Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

42 Michael Burgess3 Ethnic diversity and multi-nationalismUp until 2005 49 the Russian Federation had a population of approximately145 million citizens and its 89 ‘federal subjects’ that comprised 57 territoriallydefined entities and 32 ethnically defined entities was largely a collectivelegacy of the old Soviet Union. Within the latter ethnic category were 21republics and 11 national autonomies, making Russia a conceptual melangeof ethnic and sub-state national identities. Heinemann-Grüder has claimedthat ‘the departure from a pure ethnofederalism and the avoidance of a pureterritorial federalism are key achievements of federalization in Russia’ and‘the combination of both principles seems to be the best variant forRussia’. 50 In this section we will construe the multiethnic and multinationalcomposition of the Russian Federation as the federalism in the federationand address it from the standpoint of comparative federalism and federation.Let us begin with Heinemann-Grüder’s interesting comment aboutanother historical legacy, namely, Russia’s purported failure in the nineteenthcentury ‘to develop an assimilative, homogenizing nation-state’ andthe Soviet Union’s corresponding inability in the twentieth century to ‘engineera supranational, internationalist state’. These two failures, he suggests,served to de-legitimize ‘compulsory assimilation as a means of integration’.What, then, were the implications of these circumstances for a federalRussia? Put in Heinemann-Grüder’s own words, how did these ‘successive failuresof nation-state building become a pre-requisite for Russia’s contemporaryfederalization?’ 51The question is interesting in the extent to which it compels us to thinkdeeply about the nature of Russia as a multiethnic and multinational state.In a sense the constitutional architecture and the institutional design of theRussian Federation themselves betray certain assumptions about its ‘ethnonational’past, present and future. First, it is important to note thatapproximately 83 per cent of the total population is Russian so that wewould need to determine the precise territorial distribution of the variousprimary ethnic identities and distinct self-conscious nations throughout thecountry. For example, Russia’s 21 republics constitute just 15.7 per cent ofthe total population of the federation and in only seven of these republicsdoes the indigenous population comprise a majority. 52 Second, we wouldneed to detect the number and variety of similar identities existing as minoritieswithin each of the primary ethno-national categories and how theywere distributed. Third, we would need to understand how far elite representativesof each of these categories have already been successfully incorporatedin the decision-making processes of their respective tiers of politicalauthority. To paraphrase Heinemann-Grüder, it would seem that there was‘a comparatively high degree of “integral incorporation” of non-Russianelites into decision-making, and into the administration of their respectivesub-national units’. Consequently past experience suggested that there wereclear incentives for ‘acculturation and assimilation’ into the Russian polity