While we are united…

Persistent statement about unity of Russia in preelection slogans of the ruling party inspires alarm. Experience shows that when authorities assure about the well-being of the country, it really means that there are serious problems. How united is Russia today, and does the policy of authorities lead to strengthening of this unity?

1. Economic ties

A lot of regions have more economic ties with foreign partners than with Russian. Alexander Gusev, associate professor of the department of public administration at State University of Management, has come to this conclusion while analyzing the data of Russian Committee for Statistics.

Administrative federal districting is quite artificial, because regions inside these districts are poorly economically tied with each other. At the same time the borders of these federal districts are not supported by strong economic relations, so "potentially they could become the line of political “fracture” of the territory of the country". Federal districts as administrative units are 10 times more dependant on external markets, than on economic regional interaction. In this case territorial integrity of the country doesn’t have strong economic foundation. So, possible destruction of internal economic space would be a problem for the majority of Russian subjects, because their economic ties with other territories of the country are weak". First "candidate for separation" is Far Eastern federal district.  

The reason for absence of interregional economic ties is lack of industry, and as a result economic ties are reduced to trading relations. And at interregional level regions have nothing to trade, because the volume of production in these regions is very low.

2. Cultural community

Culture could also serve as platform for uniting big multinational territory of Russia. Russian language could serve as a rallying top. However, in this sphere situation is even duller. The level of literacy and language skills of the majority of the Russian population are decreasing.

First of all, the reason for this is overall reduction in cultural and educational level, dominance of slang in Mass Media, and even on TV, and, of course, catastrophic reduction in quality of education even at primary schools. Usually in a simple high school on low wages and rather bad working conditions agree those who can’t claim for more. In result, there are more illiterate, passive teachers; the growing generation tries to limit their knowledge.

Overall reduction in cultural level leads to the growth of aggression, xenophobia and nationalism. At the same time Russian language becomes political instrument. National languages are used as government ones in 23 Russian subjects. Of course, this doesn’t deny the status of Russian language as a governmental, but without knowing national language in, for example, Bashkortostan, Tuva or Adygea – not to mention North Caucasian Republics – it is impossible to get promotion.

At the same time significance of Russian language is reduced, studying the language of titular nation (which not necessary is the majority of population of this or that republic) is often done by reducing the programs of Russian language studies. The foundation for this are options of basic training plan, accepted by the Ministry of Education Science in 2008 and providing national language studies. And there is no principle of voluntariness in choosing the training speech program. For example, in Tatarstan and Bashkiria parents who protest against national bias are often asked to leave the republic.  

3. Self-identification

Supporters of the idea about formation of supranational community of Russian people have little to set against the growth of national mood "on both sides of the fence". "Russian march" doesn’t lead to unity on the Day of National Unity.

By ceasing to be cosmopolitan, Russian culture is becoming more mythical concept. It keeps all great traditions of the past, but looses its positions in present, by giving ground to Hollywood “pop” and Chinese thrillers. For example, phenomen of Yakut movie, which is fresh, original and with high creativity, can be remarkable. Young Yakut producers don’t develop Soviet or Russian cinematic traditions; they imitate Japanese and Korean films.

If to believe the official data, only 60% of citizens of our country recognize themselves as Russians. Starting from 1989, the number of new ethnic categories and "independent people" on the territory of Russia is constantly  growing - and not because of migrants, but because more our fellow citizens don’t want to feel themselves faceless "small screw-Russians", who only can rely on "batushka-President". They search for the roots and want to feel themselves the part of some community, not so big community, but original and worthy. In result, fragmentation of nations takes place: Chuvans stood out from Chukchi, Nagaybaki, Astrakhan and Siberia Tatars, and also Kryashens - from Tatars, and from Russians – Cossacks, Pomors, and according to results of census 2010 – Siberians and Kaliningradians.

Appearance of new nations and sub ethnos "is a social engineering, – says director of the Institute of ethnology and anthropology of RAS (Russian Academy of Sciences), acamedician Valeriy Tishkov. – Politicians, businessmen and intellectual communities could be involved in this process. This is how Georgia nation was born, which united Megrels, Kartliytsy and Svans.  Representatives of national intelligence, who lived in St. Petersburg, gathered and said that all these groups are Georgians. Practically the same way Altai people, Uzbeks, Turkmens and many other nations appeared. Everywhere first there were intellectual constructions created by elite with the participation of scientists-humanities".

This phenomenon is really close to distribution of social network and communities. The process of self-identification and search of kindred spirits in the blood, in culture or in mentality gains momentum. And the same as social networks, national self-identification could become an effective weapon in achieving political goals.

4. "United Russia" and disintegration of the country

Did Russia become more united under the presidency of Putin-Medvedev? The threat of disintegration, which was facing the country in the 90s. today is also real. Top-down command structure has led to the fact that "Moscow overlapped practically all feedback channels with regions". At the same time, the government doesn’t take any measures for solving the national problem and for strengthening of economic and cultural ties between the regions. Moreover, today current policy provokes the growth of nationalism and separatism.

So, for example, the proposal of authorized representative of the North Caucasus Federal District, Alexander Khloponin, to allocate budget funds for migration of North Caucasian unemployed people to other regions in Russia would unlikely help to reduce social intensity in Caucasus, but may increase it in regions, to where citizens of Caucasus will migrate.

"The government instead of introducing proper civil order, calling on compliance with laws in the country, and, of course, instead of stimulating migration, is doing nothing, – believes the head of Caucasus sector in the Center of civilized and regional researches of RAS Enver Kisriev. – All this should happen without any programs, paternalistic bureaucrats, who give you all this money, buy you one-way train ticket, and show you where to settle down. And Russian authorities work on the principle of traditional, preindustrial government, this is a set of bureaucrats of various ranks, who solve the issues for themselves and from themselves, instead of acting according to law. They see in front of them "people", whom they should look after, to whom they should give money, from whom they should take money, whom the should evict from the country. There will be no results from this.  And I can imagine, how much of the allocated funds will go to bureaucrats’ pockets, who will organize the whole process".

Instead of coherent and consecutive national policy – we witness the process of going from one extreme to another. On the one hand, there are double standards in applying the article of law "For inciting ethnic hatred", absence of adequate reaction on "national extremes" and infringements of the rights of a Russian-speaking population in some republics, on the other hand, there are  concerns of the Ministry of Mass Communications about the fact that creation of Internet-resources on the languages of various Russian nations "carries the threat of social isolation and could be used for creation of the websites of  extremist orientation". If Soviet government in proper time had thought over these concerns, Soviet scientists would unlikely had created, for example, in 1930 and 1941 two types of alphabet for Tuvan language. And without this alphabet it would be more difficult to declare the Tuvan language an official one.

Centralized budget flows remain the only possible instrument to hold territorial Russian integrity. However the principle of distribution of government subsidies provokes separatism – the more real the threat of separation of this or that region is, the more generous it is financed from the government budget. And it is not accidently that together with numerous actions on the topic "Enough feeding Caucasus!" in Siberia there is a movement under slogan "Enough feeding Moscow!"

Meanwhile, continuous weakening of economic ties between the territories will bring closer the moment, when regions will understand the unexpediency of further existence under federal authorities, which governance is not so effective. Also according to Alexander Gusev, there are less than 7-8 years left in order to introduce into governance of regional development new and effective instruments.

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