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THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Andrey ZAKHAROV
Ph.D. (Philos.), Assistant Professor at the Russian State Humanitarian University, Editor of Neprikosnovenny zapas: debaty o politike i kulture (Moscow, the Russian Federation).
INDIVISIBLE SOVEREIGNTY: SETBACKS OF FEDERALISM IN THE CAUCASUS AND AROUND IT
Abstract
The author takes an in-depth look at the setbacks of the federalist experiments across the post-Soviet expanse and concentrates on the Central Caucasus. He compares Russia's experience of federalism with the attempts to plant federative principles in other Soviet successor-states. He is out to prove that post-Soviet federalism has not freed itself from the Soviet nationalities policy that treated national sovereignty as an indivisible whole. While many of the new-
ly independent states have poured a lot of effort into consolidated nationality and rejected federalism as a factor dangerous to their statehood from the very beginning, in Russia many viewed it as a handy instrument of expansion to neighboring territories. This explains its setback in the post-Soviet expanse: some treat it as a dangerous remedy to be avoided, while others are abusing it in a way that has little in common with its original purpose.
Introduction
In 1945, the Allies, confronted with the task of dealing with Germany's postwar future, chose federalism because in 1949 the Constitutional process was supervised by America, where the federal
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model enjoyed well-justified respect.1 Not only that: the French, the junior partners in the victorious coalition, insisted on a federation in the expectation that a federative Germany would be a weak state. This means that "the re-emergence of a federal state format occurred on the insistence of the Allied Powers. They perceived federalism as a suitable means to deconcentrate or disperse political power."2 In other words, federalism imposed on the defeated looked like a mechanism of regional security in the very heart of Europe; federalist order was equated with the loss of state power and perpetuation of military weakness of those on whom the scheme was imposed.
Federalism as a Weakness
While watching the "soap opera" of Georgian federalization and being aware of the torturous paths of the federative idea in the Central Caucasus, we should bear in mind the story of the 1949 German Constitution. Today, many of those holding forth about the federative prescriptions to be accepted or rejected in the Caucasian context are proceeding from the assumption that federalism is a synonym of weakness. In the summer of 2009, during the mini-debates on a so-called federation of different levels, Georgian politicians dismissed a project (one of many similar projects), the authorship of which was ascribed either to Russia or to Turkey, as a "plan to dismember Georgia." The Vice President of the United States, who visited Georgia after the 2008 August war with Russia, failed to alleviate the Georgians' fears. He called on Georgia "to keep the doors open to Abkhazians and South Ossetians so that they know they have other options besides the status quo" and recommended that it think about a federation for the country.
In 1949, in his article "Zhiznennye osnovy federatsii" (The Vital Principles of Federation), Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin complained: "When we hear so-called intelligent suggestions, such as 'Set up a federative republic in Russia by a referendum!', we cannot help but ask ourselves whether this is a naive or an ill-intentioned suggestion? What might be a boon for some nations could be a bane for Russians."3 Today, this thinker, who was convinced that transformation of the empire into a federation was pernicious for Russia, is very much respected in the Great Power-patriotic ranks of the Russian political elite that grew up on "resource imperialism." Ivan Ilyin was convinced that federation spells dismemberment and voluntary death of large, old, and multinational states. He wrote, for example, that "the federative structure is practically unthinkable for states with a multitude of nationalities that have different languages, different blood kinships, and different religions."4 He also pointed out, and rightly so, that a federation cannot be realized in conditions where legal consciousness is tenuous.
These and other objections to a federation offered by this outstanding Russian conservative can, of course, be contested. Here, however, I am more interested in the fact that today politicians of the post-Soviet polyethnic states used and are still using similar arguments against the federative approaches to inner and regional stabilization.
Indeed, what has been put on the scales? On the one hand, it was repeatedly and convincingly demonstrated within the framework of comparative studies of empires that federalization is not merely efficient, but also practically the only road leading from an empire to a democratic politia. The concepts of "imperial federation" and "imperial federalism" were put into scientific circulation quite
1 William Riker, however, believes that the Americans were guided not so much by political considerations as by "their provincial conviction that federalism was a 'good thing'" (see: W.H. Riker, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1964, p. 37).
2 See: W. Swenden, Federalism and Regionalism in Western Europe: A Comparative and Thematic Analysis, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2006, p. 27.
3 I.A. Ilyin, "Zhiznennye osnovy federatsii," in: I.A. Ilyin, O griadushchey Rossii: izbrannye statyi, Voenizdat, Moscow, 1993, pp. 55-56.
4 Ibid., p. 57.
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a long time ago and have been developing with good results ever since.5 By the beginning of decolonization, it had become more or less generally accepted that the multinational political aggregations knocked together by the Great European Powers that survived World War I could only hold their ground in the changing world if armed with federalist instruments. Late in the 1930s, Georgy Fedo-tov, a prominent supporter of federalism in the Russian emigrant community, wrote the following about the Bolshevik state: "The present Russian empire is and will remain a federation of free peoples. It will not survive otherwise. Russia's unity would have been in danger if it acquired a purely Great Russian national power in the style and traditions of Alexander III. Russia's grown-up and fully fledged nestlings will never reconcile themselves to that sort of Russia."6 The geopolitical fact that most of the federative alliances in Europe appeared on the ruins of continental empires while the maritime colonial empires left behind a vast massive of Third World federations was not fortuitous. William Riker, a classic of federalist studies, pointed to this logic when he said that in the wake of World War II and collapse of colonial empires the world entered an era of federalist revolution.7
On the other hand, the post-Soviet democratic politicians who, in the Soviet past, furiously and with good reason, accused the Soviet Union of every imperial sin spent many years in preserving their countries as post-Soviet mini-empires which, not infrequently, reproduce worst Soviet practices when dealing with national or linguistic minorities. (Independent Georgia, which from the very beginning refused to leave its autonomies in peace, is a pertinent and most glaring example.) In fact, the federative principle of state structure was not used anywhere in the post-Soviet expanse. Russia was probably the only exception, where the compromise initiated by the asymmetrical federalism of the "wild 1990s" concluded by "the Russian revolution from the above" with "its native elites prevented or at least forestalled separatism (except in Chechnia), civil war, and even the dissolution of Russia during the communist regime's demise."8
The geography of post-Soviet ethnopolitical conflicts suggests that the main and most persistent seats of instability were an outcome of mishandled federalist patterns.9 It looks, at least in hindsight, that the federalist division of powers and competence would have been the best answer to the headache of unrecognized states, the product of political restructuring of the former Soviet Union. This preliminary conclusion poses at least two equally intriguing questions.
■ First, why did the post-Soviet elites fail practically everywhere to master the federalist instruments?
■ Second, is it an overstatement to say that unlike its neighbors, Russia knows how cope with federalism?
Separated Governance versus Indivisible Sovereignty
When analyzing the cause of the systematic failures of all the federalist initiatives in the Central Caucasus, Bruno Coppieters pointed to the legacy of Soviet federalism and the way it interpreted
5 For more on the history of the terms, see: M. Burgess, The British Tradition of Federalism, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison, 1995; V.V. Grudzinsky, Na povorote sudby: Velikaia Britania i imperskiy federalizm (posled-niaia tret XIX—pervaia chetvert XX vv.), Chelyabinsk State University Press, Chelyabinsk, 1996.
6 G.P. Fedotov, Zashchita Rossii. Statyi 1936-1940, Vol. IV, YMCA-PRESS, Paris, 1988, p. 220.
7 See: W.H. Riker, op. cit.
8 G. Hahn, "Reforming the Federation," in: Developments in Russian Politics, ed. by S. White, Z. Gitelman, R. Sakwa, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2005, p. 152.
9 Rich factual material can be found in: S. Markedonov, Turbulentnaia Evrazia: mezhetnicheskie, grazhdanskie konflikty, ksenofobia v novykh nezavisimykh gosudarstvakh postsovetskogo prostranstva, Academia, Moscow, 2010.
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national problems. We all know that the Bolshevist project of social modernization stirred up ethnic consciousness while insisting on territorial arrangement of ethnicity. At the same time, the rigid political nation/territory interconnection produced an unquestionable triumph of the legal principle of indivisibility of sovereignty, one of the cornerstones of Soviet constitutional law. Those Russian authors who cherish this tradition write: "Sovereignty is an element of the state's legal capacity which gives the state all sorts of rights but which is not reduced to them. It cannot be divided or transferred, not because this is prohibited but because it is impossible. Unlike rights, legal capacity cannot be divided."10 As soon as the Soviet Union left the stage, all local nationalisms, pampered and raised by Soviet power and determined to realize their statehood ambitions, vehemently insisted on their exclusive nature. Since the new states born by local nationalisms were extremely and obviously vulnerable, especially at the early stage of their existence, joint or divided sovereignty was seen as an unacceptable option for them. This specificity is typical not only of the former Soviet Union but of the postcolonial world as a whole. Here is what an Asian student of Asian federalism has to say: "In the first few decades following decolonization, states attempted to build unitary and homogenous nation-states. They distrusted and discouraged federalism and regarded it as an aberrant phenomenon."11 In the Central Caucasus, likewise, "the principle of indivisible sovereignty is the last straw for all the weak states of the region whether internationally recognized or not."12
The above is true of those nations that could profit from the dissolution of the Soviet Union by using the notorious right to self-determination. Clinging tightly to the sovereignty they unexpectedly found their hands on, the political leaders suspected federalism and its deconcentration of power of inadequate attention to independence associated with undivided sovereignty. The result could only be expected: "The vertical division of power among the bodies of state power did not look like a remedy to the state's weakness."13 Here is an important point: the federative idea looked suspicious not only to ethnic majorities which set down to the business of building up their own states, but also to numerous national minorities left without statehoods in the post-Soviet era. For the former federalism was an excessive alternative, while the latter regarded it as inadequately narrow; the reason, however, was the same: the doctrine presupposed a combination of self-administration and divided rule. This explains why the rulers of all unrecognized states who challenged their newly born mini-empires consistently rejected federalism as the best option—they wanted unconditional and complete independence—a tempting yet unassailable goal.
Meanwhile, one of the essential prerequisites for forming a federative alliance is that the sides are willing to bind themselves by such a contract. Any federation is a voluntary structure based on the conscious and strong determination of the central and regional elites to enter into contractual relations. This is even more important when the center and regions have distinct ethnic characteristics: a federalist alliance of ethnically homogenous elements differs greatly from a similar union among different nationalities. Indeed, sovereignty concerns are dismissible in one case and move to the fore in the other. This means that the desire to join a federation expressed by ethnic elites (that have enjoyed or have come close to enjoying the advantages of the right of nations to self-determination) should be imperatively confirmed by the possibility of leaving the federation, something which they implicitly have in mind when signing the contract.
What political aims do the national minorities have in mind within a federative union? As distinct from an empire, a federation does not require that its members unconditionally accept the priority of political loyalty over ethnic loyalty. This form of statehood, while limiting ethnic self-realiza-
10 A.V. Kiselvea, A.V. Nesterenko, Teoriiafederalizma, MGU Press, Moscow, 2002, p. 101.
11 B. He, "Democratization and Federalization in Asia," in: Federalism in Asia, ed. by B. He, B. Galligan, T. Inoguchi, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK, 2007, p. 2.
12 B. Coppieters, Federalizm i konflikt na Kavkaze, Moscow Carnegie Center, Moscow, 2002, p. 36 (B. Coppieters, Federalism and Conflict in the Caucasus, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 2001).
13 Ibid., p. 14.
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tion, does not presuppose that it is liquidated altogether. National self-identification is equally important for empires and for federations; there are no federations anywhere in the world with more or less numerically equal national or linguistic groups—it seems that Switzerland is the only or, at least, rare case. This means that, unlike ethnically homogenous federations, multinational federations have to identify the most adequate forms of self-expression that would permit ethnic minorities to easily fit the political, cultural, and economic context of the national majorities. This is one of the most challenging structural tasks and the responsibility of the political leaders of the dominant nation. Georgy Fedotov referred to this in the Soviet political context: "While the national idea has not exhausted itself in Russian culture, in Russia's present and future political life nationalism presents an obvious national danger. Russia is a state of peoples; the majority of them have awakened to national life for the first time, which makes their young pride very vulnerable... The victory of nationalist trends in Great Russia could simply destroy Russia."14 This is as topical today as ever.
In other words, the public space of a federative state should contain zones in which a minority would feel itself a majority and enjoy corresponding privileges. This is why the "nationalism of component parts," "that is, the collective needs and requirements of the nation or nations that coexist within the large, overreaching political nationality of the federation taken as a whole,"15 is of fundamental importance. In this context, the experience of the Russian Federation can hardly be described as successful or inspiring: the decade of the "vertical of power" dramatically and promptly narrowed down the scope of political self-expression of the ethnic groups living in the country. This (nearly) dampened the fairly limited enthusiasm over federative projects of any sort among the politicians and citizens of unrecognized republics seeking readjusted relations with their "smaller metropolitan states" who look at the Russian experience as maximally important.
Federalism with Russian Specifics
Here I will try to assess to what extent Russia's consistent and praiseworthy loyalty to the letter of federalism helps it to maintain normal relations with its neighbors. Any student of comparative federalism cannot but be bewildered by the fact that Russia, no longer a federation, still calls itself the Russian Federation. Indeed, one can hardly argue with British academic Cameron Ross who has described Russia as "a federation without federalism."16 It seems it would have been much easier to legalize the "vertical arrangement," amend the Fundamental Law accordingly, and call the country a unitary state. Nothing is being done to follow this logic. The question is: Why? It seems that the metamorphoses of federalism of the last decades can supply an answer. Back in the mid-1960s, William Riker pointed to a very interesting phenomenon: while the traditional colonial empires were dying out, federalism became the only political instrument of legal non-violent acquisition of new territories. In the world of triumphant political correctness, cynical seizure of other people's land is no longer acceptable. Federalism has become the only acceptable instrument of territorial expansion.17
In the case of Russia, the state preserves the federative shell to be able to efficiently regulate political processes in the so-called Near Abroad. This possibility was practically forgotten or, at least, used ad hoc in the Yeltsin era. The trend changed at the turn of the 2000s. The 2001 Federal
14 G.P. Fedotov, Tiazhba o Rossii. Sbornik statey (1933-1936), Vol. III, YMCA-PRESS, Paris, 1982, pp. 191-192.
15 M. Burgess, Comparative Federalism: Theory and Practice, Routledge, Abingdon, 2006, p. 108.
16 C. Ross, Federalism and Democratization in Russia, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002, p. 7.
17 For more detail, see: A.A. Zakharov, Unitarnaia federatsia. Piat etiudov o rossiiskom federalizme, Moscow
School of Political Studies, Moscow, 2008, pp. 113-139.
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Law on the Order of Admittance to the Russian Federation and Formation within It of a New Subject was a watershed in the foreign policy mission of Russian federalism. The new law regulated the way the composition of the Russian Federation changes if territories of a foreign state are joined to it. Today, this act requires conciliatory procedures that will involve the leaders of the country which, totally or partially, joins the Russian Federation. Significantly, the Russian "hawks" tried to revise the regulation (which they found pinching) during Vladimir Putin's first presidency to make it more "comfortable." In 2005, the Rodina parliamentary faction suggested that the law acquire a regulation that the decision on joining Russia should belong to the people living in the territory of the possible subject, their will being expressed through a referendum. In other words, the authors of the amendment suggested that the State Duma should waive the treaties between Russia and other states for the sake of partial restoration of the Soviet Union. Andrey Saveliev, one of those who promoted the amendment, was very explicit: "Besides legal incontrovertibility there is also political expediency."18
In 2005, the State Duma rejected the draft; today, there is no faction of this name in the lower chamber. In August 2008, however, the Russian press revived it—a sign that the trend is still alive. It seems that the Russian elite has achieved a latent political consensus: it has been agreed that an empire is a useful thing even if it has to carefully conceal its imperial nature by pretending to be something else. This explains the recent and unexpected virtual demand for the federative idea among the "oil and gas" supporters of the Great Power idea; they have convinced themselves that in the last ten years the Motherland has indeed been "rising from its knees." The paradox is obvious: today the democratic and liberal federative ideology is exploited in Russia to justify future Great Power expansion. Moreover, our federalism is still alive for the simple reason that the imperial dream is gaining momentum.
There is another important reason: a "newcomer" finds it much easier to join a federative state (a unit which gives its parts a lot of self-administration and prioritizes or should prioritize persuasion rather than compulsion in relations between the center and the regions) than a unitary state. Indeed, the elites of a disappointed federation subject will find it much easier to minimize the effects of their miscalculation. A federation keeps the doors open or leaves them ajar for those who might want to beat a retreat. This is especially important in cases when the territory which joins a federation is open to outside threats while the political class is guided by short-term political survival expediency. Those who join an empire must take up arms to disentangle themselves from it: in natural conditions the imperial system offers no exit. On the other hand, in the past, federations either survived the loss of their constituents or essentially peacefully fell apart.
The question of whether this interpretation of federalism can strengthen regional security and mutual understanding with the post-Soviet neighbors suggests an obvious answer. This is very sad: in the post-Soviet context, the peaceful, democratic, and consensual potential of federalism is not tapped by the sides related, in one way or another, to the federative idea. In the big and small wars which flared up within the former Soviet borders, "violence was cut short either by military victory or by mutual depletion of resources. The conflicting sides never tried to use the mechanisms of harmonization of interests based on mutual trust, democratization, and economic considerations."19 Some of the "former Soviet subjects" are afraid of federalism as a source of disasters or even perdition. Other "former Soviet subjects" are prepared to accept it, albeit in a strange form: they turn it upside down to wield it as a weapon of potential expansion. Both versions—federalism as a persistent phobia, on the one hand, and imperial federalism, on the other—leave no opportunity for the federative model to heal opposition and confrontation, a task to which it is perfectly suited.
18 For more detail, see: E. Mikhaiylovskaia, "Fraktsia 'Rodina' v kontekste natsionalisticheskogo diskursa v Gos-udartvennoy Dume," in: Russkiy natsionalizm: sotsialny i kulturny kontekst, Compiled by M. Laruel, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Moscow, 2008, pp. 50-57.
19 S. Markedonov, op. cit., p. 126.
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"Soviet, Therefore Excellent"
The above partly answers the question of why Russia outstripped all the other post-Soviet states in mastering the federalist implements indispensable to all divided societies. This was not intentional: legally, the R.S.F.S.R. was a federative alliance within the Soviet Union, another, albeit formal, federative alliance. From the point of view of political practice, both alliances were constructions of an imperial type. They were multinational states with a clearly outlined—both ethnically and geographically—imperial center and no less obvious imperial periphery. I have already written that an empire, which is multinational by definition, and a federation, which is multinational by the whim of fate, share an important typologically similar problem: both have to address, in one way or another, the task of harmonizing relations with ethnic minorities, that is, to seek for and find their own combination of self-administration and divided governance. While the Soviet Federation, the home of a multitude of peoples and nationalities, having overtaxed its military and economic potential while competing with the West, failed to resolve the problem, the Russian Federation survived, for several reasons, even as a sovereign state.
One has to agree with those who point to the fundamental similarity of the two federations with their center in Moscow: "Russia, the core of the U.S.S.R.'s 'internal empire,' mirrors its predecessor not only in its territorial, ethnic, and confessional incongruence, but also in its weakened asymmetrical 'national-territorial' administrative structure."20 The mirrored image, however, is not totally faithful: with hardly 20 percent of non-Russians in the newly born Russian Federation against a practically equal numbers of Russians and non-Russians in the Soviet Union on the eve of communist collapse, the ethnic proportions have obviously changed radically. The new ethnic context made it both easier and harder to harmonize national relations in new Russia.
The strategy of cooperation and mutual concessions is inevitably enforced in personal and social relations: the political actors involved regard this strategy as more rational and, therefore, more advantageous. In this sense, federalism is not a magnanimous concession but political decisions imposed by circumstances. There is no doubt that the elites treat the very close demographic parity between the imperial nation of the past and the ethnic minorities which cooperate with it as a serious argument in favor of a federation. In other words, the Bolsheviks who came to power in 1917 had no other option: they could hardly hail federalism as a bourgeois invention, yet without it the new masters of the ethnic and linguistic patchwork called the Russian Empire could barely pacify the fringes and take a firm grip on the country. Throughout seven decades this choice, sustained by large-scale economic programs or rather bribery of the periphery elites, proved its viability.
Was it taken into account by those who restored the Russian state on the ruins of the Soviet Union? President Yeltsin and the democratic leaders feared that the wave of disintegration would spill over the administrative borders into the R.S.F.S.R. This did not and could not happen, however the new Russian leaders used the Bolshevik remedy: "Take as much sovereignty as you can swallow" to forestall the threat of disintegration (even if mainly imagined) and then push it back beyond the horizons of the politically feasible. The republican elites busy digesting what they had swallowed never questioned the expediency of a federative union in Russia, even though central power was at its lowest. In the Soviet Union, on the other hand, at the last stage of its existence, the leaders had no economic tidbits to pacify the republican elites. The medieval savagery of the two Chechen wars gradually convinced the leaders of the main Russian regions that haggling with Moscow was much safer and much more effective than open and defiant resistance. Having placed the stakes on federalism, they actively or even aggressively insisted on its principles and slogans, at least until Vladimir Putin came to power.
1 G. Hahn, op. cit., p. 148.
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It is much easier to extend concessions to a small and weak partner than to a big and powerful one. In the period after the Soviet Union's disintegration and the emergence of the Russian Federation, the nationalist-minded public and its political representatives started saying that the new country, with less than one-fifth of national minorities within its borders, might be regarded as a monoeth-nic state. At first this looked like a slip of the tongue; later it was deliberately and frequently repeated. The skyrocketing oil and gas prices stirred up the national pride of the Great Russians and heated up patriotic sentiments: once more the Russian Orthodox Church was conscripted to state service. No longer concerned with a (potential) threat presented by the ethnic minorities, the political leaders of new Russia remained indifferent to the fact that the centralized and unitary (by design and in practice) country would continue to be called a federation. Concessions to a small fraction of citizens were easy and helped promote the federative idea.
In other words, the Russian federative project was hardly a product of deliberate political action realized by the wise and far-sighted elite intent on building a radiant future for themselves and their voters. This design rooted in the Soviet past was realized spontaneously, developed by momentum, and responded to the changing situation. The country's political leaders were not so much confronted with a choice between federalism and other forms of territorial organization as with the muted imperative to preserve it. The Russian Federation, the first post-Soviet federation, was a federation only by "birth right," because of its genetic connection with the R.S.F.S.R. In this context, the Russian federal elite concluded a tacit agreement of sorts with the non-Russian republican elites on preservation of the federative legal shell. One side was fully aware that in extreme situations it would not be able to keep those who wanted to leave within its orbit; the other side knew that even having pushed the situation to the extremes it would not be resolved enough to leave the federation once and for all.
This was the fairly shaky balance of the Yeltsin era. The sudden interest in Russia's natural resources, which coincided with the advent of a new leader to power, made it possible to readjust the principles of post-communist federative haggling. The readjusted principles did nothing for Russian federalism: it was transformed into a rather puzzling phenomenon with no federalism about it except the name. The federative political system functions differently in the conditions of plenty and scarcity. Modest incomes encourage civilian virtues typical of federalism because the elites of the state's constituent parts have to coordinate their actions, while the state's excessive income (especially if easily come by) adds efficiency to the non-competitive distribution of the raw material rent. This creates a vertical structure within which "the federal center not merely centralizes the federative system by radically narrowing down the sphere of regional autonomy, but doubts its existence."21
While federalism is dying out inside Russia, the foreign policy dimension described above is gaining weight. "Resource imperialism" presupposes Russia's political, economic, cultural, and military domination in the larger part of the post-Soviet world. In the absence of opposition inside the country, this course is not publicly discussed on the Russian political platforms; there is not a single chance that it could be contested in earnest. The weak statehoods of many of Russia's neighbors and the conflict potential of the post-Soviet geopolitical space suggest that the expansionist potential of Russian federalism would some day no longer be on standby. It seems that South Ossetia, a tiny and unviable state unit with North Ossetia as its Russian "elder brother," will be the first to test the model of expansion of Russia's family of fraternal peoples. Of course, the present law does not allow a "newcomer" to be accepted without the consent of the Georgian authorities ... but,
■ first, Georgia is a democratic country in which power changes, albeit not irreproachably, from time to time;
21 N.V. Pankevich, Modeli federativnogo ustroystva: zakonomernosti politicheskoy transformatsii, The Urals Branch of RAS, Ekaterinburg, 2008, p. 177.
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second, the laws are written to be amended and perfected;
third, in 2008, Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia, which means that it is no longer part of Georgia.
Conclusion: The Failed Mission
To sum up, the mission of federalism in the post-Soviet expanse, including Russia and the Central Caucasus, failed because its realization was undermined from different sides.
■ First, the Russian political class looked at federative statehood not so much as the result of consistent efforts to achieve an agreement among the elites, but as part of the legacy left by the sinking Soviet Union and disposed of it in a very original way. The authoritarian regime, a very natural decoration of sudden oil and gas prosperity, had no use for the contractual, concessional, and civil potential of the federalist idea. It amazed many by its newly displayed interest in another hypostasis of federalism: an instrument of territorial expansion. It is not easy to think in imperial terms in the era of post-modernity; however this can be done with the help of the federative idea. Strictly speaking, today it is impossible to dream about territorial acquisitions (or restoration of lost land) outside a federation. If federalism is practiced only for geopolitical considerations it loses its meaning to become an empty and artificial structure. For this reason the Russian Federation has next to nothing to add to the fairly rich experience of world federalism: this great principle was invented at one time for purposes that have nothing in common with its intended purposes in Putin's Russia.
■ Second, Russia's post-Soviet neighbors have no use for federalist projects, plans, and schemes. The value of sovereignty in this part of Eurasia has been seriously overestimated for two reasons: independence was suddenly acquired by politically unprepared nations and the newly born states underwent their development in the dark shade of a much too large, chronically unstable, and permanently frightening "fraternal" power. The dogma of indivisibility of sovereignty which the elites of the new nations extracted from Marxism-Leninism prevents any contemplation of divided governance, to say nothing of its practical implementation. It was these sentiments that doomed the Commonwealth of Independent States to a miserable existence. For the same reason, in the two post-communist decades, none of the Soviet successor-states (with the exception of Russia) have accepted the federative structure; even the obvious candidates—Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine—qualified to join the list of federative states preferred to keep away. In some cases, sovereignty was cherished above territorial integrity: the national political elites lauded this principle and brought it to the extreme when they, strange as it may seem, accepted without a murmur the readjusted borders of their own states. This could have been described as sheer craziness, yet this is political practice vehemently substantiated and supported. There is no way back: even if federalism were temporarily rejected, the breakaway territories cannot be restored.
■ Third, it was not only national groups which acquired statehood in the course of the great reorganization that rejected federalism. It was rejected even by those peoples that acquired no statehoods in the course of the Soviet Union's disintegration. After 1991, having found themselves under the jurisdiction of nationally-oriented rulers who spared nothing to consolidate their sickly newborn states and were not prepared to cede even the tiniest share of the newly acquired sovereignties, the "deprived nations" abandoned, after a while, the idealist
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federalist projects. While watching the nationalist elites of their new countries gradually master the imperialist parlance in their dialog with the minorities, the smaller groups placed their stakes (where possible) not on the division of power within a common country but on political independence. They did not need federalism to realize this design.
