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

• the Ministry for Emergency Situations;
• and, since the intervention in Chechnya, the Ministry of Defense.
As Galina Staravoitova, President Yeltsin’s former advisor on nationalities issues, said in
1992, “[W]e have too many people who consider themselves specialists on the national question.
There is the Council of Nationalities, there are subcommissions of the Supreme Soviet, there is the
State Committee for Nationality Affairs...and there are numerous volunteers.” 48
In part, this diffusion of policy is the result of the weakness of the Ministry for Nationalities
and Regional Policy. Since 1991, the ministry has changed leadership–and thus direction–four
times. 49 However, the nature of the issue is also a major contributing factor. As the current head of
the Ministry for Nationalities and Regional Policy, Vyacheslav Mikhailov, noted in an interview in
the Russian press, he is not in charge of the “ministry for the settlement of nationalities conflicts.” 50
The outbreak of armed conflict on the territory of the Russian Federation demands the attention of
other government agencies. The ministries of Foreign Affairs, Internal Affairs, Emergency
Situations, and Defense, have all become involved in nationalities and regional policy when intergroup
conflicts in the North Caucasus and elsewhere have required the imposition of martial law or
the deployment of troops, or when they have threatened to embroil external powers. The federal
security and counter-intelligence services have become involved, as in the case of Chechnya, when
the decision has been taken by the Russian government to lend support to key opposition movements
in their political struggle.
There is, however, no coordination of effort among the institutions, and no agency has the
ultimate responsibility for decision-making on nationality and regional policy. In an interview,
Vyacheslav Mikhailov himself described the role of his ministry as an advisory one: “first,
analyz[ing] ethnic problems in a profound fashion; and second, draw[ing] up recommendations on
shaping the Russian Federation’s nationalities policy,” but not making Russian policy. While
48 Cited by John Dunlop in “Gathering the Russian Lands: Background to the Chechnya Crisis,” Working Papers
in International Studies I-95-2, The Hoover Institution (Stanford University, January 1995), p.6.
49 In March 1992, Valery Tishkov was appointed Chairman of what was then the State Committee on Nationality
Policy (Goskomnats). Frustrated by Yeltsin’s reluctance to take his advice seriously, and exasperated by the
government’s contradictory statements regarding ethnic conflicts, Tishkov resigned after a tenure of only seven
months. He was replaced in October 1992 by Sergei Shakhrai, a key adviser to President Yeltsin and one of the
architects of the Federal Treaty and the Russian Constitution. Shakhrai was elevated to the rank of
Vice-Premier, and Goskomnats was upgraded from a State Committee to the full-fledged Ministry for
Nationalities and Regional Policy. However, Shakhrai became increasingly involved in political intrigue in
Moscow and was eventually removed from his post in May 1994. Nikolai Yegorov, the former head of
Krasnodar Krai, was chosen as his successor. Yegorov, in turn, was forced to resign in June 1995, in the wake
of the Chechen attack on the Russian city of Budennovsk in Stavropol’ Krai. He was replaced in July 1995 by
Vyacheslav Mikhailov, a nationalities expert and a former Deputy Minister of Nationalities and Regional
Policy.
50 See Yelena Dikun, “A Problem has Found a Specialist: Interview with Vyacheslav Mikhailov, Newly
Appointed Nationalities Minister,” Obshchaya Gazeta (in English), No. 31, August 3-9, 1995.
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