From Submission To Rebellion by Vladimir Shlapentokh

Author:Vladimir Shlapentokh [Shlapentokh, Vladimir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Europe, Former Soviet Republics
ISBN: 9780813321561
Google: QqV8wgEACAAJ
Publisher: Avalon Publishing
Published: 1997-08-07T03:39:42+00:00

The Masses as Actors

The regional elite was the major force behind regionalization. In contrast, the role of many other political actors was much less significant. This can also be said of the masses. The turbulent currents of Russian public opinion on regionaliza-tion in 1992–1995 were quite complicated and contradictory.

After 1991, the hostility to the center lingered in people’s minds, though the perception was basically subconscious, as it had surfaced a long time before that when the regional movement emerged, headed by officially recognized politicians. The great turmoil throughout the country in 1991–1995 accompanied the drastic decline in the standard of living for a majority of Russians and the growing corruption of the central bureaucracy. These sentiments made Russians even more hostile to the center and more supportive of local leaders, who were exploiting the popular anti-Moscow mood, as previously discussed.

Economic factors significantly helped increase this alienation from Moscow. The quality of daily life began to depend more on decisions made in regional centers than on those made in Moscow, and interest in Moscow political life decreased tremendously. Moscow newspapers almost disappeared as reading fare for people living in the provinces, who now regarded local periodicals as their main source of information. Only national television remained to link the provinces and the capital.

Several surveys and various anecdotal projects have showed that with the alienation from political power, particularly in Moscow, many Russians felt much closer to their local authorities than to central authorities. This fact sharply contrasts with the situation in the Soviet era, when the Kremlin appeared to be more benign to ordinary people than local administrations.

As part of the project of ROMIR, a Russian polling firm, Andrei Melville and Galina Bashkirova conducted a study in which they based their results on two-hour interviews with focus groups of eight to ten participants in eleven regions of the country conducted on 9–10 September 1993. According to their study, “local politicians and local political institutions, in contrast to central ones, are generally perceived as being closer’ to the people and in a much better way expressing their needs.” The authors cite the following as “typical comments”: “Local powers can do at least something for the people” (from Dmitrov); “problems are at least partially being solved by regions themselves, though not always successfully” (from Pskov); and “the Moscow bureaucracy crushes down everything, it denies the regions the right to initiate and choose by themselves their own fate” (from Khabarovsk).20

Because of the immense rise in transportation fares to Moscow, as well as to other regions, it became a rarity for most Russians to travel to Moscow, a fact that also accounts for the gradual isolation of the regions from Moscow and other provinces in the country. With the new political developments, people increasingly began to identify themselves as residents of their region and less as citizens of Russia.21

These developments pushed a certain part of the population of provincial towns to the side of the “champions of regional interests.” It is not at all surprising

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