Politics in Russia (Late 80s to Present) HWK : 10 1-page Max Answers

SECESSIONISM FROM THE BOTTOM UP

Democratization, Nationalism, and Local Accountability in the Russian Transition

By ELISE GIULIANO*

IN the early 1990s Russia stood at the precipice of state failure. De-mands for autonomy radiated from Russia’s ethnic republics, threat- ening to split the federation along ethnic lines as had happened to the Soviet Union before it. Russia’s republics had begun appropriating power from Moscow during the late Soviet era. With the collapse of the USSR, several accelerated their quest, asserting control over natural resources, defying federal laws, and introducing republican presiden- cies. The decisions some republics made to boycott federal elections and stop paying federal taxes lent momentum to a process that seemed likely to end in Russia’s disintegration.

Events in Russia, together with those in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have reanimated a discussion about the causes of seces- sionism and the relationship of secessionism to ethnic confl ict and state collapse. Some scholars argue that secessionism develops in ethnic fed- erations because their institutional structure generates identities, actors, and resources that facilitate ethnic mobilization and weaken the central state. Ethnofederalism,1 in this view, caused Yugoslavia, the USSR, and

* I would like to thank participants at the Comparative Politics Workshop at the University of Chicago,the Post-Communist Politics and Economics Workshop at Harvard University, and the Laboratory in Comparative Ethnic Processes for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I acknowledge Dawn Brancati, Stephen Hanson, Harris Mylonas, Josh Tucker, Pieter Van Houten, Lucan Way, and, in particular, Yoshiko Herrera and the anonymous reviewers for excellent sugges- tions. I am grateful to Mark Beissinger, Dmitri Gorenburg, and Jeff Kahn for sharing their data. Fi- nancial support for this article was provided by Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, the Kennan Institute, the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute, Harvard University’s Davis Center for Rus- sian and Eurasian Studies, the American Political Science Association, and the International Research and Exchanges Board.

1 Philip Roeder popularized this term in Roeder, “Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization,” World Politics 43 ( January 1991).

World Politics 58 ( January 2006), 276–310

2 Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Svante E. Cornell, “Autonomy as a Source of Confl ict: Caucasian Confl icts in Theoretical Perspective,” World Politics 54 ( January 2002); Carol Skalnik Leff, “Democratization and Disintegration in Multinational States: The Breakup of the Communist Federations,” World Politics 51 ( January 1999); Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, “Political Identities and Electoral Sequences: Spain, the Soviet Union, and Yugosla- via,” Daedalus 122 (Spring 1992); Roeder (fn.1); idem, “The Triumph of Nation-States: Lessons from the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia,” in Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, eds., After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Ronald Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993).

3 Nancy Bermeo, “The Import of Institutions,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002); Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Henry Hale makes the more fi ne-grained argument that ethnofederal collapse is more likely when states contain a core ethnic region. See Hale, “Divided We Stand: Institutional Sources of Ethnofederal State Survival and Col- lapse,” World Politics 56 ( January 2004).

4 In practice, however, the autonomy of all ethnic regions was very limited. Ruth Lapidoth, Au- tonomy: Flexible Solutions to Ethnic Confl icts (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996).

5 Thus, I exclude republics that were elevated from autonomous oblast to republic in 1991: Ady- gei, Gorni Altai, Khakassia, and Karachai-Cherkessia. I also exclude Ingushetia, which split off from Checheno-Ingushetia in 1992. These republics displayed very little separatism and therefore add no variation to the original sixteen.

Czechoslovakia to rupture along ethnic lines.2 Others scholars disagree, maintaining that, to the contrary, ethnofederalism reduces confl ict and “preserves peace.”3 Because some of Russia’s ethnic regions demon- strated separatism while others remained quiescent, examining Russia offers an opportunity to better specify whether and how ethnic federa- tions promote regional secessionism.

This article asks why secessionism emerged in Russia and why cer- tain republics were more secessionist than others. It compares Russia’s sixteen autonomous republics (ARs) that were ranked just below the union republics (URs) in the USSR’s ethnoterritorial administrative hierar- chy. Soviet leaders established the ARs as homelands for certain ethnic groups though large populations of ethnic Russians lived in the repub- lics as well. Russia’s ARs looked considerably more like states than the lower-ranked autonomous oblasts and autonomous okrugs, insofar as they had their own legislatures, executives, and judiciaries, as well as fl ags, constitutions, and some national language education. In addition, com- pared with lower-ranked territories, ARs were allowed greater, albeit symbolic, representation in the federal government and limited rights to set local administrative policy.4 I compare only those regions that held the status of autonomous republic before 1991, in order to hold constant these factors of rights, privileges, and institutional develop- ment.5 I also focus on the ARs because they, like Russia’s oblasts, were politically more important than lower-level ethnic territories.

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Post-Soviet political science has developed a conventional wisdom— which we may call the “wealth hypothesis”—that explains secessionism in Russia by focusing on structural economic conditions in the repub- lics. According to this approach, leaders of resource-rich, economically developed republics were motivated by their republics’ wealth to make separatist demands on Moscow. Leaders of comparatively poor repub- lics, by contrast, lacked such motivation.6 This argument elucidates a general logic in which structural economic conditions induce actors to support secession when they expect to profi t from it.7 The logic of the wealth hypothesis seems persuasive. Yet not all wealthy republics were secessionist, whereas some poor republics were. The variable of wealth, therefore, cannot account for separatism among Russia’s republics.8 Moreover, by focusing solely on economic structure, the wealth hy- pothesis fails to consider how the massive political transformations oc- curring at the time affected relations between Moscow and republican leaders and relations among actors within the republics. The approach developed in this article brings politics back into the study of republi- can secessionism.

I argue that disintegration of the Soviet Union’s centralized, single- party system produced a contest for political control inside Russia’s re- publics—and that that contest determined the strength of separatist demands the republics made on Moscow. With the massive transfor-

6 The three main comparative studies on secessionism in the Soviet republics are Kisangani Emizet and Vicki Hesli, “The Disposition to Secede: An Analysis of the Soviet Case,” Comparative Political Studies 27 ( January 1995); Daniel S. Treisman, “Russia’s ‘Ethnic Revival’: The Separatist Activism of Regional Leaders in a Postcommunist Order,” World Politics 49 ( January 1997); and Henry Hale, “The Parade of Sovereignties: Testing Theories of Secession in the Soviet Setting,” British Journal of Political Science 30 ( January 2000). See also Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, “Federalism and Regionalism” in Stephen White, Alex Pravda, and Zvi Gitelman, eds., Developments in Russian Politics 4 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 239.

7 This logic was originally delineated by Ernest Gellner, Donald Horowitz, Michael Hechter, Peter Gourevitch, and Tom Nairn. Gourevitch and Nairn hypothesize that relatively economically advanced ethnic elites in politically peripheral regions support secessionism to develop their regions’ potential. Horowitz and Hechter argue, by contrast, that relative economic backwardness inspires ethnic groups to increase their region’s prospects through secession. See Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change (Chi- cago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 147–78; idem, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1983); Donald Horowitz, “Patterns of Ethnic Separatism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (1981); idem, Ethnic Groups in Confl ict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); idem, “Group Formation and the Cultural Division of Labor,” American Journal of Sociology 84, no. 2 (1978); Peter Gourevitch, Paris and the Provinces (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo- Nationalism (London: NLB, 1977).

8 In the same vein, Yoshiko Herrera’s study of sovereignty movements in Russia fi nds that regional wealth did not drive campaigns for sovereignty among Russia’s nonethnic regions in the early 1990s. Instead, in certain oblasts, economic interests were constructed in ways that produced demands for sovereignty. See Herrera, Imagined Economies: The Sources of Russian Regionalism (New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 2005).

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mations of late perestroika, communist leaders in the republics sud- denly found themselves accountable to local constituencies rather than to Moscow. Three key aspects of democratization at the center pro- duced this shift in accountability. First, the dissolution of the Com- munist Party (CPSU) ended the nomenklatura system in which regional leaders were appointed according to party lists maintained by Moscow. Second, the fi rst semicompetitive elections to republican parliaments were held in 1990, introducing new representatives with new ideas into what had been rubber-stamp legislatures. Third, Gorbachev’s glasnost allowed informal organizations to emerge and employ grassroots tac- tics such as mass demonstrations. In certain republics, the most popu- lar, visible, and vocal of these organizations became ethnonationalist movements, which developed into a critical, yet commonly overlooked variable in Russia’s transition. Together then, these three aspects of lib- eralization transformed Russia’s republics very quickly from hollow ad- ministrative units into new competitive arenas or, in the words of Carol Leff, into “separate and distinct political marketplaces.”9

Once we recognize that change in the center restructured the incen- tives of republican leaders by creating a contest for local control, it is possible to theorize how relations among subfederal actors—nomen- klatura leaders, opposition nationalist movements, and mass publics— infl uenced secessionism vis-à-vis Moscow. As glasnost progressed in the late 1980s, popular opinion in several of Russia’s republics began to support nationalist programs of increased rights for titular nationalities and greater republican autonomy.10 In those republics where national- ist movements were gaining popularity, the very visible fact of growing crowds at rallies and the rising status of opposition leaders on the street and in local parliaments represented a palpable threat to incumbents. Communist leaders were pressured into addressing nationalist pro- grams and petitioning Moscow for autonomy. In other republics, na- tionalists replaced nomenklatura leaders and led campaigns for sover- eignty themselves. These scenarios occurred in republics that mounted the strongest challenges to federal authority: Tatarstan, Tuva, Chech- nya, Yakutia, and Bashkortostan.11 Conversely, in republics where na- tionalist movements failed to attract support, incumbents could ignore nationalist appeals with impunity and remain safely in offi ce.

9 Leff (fn. 2), 210. 10 The term titular denotes the ethnic group for which the republic is named, for example, Tatars

in Tatarstan. 11 I use the post-Soviet names of Russia’s republics throughout this article for consistency, except

when discussing Checheno-Ingushetia before Ingushetia separated from the republic in 1992.

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I argue that variation in popular support for nationalism can explain the level of republican secessionism toward Moscow. This variable can account for cases that the wealth hypothesis is at a loss to explain. While the secessionist republics of Tatarstan, Yakutia, and Bashkortostan were relatively resource rich, the fact of secessionism in Tuva—a tiny, poor republic whose economy centered on livestock herding—fl atly contra- dicts the wealth hypothesis. Likewise, secessionism in Chechnya can- not be explained by the wealth hypothesis. While Chechnya contained some crude oil and an oil pipeline connecting Russia with refi neries in Baku, its reserves made up a minuscule 1 percent of Russia’s to- tal output in 1992, and its pipeline was threatened with redundancy by new pipeline projects already under way that bypassed the repub- lic.12 Chechnya and Tuva rank among Russia’s poorest regions, whether measured in terms of raw materials, population size, standard of liv- ing, or industrial production—yet they were among the most seces- sionist.13 Moreover, the presence of rich natural resources did not spur separatism in Komi—a highly industrialized republic that contained enormous coal deposits and signifi cant oil and gas fi elds. The fact that the wealth hypothesis can explain neither separatism in the poor re- publics nor its absence in the rich ones14 suggests that we need another explanation for variation in republican secessionism. Popular support for nationalism, I will show, was present in secessionist republics but missing in quiescent ones.

If popular nationalism was critical in driving republican secession- ism, where did it come from? Did incumbent leaders foment mass na- tionalism in order to strengthen their republic’s negotiating position with Moscow?15 If so, this would mean that incumbents were able to act autonomously at this time of unprecedented political ferment. Yet Gorbachev’s policies drained power from the Communist Party, intro-

12 Anatoly Khazanov, After the USSR: Ethnicity, Nationalism and Politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 219.

13 Oksana Genrikhovna Dmitrieva, Regional’naia ekonomicheskaia diagnostika (Regional economic diagnostics) (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universiteta Ekonomiki i Finansov, 1992), 128–32.

14 Similarly, Russia’s wealthiest ethnic regions—the autonomous okrugs of Khanty-Mansisk and Yamal-Nenets—also failed to make separatist demands. Though these regions, as okrugs, had fewer institutions, rights, and privileges than republics, they were far richer, producing 80 percent of Russia’s oil and gas. Roy Bahl and Christine I. Wallich, “Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations in the Russian Federation,” in Richard M. Bird, Robert D. Ebel, and Christine I. Wallich, eds., Decentralization of the Socialist State (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1995), 326. After federal relations had stabilized in the late 1990s, okrug leaders demanded administrative independence from Tyumen oblast to retain more control over natural resources. See “Khanty-Mansi Avtonomnyi Okrug,” in Regiony Rossii: statis- ticheskii sbornik (Russia’s regions: Statistical handbook) (Moscow: Goskomstat, 1999).

15 This argument can be found in Roeder (fn. 2); Treisman (fn. 6); and Jeff Kahn, Federalism, De- mocratization, and the Rule of Law in Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 126–32.

280 W O R L D P O L I T I C S

duced competitive elections, and allowed opposition groups to form, all of which eroded the autonomy of incumbents within their republics. Moreover, the view that republican leaders effortlessly manipulated masses into a nationalist fervor treats elites as strategic actors but mass populations as passive instruments who were either (1) “genuine” na- tionalists, patiently waiting for their chance at statehood or (2) Soviet subjects, dutifully obeying their leaders’ commands.16 This approach essentializes ethnic populations and overestimates the power of ethnic- ity as a basis of political action. Instead, republican residents, like citizens in Russia’s nonethnic regions, behaved rationally, backing one or another politician and occasionally shifting or withdrawing their support.

What, then, were the origins of popular support for nationalism? The explanation offered in this article focuses on how increasing com- petition for jobs in the Soviet Union’s failing economy allowed par- ticular issues articulated by nationalist leaders to resonate with ethnic populations. Nationalists claimed that their ethnic groups were denied full participation in republican economies due to blocked access to de- sirable jobs and resources. They deplored titulars’ socioeconomic sub- ordination to Russians, blamed a discriminatory central state, and ar- gued that achieving republican sovereignty would eliminate oppression. However, the nationalists’ claims were at odds with the fact that titulars had made astonishing professional gains under Soviet rule due to of- fi cial policies of affi rmative action. But the way in which the nation- alists framed issues of ethnic economic inequality resonated because it provided people with an interpretation of their current experience of rising competition for jobs in an exceptionally insecure environ- ment. Nationalist leaders politicized ethnicity by convincing people to connect personal material interests to one of their social identities— ethnicity. They persuaded people that their personal life chances de- pended on the political fate of their ethnic community.

This article is structured as follows. Section I defi nes the dependent variable by introducing a new coding of secessionism in Russia’s sixteen republics. Sections II and III explain (1) the origins of popular nation- alism within the republics and (2) the infl uence of popular nationalism on republican secessionism from 1989 to 1994. In Section II, evidence presented for the origins of mass nationalism is based on analysis of

16 Dmitri Gorenburg’s work is an exception. He shows how local institutions produced variation in mass nationalist mobilization across Russia’s republics, in Gorenburg, Minority Ethnic Mobilization in the Russian Federation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Hale recognizes that masses may have different preferences than leaders, but he posits that macroeconomic factors infl uenced all actors in the republics uniformly. See Hale (fn. 6).

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data on the ethnic composition of republican workforces, as well as on a discourse analysis of nationalist platforms and local newspaper articles published in the republics. Section III demonstrates that mass nation- alism infl uenced secessionism, using data showing correlations between secessionism, on the one hand, and ethnic demonstrations and ethnic violent events in the republics, on the other. In addition, case studies of three republics demonstrate that mass nationalism in Tuva and Ya- kutia infl uenced republican demands on Moscow at key moments in their sovereignty campaigns, while low mass nationalism in Mari-El resulted in low secessionism there. I maximize variation on the inde- pendent variable of mass nationalism by comparing two cases that are representative of Russia’s secessionist republics, Tuva and Yakutia, with Mari-El, a case that typifi es Russia’s low-secession republics. In addi- tion, the comparison of Tuva and Yakutia casts doubt on the wealth hypothesis insofar as these republics differ in terms of wealth (Tuva is poor; Yakutia is wealthy) but share a common outcome: secessionism. Section IV offers conclusions.

I. SECESSIONISM AMONG RUSSIA’S REPUBLICS

To determine levels of secessionism among Russia’s republics, I use a fourteen-point coding index based on actions initiated by the repub- lics, as well as on their responses to Moscow’s policies during the years 1989–94. My coding captures the main ways in which the republics challenged Moscow and improves upon previous codings that have relied on a single indicator, omitted key developments in center- periphery relations, and miscoded the critical case of Tuva.17 The indica- tors (discussed below; and listed in Table 1) show that the most secessionist republics were Tatarstan, Tuva, Chechnya, Bashkortostan, and Yakutia.18

In the earliest separatist act, all of the autonomous republics issued declarations of sovereignty following the Russian Soviet Federated So- cialist Republic’s (RSFSR) momentous decision to do so in June 1990 (indicator 1). For the next year and a half Gorbachev tried to preserve the Soviet Union and undermine the growing power of Boris Yeltsin by offering more rights to the autonomous republics, even suggesting that

17 See Emizet and Hesli’s (fn. 6) use of the timing of Supreme Soviets’ sovereignty declarations as a single indicator of secessionism (p. 500); and Treisman’s (fn. 6) miscoding of Tuva (pp. 224–25).

18 Leading Russian specialists also identify these republics as the most separatist. See Valery Tish- kov, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Confl ict in and after the Soviet Union (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 58; Leokadia Drobizheva, Natsional’noe samosoznanie i natsionalizm v Rossiiskoi Federatsii nach- ala 1990-x godov (National consciousness and nationalism in the Russian Federation in the early 1990s) (Moscow: Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1994).

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TABLE 1 INDEX OF SECESSIONISM IN RUSSIA’S REPUBLICS

(1989–94)

1. Declared sovereignty 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2. Boycotted RSFSR 1 1 1 1 presidency referendum, 1991 3. Established presidency 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4. Passed language law 1 1 1 1 1 5. Titular language sole 1 language 6. Set own tax policy/ 1 1 1 1 1 1 stopped paying taxes 7. Refused to sign Yeltsin’s 1 1 Federation Treaty, 1992 8. Held sovereignty 1 1 referendum 9. Adopted constitution 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 10. Before new RF 1 1 1 constitution? 11. With right to secede? 1 1 12. Republic law supreme? 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 13. Boycotted/ invalid 1 1 referendum on Yeltsin, April 1993 14. Boycotted referendum 1 1 on RF constitution, Dec. 1993 Index of Secessionism 12 10 9 8 6 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 1

T at

ar st

an

T uv

a

C he

ch ny

a

Y ak

ut ia

B as

hk or

to st

an

K al

m yk

ia

K ar

el ia

B ur

ya ti

a

N . O

ss et

ia

K om

i

K ab

ar di

no -B

al ka

ri a

C hu

va sh

ia

U dm

ur ti

a

D ag

es ta

n

M ar

i- E

l

M or

do va

their status in a “renewed federation” would match that of the Union republics.19 Yeltsin also promised the ARs greater recognition within a sovereign Russia, telling them, “Take as much sovereignty as you can handle.”20 Despite Yeltsin’s efforts, fewer voters in the republics than in the rest of the RSFSR voted to create a Russian (read: Yeltsin) presidency in a March 1991 referendum. Tatarstan, Tuva, Checheno- Ingushetia, and North Ossetia even refused to hold the referendum (indicator 2).21

After the Soviet collapse, the behavior of the republics diverged. Some scaled back their separatist activity. Others took advantage of central state weakness by establishing presidencies (indicator 3), draft- ing constitutions, and passing language laws (indicator 4), some of which named the titular language as the sole offi cial state language (indicator 5). When Yeltsin’s program of shock therapy led to rampant infl ation and reduced central fi nancing of regional budgets, a few re- publics began to withhold tax revenue and/or set their own tax policy.22 Tatarstan, Tuva, and Chechnya, for example, “virtually ceased paying their taxes in 1993,” while Yakutia and Bashkortostan regularly delayed remitting taxes to Moscow (indicator 6).23

A constitutional crisis cum power struggle between the executive and legislative branches of Russia’s federal government developed, prompting Yeltsin to try to secure the republics’ support by drafting a Federation Treaty that was to become part of the new Russian constitu- tion. The Federation Treaty acknowledged republican sovereignty and granted special rights to ethnic regions. Though most republics voted the treaty into law in March 1992, Tatarstan and Chechnya refused to

19 Thus, a majority of the electorate in the ARs (82.6 percent) voted to preserve the USSR in the March 1991 referendum. See Edward Walker, Dissolution: Sovereignty and the Breakup of the Soviet Union (New York: Rowman and Littlefi eld, 2003), 96, 102, 117; Vladimir Shlapentokh, Roman Lev- ita, and Mikhail Loiberg, From Submission to Rebellion: The Provinces versus the Center in Russia (Boul- der, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), 91; and Yurii Baturin, “Shakhmatnaia diplomatia v Novo-Ogarevo,” Democratizatsia 2 (Spring 1994).

20 E. Chernobrovkina, “Reshat’ vam samim,” Vechernaia kazan (August 10, 1990), 1. 21 Ann Sheehy, “The All-Union and RSFSR Referendums of March 17,” RFE/RL Research Report

3 (March 29, 1991), 22. Results of the presidential election in June 1991 indicate the same pattern: Yeltsin won 50.6 percent of the votes in the autonomous regions compared with 58.4 percent in the RSFSR as a whole. Walker (fn. 19), 117, 123–24.

22Elizabeth Teague, “Center-Periphery Relations in the Russian Federation,” in Roman Szpor- luk, ed., National Identity and Ethnicity in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 42; and Darrel Slider, “Federalism, Discord, and Accommodation: Intergovernmental Relations in Post-Soviet Russia,” in Theodore Friedgut and Jeffrey Hahn, eds., Local Power and Post- Soviet Politics (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 249.

23 Ingushetia and North Ossetia declared bankruptcy and also reduced tax payments to Mos- cow; Shlapentokh, Levita, and Loiberg (fn. 19), 169. See also Jeremy Azrael and Emil Payin, Confl ict and Consensus in Ethno-Political and Center-Periphery Relations in Russia (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Conference Proceedings, 1998), 29.

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sign, and Bashkortostan signed only after Moscow added an appendix recognizing its independence. Yakutia also took an oppositional stance throughout the negotiations and signed after obtaining an agreement allowing it to retain part of the revenue from diamonds and gold on its territory (indicator 7).24

At about the same time, certain republics initiated highly destabi- lizing acts. In Tatarstan 61 percent of the population voted yes in a referendum on state sovereignty that many interpreted as a vote for independence.25 Bashkortostan held a similar, but less radical referen- dum a year later (indicator 8). In another series of challenges, most re- publics adopted constitutions (indicator 9). Tatarstan, Tuva, Chechnya, and Yakutia did so prior to the December 1993 referendum on Russia’s federal constitution organized by Yeltsin (indicator 10).26 The boldest republican constitutions contested Moscow’s authority by stipulating that republican law took supremacy over federal law and specifi ed the right to secede in the case of Tuva (indicators 11 and 12).27

In a critical event in April 1993, Yeltsin held a national referendum on his leadership and reformist policies in order to delegitimize the antireform federal legislature. A majority of Russia’s population voted for Yeltsin, but support varied in the republics, with six of the sixteen voting against him.28 Two republics, Tatarstan and Chechnya, blatantly defi ed federal rule by refusing to hold the referendum on their terri- tory (indicator 13).29 The republics maintained the initiative in rela- tions with the center until September 1993, when Russia’s constitu- tional crisis came to a head and Yeltsin rashly passed a decree dissolving

24 Teague (fn. 22); Vera Tolz, “Thorny Road toward Federalism in Russia,” RFE/RL Research Report 2 (December 3, 1993); and Kahn (fn. 15), 126–32.

25This perception was reinforced ten days later when Tatarstan refused to sign the Federation Treaty. Ann Sheehy, “Tatarstan Asserts Its Sovereignty,” RFE/RL Research Report 1, no. 203 (April 3, 1992), 1.

26 In fact, the actions of these four republics convinced Moscow of the need to replace the Federa- tion Treaty with a new federal constitution; Tishkov (fn. 18), 62.

27 Most constitutions asserted control over natural resources and gave both Russian and the titular language offi cial status. See Teague (fn. 22), 43; Kahn (fn. 15), 82–84; and Gorenburg (fn. 16). For the full text of the constitutions, see Iu. A. Dmitriev and E. L. Malakhova, Konstitutsii respublik v sos- tave Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Republican constitutions of the Russian Federation) (Moscow: Izdatel’skaia Firma Manuscript, 1995).

28 Bashkortostan, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Mari-El, Chuvashia, Mordova, and Ingushetia voted against Yeltsin. In Tuva a majority endorsed him in questions one and two, but voted for early presidential elections—a rejection of Yeltsin. Wendy Slater, “No Victors in the Russian Referendum,” RFE/RL Research Report 2 (May 21, 1993). However, an anti-Yeltsin vote was not necessarily a chal- lenge to federal authority, since some republics voted against him to signal support for the Supreme Soviet’s conservative policies of preserving federal subsidies to the regions. Ralph Clem and Peter Craumer, “The Geography of the April 25 (1993) Russian Referendum,” Post-Soviet Geography 34 (October 1993).

29 Chechnya boycotted the referendum, while Tatarstan’s administration discouraged voting, re- sulting in a 22.6 percent voter turnout, which invalidated the republic’s results.

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parliament. Several republics condemned or ignored his decree during the two-week standoff in which deputies refused to leave the parlia- ment building in Moscow. A majority of republics, however, softened their stance following Yeltsin’s drastic decision to shell parliament and arrest the opposition. Most republics complied with his ensuing order to hold new local parliamentary elections, but Tatarstan and Chechnya obdurately boycotted a national referendum on Russia’s constitution (indicator 14).30

Some analysts believe Yeltsin’s dissolution of parliament averted Russia’s collapse. Whether or not that belief is accurate, it did permit the central government to consolidate power, beginning with the pas- sage of the Russian Constitution. Another important development was Moscow’s decision to sign bilateral treaties with several republics. Yet by the time this occurred in the mid-1990s, mass nationalism was fad- ing in even the most assertive republics. Nationalist movements had been losing support, in some cases as early as 1993. This suggests that declining subfederal political competition led to lower levels of seces- sionism vis-à-vis Moscow. By the mid-1990s republican separation from Russia had become unlikely. Yeltsin’s centralization of power al- tered Russia’s entire institutional environment, shifting power from re- publican parliaments to executives and eliminating the massive central state weakness that had made possible republican challenges to federal sovereignty in the early 1990s.

Coding secessionist activity toward Moscow raises the question of whether the republics desired independence or political autonomy. Some observers differentiate between the two, arguing that Russia’s republics sought mere autonomy all along. They accurately note that only Chechnya issued an actual declaration of independence. Yet to conclude that the other republics wanted autonomy rather than inde- pendence would be to deduce actors’ intentions at that time by observ- ing the fi nal outcome of nonsecession. This approach, I argue, misun- derstands the dynamic and political nature of separatist campaigns. In- tentions of regional actors cannot be gleaned directly from their state- ments and tactics because those intentions shift and evolve along with political opportunities. As Donald Horowitz states, actors’ “[d]emands can switch from autonomy to independence and back again, depending

30 Seven republics voted for the constitution, fi ve voted against it, and voter turnout was under 50 percent in two republics. Gail 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, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995), 100–101. On local elections, see Elizabeth Teague, “North-South Divide: Yeltsin and Russia’s Provincial Leaders,” RFE/RL Research Report 2 (November 26, 1993).

286 W O R L D P O L I T I C S

on the state of negotiations between central regimes and separatists.” The terms secession and separatism should refer not only to indepen- dence movements, he argues, but also to those “seeking any territorially defi ned political change intended to accord an ethnic group autono- mous control over the region in which it resides.”31 In Russia’s republics moderate appeals for autonomy either led to radical demands or dis- sipated over time. Therefore, in analyzing secession, the intentions of regional actors cannot be inferred by assuming that outcomes of non- secession directly represent their preferences at an earlier point in time.32 Conceptualizing secessionism as a dynamic process permits theorizing about why demands intensify or slacken. Republican separatism should be viewed as the evolving product of interaction among various actors rather than as a fi xed preference of a unitary actor. In Russia secession- ist demands on Moscow developed from the relationship between the masses, nationalist movements, and incumbent leaders. Before examin- ing this relationship in detail, the next section addresses the origins of mass nationalism in the republics.

II. THE ORIGINS OF POPULAR NATIONALISM

Popular support for nationalism developed in the republics of Tatarstan, Tuva, Chechnya, Bashkortostan, and Yakutia because, in a declining economy with increasing competition for jobs, certain issues articulated by nationalist leaders resonated with ethnic populations fearful about their life chances. Instead of blaming job competition, however, na- tionalists decried titulars’ blocked access to jobs and resources. Titulars’ supposed socioeconomic subordination to Russians kept them from fully participating in the industrialized economy of “their” own repub- lic. The nationalists blamed this serious injustice on Moscow’s policies rather than on local Russians. Winning state sovereignty, they argued, would rectify the injustice.

Paradoxically, the nationalists’ issue frame of ethnic economic in- equality contradicted the actual situation of rising titular professional- ization and achievement. At the beginning of the Soviet era, there was an ethnic division of labor in which titular ethnic groups in Russia’s republics lived and worked in the countryside while Russians, for the most part, worked in more highly skilled jobs in the cities. Yet the Soviet

31 Donald Horowitz, “Patterns of Ethnic Separatism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (April 1981), 168–69.

32 This assumption commits the fallacy of retrospective determinism. I use the terms secession, separatism, and autonomy campaigns interchangeably throughout this study.

S E C E S S I O N I S M F R O M T H E B O T T O M U P 287

state resolved to advance titular nationalities through specifi c policies of industrialization, urbanization, public education, Russifi cation, and indigenization. The policy of indigenization, or korenizatsiia, granted preferences to titulars in higher education, economic management, and government administration inside their own republics and sought to “proletarianize” rural dwellers by moving them into industrializing So- viet cities.33 Following World War II and accelerating in the 1960s, titulars took advantage of these quotas, moving from farm to factory and assuming jobs alongside Russians. By the late 1970s titulars were working not only in government administration and the Communist Party but in economic management as well. Thus, Soviet state policies produced urban, educated ethnic minorities, transforming the lives of ordinary people and their families in the process.

Meanwhile, ethnic Russians living in the republics were also moving to the cities as part of the broader trends of urbanization and indus- trialization occurring in the Soviet Union.34 Thus, by the late 1980s Russians worked in white-collar jobs in more or less equal proportion to their share of the total workforce in most republics. The same was true of titular ethnic groups. Although some of the poor republics still displayed an ethnic division of labor as of 1989, titulars had been mak- ing signifi cant strides even in these places. In Tuva, for example, equal numbers of Tuvans and Russians graduated with higher educational degrees in 1989, and in Chechnya, Chechens’ rate of higher education exceeded that of Russians between 1979 and 1989.35

This tremendous social mobility is shown in Figure 1, which pres- ents a ratio of titular to Russian representation in the white-collar workforce compared with each group’s percentage of the total work- force in each republic.36 A ratio of 1 indicates that both titulars and Russians were equally represented in white-collar jobs in proportion to their percentage of the total workforce. A ratio greater than 1 means that titulars held white-collar jobs in numbers greater than their share

33 Yuri Slezkine, “The USSR as Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review 53 (Summer 1994), 433. See also Roeder (fn. 1); and Suny (fn. 2).

34 Moshe Lewin describes how these processes transformed the entire Soviet population in Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

35 The same was true of Yakuts in Yakutia. G. S. Denisova, Etnicheskii faktor v politicheskoi zhizni Rossii 90-x godov (The ethnic factor in Russia’s political life during the 1990s) (Rostov-on-the-Don: Rostov State Pedagogical University, 1996), 86–88. See also Leokadia Drobizheva, “Processes of Dis- integration,” in Vladimir Shlapentokh, Munir Sendich, and Emil Payin, eds., The New Russian Dias- pora: Russian Minorities in the Former Soviet Republics (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 47.

36 These ratios were compiled by the author based on unpublished raw data collected by Gos- komstat, the State Statistical Committee of the USSR, as part of the 1989 All-Union census. See Professional’no-otraslevoi sostav intelligentsia naseleniia titul’noi i russkoi natsional’nostei absolytnie znach- eniia (Titular and Russian ethnic group composition of white-collar economic sectors). I thank Dmitri Gorenburg for providing the data.

288 W O R L D P O L I T I C S

of the republican workforce compared with Russians. A ratio less than 1 indicates that as a proportion of each group’s overall representation in the workforce, titulars were underrepresented compared with Russians. The average for all republics is 0.814 (see dotted line) which shows that in a majority of republics, Russians were only slightly more proportion- ately represented in white-collar jobs than titulars.37 Titulars, as might be expected, occupied a majority of white-collar jobs in republican rural areas. But they were also very strongly represented in the coveted up- per echelons of urban economies and worked as enterprise directors in numbers equal to or greater than their share of the total population in almost all republics.38 (See Figure 2.)

Macroeconomic decline that had begun in the Brezhnev era acceler- ated under Gorbachev. Widespread shortages of consumer goods and food, followed by runaway infl ation after Yeltsin deregulated prices, profoundly destabilized the daily lives of Soviet citizens. This means that demand for white-collar jobs was rising at the same time that the

37 Only in Chechnya and Mari-El do Russians dominate white-collar sectors, although Chechens constitute 40 percent of Checheno-Ingushetia’s white-collar workforce and 54 percent of its total workforce. Chechens form 55 percent of the republic’s total population.

38 Mari El and Tuva are exceptions, although Tuvans still constituted 40 percent of directors in Tuva. See Narodnoe khoziaistvo RSFSR (The economy of the RSFSR) (Moscow: Goskomstat, 1989).

S E C E S S I O N I S M F R O M T H E B O T T O M U P 289

FIGURE 1 RATIO OF TITULAR/RUSSIAN REPRESENTATION IN WHITE-COLLAR WORKFORCE

))

Buryatia

Kalmkia

North Ossetia

Komi

Kabardino-Balkaria (K/R)

Tatarstan

Yakutia

Bashkortostan (Bash/Rus)

Mordovia

Karelia

Udmurtia

Dagestan

Chuvashia

Tuva

Mari-El

Chechnya

Karbardino-Balkaria (B/R)

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4

Bashkortostan (Bash/Tatar)

FIGURE 2 TITULAR PERCENTAGE OF ENTERPRISE DIRECTORS COMPARED WITH TITULAR

PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION (1989)

Soviet economy had stopped growing. People who expected their lives and those of their children to progress along familiar, state-established trajectories—secondary school followed by higher education or tech- nical training, followed by secure jobs and advancement up the career ladder—became uncertain that the state would continue to provide them with educations and jobs. Growing labor competition in this cli- mate caused people to experience material dissatisfaction and fear of job loss. But if these trends affected all citizens, why would only titu- lars respond by supporting nationalism? Soviet enterprises did not for- mally organize job applications or work collectives along ethnic lines.39 And people had class, regional, professional, generational, and national identities, in addition to ethnic ones. Why would they think of them- selves as competing along ethnic lines?

In certain republics people began to think of themselves as part of an ethnonational community because nationalist leaders changed the meaning of ethnic identity at this time. The way in which national- ists framed issues about unequal access to resources and jobs helped to create a sense of groupness connected to specifi c political interests.

39 According to ethnic competition theory, rising job competition may spur mobilization as groups begin competing for resources in a common economic niche, especially following sudden macroeconomic change. Frederik Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969); Susan Olzak, The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Confl ict (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992).

290 W O R L D P O L I T I C S

Ta rta

rst an

Tu va

Ya ku

tia

Ch ec

he no

-I ng

us he

tia

Ba sh

ko rto

sta n

Ka lm

yk ia

Ka rel

ia

Bu ry

ati a

N . O

sse tia

Ko m

i

Ka ba

rd in

o- Ba

lka ria

Ud m

ur tia

Ch uv

as hi

a

D ag

es tan

M or

do va

M ar

i-E l

100 80 60 40 20 0

Titular % of Directors Titular % of Population

What did these issue frames look like? Nationalists claimed that titular ethnic groups worked in agrarian jobs in the countryside while Rus- sians occupied prestigious positions in the city. The best jobs requiring the best educations were “given” to Russians, condemning titulars to a subordinate social status. It is critical to note that this framing not only ignored Soviet state policies that promoted titular mobility, but it also painted titulars as victims of the Soviet—and ethnically Russian—state. By claiming victim status and blaming the current state, nationalists could argue that titulars were “subjects” of Russians within their “own” homelands—a situation violating the basic nationalist principle that “the political and national unit be congruent.”40 Among the many kinds of issues articulated by nationalists, those concerning impediments to ethnic economic equality resonated most strongly because they pro- vided titulars with a plausible interpretation of their experience of ris- ing job competition. People came to believe that their life chances were constrained because of their non-Russian ethnic identity in a Russian state and began to support the nationalist solution of establishing eth- nonational state sovereignty.

A comparative discourse analysis of issues articulated by national- ist leaders in (1) their founding platforms and (2) newspaper articles published in the republics during the period 1989–94 indicates that the issue frame of ethnic economic inequality was present in the national- ist republics of Tatarstan, Tuva, Chechnya, Bashkortostan, and Yakutia but absent from republics in which titulars failed to back nationalist movements, such as Mordova and Mari-El.41 My analysis examines three dimensions of issue framing: how nationalists defi ned a social condition as “unjust, intolerable, and deserving of corrective action”; how they attributed blame for the unjust situation to an actor or set of social processes; and how they identifi ed solutions to that injustice.42 For example, a Yakut nationalist describes inequality among Yakuts and Russians in the mining industry as unjust, blames the Soviet state for privileging Russians, and identifi es sovereignty as the solution:

40 Gellner (fn. 7, 1983), 1. 41 Working in two Moscow libraries, I culled through fi ve years of at least two newspapers pub-

lished in each of Russia’s sixteen republics. I collected between forty and one hundred articles from each republic that address some aspect of ethnic politics. The articles include standard news reports, offi cial statements by political leaders, editorials, letters to the editors, and statements by nationalist organizations.

42 The social movements literature identifi es these dimensions as critical. See David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, “Master Frames and Cycles of Protest,” in Aldon Morris and Carol McClurg, eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 137; and David Snow and Robert Benford, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” An- nual Review of Sociology 26 (2000).

S E C E S S I O N I S M F R O M T H E B O T T O M U P 291

The USSR . . . ignored the equality not only of its citizens, but of entire nations . . . not only high salaries but special privileges were established for migrants who came to work in the mining industry, including northern salary supple- ments, apartments, the best supplies. . . . Only in 1961 was there a partial equal- ization when salary supplements were given to indigenous residents of Yakutia. All other main privileges remained. . . . Only sovereignty . . . can regulate and stabilize relations among people and prevent mass impoverishment of the re- public’s indigenous residents.43

Similarly, the nationalist Tatar Public Center asserts in its founding program that the Tatar nation is endangered due to its subordinate sta- tus vis-à-vis Russians. Since the beginning of the Soviet era and lasting to the present day, it argues, Tatars outnumbered Russians in rural areas and exhibited a slower rate of urbanization and “lower qualifi cations.” The group then advocates specifi c solutions such as regulating the “eth- nic composition” of higher educational institutions, helping rural Tatars secure jobs in the republic’s cities and providing Tatars with set-aside positions in the economy.44

Nationalist leaders, therefore, attracted popular support not by sim- ply picking up on preexisting attitudes among ethnic populations but by actively creating grievances that interpreted economic information in ethnic terms. Nationalists’ attention to these kinds of issues reveals just how much they were products of the very Soviet state whose au- thority they were trying to undermine. Their focus on pragmatic issues of professional mobility, equal ethnic group representation, and indi- vidual advancement reproduced typical late-Soviet-era ideals. Nation- alists in the republics saw no contradiction in asserting the right to a nation-state in order to realize the goods of modernity as defi ned by the Soviet state. Like all nationalists, they drew on a range of extant beliefs and practices to construct an idea of national community deserving control of the state.45

It is critical to note, however, that growing popular support for na- tionalism does not mean that entire ethnic groups were suddenly won over to the nationalist cause. On the contrary, support for nationalism varied greatly—many people were apathetic or hostile. Even within the most nationalist republics support varied across space, just as in many

43 V. Kopylov, “Kogo pugaet suverenitet?” Yakutia 14 (October 1992), 2. 44 Damir Iskhakov, Sovremennie natsional’nie protsessi v respublike Tatarstan (Current ethnic pro-

cesses in the Republic of Tatarstan) (Kazan: Russian Academy of Sciences, 1992.) 45 This underscores John Breuilly’s point that nationalism is not “the expression of pre-existing

national values and practices in political form.” See Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1993), 69.

292 W O R L D P O L I T I C S

Union republics.46 Yet despite the ultimately transitory nature of na- tionalist mobilization in Russia, the fact remains that signifi cant dif- ferences in levels of popular nationalism existed among the republics. Though all republics faced similarly fl uid and ambiguous conditions as a result of central state implosion, only some used the opportunity to make serious secessionist claims on Moscow. Before showing how mass nationalism infl uenced separatism, I describe below how democratiza- tion at the center destroyed vertical accountability and forced republi- can leaders to respond to local opinion.

III. DEMOCRATIZATION, SHIFTING ACCOUNTABILITY, AND NATIONALISM

During the Soviet era political accountability ran vertically from cen- ter to region, with the Communist Party in Moscow appointing re- publican leaders according to the nomenklatura system. Regional party leaders were selected and dismissed on the basis of central party de- cisions.47 These nomenklatura leaders in turn controlled the appoint- ment of party and managerial cadres within their republics.48 But Gor- bachev embarked on a strategy of shifting power away from the CPSU and toward the state, that is, toward central and regional legislatures. In 1988 he undermined the power of the central party apparat and later eliminated Article 6 of the Soviet Constitution, which had granted the CPSU a monopoly.49 After the 1991 coup attempt, the party’s remaining legitimacy rapidly drained away. The Soviet legislature suspended all party activity, and two months later Yeltsin formally banned the Com- munist Party in Russia.50 With the party’s collapse, the Soviet Union’s main integrative institution disappeared, shattering accountability of local leaders to the center.

Vertical accountability was also eroded by Gorbachev’s decision to hold semicompetitive elections in 1990 to replace nomenklatura in fed- eral and local legislatures, or Supreme Soviets. Though the nomenkla-

46 See Andrew Wilson’s discussion of nationalism in Ukraine in Wilson, The Ukrainians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); and Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

47 Jeffrey Hahn, “Introduction: Analyzing Parliamentary Development in Russia,” in Hahn, ed., Democratization in Russia: The Development of Legislative Institutions (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1996).

48 Olga V. Kryshtanovskaia, “Transformation of the Old Nomenklatura into a New Russian Elite,” Russian Social Science Review 37 ( July–August 1996).

49 Kotkin (fn. 46), 75–85. 50 Stephen White, Graeme Gill, and Darrell Slider, The Politics of Transition: Shaping of a Post-

Soviet Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

S E C E S S I O N I S M F R O M T H E B O T T O M U P 293

tura retained a majority of seats,51 independent deputies now served alongside them in many republics, introducing ideas unthinkable just a few years earlier. Competitive elections transformed rubber-stamp soviets (councils) into fl edgling representative institutions whose legiti- macy originated in the regions, rather than in Moscow.52

Furthermore, Gorbachev’s democratization policies allowed opposi- tion groups to emerge and openly articulate heterodox ideas without the expectation of serious state repression.53 Prodemocracy, environ- mental, and ethnonationalist groups appeared. In some republics the support base of nationalist groups remained confi ned to a small layer of intelligentsia in the capital cities. But elsewhere, the nationalists’ popu- larity grew, as teachers, students, and government offi cials were joined by workers and party members. In Tatarstan, Tuva, Chechnya, Yakutia, and Bashkortostan, opposition nationalist movements were developing a mass following.

Republican leaders watched as new constituencies began seizing the political initiative. They observed rising support for nationalism by looking out their offi ce windows at mass demonstrations held on central squares, by reading impassioned debates in the local press, and by monitoring nationalist group activity. They watched as pillars of the Soviet establishment became targets of organized campaigns against corruption and mismanagement. The nationalist and democratic oppo- sition in Bashkortostan, for example, led a grassroots campaign against the republic’s party committee that led to its expulsion from power.54 Nationalist organizations formed national congresses in an attempt to supplant republican Supreme Soviets. Though unsuccessful, certain de- mands raised at the national congresses prompted Supreme Soviets to respond. When, for example, the founding meeting of the Chechen National Congress in 1990 passed a resolution on state sovereignty, Chechnya’s Supreme Soviet did the same days later.

Most important, nationalist organizations sponsored mass demon- strations, rallies, pickets, and an occasional hunger strike in front of

51 Only in the union republics of Moldavia, the Baltics, and Armenia, as well as in parts of Ukraine, did independent candidates win a signifi cant number of seats in Supreme Soviet elections.

52 For example, in Tatarstan, nationalists won one-third of the seats in the Supreme Soviet and came to control approximately 120 out of 250 votes by winning over independent deputies. See I. V. Terent’eva, R.Iu. Beliakov, and M.F. Safarov, Politicheskie partii i dvizhenie Respubliki Tatarstan (Politi- cal parties and movements in Tatarstan) (Kazan, 1999); and Gorenburg (fn. 16), 135. See also Gavin Helf and Jeffrey Hahn, “Old Dogs and New Tricks: Party Elites in the Russian Regional Elections of 1990,” Slavic Review 51 (Fall 1992).

53 See Herrera’s discussion (fn. 8) on breaking the Soviet doxa (pp. 98–142). 54 Subsequently, several members of the Bashkir nationalist movement joined the republic’s interim

leadership. RFE/RL Research Report 2, no. 8 (February 23, 1990); and “Plenary Sessions Held,” Current Digest of the Soviet Press 42, no. 6 (1990).

294 W O R L D P O L I T I C S

government buildings where they could attract maximum attention. Tatarstan, for example, was home to 142 nationalist demonstrations with thousands of participants from 1987 to 1994. The most radical rallies demanding independence continued for days in October 1991. When demonstrators heard that the Supreme Soviet had voted against a declaration of independence, they rushed the building. As one parlia- mentary deputy remembers:

I will never forget how the crowds, the multi-thousand person crowds sur- rounded our parliament building on Freedom Square from morning till night and how they idolized Fauzia Bairamova [a radical nationalist leader] who was advocating secession from Russia. It was quite frightening. I was afraid that such events might scandalously develop into a civil war. I remember . . . that when . . . we [the deputies] exited the parliament, the militia was holding back the crowds with much diffi culty . . . and they were throwing pieces of broken glass and nails into us.55

These acts stimulated public debate and won massive media attention, while demonstrators risking arrest, job loss, and physical injury signaled their strong commitment to their cause. All of this increased the power and resources nationalists wielded within the political arena.

For nomenklatura leaders unaccustomed to considering popular opinion, a misstep was potentially fatal. The president of Tatarstan, Mintimir Shaimiev, learned this lesson after he backed the attempted coup against Gorbachev, suppressing information and arresting people demonstrating against the leaders of the coup. When the coup failed, opposition groups began a grassroots campaign to impeach Shaimiev. He was eventually absolved when nationalist groups decided that, as an ethnic Tatar, Shaimiev would ultimately back their interests. Shaimiev then announced support for republican sovereignty—a position the nationalists had been advocating since glasnost began.56 The fact that Shaimiev, a good communist apparatchik, supported saving the So- viet Union one moment and demanded state sovereignty the next sug- gests the impressive political opportunism that produced secessionism in Russia’s republics.

Republican leaders could not even necessarily count on enterprise directors to continue to support the status quo. Directors of factories

55 Jeffrey Kahn, interview with Boris Leonidovich Zheleznov, professor of law, Kazan State Uni- versity, Kazan, June 6, 1997. Similarly, the Union of Bashkir Youth marched on Bashkortostan’s tele- vision station and went on air to denounce the Supreme Soviet’s vote to delay presidential elections. RFE/RL Research Report 3, no. 47 (November 22, 1991).

56 See Elise Giuliano, “Who Determines the Self in the Politics of Self-Determination? Ethnicity and Preference Formation in Tatarstan’s Nationalist Mobilization,” Comparative Politics 32 (April 2000).

S E C E S S I O N I S M F R O M T H E B O T T O M U P 295

and mines had fi nancial incentives to support the nationalist goal of republican sovereignty, realizing that they could exploit central state weakness to increase ownership of state property under their manage- ment. Some directors had already begun to pursue personal profi t by forming cooperatives that marketed the products of the state-owned enterprises they managed.57 In general, perestroika benefi ted enterprise directors by releasing them from following the economic plan and by reducing monitoring by ministries in Moscow. The increase in local control offered by republican sovereignty could further enlarge these benefi ts. In the event, enterprise directors of lucrative large enterprises in the nationalist republics did profi t fi nancially from the increased au- tonomy their republics won from Moscow.58 This autonomy was the direct result of campaigns for sovereignty initiated by their republics.

In addition, the demonstration effect of nationalism in certain Union republics served as warnings to leaders in Russia’s republics. Together with their populations, they observed how radicalizing nationalist crowds forced out even popularly elected presidents Gamsukhurdia in Georgia and Mutalibov in Azerbaijan.59 Thus, while republican leaders used the threat of ethnic unrest during negotiations with Moscow, they did not foment nationalism simply to strengthen their bargaining position. The risk inherent in such behavior was clear. Popular opinion—instantiated in nationalist rallies, intense public debate, and occasional violence— could turn against them. Like politicians everywhere, republican lead- ers wanted to satisfy constituents and keep their jobs. Their demands for sovereignty from Moscow were motivated by self-interest.

An alternative hypothesis might argue that the key variable infl u- encing secessionism was whether republican incumbents repressed or co-opted nationalist groups soon after they formed, denying them the ability to win popular support and pressure local leaders. Yet com- paring the republics, we observe no correlation between repression/ co-optation and weak nationalist movements, or between nonrepres- sion/non-co-optation and popular nationalist movements. Party leader- ships in most republics were changing as a result of personnel reforms in 1989, Supreme Soviet elections in 1990, and the anti-Gorbachev

57 This began after Gorbachev passed the 1987 Law on Cooperatives. Eric Hanley, Natasha Yer- shova, and Richard Anderson, “Russia—Old Wine in a New Bottle? The Circulation and Reproduc- tion of Russian Elites, 1983–1993,” Theory and Society 24 (October 1995).

58 As did former nomenklatura political leaders. For example, the oil company Tatneft underwent little restructuring and remained controlled by Tatarstan’s Soviet-era managers. See Leo McCann, “Embeddedness, Markets and the State: Observations from Tatarstan,” in McCann, ed., Russian Transformations (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004); and Jozsef Borocz and Akos Rona-Tas, “Small Leap Forward: Emergence of New Economic Elites,” Theory and Society 24 (October 1995).

59 White, Gill, and Slider (fn. 50), 103.

296 W O R L D P O L I T I C S

coup in 1991 and were therefore either unable to repress or uninter- ested in doing so. For example, Chuvashia’s leadership was under fi re from the democratic opposition for corruption, failed to control the 1990 parliamentary elections, and was ultimately deposed for support- ing the coup.60 This gave Chuvashia’s nationalists an opening to attract support, though they nonetheless failed to do so. Also conservatives did not co-opt or repress nationalist movements in republics where they retained power. In Mari El, a conservative Supreme Soviet chairman replaced a conservative Obkom leader, yet the nationalist group Mari Ushem was able to fi eld a presidential candidate. Despite this, Mari Ushem attracted minimal popular support.61 Finally, in Tatarstan, na- tionalist groups won support even when authorities used repressive tac- tics early on to dilute their infl uence. In short, republican leadership was contested during this time and executives did not control repub- lican politics.62 By the mid-1990s, however, when popular support for nationalism had dwindled, republican presidents were able to disregard the weakened opposition and consolidate power.

CAMPAIGNS FOR SOVEREIGNTY IN RUSSIA’S REPUBLICS Popular support for nationalism infl uenced republican secessionism both directly, by electing nationalist candidates to republican legislatures, and indirectly, by pressuring incumbent leaders concerned with self-preser- vation. I provide two types of evidence of the effect of mass nationalism on republican secession. First, I show that both the number of ethnic demonstrations and the instances of ethnic violence in the republics are correlated with the level or index of republican secessionism (Table 1). Four fi gures below depict the relationship between these variables. Sec- ond, case-study evidence from Tuva and Yakutia shows how mass na- tionalism increased those republics’ secessionist demands on Moscow, while evidence from Mari El indicates that low mass nationalism kept secessionism to a minimum there.

Participation in ethnic demonstrations captures support for nation- alism because it suggests peoples’ willingness to engage in risky behav- ior to express opposition to current state authority. Also, an individual’s decision to step onto the streets represents a public assertion of com- munity and national identity.63 In Figure 3, we observe a relationship

60 Gorenburg (fn. 16), 62–63, 72. 61 Timur Muzaev, Etnicheskii separatizm v Rossii (Ethnic separatism in Russia) (Moscow: Pan-

orama Publishers, 1999), 159–63. 62 White, Gill, and Slider (fn. 50), 101. 63 See Mark Beissinger’s discussion of the meaning of nationalist event; Beissinger, Nationalist Mo-

bilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 18–28.

S E C E S S I O N I S M F R O M T H E B O T T O M U P 297

between the number of demonstrations and the republics with the highest secessionism scores. These two variables are signifi cantly cor- related (.661; p≤.005).64 For example, the highly secessionist Tatarstan and Checheno-Ingushetia had 77 and 58 demonstrations, respectively, while the minimally secessionist republics of Mordova and Mari El had none. However, in other secessionist republics, there were few demon- strations: Bashkortostan (10), Tuva (4), and Yakutia (3). This could be explained by the fact that some nationalist groups chose the strategy

64 The variables of ethnic demonstrations and ethnic violence are from Mark Beissinger’s data set of mobilization events in Soviet Union. I am grateful to him for providing these data. Beissinger de- fi nes an ethnic demonstration as a “voluntary gathering of persons with the purpose of engaging in a collective display of sentiment for or against public policies.” All demonstrations had a minimum of one hundred participants. Beissinger defi nes a mass violent event as “a mass political action whose pri- mary purpose was to infl ict violence, either in the form of an attack on people or on property.” Violent events had a minimum of fi fteen participants. The data set does not include hunger strikes or general strikes. See Codebook, “Non-Violent Demonstrations and Mass Violent Events in the Former USSR, 1987–1992,” 4, 6. For more on the procedures utilized in collecting the data, see Mark R. Beiss- inger, “Event Analysis in Transitional Societies: Protest Mobilization in the Former Soviet Union,” in Dieter Rucht, Ruud Koopmans, and Friedhelm Neidhardt, eds., Acts of Dissent: New Developments in the Study of Protest (Berlin: Sigma Press, 1998); Beissinger (fn. 63); and http://www.polisci.wisc. edu/~beissinger/research.htm.

298 W O R L D P O L I T I C S

FIGURE 3 NUMBER OF ETHNIC DEMONSTRATIONS IN RUSSIA’S REPUBLICS VERSUS

INDEX OF SECESSIONISM

N um

be r

of E

th ni

c D

em on

st ra

ti on

s 0

2 0

40

6

0

8

0

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 Index of Secessionism

of sponsoring candidates in local elections instead of holding demon- strations. Moreover, the number of demonstrations in some republics may be underrepresented because the data set used here concludes in the year 1992, whereas republican campaigns for sovereignty continued until 1994.

The late Soviet and early post-Soviet years generated much popular protest by many groups on a variety of issues. Examining ethnic dem- onstrations as a percentage of total demonstrations, we see in Figure 4 that this variable is also correlated with republican secessionism (.518; p≤.05.). In the highly secessionist republics of Tatarstan, Tuva, and Checheno-Ingushetia, a majority of demonstrations (between 60 per- cent and 100 percent) concerned ethnic issues. In the secessionist repub- lics of Yakutia and Bashkortostan between 40 percent and 50 percent of demonstrations concerned ethnic issues. Note that the three North Caucasian republics of Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, and North Os- setia have low secessionism scores yet a high number of ethnic demon- strations. This can be explained by the fact that most demonstrations in these republics concerned issues other than ethnonational sovereignty.

S E C E S S I O N I S M F R O M T H E B O T T O M U P 299

FIGURE 4 NUMBER OF ETHNIC DEMONSTRATIONS AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL

DEMONSTRATIONS IN RUSSIA’S REPUBLICS VERSUS INDEX OF SECESSIONISM

N um

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For example, the repatriation of ethnic groups deported by Stalin and the wars between Georgia and the republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were major issues in these republics.65 That is, ethnic dem- onstrations there revolved around intraethnic confl icts and displays of sympathy with neighboring Abkhazia and South Ossetia and did not develop into secessionism.

Several republics experienced ethnic violence during the years 1987– 92. This violence was related to campaigns for sovereignty in some, though not all, republics. As shown in Figure 5, the largest number of violent ethnic events occurred in the secessionist republics of Chech- eno-Ingushetia (21), Tatarstan (6), Tuva (7), and Yakutia (2). In con- trast, the low-secession republics witnessed little to no ethnic violence during this period. North Ossetia is again an outlier because of the vio- lent confl ict that took place between Ingush and Ossetians in fall 1992; it was not related to a campaign for sovereignty.66 Thus, mass violent events and secessionism were statistically correlated but less strongly so than the variables of ethnic demonstrations and secessionism (.438; p≤.10).

If we consider ethnic mass violent events as a percentage of all mass violent events that occurred, we fi nd a very strong and statistically sig- nifi cant correlation between this variable and republican secessionism (.768; p≤.0005). Between 84 percent and 100 percent of mass vio- lent events concerned ethnic violence in the secessionist republics of Tatarstan, Tuva, Checheno-Ingushetia, and Yakutia. (See Figure 6.) Again, Dagestan and North Ossetia are outliers.

Although demonstrations and ethnic violence are suggestive, they are not comprehensive indicators of popular support for nationalism. Case-study evidence more accurately captures how mass nationalism infl uenced republican campaigns for sovereignty at critical junctures. Below, I compare the republics of Tuva, Yakutia, and Mari-El, which differ in terms of popular support for nationalism. Tuva and Yakutia are representative of republics where mass nationalism pressured incum- bent leaders into adopting nationalist policies and making secessionist demands. Mari-El, conversely, is typical of those republics where low

65 Concerning repatriation issues, Akkintsy clashed with neighboring ethnic groups in Dages- tan, Balkars challenged Kabardins in Kabardino-Balkaria, and Ingush made claims in the Prigorodnii region of North Ossetia. In terms of the regional armed confl icts, North Ossetia supported South Ossetia against Georgia by taking Ossetian refugees and sending aid and volunteer fi ghters, while Kabardino-Balkaria took the side of Abkhazia against Georgia. See Jane Omrod, “The North Cauca- sus: Confederation in Confl ict,” in Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., New States, New Politics (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

66 Tomila Lankina discusses ethnic confl ict and mobilization in North Ossetia in Governing the Locals: Local Self-Government and Ethnic Mobilization in Russia (NewYork: Rowman and Littlefi eld, 2004).

300 W O R L D P O L I T I C S

levels of mass nationalism allowed incumbents to ignore opposition na- tionalist movements and remain in offi ce.67 In addition, the compari- son of Tuva and Yakutia undermines the wealth hypothesis because the republics differ in terms of republican wealth but exhibit a com- mon outcome of secessionism. The fact that separatism emerged in the territorially tiny, economically underdeveloped, and resource-poor re- public of Tuva and also in the enormous and resource-rich republic of Yakutia suggests that the variable of wealth provides scant causal lever- age. Finally, the republics of Tuva, Yakutia, and Mari-El are neglected in most studies of nationalism in Russia, which generally examine the high-profi le republics of Chechnya and Tatarstan and ignore republics with low nationalism.

67 I use the diverse-case method and the typical-case method to select cases, according to John Gerring’s typology in Gerring, Case Study Research: Principles and Practice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

S E C E S S I O N I S M F R O M T H E B O T T O M U P 301

FIGURE 5 NUMBER OF ETHNIC MASS VIOLENT EVENTS IN RUSSIA’S REPUBLICS VERSUS

INDEX OF SECESSIONISMa

aDue to space constraints, the names of several republics are abbreviated: M-E = Mari- El, Udm=Udmurtia, B=Buryatia, C=Chuvashia, KB=Kabardino-Balkaria, K=Komi, Kal= Kalmykia, Kar=Karelia.

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THE REPUBLIC OF TUVA Tuva—a tiny Siberian republic of 309,000 people in 1989, with an economy centered on traditional livestock herding of sheep, cattle, and horses—was highly secessionist and offers strong evidence that popular support for nationalism infl uenced republican campaigns for sovereignty.68 First, several members of nationalist organizations were elected to Tuva’s Supreme Soviet in 1990 and 1993 and the leader of the nationalist movement served in the highest post in the republic— chairman of the Supreme Soviet. Second, the republic experienced very high levels of ethnic violence in the early 1990s. Third, support for na- tionalism infl uenced the substance and adoption of Tuva’s constitution, as well as the vote against the constitution of the Russian Federation.

68 Moscow appropriated what little gold, uranium, cobalt and coal Tuva, one of Russia’s poorest republics, did contain. Zoia Anaibin, “Ethnic Relations in Tuva,” in Marjorie Balzer, ed., Culture In- carnate (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995).

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FIGURE 6 NUMBER OF ETHNIC MASS VIOLENT EVENTS AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL VIOLENT EVENTS IN RUSSIA’S REPUBLICS VERSUS INDEX OF SECESSIONISMa

aDue to space constraints, the names of several republics are abbreviated: M-E = Mari- El, Udm=Udmurtia, B=Buryatia, C=Chuvashia, KB=Kabardino-Balkaria, K=Komi, Kal= Kalmykia, Kar=Karelia.

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The nationalist movement in Tuva began in 1989 with the formation of the Popular Front of Tuva. The Front’s leader, Kaadyr-ool Bicheldei, grew increasingly popular and was elected to represent Tuva in the RSFSR Congress of Peoples’ deputies.69 At the same time, ten mem- bers of the Popular Front won seats in Tuva’s Supreme Soviet in the fi rst competitive elections of 1990. Support for Bicheldei rose further when Tuva’s conservative Supreme Soviet chairman, D. Ondar, backed the plotters during the 1991 coup against Gorbachev. A series of protest demonstrations and hunger strikes followed, leading to Ondar’s ouster and replacement by Bicheldei. With Bicheldei’s appointment, Tuva be- came the only republic in which a leader of the nationalist movement held the top post of Supreme Soviet chairman.70

In the summer of 1990 an intense spate of Russian-Tuvan violence erupted.71 Following a fi ght between young Tuvan and Russian “public order volunteers” at a disco in an industrial town, Tuvan gangs fanned out through the town destroying property, intimidating the popula- tion, and clashing with police. The violence expanded to other cities. In the capital of Kyzyl, members of Tuvan gangs shot several Russians, reportedly for not knowing how to speak Tuvan. In another city, Tu- vans burned and raided Russians’ homes, leaving notes urging them to get out of town.72 Communist Party fi rst secretary Gregorii Shirshin, a Brezhnev-era appointee, tried to discredit the Popular Front of Tuva by blaming the group for inciting anti-Russian pogroms. Bicheldei ve- hemently protested the allegations, appealed to the KGB to clear the group’s name, but decided to formally dissolve his organization to allay concerns.

Two new nationalist organizations evolved out of the dismantled Popular Front: the moderate National Party of Sovereign Tuva (NPST) and the radical Peoples’ Front Khostug Tuva (Free Tuva). Both groups were composed exclusively of ethnic Tuvans and shared the goal of strengthening republican sovereignty. Khostug Tuva, whose members

69 Ann Sheehy, “Russians the Target of Interethnic Violence in Tuva,” RFE/RL Research Report 2, no. 37 (September 14, 1990).

70 According to one Russian analyst, Tuva’s Popular Front represented a serious force in republican politics due to its mass popular support. Muzaev (fn. 61), 186–89.

71A question exists as to whether the violence was Tuvan on Tuvan rather than interethnic. It was nevertheless perceived by the press and the general population as ethnic violence. Toomas Ala- talu, “Tuva: A State Reawakens,” Soviet Studies 44, no. 5 (1992). See also Marjorie Mandelstam Bal- zer, “From Ethnicity to Nationalism: Turmoil in the Russian Mini-Empire,” in James R. Millar and Sharon L. Wolchik, eds., The Social Legacy of Communism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

72 Overall, by the mid-1990s, approximately ten thousand Russians, including highly skilled engi- neers, teachers, and doctors, were estimated to have migrated out of Tuva. Stefan Sullivan, “Inter- ethnic Relations in post-Soviet Tuva,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 18, no. 1 (1995).

S E C E S S I O N I S M F R O M T H E B O T T O M U P 303

were young, unemployed migrants from the republic’s rural regions, began to organize rallies in 1992. The NPST, made up mainly of profes- sional politicians and members of the intelligentsia, organized as a politi- cal party to defend Tuvan sovereignty. The NPST established local organs throughout Tuva and actively campaigned in the 1993 elections to the now renamed Supreme Soviet—the Supreme Khural. The party’s grow- ing authority among Tuvans translated into electoral success: it won 62.9 percent of the popular vote and three out of fi ve seats in the Khural re- served for political parties. In the same elections, a leading NPST member and scientist at the Tuvan branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Kara-Kyz Dongakovny Arakchaa, won a seat in the Russian Duma.

Popular support for nationalism exerted the greatest pressure on re- publican policy during the crafting and adoption of Tuva’s constitu- tion in 1993. Two issues defi ned public debate throughout the early 1990s: the question of Tuva’s new constitution and the republic’s right to secede from Russia. Following a popular referendum, both NPST and Khostug Tuva actively lobbied for a constitutional amendment on se- cession.73 The issue of secession was widely debated in the media and among the general population in “kitchen conversations.” Many people believed that Tuva met the three conditions articulated by the Russian sociologist and human rights advocate Galina Starovoitova as necessary for secession: a titular majority, an international border (with Mongo- lia), and past independent statehood.74 According to a local (Russian) analyst whose husband served in Tuva’s parliament during the debate, the drafting of the constitution elicited high concern among the popu- lation, with most people coming to agree by 1992 that the constitution should include a right to secede.

Parliamentary deputies in the Supreme Khural heeded popular opin- ion and voted in favor of an amendment on secession. The amendment was to serve as a warning to Moscow that Tuva would consider seces- sion if its sovereignty were infringed upon. Because nationalist groups had been lobbying for the right to secede since their inception, they considered the amendment’s inclusion to be a victory for their move- ment.75 In addition, another amendment backed by the nationalists— a ban on private landownership—was included in the constitution, as was the statement that republican law took primacy over federal law.

73 Khostug Tuva went a step further, calling for the republic to hold an immediate referendum on secession from Russia; Drobizheva (fn. 18), 125.

74 Tuvans formed 65 percent and Russians 32 percent of the population in 1989. Tuva was nomi- nally independent from 1921 to 1944, when it was incorporated into the USSR. Before 1921 it held the status of a Russian protectorate. Balzer (fn. 71), 124.

75 Anaibin (fn. 68), 104, 110.

304 W O R L D P O L I T I C S

The NPST also devoted its energy to opposing Russia’s federal con- stitution. The group sponsored demonstrations against the adoption of the constitution during the fall of 1993. Its campaign was a success; when both the federal and Tuvan constitutions were put to a popular vote on the same day, a majority of Tuva’s population voted for Tuva’s constitution (53.9 percent) but against the federal constitution. Only 29.8 percent of Tuvans voted to approve the federal constitution.76 The results of these votes indicate that Tuva’s population supported the na- tionalist policies of an amendment on secession, a ban on private land- ownership, and the precedence of Tuvan law over federal law.77

Despite the infl uence of the Popular Front in republican politics, by the mid-1990s popular support for nationalism in Tuva was declin- ing.78 This, together with Yeltsin’s consolidation of central state control, began to shift political power away from the parliament led by Bich- ildei and toward the executive branch. Tuva’s new president, Shegir- Ool Orzhak, co-opted nationalist leaders by offering them government positions. Nevertheless, during Tuva’s autonomy campaign in the early 1990s, the nationalist movement attracted extensive levels of support among the general population and was able to signifi cantly infl uence republican policy.

THE REPUBLIC OF YAKUTIA Yakutia was another of Russia’s secessionist republics, demanding the right from Moscow to control its economy, including the sale of nat- ural resources located on its territory. According to the conventional wisdom, the existence of diamonds, gold, and coal motivated Yakutia’s leaders to make secessionist demands.79 I argue, however, that the key determinant of separatism was the presence of popular support for the Yakut nationalist movement that was able to exert infl uence on repub- lican policy. Evidence consists of, fi rst, the election of nationalist candi- dates to republican legislatures; second, a moderate level of mass activ- ity, including demonstrations, strikes, and instances of ethnic violence;

76 The popular vote took place on December 12, 1993. Tuva’s Supreme Khural had voted to adopt Tuva’s constitution earlier that fall, in October, while Yeltsin was busy bombing the federal parliament. A. Kuzhuget and M. Tatarintseva, Etnopoliticheskaia situatsiia v Respublike Tyva, Research Mono- graph, no. 74 (Moscow: Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1994), 9.

77 Ann Sheehy, “Tuva Adopts New Constitution,” RFE/RL Daily Report no. 203 (October 26, 1993), 2. 78 I address the decline of mass nationalism in my book manuscript, in Giuliano, “Why Secession

Fails: The Rise and Fall of Ethnic Nationalism in Russia.” 79 See, for example, Daniel R. Kempton, “The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia): The Evolution of Cen-

tre-Periphery Relations in the Russian Federation,” Europe-Asia Studies 48 ( June 1996).

S E C E S S I O N I S M F R O M T H E B O T T O M U P 305

and third, popular pressure on the republic’s Supreme Soviet surround- ing the adoption of Yakutia’s constitution.

The two main nationalist groups in Yakutia were the moderate um- brella organization Sakha Omuk (the Sakha People) and the more rad- ical Sakha Keskile (Sakha Perspective). Sakha Keskile advocated union republic status for Yakutia and actively supported republican sover- eignty. Its founder, the linguist Lazar Afanas’ev, pithily summarized the group’s stance as “our sharp politics against those in power.” The group’s support for Boris Yeltsin during the 1991 coup provoked Ya- kutia’s Communist Party to fi re members of Sakha Keskile from their jobs in provincial republican cities in order to slow the group’s grow- ing infl uence.80 Sakha Omuk, the moderate group, advocated cultural rebirth of the Sakha nation and greater Yakut representation in the top tiers of republican administration and enterprise management; it also demanded that Yakutia keep a greater share of the income from its natural resources.

The nationalist opposition began to win popular support. Several Sakha Omuk candidates were elected to local soviets throughout Ya- kutia and to the Supreme Soviet in 1990. Though nomenklatura con- tinued to dominate, Yakut nationalists allied with democrats in the Su- preme Soviet to declare sovereignty in 1990.81 Sakha Omuk lobbied for the election of Mikhail Nikolaev as the republic’s fi rst president. Nikolaev, a product of the Soviet establishment, had just been elected chairman of Yakutia’s reconstituted Supreme Soviet in 1990. When the post of republican president was created one year later, Nikolaev won a majority (76.7 percent) of the popular vote. The nationalists backed Nikolaev because he supported their interest in greater economic sov- ereignty and because he was an ethnic Yakut who fulfi lled the require- ment that the president be able to speak Yakut.82

In terms of mass activity, there were several isolated instances of in- terethnic violence in Yakutia. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer notes that the everyday ethnic tension that existed between Yakuts and Russians erupted into violence at several points in the 1980s and 1990s.83 Also,

80 Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, “A State within a State: The Sakha Republic (Yakutia),” in Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff, eds., Rediscovering Russia in Asia (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995).

81 After declaring sovereignty, Yakutia changed its name to The Sakha Republic (Yakutia). 82 F. M. Zykov, Etnopoliticheskaia situatsiia v Respublike Sakha do i posle vyborov 12 dekabria 1993 g.,

Research Monograph, no. 71 (Moscow: Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology, Russian Acad- emy of Sciences, 1994). Khazanov (fn. 12) writes that Nikolaev “liked to point out [during negotia- tions with Yeltsin] that he acted under heavy pressure from Sakha Omuk and that some decisions of Yakutia’s parliament were made against his will” (p. 183).

83 Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer and Uliana Alekseevna Vinokurova, “Nationalism, Interethnic Rela- tions and Federalism: The Case of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia),” Europe-Asia Studies 48 ( January 1996).

306 W O R L D P O L I T I C S

Yakutia’s coal, diamond, and gold miners went on strike during the fi nal years of the Soviet Union. For example, in 1990, in the diamond- mining town of Mirny, where most miners were recent ethnic Russian migrants, a short-lived Russian movement developed, advocating se- cession from Yakutia and the creation of a “Lena Republic.” A rela- tively low number of demonstrations occurred in Yakutia as the nation- alist movement chose not to employ the strategy of mass protest rallies. However, a demonstration held in 1992 indicates how a strong display of popular opinion infl uenced policy at a critical juncture in republican politics: the vote on Yakutia’s constitution.

By spring 1992 Yakutia’s parliament and population had already been considering for some time whether to adopt a constitution—an act that would be the fi rst of its kind among Russia’s republics. The general population and Yakuts in particular actively participated in the debate surrounding its adoption. There were two main issues of contention: whether the constitution should be passed before or after the Russian constitution and whether it should include a right to secede. As the Su- preme Soviet opened its session in April, expectations had risen among the population that it would be adopted. When it became apparent that the parliament was leaning toward allowing Moscow to fi rst hold its vote on the federal constitution, nationalist groups organized a mass demonstration in front of the parliament building calling for the con- stitution’s immediate passage with an amendment guaranteeing a right to secede. The rally was well attended, both by Yakut intelligentsia and by youth from the nationalist student organization Eder Saas. Protest- ers at the rally threatened to replace the Supreme Soviet chairman with the vice chairman if the constitutional vote was not held.84

The parliament responded to this pressure by voting for immediate adoption of the constitution and for inclusion of the controversial clause on secession. Sakha Keskeli’s infl uence among the population prompted the Supreme Soviet to meet the group’s call for a constitutional right to secede. Another of Sakha Keskeli’s demands, however—that the Ya- kut nation be labeled the “bearers of state sovereignty”—was rejected. Nevertheless, overall, the passage of the constitution represented an enormously important symbolic event in the republic, following a year and a half of tense national debate. Yakutia’s constitution asserted the supremacy of republican law over federal law and provided for the right to secede. The nationalists considered its adoption to be their victory and organized a national (vsyenarodnaia) public holiday in the central

84 Drobizheva (fn. 18) notes that this threat indicated a very radical mood among Yakuts since it would have meant replacing a Yakut with an ethnic Russian (pp. 135–52).

S E C E S S I O N I S M F R O M T H E B O T T O M U P 307

square of the city where people celebrated the long-anticipated constitu- tion.85 By the mid-1990s, however, the nationalist movement’s popular- ity had declined. But the considerable popular support it had enjoyed in the early 1990s allowed it to infl uence key republican policy.

THE REPUBLIC OF MARI-EL Mari-El, with a population almost evenly split between Russians and Maris, was among the least secessionist of Russia’s republics. Its leaders advanced few initiatives following a 1990 declaration of sovereignty. For example, the republic’s Supreme Soviet failed to pass a draft lan- guage law written in the early 1990s and did not adopt a new constitu- tion until 1997.86 Mari-El had two nationalist organizations that found little popular support as indicated by few mass demonstrations, no eth- nic confl ict, and the nationalists’ meager electoral success and lack of infl uence on republican policy.

The radical nationalist group, Kugeze Mlande (Land of our Ances- tors) advocated secession from Russia and exclusivist laws on migra- tion. Kugeze Mlande’s provocative statements and rallies brought the group attention, but it was unpopular and never succeeded in taking control of the nationalist movement.87 The moderate nationalist orga- nization, Mari Ushem (Mari Union), as in other republics, supported republican sovereignty, state status for the Mari language, cultural re- vival, and the end of Russifi cation. Mari Ushem, however, chose not to become an opposition movement and from its inception cooperated with local leaders.

According to a local expert on republican politics, Mari Ushem’s in- fl uence on public opinion was insignifi cant, despite the fact that most people, especially ethnic Mari, were well informed about the group.88 First, Mari Ushem backed the losing candidate in the republic’s fi rst presidential election.89 Second, results from the 1993 elections to the federal Duma and to Mari-El’s Supreme Soviet confi rm the group’s lack of infl uence: only one Mari Ushem member won a Duma seat, and none of its fi ve candidates were elected to the Supreme Soviet. The radical group Kugeze Mlande failed to win any seats at all.

85 Ibid., 137; see also Muzaev (fn. 61), 206–10. 86 Mari-El passed a language law in 1995. Iurii P. Shabaev, “National Movements in the Eastern

Finnic Republics of Rossiia,” Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia 37 (Fall 1998). 87 Muzaev (fn. 61), 159–63; V. D. Sharov, Etnopoliticheskaia situatsiia v Respublike Marii El, Re-

search Monograph, no. 63 (Moscow: Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1994), 5.

88 Sharov (fn. 87), 15. 89 Muzaev (fn. 61), 160–61.

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Mari Ushem’s major initiative took place in spring of 1992, when it organized a “First Congress of the Mari nation” in the capital Ioshkar- Ola. The Congress passed resolutions calling for greater Mari repre- sentation in government and identifying Maris as “a national minority in their own republic.” Yet the Mari Congress remained moderate, op- posing secession and supporting Yeltsin’s Federation Treaty, which was to become part of the Russian Constitution. The following fall, the republican administration began to co-opt the nationalists. It decided to “legitimize the nationalist movement as the national representative organization of the Mari nation” and fi nanced a second “First Congress of the Mari Nation,” which passed resolutions identical to those passed at Mari Ushem’s earlier congress. Although some government offi cials were among the leaders of the Mari Congress, several other Supreme Soviet deputies issued a formal protest to President Zotin stating that the resolutions of the Congress contradicted existing representative or- gans and laws. In response, Zotin had the resolutions of the Congress published in the press along with a statement that they were mere rec- ommendations without any legal status and that the government did not share the group’s approach to solving problems.

After 1993 Mari Ushem began to concern itself mainly with language and education issues.90 Ultimately, only a small portion of the republican intelligentsia embraced the Mari nationalist movement. Both nationalist groups signifi cantly decreased their activity as members stopped partici- pating in elections and migrated to other voting blocs.91

SUMMARY OF CASE STUDIES These case studies have shown that popular support for nationalism in Tuva and Yakutia contributed to secessionism in those republics. In re- publics that failed to make secessionist demands, such as Mari-El, pop- ular nationalism was virtually absent. Political choices made by mass populations, therefore, and the effect of those choices on the competi- tion for power within republics can explain variation in secessionism among Russia’s republics.

IV. CONCLUSION

This article has demonstrated that politics within subfederal regions matters for the development of secessionism. It has shown how ethnic

90 Ronald Wixman and Allen Frank, “The Middle Volga: Exploring the Limits of Sovereignty,” in Bremmer and Taras (fn. 65).

91 Muzaev (fn. 61), 162

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federations undergoing democratization produce conditions that may encourage regional separatism. Specifi cally, the transfer of political ac- countability from center to region shifts the incentives of regional lead- ers, forcing them to react to local constituencies in order to retain offi ce. If these constituencies desire autonomy, regional leaders must respond, making separatism not merely an opportunistic strategy but a neces- sary one for the leaders’ own political survival. Democratization turns administrative territories into electoral arenas. In Russia, the ethnic re- publics became electoral arenas in which popular support for national- ism pressured local leaders into making separatist demands. Thus, the contest for political control of subfederal territories is a critical variable driving regional secession.

These fi ndings have implications for other culturally plural societ- ies concerned with preventing secession, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact of destabilizing campaigns for sovereignty in Russia in the early 1990s implies that democratizing, multiethnic states should avoid establishing subfederal territories that overlap with socially recognized ethnic or religious communities. It is also the case that varying levels of secessionism among Russia’s republics and the ultimate decline of na- tionalism within the republics suggest that secessionism is not inevitable but depends on the presence and degree of mass nationalism within subfederal territories. And, this article has argued, mass nationalism is neither a latent attribute of federal regions, nor a simple function of natural resource endowments, nor something summoned into existence by the manipulations of regional leaders. As such, attention should be directed toward understanding the origins of popular nationalism in ethnofederal states, as well as its role in the elite contest for power within those states.

310 W O R L D P O L I T I C S