and economic power.

An alternative construct is suggested by Russian scholar and People's Deputy
Galina Starovoitova (1994). She argues that one ought to classify the elites in the 89
regions of the federation along two dimensions, one of political autonomy, and one of
economic reform, as shown in Figure 1-1.3 In the first of the four quadrants, then, are
those regional elites who want a very decentralized relationship with Moscow with lots of
local political control, and who have proceeded quickly towards instituting fi'ee market
reforms in their region. In the second quadrant are those who support renewed political
centralization, but have also supported free market reforms. In the third are those who

have supported greater central political control by Moscow, and no fi'ee market reforms;

 

2Revisions to the original conceptual schema were made following interviews with Presidential Advisors
Leonid Smirnyagin and Emil Payin in Moscow, March 1995.

3The following discussion stems from a paper presented by Galina Starovoitova at Michigan State University’s
New Elites in Russia conference held in the fall of 1994 and is cited with the permission of the author.

28

and in the fourth, those who support greater political autonomy from the federal center,
while simultaneously working to inhibit the emergence of a fiee market in their region.

The least popular quadrant according to Starovoitova is the one in which elites push
for continued centralization under a strong federal center and continued state planning in the
economy (Quadrant 111). She argues that nearly every one of the regions' elite needs to push
at least for autonomy or freedom for their constituents in order to remain popular. What
remains to be explained are the factors that lead regional elites to adopt one of the three
remaining strategies above the others.

This two-dimensional classification corresponds with one developed by Slider et a1.
(1994) to classify political party positions in the December 1993 State Duma elections. In
a factor analysis of regional voting behavior, Slider, et al., found regions in all four quadrants.
Voting behavior does, however, reflect popular attitudes, and not necessarily the positions
actually adopted by the regional governmental leaders.

I adopt Starovoitova's classification scheme, which she has applied only to the ethnic
autonomous regions; however, I apply it to the entire group of 89 states. But rather than
dichotomize the notion of political autonomy as she has done above, I conceptualize it as a
range of possible constitutional arrangements between complete independence, an ethnic
confederation (which implies an asymmetrical relationship between the Center and ethnic and
non-ethnic states), a loose confederation (in which the relationship between the Center and
all states is symmetrical), a strong federation (also symmetrical), and a highly centralized,

unitary, and indivisible Russia.

29

Using Events Data to Understand State Positions

To classify the positions of each state, I recorded events occurring within the regions
or between regional political actors and the center which articulated or were related to a
state's preferred position along this political autonomy dimension. The use of events data has
long, if not controversial, history within the study of international relations, perhaps finding
its most fervent early defense in the works of Edward Azar (1972). A smaller but still
controversial body of scholarship using events history and events counts can be found in the
field of comparative politics, especially in the study of domestic political conflict and
rebellion. Issues raised in the use of events data include inaccurate reports of events in non-
Westem countries, Western bias in reporting these events as the most relied upon source for
events data is the New York Times Index, and “missing” events not covered in the one or more
sources used to capture events in the region under examination.4

Few scholars have used events data on the former USSR or the Russian Federation.
In the past, researchers were hindered by the lack of access to sources that covered events
outside the major cities of Moscow and Leningrad. Even then, it is harder still to find sources
that covered events in regions other than the 15 union republics. This project seeks to fill this
void. Events data are not used here to record exact detail about events or activities occurring
in the regions, but instead to provide a systematic record of regional differentiation. Many

scholars limit their focus to counts of events by type (strikes, political protests, etc.) The

data I have gathered is not a count, however, but a systematic collection using a defined set

 

‘See, for example, Azar, Edward and Ben-Dak, D., eds, [Licory and Practice of Events Research (New York:
Gordon and Breach, 1973) and Robert Jackman, “Multiple Sources in the Collection of Data on Political
Conflict,” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 23, No. 2, May 1979, pp. 434-458.

30

of criteria from all of the regions of Russia to depict each state’s preferred position regarding
the federal bargain.

"Events" of relevance range from responses to central decrees relating to the division
of powers between the center and the regions, to boycotts of federal referendums or elections,
withholding of federal taxes, petitions to the federal government, communiques to the federal
government and strikes and demonstrations in favor or opposed to a proffered arrangement.
Each of these would be reported in one of the sources used to collect information.

Additionally, I gather information on the Center, here defined as the position of the
Executive Branch, or the administration of President Boris Yeltsin. I record statements made
by Yeltsin and his Chief of Staff and the Prime Minister on federal issues. Additionally, I
record actions taken by the Center vis-a-vis the regions, such as the firing and appointing of
regional administrators, threats to withhold subsidies, and the military invasion of Chechnya.
From this information, I track the position of the Center along the index of federal relations
I develop. This will allow me to measure, through an events history analysis, whether or not
the state governments’ positions reflect responses to moves by the Center, or are to a greater

degree independent of the Center’s actions.

Sources

Events recorded in this data set are taken from the weekly Current Digest of the Post-
Soviet Press (CDSP) fiom 1988 through 1995, and the Open Media Research Institute ’s
(0W1) Daily Digest (on-line service) from 1991-1995. OMRI is a non-profit news and
analysis organization, which is custodian to the Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty

archives. The Daily Digest provides concise news reports based on current primary sources

31

from the region. The CDSP presents a weekly selection of Russian-language press materials,
translated into English. It, too, is a non-profit, self-supporting corporation affiliated with
Ohio State University and the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.

I record each event related to the topic of federal relations as a case, along with the
date of the event, a brief description of the event, the state involved, the state actor
(executive, legislative, or autonomous social actor), the issue area involved (politics,
economics, culture, environment, foreign policy), and the source from which it was taken
(CDSP or OMRI, or Both). From January 1, 1991 through December 31, 1995 a total of
1460 events are recorded by regional actors. Of these events, 46% are drawn exclusively

from the CDSP, 45% from OMRI, and 9% from both sources.

Indexes

I assign each case a rank along a political autonomy continuum. The autonomy index
ranks events from 1 to 5 based on the position it represents along this dimension.

The potential positions along the Political Autonomy Index range from a desire for
independence fi'om the federation (complete political autonomy) to a desire for a unitary state

(little or no independent regional autonomy). The coding rules are as follows:

5 The pursuit of independence from the federation.

Comment: This is the greatest amount of political autonomy possible. This could be
considered neither federalist nor anti-federalist, but simply nationalist. Nationalism is
an ideology which argues that every self-proclaimed nation is entitled to its own state.
States that adopt this position might settle for what the union republics got, that is,
political independence with the ability to later agree to work with Russia in areas of
common interest, but they will be unwilling to settle for anything short of this.

32

Events representative of this position include declarations of war against the Center,
demands for international recognition of independence, acts of war or violence against
the Federation, refusing to pay federal taxes or obey federal decrees on the basis that
you are no longer a member of the federation, refusal to sign the Federal Treaty,
boycotting referendum on Federal Constitution, demand for negotiation of separate
Treaty-based relations with the Federation as a separate, sovereign state as former
union republics did.

4 The pursuit or support of "cantonalism."

Comment: “Cantonalism” is defined, following Hughes (1993), as the cultivation of
the component state as morally prior to the Union and in cases of conflict, preferable
to it. It has as its goal the survival of the canton at all costs, and includes the idea of
absolute state rights and the defense of the canton as a "historical" creation.S In other
words, it is the ideology of those who remain a part of the Federation but essentially
want to be recognized as separate nations within the federation, and expect to be treated
to more autonomy than mere provinces that do not represent separate nations. As
Beissinger (1995) indicates, "Nations need not be based exclusively on ethnicity. . . .
However, ethnicity has formed the most powerfiil bond justifying nation status."6 For
this reason, I prefer the concept of cantonalism to the more traditional, but limited
ethno-confederal one.

Events coded as representing this position include declarations of political sovereignty,
referendums on sovereignty, support for the Federal Treaty which in effect sanctifies
this position, opposition to the Constitution which in effect nullifies the special status
of ethnic cantons or republics, appeals for the formation of a new canton, secession of
a self-proclairned nation from an existing territorial formation, demands for the right
of the canton to print its own currency, conduct its own foreign policy, pass its own
language and citizenship laws, as well as write and pass constitutions in conflict with
federal ones, etc.

The pursuit or support of territorial confederation.

Comment: This category includes states that want much greater local political
autonomy and much less central control over local natural resources, foreign
investment, privatization programs, land reform, etc. These states will allow a weak
center to maintain control over defense and maintain a single currency system, but not
necessarily even a single national banking system. They do support the model of
federalism under which all regions are equal regardless of whether they are "ethnic"
states or not, and therefore, find the current Constitutional arrangement too centralizing
with the President of the Federation having the sole right to decide disputes between

 

5Christopher Hughes, 'Cantonalism: Federation and Confederacy in the Golden Epoch of Switzerland," in
M. Burgess and A. Gagnon, Comparative Federalism and Federation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,

1993), p. 155.

6 Beissinger, Mark. 1995. "The Persistent Ambiguity of Empire," in Post-SovietAffairs, vol. 1 1, no. 2, p.

156.

33

the Center and the individual states, but they also oppose the Federal Treaty on the
gromds that it perpetuates unequal relations between the states. Anti-Federalist, states'
rights position from the American experience.

Events coded in support of this position include public statements supporting creation
of Upper Chamber with equal representation for all regions, demands that Upper
Chamber be allowed more power to approve and veto national legislation, local Soviet
resolutions or referendums declaring "sovereign state status" within the Federation,
attempts to negotiate foreign investment apart fi'om the Center's control, attempts to
control privatization program apart fi'om the Center's, claims right to keep higher
percentage of taxes at home to support new responsibilities at local level.

2 The pursuit or support of a strong federation — a central government
with weaker local governments.

Comment: The central state mandates many of the social and economic development
program guidelines left to the regional governments to carry out, such as privatization
programs, banking, trade, and even type of local political institutions. In conflicts
between Center and States, the Center's ruling will have final authority. All states are
deemed equal and subordinate to the center, but local governments are elected to better
oversee the implementation of federal programs and to decide on local issues such as
education and environmental legislation.

Events coded as representing this position include those that largely support the
Center's decrees on privatization, payment of filll federal taxes, support for
Gorbachev's Union Treaty, strong support for the new Constitution, given its
provisions for a strong center, with the President's right to decide disputes between the
Center and the states. Also coded here is support for the creation of an upper house
with equal representation for all states with less power than the lower house, support
for continued central planning of most social programs, and opposition to those states
that are demanding special treatment within the Federation.

1 Unitarism: opposition to any kind of real federal arrangement.

Comment: This is the classic unionist position, hoping to preserve a strong, centralized
and unitary state, similar to the centralization of the past. Though the past system was
federal in form, as Sharlet (1994) indicated, "Unitarism has long been the political-
administrative norm in Russia."7 All important policy decisions, personnel
appointments, allocations and extraction were made by the Center, and advocates of
this position would prefer to have that continue.

 

7 See Sharlet, R., "The Prospects for Federalism in Russian Constitutional Politics," p. l 15.

34

Events coded as representative of this position are statements or resolutions which
oppose or criticize Yeltsin for being too lenient with the regions and republics, support
the war in Chechnya (or argue it should have been done sooner), oppose separate
treaties with Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, support the law-and-order centralizing
platform of the SCSE during the coup of August 1991, oppose decrees that seem to
support greater devolution of power and responsibility to the regions, support decrees
that limit or constrain that power and responsibility, support the political platform of
the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

1 code events over time, but do not develop a dynamic model of autonomy-seeking
behavior here, because I do not hypothesize initially that the ideological position of the states
changes dramatically over time. There should always be one arrangement that is preferred
by the state over the others, though for bargaining purposes, they may at times adopt a
position that is stronger or weaker than their true position. Thus I seek to measure their
central tendency, based on observations of their behavior in a set of events. I use a "median"
score on the Political Autonomy Index to capture the central tendency of the individual states.
Each state will earn a median score along the index of political autonomy as the middle point
ill the ranking of all events involving that state. A median, rather than a mean, is used as the
more appropriate measure of central tendency for rank-ordinal data. The median is also
preferable in cases where only a few events were recorded as it is not as subject as the mean
would be to distortion by one or two outlier events. In the final chapter, however, I will also
examine the amount of variation in state positions to measure whether states’ positions are
in fact changing significantly in response to the Center’s actions, in which case the assumption
of the importance and relevance of the “central tendency” is called into question.

I suggest that what might conceivably change over time is the strategy each state uses
to support their desired position. They might be more cooperative, or more hostile in their
pursuit of the ends they seek depending on their resources, and on responses and reactions

from the Center. The states might merely express unhappiness or they might resort to

35

violence. But the demandingness of their action is conceptually distinct from the position they
adopt. It is also empirically distinct, I suspect, though an analysis of this question is beyond
the scope of this investigation.

The number of events recorded for each state varies tremendously. Over the entire
period, these range from as few as three (Koriak Autonomous Oblast) to as many as ninety-
one (Chechnya). The distribution of events is very skewed, given Chechnya’s 91 and the
Koriak AO’s 3. In fact, after Chechnya, the next highest number of events is 56 (Tatarstan).
The distribution is bimodal, at 5 and 20 events, and the mean, removing the outlier Chechen
case, is 15.5 events per state. Since I am using the recorded events to get the best estimate
of the govemment’s stated position, the more events per state, the better the estimate is likely
to be. In the terminology of King, Keohane, and Verba (1994) this effort in descriptive
inference comes down to, “Do we get the right answer on average?”8 If we do, then our
estimator can be unbiased, even if we have only a small number of observations on which it
is based and hence the estimator is inefficient. Therefore, I include all eighty-nine states, even
those for which there are only a few observations because it represents the best information
I have, although I feel more confident about the estimates for the states for which I have a
greater number of recorded events.

A sample of the types of events recorded and the scores received for them is provided
in Table 2-1 for the ethnic republic of Karelia, located in the Russian northwest, on the border
with Finland. Karelia is an active player in the federal bargaining process, but not one of the

more strident autonomy seekers. Tabulating the overall median score on the Autonomy Index

 

8 Gal? King. Robert 0- Keohane. and Sidney Verba. W
W (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1994), p. 63.

36

gives Karelia a score of 4.0, with a range of 2. Interpreting this score according to the criteria
laid out in the aforementioned Autonomy Index scheme indicates that the central tendency
in Karelia is to support arrangements that favor the emergence of an ethnic confederation or
cantonalism. This position is supported by actions such as threatening to sign the Union
Treaty only if the “autonornies” are equal in status to the Union republics, refusing to support
an upper chamber of the legislature with equal representation for regions, signing statements
opposing the new Constitution because it fails to protect the republic’s sovereignty,
consideration of their own currency, etc. Future chapters will analyze the degree to which
this position is consistent over time, and the degree to which elites and their publics diverge

or converge onto this position.

Confronting Problems of Source Coverage and Bias

The choice of sources for events data in the region presents a separate challenge to the
research project. Several potential problems arise out of any kind of data collection fi'om
secondary sources. Do the CDSP and OMRI reports provide adequate and accurate coverage
of regional events to make this kind of events data collection usefirl and valid? Will I be
“missing” data that use of additional sources might provide? Are there differences in the type
and number of events each of these sources covers?

While using additional sources might have provided me with more events, it might not
have substantially altered the overall picture. J ackman (1979) suggests that rather than be
concerned with “whether different sources reports a different volume of events or type of
event, we should more properly be concerned with (a) whether different sources provide data

that yield the same underlying structure among political events, and (b) whether different

37

sources provide data that lead to the same substantive conclusions in hypothesis-testing and
model-building research.”9

Jackman was primarily concerned with the costs and benefits of using additional
sources, in particular regional versus merely global sources, to gather events data on political
conflict and coups in Afiica. In disaggregating his own data set by the five sources used, and
testing several hypotheses about the relationship between social mobilization and conflict, he
found little variation in the estimates produced by each of the individual sources, or between
global (NY Times) versus regional (Afiica Recorder) sources. While not producing identical
estimates for each of the independent variables, each of the parameter estimates remains
significant and produces signs in the same direction. The same substantive conclusions are
implied by all three sets of estimates.

To examine whether the same substantive conclusions can be drawn from the use of
only the CDSP, which is essentially a regional source, or only the OMRI reports, which come
from global sources, or both, I undertake a similar test to that of Jackman’s, using the
Political Autonomy Index. I want to know whether or not I get the same “overall” picture
of a state’s expressed position on the Autonomy Scale from each of the sources, or if there
is a significant difference in the way the two cover at least federal issues in the region. Use
of both sources together obviously gives me more cases per state and should provide me with
a better estimate of that state’s position. But does combining the scores from the two sources

hide important and potentially systematic differences in the events each reports?

 

9Robert W. Jackman, “Multiple Sources in the Collection of Data on Political Conflict,” American
Journal of Political Science, Vol. 23, No. 2, May 1979, p. 436.

38

I compare the median scores the states received on the autonomy index outlined above
using both sources, and then the median score generated using each individual source. Using
data from January 1, 1991 through December 31, 1995 (the period during which data are
available from both sources), there is no difference in the overall median score for all events
using exclusively the 795 CDSP events, exclusively the 790 OMRI events, or using all 1460
events. In all cases the overall median score for each source’s events is a 3.0. On a state-by-
state basis, however, there are more nuanced differences in the coverage. The results for each
state, for each source are presented in Table 2-2.

In looking at the individual state scores for OMRI events only and CDSP events only,
1 find a number of states had different median scores from each individual source, but only
in one case was the difference larger than 1 unit. In the case of Dagestan the difference (a 3.5
from CDSP, a 2 from OMRI) is striking, given the number of events recorded for each (12
for CDSP and 15 for OMRI). But as it is the only case with such a large discrepancy, I feel
comfortable using both sources together to maximize the number of cases per state and to
increase the accuracy of my results.

Another way of looking at the relationship between the events coverage of each source
is through a correlation, looking at the degree to which scores from CDSP are correlated with
scores fiom OMRI. The results are summarized in Table 2-3.

While not a perfect correlation (.471), the Kendall’s tau-b is statistically significant
(p=.001). This also suggests that the two sources are capturing somewhat different
information about the events. Combining the information from the two sources should
provide me with a more valid measure of the actual score of the states. For these reasons,

I feel more confident that the use of the two sources together increases the accuracy of my

39

observations and therefore, my results. To the degree that we are able to impute preferences
of political and social actors from actual behavior, the use of events data in this project seems
not only justified, but optimal. It allows me to examine elite and mass behavior related to one
issue—federal relationsuover an extended period of time, between elites and their publics, and

within and across states.

Operationalizing the Theoretical Models: The Independent Variables

As already noted, the dependent variables here will be scores on the Political
Autonomy Index by each state, based on the coding of events or interactions between the
center and the regions between 1991-1995. A median score will be calculated from all the
scores assigned to individual events involving each member state. Additionally, the following
independent variables are used to test hypotheses derived from the essentialist,

instrumentalist, mobilization and relative deprivation approaches:

Essentialist Model (Model 1): Seeks to test aspects of the “essentialist” argument by
determining which ethnic groups represent national groups most culturally “distant” from the
Russian center. Gurr argues that communities most predisposed to act upon a grievance are
those who already share a strong sense of “group identity.”

This involves two kinds of hypotheses, one about cultural distance from the center,
and one about the current strength of group identity. In the first case, it is clear that the
groups in the federation most distant culturally, linguistically and religiously from the Slavic
center are the Muslim and Buddhist groups that have not converted in the majority to some

form of orthodoxy. States with a significant Muslim/Buddhist population, which in this case

40

means a plurality of the population, will be coded 1, all others 0. To measure strength of
ethnic attachment, 1 will follow Silver’s (1974) lead and use level of attachment of to native
language as measured in the 1989 Soviet census, to capture the strength of a group’s identity.
Additionally, following Gurr (1993) in his Minorities at Risk Project, I will look at whether
or not a “serious conflict” with the dominant Russian center has occurred in the past, the
memory of which might be invoked successfully some 40-50 years later. The forcible
deportation of many of the North Caucasian groups by Stalin during World War II is one

such example. '0

Instrumentalist Model (Model 2): Seeks to understand how important rational
calculations of economic viability are in determining whether or not a state will seek greater
autonomy. I use a simple 0/1 dummy variable based on World Bank indicators of which
states contain the "valuable, exportable" natural resources of natural gas and 'oil, or diamonds
and gold.11 Likewise, those states which are most economically dependent on the Center are
rationally viewed as least likely to demand confederal arrangement, and most likely to benefit
from continued centralization. Those states whose econonries are dependent on defense
industries with continued substantial support from the Center are coded 1 versus those coded
O with few defense/military bases. Tax data on which states receive more in subsidies fiom

the federal government than they turn over in tax revenues is also included within this model.

 

loSee Alexander Nekrich, W (New York: WW Norton & Co., 1978).

nSee Christine Wallich, W (Washington, DC: World Bank,
1994), map, pp. 182-183.

41

Relative Deprivation Model (Model 3): Seeks to test assumptions of relative
deprivation theory, arguing that the historically most exploited regions are most likely to opt
out of the bargain. Since deprivation is taken to mean a sense of “perceived” inequality, it
might be dificult to capture in a single measurement. As objective indicators of relative well-
being I use several different measures. The first is level of unemployment, the second income
growth, and the third whether or not the region has been publicly identified by President
Yeltsin’s administration as a “critically depressed region.” Both the level of unemployment
and income grth measures are interval level indicators representing the percent change
from one year (1993) to the next (1994). Those with the greatest increase in the level in
unemployment and the slowest rate of income growth are expected to be least satisfied with
the current federal arrangement, and most likely to opt “out.” The public identification as a
depressed region is a simple 1/0 dummy variable, but it captures something the other two
indicators do not-the public recognition that they are doing less well relative to other regions

in the Federation in 1992.

Resource Mobilization Model (Model 4): Seeks to understand the relative importance
of political structures in shaping the mobilization strategies of regional elites. The independent
variables are coded 1-4 for each of the four administrative statuses, ASSR, Autonomous
Oblast, Autonomous Okrug, and Non-Ethnic Region. Secondly, for the importance of the
regional elite and whether or not they are former members of the communist nomenklatura
I will use biographical data obtained on the regional Soviet Chairs and on republic presidents
fiom the source, "Politicheskaia Rossiia Segodnya: 1993 [Political Russia Today: 1993]." I

will separate the leaders according to their career histories, whether they were full-time Party

42

leaders in the region prior to their appointment/election, each one a dichotomous dummy
coded 0/1. I will also control for the autonomy of the regional elite by measuring which states
have elected their leaders in each of the five years under investigation.

Each of these approaches and the propositions derived from them will be firrther
fleshed out in the forthcoming chapters, along with the implications for both the political elite
and the masses spelled out more explicitly. For the purposes of this chapter, it is enough to
introduce the types of data that will used to test these various approaches and their usefulness
in understanding and predicting the variation in behavior and preferences of elites and mass

publics in Russia’s regions with regard to the federal bargain.

CHAPTER 3:
Regional Elites and the Federal Bargain

The most important players in the bargaining process with the federal center are
the regional and republican executives, though as with other matters, systematic
differences in the level of administration between the ethnically-defined republics and the
other members of the federation exist here as well. The so-called “governors”
(gubenators) of the regions (not of the ethnic republics) were almost all appointed in the
Fall of 1991 by President Yeltsin to the positions of “Glava Administratsiia,” or Head of
Administration. The appointment of regional heads of administration was intended to
counterbalance some of the anti-Moscow sentiment of the oblast soviets (legislatures),
particularly those who had supported the efforts of the State Committee for the State of
Emergency, or the coup-plotters, in August of 1991.

According to the law adopted by the Russian Parliament in October 1991, heads of
administration were to be directly elected in December 1991, but these elections were
continually delayed by the Yeltsin administration, which was granted special emergency
powers in November 1991 to appoint the regional chiefs for one year. This power was

not taken away in 1992 or 1993.1 In 1994, Yeltsin requested once again that the direct

 

1Vera Tolz, “The Role of the Republics and Regions,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Vol. 2, No. 15, 9
April 1993, p. 12.

43

44

election of the governors, as well as the presidential election of the Russian Federation, be
delayed until 1996. He announced this on the eve of an expected election in the Maritime
Province, where the current appointee, Nazdratenko (a man the‘Center suspected of
corrupt practices), was expected to win easily. Despite loud protest and threats from
Nazdratenko, the election was delayed.

During this period, however, a number of other regions (e.g., Briansk) defied the
request and went ahead with local elections, and a number of others received special
permission to hold their elections ahead of schedule (Sverdlovsk, Moscow City Mayoral
elections). The pattern of defiance versus agreement with the federal center is something
this chapter seeks to investigate. Up until now, we have only heard anecdotal accounts of
defiance and loyalty among the regional elite. No systematic attempt has been made to
understand which regional Chiefs, all of whom were originally appointed by the Center,
went on to become the Center’s adversaries and which remained loyal functionaries, and
more importantly, what factors were important, and continue to be important in explaining
the variation.

The heads of administration possess broad powers, including a great deal in the
legislative sphere, mirroring developments at the national level for the emergence of
strong executive authority at the expense of the legislative branch in their regions. In
regions where the legislature (soviet) has opposed an unpopular appointee, stalemates
have developed. While Yeltsin clearly intended the “glava Adrninistratsiia” to represent a
central stronghold in the provinces, this expectation went unfillfilled as several of these

allegedly “dependent” administrators went on to win regional elections, and several others

45
were forcibly ousted from power by stronger local legislatures, often in direct violation of
the center’s decrees.2

Most of heads of regional administration went on to face competitive election to
their office in the fall of 1996. As of March 1997, only three regions have not held such
elections, and only one of these (Kemerovo) seems to be an intentional attempt by the
administrator to avoid imminent defeat in an election. Of the 48 incumbent regional
governors who stood for election this past fall, twenty-one held on to their jobs while 24
were defeated. Another three face run-off elections in the near future.3 In anticipation of
less-popular appointees losing elections to left-wing, communist or nationalist-party
candidates, Yeltsin replaced fourteen governors in the “red belt” regions of the country in
early 1996. But only six of these new appointees were able to hold on to their seats after
the elections.

Although the threat of federal disintegration is today much smaller than two years
ago, when I began collecting data on federal-state relations, the direct election of regional
governors could embolden them to renew their autonomy demands. Khabarovsk Krai
Governor Viktor Ishaev spoke for many regional leaders when he chose the following

slogan for his successful re-election campaign, “I need a mandate of popular trust in order

to speak with Moscow on equal terms.”4 This study remains relevant in identifying those

 

2Josephine Andrews and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, “Regionalism and Reform in Provincial Russia,” Journal of
Post-Soviet Affairs, vol. 1 1, no. 4, p. 462.

3See Laura Belirr, OMRI Russian Regional Report, Vol. 2, No. 1 from 8 January 1997 for more on the
elections in Russia’s regions in the Fall of 1996 and the first week of 1997.

4OMRI Russian Regional Report, Vol. 2, No. 1, 8 January 1997.

46

factors that lead a state executives to adopt an aggressive stance in favor of greater
independence from the federal Center.

There is, to complicate the picture, a third center of power in both the regions and
the republics. In addition to the centrally appointed heads of administration (which are
now elected) and the soviets, Yeltsin has appointed special “presidential envoys” to
oversee and supervise the activities of the very same heads of administration that he had
appointed. The position of the envoys has been weak, with very little support in the
regional administration or public at large. The envoys, or presidential representatives,
were supposed to be the “emperor’s eye in the localities,” but in reality, they were rarely
heeded and largely kept uninformed by the regional government of regional business.5 For
the purposes of this project, their role is also limited. Events reported in the sources used
here did not include the behavior of envoys in federal negotiations, except in one or two
instances. In these instances, they were coded as parts of the executive arm of regional
authority, as opposed to the legislative branch.

In the ethnic republics, the executives have had the potential to remain more
autonomous than their appointed colleagues in the regions. Direct election to the
executive positions of power varied in their timing. Initially, republican parliaments in
1990 were in the same position as the R.S.F.S.R. parliament vis-a-vis the Soviet
government, in trying to claim rights away from the Center. They were aided in this

endeavor by the republican elections of 1990, which resulted in fewer “democrats” being

 

SJosephine Andrews and Katherine Stoner-Weiss, “Regionalism and Reform in Provincial Russia,” Journal of
Post-Soviet Affairs, vol. 11, no. 4, p. 462.

47

elected than at the national level.6 By and large, the chairs of these 1990-elected
parliaments in the republics went on to become the executives in the newly independent
Russian Federation. For some regions, such as Tatarstan, the election of the president of
the republic, Mintimer Shaimiev (a former Secretary of the Tatar Communist Party),
occurred simultaneously with the election of Boris Yeltsin to the presidency of the
R.S.F.S.R. in 1991. For others, it did not occur until as late as 1994 after the drafting of
new republic constitutions redefining the relationship between the republic executive and
legislative branches.

In most cases, however, the individuals in power prior to Russian “independence”
in the fall of 1991 remained in power after 1991 in the ethnic republics. The most notable
exceptions were Chechnya, Ingushetia, Chuvashia, and Kalmykia, the only four of the
twenty-one republics which, by the beginning of 1995, had genuinely new executives
@residents or “chairs” of parliaments), that is, men who had not played a prominent role
in the government of the republic under the Soviet state. In any case, in the republics,
executive power tends to be even more concentrated than in the regions, where authority
is somewhat more evenly divided between the heads of administration and the local
legislatures. This is especially true where democratic elections to the presidency of
republics took place as early as 1991 or 1992 (some as late as 1993).

In contrast, elections to the republican parliaments were often delayed, held as

early as December of 1993 for the Moscow City Duma and as late as December of 1995

 

6Vera Tolz, “Russia’s Republics: A Threat to Its Territorial Integrity?”, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,
Vol. 2, No. 20, 14 May 1993, p. 36.

48

for Adegeya and Tuva.7

This gave republican presidents a perceived mandate and
legitimacy the legislatures could not claim. Thus, the phenomenally popular 30-year old
millionaire elected president of Kalmykia in 1992 went on to “dismiss” the Kalmykian
Soviet and rule by decree. Likewise, in the Chechen-Ingush Republic, Major-General D.
Dudayev was elected “president” of the Chechen part of the republic, and was successful
in convincing the Chechen-Ingush Soviet to disband itself, after it supported the
unsuccessfirl 1991 coup in Moscow. There are, of course, a couple of exceptions to
dominant executives in the republics. The parliament of the republic Mordovia, for
example, has resisted the introduction of a “presidency” and even went so far as to
“dismiss” the democratically elected president, V. Gusliannikov.

Table 3-1 provides a list of the “governors” or executives in both the regions and
the republics as of the beginning of 1995. It also notes whether or not the executive later
went on to win competitive election to that office. Additionally, Table 3-1’ reports which
leaders from the beginning of 1995 were replaced by Yeltsin in 1996 prior to the elections
in the hopes of increasing the electoral hopes of the administration in that region. The
table also indicates which leaders have been consistently in power since 1991.

As is evident from a cursory examination of the table, the continuity of executive
leadership in the ethnic republics is higher than in the oblasts fiom 1991 through 1995,

where the most significant change in republican leadership has occurred in Chechnya

following the reported death of Dzhokar Dudayev in the civil war during 1995. Elsewhere

 

7Darrell Slider, “Elections to Russia’s Regional Assemblies,” Post-Soviet Affairs, 1996, vol. 12, no. 2, p. 253-
254.

49

in the republics, those executives who came to power during transition from the Soviet
Union to the Russian Federation largely remain in power. As Table 3-1 indicates, many of
those presidents have since been “elected” but in many of those cases, the elections were
uncontested, as in Tatarstan (1995), Kalmykia (early 1996), and Kabardino-Balkaria
(1997), or serious contenders were denied the opportunity to compete, as in Adegeya
(1997). The fall elections in Mari-El and Khakhasia, where incumbents were both soundly
defeated, are exceptions but may point to a new trend in the republics where strong
executives have ruled almost unchecked since 1991.

In the oblasts, where the Yeltsin administration regularly exercised its right to
dismiss local executives, especially following the showdown with the Parliament in the fall
of 1993, there is little continuity in regional leadership. In some cases, however, even
dismissal did not result in the end of some regional executives’ power. In Yeltsin’s home
state of Sverdlovsk, for example, the charismatic appointee Edward Rossel was summarily
dismissed after repeatedly demanding republic status for his state, against the wishes of the
central administration. He went on, however, to become one of the first democratically
elected governors of that region, despite (or perhaps because of) his falling out of favor
with the President. Similarly, the one-time administrator of Briansk oblast, Yurii Lodkin,
who was dismissed in 1993 for supporting the Parliament in the October 1993 showdown,
made a political comeback this fall by defeating his successor in the fall election. This was

also true of Petr Sumin, newly elected governor of Chelyabinsk.

50

REGIONAL DIFFERENCES IN THE FEDERATION

Before analyzing the factors related to a state elite’s preferences for one type of
federal arrangement over another, I examine the regional socio-eConomic and geographic
differences between the members of the Russian Federation. For the purposes of
evaluating quality of life indices, industrial and agricultural production figures and other
economic indicators, the Soviet and now Russian State Committee on Statistics
(Goskomstat) divides Russia into the several geographic zones. They roughly
approximate the eight regional associations which have cropped up since the dissolution of
the Soviet state. In fact, some members of the presidential administration, prior to the
constitutional debates of 1993, proposed that the new federal structure of the Russian
Federation be based upon these eight large divisions. This was fiercely resisted by the
local leaders of almost all of the eighty-nine states. Despite their reluctance to see Russia
divided along larger regional lines, most state leaders have still since joineda regional
association (all states but Chechnya belong to one), recognizing their common interests
and the power of collective action.

The federation and regional associations can be geographically subdivided as
follows. The map in Figure 3-1 illustrates the zones discussed blow.

[F igure 3-1 (map) About Here]

The North-West (Association): Includes the republics of Karelia and Komi, and the
oblasts of Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Kaliningrad, Kirov, Leningrad Oblast, Novgorod,
Pskov, Murmansk, Nenets Autonomous Okrug and the city of St. Petersburg. The

governor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Yakovlev, heads the North-West regional

51

association. Although the level of industrialization is high in this zone, the standard of
living, outside of St. Petersburg, is not. Karelians have ethnic ties to neighboring Finns,
but only make up about 10% of the Karelian Republic population. Komi are Northern
Indigenous people (also Finnic), who make up about 23% of the Komi republic, which is
primarily a mining enclave, very hard hit by the payments-in-arrears crisis hitting the whole
mining industry in Russia.

Central Russia (Association): Includes the federal city and capital, Moscow, the
oblasts of Briansk, Vladimir, Ivanovo, Kaluga, Kostroma, Moscow Oblast, Riazan,
Smolensk, Tver, Tula, and Yaroslavl. These are all very small but highly populated,
ethnically homogeneous regions, with relatively low levels of industrial development
except for pockets of the defense sector (as in Tula and Tver). It is largely considered
part of the “red belt” where support for the Communist Party of the Russian federation
and nationalist parties is high. While the Yaroslavl Governor is the formalleader of this
group, the most influential leader is undoubtedly Moscow Mayor Yurii Lyzhkov.

Greater Volga (Association): Located in the center of the federation, along the
Volga river, it includes the Republics of Mari-E1, Mordovia, Tatarstan and Chuvashia, and
the oblasts of Astrakhan, Volgograd, Penza, Samara, Saratov, Ulianovsk, and Niznhy-
Novgorod. The Volga region is generally more prosperous than the rest of the federation
(with the exception of Mali-El), and Niznhy Novgorod is considered one of the most
forward-looking, reform-oriented oblasts in the country. Tatarstan, Nizhny Novgorod,
and Samara are all considered “donor” regions today (giving more than they get in federal

subsidies in 1996).

52

Black Earth Zone: Located in central Russia, in the agricultural center of the
federation, it is an ethnically “Russian” and politically conservative region. It includes the
oblasts of Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Lipetsk, Orel, and Tambov. The inter-regional
association is headed by the Governor of Orel Province, Yegor Stroev, who is also the
Speaker of the Federation Council, a man with clear national-level political ambitions.

North Caucasus (Association of Cooperation of Republics, Krais and Oblasts of):
The region with the lowest standard of living among its members and the lowest level of
industrial development in the federation. It includes the rural, mountainous republics of
Adygeya, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachai-Cherkessia, North Ossetia, Kalmykia,
Ingushetia, and Chechnya, in addition to Krasnodar and Stavropol Krais, and Rostov
oblast. The North Caucasus is by far the most ethnically diverse of all the federation
zones, with the most ongoing horizontal conflicts between ethnic groups (ethnic conflict in
Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia and Dagestan) in the region. The region is also
home to the Russian “Cossacks” in Stavropol, Rostov and Krasnodar. The Cossacks,
who have been known to take the law into their own hands to protect fellow Russians and
impose order on cities and villages in the area, contribute to ethnic tensions in the region.

Urals Region (Association): Includes the relatively prosperous republics of
Bashkortostan and Udmurtia, and the oblasts of Kurgan, Orenburg, Perm, Sverdlovsk, and
Cheliabinsk, in addition to the Komi-Pemriak autonomous okrug. It is well-developed
industrially and rich in natural resources. The inter-regional association is headed by the
well-known leader of Sverdlovsk, Eduard Rossel, who was removed by Yeltsin from his

chief administrator position when he lobbied too hard for the rights of non-ethnic states

53

vis-a-vis the ethnic republics by declaring his oblast a “republic” with rights equal to those
of the ethnic republics. Sverdlovsk and Bashkortostan are both today considered donor
regions.

Siberia (Accord Association): The model inter-regional association for all the
others. The regions that are party to the Accord are large but sparsely populated,
containing centers or pockets of Russian cities around mining centers with northern,
indigenous peoples living outside them. Harsh in climate but with a wealth of natural
resources to exploit, the regions include the republics of Khakhassia, Altai, and the
corresponding Altai and Krasnoiarsk Krais, as well as the oblasts of Kemerovo,
Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Omsk, Tomsk, Tyumen, and the Khanti-Mansii, Taimyr, Ust-Orda,
Agin-Buryat, Yevenk and Yamal-Nenets autonomous okrugs. Each of these okrugs is
meant to represent a small ethnic group of northern people, but the percentage of “Khanti”
or “Mansii” that actually populate the district is usually quite small, with the exception of
the Agin-Buryat AO, which is 55% Buryat. The most serious threat to the unity of this
region comes from several of the krais and autonomous okrugs, which are demanding
administrative separation from their governing oblasts. Omsk governor Leonid Polezhaev
heads the association. Krasnoiarsk, Yamal-Nenets and Khanty-Mansii are all considered
donor regions and the latter two have demanded legal and administrative separation from
Tyumen oblast.

The Far East (and Baikal Association): Again, a natural resource rich region,
includes the republics of Sakha/Yakutia, Tuva and Buryatia, the Primorskii and

Khabarovsk Krais, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, the Koriak and Chukota Autonomous

54

Okrugs and oblasts of Chita, Sakhalin, Magadan, Amur, and Kamchatka. Sakha is rich in
diamonds, Sakhalin in oil, and Kamchatka in fisheries. The region is trying to attract
foreign direct investment in the more efficient extraction of its natural wealth.8

While 1 do not expect the state governing elites within each of these regions to act
uniformly with regard to the federal bargain because of their geographic proximity and
potentially similar levels of socio-economic development, there is at least the possibility of
a relationship between these factors, as hypothesized in the relative deprivation and
instrumentalist approaches. There is also the possibility of some “contagion” or
“bandwagoning” effects within regions where a particularly strong leader of one state,
Eduard Rossel of Sverdlovsk, for example, threatens the Center that all members of his
regional association are banding together to form one large “Urals Republic” and the rest
of the region follows suit. That kind of time-dependent analysis of elite behavior and
demands will be examined in chapter 5. Within this chapter, I want to examine the
primarily structural arguments set forth in general terms in chapter one, from the

Essentialist, Instrumental, Relative Deprivation and Resource Mobilization perspectives.

REGIONAL ELITE BEHAVIOR, 1991-1995
For the purposes of this study, 1 have recorded over one thousand events related to
the federal-periphery constitutional debate over the division of powers between the center

and the states. I have also broken down the events according to the type of actor involved

 

8For more on the regional associations and their interactions with Moscow, see Laura Belin, OMRI Russian
Regional Report, Vol. 2, No. 2, 15 January 1997.

55

in the event, i.e., whether or not the actor was a member of the regional executive,
legislature or a member of a civic association (leader of a party, union members, members
of nationalist organizations, etc.) In this chapter, I analyze the behavior and demands of
the political actors with regard to their preferred federal arrangement. Political actors
include both the presidentially appointed Heads of Regional Administration and the
Presidents of the ethnic republics, in addition to the chairs of regional and republican
parliaments. Whether or not the elected presidents act significantly different from the
initially appointed heads of administration is something this study will investigate.

I combine the two types (executives and legislative chairs) of state elites for the
purposes of this analysis, expecting that the two branches will largely converge on federal
policy, while recognizing that they often differed in their stands on the stalemate between
the President and the Parliament in October of 1993. The majority of local executives
tended to favor the President’s position while over 60 of the 89 local parliaments sided
with the Parliament.9 But with regard to federal divisions of power I assume that their
positions will be rather more similar than different. Ultimately, I will examine this
hypothesis empirically, when the data permit me to do so.

After using those events involving only state political actors, using both the CDSP
and OMRI, I recorded the distribution of autonomy scores displayed in Table 3-2. I
recorded both the mean and median scores in the table. For statistical purposes, the

median is the more appropriate indicator of central tendency on this, an ordinal scale. If,

 

9Galina Starovoitova, “The Formation of the New Ethno-Political Elites in Russia,” paper presented at
Michigan State University Conference on the New Elite of Russia, October 1994, p. 8.

56

however, one conceptualizes the observations on the scale as measuring an underlying
continuous variable, then the mean becomes meaningful as well. Theoretically, I do
conceive of the scale as a continuum of autonomy from none to firll. And it is possible,
therefore, for a state to fall in between my categories and for that “in between” score to
have meaning. For these reasons, I report the mean score for the political actors of each
state on this index for the entire period from 1991 through 1995 and rank order them in
Table 3-2 from those demanding the most autonomy, the leaders of Chechnya, to those
demanding the most centralization, the leaders of Kursk. The number of events recorded
(n) is also displayed in parentheses.

As is evident from Table 3-2, only Chechnya had a median score of five and a
mean score above a 4.5, and Tatarstan is the only other republic with a mean above a 4.0,
with a 4.33. It is the only other state whose political elite pushed for greater autonomy
than would be granted in a real ethno-confederation during this five year transition period.
Another fact also stands out: all states for whom the median score of their political elite is
a four (favoring an ethnic-confederation) are ethnic republics. Among the non-ethnic
states, only Tyumen and Sverdlovsk had mean scores above a 3 .0.

But while only ethnic republics pushed for special cantons for the new federal
constitution, ethno-federation was not the central tendency of all the republics’ leaders.
The republican leaders of North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Dagestan, Karachai-
Cherkessia, and Altai all had median positions of a 3.0, or support for a loose, but not
ethnically defined, federation. Significantly, all but Altai are republics located in the North

Caucasus, a region torn apart by interethnic strife. Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachai-

57

Cherkessia and Dagestan leaders must contend on a daily basis with separatist movements
within their own republics from small ethnic minority groups demanding equal recognition
with other titular nationalities. The Congress of Balkars wants to separate from the
Kabardinians and form their own republic, and the Lezgins, in Dagestan and Azerbaidjan,
want to be united in one administrative unit, either independent or as a part of the Russian
Federation. For these reasons, it may not be as easy for the ethnic leadership in these
republics to play the nationalist card. But at this point, I will return to the theoretical
propositions discussed in Chapter 1 to understand better the reasons for the variation in
the expressed positions of the leaders of the republics, autonomous entities and oblasts of

the Russian Federation along this continuum of autonomy from the federal center.

EXPLAINING REGIONAL ELITE BEHAVIOR

Why does one state’s political elite pursue autonomy from the center while another
is reluctant or hostile to any political decentralization? As discussed earlier, the types of
explanations fall into several broad categories: Essentialism, Instrumentalism, Relative

Deprivation and Resource Mobilization schools of thought.

Essentialism:

If one were to look at the debates over the federal bargain in Russia as debates
between ethno-nationalists in the peripheries and the Russian Center, as essentialist
scholars do, then the inevitable consequence of the break-up of the Soviet state is the rise

of movements in the non-Russian parts of the empire for their just recognition.

58

Essentialists would suggest that any self-proclairned nation will eventually rise up to claim
statehood with the collapse of the imperial center in 1991. In terms of the Russian
Federation, while considerably less diverse than the former Soviet Union, this would
suggest that over fifty different national groups should be seeking statehood. It is not
within the bounds of this project to evaluate the demands or aspirations of those groups
which did not already have an administratively defined territory and political leadership at
the time of the collapse of the Soviet state, but the case of the Germans in the Volga
region, who have pressured the German government to ask Russia to restore a German
state within the Federation, would be evidence of such aspirations. But the Germans in
Volgograd and Saratov are only one example of those without an existing unit which are
seeking increased recognition. In reality, the majority of the small ethnic groups in the
Federation are not aspiring to nation-statehood.

More nuanced arguments flowing out of the essentialist school suggest that only
those national groups with an already strong sense of “group identity,” sustained perhaps
by cultural distance from the dominant national group and/or a past serious conflict with
the same dominant center, are likely to mobilize for greater national autonomy. These are
the hypotheses and findings of the Minorities at Risk (1993) project, and it is their
measures that I will use to test the following hypothesis derived from this school of

thought.

W: The state elites most likely to express a desire for
greater autonomy from the center are those whose population

shares a strong sense of group identity, are culturally distant from the center,
and experienced a past serious conflict with the Russian center.

59

I also hypothesize, based on the logic of the essentialist argument, that the converse is
true: among the ethnic states with a weak sense of group identity, cultural proximity to
the dominant Russian culture and no past serious grievance with the center (such as
deportation, massacres, etc.), state leaders would be less likely to push for the maximum
amount of autonomy from the center, or even for the special status granted by virtue of an
ethnic confederation.

Instrumentalism:

Instrumentalists are more cynical about the rise of nationalist movements for autonomy
and independence from the center. They view such movements not as the inevitable result
of imperial or foreign rule over “nations” but as a function of deliberate strategies pursued
by elites in territories where the benefits of greater autonomy would be greater than the
costs incurred in demanding it. Elites in the states make calculations of the costs and
benefits of remaining a part of the federation. They bargain to improve their position,
instrumentally, within it.

Ethnicity, in this view, is just a means of rallying support for what is ultimately a
rational calculation of costs and benefits. It is a form of leverage which may or may not be
effectively mobilized against the center. Other forms of leverage might include natural
resource wealth, such as if the state produced a large share of the Federation’s oil, or the
tax base of the state, that is, if the state is a donor vs. recipient economic unit.

While all of the executives in the regions were initially appointed at the end of
1991, all expected to ultimately face voters in their states. They would pursue autonomy

if they felt benefits to their constituencies would enhance their own electoral chances

60

down the road. This assumes, of course, that the administrators aspire to remain
governors for longer than their appointed terms. But if the 49 regional elections held this
fall are any indicator, this is a fair assumption. Only one incumbent did not seek to extend
his term. Once elected, one might expect that regional leaders would feel even freer to
pursue the self-interest of the region vis-a-vis the center even more strenuously than
before, something the final chapter will examine.

The following would represent one proposition derived from the instrumentalist

argument.

WM: Elites from states which are least dependent on

the center for subsidies and investment are most likely to demand autonomy
from the center. Similarly, elites from states which are most dependent on
the center for subsidies and investment, with little or no independent
resources valued on the world market, are least likely to pursue political
decentralization.

I will test this proposition in a number of ways, using different measures of “dependence.”

I will use several indicators, in order to show that the results are robust across measures,

and not a function of a particular type of measure.

Relative Deprivation Theory:

Almost in direct contrast to the instrumentalist position, the relative deprivation
approach would suggest that elites in states which have been exploited by the center
relative to their neighbors or other members of the federation would use ethnicity or any
other effective unifying symbol to argue that they have not benefited fi'om membership in

the Federation in the past. Mobilization of this resentment occurs either when

61

expectations rise well above capabilities to fulfill them, or when capabilities decline, even
while expectations remain unchanged.

The collapse of the Communist state and central organization might have
generated a tide of rising expectations that new/old leaders are simply unable to satisfy.
Relative deprivation scholars might then hypothesize that the most depressed regions, and
the leaders of those regions which have actually seen a decline in their overall quality of
life since the collapse of the old center, would make a scapegoat of the federal center.
Published reports appear almost daily in the Russian media discussing the relative
wealth/poverty and environmental degradation of each of the federation’s members. In
negotiations over new federal-constitutional arrangements, it would be natural, relative
deprivation theory suggests, for the most depressed regions to want to opt out of the
bargain altogether on the grounds that the Center is untrustworthy. They might argue that
they do not want to remain “proletarian” states forever, helping to maintain the wealthy

lifestyles of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kazan with no benefits accruing to them.

WWII: Elites from states whose population has

experienced deprivation (an increase in expectations without a
corresponding increase in abilities OR a decrease in capabilities)
during the time period of this study are more likely to seek to blame
the center for their situation, and as a result, he more likely to pursue
independence from the center and to resist any attempts at a
recentralization of political power which could signal a return to their
exploited position in the federation.

Relative deprivation theory focuses on the psychological impact of “perceived” inequality
in treatment by the Center, towards the states. As Gurr (1976) noted, the “perceived

discrepancy between men’s value expectations and their value capabilities” is more

62

important than what objective indicators might tell us about such discrepancies. Any
measure of this “relative deprivation” has to contend with the issue of perception in order
to be a valid test of the hypothesis.

Resource Mobilization Theory:

This branch of collective action theory has its origins in some of the early work of Charles
Tilly (1974). It recognizes weaknesses in relative deprivation arguments, which like other
revolutionary theories, overlook the fundamental problem of collective action. Given the
same window of opportunity, what drives some individuals to undertake a collective
action where there are costs to the individual and where the benefits are widely distributed
to the many, and where the risk of defection is high? In this case, I apply the argument to
individual state elites. What drives some of them to pursue autonomy from the center
while others resist the decentralization of power? The answer, suggest resource
mobilization scholars, resides in the different resources each state’s elite can bring to bear
on the bargaining process.

One such potential resource is the leader’s experience in such political bargaining
from under the old regime, and the amount of domestic political support he has already
built up, independent of the center. This suggests that the political structures in place
before the dissolution of the Soviet state will be important in shaping the bargaining for
certain structural arrangements in the post-Soviet state. As mentioned earlier, Roeder
(1991) makes a persuasive argument on the relationship between “ethnonationalism” and
the previous administrative status of the state (and thereby, state elite) under the old

regime. The more privileged the state (and thereby, the state elite), the more likely it will

63

be able to mobilize experience and support to maintain that privilege after the center’s

collapse.

WWW: Elites from those states that were

administratively privileged under the old regime will be most likely to
mobilize to maintain those privileges (i.e. political, cultural and economic
autonomy) in the transition period. They will be most likely to bargain for
greater autonomy.
Other such resources besides those accrued under the old regime, would be whether or
not the elite were able to mobilize some kind of support outside of Moscow to counter
Moscow’s influence. If the leader of that state were independently elected, or when the
elite of a given state are elected, they instantly develop a base of support independent of

the Center, and with greater ability to act independent of the Center’s authority.

Therefore, a second proposition derived from this school would be:

WWW Elites who have stood for

independent election and won are more likely to demand autonomy than
those who are still subject to appointment and re-appointment from the
Center.
An additional resource that might be mobilized against the Center would be international
support from neighboring independent states or larger “brothers” in the near abroad. One
such example would be the continued pressure placed upon the Yeltsin administration by

the German government on behalf of the newly created German-national districts in

Volgograd. This hypothesis, too, will be examined later.

64

Operationalizing the Models

The dependent variable is a state elite’s central tendency, or median score, on the
autonomy index from 1991-95. The mean scores range from a 1.6 to a 4.62, while the
median scores range from 2 to 5. No state had 1 as a median score, and only one
(Chechnya) state had 5. Given the limited and bounded nature of the dependent variable, I
will use a multinomial logistic regression when appr0priate for each of the five categories
to derive the probability of each model predicting a state elite’s position along the
autonomy index. So, for example, the model will generate coefficients for independent
variables for each position on the index. Multinomial logit (MNL) is the most appropriate
statistical technique to model the relationship between the above-mentioned factors and a
state political elite’s bargaining position (as opposed to linear regression). Though the
coefficients are somewhat more difficult to interpret in logit when compared to a multiple
regression analysis, regression only produces unbiased estimates when its basic
assumptions are not violated, and one of those assumptions is a continuous, normally
distributed dependent variable.

For the purposes of clarity, all of the independent variables for each of the four
models are listed in Figure 3-2. To operationalize the essentialist model, or Model 1, I
need to measure strength of group identity, cultural distance from the center, and past,
serious conflict with the center. To capture the first, I follow Silver (1974) by using level
of attachment to native language as a measure of attachment to one’s national group. The
1989 Soviet census reports responses to questions about individuals’ use of Russian and

their native tongue. Those that have linguistically assimilated are treated as having a weak

65

sense of national identity, while those who have maintained the use of their native tongue,
in spite of central pressures to Russify, are treated as having a strong sense of national
identity.

As a measure of cultural distance, I could follow Anderson and Silver (1989) and
Emizet and Hesli (1995) by using Muslim faith as an indicator of cultural distance from the
center. They measure whether or not a republic (in their case, union republic) was
“predorrrinantly” Muslim. It is not clear if this means Muslims are in the majority, or mere
plurality. In my study, however, I will use “Orthodox/Non-Orthodox,” as did Silver
(1974), as an indicator of proximity to the dominant Russian, Orthodox center. I score
those states where the plurality of the population is not orthodox, that is Muslim or
Buddhist, as one, while those where the plurality are orthodox Christian I score as zero.

Finally, I judged any state whose population was subjected to deportation,
extermination or forcible annexation by Stalin during World War II to be a victim of a
serious conflict with the center. They received a score of 1 on the “punished people”
variable while those who were not subject to extermination or deportation, received a 0.

Eleven states are in the plurality Non-Orthodox states, according to the Anderson
and Silver (1989) classification: Tatarstan, Tuva, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Kalmykia,
Dagestan, North Ossetia, Karachai-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Bashkortostan.
There were five “punished” peoples, which had administrative states taken away from
them in 1944 by Stalin and were deported en masse for alleged collaboration with the

Nazis: Chechens, Ingush, Karachai, Balkars and Kalmyks. I have also considered

66

Tuvinians “punished” peoples because of the forcible annexation of their territory to
Russia in 1940.

To test the Instrumentalist Model, I use several indicators of dependence/
independence from the center. The first is natural resource wealth. All those states with
significant (as defined by the World Bank) oil, natural gas, diamond and gold deposits
have independent economic potential and are scored a 1, to those without, 0. In contrast,
those states whose economy rests almost entirely on the defense industry/complex are
considered to be dependent on the center and likely to be supportive of more centralized
constitutional arrangements.

As an indicator of whether or not a state was a “defense” state or not, I used the
sixteen regions that were designated “closed” security regions to foreigners for national
security/defense reasons under the old Soviet state and the new Russian government in
July of 1992. They were the following states: Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Novgorod,
Kaliningrad, Kamchatka, Amur, Primorskii Krai, several districts of Moscow and
Leningrad Oblasts, Orenburg, Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Sverdlovsk, Astrakhan,
Krasnoyarsk, Mordovia and Volgograd. Additionally, I include those ten regions that
contained the secret “nuclear” cities, which in addition to Chelyabinsk, Moscow Oblast,
Krasnoyarsk and Sverdlovsk (all also listed above), include the regions of Tomsk and

Penza. All of these are coded 1, for defense region, while all others are 0.

67

Under a separate indicator, 1 identify what Malleret (1992) refers to as the top
fifteen “end product weapons” regions in the federation”. He ranks them according to
the number of defense industry enterprises (whose end produCt is weapons) per 10 million
of the population. They are as follows: Vladimir, Tula, Udmurtia, Chelyabinsk, St.
Petersburg Oblast, Tatarstan, Mari El, Perm, Samara, Kirov, Nizhny Novgorod, Buryatia,
Omsk, Voronezh, and what he calls the “Far Eastern region” (Kamchatka, Primorskii
Krai, Magadan). They receive a 1, for defense industry regions, while all others receive a
0.

To test the Relative Deprivation Model, I need an indicator of overall well-being
that captures the relative levels of inequality between regions of the federation, as well as
how these levels are perceived by the public at large. As an objective indicator of this I
use whether or not a region was identified by the President’s administration as a critically
depressed region in 1991, the starting point of this study. It does not, therefore, measure
any changes in this status over the five year period of time, but it does provide evidence
that such deprivation has been publicly and therefore, collectively, recognized, which is an
essential component of the theory. To capture change in status over time, I will examine
other objective indicators of well-being which are available yearly specifically changes in
the level of unemployment in the region and the comparative rates of income growth. As

states earlier, those with the slowest rates of income growth and highest rate of

 

loSee Thierry Malleret (1992), “Conversion of the Defense Industry in the Former Soviet Union,” Institute for
East-West Studies: New York, p. 52, Table 6.

68
unemployment, relative to their neighbors, will be most likely to opt out of the federal
bargain.

The social indicators of the quality of life in the regions may, however, be a more
important indicator of what the public at large is feeling and not a significant indicator of
elite behavior. The deprivation, be it perceived or real, might have a more pronounced
impact on the behavior of mass publics, and only be reflected in the behavior of regional
elites to the degree that elites correctly represent the concerns of their publics. Both
hypotheses are examined in this study.

Finally, to test the proposition derived from the Resource Mobilization School, I
identify those regional elites who were working in administratively privileged states at the
time of the collapse, in the fall of 1991. I assign scores to the eighty-nine states based on
their status in the administrative hierarchy of the US SK using four dummy variables for
each of the four possible status’: A.S.S.R., Autonomous Oblast, Autonomous Okrug, and
Non-Ethnic Territory. Additionally, I try to understand the mobilizational resources of the
regional elite according to their past history (former Party leader of the region), and their
current status (elected or appointed). I hypothesize that if they are elected they are more
likely to display behavior that is independent of the Center’s authority, and perhaps more

confrontational.

Analysis:

The propositions to be tested are restated here.

69

Essenflaljflmmsiflon: The state elites most likely to express a desire for
greater autonomy from the center are those whose population

shares a strong sense of group identity, are culturally distant from the center,
and experienced a past serious conflict with the Russian center.

Instmmentahflmmsiflnn: Elites from states which are least dependent on the

center for subsidies and investment are most likely to use this economic
independence as leverage to demand increasing levels of autonomy from the
center. Similarly, elites from states which are most dependent on the center
for subsidies and investment, with little or no independent resources of value
on the world market, are least likely to pursue political decentralization.

WW: Elites from states whose population has

experienced deprivation (an increase in expectations without a corresponding
increase in abilities OR a decrease in capabilities) during the time period of
this study are more likely to seek to blame the center for their situation, and
as a result, he more likely to pursue independence from the center and to
resist any attempts at a recentralization of political power which could signal
a return to their exploited position in the federation.

WWW”: Elites from states that were administratively

privileged under the old regime will be most likely to mobilize to maintain
those privileges (i.e., political, cultural and economic autonomy) in the
transition period. They will be most likely to bargain for greater autonomy.

WW Elites that have stood for independent

election and won are more likely to demand autonomy than those that are
still subject to appointment and re-appointment from the Center.

Essentialism: I begin with an analysis of the variables that identify those states
likely to exhibit nationalist tendencies on the basis of their potential for the development of
a separate national identity. These include indicators of strength of group identity and of
the distance of that identity from the culturally, demographically and politically dominant
Russian Orthodox Center. This school of thought predicts that only those states with a
significant ethno-linguistic group present within its borders are likely to opt “out” of the

Federation. Significant need not mean majority. In this case, it may be that a minority

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within the state received “official” recognition of its status within those boundaries, either
as a republic, autonomous oblast, or autonomous okrug. Essentialists do not posit that
other factors are unimportant in explaining secessionist tendencies in a formerly united
state, but do expect to see secessionism arise in those states where multiple national
groups reside as minorities in a “foreign” state.

In order to test this, I need to determine which of the ethnic states, if any, have
maintained a strong sense of group identity and are culturally distant from the center. I
begin with some bivariate analyses of some commonly used indicators of this
phenomenon: states with non-orthodox populations, states with populations retaining the
use of a native tongue separate from Russian, and states with populations experiencing
some past serious injustice at the hands of the Russian Center.

Table 3-3 reveals the strong relationship between my potential indicators. There is
a strong relationship between those states which are non-orthodox and those with a past
serious conflict with the center (i.e., deportation or forcible annexation during Stalin era).
All of the “punished” peoples are non-orthodox groups, though there are five non-
orthodox groups that are not punished. None of the ethnic groups that have largely
converted to orthodoxy are punished peoples.ll Use of both of these variables in an
equation with the Median Score on the Autonomy Index would be problematic. The

question is whether or not there is a “punished people effect” that interacts with the non-

 

11The Jewish people are not considered here to be “punished” in the sense that the Jewish Autonomous Oblast,
established in 1928, never served as an ethnic “homeland” to Soviet Jews in the way that Kalmykia did for
Kalrnyks or Tuva did, and still does, to Tuvinians. This classification does not mean to suggest, however, that
Jews were not systematically discriminated against or persecuted by the Soviet state. They clearly were. But
by the logic of the essentialist case, there needs to be a strong sense of national identity also associated with a
particular space or territory, which then becomes the object of a national secessionist movement.

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orthodox measure, to mean that groups that are non-orthodox and formerly punished are
most likely to push for autonomy.

Another means of measuring strength of group identity is through language use.
Those groups with a high level of retention of their native tongue (as self-reported on the
census of 1989) are believed to have a stronger sense of national identity than those
groups that have lost their native tongue to the process of assimilating to Russian culture
and language. Even native language retention is correlated with non-orthodoxy. The
Muslim groups and the Buddhist Tuvinians in particular (who are also a punished people)
are the highest among the thirty-two groups in reporting native language use. Since there
is a high degree of multicollinearity between all three of these “essentialism” variables, I
will not incorporate them into a multivariate equation just yet.

According to the essentialist theory, we would expect that groups with a strong
sense of identity, cultural distance from the center and a past historical grievance would be
the most demanding of autonomy. Therefore a summated scale of “potential” for
developing a separate national identity with separatist ambitions seems appropriate. If the
population of the state is recognized as non-Russian, non-orthodox, previously punished
by Stalin and has a high reported use of its native tongue (75%+), it receives a score of 4.
Any combination of three of the above is a 3, two of the above a 2, and one of the above a
1. “Russian” states receive a score of 0. I consider those states with all four factors to
have a high potential for the development of a strong, separate national identity, while

those with none to have a low potential for doing so. Accordingly, there are 6 states with

72

a score of 4, 5 with a score of 3, 12 with a score of 2, 9 with a score of l and the rest, 57,
with a score of 0..

Correlating this “Essentialism Index” with the Median Autonomy Score Index
yields the results shown in Table 3-4. The Kendall’s tau-b coefficient (.575) is statistically
significant (p = .000), suggesting that the essentialist propositions are important when
explaining the behavior of the state elite. A closer examination of the relationship among
the ethnic state elite is provided in the crosstabs presented in Table 3-5. While the only
state (Chechnya) to pursue a course of independence is also one with the highest potential
for the development of a separate national identity, five other states with similarly high
levels of national identity have not opted for independence. So while presence of these
four factors might be considered necessary to the leadership before embarking on a path to
independence, they are not sufficient conditions for doing so.

Likewise, the only two ethnic states to adopt positions asking for less autonomy
than is represented by the overall median of 3.0 are states lacking any of the essentialism
factors present (the Koriak and Evenki A0). So while the presence of a strong sense of
national identity is not sufficient for predicting a desire for greater autonomy, it does seem
less likely that states with some potential for the development of a separate national
identity will be unlikely to call for the return of a strong, central government at the
expense of the development of regional government.

But the indicators cannot tell us much more about the likely behavior of these state
elite beyond the most extreme positions. For example, the leaders of the state of Karelia,

with only one of the factors present and those of Tuva, with all of them present, score the

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same on the autonomy index, in asking for the maximum amount of autonomy possible
within a single state, position four. We need more than what the essentialism school offers
to explain the behavior of both ethnic and non-ethnic elite in bargaining with the center
over the distribution of political power.

Instrumentalism: In contrast to what the essentialist school would suggest, the
instrumentalist approach suggests that elites in states with credible economic leverage to
use against the Center will be most likely to demand increasing levels of autonomy from
the Center to capture greater rents from those same resources. In the more prosperous
regions, elites may be aware of the fact that continued membership in this federation
would signal a continuation of their status as “donor” regions, supporting poorer regions
at the expense of the development of their own constituencies. Increasing levels of
political autonomy then would mean that regional elites gain more control over tax
revenues collected in their regions, and over wealth accumulated from the sale of natural
resources in the region, etc. This case has been made with regard to the Baltic states and
their desire for independence from the Soviet Union. That they had a consistently higher
standard of living than most of the other republics, and felt they could be doing even better
if they did not have to continue to subsidize the development of poorer regions like those
in Central Asia, are among the primary reasons for the emergence of strong independence
movements in these regions. In contrast, that the much poorer and culturally distant
Central Asian republics were reluctant to secede from the Union is consistent with the fact

that they were budgetary recipients under the terms of the old federal bargain.

74

To test these propositions on the eighty—nine regions of the Russian Federation, I
use data on the degree of economic dependence/independence of the state on the federal
Center. There are several ways to measure dependence. The first is to use an indicator
that captures which regions are the “donor”regions and which are the “subsidized” ones.
One such indicator uses 1992 tax and subvention data to rank the regions according to
whether they pay into the federal budget more than they receive back in subsidies. Those
that pay more than they receive have negative values while those that receive more than
they pay have positive values. Net gainers are expected to be least likely to demand a
loose or decentralized federal arrangement, and not at all likely to opt for independence.
They are expected to mirror the behavior of the Central Asian states during the collapse of
the old Soviet center in 1991.

A Kendall’s tau-b correlation of .366 between the Median Autonomy Score for
state elites and the net budgetary gainers/losers variable is statistically significant (p =
.000) and positive. I find that states that are budgetary gainers in the federal bargain are
more likely to demand autonomy than those that are budgetary losers. This is the opposite
of what the theory would predict, which is that the most well-to-do would want to opt out
to do better, like the Baltics in 1990-91. The result is not, however, entirely surprising
when one examines the net gainer variable more closely. Table 3-6 identifies the 15 net-
gainer states, that is, those with excess subsidies received over the taxes they paid into the
federal budget (per capita), 13 of which are ethnic republics. Of the non-ethnic regions,
only Kamchatka and Irkutsk receive more in subventions than they pay out in federal taxes

in 1992. Thus, there is a strong interaction between the budgetary measure and the status

75

of the state. Since Chechnya, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Tuva, and Sakha are all net
gainers but are still among the most demanding of autonomy, the motivations are not that
they are being economically “exploited” to firnd development'in poorer regions, as we
often heard from the leaders of the Baltic independence movements. The leaders from the
highest paying donor regions are probably not, by the same token, instrumentally using
their status as donors to bargain for better either.

The measure is imperfect, however, because it does not allow us to consider the
position of the autonomous okrugs and krais, which in budgetary terms, are considered
one with their oblasts/republics. This removes a number of important cases fi'om
consideration (N: 73).

Looking at the natural resource base of the regions is another way to examine
whether elites are motivated by instrumental considerations in their bargaining with the
center. Those with a strong natural resource base of tradable goods on the world market
(i.e. oil, gas, diamonds and gold) might be more likely to bargain for more autonomy. A
cross-tabulation of resource base against the Median Autonomy Score seems to support
this proposition, as Table 3-7 indicates. The state elites demanding a strong federation,
that is, a strong center at the expense of regional state governments are those fi'om states
with no known resource wealth. Of the 25 state elites opting for a 2 or 2.5 on the
autonomy scale most of the time, 20, or 80 percent, are from states without any oil, gas,
diamond or gold reserves to speak of.

At the other end of the spectrum, however, things are not as clear. Of the

seventeen 4's, that is, state elites advocating a very loose ethnic federation of states, ten

76

are resource-rich and seven are not. Resource base is not an important predictor of this
position, as it is the strong federalist position. The one 5, Chechnya, is an oil-producing
state. The overall Kendall’s tau-b correlation between natural resource wealth and the
median autonomy position of state elites is moderately positive at .295 (p= .001).

One additional way to determine the economic dependence of a particular state on
the center is to examine the state’s expenditures to revenues ratio. The World Bank has
compiled a listing of the state budgets for 1992--their expenditures and resources. From
these figures, I calculated the percentage of the local budget expenditures made up by
federal subsidies. It ranges dramatically across regions from virtually nothing to well over
75%. Again, in a rational economic world, one would expect that those states least
dependent on the center would be most likely to demand a loose federation, special
autonomy or outright independence.

A list of the states ranked according to how dependent they are on the center for
resources is presented in Table 3-8. A Kendall’s tau-b correlation between percent of
local budget obtained from federal subsidies and the median autonomy index is statistically
significant, but not in the expected direction. It is positive .172 (p= .043). Once again,
economic motivations alone are not important predictors of state elite behavior with
regards to the federal bargain. Those with little or no dependence on the center for
subsidies are not more likely to demand autonomy; in fact, they are slightly less likely to
do so.

Among the instrumentalist measures expected to predict demands for autonomy,

then, only natural resource base is significant and predictive in the expected direction.

77

State leaders seem willing to use oil, gas, diamond wealth as leverage against the center to
obtain greater autonomy themselves over those same resources and other political and
economic powers. This is true even in cases where the state has done well vis-a-vis the
center in terms of what they have received relative to what they put in, and in cases where
they appear to be dependent on the center for resources to cover local budget
expenditures.

What it is about natural resource wealth above other kinds of wealth that makes
local leaders more bold is not immediately apparent. Perhaps the marketability of these
goods on a world market at values higher than they are likely to receive on the domestic
market contributes to this phenomenon. Another possibility, worthy of firrther
consideration at a later point, is more political. I can only begin to speculate here about the
degree of influence that directors of natural resource extraction and production facilities
(the profitable oil/ gas ones, that is, not the forlorn coal mining facilities) in the states have
on local leaders, but one could hypothesize that it is relatively strong and that they would
tend to favor a loosening of federal authority over their prizes.

Along these same lines, I have a final test of the instrumentalist position involving
reverse expectations. Ifthe elite/managers/directors fiom the profitable firms are pushing
for a looser federation with more local control, the reverse would certainly be true of
those firms which are almost entirely dependent on the Center for survival in the new
marketplace. In this case, one can imagine that the advocates of a strong center at the
localities expense would be those states whose economy is almost entirely based upon the

Center’s continued strength--the defense regions. According to the logic of the

78

instrumental approach, defense regions and their leaders are more likely to be hostile to
attempts by other regional elite to jeopardize the territorial integrity of the Federation;
defense regions would also resent the demands from resource rich states for lighter tax
burdens, greater revenue sharing and economic decentralization.

The numbers do not support these expectations. In fact, there is no statistically
significant relationship between defense regions and their position on the autonomy index.
The Kendall’s tau-b correlation is a -.086 (p = .381)

Relative Deprivation: Moving next to an assessment of the relative deprivation
school, I begin by attempting to measure “relative deprivation” in each state. The concept
attempts to capture a psychological phenomenon that occurs when individuals, or groups
of individuals, feel they are being mistreated relative to others. This comes to a crisis when
there is a change in circumstance, when either the capabilities or status of a group
experience a decline due to some outside force, or when the expectations of the group
increase without a corresponding increase in their ability to fulfill those expectations.

I assume, at the onset, that the collapse of the USSR. in 1991 and Yeltsin’s
“victory” over the putschists of August created a tide of rising expectations all over the
federation, which residents in some regions were more able to capitalize on than others.
What is important in the relative deprivation school is the perception among large groups
of people that they are doing worse than their neighbors, and that the Center is somehow
to blame, either from pursuing reckless policies, or more likely, from the sense that they
are purposefillly privileging some regions over others. Those regional elites who are up

for election in regions where large parts of the population are experiencing relative

79

deprivation during this period are more likely to opt out of the federal bargain. Once
again, I have several means to test this hypothesis.

First, I look at changes in the standard of living of thestates. In states
experiencing a dramatic decline in the standard of living during this time period, leaders
might opt to deflect the criticism fi'om themselves by blaming the Center and telling their
constituents that they could do better without so much interference fiom the Center. As a
measure change in the standard of living over time, I look at the level of change in income
and unemployment from 1993 -94. Elites in those states experiencing slower income
growth in the face of rampant inflation and a corresponding jump in the level of
unemployment are more likely to demand autonomy from the center as a means of taking
the heat off themselves.

The results do not bear this hypothesis out. Kendall’s tau-b correlations between
change in unemployment/change in income by median autonomy score do not yield
statistically significant results. The correlation between level of unemployment and
median autonomy score is negative (-.049), as expected, but not significant (p = .567).
Likewise, level of income growth and median autonomy score are negatively correlated (p
= -.030) so the higher the growth the less the deprivation and the less likely the leader is to
demand autonomy. But this relationship, too, is not significant (p = .733).

An alternative to this measure of relative deprivation is one which measures
whether or not the Center considers this region to be a “depressed” region. In 1992, the
President’s Analytical Center identified twenty regions as economically depressed

compared to the rest of the Federation during 1991-92. While this measure is only for a

80

single point in time, and therefore, cannot measure the degree to which a state’s
population’s capabilities have declined over this time period, if we take the collapse of the
USSR to be a point in time at which all individuals expectations were raised, then we do
not need to find a corresponding decrease in abilities. By the logic of the theory, the worse
off regions would be more likely to opt out than the well-to-do regions, by virtue of the
fact that they were worse off than their neighbors in a time when things were expected to
improve (however unrealistic this expectation) for all.

The Kendall’s tau-b correlation between “depressed region” and the state elite’s
median autonomy score is .284 (p = .004). The relationship is strong and positive, as the
theory would have predicted. The fact that these regions were also identified publicly by
the Center as having been worse off than the average state in the Federation lends support
to the relative deprivation theory. It is not enough that the region be depressed, but the
population must perceive this to be the case in comparison to some “other.” In this case,
the comparison was made clear for them.

The relative deprivation school then, receives mixed reviews here. It finds little
support when we use income and unemployment levels to measure deprivation, but when
we consider a state’s classification on a federal list of depressed regions, we find evidence
of a relationship between those on the list and those demanding autonomy from the center.
Not surprisingly, many of those classified as depressed are also on the “net gainers” list.
The most depressed regions are receiving subsidies from the Center as the Central Asian
states did under the Soviet system, but as was also true under the Soviet system, these

subsidies did not do away with the dramatic differences in quality of life between the

81

peoples of Central Asia and the Baltics, for example, any more than they did away with
the poverty afflicting the North Caucus’ and the relative wealth of the Moscow suburban
area. '2 What is perhaps left unanswered here, by the limitations of the data analyzed, is
whether the public declaration of critical depression measures absolute or relative levels of
deprivation.

Resource Mobilization: The final test examines the proposition that those elites
from states that were privileged under the old regime are most likely to demand increasing
levels of autonomy on the basis that these elites gained in experience and networks the
political skills and tools necessary to bargain effectively with the Center. While the
federalism that existed under the Soviet state was nominal in the amount of power it
granted to state officials, it did allow for elite recruitment and some bargaining to go on
between these local elites and the federal center. And it allowed this on an unequal,
hierarchical basis. Elites from the A.S.S.R. ’3 had more flexibility than those from the
autonomous oblasts, who had more than those from the autonomous okrugs, who had
more than those from the non-ethnically defined oblasts and krais. This relationship
should show up in an evaluation of the relationship between previous administrative level
and demands for autonomy under the new regime. Those from the AS SRs should be more
demanding than those from the Autonomous Oblasts, Okrugs, and non-ethnic states, and

so forth.

 

12See Donna Bahry (1987), 0

(New York: Columbia University Press) for an excellent Study on the nature of the relationship between federal
subsidies to the Union Republics and their overall level development.

 

82

The relationship is both strong and statistically significant. The higher in the
administrative hierarchy (which I have divided into a rank-ordered four-fold classification:
ASSR, Autonomous Oblast, Autonomous Okrug, Non-Ethnic State) the state was under
the Soviet state, the more likely its current state elite are to demand “specia ” autonomy
for themselves, if not outright independence. Only 3 of the 16 previous ASSR’s are now
demanding a federal arrangement under whose terms they are likely to give up some of
their privileged status. Likewise, none of the territorial formations (non-ethnic states) are
demanding the kind of special status or independence demanded by the likes of Chechnya
or even Tatarstan. Within the group of non-ethnic states, however, there is disagreement
about how strong a federal center should be created. Twenty-three of 57 non-ethnic
states lean towards a very strong central state while 34 others prefer a looser federation
with more autonomy granted to the local leadership. This variation cannot be explained
away in terms of the previous administrative status or non-privileged status of the state

under the Soviet system.

Multivariate Analysis

Next, I will examine explanatory power of the variables for each theory in a
multivariate analysis. Multinomial logit will be used as the dependent variable is bounded.
While the bivariate analysis above allows us to understand whether any relationship exists
between the variables chosen to represent the four theories examined here, bivariate
correlations do not allow us to see how the variables interact, the relative weight of the

variables in explaining variation in the dependent variable or the comparability of the

83

models’ goodness of fit. Multinomial logit (MNL) will generate coefficients representing
the probability of being in each category of the dependent variable when the independent
variables are altered. It will also indicate whether those coeffiCients are statistically
significant. MNL also generates data on what the model would predict each state’s
position to be compared to what its actual position was, providing us with an overall
“percentage correctly predicted” statistic for comparison among models.

For the purposes of the multivariate analysis, I recode some of the median
autonomy scores in order to have enough cases in each category to allow the analysis to
converge. The one ‘5' is recoded into the category 4 while the eight 25's and the three
3 5'5 are recoded into either a 2, 3, or 4 based on their mean score on the autonomy index.
The final result is 24 2's, 47 3'5 and 18 4'8.

First, I ran the MNL on the Essentialism Model, using as my independent variable
the 0-4 composite scale of “potential” for the development of a separate national identity.
The results are presented in Table 3-9. The essentialism index does produce significant
coefficients for categories 3 and 4, and in the expected direction. In fact, an examination
of the actual versus predicted values reveals that knowing where a state falls on the
essentialism index will allow me to correctly estimate its position on the autonomy index
56% of the time. A closer examination of the actual versus predicted values reveals that
Essentialism is very strong predictor of category 4, the ethnonationalist position. It is less
successful at predicting whether or not a state’s elite would be strong or loose federalists,

the distinction between categories 2 and 3. In fact, since 3 is the modal category, if you

84
predicted 3 for all eight-nine cases, you would end up with the correct score 53% of the
time!

The MNL of the instrumentalist position uses defense region, net gainers in the
federal bargain, natural resource region, and percent of the local budget obtained from
subsidies as the four representative independent variables. Table 3-10 reveals that how
dependent the local budget is on federal subsidies and possession of valuable natural
resources do make a significant difference in the probability of being in one versus another
category of autonomy, while being a defense region and/or a net budgetary gainer do not.
Possession of a marketable natural resource(s) gives elites leeway to bargain for greater
autonomy(.139 for 3, .116 for 4), and is a negative predictor (-.255) of wanting a return to
a strong center, position 2. Consistent with the bivariate analysis, the higher the
percentage of the state budget subsidized by the center, the higher the probability that a
state will adopt an ethnonationalist position. The coefficient is very small, however,
(.005). It is not a significant predictor of the other two positions. The log-likelihood for
this model is a -56.736. It does, however, correctly predict the position of each state 61%
of the time, which is somewhat better than the essentialism model predicts.

The test of the relative deprivation model used change in income, change in
unemployment and identification as a “depressed” region by the President’s Analytical
Center as independent variables. As demonstrated in Table 3-11, only being identified as a
depressed region was significant, as it increased the probability that a state’s elite would
demand increased autonomy fi'om the center, .167 for a 3 and .257 for a 4. It was a

negative predictor for category 2, yielding a coefficient of -.425. The log-likelihood

85

statistic was a -72.817. It correctly predicts in 42 of 78 cases, or 54%, but the greatest
success is in predicting category 3 (92%) which again, is the modal category. It only
predicts category 2 9% of the time and category 4, 25% of the time.

The test of the resource mobilization school used past administrative level and
whether or not a state held early elections (pre-1995) for the post of governor as
independent predictors. In this case, Table 3-12 shows that only past administrative level
was significant. The higher a state was in the old Soviet administrative hierarchy, the
higher the probability its elite would fight for more autonomy in the new regime. The log-
likelihood statistic for this model -58.842. This model predicts correctly only 47% of the
cases, or 42 out of 89. Interestingly, it correctly predicts all of category two and all of
category four correctly, and virtually none of category three correctly. It is possible that
past administrative level leads the model to predict all previous ethnic states, no matter
what their rank in the hierarchy, should be a four and almost all non-ethnic states should
be a two. In the real world, however, a number of ethnic states and non-ethnic states fall
into category 3.

Comparing the log-likelihood estimates allows me to determine if the overall
models are significant, even if individual variables are not significant for all categories.
Using a null model, with a log likelihood of -90.23 2, I find that all of the models examined
here are a significantly better fit than the null model.

However, none of the models performs spectacularly. In their simple forms, the
models are not persuasive in explaining the behavior of regional elite in the Russian

Federation. It is possible, however, that a new model based upon what we have learned

86

from testing the performance of the simple models will better explain this behavior. In a
combined model, I use the essentialism index, the possession of natural resources, whether
or not the state is identified as a critically depressed region, and past administrative level
to predict where a state’s elite will position itself in the federal bargain. The combination
of ethnicity with perceived economic injustice, living in a critically depressed region while
in possession of vast natural resource wealth, and an elite that was privileged and
experienced under the old regime, would seem to provide the ingredients for a successful
autonomy-movement. Likewise, the absence of these factors should lead to no visible
autonomy movement, with leadership supporting a strong center to reign in the autonomy
-seekers.

In this combined model, the results of which are presented in Table 3-13, only
natural resource possession is statistically significant for all positions, while past
administrative level is a significant predictor of position 4 and depressed region is a
significant predictor of position 3. This model, does, however, correctly predict 57 out of
89 cases correctly, or 64% of the cases. This is substantially better than any single model
does on its own. The log-likelihood is -51.097, which means it is also a significantly better
fit than the null model as well (p=.000).

One explanation for why the combined model is a better fit while few of the
indicators are individually significant is the high degree of multicollinearity between past
administrative level and the essentialism index. While they attempt, conceptually, to
measure two distinct phenomena, in fact, they do not. They are correlated -.912 (p=.000).

For this reason, one of the variables (past administrative level) is thrown out. Without

87

past level included, the essentialism index becomes significant in the equation, as does
possession of natural resources, while being identified as a depressed region remains
significant only in predicting the non-ethnic categories. The log-likelihood estimate is -
62.4570. The high potential for the development of a separate national identity and
possession of natural resource wealth are strong indicators of a state elite’s commitment
to an ethnofederalist position. And the absence of either factor is indicative of a
preference among regional elite for a strong federal Center.

But, while the combined model performs better and predicts a state elite’s position
on the federal bargain better than any of the single models, it does not do as well as
expected, especially at distinguishing between loose federalists (anti-federalists) and
strong federalists (federalists).

Something is missing in all of the models examined here, and it may well be that
the “missing” parts of the puzzle are to be found in the masses themselves or in the
behavior of the federal center. Perhaps the elite are merely responding the best they know
how to societal pressures from below which are driving them to adopt a more extreme
position than we would expect given their resource base, previous experience and level of
assimilation and acculturation to the dominant Russian center. Perhaps the elite are
responding to mixed signals from the Center about what levels of autonomy are
“acceptable” for individual states to administer. These questions are the subject of the
final two chapters of this investigation. Chapter 4 will look more closely at the behavior
of the masses in each of these states, explicitly comparing the positions of mass publics to

that of their governing elite, and re-testing the models examined here to see if some of

88

them are better at explaining mass versus elite behavior with regards to the federal
bargain.

Chapter 5 will introduce the Center into the bargaining process to see what effect
the changing policy preferences of the Center and its representatives has on the local
leadership. It is also in the final chapter that I investigate the assumption that each state
has a central tendency or preference for a certain type of constitutional order, and that
these preferences are not fluid and subject to frequent vacillations. In concluding, I will
synthesize the findings from each of these separate empirical investigations to sort out

what we now know.

CHAPTER 4:
The Masses and the Federal Bargain

Up until this point, I have focused on the behavior of the political elites, and
specifically on the political elites in the member states of the Russian Federation, as
opposed to elites in Moscow or the masses in the regions. The behavior of actors in the
federal center will be investigated in the final chapter. This chapter focuses on the
behavior, actions, threats, and expressed preferences of non-elites in the regions. Events
recorded for this portion of the study include voting behavior, demonstrations, strikes,
boycotts, acts of violence, rallies, petitions, party conferences and related manifestos.

The actors in this analysis are not members of the regional (executive)
administration, or the legislature. They may, however, be political actors in that they
represent nationalist movements, religious associations, political parties, labor/trade
unions, business interests, or simply the spontaneous, unorganized masses. They are the
constituents in this new democracy, and members of an ever-expanding civil society.
What do they want? Are their interests being represented? Are they the missing part of
any theory explaining regional elite behavior?

My interest in the behavior and expressed preferences of the masses is many-
faceted. First, I am interested from a democratic theory perspective in what the masses

want and what they prefer as a constitutional arrangement. Following closely from this, I

89

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am interested in the degree to which the elites in these states express preferences that are
close to that of their population. As most of these leaders were not directly elected in
competitive multi-party systems during the time when the federal bargain was negotiated,
it is worth finding out if the leaders in these states, particularly in the most adamant
autonomy-seeking states, were merely reflecting the will of their population, or if they
were, as many scholars of ethnic conflict in the modern era suggest, manufacturing
“nationalism” and “separatism” in their regions as opportunistic political entrepreneurs. In
contrast, they may well have been the moderating forces in the bargaining process,
reflecting views that were less independence-minded than their constituencies seemed to
be. Alternatively, they may have been subject to intense pressure from below to demand
more and more autonomy from the Center, despite their own sense that this was not in the
best interests of their state.

This chapter investigates these and several other questions about the relationship
between the masses in the member states of the Federation and their representatives. It,
too, uses events data gathered from both the CDSP and OMRI Daily Digest.

There is a potential problem in the use of events data for the study of mass
behavior that was not as evident for the study of elite behavior. Protests, acts of violence
and other non-conventional forms of participation are likely to be over reported compared
to cooperative, more conventional forms of political behavior, which just are not as
newsworthy. To compensate, I have voting behavior data for several elections: the 1991
vote on the Union Treaty, the vote of confidence in Yeltsin in April 1993 (and several

local initiatives tacked onto it), the parliamentary elections and referendum on the

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constitution in December 1993, as well as various local referenda on independence and
declarations of sovereignty. These results balance out the reports of strikes,
demonstrations and rallies for political resignations that might tend to overestimate the
“radicalness” of the masses.

Additionally, I am not counting events, but once again trying to determine the
central tendency of the actors that make up the “civil society” of each state. While the
actions and statements of a small but highly radical nationalist party in one of the ethnic
states might yield several events with scores of ‘5' on the autonomy index, these are
counterbalanced, in many cases, by voting behavior which a) never elects anyone from this
party to either national or local office, or b) re-elects by overwhelming majority deputies
from the old Communist Party apparatus, or from Zhirinovsky’s unitarist Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP).

First, I will establish a median autonomy score for the civil society in each of the
89 states in a manner similar to that in the previous chapter on elites in the regions. I will
use events recorded by social (non-elite) actors to give each state a median autonomy
score. I compare these scores to the scores received by each state’s elite, and retest the
theoretical perspectives from Chapter 3 on the civil society data. There are fewer events
(495) gathered on social actors than on elites, with the number of events per state ranging

between 2 and 32. The modal number of events per state is 4.

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Mass Preferences and the Federal Bargain

Table 4-1 reveals the ranking of the social actors of each state along the autonomy

' As Table 4-1 indicates, the median is lower (2.0) for the masses than for the elites

index.
(3.0). Table 4-2 reclassifies the data presented in Table 4-1 according to the size of the
difference between each state’s elite and their general population. The masses in most
states seem to prefer a stronger central government than the regional elites, though there
are 3 states for which the median score of the publics is one level higher than that of their
leaders. Thus, in 56 of the 89 cases the public’s behavior indicates support for a stronger
central government than their respective leaderships are advocating.

In seven cases, there is a substantial difference (+2.0) between the mass score and
the elite score for the same state. In six of these seven cases, the state in question is a

republic. In the one non-ethnic state, Volgograd, where the public is most unitarist, the

predominantly Russian masses are responding negatively to central pressure on them to

 

1

While voting behavior data from several referenda and elections are available for all states, the results are not
interpretable in some cases, at least from the perspective of this investigation. For this reason, some states have
only two events recorded, while data from at least three elections/referenda are available. Voting behavior was
only relevant to the federal bargain position of the voters in this study if they voted in the plurality for the
Communists and the Liberal Democratic Party in the 1993 elections, which would indicate a desire for a return

to a strong centralized government. Likewise, victory for candidates representing secessionist/nationalist
parties would indicate (depending on the platform) either a 4 or a 5 on the autonomy scale. Victory for
independent candidates, about whom little data were available, or smaller parties without a clear position on
the nature of the federal-constitutional arrangement of the country were coded as missing data, as were evenly
divided outcomes between liberal parties and the LDP/KPRF.

Similarly, voting “no” on the constitutional referendum of December 1993 could not be interpreted
without additional information. “No” could mean, in the case of the republics, that the constitutional draft
proposed by the Yeltsin administration was too centralizing, without enough guarantees of state sovereignty. In
the case of the regions, “no” might have meant it was too liberal, too accepting of the demands of the republics
for separate, unequal status. And alternatively, no may have been a vote against Yeltsin for the actions he took
against the Parliament in October, with little or no thought given to the federal distribution of power at all. In
this case, only boycotts of the election were coded 5.

93

recreate German autonomous districts within their existing state, a status taken away from
Soviet Germans during the second world war. Supporting the LDP, then, is one way to
protest against the recreation of these districts, and potentially even a republics, within
their territory. The substantial difference between the leadership and the public on this
issue was reflected at polls in the fall of 1996 as well, when the incumbent governor was
defeated by a more conservative opponent. This was also true in Unitarist/ Strong
Federalist (1.5) Kaliningrad and Kirov, where more loose federalist (3.0) leaders paid the
price in the fall gubernatorial elections as well.

In the cases of the republics of Mari-E1, Chuvashia, Khakhassia, Adegeya,
Mordovia, and Buryatia, the public is generally voting very conservatively compared to
how their leaders are bargaining with the Center. In Khakhassia, for example, where the
public voted pro-LDP/KPRF in the 1993 elections, they just elected the brother of
nationalist Alexander Lebed as their new governor in the fall of 1996. While Lebed’s
party platform was not as rabidly Russian-nationalist and unitarist, it certainly emphasized
the need for a strong center to reassert control over the undisciplined regions. The
incumbent governor, seeking more autonomy for Khakhassia than the public apparently
desired, lost to Lebed.

Similar results were witnessed in Mari-El as well, where the conservative public
voted out their incumbent governor as well. In 50% (6 of 12) of those states where the
difference between the elites and the publics was greater than 1.0 on the autonomy index,
the incumbent suffered a defeat in the 1996 elections. They may have escaped such fates

only temporarily in Komi, Chuvashia, and Buryatia, (3 of 12) where elections were not yet

94

held. In Adegeya and Chukota, the incumbents were victorious despite the discrepancy
between their publics and themselves on the federal division of power issue. Other issues
were either more important in the eyes of the voters, or the voters did not perceive their
leader as having held views that differed from their own on this issue.

While the 1991-1995 governors of these ethnic republics played the ethnic card to
extract autonomy from the center (and often special tax breaks as well), their
constituencies moved closer to the center, if not with the past. In each of these cases
except that of Chuvashia, the titular ethnicity is in the minority, which may explain why the
majority or even plurality voting population is not supportive of nationalist agendas, a
position 4 on the autonomy index. But it does not explain why they support a strong as
opposed to a weak center, or a 2 versus a 3 on the index. A reinvestigation of the
theoretical propositions from the third chapter may shed more light on those factors that
influence the masses, and if, in fact, some of the factors which seemed insignificant in
explaining the behavior of regional elite, become more important to understanding the

behavior of the public.

Explaining Mass Preferences and Behavior

The propositions tested in the previous chapter are restated here.

Essontialist Proposition: Those most likely to express a desire for greater
autonomy from the center are those from state’s whose population shares
a strong sense of group identity, is culturally distant from the center and
has experienced a past serious conflict with the Russian center.

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Instmmontaljflmnoagon: States whose populations are engaged in the

extraction of a valuable natural resource are most likely to use this economic
independence to assert demands for greater independence from the center.
States whose populations are engaged in work dependent on the center for
resources are least likely to demand autonomy from that center.

Wm: Populations that have experienced

deprivation during the recent past (the time of this study) are most likely to
blame the center for their frustrated expectations, and unlikely to demand a
recentralization of power.

Wagon: States whose populations experienced

some special recognition and privileges under the Soviet system are going to

be more likely to want that status to continue. They will be most likely to

resist any movement toward a recentralization of power or a “leveling” of
administrative powers.

Essentialism: I begin with the bivariate analysis of the composite index of
“cultural distance” created in chapter 3 to capture important dimensions of the
essentialism approach. The Kendall’s tau-b correlation between Cultural Distance and the
Autonomy Score for each state’s population is .409 (p=.000). The more culturally distant
the population, the more likely they are to pursue greater autonomy from the center. The
results of this and a cross-tabulation of the two to reveal the pattern of association are
presented in Table 4-3. Of the 47 populations that want to see a return to a centralized or
highly centralized state, 38 are those with no potential for the development of separate
national identity, or 80%.

Of the five state populations preferring an ethnofederation or complete
independence (Chechnya, Tatarstan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Bashkortostan, and Ingushetia),

all have at least a high potential for the development of a separate national identity. All

are Muslim populations, with relatively high-levels of language retention and the

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Chechens, Ingush and Balkars are all deported peoples during World War II. The
relationship is slightly weaker for the masses than it was for the elites, despite the fact that
confounding ethnic states like Karelia, whose elite adopted a position of ethnofederalism
but who score very low on the essentialism index, have populations that would be happy
enough with a loose territorial federation. This is largely because a number of state
populations with high potential for the development of a separate national identity
(Karachai-Cherkessia, Dagestan) are not adopting an ethnofederalist position.

Essentialism, then, significantly predicts the position of the average person, but
does not necessarily lead to the emergence of separatist tendencies among the masses any
more than it did among the elites. This is a finding that ultimately lends support to those
who suggest that ethnonationalist movements are often (but clearly not always) a function
of elite manipulation rather than primordial attachments. At the same time, however,
those with strong attachments after years of attempted forced assimilation and
acculturation are very likely to move to maintain that separate national and ultimately
political identity.

Instrumentalism: The masses most dependent on Moscow economically are
expected to argue for a strong center while those with the highest potential for
independent economic development are expected to demand decentralization and greater
local autonomy. The measures of independence/dependence used to test this school in the
previous chapter were possession of natural resource wealth, whether or not a state was
classified as a defense region and percent of the local budget made up of federal

subventions. Those with natural resources and few subventions from the center were

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deemed to be regions with high potential for independent development. Those whose
local budgets were highly subsidized and were dependent on the grth and support of
national defenses were more likely to remain dependent regions.

The Kendall’s tau-b correlations are recorded in Table 4-4. Natural resource
wealth is pOsitively correlated at .209 (p=.05) with increasing levels of autonomy, as
expected. In this case, defense region is negatively correlated -.235 (p=.05) also as
predicted by the instrumentalist position. Budget subsidization is not significantly
correlated (.103), nor is the relationship in the expected direction. This is not surprising
when one considers that the percent of the local budget subsidized by the center is not
something that one would expect the average citizen of Karelia or Kursk to be aware of.
Budget subsidy was a significant predictor of elite behavior because the regional elite are
probably very aware of the region’s balance of trade with Moscow, and are probably
reminded of it by the Center when necessary.

In contrast, every Yakutian citizen is well aware of that northern Siberian
republic’s vast and still unexplored natural resource wealth and might well understand that
a strong center means continued regulation of the energy sector, and less revenue for
them. Similarly, every defense plant worker in Tula is aware how a strong center means
continued contracts and payment of back wages. Even conversion of defense industries in
most cases requires enormous cash infusions from the center (continued subsidization),
while “decentralization” or regional autonomy to them implies that the regions themselves

will be forced to make conversions or shut the plants down.

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Relative Deprivation: Relative Deprivation might be expected to perform better
as a predictor of mass behavior than of elite preferences, as it refers to a collective
psychological phenomenon--the collective recognition by one group of exploitation by
some central “other” relative to comparable groups. The measures of deprivation used
here are change in income, which should be negatively related to autonomy demands,
change in unemployment, which should be positively related to them, and identification by
the President’s Analytical Center as a critically depressed region, which should be
positively related to autonomy position. The results of the bivariate analysis are presented
in Table 4-5. Only the “percent increase in income from 1993 through 1994" indicator is
significant, but not in the expected direction. The Kendall’s tau-b correlation is .209
(p=.05). Relative deprivation would not predict that those groups with the fastest
growing incomes would be those most likely to demand autonomy. Instead, those with
the stagnant incomes should become fi'ustrated as their capabilities fail to keep up with
rising expectations. Instead, it is those who are doing well in the post-transition economy
that are most likely to demand greater regional autonomy at the expense of the Center.

Table 4-6 presents a cross tabulation of income growth, recoded into three
categories of high, medium and low, and median autonomy position of social actors. Of
the 46 states preferring a strong center at the expense of regional autonomy, only three are
regions in which individual incomes are growing at a high level (greater than 4.25%). At
the far end of the scale, none of unitarists (1's or 1.5's) are high-growth regions. Rate of
income growth seems to be a significant predictor of conservatism on the autonomy index,

something that will be reexamined in the multivariate analysis.

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Resource Mobilization: To a large extent, the resource mobilization better
predicts the behavior of elites, rather than of the masses. It tries to explain why one
person might be likely and willing to incur the costs of mobilizing collective action against
some “other,” to become a political entrepreneur. The institutional advantages afforded
some regional elite over others in the Soviet era and the advantage of having stood for
competitive election as opposed to still being a federal appointee were both factors which
I hypothesized would have an impact on elite behavior in the previous chapter. In this
analysis of mass behavior, it does not make sense to replicate the second factor, whether
the leader was elected or appointed, on the behavior of the masses.

Institutional advantage under the old regime, might, however, still be related to
mass preferences for a given institutional arrangement under the present regime. “Special”
autonomy for ethnic republics under the old regime did more than provide affirmative
action opportunities for ethnic political cadres; it also created affirmative action for the
average citizen in terms of post-secondary educational opportunities and often, career
advancement. For these reasons, and not those directly related to the resource
mobilization school, mass actors in the old ethnic republics might be mobilized to preserve
their privileges by advocating a continuation of the special status they were accorded
under the old regime--a 4 on the autonomy index. But the past administrative status of the
region should not otherwise be very helpful in explaining the preferences of the masses,
especially in predicting why some would prefer a loose as opposed to a strong federation.

The results of the Kendall’s tau-b correlation between past administrative status

and the median autonomy score of mass actors is provided in Table 4-7. The correlation

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is .390 (p=.000), slightly stronger than we would have expected given the above
theoretical discussion. Even for the masses, past administrative level is a positive and
significant predictor of the desire for autonomy fiom the Center. The multivariate analysis
will tell us more about which positions on the autonomy index the past status will allow us

to predict, that is, for which categories of autonomy past level is a significant predictor.

Multivariate Analysis:

For the purposes of the multivariate analysis, I again collapsed the median
autonomy scores into categories 2, 3 and 4 only. This involved coding the single region
coded a 5, Chechnya, down to a 4 again; recoding the single region coded a 1 into the 2
category; and rounding all of the 15's, 25's and 3.5's up or down according to the mean
score generated by the mass actors in each state. This left the following distribution: 47
“2"s, 36 “3 "s, and 6 “4"s. Again, multinomial logit (MNL) is used to generate log-
likelihood goodness of fit statistics and to calculate the impact of each variable on the
probability of being in each of the above three categories.

Essentialism: First, I ran the MNL on the Essentialism Model, using the 0-4
composite index of “potential” for the development of a separate national identity. The
results are presented in Table 4-8. The log-likelihood function is -67.431, which is a
significantly better fit than the null model, but the index is only a significant predictor of
category 4, the ethnofederalist position, which it predicts correctly 50% of the time, and

category 2, which it predicts correctly 79% of the time.

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Populations with the highest or very high potential for the development of a
separate national identity are those that are demanding the maximum amount of regional
autonomy within the federation, or demanding the right to leave the federation. But
among the medium, low and no potential groups, the model places all of them into
category 2, where it predicts 66 of the 89 states to be. There is little in the model to tell
us why some states would want a loose federation rather than a strong one. Instead, it
tells why some would want an ethnofederation versus a territorial federation. This is
similar to the findings on elites as well.

Instrumentalism: The MNL of the instrumentalist position uses defense region,
percent of the local budget subsidized by the center and natural resource wealth as
independent variables. The results are presented in Table 4-9. The log-likelihood firnction
generated is -68.766, which is also a significantly better fit than the null model. However,
none of the indicators is significant in either category 3 or 4. None of the instrumental
indicators is a significant predictor of mass behavior and attitudes towards the federal
division of power. This is reinforced by the fact that although it correctly predicted cases
61% of the time, better than the essentialism model, it predicts none of the category 4
regions correctly. It correctly predicts category 2 85% of the time and category 3 only
36% of the time.

While defense region and natural resource wealth were significantly correlated
with mass positions on the autonomy index, they are not significant in the multivariate
model. One problem is probably that there are so few 4's now, only six, one of which is

missing data for one of the indicators. The t-values are very close to significant (with 81

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degrees of freedom and a one-tailed test, t > 1.66), especially in the case of budget
subsidies, but it is possible that too few 4's (ethnofederalists) are throwing off the
estimates. It also possible that these variables are significant predictors of the non-ethnic
states’ behavior, but tell us little about the behavior of the ethnically defined units, or how
ethnicity interacts with these variables.

Relative Deprivation: As presented in Table 4-10, the Relative Deprivation
indicators perform better than the instrumentalist ones, as one might expect given the
nature of the theories. Instrumentalism seems more appropriately targeted to be an
explanation of elite rather than mass behavior, while relative deprivation is explicitly a
mass phenomenon. The log-likelihood function generated is a -58.402, which is
significantly better than the null model alone. The overall model predicts correctly 67% of
the time, better than either the instrumentalist and the essentialism models. However, the
model as a whole is unable to predict correctly even one of the five state populations that
rank a 4 on the index.

As expected from the bivariate crosstabs, rate of income growth is a significant
predictor of category 3 and 2, though again, not in the manner relative deprivation
scholars would anticipate. The states whose populations are doing relatively well are the
ones arguing for greater local control, while the ones that are stagnating are demanding
greater centralization. One potential explanation is that the greater insecurity produced by
the uneven transition to a market-driven economy has resulted in a backlash in the poorer
regions, where a return to a strong central state is equated with a minimum level of

security and economic subsidization.

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Resource Mobilization: Table 4-11 presents the results fi'om this model. The

MNL performed here only with past administrative level produces a log-likelihood of
-69.998, which is again a statistically better fit than the null model generates on its own.
It correctly predicts the correct position 55% of the time, again, worse than the
Instrumentalism or Relative Deprivation model does, and only slightly better than the
Essentialism model. On an individual level, however, the variable is significant in
predicting both category 3 and 4. Only previous ethnic republics are now to be found
among the populations demanding level 4 or more autonomy from the center. And 35 of
48 strong federalists/unitarists are previous non-ethnic states under the old regime. A
closer examination of the correctly predicted categories, however, reveals that the model
is unable to correctly predict category 4 at all, correctly predicts category 2 60% of the
time, and category 3 24% of the time.

The Combined Model: Specifying a new model, combining the indicators we
selected in the previous chapter as representative of each theory to generate a new model
of mass preferences, I now run MNL on the essentialism index, natural resource wealth,
and being declared a critically depressed region, the same combined model tested in
Chapter 3. The results, presented in Table 4-12, are impressive, as the model predicts
correctly in nearly 69% of the cases, just slightly better than the 67% achieved by the
Relative Deprivation model (which predicted in the wrong direction anyway). The log-
likelihood generated (-59.567) is also significantly better than the null. The Essentialism
Index is a significant predictor of both categories 3 and 4, as is being declared a depressed

region. Natural resource wealth is not individually significant.

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No single theory presented here seems to adequately predict the behavior of the
masses in all 89 states, though we can draw some preliminary conclusions. First, a strong
sense of ethnicity among a state’s population, combined with a relative or absolute level of
poverty, appears to be a potent combination predicting mass support for independence or
the maximum amount of autonomy possible within the existing federation.

Second, among those states without a high level of potential for the development
of a separate national identity, doing poorly translates into the opposite phenomenon, the
demand for a return to a strong center, the old order, the old level of security that was at
least minimally guaranteed by the Soviet state. Thus, what appear on the surface to be
mutually contradictory results are actually quite interpretable. However, they are not what

would be predicted by any of the theories examined here.

Are Mass Preferences the “Missing Link” in Understanding Elite
Behavior?

Are the preferences of the masses are important indicators of the strategies elites in
the regions have adopted in negotiating with the center? As noted earlier, one could
hypothesize that the masses are in fact pressuring the elites to push for greater autonomy
than might be expected from an assessment of a state’s level of economic dependence on
the Center or strength of separate ethnic identity from that of the Russian center.

Similarly, elites demanding autonomy from the center to fithher their own political ends--
acting as political entrepreneurs--may well be constrained in this pursuit by the

conservatism of their voting or soon-to-be voting constituencies.

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Looking first at how well the preferences of the masses (here using the unrounded
median scores of the masses presented originally in Table 4-1) predict the expressed
preferences of their leaders, the results are presented in Table 4-13. The MNL on this
model generates a log-likelihood of -83.690, which is better than the null model would
predict on its own. The model correctly predicts cases 55% of the time, doing best in
category 3, where it correctly predicts 94% of the cases. Mass behavior only correctly
predicts elite preferences for category 2 in one of the 24 cases, and for category 4 in four
of 18 cases.

On its own, it is not a very compelling model of elite behavior, but perhaps in
conjunction with the combined model specified at the end of Chapter 3, it would increase
the number of cases predicted correctly. At the end of Chapter 3, I specified a combined
model of elite behavior using natural resource wealth, the essentialism index, and being a
critically depressed region as predictors. It correctly predicted the positions of the elite in
64% of the cases. Adding the additional indicator--mass preferences in the state-~does not
increase the percentage of correctly predicted cases at all. The model as a whole is a
significantly better fit than the null model, however, generating a log-likelihood of
-62.049. Examining the variables individually, natural resource wealth remains a
significant predictor of elite positions in all categories, while essentialism is significant only
in predicting category 4. The mass indicator is not significant in any of the categories.

It is worthy of note that the primary problem encountered by all of the models
examined is one of distinguishing category 2 from category 3, and this problem is one also

experienced in Chapter 3. One potential explanation is that the scale created here is

106

actually measuring two different dimensions of political behavior, not one. Instead of one
dimension ranging from autonomy to centralization, I may have convoluted two very
separate dimensions: one for degree of administrative centralization, where the territorial
integrity of the state is not in question, and perhaps an entirely different dimension for the
disposition to secede, as identified by Hesli and Emizet (1995). It is a question worthy of
further investigation in a fiiture study, and a point to which I will return in my conclusion.

The most interesting finding from this examination of factors influencing mass
behavior is the differential effect that economic growth has on ethnic and non-ethnic
states. In the non-ethnic states, income stagnation results in a desire for a return to a
strong Center, to restore order and the old guarantee of at least a minimal level of
economic security. In the non-ethnic states, stagnation is associated with the desire to
escape federal control over policies governing the economy and the state.

Among the important non-findings of this chapter are the lack of congruence
between mass and elite preferences for autonomy from the Center, and the non-existent
relationship between what the masses want and what the elites are doing about it. The
fact that mass preferences are not driving elites in a more radical direction, that is, towards
autonomous behavior and non—compliance with federal decrees, is important. While
Yeltsin may believe negotiation of separate treaties guaranteeing regional autonomy is the
best way to win support outside of Moscow, in most republics, it appears to be a strategy

that will not yield him tremendous electoral gains.

CHAPTER 5:
The Other Half of the Bargain

Throughout this analysis, I have made several assumptions about both the behavior
and preferences of regional elites and their constituencies. First, I have assumed that the
analysis of each actors’ central tendency is meaningful to a discussion about the future of
the Russian Federation. This implies that the central tendency of each represents their
“true” position on the subject of federal-constitutional design.

From this flow the assumptions that these positions are stable over time and
without reference to what is being offered by the Center. In retrospect, these assumptions
seem rather questionable. After all, to discuss the federal “bargain” as a process suggests
that there is an ongoing dialogue between the two sides of the bargain--the center and the
regions. To ignore the Center, then, is to suggest, as many of the theories discussed in
earlier chapters implicitly do, that structural factors, be they institutional, economic or
cultural, are more important than the actual decisions of individual leaders in explaining
mass or elite behavior.

While the nature of the bargain offered by the Center might be important in terms
of how willing states are to express their preferences, it need not affect what the masses
feel they want or deserve any more than it constrains or emboldens elites to alter their

position on autonomy. I am not the first to make such assumptions about the existence of

107

108

an identifiable tendency towards a given position. Treisman (1997), for example, created
an index of separatist activism based on the actions of the ethnic regional elites, assuming
implicitly that what these leaders are demanding, independent of what the Center is
offering, matters.

However, while an examination of the central tendency of these states and their
publics may give us a view of what they are demanding, it does not tell us how strongly
they hold these views, and to what extent they are willing to fight for them. This brings us
back to the temporal discussion. By looking only at the central tendency of the states, I
miss not only their potential responses to the Center’s actions, but to each others’ actions
as well. In their analysis of the “disposition to secede,” Emizet and Hesli (1995) construct
an index based almost entirely on the timing of demands for autonomy, which puts
Estonia, for example, in a higher category than Kazakhstan among the Union Republics
seeking independence fiom the Soviet Union in 1991. This is fimdamentally different
from my scale or Treisman’s (1997), for that matter, where it is important only that the
leadership asked, not when they asked.1

In the case of the Russian Federation, my examination of each state’s central
tendency makes Tatarstan the equivalent of Buryatia in that they both register a 4, or the
ethnofederalist position. While I believe that the ethnofederalist label is appropriate for

the elites in both states, there are some obvious differences. Tatarstan has been a leader in

 

lTreisman’s index differs fiom mine as it is an additive one, not one which measures a central tendency.
Therefore, Tatarstan comes out ahead of Udrnurtia because it has more actions, and is therefore, more
demanding. For more, see Daniel Treisman, “Russia’s Ethnic Revival: The Separatist Activism of Regional
Leaders in a Post Communist Order,” World Politics, 49 (January 1997), pp. 212-49.

109

regional movements for autonomy, while Buryatia has been a bandwagoner, or follower.
Tatarstan was the first to ask to be an equal signatory to the 1991 Union Treaty with the
Union Republics like Ukraine and Kazakhstan. They were the first to hold a referendum
on their “sovereign” status and they were the first to demand and receive a separate treaty
with the center detailing special tax and resource privileges.

Buryatia’s leaders supported Tatarstan in these endeavors and ultimately went on
to declare sovereignty and demand a separate treaty akin to the one made with Tatarstan.
But being a follower is substantially different from being a leader. One could hypothesize,
for example, that leader states are those with firmer stances, stronger commitments to
their position, or more leverage with which to credibly bargain. Follower states, in
contrast, are more likely to be those that vacillate, who express a wider range of opinions
along the autonomy continuum, and who therefore, are more subject or sensitive to
changes in the mood and policy priorities at the Center. ’

If this is so, it is important from a state-building perspective that the leadership of
the Federation is aware of the difference. In order to develop a federal system that is both
stable and responsive, the Center needs to understand where the ability to compromise is
possible and where it is not, and which are the most effective strategies for reaching it
where it is possible.

The goals of this final chapter are threefold. First, I introduce the Center as a
party to the bargaining process. The degree of influence it exercises on the behavior of
the individual states and publics is an empirical question which is examined in some detail.

Prior to this, however, I trace the position of the Center as it has evolved from 1990

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through the end of 1995, with some comment on the current status of this debate as well.
While the actions of the Center may not, in the end, be all that important to an
understanding of regional elite or mass behavior, it is important to the stability of the
region as a whole. That is, if the Center’s position is in opposition to that of its regions or
republics and its position has been stable and rigid over time, as has that of the regions, the
potential for center-regional conflict is greater than for center-regional cooperation and
compromise. For this reason alone, it is important to trace the position of the Center over
time.

Secondly, I re-examine the position of the individual state elites introducing a
temporal dimension to the analysis. Instead of looking at the central tendency of the state
elite, I look at the amount of variation, or the range of positions adopted by state elite
during this time period. This will either validate or challenge the previous assumption of a
“true” position for each state. It may, in fact, present a more complicated picture which
reveals stability in the position of some state elites and tremendous variation in others.
This, I suggest, will be linked to whether or not the state is a leader or follower in the
“parade of autonomies,” as one Yeltsin administrator dubbed the struggle.

Finally, I will examine, in a more descriptive manner, the effectiveness of certain
Center strategies in dealing with the parade of autonomies and the challenges to its rule.
Has the use of force, or the real threat of it, been effective in reducing the demands for
autonomy from the regions, or has it inflamed these demands? Did the use of special tax
incentives negotiated under the separate treaty with Tatarstan serve to “buy of’ the

nationalist impulses in the region? This portion of the analysis will have to be preliminary,

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given the small number of events recorded for some states during this time period, but will
nonetheless provide some insights into the bargaining process, the future of the federal

system in Russia, and hopefiilly leave us with some specific avenues of future research.

The Center and the Federal Bargain

While touring through Tatarstan, Bashkiria and the Komi Autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republic in the summer of 1990, Boris Yeltsin told local leaders to “take as much

sovereignty as you can swallow.”2

His support for local autonomy at the Center’s
expense was calculated to gain regional support in his own struggle with Mikhail
Gorbachev for decentralization of the Soviet state and the empowerment of Union
Republic governments. Yeltsin’s speeches throughout the latter part of 1990 even
promised the autonomies ownership of the natural resources in their territories, much as
he demanded of the Soviet government for the R.S.F.S.R.. Indeed, within months of the
Russian Soviet Socialist Republic’s declaration of sovereignty, the autonomous republics
in Russia followed suit. Yeltsin’s position in the summer of 1990, then, and the position
of the Russian Center (as opposed to the Soviet Center represented by Gorbachev), could
be considered close to a 5, if one interprets “take as much sovereignty as you can
swallow” to mean you, too, can have the independence we seek as the right of a union
republic.

That position shifts to the more conservative end of the spectrum by the spring of

1991 while campaigning is underway for the signing of the Union Treaty, Gorbachev’s last

 

2Bill Keller, New York Times Sunday Magazine, September 2, 1990.

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attempt to hold the Union’s Center together. At this point in the negotiations, Yeltsin
opposed Tatarstan’s bid to become an equal signatory to the Union Treaty with the
R.S.F.S.R., and angrily criticized the refiisal of Tuva, North Ossetia, Chechen-Ingushetia,
and Tatarstan to include a question on the creation of a Russian Presidency along with the
referendum approving the adoption of the Union Treaty.3 A May 1991 agreement
between Yeltsin and the leaders of all the autonomous republics except Tatarstan
ultimately determined that the autonomies would sign the Union Treaty as members of
both the USSR. and the RSFSR. At this point, shifting from a 5 to a 4, Yeltsin seems to
shut down the possibility of exit from the Federation, but supports the idea of a loose
confederation of ethnically defined states.

His position seems to harden firrther following the coup in August of 1991, when
he threatens the dismissal of any local legislatures that had supported the coup against his
supporters. He ultimately demands and receives permission from the Russian Parliament
to appoint presidential representatives in the regions, and to fire at will those who oppose
his democratic restructuring efforts. It is diflicult to code this position on the autonomy
index. On the one hand, it is clearly an infiingement on local autonomy for the Center to
assert the right to hire and fire local administrators. This implies a strong Center--a
position 2, at most. By the same token, however, the administrators who were fired were

those supporting a return to the old order, where federalism and local power existed on

 

3See Gail Lapidus and Edward W. Walker, “Nationalism, Regionalism and Federalism,” in W
Wagon, (Bouder: Westview Press, 1996), p. 83-87.

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paper, not practice. Opposition to them represents a broadening of local authority at the
expense of the Center, or at least the Party.

The latter interpretation is supported by the first official bargain proffered by the
new Russian Center to the regions--the March 1992 Federal Treaty. This document
satisfied all but Chechnya and Tatarstan, in that it supported continued special autonomy
for the ethnic republics, protection of their sovereignty, and greater local control over
local resources. In March 1992, then, the Center adopts position 4, the ethnofederalist
position.

The next critical phase is the bargaining during the summer of 1993 over the new
Constitution. Here again, Yeltsin adopts a republic-fiiendly stance in order to gain their.
support in his struggle with the Parliament. Indeed, he promises them most of what they
want, even at the expense of the non-ethnic regions which begin to express their
discontent with the unequal treatment during the Constitutional Convention. But as the
struggle with the Parliament intensifies, and as republican governments still refuse to ratify
the draft constitution adopted in July, Yeltsin loses patience with the bargaining process
and launches his “democratic coup” in September of 1993.

With the bloody ouster of the Russian Parliament came a similar, though largely
bloodless, ousting of recalcitrant local leaderships, in all areas of the Federation but the
republics. Presidential Decree 1617 of October 1993 tells regional legislatures (soviets) to
disband and allow presidential representatives and chief administrators to dictate until new
charters and elections to smaller, full-time legislatures can be established. This puts

Yeltsin at a 1 for the period of September-October 1993, and is reinforced by his

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subsequent abolition of the Urals Republic, which declared itself in November 1993.

His position evolves back to a 2 with the second official “bargain” proffered in late
November 1993, with the publication of the Presidential draft of the constitution
scheduled for referendum in December of 1993. The draft deletes all references to the
much more decentralized structure of governance hinted at in the Federal Treaty, and
suggests that all 89 members of the Federation are equal members of the federation,
implying that the era of special privileges for the autonomies is at an end.

While adopting a hard line publicly, the Yeltsin administration then went on in
1994 to sign separate treaties with Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and North Ossetia, and other
treaties/agreements were negotiated with several other republics in 1995. The terms of
these agreements are largely secret, though it is now common knowledge that the treaty
with Tatarstan guaranteed the republic’s sovereignty, its right to conduct separate
international and economic relations, and the republic’s right to determine ownership, use
and distribution of the natural resources on its territory.

This agreement contradicts the essence of the constitution, again suggesting the
Center is undecided on the status of the republics vis-a-vis the regions and on the strength
of its own authority vis-a-vis the states. The early part of 1994, then, after the passage of
the strong Constitution, sees the administration moving back to accepting a 4 on the
autonomy index. Indeed, during much of 1994 the Center seems to be using the carrot of
separate treaties to assuage the republican leadership after virtually forcing the

Constitution upon them, up until December of 1994 when more than 10,000 Russian

115

Interior Ministry Troops cross the border into Chechnya to force an end to the Dudayev
administration’s independence bid.

The use of force against the renegade Chechen regime puts the Yeltsin
administration back at position 2, perhaps even at a 1. No matter how one feels about the
Chechen independence movement, the administration’s decision to use force to resist it,
rather than institutions put in place under the new Constitution, calls into question the
Center’s commitment to democratic norms of decision-making and dispute resolution. It
also challenges the significance of any agreements signed to date with other regions and
republics, since the trust upon which they were founded was violated. The Center’s
inability since then to end the Chechen resistance, the domestic and international
opposition to the bloody fiasco that ensued there for over two years, and its inability since
that time to compel regions to send the required conscripts to serve or to turn over
revenues to the federal budget have since served to reopen, rather than resolve, the
question of the nature of the bargain in the Federation.

The evidence for the lack of resolution mounts, and though many of the events
referred to are not yet catalogued in my index (1996 events), they are proof of the
continuing relevance of this study to the state-building process in Russia. In 1996, only 10
regions paid the taxes they were supposed to into the federal budget. In Sverdlovsk, the
self-proclaimed Urals Republic, they have issued their own currency to be used locally to

pay for food and local services. In Udmurtiya, the governor has dismissed city mayors and

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legislatures as agents of the Center who were working to weaken the region.4 Despite a
Federal Treaty, despite a new Constitution, despite the Civil War, the bargaining
continues.

To some extent, this is the nature of federal systems. Federal institutions are not
static and they are constantly experiencing periods of federal and state revival. It is the
give-and-take of federal systems that make them so attractive, adaptable, and responsive
to changes in context and the political environment. But there needs to be a framework
and some rules to which all participants are willing to adhere. As of yet, these rules do not
exist in Russia.

Figure 5-1 tries to catalog the shifting position of the Center, identified with that of
the Yeltsin administration, during the five years of this study and beyond, along with that
of the non-ethnic and ethnic states. The first observation is that the shifts by the Center
have been very dramatic. What seems to be missing is the middle ground between
ethnofederalism and strong federalism. The loose federation position, based on a
territorial not ethnic principle, is virtually absent from the Center’s bargaining portfolio.
We can point to individual advisors from among his administration who early on
advocated a complete restructuring of the federation, moving away from the national-
territorial principle to, for example, a federation of eight large regions, largely matching

the boundaries of the existing interregional associations.’ These advisors, however, were

 

4Michael Spechter, “Regions Defy Yeltsin to Start Talk of a More Perfect Union,” New York Times, March 25,
1997, p. Al.

5See comments by Minister for Nationality Affairs Valerii Tishkov in the Current Digest of the Post-Soviet
Press, October 28, 1992. Tishkov went on to resign as Minister for Nationality Affairs, as did his successor,
Sergei Shakhrai.

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never seriously heard, for largely political reasons, and most went on to resign in
fiustration.

We can observe from the Figure that while the median position of the ethnic states
has remained relatively stable over time, as has that of the regions, after the bloody
September 1993 ousting of the national parliament and the subsequent crack-down on
regional autonomy demands, the positions of the elite in the regions and ethnic states
shifted to the more conservative end of the spectrum. This may reflect a sense of fear on
the part of the regional elite about the Center’s willingness to use force to gain compliance
with its policy objectives. Or it may simply reflect, as it is a fairly short-term phenomenon,
the positions of new appointees in the regions, replaced in the aftermath of the coup, not
yet emboldened to challenge federal authority. Since most of the ethnic elite were not
replaced by the Yeltsin administration (republic presidents/ governors were never subject
to federal appointment the way oblast administrators were), the shift in their median
positions in the fall of 1993 more likely reflects caution about how far they are able to
push the Center.

However, the use of force against rebel Chechnya in December 1994 did not cause
the median position of the ethnic states to weaken, and in many cases, heightened the
demands of local leaders’ for guarantees against the sort of federal abuse of power many

felt the Yeltsin administration was guilty of in the Chechen republic.6 Indeed, the use of

 

6President Fyodorov of Chuvashia, for example, was very vocal in condemning the military action against

the Chechen state and issued numerous proclamations in his republic which stated that citizens of his state

did not have to adhere to federal conscription requirements to serve in that war. Yeltsin admonished him

on more than one occasion, and declared his proclamations null and void, but Fyodorov never rescinded them.
The story is related across several issues of the Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, from January and
February of 1995. F yodorov is a former Federal Minister of Justice in the Yeltsin administration, who resigned

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force against Chechnya also gave rise to a corresponding increase in the demands of the
non—ethnic states as well, so that at the end of this period of study, the Center is moving in
the opposite direction of its member states, at least the median position of both the ethnic
and non-ethnic states. By the summer of 1995, however, the Center was again sending
mixed signals. On the one hand, it negotiated several other independent agreements with
the ethnic republics, such as Sakha and Buryatia. On the other hand, Yeltsin moved to
prevent early elections to regional administration, decreeing that the gubernatorial
elections would not be held until after the June 1996 presidential elections. This move
was calculated to prevent what was seen as the imminent election of communist and
nationalist candidates in a number of regions, but was also undoubtedly calculated to allow
Yeltsin to continue to exercise some control over the regional administrations during his
competitive campaign against challengers Gennadi Zyuganov and Alexander Lebed.

Once again, Yeltsin seemed anxious to buy off the ethnic states at the expense of
the non-ethnic states, granting privileges to the former and reining in the latter. The
reasoning is simple, though it remains to be empirically examined at a future date: the
states with a credible threat to exit the federation are those with the ability to mobilize the
masses against the Center, and the ethnic states, especially those with the characteristics
examined in the previous two chapters (a strong sense of a separate national identity and
natural resource wealth) are those that are being bought ofl’. The non-ethnic states do not
present a credible threat to the stability or territorial integrity of the state, and therefore,

are not achieving as much success at securing local autonomy over their political or

 

after the September 1993 coup in protest of the use of force.

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economic fates. The next phase of this study would look, then, at the factors that
determine which states are successful at obtaining the degree of autonomy they appear to
be seeking.

One means of measuring this would be to examine the states that have been able to
negotiate separate treaties with the Center which make them net gainers in the overall
budgetary process. A second would be to look at those states that were able to hold early
elections on their territory, despite the decree prohibiting such elections until late 1996. A
third would be to examine the states that have been able to get the center to pay its arrears
owed to firms and employees in the regions, compared to those that have not.

Each region is liable to define “success” in terms of its preferred constitutional
order as discussed here, though its credibility may depend on the strength and stability of
this position over the transition period. This investigation leaves the analysis of “success”
to a separate study, but will begin to examine the question here by looking next at the
variation in the individual positions of the state elite over time. Those that exhibit the
greatest degree of stability in their positions over time are those hypothesized to be leader
states and those more likely to have gained credibility in the bargaining process, both

factors which may ultimately influence the Center’s willingness to deal with them.

Examining Variation in the Strategies of State Elites

Figure 5-1 provides an overall sense of the shifts in the behavior and demands of
regional and ethnic elites following critical shifts in the strategy and policies advocated by

the federal administration. This next section examines these shifts, or lack of them, among

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the individual states to get a better sense of the relative stability or fluidity of state elite’s
preferences over time. Table 5-1 provides the individual level data on the degree of
variation in the regional elites’ position over the entire periOd of the study. To evaluate
variation in the position of the elites in the individual member states, I use a standard
deviation from the median statistic. The table rank orders those from most to least
variation from 1991 through 1995. While three states register no variation in their
position during this period--Tver, Riazan, and the Koriak AO--this is probably a function
of the few events recorded for these states more than an iron will.

Table 5-2 tries to reclassify the results in Table 5-1 in a more general and
interpretable manner. Interestingly, of the nine states with standard deviations greater
than or equal to 1, which represents a propensity to identify with either the position above
or below the median for that state, seven are ethnic states. Indeed, 12 of the top 15 (80%)
most “fluid” states are ethnic states, while 32 of the 36 (91%) least variable states are non-
ethnic states. While this might simply be a fiinction of the fact that the ethnic states
record, on average, more events than the non-ethnic states, it is worth looking more
closely at the cases with the largest standard deviations, to try and understand what that
statistic actually captures.

Mordovia, the state with elites expressing the greatest variation in their position
over this period, is an interesting case. While its central tendency is towards the
ethnofederalist position on the autonomy index (a 4), its leaders also at different points
expressed support for positions 1, 2 and 3 as well. Mordovia has been a problem state for

the administration in its reluctance to deconstruct the past. The Mordovian Parliament

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dismissed the democratically elected president there, arguing they had not adopted a
constitution there which allowed for the introduction of a presidency. They were the last
“Soviet” to formally drop the “Soviet Socialist” part of the republic name, even under
pressure from the Center. They also sent the presidential representative of Boris Yeltsin
home, suggesting that such oversight was an infiingement on their local autonomy. On
the one hand, they behave in a manner befitting a state seeking real autonomy fiom the
Center, though the ends ultimately sought from this maneuvering appear to be the
blocking of most reforms.

The voters in Mordovia, as discussed in Chapter 4, came out much more
conservative than their elites, but upon examining the fluid position of the Mordovian
Soviet elites, the position of the elite appears closer to that of their public than is apparent
from their median 4 score. In fact, the mean score in Mordovia is 3.14, much closer to a 3
than a 4, largely because the elites vacillate between a 2 and a 4 on my index, between
supporting anything that signals a return to the past and opposing anything from the
Center that signals a move away from it.

Among the ethnic states expressing substantial fluidity in their positions over time
(.875 or higher) are the republics of Udmurtia, Kalmykia, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria,
Komi, Dagestan and North Ossetia in addition to the Nenets, Chukota, Yamal-Nenets,
Evenki and Taimyr AO’s. The positions of these states, especially the republics, whose
scores were based on a greater number of events, have vacillated enough to suggest that

their positions were never hard and fast, never non-negotiable.

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Worthy of further investigation is the degree to which their variation appears to be
in response to some action by the Center, and whether or not that reaction sent them in a
more conservative or radical direction. For example, InguShetia, Kabardino-Balkaria,
Dagestan, and North Ossetia are all extremely proximate to Chechnya and may well have
hardened their positions over time as the situation there deteriorated. Likewise,
Ingushetia and North Ossetia have been engaged throughout the entire period of this study
in low grade civil war/border dispute over a region inside the borders of North Ossetia,
Prigorodny, which was once Ingush territory taken away during the reign of Stalin. The
Center’s inability to resolve the conflict after years of trying may also have hardened the
positions of these elite to demand more local authority to resolve it more effectively.

On the other end of the spectrum, again ignoring those with no variation because
of too few cases, we find that Sverdlovsk and Irkutsk have been the most consistent over
time in arguing for a loose territorial federation, a position 3 over time, and this despite a
substantial number of events recorded for each. Their positions are remarkably steady,
though this is in part due to the consistency in the leadership throughout this period as
well. Sverdlovsk Governor Edvard Rossel has been the outspoken leader of the
movement for greater local autonomy and an equalization of power and privilege across
the states regardless of whether or not the state has been defined an ethnic state. He
defied President Yeltsin in proclaiming Sverdlovsk Oblast the “Urals Republic,” in an
effort to gain the same measure of autonomy accorded the ethnic republics.

Irkutsk has likewise been led for the entire period by Governor Yurii Nozhikov, a

self-proclaimed social democrat who advocates a responsible pace of reform and greater

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local control over oblast resources. He was “dismissed” and subsequently reinstated by
Yeltsin for refusal to implement presidential decrees, including stalwart resistance to a
federal attempt to nationalize the regional energy production facilities. He is considered a
leader among the Siberian states, and like Rossel before, an open critic of the asymmetrical
federalism that favors the republics by granting them special control over their budgets and
natural resources.7 He was elected to serve as Governor in 1994, and is no longer subject
to dismissal by the Center.

Other unwavering states, among those with over ten events recorded, are St.
Petersburg and Niznhy Novgorod, both considered progressive states advocating faster
reform and greater decentralization. Both were also led by single individuals throughout
this same period. Among the ethnic states, somewhat surprisingly, Mari-El seems
committed to the ethnofederalist position, although its score is based only on 7 events.
Mari-El does not rank highly on the essentialism index and is not one of the more vocal
advocates of autonomy. In its 7 recorded events, however, it has been consistent in
defending the right of the ethnic states to a special privileged status within the federation.

Tuva, with 15 events, is also a solid four with little fluctuation in its position over
time, regardless of what the Center was apparently doing. Tuva remains the only republic
to have adopted, albeit quietly, a Constitution with a provision for unilateral secession
from the Federation. As noted in the previous chapters, it is a poor and highly subsidized
republic, but also one with a previous history of independence, a past historical grievance

with the Center and a population that has successfully maintained a strong, separate

 

7OMRI Russian Regional Report, “Irkutsk,” at www.0mri.cz/Elections/Russia/Regions/About/Irkutsk.htrnl.

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national identity independent of Moscow. Like Chechnya, Tuva also has an international
border with a country closer to its own culture and religion in Mongolia.

Among the autonomy movement leaders, universally recognized to be Chechnya,
Tatarstan and Sakha, we find somewhat more variation than we expected, especially in
Chechnya, which registers a .806 deviation from its median. This may simply be a
reflection of the fact that for a period of time, the question of who represented Chechnya
was in doubt and that while the position of Dzhokar Dudayev may have been consistent
over time, other leaders have positions recorded for the Chechen state during this time
period as well. At the beginning and end of this study, he is not acting as the leader of the
renegade republic, and the variation in position may simply reflect changes in leadership.
In Tatarstan and Sakha, however, this kind of explanation is not valid, since Shaimiyev in
Tatarstan and Nikolaev in Sakha have ruled consistently throughout the period of this
study and beyond.

The variation captured in Tables 5-1 and summarized in Table 5-2 may suggest,
then, something other than merely changes in leadership. It may, for example, show that
at one point in time, the Chechen leadership was willing to settle for less than fiill
independence and that their positions hardened over time perhaps in relation to actions
taken by the Center. It also suggests that Tatarstan and Sakha responded to actions taken
by the Center, though the direction of their response along the autonomy continuum
requires further investigation.

At this point, the question seems worthy of closer examination. Among those

states that vacillated substantially, is there a pattern related to the actions taken by the

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center, corresponding to the time periods introduced at the beginning of this Chapter? To
answer these questions, I now examine the variation in each state leaders’ position during
the critical periods already introduced: (a) summer 1990-spring 1991, (b) spring 1991-
Federal Treaty in March 1992, (c) Federal Treaty - October 1993, (d) October 1993-

December 1993, and (e) post-Chechen war (December 1994-December 1995).

Variation in Response to the Center’s Shifting Strategies

At this point, the analysis can only proceed at a descriptive level. There are not
enough events to allow for a detailed analysis of each period. For example, in the summer
of 1990, there are no events recorded for 46 states, and for 23 others there is only one
event recorded. Part of this is due to the fact that only the Current Digest of the Post-
Soviet Press is available during this period. OMRI did not begin cataloguing on-line until
January of 1991. However, even in later time periods, there are states for which only one
event is recorded. For the states of Tver, Riazan, and the Koriak A0, for example, there
are only a total of 4 events, rendering any analysis over time impossible.

With these reservations in mind, however, some comparisons can still be made for
those states with a substantial variation in their position captured by the standard
deviation, and a significant enough number of events (+10) to allow for some comparisons
throughout these critical periods. Using these criteria, Table 5-3 compares the median
positions of the following twenty-five states over the course of the critical time periods:
Mordovia, Udmurtia, Kalmykia, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Komi, Dagestan, North

Ossetia, Karachai-Cherkessia, Kaliningrad, Krasnoiarsk, Chita, Samara, Sakha, Chechnya,

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Buryatia, Karelia, Saratov, Krasnodar, Chuvashia, Tatarstan, Moscow City, Rostov,
Khakhassia, and Kemerovo oblast. Ethnic republics are necessarily over represented here,
and Autonomous Oblasts and Okrugs are absent, as none of them record more than 7
events. Again, with these reservations in mind, the data collected and presented in Table
5-3 are interesting. I analyze each critical period below.

Summer 1990: The summer 1990 position of the Center, one seemingly accepting
of the possibility of exit from the federation, does seem to have radicalized or at least
allowed for the expression of aspirations for independence in not only Chechnya and
Tatarstan, but in Kabardino-Balkaria and Udmurtia as well. Interestingly, it is the
imminent collapse of the Soviet Union that seems to fiighten Kaliningrad leaders into
adopting a position 1, for the return to a unitary state. Their fate next to the independent
Baltics and geographically distant from the borders of the Russian Federation seemed
uncertainty and perhaps support for the old order reflects this terrible uncertainty.

North Ossetia, in contrast, adopts during this period a strong federalist position, a
whole level lower than its overall central tendency. This appears to reflect concern by the
leaders’ for the territorial integrity of the state, with Ingush rebels initiating military
actions along the disputed borderlands. The North Ossetian government throughout this
period and beyond appeals to the Center to restrain the Ingush and monitor the border,
rather than accepting the mantle of local authority to resolve this crisis regionally.

Among the non-ethnic states, almost all with the exception of Kaliningrad are

adopting position 3 for a loose federation, in this case advocating the greater

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decentralization that comes fi'om the adoption of more democratic political norms and the
end to one-party rule.

Spring 1991-March 1992: This period witnessed the failed campaign to unify the
country under the new Union Treaty, a failed coup by Communist hardliners, and the
break-up of the Soviet state. More states register a 1 during this period than in any other
period under investigation, including Udmurtia, which had previously seemed to support
independence! The 1's recorded for Udmurtia, Samara, Saratov, and Rostov oblasts
indicate that the regional elite in these states had been vocally supportive of the State
Committee for the State of Emergency (SCSE)’s attempted coup in August of 1991.
Udmurtia is not the only republic that supports the SCSE but because it has fewer
recorded events for this time period than other republics, its support stands out as its
central tendency for this period. Other states with more recorded events later go on to
invalidate their support by proclaiming their sovereignty in the fall of 1991, dismissing
leaders that supported the coup, and so forth. Tatarstan hardens its stance to that of a 5 in
that during the early part of 1992 it was refusing to even discuss the Federal Treaty with
the new Yeltsin government as it wanted to be dealt with as an independent state.

Ironically, while Tatarstan’s position hardens during this time, Chechnya’s and
Sakha’s are lower than their overall median scores by one level. During this time, the
leaders of the still unified Chechen-Ingush Soviet support the coup plotters in Moscow.
They are subsequently ousted for that support, creating a vacuum and power struggle

which Dudayev ultimately fills in winning a questionable election, held against the Yeltsin

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administration’s wishes in the late fall of 1991. After that, their position firms to a 5,
where it remains for most of the period under investigation.

In Sakha, demands for regional autonomy have notyet escalated. Though
considered a regional leader in the demand for autonomy, Nikolaev and the
Sakha/Yakutian leadership vacillates between a 3 and a 4 during several of the periods
under investigation. A closer examination of Sakha’s position reveals an interesting
strategy on the part of Nikolaev. He seems very firm on the demand for economic
autonomy and decision-making authority, and willing to trade corresponding political
autonomy for this economic freedom, yielding him a mixed bag of scores depending on the
issue area. He has been very successful in trading political loyalty to Yeltsin for
considerable freedom in the economic sphere, to negotiate, for example, lucrative
contracts with DeBeers for the exploitation of Sakha’s diamond reserves. Economic
autonomy for this region, which will prosper on the world market more than others,
seemed the most it could get, as independence for an ethnic state scoring only a 1 out of 4
on the essentialism index, Nikolaev could not credibly threaten to play the ethnic card in
Sakha as his counterparts in Tatarstan, Tuva or the North Caucasus republics could. So
he traded one kind of autonomy for the other, and the wide variation in his position
reflects the issue area more than anything else.

For the non-ethnic states of Kemerovo, Rostov, Samara, Saratov, and Krasnoiarsk
and Krasnodar Krais, the time after the coup attempt in the summer of 1991 and the time
leading up to the signing of the federal treaty saw most of them adopting strong federalist

or unitary positions. Interestingly, Rostov and Krasnodar both border the North Caucasus

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republics, and leaders in both states responded to the increasing crime, ethnonationalist
activism and guerrilla warfare in the region by asking the Center to intervene to restore
order to the area, to reign in the “irresponsible” leaders of these republics. One might
suspect that Samara, Saratov, and Krasnoiarsk’s leaders, who later adopt fairly consistent
support for a loose territorial federation, adopt more conservative positions here finding
themselves for the first time with an international border with newly independent
Kazakhstan.8 There is little evidence of this, however. Their score is based solely on
support for the SCSE, of which many regions distant from Moscow were guilty. Most
were unable to gauge, with little information at their disposal, how credible Yeltsin and his
supporters, or the coup plotters were.

Federal Treaty through September 1993: During this period, true negotiating
was underway for the adoption of a new Constitution, and the scores for this time seem to
reflect a radicalizing of both the republics and the regions as they battle each other for
status under the new Constitution. Among the many republics considered here, only
Kabardino-Balkaria records a low score on the autonomy index, and among the other
states, only Moscow supports the strong federalist position, while the others have
hardened their stance into one which supports a decentralized federation with equal
autonomy and status for all members. Kabardino-Balkaria receives a low score because
its Supreme Soviet is acting in cooperation with the Federal Center to a) arrest the leader

of the Congress of Mountain Peoples organization for agitating for North Caucasian unity

 

8'Bordering on another nation does not seems to effect the scores of the non-ethnic states, however. Among the
16 non-ethnic states with a median score of 2, 8 have a international border, or 50%. Among the remaining
41 non-ethnic states, 19 have international borders, or very nearly 50%.

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and independence from Russia; b) to declare a state of emergency in the region, to fight
rebel, criminal activities. Kabardino-Balkaria’s score reflects the desire of that state’s
governing elites to have the Center manage their local problems, even militarily if need be.

In Moscow, a similar scenario emerged, where the governing Soviet requests the
Center’s aid in combating rampant crime and skyrocketing underworld activities. Again,
the willingness to turn to the Center as opposed to finding local means for resolving the
conflict reflects the desire for a federation in which the Center is stronger than any of its
parts. Of course in both these states, these somewhat conservative soviets (legislatures)
are later ousted for more popular and populist executives.

Outside of the North Caucasus, republican elite seem firmly committed to the
ethnofederalist arrangement promised them under the terms of the Federal Treaty of 1992,
and worked together to oppose any draft of the Constitution that did not protect the gains
made under that Treaty. They include the states of Karelia, Komi, Buryatia, Udmurtia,
Tatarstan, Khakhassia, and Chuvashia.

However, as conditions deteriorated further in the North Caucasus, with military
preparations under way in Checnhya and Ingushetia-North Ossetia continuing their
guerilla warfare with one another, and with a civil war being conducted in neighboring
Georgia against its own nationalist autonomous districts, the leaders of North Ossetia,
Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachai-Cherkessia were more interested in having
the Center act to control the violence, the gun-running and the flow of refirgees than in
fighting for more autonomy to govern an increasingly ungovemable situation. Meanwhile,

Ingushetia was forced somewhat reluctantly into separate statehood by the actions of the

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Chechen leadership. President Aushev felt the Center was favoring the North Ossetians to
the detriment of the Ingush people’s claims on the North Ossetian Prigorodny region, and
thus began asserting the right to resolve the conflict without interference fi'om the Center--
thereby moving up to the ethnofederalist position, from its earlier 3.

The “Democratic Coup” of September-October 1993: This time period covers
two short months of events, but in many ways, it is the most critical period to examine
next to the period following the Center’s invasion of Chechnya. The use of force points to
a hardening of the Center’s position vis-a-vis the demanding republics and regions and to
its willingness to use force to persuade the non-believers. The leaders and the followers
should be easy to sort out during this period, and those not so committed to the positions
they adopted during the Constitutional Convention of that summer weaken in their stance
at the show of force by the Center. Of the previous 4's from the summer of 1993,
Kalmykia, Sakha, Buryatia, Chuvashia, and Khakhassia buckle. North Ossetia,
Kabardino-Balkaria, and Dagestan remain 3's. Only Chechnya, still at a 5, Tatarstan,
Komi, Udmurtia and Ingushetia hold on to their pervious position, while Karelia slips
slightly to a 3.5. Mordovia, which had all along been a supporter of the national
Parliament over the President, moves up to a four, the only republic to see an increase in
its desire for autonomy from the Center.

Among the non-ethnic states examined in Table 5-3, there is no systematic or
observable decrease in their demand for a loose federation, except in Krasnodar and
Krasnoiarsk, where the leaders moderate from a 3 to a 2.5 on the autonomy index. We

know from Figure 5-1 that a corresponding decrease in the demands of the non-ethnic

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elites did occur following the ouster of the National Parliament by forces loyal to Yeltsin,
but not among the states examined in Table 5-2.

December 1993 through December 1994: This period traces the impact of the
second official bargain proffered by the Center with the publication and subsequent
referendum on the President’s own Constitution in late November and early December
1993. Here, we might actually see a moderating of the demands of the regions and
republics based on the bargain offered, or more likely, the actions of the voters in their
constituencies. In regions where the Constitution was accepted by a wide margin, or
where nationalist (LDP) or Communist candidates did well in the corresponding
Parliamentary elections, autonomy-seeking elites may well have changed their demands.

In fact, all but Chechnya, Tatarstan, Sakha and Moscow City moderated their
demands, while Sakha and Moscow were the only ones to demand more than they had
immediately after the coup. Moscow Mayor Gavril Popov has resigned as mayor, mostly
in protest to the Center’s actions that Fall and the new mayor, Yurii Lyzhkov has proven a
very wily leader, confionting Yeltsin at every level where he feels the Center is interfering
in city affairs, from migration restrictions to the city from the countryside, to rationing
products for city residents, to personnel appointments from judges to police chiefs to
prosecutors.

Many believe Lyzhkov is using these highly publicized confrontations to gain
national attention and recognition before making a bid for national office himself. The
personal ambition of regional governors is something that has been looked at in the

American literature on federalism, and is certainly worthy of fiirther investigation here as

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well, especially now that all regional executives must be elected and serve more regular
terms than during the 1991-95 period under investigation.

Tatarstan’s leadership encouraged a boycott of the referendum, and got it, with far
fewer than the required percentage of voters participating, the results were not valid here.
In Chechnya, likewise, an organized boycott was underway as well. In Sakha, Nikolaev
was one of the first and only republic heads to vocally support Yeltsin in the aftermath of
the coup, though he was critical of Yeltsin’s deletion of the language of the Federal Treaty
from the draft constitution. Sakha went on to ratify the draft after Nikolaev had
negotiated a deal with the Center to keep all tax revenues in the republic during 1994,
once again trading his political loyalty for economic fieedom. The higher score for Sakha
comes from a dispute between Nikolaev and his Prime Minister, who opposed the
Constitution and who walked out of the first meeting of the new Upper House of the
National Parliament in protest of the new Constitution.

Post-Chechen War: If Tatarstan and Chechnya remained firm in their commitment
to positions 4 and 5, respectively, and Irkutsk and Sverdlovsk evidenced little fluidity in
their support for a loose territorial federation despite central action through 1994, then the
war in Chechnya is unlikely to affect them either. But for weaker states, it may have a
dramatic impact. On the one hand, one can imagine that the use of force against an actual
member of the federation, against civilians and soldiers alike, might silence once and for all
the clamoring and bickering among states for special privileges and status within the
Federation for fear that the Center would next send troops to unseat the sitting governor,

elected or not.

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But the alternative is almost as persuasive. Regions or republics with no
aspirations towards independence might view the Center’s actions as so unacceptable that
they begin to take a harder stand than ever before, if only because they now see that
strong regions are necessary to curb the growth of unchecked power by the federal
executive. After creating a particularly weak legislature, Yeltsin’s only real check on
power are the regional governments and their representatives in the Council of Federation.
The use of force in Chechnya without prior notification, let alone approval, by any other
governing body may well have served not to quell the desire for autonomy, but to have
exacerbated it. Table 5-3 tells the story, though not an immediately clear one.

Chechnya and Tatarstan remain firm at 5 and 4, respectively. Sakha and
Chuvashia are among the first leaders to announce that their constituents do not have to
answer conscription notices by the federal government to serve in the military action in
Chechnya, both defying Yeltsin. In the Caucasus, reaction is mixed along no clear lines.
While Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia harden to a 4 and 3.5's respectively, above
their overall median position, Dagestan and Karachai-Cherkessia weaken to a 2,
demanding federal intervention to stop the flow of arms and refiigees across its border.
Ingushetia jumps back up to a 4 after reducing its demands following the October coup.
There is, then, no uniform response to the federal assertion of power in Chechnya among
the Muslim states.

Non-ethnic states bordering the conflict, including Rostov and Krasnodar krai, are
not sympathetic to the Chechen cause, especially after Chechen rebels entered Stavropol

and took a hospital and its patients hostage in response to the Center’s military actions.

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They harden firmly to a 2 on the autonomy index, demanding the Center reign in the
Chechen state and its illegal activities.

The republics of Buryatia, Kalmykia, Komi and Khakhassia also cease their
demands for autonomy following the Chechen invasion, settling on a 2.5 for Buryatia and
a 3 for the others. Buryatia stops thinking like an ethnic republic, and begins working
more cooperatively with other members of the Siberian Accord, which include ethnic and
non-ethnic states alike. Buryatia signs onto several Siberian Accord agreements to
improve the development of the region, along with Khakhasia. The role of the
interregional associations in the new federation is something requiring firrther
investigation, but this author remains optimistic about the positive role they are playing in
integrating regions along geographic and socio-economic lines, cutting across ethnic
cleavages to the benefit of all. While the strength of the interregional associations varies
tremendously, and the Siberian one is one of the strongest, they remain an alternative
outlet for bargaining and reaching compromise, and in the long run, may become more
effective and credible bargaining partners with the Center than any single republic or
regional administration is likely to be. lumpy Mordovia leaps to a 4 following the
invasion, from a 2 prior to it, though its rationale is once again somewhat suspect.

Among the non-ethnic states considered here Kaliningrad, Samara, Chita and
Krasnoiarsk all resorted to demands for a strong center, to oppose movements that
threatened the territorial integrity of the country as a whole. Chita’s Chief Administrator
went so far as to meet with Yeltsin to criticize a joint-statement made by signatories to the

Heads of the Urals Republics Accord, which condemned the federal military action in

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Chechnya and called for a reactivation of a transitional governing body, the Council of the
Heads of Republics.

Table 5-4 shows those states which were signatories to the condemnation, or
otherwise condemned the action, and those who came out to criticize the condemnation,
like Chita’s Chief Administrator. The others were noticeably silent or withholding
judgement on the whole affair, calling it a tragedy, but perhaps an unavoidable one. In
essence, they were hedging their bets, not committing themselves to a firm position.
Among the vocal critics, only Irkutsk is a non-ethnic state, and as already noted, a state
whose position over time has been relatively unwavering in its commitment to a
decentralized federation. Among what could be called the supporters of the war, only
Karachai-Cherkessia is an ethnic state, and one notably close to the conflict, and no doubt
affected by the conflict. North Ossetian and Dagestani leaders were eager to have it
resolved as quickly as possible, but they never voiced outrage at the Center’s actions, nor
suggested that it in any way violated the terms of the Constitution or the Federal Treaty,
which renders them supporters of a federal position beneath that of their colleagues in the
Urals Republics listed below, or Karelia and Komi.

The Siberian Republics of Khakhassia and Buryatia have again turned to the
Siberian Interregional Association for guidance and planning, and have thereby abandoned
the firm ethnofederalist position represented by their overall median score. The positions
of the republics in the column condemning the war are those which now seem firmly on
the path to pursuing local autonomy even when at odds with the Center. This may mean

they will continue to withold taxes whenever they feel it is justified, pursuit of

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privatization plans at odds with the federally mandated ones, resistance to privatization of
public properties mandated by the center, negotiation with foreign investors without prior
approval from Moscow for exploitation of natural resources, appointment of judges
without approval from the center, passage of any number of local laws at odds with the
Federal laws on issues ranging from migration and residence restrictions to economic and
price regulations.

The Center responded to what amounts to a campaign of civil disobedience or
non-compliance that rivals some of the best strategies from the Soviet era. In the non-
ethnic states, support for the return to a strong central government is highest in those
regions firmly committed to a 2 on the autonomy index. After the war, the firm 2's remain
those states bordering on the North Caucasus region, such as Rostov, Stavropol and
Krasnodar Krais, which all feel threatened by the enduring conflict and are drawn to the
strong federal principle, much as Riker originally argued, in the interest of self-
preservation against an external military threat.

The other 2's after the war are not likely to be in Siberia, which seems to be
progressing towards some kind of common market among its member states, not simply
talking about regional economic and political autonomy and waiting for Central approval,
but acting on it on a daily basis. The other 2's, proponents of the strong center, are in the
states now commonly referred to as the Red Belt of Russia, the suburbs of Moscow where
communist and nationalist parties do well, and where leaders regularly ask for stronger
central leadership to reign in defiant regions. Moscow Oblast, Briansk, Orel, Riazan,

Smolensk, Tula, Tver, Yaroslavl, Belgorod, Kursk, Lipetsk, Penza, Saratov, Ulianovsk

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and Volgograd--the regions of the geographic center are perhaps, not surprisingly, in
favor of a constitutional arrangement that favors the rule of the center over the regions.
Add distant Kaliningrad to the list, on the grounds that it, too, feels its security would be
better served by a stronger center.

Firmly in the 3 camp after the war, favoring the continued decentralization of the
Russian state are Irkutsk and Sverdlovsk and Nizhny Novgorod, all led by pioneers in the
regional autonomy game, and their follower neighbors in Siberia (Novosibirsk, Omsk,
Tomsk, Tyumen, Agin-Buryatia, Buryatia, Khakhassia, Taimyr) and the Urals
(Chelyabinsk, Komi-Permyak, Orenburg). It is difficult to ignore the fact that there are
regional effects at play here, and that a dynamic regional leader, in the case of Sverdlovsk
or Irkutsk or Sakha, can bring others with him. Again, in the judgment of this researcher,
the potential of the interregional associations to act to bring ethnic and non-ethnic states
together to serve as an alternative locus of power to challenge federal executive power is
worthy of further investigation.

Conclusion: In conclusion to this examination of the fluidity in state positions
over time and the role of the center in shaping these positions, several points are worth
stressing. While there have been some rather impressive shifts in the positions of
individual states in response to both changes in local leadership and policy shifts at the
Center, the majority of the states examined remain throughout this five year period within
one standard deviation of their overall median position, making the earlier analysis of their
central tendencies meaningfiil in most cases. Indeed the use of the median position

ensured that single outlier events did not distort the true position of the state. For

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example, in Udmurtia, where the regional Soviet in 1991 supported the coup plotters, but
in all other time periods thereafter, remains firmly committed to an ethnofederal
constitutional division of power, and today, remains one of those non-compliant regions
holding out for exactly that kind of autonomy.

Secondly, the Center’s strategy of using a “show of force” to enforce compliance
with its current policy position seems to resemble a card played once too often. While
engendering an overall lessening of the autonomy demands of both the ethnic and non-
ethnic states following the October coup in 1993, no corresponding decrease was
recorded following the Chechen invasion in December of 1994. In fact, a slight increase
was registered across the board, and compliance, as noted earlier, is once again on the
decline in the regions.

Table 5-5 summarizes the changes in state positions across the above-mentioned
critical time periods, in relation to both the Center and the position the state had adopted
in the previous time period (in other words, was the state’s position moving up or down
relative to where it had been before critical event x). The period during which significant
agreement existed between the regions and the Center was the period following the
signing of the first bargain, the Federal Treaty of March 1992, in that only one state is
demanding more autonomy than the Center was willing to allow (Chechnya). During this
period, it is the non-ethnic states that threaten the bargain by demanding a strengthening
of central power, resentfiil of the perks offered to only the ethnically defined territories.
They are among the 51 states demanding less autonomy than the Center is offering. One-

third of the states are at the same position as the Center at that time.

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The only period during which there is more “agreement,” that is, the period during
which the highest percentage of states recorded positions equal to that of the Center, is
the post-December 1993 period, when fully 40% of the states were in agreement with the
new hard line offered by the Center, though only 4 were ethnic states. After the Chechen
war, in which I assign the Center a 1 on the autonomy index, no states are in agreement.
If I move the Center back up to a 2 by the summer of 1995, in its efforts to extract itself
from the war, then there are 15 of 65 in agreement with the Center’s new hardline, or
23%. This amounts to a 17% drop in agreement, and no drop in the demands of the
leader states, Tatarstan, Sakha, Bashkortostan, and most importantly, no change in the
expressed position of the Chechen leadership, even after Dudayev’s death.

Twice as many states increased their demands as weakened them during the period
following the Chechen invasion. After the October 1993 coup against the National
Parliament, those numbers are reversed. Twenty-two states lessened their demands while
only 5 increased them. The use of force against an entire people, as opposed to several
hundred political opponents, was not a successful gamble on many fronts, independent of
the hundreds of thousands of lives already lost.

While these conclusions can only be preliminary, in that there are few events for
each individual time period recorded, the observations are still worth noting. Use of the
median autonomy position seems justified in most cases, with the potential exception of
Mordovia, whose leadership seems to march to the beat of a drummer none of the other

states are hearing. While some states weakened their demands after the December 1993

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referendum, the decline was only temporary, and the mean score is back above a three
again, where it was in the spring of 1992 after the signing of the Federal Treaty.
Nonetheless, the examination of variation in state leaders’ positions over these
time periods did allow us to learn something more about individual states, such as the
quiet determination of Tuva in its commitment to ethnofederalisrrr, and the possibility of
exit; the strategic behavior of Sakha Governor Nikolaev in his ability to successfiilly trade
political for economic autonomy; and the personal ambition of Moscow Mayor Yurii
Lyzhkov. Each of these cases served to introduce alternative factors worthy of further
consideration in a fiiture project. In fiJtUI'C analyses, it is worth investigating the
differences between those states, like Sakha, which are demanding almost exclusively
economic autonomy, and those which, like Tuva, are demanding true political autonomy.
Secondly, it is worth considering a means of introducing more information about the
political ambitions of the individual regional executives, like Lyzhkov, which may well be
instrumental in explaining the bargaining stance they were willing to take with the Center

on the federal division of power.

CHAPTER 6:
Conclusion

The central research goal of this investigation was to explain why states in Russia
adopt different bargaining positions with regard to the federal division of power in Russia.
I wanted to understand which states were likely to lobby for a return to a strong central,
even unitary state and which were likely to push for increasing levels of political and
economic autonomy, supporting the continued devolution of power fi'om the federal
Center to its constituent parts. An understanding of the strategic preferences of both
regional elites and their publics is prior to any investigation into the stability of the Russian
state, its tenitorial integrity, and its prospects for continued democratic development.

The first step to explaining the variation in the positions of state elites was to
identify where states fell where along this dimension of centralization—decentralization of
political decision-making authority. This study accomplishes this and is the first to have
systematically attempted to do so. While a number of studies investigate the disposition of
individual cases, such as Sullivan’s (1995) study of inter-ethnic relations in Tuva, and
fewer others systematically classify the positions of the ethnic states, such as Treisman
(1997), none have tried to put all 89 states on a single autonomy continuum based on the
behavior of elites in the regions. I have elected not to examine the ethnic states and their
preferences and behavior independent of the other federation members. I felt that their

distinctiveness was an empirical question, not something to be assumed prior to the study.

142

143

I chose to use events data on the behavior of both elites and their publics for
several reasons, and I think the merit of this approach has been demonstrated by the scope
of this investigation. While gathering information on over one thousand events relevant to
the federal bargain was arduous, it provided me with a better overall picture of politics in
the regions than use of any other single indicator could have. The use of voting behavior
data, has, for example, become commonplace for identifying regions as “conservative” or
“reformist.” Voting behavior is an integral part of my data set, and is useful in identifying
the preferences of non-elites in the regions. However, it is limited. It identifies
preferences at a single point in time, and does not allow me to gauge how mobilized the
population is at large. Events data allows me to identify those regions with populations
that are “in the streets” on a weekly basis, as opposed to those who come out only to
vote. And this may well have an impact on their overall bargaining position vis-a-vis the
Center. A

The events data is also useful in identifying the positions of state elites, as opposed
to just their publics, in a systematic manner. It allows me to track positions over time,
determining the degree to which the behavior of elites converges on a central preference,
and the cases in which there is no apparent or meaningful tendency. All of which is useful
to understanding what drives these political actors in one direction as opposed to another.
Within the scholarly community engaged in research on federalism, my approach to the
question is unique. The two most common approaches to the study of regionalism in
Russia are game theoretic and analysis of voting behavior. Most game theoretic studies

do not include an empirical component, and most analyses of voting behvior are limited to

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mass behavior and to single points in time. The use of events data at the very least
complements these other approaches, and provides singular insights into center-regional
interactions.

Finally, 1 derived propositions from several competing theoretical perspectives to
explain the behavior of both state elites and their publics once each was assigned a
position on my five-item autonomy index, ranging from unitarism to independence. The
schools from which these propositions are derived represent different subsets of largely
structural factors which explain the behavior of individual elites. While Essentialists focus
on the underlying strength and survival of a distinct cultural and political identity,
Instrumentalists look at the ability of local leaders to command concessions fiom the
Center based on their relative economic independence or dependence on the Center.
Relative Deprivation scholars focus on the perception in the regions that they are being
exploited relative to other subjects in the federation, and Resource Mobilization scholars
focus on the individual resources governors bring to the bargaining table, in particular,

their past experience and level of electoral or popular support.

Findings

The findings of the study are complicated and do not serve to validate or invalidate
any single argument presented above, but instead allow for a synthesis of several strands.
In looking first at the behavior of state elites, I found that cultural factors do seem to
matter, and cannot simply be dismissed as factors that will disappear with the onset of

modernization. State elites with populations that have been able to maintain a strong

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separate national identity are more likely to continue to push for the maximum amount of
autonomy from the Center as possible, and for a continuation of their privileged status in
the Federation as separate “ethnic” nations. In fact, it might be a necessary condition to a
state elite electing to opt out of the Federation altogether.

But as powerful a predictor of demands for autonomy as having a strong, separate
and distant identity is, it is not sufficient. A number of state elites adopt a strong
ethnofederalist position despite the apparent weakness of the group identity of their
populations, such as Karelia’s Stepanov, and Sakha’s Nikolaev (both of whom are also
ethnic Russians). Karelians and Yakutians have largely assimilated to Russian culture
through conversion to orthodoxy and the adoption of Russian as their native tongue; the
Presidents of Karelia and Sakha have nonetheless been vocal in their advocacy of
republican sovereignty, and critical of attempts by the Yeltsin administration to reassert
Federal control over the republics. ’

Are Presidents of Karelia and Sakha, then, being driven to adopt the maximum
amount of autonomy from the Center by their own instrumental and predatory concerns?
Are they representing states with high potential for economic development independent of
Moscow, which would allow them greater access to rents than they previously had in a
system where the Center controls local development, privatization and foreign investment
contracts? Among the instrumental variables which would support this interpretation, I do
find that possession of natural resources of value on world market is positively and
significantly related to a state elite’s position on the autonomy index, and is no doubt

highly influential in the case of Sakha, which is rich in all categories, but especially

146

diamonds and gold. It does not help explain Karelia’s Stepanov, however, whose region
is rich in timber, but little else.

Likewise, lack of natural resources to bargain with external sources for revenue
seems to be related to elites preferring the continuation of a strong center, if only to hinder
the flight of cheap resources from the Federation. But being otherwise dependent on the
Center, such as being fi'om a defense industry region, or having a highly subsidized local
budget, are not significant predictors.

Among the Relative Deprivation indicators, being publicly declared a Critically
Depressed Region by the Center significantly increases the probability that a state’s elite
will demand autonomy from the Center, as does the previous administrative status of the
region, which speaks to the resources of its elites, though past administrative level and the
essentialism index are so highly correlated it is not apparent that they successfully measure
conceptually distinct factors. 1

The combination of a strong separate national identity, a marketable natural
resource, and being publicly declared in crisis, are powerful predictors of the
ethnofederalist position, explaining nearly all of them but for Karelia. The combined
model, including the essentialism index, the natural resource and depressed region
variables, does better than any of the individual models, predicting 64% of the cases
correctly. The problem, in all of this analysis, is that none of the models does especially
well at sorting out the loose federalists, or position 3 on the autonomy index. The models
seem fairly well suited to explaining extremes on either end of the autonomy index, but not

the middle position of, for example, the governors Sverdlovsk or Irkutsk, who consistently

147

lobby for less centralization and an end to the privileges accorded the ethnic states at the
expense of the territories.

1 next investigated whether or not the behavior of the regional publics or masses
could be influential in explaining the missing parts of the puzzle discussed above, again
using events data to first classify the overall mood of the public towards the federal
division of power. I found overall that the masses in the overwhelming majority of states
are more conservative regarding the federal division of power than their regional
executives. In cases where there was nearly a two-level difl‘erence in the autonomy
desired between the elites and their publics, many of those leaders were ousted in the most
recent gubernatorial campaigns.

Different factors were significant in predicting the position of the masses, though
once again, the cultural factors were significant to explaining the few mass publics that
were demanding the maximum amount of autonomy possible within’the Federation. Those
that have been able to sustain a separate identity fight to maintain it, such as the Chechens,
Tuvinians, Ingush, and Tatars. And here, we see that among the states with the weaker
separate identities, such as Karelia, the public is dramatically less independence-minded
than their leaders, which eliminates for those cases, at least, any explanation of elite
behavior as a reaction or response to pressures from below. In fact, mass preferences are
not a significant predictor of elite preferences at all.

Perhaps the most important finding among the tests for mass behavior is the one
which found a relationship between income growth and autonomy preference. As an

indicator of the relative deprivation approach, it predicts in the wrong direction. In fact,

148

there seems to be a non-monotonic relationship between this and the essentialism indicator
which suggests that stagnant growth reacts with strong ethnic attachments to propel
populations away from the Center, while in the non-ethnic regions, the economic
insecurity generated by the collapse of the old order sends them back, towards a strong
Center, almost as if they have no alternative vision to which they can turn, unlike those in
the states with a potential for an alternative national path to development.

As with the analysis of elite behavior, however, I find that none of the models
predicts or distinguishes between the states with a preference for a non-ethnic but
otherwise very loose federation of strong states and those that want a strong Center to
rein in the more demanding regions.

My final attempt to explain this problem involved introducing both the Center and
time into the analysis of regional bargaining positions. I felt the need to justify,
empirically, my analysis of each state’s central tendency as somehow meaningful to the
bargaining process by establishing that state leaders were fairly consistent in their desire
for a particular federal arrangement, though perhaps vacillating with sudden and dramatic
shifts by the Center. I think this was born out, to a large extent, by my necessarily
descriptive analysis of the variance in state positions over time, in response to critical
events such as the signing of the Federal Treaty, the “democratic coup” of 1993, and the
invasion of Chechnya. The overwhelming majority of states remain within one standard
deviation of their overall median position, despite dramatic shifts by the Center.

Among those states with more substantial fluidity in their position are some that

experienced dramatic changes in leadership (Chechnya, Amur province--which had five

149

governors in as many years), some who seemed willing trade some kinds of autonomy for
others (Sakha, Tatarstan), and some who have abandoned one position in favor of an
alternative vision, one associated with an Interregional Association, for example (Buryatia,
Khakhassia). These findings bring to light some of the weaknesses inherent in the

investigation, as well, and point to several interesting avenues for fiiture research.

Implications and Avenues for Future Research

What this study has done best is classify the 89 members of the Federation along a
single contiuum of autonomy from the Federal Center. This is a contribution to the field,
which, as noted earlier, is spotted with case studies and only a few systematic efforts to
examine the behavior of elites outside Moscow in a comparative manner. Likewise,
studies of mass behavior have focused on either voting behavior or the actions of radical
nationalist movements in the republics. They have not integrated these actions, as I have,
into a single account of the political life of the region, and therefore, I think, much of this
work is missing important parts of the puzzle.

What this investigation was much less successful in accomplishing was
systematically explaining the behavior of either the elites or their publics with regard to the
federal bargain. All of the approaches examined here have provided some insight into the
behavior of the ethnonationalists, in both their political and civil attire, but were much less
instructive about distinguishing between “federalists” and “amt-federalists” in either the

political or civic arena.

150

Some reasons why are explored below. Though most of these points were raised
in the individual chapter conclusions, I offer them again here for the sake of clarity, and
for some closure on the subject. Perhaps the easiest explanation to provide is one that
simply says the models did not perform well because I did not operationalize them well. I
was, for example, somewhat strict in my interpretation of those states that had
experienced a past serious conflict with the Center by limiting my cases to the states with a
20th-century history of oppression or annexation during the Stalin era. I could have
included Karelia, which had its status demoted from the Karelo-Finnish Union Republic to
Autonomous Republic. I could likewise have included the Tatars, who consider the fact
that they were conquered and enslaved by the ancestors of Russia’s current rulers
centuries ago a valid and vivid form of “serious conflict.” Inclusion of these cases would
have rendered the Essentialism Index even more powerful a predictor of the
ethnofederalist position than it already was.

Likewise, in the Instrumental case, I could find alternative ways of measuring
dependence/independence from Moscow, and sharpen my largely crude measures of
natural resource wealth or defense region into interval variables based on percent of
federal oil reserves or percent of local industrial production made up by defense industries.
1 might also have included agrarian or mining regions as regions highly dependent on the
Center for subsidies, therefore, unlikely to have elites demanding autonomy, which would
be the equivalent of biting the hand that feeds them. It is also probable that international
factors need to be included within this approach, to get at the role that international

capital, in particular, plays in encouraging or discouraging autonomous behavior by

151

rational elites. Some measure of foreign influence in each of the regions, such as amount
of foreign investment or exports as a percentage of the total regional budget, might
account for the lack of explanatory power this model had ‘with the domestic economic
measures alone.

In the relative deprivation school, I have recently read a number of working papers
on the political economy of the regions arguing about the best means of measuring the
relative well-being of the states.1 The consensus now seems to be that income growth and
unemployment are not especially good indicators in this transition from the state socialism
period. The argument about income growth is demonstrative of this logic. With
privatization and the slow but steady freeing of prices and wages, some regions have seen
real increases in income, such as Moscow City, which corresponds to an increased ability
to buy things to live better. But in other areas, like most of Siberia, high wage increases
do not mean as much because there is still virtually nothing to buy with increased rubles,
and the quality of life there remains harder than anywhere around Moscow. Alternative
measures include the amount of backwages (arrears) owed to regional industries by the
Center, degree of urbanization (with which the purchase of goods is substantially
correlated), and perhaps a measure of industrial output to capture whether the regional
economy is rebounding or stagnating.

The resource mobilization school needs some fiirther consideration here, as its only

significant indicator, past administrative level, was too highly correlated with the

 

lSee Mikhail Filippov, “Economics and the Electoral Choice of Russia’s Regions,” paper presented at the
Midwest Political Science Association, April 10-12, 1997.

152

essentialism index to constitute an independent test of its tenets. Some other resources
and organizational advantages individual governors might bring to the table include
previous administrative position (which means more than were they a member of the
Communist Party or not), presence of an organized nationalist movement in the region,
and the personal ambition of the individual leader to move up the political ladder from the
regions to the national political arena.

Indeed, more reflection on the regional differences in local political conditions in
general seems warranted. How strong and well developed are political parties and interest
groups across the regions? How free are the presses? Do these resources make it harder
or easier for local governors to demand autonomy from the Center? These are all factors
which would fall into the resource mobilization school’s realm of possible explanations,
but which were not examined here.

Likewise, political ambition as a mediating factor needs to be considered further.
Ordeshook (1996) identifies the integration of local politcal leaders’ ambitions into the
national political arena as an important element in the evolution of the federation to a
stable republic. Local leaders with ambitions must feel they have a stake in the federal
system, that benefits to them accrue, on an individual basis. This will only happen as the
party system in Russia matures and helps elect unknowns in the hinterlands on the basis of
well-known platforms, and when regional elites see govemorships and senatorships as
legitimate stepping stones to a national career in politics, as Ordeshook claims they are in
other successfirl federations. Without these mechanisms in place, federal systems become

too combative and are more likely to splinter.

153

The current party list system in Russia is biased in favor of Moscow-based
politicians at the expense of regional politicians, and there may well be a geographic effect
related to this and the federalism dimension.2 The governors of the regions around
Moscow are the most solid base of strong Center supporters in the country right now, and
they are also the leaders with the most proximate chance of being included on such a
national party list. Governors of non-ethnic regions less proximate to Moscow may well
find that they are being left out of the game anyway, and with little ability even to
influence it, and therefore, they opt for more local control over resources, to remain big
fish in their little ponds.

And finally, the role of the Interregional Associations is an additional factor worthy
of further investigation that may well shed more light on those regions that (a) moved
away from their original bargaining position towards a state’s rights perspective, and (b)
are moving towards the kind of confederalism discussed only in theory here. The Siberian
and Far East Associations are the most innovative and have proven remarkably united
despite the mix of ethnic and non-ethnic states included in their memberships.

On a normative level, this author recognizes the need for the emergence of strong
regional governments to counteract the unchecked authority of the federal executive under
the current constitution. Some would say the regions provide the only possible credible
check on that authority, with the new legislature so weak and divided and the Court

viewed as an arm of the executive.

 

28cc M. Steven Fish, “The Advent of Multipartism in Russia,” in Journal of Post-Soviet Affairs, vol. 1 1, no. 4,
1996, for more on the evolution of the party system in Russia and its regional effects.

154

However, the regional executives themselves have more often acted in a manner
less democratic than the federal center whose authority we seek to check. Their
parochialism and penchant for corruption appear unrivalled at the Center. This kind of
conclusion then begs the question, is one type of autonomy to be preferred over another,
to better ensure, at minimum, a politically stable and democratic state? Which is to be
feared more, a strong center or strong regions? Without a strong Center, do local leaders
“fix” privatization auctions to the benefit of the few at the expense of the many? Without
strong regions, does the Center impose draconian adjustment reforms without reference to
the well-being of the regional constituencies?

This study does not allow me to answer that question, but it does allow me to see
the need for further research to investigate it. While the Center continues to demand
compliance with its decrees, the Siberian states have already begun to develop
independent means of cooperating and resolving local issues, especially as they pertain to
the environment and foreign investment. Their vision of the Federation’s firture is very far
afield from that of the suburbs of Moscow, and a thousand miles from the battlefields of
the North Caucasus. It is probable that this differential development will continue until

someone replaces the tired administration of Boris Yeltsin. Unfortunately, the only viable

155

alternative candidates are those with visions for a federal center much stronger than the

median state leader, though apparently much closer to the median state voter.

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX A

 

Quadrant I

Regional Political Autonomy
Free Market Economy

Quadrant 11

Political Centralization
Free Market Economy

Quadrant I V

Regional Political Autonomy
State Planned Economy

Quadrant 111

Political Centralization
State Planned Economy

 

Note: Based on G. Starovoitova, “The Formation of the New Ethno-Political Elites in Russia,” (1994).

FIGURE 1-1: Classification of Regional Elites

156

Map 3.1

Figure 3-1:
The Russian Federation, 1993

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157

FIGURE 3-2: INDEPENDENT VARIABLES BY MODEL

Essentialism:
Punished People

Non-Orthodox

Use of Native
Language
Instrumentalism:
Net Gainers/Losers

Natural Resources

Defense Regions

Budget Subsidies

Relative Deprivation:

Change in Income

Change in
Unemployment

Depressed

Resource Mobilization:

Past Level

Early Elections

Ethnic Groups deported, exiled or annexed during Stalin era. Coded 1/0.

Ethnic states whose populations have resisted conversion to orthodoxy.
Coded l/O.

Percentage of each ethnic state’s population that claims to use its native
tongue. Coded -9 for non-ethnic states, otherwise its a percentage

Ratio of gains or losses from the federal bargain, in terms of rubles
received in subventions versus rubles paid in federal taxes (in millions)
Scale ranges from -9.9 to +670, with -9 signifying missing data for okrugs

Regions the World Bank identified in 1992 as having significant oil, natural
gas, diamond or gold reserves. Coded l/O.

Regions identified by the Center as “closed” because they were national
security zones, or states whose local economy is highly dependent
on the defense industry. Coded l/O.

Percent of each state’s local budget that is paid for by federal subventions.
Ranges from O to 80%, with -9 for missing data. (World Bank data)

Percent change in individual income from each state, 1992-93.

Percent change in unemployment figures of each state, 1992-93.

Identified by President’s Analytic Center as critically depressed region in
1992. Coded l/O.

Ordinal scale identifying rank in Soviet federal hierarchy, code 1-4 for
oblast through ASSR

States which had elections to govemor prior to the end of 1994. Coded
1/0.

158

 

 

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159

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX B

a}-.- -a-uu 131/0-! Onz‘ 2110.11 '1': i.
.A_S§B.S.
BashkirASSR

Created in March 1919.
21.9% Bashkir
Buryat ASSR
Created in May 1923 as Buryat-Mongol ASSR. Renamed in July 1958.
24.0% Buryat
*Chechen-Ingush ASSR
Chechen Autonomous Oblast created in 1922. Ingush Autonomous Oblast created in 1924. The two
were merged in 1936, then abolished altogether during the 1944 deponations. Recreated in 1957.
57.8% Chechen/ 12.9% Ingush
Chuvash ASSR
Created as an Autonomous Oblast in June 1920. Became an ASSR in 1925.
67.7% Chuvash
Dagestani ASSR
Created in January 1921.
80.1% Dagestani
Kabardino-Balkar ASSR
Kabardinian Autonomous Oblast created in 1921. Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Oblast created in
1922. Became an ASSR in 1936, but when Balkars were deported in 1944, renamed Kabardinian
ASSR. In 1957, it was again renamed Kabardino—Balkar ASSR.
48.2% Kabardinian/9.4% Balkar
Kalmyk ASSR
Created as an Autonomous Oblast in 1920. Became an ASSR
in 1935. It was abolished during deportations of 1943. Recreated in 1957.
45.3% Kalmyk
Karelian ASSR
Created as Karelian Labour Commune in 1920. Became an ASSR in 1935. It was renamed the
Karelo- Finnish SSR from 1940-56, but demoted to Karelian ASSR in 1957.
10.0% Karelian
Komi ASSR
Created as Komi-Zyryan Autonomous Oblast in 1920. It became Komi ASSR in 1936.
23.3% Komi
Mari ASSR
Created as an Autonomous Oblast in 1920. Became an ASSR in 1936.
43.2% Mari
Mordvin ASSR
Created as an Autonomous Oblast in 1930. Became an ASSR in 1934.
32.5% Mordva
North Ossetian ASSR
Created as an Autonomous Oblast in 1924. Became an ASSR in 1936.
52.9% Ossetian
Tatar ASSR
Created in May 1920.
48.5% Tatar

160

Tuvin ASSR
Independent until 1944. Made an Autonomous Oblast in 1944, and became an ASSR in 1961.
64.3% Tuvin
Udmurt ASSR
Created as an Autonomous Oblast in 1920. Became an ASSR in 1934.
30.9% Udmurt
Yakut ASSR
Created in April 1922.
33.4% Yakutian
*The Chechen-Ingush ASSR split in late 1991-early 1992 into two separate republics.

Autonomous leasts
Adegeia AO
Created in July 1922. Known as Adegeia-Cherkess AO until 1928.
22.1% Adegei
Gorno Altai AO
Created in June 1922. Known as Oirot AO until 1948.
31.0% Altai
Jewish A0
Created in May 1934.
4.2% Jewish
Karachai-Cherkess A0
Created in 1922. In 1926, it was divided in two. The Karachai AC was abolished in 1943,
and a joint AO was reestablished in 1957. 31% Karachai/9.7% Cherkess
Khakhass A0
Created in October 1930.
11.1% Khakhass
Autonomous Ongs
Agin-Buiyat AOk
Created in 1937 from the split of the Buryat-Mongol ASSR. 54.9% Buryat
Chukchi AOk
Created in December 1930. 7.3% Chukchi
Evenki AOk
Created in December 1930. 13.9% Evenki
Khanty-Mansi AOk
Created in December 1930. .9% Khanty/.5% Mansi
Komi-Pennyak AOk
Created in February 1935. 60.1% Komi-Pennyaks
Koryak AOk
Created in December 1930. 16.5% Koryaks
Nenets AOk
Created in July 1929. 11.9% Nenets
Taimyr AOk
Created in December 1930. 8.9% Dolgan/4.4% Nenets
Ust'-Orda Buryat AOk
Created in 1936 when Buryat-Mongol ASSR split. 36.1% Buryat
Yamalo-Nenets AOk
Created in December 1930. 4.2% Nenets

161

     

'1 |::

Karelia, 199195-

  

 

Repu lie of
Date Mullen Sauna Sure
3-27-91 Karelian majority votes yes on Union Treaty CDSP 2
4-25-91 Karelian SupSoviet votes to lease land to Finns OMRI 3
5-12-91 Karelian ViceChair threatens to sign Union Treaty CDSP 4
only if status equal to that of Union Republics
9-05-91 Karelian Chair signs statement asking new Council CDSP 4
of Republic Heads
1-27-92 Karelian Parl doubts independence, asks for special OMRI 4
Federal Treaty with guarantees instead
3-12-92 Karelia says Karelia doesn’t want independence, OMRI 4
will sign the Federal Treaty
3-14-92 Karelian Chair initials Federal Treaty CDSP 4
9-28-92 Karelia signs statement supporting strong Parliament to
balance executive power CDSP 3
3-31-93 Karelian Leader won’t support creation of an CDSP 4
upper house with equal representation for regions
4-23-93 Karelians vote confidence in President Yeltsin OMRI 3
5-15-93 Karelia signs a statement opposing President’s Both 4
Constitution bc it doesnt protect republic sovereignty
6-04-93 RussDepPrime Min says Karel wants own currency OMRI 4
6-16-93 Karelia says it wants guarantee of sover in all drafis CDSP 4
7-12-93 Karelia abstains from vote on Draft Constit on CDSP n/a**

procedural grounds

162

InhleZdJmnlIJ

 

9-21-93 Karelian Deputies ask help preserving national cult OMRI 4
from Russian “hegemony”
9-24-93 Karelian Parliament condemns Yeltsin’s decree OMRI 4
dissolving Federal Parliament '
10-02-93 Karelia and 61 regional heads agree to form interim CDSP 3
gov’t. as Council of Federation
10-11-93 Karelian Parliament agrees to hold new elections in OIVflU 2
keeping with Yeltsin decree
10-14-93 Karelian Leader joins Federal Commission on regional
reform OMRI 2
10-23-93 Karelian Leader calls new constit a return to empire CDSP 4
11-02-93 Karelia offers compromise to make all regions equal and
sovereign in the new constitution CDSP 3
11-04-93 Karelia joins federal working group seeking compromise
on constitution OMRI 3
12-03 -93 Karelian leader criticizes draft for leaving out Treaty,
But he will support it anyway OMRI 3
12-15-93 Karelia votes plurality Russia’s Choice, Yabloko
Women’s Parties OMRI 3
2-03 -94 Karelian Leader boycotts first Council meeting CDSP 4
4-19-94 Karelia’s Stepanov elected to new Chair w/40% CDSP n/a**
10-21-94 Center reports Karelian Const ok by Federal one CDSP 2
1-12-95 Karelian leader condemns war in Chechnya, asks revival
of Council of Republic Heads CDSP 4
1-19-95 Stepanov issues statement asking for more checks on
central executive power CDSP 3
Median Score on Autonomy Index (All Actors) = 4

163

Table 2-2: Comparing Source Differences on the Autonomy Index

SIAIE
Arkhangelsk

Karelia

Komi
Murmansk
Nenets A.O.
Vologda
Leningrad Oblast
Novgorod
Pskov

St. Petersburg
Briansk
Ivanov
Kaluga
Kostroma
Moscow City
Moscow Oblast
Orlov

Riazan
Smolensk
Tula

Tver
Vladimir
Yaroslavl
Chuvashia
Kirov
Mari-E1
Mordovia
Nizhny Novgorod
Belgorod
Kursk
Lipetsk
Tambov
Voronezh
Astrakhan
Kalmykia
Penza
Samara
Saratov
Tatarstan
Ulianovsk
Volgograd
Adegeia
Chechnya
Dagestan
Ingushetia
Kabardino-Balkaria

E

W W
2.5 .5
4
3
2.5
3.5
2.0

M

Ut
LIILII

LII

UI
{1!

LI!
M

LII'JI
U!

LII
AhNth-{>19NANwNprwNNMNU)tea-ANANwNNNNNNwNNNNWwawmwwhN

wbwmwNNthNANmNNNNwNAN-bwNNNNNNNwNNNNwNNNwwww-bp

AANAANNAwNNwwwpwwwwawmwprNNr-NNmpg—mummwu

164

l _ 9

Karachai-Cherkessia
Krasnodar
North Ossetia
Rostov
Stavropol
Bashkortostan
Chelyabinsk
Komi-Permiak A0
Kurgan
Orenburg
Perm
Sverdlovsk
Udmurtia
Altai Republic
Altai Krai
Kemerovo
Khanty-Mansii
Novosibirsk
Omsk

Tomsk
Tyumen
Yamal-Nenets
Agin-Buryat
Buryatia

Chita

Evenkii
Irkutsk
Khakhassia
Krasnoiarsk
Taimyr

Tuva
Ust-Orda
Amur
Chukota
Jewish A.O.
Kamchatka
Khabarovsk
Koryak
Magadan
Primorsk (maritime)
Sakha
Sakhalin
Kaliningrad
Total Events
Overall Median

(JIM

N

N=795
3.0

165

I)! ML]! M

kl!

thklt

LII'JI

\)
\O
O

OII

N= 1460

Table 2-3: Correlation of Autonomy Scores Between the Two Sources

 

Median Autonomy Scores

QMRLchenageinx
Median Autonomy Scores .471 **
Willy (N=89)
**Sig= .01

Kendall’s Correlation Coefficients

166

TABLE 3-1: Regional Executives in the Russian Federation

 

January 1995 Incumbent Elected Fall 1996

Adeygeya

President Aslan A. Dzharimov Re-elected
+Altai

Head of Republic Valerii I. Chaptinov
+Bashkortostan

President Murtaza G. Rakhimov (elected 1995)
+Buryatia

President Leonid V. Popatov (elected 1994)
+Dagestan

President of Supreme Soviet Magomedali M. Magomedov
Ingushetia

President Ruslan S. Aushev (elected 1993, unopposed)
+Kabardino-Balkan'a

President Valerii M. Kokov Re-elected, unopposed
Kalmykia

President Kirsan I. Ilyumzhinov Re-elected, unopposed

Karachai-Cherkessia
Head of the Republic
+Karelia
Chair/Head of the Government
+Komi
Head of the Republic
Mari-El
President
Mordovia
Head of the Republic
+North Ossetia
President
+Tatarstan
President
Tuva
President/Head of Government
Udmurtia
Chair of the Governing Council
Khakhasia
Chair, Council of Ministers
Chechnya
President
Chuvashia
President
+Sakha/Yakutia
President

*Incumbent defeated in 1996 elections.
+Same leader in power since Fall of 1991

Vladimir I. Khybiev

Viktor Stepanov (elected 1994)
Yuri Spiridinov (elected 1994)
Vladislav M. Zotin Vyacheslav Kislitsyn“
Nikolai I. Merkyshin

Akhsarbek Kh. Galazov (elected 1994)

Mintimir Shaimiev (re-elected 1996, unopposed)
Sherig-ool D. Oorzhak Scheduled 3/16/97
Alexander A. Volkov (elected 1994)
Yevgenii A. Smimov Aleksei Lebed“
Acting Pres. Yandarbiev Scheduled 1/27/97
Nikolai V. F ederov (elected 1993)

Mikhail Ye. Nikolaev Re-elected

167

9

 

KRAI (province) HEADS OF ADMINISTRATION (GLAVA ADMINISTRATSIIA):

Altaiskii Krai
Krasnodarskii Krai

Krasnoiarskii Krai
Primorskii Krai
Stavropolskii Krai
+Khabarovskii Krai

AUTONOMOUS OKRUG (district) HEADS OF ADMINISTRATION

+Taimyrskii Autonomous Okrug
+Evenkiiskii Autonomous Okrug

Nenets Autonomous Okrug

Ust-Ordinskii Autonomous Okrug
Koriakii Autonomous Okrug
+Chukotskii Autonomous Okrug
+Komi-Perrnyakii Autonomous Okrug
+Khanty-Mansii Autonomous Okrug
Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug
+Agin-Buryat Autonomous Okrug

AUTONOMOUS OBLAST (region) HEADS OF ADMINISTRATION

+Evreysskaia Autonomous Oblast

.1225Jncumhent
Lev A. Korshynov (apt’d 1/94)
Yevgenii M. Kharitonov, replaced

by N. Yegorov in 1996
Valerii M. Zybov**(1993)
Yevgenii I. Nazdratenko

Peter P. Marchenko (apt‘d 1995)

Viktor I. Ishaev

January 1995 Appointee
Gennadii P. Nedelin
Anatolii M. Yakirnov
Yurii V. Komarovskii
Alexei N. Batagaev

Sergei G. Leyshkin

Alexander V. Nazarov
Nikolai A. Poluyanov
Alexander V. Filipenko
Yurii V. Neelov (apt’d 8/94)

W
Aleksandr Surikov"

Nikolai Kondratenko“
Scheduled for April 1997
Re-elected

Alexander Chemogorov“
Re-elected

Elected Fall 1996
Re-elected
Rescheduled

Vladimir Butov“
Valerii Maleev“
Valentina Bronievich“
Re-elected

Re-elected

Re-elected

Re-elected

Gurodarma Ts. Tsedashiev Scheduled for 2 February

Nikolai M. Volkov

OBLAST HEADS OF ADMINISTRATION

Amur

1 997
Arkhangelsk
+Astrakhan
Bel gorod
Briansk
Vladimir
Volgograd
Volodya
Voronezh
lvanova
+Irkutsk
Kaliningrad
Kaluga
+Kamchatka
+Kemerovo
Kirov
Kostroma

1995 Appointee

Yuri Lyashko (apt’d 6/96, 5th in 5 yrs!)

Pavel N. Balakshin, replaced 1996

Anatolii P. Guzhvin

Yevgenii S. Savchenko**(l 995)

Vladimir A. Barabanov
Yuii V. V1asov** (1995)
Ivan P. Shabynin

W
Re-elected

Elected Fall 1996
Rescheduled for March

Anatolii Yefremov (inc)
Re-elected

Yurii Lodkin" (prev. 1dr.)

Nikolai Maksyuta"

Nikolai M. Podgomov, replaced 1996 by Vyachasla Pozgalev(inc.)

Alexander Ya. Kovalev, replaced 1996
Adolf F. Laptev, replaced 1996

Ivan Shabanov“
Vladislav Tikomorov (inc)

Yurii A. Nozhikov**(aptd ‘91. removed & reaptd 3/93, elctd 1994)

Yurii S. Matochkin

Alexander V. Deryagin (resigned 1/96)

Vladimir A. Biriukov
Mikhail B. Kisliuk
Vasilii Desyatnikov
Valerii P. Arbuzov

168

Leonid Gorbenko“
Valerii Sudarenkov“
Re-elected

Unspec. future elections
Vladimir Sergeenkov“
Viktor Shershunov“

Table 3-1 (Con’t).

Kurgan
Kursk
Leningrad
Lipetsk
Magadan
+Moscow
Murmansk
+Nizhny Novgorod
Novgorod
Novosibirsk
elctn)
+0msk
Orenburg
Orel
+Penza
Perm

Pskov
+Rostov
Riazan
+Samara
Saratov
(inc.)Sakha1in
Sverdlovsk
Smolensk
Tambov
+Tver
+Tomsk
+Tula
+Tyumen
+Ulianovsk
Cheliabinsk
Chita
+Yarsoslavl

FEDERAL CITY MAYORS

+Moscow
St. Petersburg

Anatolii N. Sobolev (aptd 95)
Vasilii I. Shuteev

Alexander S. Belyakov

Mikhail T. Narolin**(l994)

Viktor G. Mikhailov

Anatolii S. Tyazhlov I”(1994)
Yevgenii B. Komarov '
(Governor) Boris Nemtsov**(1994)
Mikhail M. Prusak"(1995)

Ivan I. Indinok

Leonid K. Polezhaev**( l 993)
Vladimir V. Yelagin

Yegor S. Stroev (1993)“

Anatolii F. Kovliagin**(l993)

Boris Yu. Kuznetsov, replaced 1996
Vladislav N. Tumanov (apt’d ‘92)
Vladimir F. Chub

Gennadii K. Merkulov, replaced 1996
Konstantin A. Titov

Yurii V. Belikh, replaced in ‘96
Yevgenii A. Farkhutdinov (apt’d 4/95)
Edward E. Rossel ”(1995)

Anatolii Ye. G1yshenkov**(1993)
Oleg I. Betin**(l995)

Vladimir A. Suslov

Viktor M. Kress

Nikolai V. Seriugin

Leonid Yu. Roketskii

Yurii F. Goriachev

Vadirn N. Solov’ev

Boris P. Ivanov, replaced 2/96 by
Anatolii I. Lisitsin

Yurii M. Lyzhkov
Anatolii A. Sobchak

* Incumbent was defeated in election
I""‘Stood for competitive election prior to fall of 1996
+Same leader in power since the Fall of 1991

169

Oleg Bogomolev
Alexandr Rutskoi“
Vadim Gustov"I

Valentin Tsvetkov*

Yurii Yevdokimov*

Vitalii Mukha" (1995

Gennadii Igumnov (inc)
Yevgenii Mikhailov“
Re-elected

Vyacheslav Lyubimov"
Re-elected

Dmitrii Ayatskov
Re-elected

Re-elected

- Re-elected

Petr Sumin“
Ravil Geniatulin (inc.)

Re-elected 6/96
Vladimir Yakovlev*

TABLE 3-2: Mean and Median Scores of Regional Elites, 1991-95

State Mean Median N
Chechnya 4.62 5.00 62
Tatarstan 4.33 4.00 43
Bashkortostan 4.00 4.00 46
Mari-El 3.86 4.00 ‘ 7
Tuva 3.80 4.00 15
Sakha 3.68 4.00 41
Khakhasia 3.64 4.00 1 l
Adeygeya 3.62 4.00 8
Chuvashia 3 .62 4.00 13
Karelia 3.56 4.00 25
Buryatia 3 .50 4.00 15
Ingushetia 3.50 4.00 30
Komi 3.44 4.00 16
Udmurtia 3.43 4.00 14
Chukota 3.33 4.00 3
Khanty-Mansii A0 3.33 3.50 6
Mordovia 3 .20 4.00 l 5
Altai 3.33 3.00 6
Nenets A0 3.33 4.00 3
Kahnykia 3.29 4.00 17
Yamal-Nenets A0 3.25 3.50 4
Taimyr A0 3.17 3.50 6
Tyumen 3.13 3 .00 8
North Ossetia 3.12 3.00 34
Kabardino-Balkaria 3 .05 3 .00 2 1
Sverdlovsk 3.04 3.00 23
Ust-Orda A0 3.00 3 .00 ~ 3
Agin-Buryat A0 3 .00 3 .00 3
Komi-Permyak A0 3.00 3.00 3
Karachai-Cherkessia 3.00 3.00 11
Irkutsk 2.88 3.00 16
Vologda 2.86 3.00 7
Dagestan 2.84 3 .00 19
Khabarovsk 2.83 3.00 6
St. Petersburg 2.82 3 .00 22
Jewish A0 2.80 3.00 5
Omsk 2.80 3.00 5
Kaliningrad 2.79 3.00 14
Nizhny Novgorod 2.79 3.00 14
Magadan 2.75 3.00 4
Evenkii A0 2.75 2.50 4
Cheliabinsk 2.75 3 .00 l 2
Vladimir 2.75 3.00 4
Moscow City 2.72 3.00 25
Voronezh 2.71 3.00 7
Briansk 2. 7 l 3.00 7

170

Iahlefliumltd
State
Novosibirsk
Primorskii Krai
Chita
Kurgan
Astrakhan
Orlov
Ivanova
Pskov
Novgorod
Murmansk
Kemerovo
Krasnoiarsk
Volgograd
Amur
Leningrad Oblast
Tomsk

Altai Krai
Arkhangelsk
Samara
Kamchatka
Perm
Saratov
Penza
Tambov
Kirov
Yaroslavl
Kaluga
Orenburg
Tula
Moscow Oblast
Sakhalin
Ulianovsk
Krasnodar
Smolensk
Kostroma
Stavropol
Bel gorod
Rostov
Koriak AO
Tver

Riazan
Lipetsk
@1315

Overall Mean

2.69
2.67
2.67
2.67
2.67
2.67
2.67
2.67
2.67
2.67
2.64
2.63
2.62
2.60
2.60
2.57
2.57
2.57
2.54
2.50
2.50
2.50
2.50
2.50
2.50
2.50
2.50
2.43
2.43
2.43
2.38
2.38
2.36
2.33
2.33
2.25
2.25
2.20
2.00
2.00
2.00
1.75
L69
3.14

Median
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
2.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
2.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
2.50
2.50
3.00
2.50
2.50
2.50
2.50
2.50
3.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
M
Overall Median 3.00

171

N
16

12
12

A

3
3
6
3
3
6
3
l
2
8
5
S
7
7
7
l
2
6
1
4
4
2
4
2
7
7
7
8
8
l
3
3
l

2
4
10
l

2
l

4
i
T

otal N = 966

Table 3—3: Past Serious Grievance by Cultural Distance from Center

 

Ai'l

MW

Kalmykia

Chechnya

Ingushetia

Kabardino (Balkaria)
Karachai (Cherkessia)

Tyva

NONE

172

We:

Tatarstan
Bashkortostan
Dagestan
Adegeya
North Ossetia

Karelia
Buryatia

Komi
Agin-Buryatia (A0)
Nenets (A0)
Yakutia (Sakha)
Chuvashia
Mordovia
Udmurtia
Mari-E1
Khakhassia
Taimyr (A0)

' Altai

Khanti-Mansii (A0)
Ust-Orda Buryat (A0)
Evreiski (A0)
Koriakii (AO)
Chukota (A0)

Evenkii (A0)
Komi-Permyak (A0)

Table 3-4: Correlation Between Median Autonomy Score and Essentialism Index

 

in r nh lii

E ni li m x r .575"
(n=89)
Sig .000

MIndicates that a Kendall’s tau-b statistic was calculated because of the ordinal nature of
the variables.

173

Table 3-5: Potential for Separate Identity by Elite’s Autonomy Score

 

 

 

 

 

 

E . l. I l 5
Low Potential High Potential
(1 factor) (2 factors) (3 factors) (4 factors)
1 l l. l E . i
2.0 Strong Federation Koriak A0 0 0 0
2.5 Evenki A0 0 0 O
3.0 Loose Federation Evreyski A0 Komi-Permyak Dagestan Kab-Balkaria
Gomo-Altai N. Ossetia Kara-Cherkessia
Ust-Orda
Agin-Buryat
3 .5 Khanty-Mansi Yamal-Nenets 0 0
Taimyr
4.0 Ethnic Confederation Karelia Chuvashia Tatarstan Ingushetia
Komi Mordovia Adeygeya Kalmykia
Nenets AO Mari-E1 Bashkortostan Tuva
Chukota Buryatia
Khakhasia
Sakha
Udmurtia
5.0 Independence O 0 0 Chechnya

 

174

Table 3-6: Net Gainersl and Losers in the Federal Budgt, 1992

 

Gainers: (+590 - +0.29)

Komi

North Ossetia
Tuva
Tatarstan
Dagestan
Irkutsk
Kalmykia
Karelia
Buryatia
Kamchatka
Sakha
Mari-E1
Kabardino-Balkaria
Chechnya
Bashkortostan

 

14mm}; (-64.91 - -11.49)

Tyumen
Samara
Yaroslavl
Moscow City
Niznhy Novgorod
Perm

Magadan
Belgorod
Ulianovsk
Kursk

St. Petersburg
Vladimir
Sverdlovsk
Smolensk
Riazan
Khabarovsk Krai
Murmansk
Ivanova
Tambov
Moscow Oblast
Kaliningrad
Primorskii Krai
Tomsk

1States who paid into the federal budget less than they received back compared to those who paid in more than
they received back in subsidies and subventions. See Leonid Smirnyagin, reported in the CDSP, Vol. XLV,

25 (1993), p. 8, for the figures and calculations.

Table 3-7: Natural Resource Base by Median Autonomy Score

 

 

WLL W
2.0 Strong Federalists (n=l3) (n=4)
2.5 (n=7) (n=l)
3.0 Loose Federalists (n=26) (n=17)
3.5 (n=0) (n=3)
4.0 Ethnic Confederalists (n=7) (n=10)
4.5 (n=0) (n=0)
5 .0 Independence (n=0) (n=l)
Value ASEl Approx. Sign.
Kendall’s tau-b Correlation Coefficient: .29509 .08852 .0014

176

Table 3-8: Percentage of Local BudggObtained from Center, 1992

States Operating at Surplus, with Subsidies not necessary to functioning budget:

Vologda Samara
Tatarstan Ivanova
Volgograd Moscow City
Perm Moscow Oblast
Sverdlovsk Riazan
Khanty-Mansii Tula
Yamal-Nenets Tver

Irkutsk Vladimir
Khakhassia Yaroslavl
Krasnoiarsk Nizhny Novgorod
Sakha Lipetsk

Percent of Local Budget Made-Up by Federal Subsidies:

Agin-Buryat A0 80.8% Amur 17.5%
Ust-Orda Btu'yat A0 73.5 Tyumen 16.9
Tuva 70.7 Altai Krai 16.8
Dagestan 67.9 Orlov 16.5
Gomo—Altai 67.4 Kemerova 16.0
Kalmykia 62.0 Magadan 13.2
Koriak A0 61.9 Briansk 12.1
Evenkii A0 58.7 Voronezh 10.1
Komi-Permyak A0 52.4 Omsk 9.2
Evreyski A0 45.9 Penza 7.7
Mordovia 44.2 Murmansk ‘ 5.2
Mari-El 44. l Kaluga 4.9
Ingushetia 43.5 Ulianovsk 4.4
Chechnya 43 .5 Kirov 4. 1
Buryatia 40. 1 Tomsk 3 .6
Nenets A0 39.5 Komi 3.6
Kabardino-Balkaria 3 9. l Tambov 3 .3
Kamchatka 37.2 Kursk 2.5
Adyegeya 36.3 Belgorod 2.4
Taimyr A0 33 .8 St. Petersburg 2.3
Pskov 30.5 Primorskii Krai 2.2
Karachai-Cherkessia 29.6 Krasnodar 2.0
North Ossetia 29.4 Khabarovsk 1.6
Chuvashia 29.3 Stavropol 1 .5
Sakhalin 26.2 Orenburg 1 .4
Novgorod 26.2 Saratov 1 .4
Astrakhan 24.8 Arkhangelsk 1 .3
Kurgan 24.5 Smolensk 1 .0
Chita 22.7 Udmurtia 0.9
Chukota 20.5 Novosibirsk 0.6
Kostroma 18.0 Leningrad Oblast 0.4

177

Table 3-9: Essentialism Model Empirical Estimates

 

Number of cases: 89

Log of Likelihood Function: -68.6357
Number of choices: 267

Correctly Predicts: 56%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Autonomy Score Estimate Constant Std. Error T-statistic
2 -. -- -- --
3 1.875 .3012 .939 1.997
4 2.968 -2.180 .575 3.053
dp/dx*
2 3 4
Constant -0.01437 0.2477 -0.2333
Essentialism Index -.32189 . 19079 .133110
d.f.=88

178

 

Number of cases: 69
Log of Likelihood Function: -56.7361

Correctly Predicts: 61%

Table 3-10: Instrumental Model Empirical Estimates

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Net Score Estimate Constant Standard Error T-statistic
Gainers

3 .586 lE-02 -.O903 .0279 .2104

4 .0488 -2.649 .0329 1.482
Defense
Region

3 .1120 -.0903 .5730 .1954

4 .1720 -2.649 .9447 .1821
Natural
Resources

3 1.240 -.0903 .6566 18887“

4 2.215 -2.649 1.016 2.1794*
Budget
Subsidies

3 .0267 -.O903 .0251 1.0623

4 .0748 -2.649 .0303 2.4714*

dp/dx*
2 3 4
Constant .07438 . 15807 -.23 245
Net Gainers -.00207 -.00194 .00400
Defense Region -.02239 .01447 .00792
Natural Resources -.25487 . 13924 .11563
Budget Subsidies -.00609 .00115 .00493
d.f.=65

*= .10, significant in a one-tailed test

179

 

 

Table 3-11: Relative Deprivation Model Empirical Estimates

 

Number of cases: 78

Log of Likelihood Function: -72.8171

Correctly Predicts: 54%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Change Score Estimate Constant Standard Error T-statistic
Income

3 .4277 -1.335 .4421 .9675

4 -. 5594 .9963 .6971 -.8026
Change
Unempl.

3 .0299 -1.335 .4163 .0717

4 -.03 73 .9963 .5440 -.0686
Depressed
Region

3 1.9881 -1.335 1.0985 1.8099*

4 3.1584 .9963 1.1677 27048“

dp/dx
2 3 4
Constant .1456 -.4187 .2731
Change Income -.0359 .1577 -. 1219
Change Unemplymt -.0026 .0108 -.0083
Depressed Region -.4256 .1689 .2567
d.f.=75

*= .10, significant in a one-tailed test

180

 

 

Table 3-12: Resource Mobilization Model Empirical Estimates

Number of cases: 89

Log of Likelihood Function: -58.8422

Correctly Predicts: 47%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Past Score Estimate Constant Standard Error T-statistic
Level
3 -l.823 3.871 .982 -l.856*
4 -3.769 4.437 1.192 -3.163*
Early
Election
3 -.273 3.871 .628 -.434
4 -.478 4.437 1.635 -.293
dp/dx
2 3 4
Constant -1 .277 1 .029 .247
Past Admin. Level .306 -.187 -.l 18
Early Elections .045 -.033 -.013
d.f.=87

*= .10, significant in a one-tailed test

181

 

 

Table 3-13: Combined Model Empirical Estimates

Number of cases: 89
Log of Likelihood Function: -51.0968
Correctly Predicts: 64%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Essentialism Autonomy Estimate Constant Standard Error T-statistic
Index Score

3 1.110 1.191 1.939 .573

4 .456 7.081 2.013 .226
PastLevel

3 -.379 1.191 1.944 -.195

4 -3.202 7.081 2.062 -1.553
Natural
Resources

3 1.640 1.191 .657 2498*

4 3.648 7.081 1.391 2622*
Depressed
Region

3 2.003 1.191 1.135 1.764*

4 1.912 7.081 1.786 1.071

dp/dx
2 3 4

Constant -.182 -.1 1 1 .293
Essentialism Index -. 15 1 . 180 -.029
Past Admin. Level -.061 .080 -. 140
Natural Resources -.232 . 128 .104
Depressed Region -.276 .274 .002

 

 

 

 

 

 

d.f.=87, *= .10, significant in a one-tailed test

182

Table 4-1: Mass vs. Elite Median Autonomy Scores for Each State

 

Mass Median Score Elite Median Score Difference in Median

 

Volgograd 1.00 3.00 +2.0
Kaliningrad 1.50 3.00 +1.5
Kirov 1.50 3.00 +1.5
Pskov 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Briansk 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Ivanovo 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Penza 2.00 2.50 +0.5
Novgorod 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Smolensk 2.00 2.00 same
Orel 2.00 2.00 same
Sakhalin 2.00 2.00 same
Arkhangelsk 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Kaluga 2.00 2.50 +0.5
Moscow Oblast 2.00 2.00 same
Riazan 2.00 2.00 same
T’ula 2.00 2.00 same
Tver 2.00 2.00 same
Belgorod 2.00 2.00 same
Kursk 2.00 2.00 same
Lipetsk 2.00 2.00 same
Vladimir 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Tambov 2.00 2.50 +0.5
Ulianovsk 2.00 2.00 same
Kurgan 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Altai Krai 2.00 3.00 ’ +1.0
Chuvashia 2.00 4.00 +2.0
Novosibirsk 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Orenburg 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Omsk 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Tomsk 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Agin-Buryat A0 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Chita 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Khakhassia 2.00 4.00 +2.0
Ust-Orda Buryat A0 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Amur 2.00 2.00 same
Mordovia 2.00 4.00 +2.0
Perm 2.00 2.50 +0.5
Magadan 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Rostov 2.00 2.00 same
Dagestan 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Mari-E1 2.00 4.00 +2.0
Adyegeya 2.00 4.00 +2.0
Tyumen 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Karachai-Cherkessia 2.00 3 .00 +1 .0

183

1811mm.)

 

Buryatia 2.00 4.00 +2.0
Samara 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Saratov 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Krasnoiarsk 2.00 3.00 +1.0
Komi 2.50 4.00 +1.5
Murmansk 2.50 3.00 +0.5
Cheliabinsk 2.50 3.00 +0.5
Kemerovo 2.50 3.00 +0.5
Nenets A0 2.50 4.00 +1.5
Vologda 2.50 3.00 +0.5
Leningrad 2.50 3.00 +0.5
Kostroma 2.50 2.00 -0.5
Yaroslavl 2.50 3.00 +0.5
Voronezh 2.50 3.00 +0.5
Astrakhan 2.50 3.00 +0.5
Khabarovsk Kr 2.50 3.00 +0.5
Chukota 2.50 4.00 +1.5
Koriak A0 2.50 2.00 -0.5
Pirmorskii Kr 2.50 3.00 +0.5
Karelia 3.00 4.00 +1.0
St. Petersburg 3.00 3.00 same
Moscow City 3.00 3.00 same
Kalmykia 3.00 4.00 +1.0
Sakha 3.00 4.00 +1.0
Udmurtia 3.00 4.00 +1.0
Stavropol Krai 3.00 2.00 -l.0
Nizhny Novgorod 3.00 3.00 same
Krasnodar Krai 3.00 2.00 -l.0
Yamal-Nenets A0 3.00 3.50 +0.5
Evenkii A0 3.00 2.50 -0.5
Irkutsk 3.00 3.00 same
Taimyr A0 3.00 3.50 +0.5
Jewish A0 3.00 3.00 same
Khanty-Mansii A0 3.00 3.50 +0.5
Kamchatka 3.00 2.50 -0.5
Altai 3.00 3.00 same
Sverdlovsk 3.00 3.00 same
North Ossetia 3.50 3.00 -0.5
Tuva 3.50 4.00 +0.5
Komi-Pennyak A0 3.50 3.00 -0.5
Bashkortostan 4.00 4.00 same
Ingushetia 4.00 4.00 same
Kabardino-Balkaria 4.00 3.00 -l.0
Tatarstan 4.00 4.00 same
Chechnya 5.00 5.00 same
N=89

184

Table 42: Difference Between Elites and Mass Autonomy Scores

   

Ete Demanding
2 Levels More Autonomy
Than The Masses

Elites Are Demanding
1.5 Levels More Autonomy
Than the Masses

Elites Are Demanding
1 Level More Autonomy
Than the Masses

Chuvashia
Mordovia
Khakhassia

Kaliningrad

Kirov

Chukota A0

Pskov

Ivanovo
Arkhangelsk

Kurgan

Novosibirsk

Omsk

Agin-Buryat AO
Ust-Orda Buryat AO
Dagestan
Karachai-Cherkessia
Saratov

Karelia
Sakha

Adegeia
Buryatia

Nenets AO
Komi

Briansk
Novgorod
Vladimir
Altai Krai
Orenburg
Tomsk
Chita
Magadan
Tyumen
Samara
Krasnoiarsk
Kahnykia
Udmurtia

Elites are Demanding the Same Penza Smolensk

or Within .5 of Level of Autonomy Orel Sakhalin

Demanded by the Masses Kaluga Moscow Oblast
Riazan T’ula

(* indicates elites were Tver ’ Belgorod

less demanding than Kursk Lipetsk

their masses) Tambov Ulianovsk
Amur Rostov
Murmansk Cheliabinsk
Kemerovo Vologda
Leningrad Kostroma“
Yaroslavl Voronezh
Astrakhan Khabarovsk Kr
Koriak AO* Primorskii Kr
St. Petersburg Moscow City
Nizhny Novgorod Evenkii AO*
Irkutsk Taimyr AO
Jewish AO Khanty-Masni AO
Kamchatka* Altai
Sverdlovsk North Ossetia“
Tuva Komi-Permyak AO*
Bashkortostan Tatarstan
Inashetia Chechnya

Elites are Demanding 1 Level Stavropol Krai Kabardino-Balkaria

Less Autonomy than the Masses Krasnodar Krai

185

 

Table 4-3: Correlation Between Essentialism Index and Mass Autonomy Scores

Mass Actors’

Median Autonomy

Score

Cultural Distance from Center

Kendall’s tau-b correlation coefficent

**p=.000

.409M
(n=89)

 

Crosstabs: Essentialism and Median Autonomy Score

Median Autonomy Score

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mass Actors
Potential for the Unitarist 1.5 Strong 2.5 Loose 3.5 Ethno- Indepen-
Development of Federalist Federalist federalis dence
a Separate t
National
Identity
No potential 1 2 35 1 1 8
Low potential 4 5
Medium 7 4 1
Potential
High Potential 2 1 2
Highest 4 1
Potential

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

186

 

Table 4-4: Correlation Between Instrumentalism
Indicators and the Median Autonomy Score for Mass Actors

 

Percent of the Local Budget

WW
Median Autonomy .103
SecreteLMassAmers (n=85)
(p=.227)

 

Median Autonomy

SceLLEQLMassAgtnrs

Median Autonomy

MW

.209
(n=89)
(p=.034)

-.235
(n=89)
(p=.017)

187

Table 4-5: Correlation Between Relative Deprivation
Indicators and the Median Autonomy Score of Mass Actors

 

Rate of Income Growth 1 1993-1224)

Median Autonomy

 

WE .209
(n=78)
(p=.016)
WW
9‘ -94

Median Autonomy

W -.138
(n=8 1)
(p=. 106)

 

‘6

Median Autonomy

SmienMasaAstms -.017
(n=89)
(p=.865)

188

Table 4-6: Income Growth by Autonomy Position of Mass Actors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Median Autonomy Slow Growth Medium Growth High Grth
Position (2-3.25%) (3.25-4.25%) (4.258%)
Unitary 1 0 O
1.5 l l 0
Strong Federalist 12 28 3
2.5 1 10 1
Loose Federalist 3 4 6
3 .5 1 1 ‘ 1
Ethnofederalist 1 3 0
Independence 0 1 0
TOTAL 20 48 11

189

Table 4-7: Past Administrative Level by Mass Autonomy Scores

 

P E l . I v]

Median Autonomy Score

fQLMassActors .390
(n=89)
(p=.000)

 

190

Table 4-8: Essentialism Model Empirical Estimates

 

Number of cases: 89

Log of Likelihood Function: -67.431

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Essentialism Score Estimate Constant Standard Error T-statistic
Index
3 .267 -.486 .212 1.258
4 1.679 -5.269 .500. 3.360“
dp/dx
2 3 4
Constant . 191 .002 -. 193
Essentialism Index -.085 .026 .059
d.f.=87
*= .10, significant in a one-tailed test
Actual Scores
Predicted Scores 2 3 4
2 38 28 1
3 9 5 2
4 0 3 3

 

 

 

 

 

Correctly Predicts: 46/89, 52%

191

 

 

 

Table 4-9: Instrumental Model Empirical Estimates

 

Number of cases: 85
Log of Likelihood Function: -68.7657

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Defense Score Estimate Constant ‘ Standard Error T-statistic
3 -.682 -.471 .495 -1.378
4 -.887 —3.332 1.214 -.731
Natural
Resources
3 .726 -.471 .476 1.523
4 1.283 -3.332 1.002 1.280
Budget
Subsidies
3 -.682 -.471 .011 .467
4 .032 -3.332 1.002 1.280
dp/dx*
2 3 4
Constant . 182 -.022 V -. 160
Defense Region .161 -.133 -.028
Natural Resources -. 181 . 133 .048
Budget Subsidies -.002 .0003 .002
d.f.=81
ActuaLScnnes
Predicted Scores 2 3 4
2 4O 7 O
3 21 12 O
4 3 2 0

 

 

 

 

 

 

Correctly predicts: 52/85, 61%

192

Table 4-10: Relative Deprivation Model Empirical Estimates

 

Number of cases: 78

Log of Likelihood Function: -58.4017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Income Score Estimate Constant Standard Error T-statistic
Growth
3 1.149 -3.45 .534 2.150*
4 -.380 —3 .506 1.082 -.285
Unem-
ployment
3 -.504 -3.45 .459 -1.098
4 .687 -3.506 .575 1.195
Depressed
Region
3 -1.095 -3.45 .702 -1.558
4 1.881 -3.506 1.115 1687*
dp/dx*
2 3 4
Constant .757 -.612 -.145
Income Growth -. 191 .223 -.032
Unemployment .061 -. 105 .044
Depressed Region .1 17 -.234 .1 17
d.f.=74
ActuaLSmrzes
Predicted Scores 2 3 4
2 42 3 1
3 17 10 0
4 5 0 0

 

 

 

 

 

193

 

 

 

Table 4-11: Resource Mobilization Model Empirical Estimates

 

Number of cases: 89
Log of Likelihood Function: -69.9976

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Past Score Estimate Constant Standard Error T-statistic
Administrative
Level
3 .361 .883 .206 1.748*
4 1.582 1.677 .539 2937*
dp/dx
2 3 4
Constant l .217 -.159 -.059
Past Admin. Level l -.107 .038 .069
d.f.=87
*= .10, significant in a one-tailed test
Actual Stores
Predicted Scores 2 3 4
2 40 8 O
3 26 9 0
4 1 5 0

 

 

 

 

 

Correctly Predicts: 49/89, 55%

194

 

 

 

Table 4-12: Combined Model Estimates

 

Number of cases: 89

Log of Likelihood Function: -59.5666

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Natural Score Estimate Constant Standard Error T-statistic
Resources
3 .387 -.527 .491 .788
4 1.822 -10.029 1.461 1.247
Essentialism
Index
3 .686 -.527 .305 2248*
4 3.95 -10.029 1.534 2574*
Depressed
Region
3 -2. 166 -.527 .957 -2.263*
4 -5.664 -10.029 2.591 -2.186*
dp/dx*
2 3 4
Constant .207 .085 -.292
Natural Resources -.094 .047 .047
Essentialism Index -. 174 .069 .105
Depressed Region .480 -.352 -.128
d.f.=85
ActnaLSmLes
Predicted Scores 2 3 4
2 44 3 1
3 20 12 3
4 O 1 5

 

 

 

 

 

195

 

 

 

 

Table 4-13: Mass Predicts Elite Behavior Empirical Estimates

Number of cases: 89

Log of Likelihood Function: -83.6902

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Median Score Estimate Constant Standard Error T-statistic
Autonomy
Score for
Masses
3 .910 -l.399 .541 1.681*
4 1.925 1.532 .620 3.104*
dp/dx
2 3 4
Constant .399 . 167 -. 566
Mass Autonomy -.207 .028 .179
Scores
d.f.=87
*= .10, significant in a one-tailed test
Actual Seance
Predicted Scores 2 3 4
2 1 23 0
3 2 44 1
4 0 l4 4

 

 

 

 

 

Correctly Predicts: 49/89, 55%

196

 

 

 

Table 4-14: Combined Model Empirical Estimates

 

Number of cases: 89
Log of Likelihood Function: -62.0486

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Essentialism Autonomy Estimate Constant Standard T-statistic
Index Score Error

3 1.497 -1.324 .994 1.506

4 2.868 -3.422 1.062 2.701 *
Natural
Resources

3 1.529 -1.324 .664 2303*

4 2.424 -3.422 .989 2450*
Depressed
Region

3 2.068 -1.324 1.138 1.818*

4 1.354 -3.422 1.534 .882
Mass Median
Position

3 .446 -1.324 .691 .646

4 .031 -3.422 .898 .035

dp/dx
2 3 4

Constant .203 -.001 -.203
Essentialism Index -.220 .081 .138
Natural Resources -.220 .123 .096
Depressed Region -.278 .322 -.044
Mass Median Score -.057 .091 -.033

 

d.f.=84

*= .10, significant in a one-tailed test

Correctly predicts: 57/89, 64%

197

 

 

Table 5-1: Ranking the Variation in State Elite Positions, 1991-1995

 

State Standard Deviation from the Median Number of Events
Mordovia l .363 14
Udmurtia 1.195 ‘ l4
Nenets AO 1.155 3
Orel 1.155 6
Chukota AO 1.155 3
Kalmykia 1.085 17
Ingushetia 1.049 30
Kabardino-Balkaria 1 .047 21
Amur 1.000 5
Yarnal Nenets A0 .968 4
Evenkii A0 .968 4
Taimyr A0 .957 6
Orenburg .926 7
Komi .901 16
Dagestan .889 19
North Ossetia .874 30
Karachai-Cherkessia .853 1 l
Kaliningrad .845 14
Krasnoiarsk .842 24
Chita .816 12
Komi-Permyak .81 6 3
Samara .816 12
Ust-Orda Buryat A0 .816 3
Agin-Buryat A0 .816 3
Sakha .812 41
Chechnya .806 60
Buryatia .802 14
Adegeya .791 8
Tyumen .791 8
Saratov .784 13
Karelia .775 25
Jewish A0 .775 S
Khanti-Mansii A0 .764 6
Moscow Oblast .756 7
Krasnodar .739 11
Chuvashia .734 13
Yaroslavl .707 4
Tatarstan .665 43
Moscow City .663 25
Arkhangelsk .655 7
Tomsk .655 7
Tula .655 7
Altai Krai .655 7
Kursk .632 5
Rostov .632 10
Leningrad Oblast .632 5

198

b e - o ’t.
Ulianovsk
Volgograd
Sakhalin
Khakhassia
Kemerovo
Smolensk
Kurgan
Altai Republic
Primorskii Krai
Ivanovo
Astrakhan
Kostroma
Murmansk
Novgorod
Pskov
Novosibirsk
Voronezh
Briansk
Bashkortostan
Kirov
Vladimir
Magadan
Kamchatka
Stavropol
Chelyabinsk
Perm
Belgorod
Kaluga
Lipetsk
Tambov
Penza
Nizhny Novgorod
Tuva
Omsk
St. Petersburg
Khabarovsk
Mari-El
Vologda
Irkutsk
Sverdlovsk

Tver
Riazan
Koriakii A0

.612
.612
.612
.603
.598

.577

.559
.535
.535
.511

.500

.463
.447
.447
.426
.408
.378
.378
.354
.209

.000

199

#u—-

N

0\

ON

MN

N-—-\JQONNLA~—AA#NA\I~—NAANA\lxl—wmwwww—cxww—~oooooo
was N VIA

r—u—N

Table 5—2: Variance in Elite Positions By Administrative Division

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Variance Ethnic States Non-Ethnic States
High (.875+) 80% 20%
(n=12) (n=3)
Medium (.6-.874) 43% 57%
(n=15) (n=20)
Low (.20-.599) 11% 91%
(n=4) (n=32)

 

* Three states (Koriak AO, Riazan, Tver) are not included because of no variation, due to each
having too few recorded events to evaluate.

200

 

 

Table 5-3: Median State Responses to ShiftinLCenter Strategies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

States in order Overall Summer Spring March October December Post War
of variation Median 1990-4/91 1991-3/92 1992-9/93 93-11/93 1993-12/94
CENTER ---- 5.00 4.00 4.00 . 1.00 2.00 1.00
Mordovia 4.0 3.00 4.00 3.00 4.00 2.00 4.00
Udmurtia 4.0 5.00 1.00 4.00 4.00 3.50 4.00
Kalmykia 4.0 3.50 4.00 4.00 3.00 no events 2.50
Ingushetia 4.0 (not a state) 3.00 4.00 4.00 2.50 4.00
Kab-Balk. 3.0 5.00 2.50 2.00 3.00 2.00 4.00
Komi 4.0 3.50 4.00 4.00 4.00 3.50 3.00
Dagestan 3.0 no events 4.00 3.00 3.00 2.00 2.00
N.OSsetia 3.0 2.00 4.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.50
Karach- 3.0 4.00 4.00 3.50 no events 2.00 2.00
Cherkes

Kaliningrad 3.0 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 no events 2.00
Krasnoiarsk 3.0 no events 2.00 3.00 2.50 no events 2.00
Chita 3.0 3.00 2.50 3.00 3.00 no events 2.50
Samara 3.0 2.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 no events 2.00
Sakha 4.0 3.00 3.00 4.00 3.00 4.00 4.00
Chechnya 5.0 4.50 4.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00
Buryatia 4.0 4.00 4.00 4.00 3.00 3.00 2.50
Saratov 3.0 3.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 no events 3.00
Karelia 4.0 no events 4.00 4.00 3.50 3.50 3.50
Krasnodar 2.0 3.00 2.00 3.00 2.50 2.00 2.00
Chuvashia 4.0 4.00 4.00 4.00 3.00 no events 4.00
Tatarstan 4.0 4.50 5.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00
MoscowCity 3.0 3.00 3.00 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.00
Rostov 2.0 3.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 2.00 2.00
Khakhassia 4.0 no events no events 4.00 3.50 no events 3.00
Kemerovo 3.0 3.00 2.00 3.00 3.00 2.00 3.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

201

 

IA.'1I .1.

 

Condemned the Action Criticized the
Condemnation

Mari-E1 Moscow Oblast

Tatarstan Chita

Bashkortostan Kostroma

Komi Moscow City

Chuvashia Karachai-Cherkessia

Mordovia Rostov

Karelia Stavropol

Ingushetia

Udmurtia

Irkutsk

Sakha

Tuva

 

202

Table 5-5: Trends in Regional Variation Over Time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Spring March October December Post-War
1990 1991 1992 1993 1993 1995

Median 5 4 4 1 2 1
Center

Median 3 3 3 3 3 3
Regions (n=43) (n=48) (n=78) (n=57) (n=28) (n=65)
# states 0 2 1 57 17 65
>Center

# states 3 15 26 0 11 O
= Center

# states 40 31 51 O O 0
< Center

# states n/a 5 15 5 4 6

I from
previous

period

# states n/a 11 9 22 9 3

1 from
previous

period

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

203

 

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