RUSSIA'S TINDERBOX - Belfer Center for Science and International ...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. The Administrative Structure of the Soviet Union:
The administrative structure of the Soviet Union gave the national republics of the North
Caucasus the forms of sovereignty but denied them the substance; made the issue of ethnicity a
central feature of regional politics; and left a configuration of borders specifically designed to keep
the peoples of the region in constant competition and make Moscow the sole arbitrator of the
territorial system.
Although the USSR was a highly centralized state and the Communist Party in Moscow
dominated all decisionmaking, it had the form at least of a federation. This federation consisted of a
descending hierarchy of administrative units based on a combination of territory and ethnicity, with
some national groups having more privileges, more institutions and more opportunity to manage
their own affairs than others.
In spite of the fact that ethnicity was one of the building blocks of the Soviet Union, and
individual administrative units were associated with a particular national group, in the majority of
cases ethnic and administrative borders did not coincide. The Bolshevik creators of the system were
anxious to prevent the total domination of any of the non-Russian groups in a particular territory,
and the creation of coalitions of groups that could threaten Russian and thus Soviet rule. As a result,
a policy of divide and rule was practiced, giving a deliberate arbitrariness to the administrative
system. Different ethnic groups were jumbled together in the individual national-territorial units.
When the USSR collapsed in 1991, those national groups at the top of the administrative
hierarchy were able to secede and form independent states. The rest, including the republics of the
North Caucasus, were not. Instead of being under the ultimate jurisdiction of a non-national suprastate,
the USSR, which was formally dominated by a political party, the CPSU, they were now
subordinate to a political entity that was controlled by another ethnic group.
This perception of being under the jurisdiction of an ethnic group rather than a state is a
crucially important one in the former Soviet Union. The ruling group is seen to monopolize political
power and to deny access to resources of land, housing and jobs to members of other ethnic groups.
At a time when these resources are at their most scarce, when salaries have declined, the social
safety net has disappeared, and prices on basic foodstuffs have risen precipitously, the monopoly of
political power by one group is viewed as a threat to the physical survival of others.
As a result of this perception, the peoples of the North Caucasus, and indeed every other
ethnic group in the former USSR that was denied its own independent state in 1991, feel that their
future is jeopardized. Their national movements, and governments in the case of Chechnya, either
want their designated republic to be given the right to secede, or want to have their ethnic group
acknowledged as the equal of the dominant group through the creation of a federated state that will
ensure political power and access to resources.
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