BACKGROUND: During his time as president, Boris Yeltsin pursued a distinctly asymmetrical policy toward Russia’s regions. This often entailed making compromises with certain regional leaders which might have seemed quite gratuitous when it came to dealing with other, less entrenched local elites. His successor, Vladimir Putin, has proven far less flexible in this regard, and clearly disapproves of the loose tactical bargaining which characterised Yeltsin’s tenure. Hence, Putin has sought to reassert the Kremlin’s authority vis-à-vis regional governments, particularly those in the North Caucasus. Over the past six years, this strategy has entailed the president parachuting his own loyalist cadres into positions of political prominence throughout the North Caucasus. At the outset of his term in office, many observers noted Putin’s preference for a stronger Russian state. This attitude alarmed proponents of an asymmetrical regional policy, and prompted Mikhail A. Alexseev to warn against the “ethnocentric consolidation of central government.” Ethnocentrism – generally defined as a positive set of attitudes toward one’s ethnic kin, allied with a correspondingly negative set of attitudes toward ethnic “out-groups” – is frequently cast as a latent mentality which, consciously or otherwise, strongly influences President Putin’s policies toward Russia’s ethno-republics. Traditionally, however, academics have tended to categorise ethnocentrism as a reactive phenomenon, whereby increased contact between different ethnic groups tends to increase ethnocentrism within the “in-group.” This certainly rings true of Russian society in general, wherein peoples of non-Russian ethnicity – particularly Caucasians – are frequently treated with suspicion, if not outright hostility. But is the Russian leadership subject to broad ethnocentric dynamics of this type? Current indicators suggest that it is not. In fact, societal manifestations of ethnocentrism, like racially-motivated assaults, are consistently criticised by the ruling elite. But while the Russian leadership may be cognizant as to the socially detrimental effects of ethnocentrism, it is simultaneously rehabilitating a different phenomenon which, contemporaneously speaking, is more spontaneous, more intrinsic, and potentially just as provocative – Great Russian chauvinism. National chauvinism – the belief that one’s own country and its people are unique and superior – implies a low appraisal of ethno-national “out-groups”, as well as a certain disregard for their cultural sensitivities A Leninist anathema, Great Russian chauvinism is related to the age-old concept of the “Russian Idea” – a postulation which holds that Russian society can be greater integrated through communal sacrifice and the invocation of universalistic themes. Indeed, judging by the content of the recently floated bill on national identity, President Putin clearly foresees the perpetuation of classical Great Russian chauvinism as an important stake in realising the Russian Idea as he sees it; that is “providing the unity of the country and strengthening the vertical of power.”

IMPLICATIONS: Putin’s faith in the “consolidating role” of the Russian people, coupled with his perpetual desire to strengthen the state’s power vertical, have fundamentally shaped his policies toward the North Caucasus over the past six years. With respect to his choice of regional leaders, for example, Putin has tended to favour candidates who, although not necessarily Russian in an ethnic sense, are thoroughly steeped in the political culture of official Russia. Local populists like Ruslan Aushev, who owed their authority to clan affiliation rather than Moscow’s benign patronage, have, more often than not, been carefully manoeuvred out of office. Putin’s structural initiatives have followed a similar pattern. For instance, since the creation of the Southern Federal District, all three presidential representatives have been Russian functionaries, seemingly prized for their loyalty to Moscow rather than any specialist knowledge of the region. Presently, however, there are indications that Moscow’s evident preoccupation with strengthening the state vertical is leading it to consider redrawing longstanding jurisdictional boundaries in the region. This was attested by Moscow’s rash, ill-considered approach toward the issue of Adygeya’s sovereignty. Recent efforts by the Presidential Representative to the Southern Federal District, Dimitri Kozak, to hasten the incorporation of Adygeya into neighbouring Krasnodar Krai provoked a farcical game of brinksmanship between Moscow and Maikop, from which the former emerged embarrassed, if hardly chastened. Importantly, this mini-crisis illustrated how a resourceful regional leader – in this case, Khazret Sovmen – can contrive an ethnocentric reaction among his own ethnic kin by appealing to national and ethnic sensitivities. In this case, Sovmen sought to conceal his own mounting professional travails behind the emotive, popular outcry regarding the proposed merger. He thus presented himself as the logical political fulcrum for incensed Circassian (Adygei) nationalists. Interestingly, the local branch of United Russia, the Kremlin’s party of power, saw fit to scramble aboard this nationalist bandwagon, perhaps showing a greater appreciation for local political sensitivities than either Putin or Kozak. The haphazard machinations of the latter two during this episode showed a disregard for non-Russian national sentiment verging on arrogance; in other words, they behaved chauvinistically. The Kremlin’s dalliance with jurisdictional revisionism has not gone unnoticed by other interested actors in the region. In late April, for example, the speaker of the pro-Moscow parliament in Chechnya, Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, argued in favour of uniting Chechnya and Ingushetia (and possibly Dagestan) in a single jurisdictional entity. In making this case, Abdurakhmanov was generally believed to be speaking on behalf of Chechnya’s pro-Moscow Prime Minister, Ramzan Kadyrov. A subsequent proposal (this time from Kadyrov directly) that Chechen security forces be allowed to pursue militants into neighbouring jurisdictions all but confirmed that the increasingly ambitious Kadyrov is perfectly attuned to the prevailing mindset in Moscow.

CONCLUSIONS: Contemporarily speaking, it is significant that a political operator as ruthless as Lenin should have deemed it expedient to take account of the ethno-national sensitivities of non-Russian minorities. As a phenomenon, Lenin considered nationalism a mere temporal inconvenience. Despite this, he did acknowledge its existence, and impressed upon his colleagues the need to formulate a programmatic approach to this issue. Conversely, Putin’s recent initiatives in this sphere have shown scant, if any, appreciation for ethno-national sensitivities. Indeed, the national identity bill, as well as the Adygeya controversy, betrayed marked chauvinistic tendencies on his part. Whereas Lenin foresaw the potential nationalist bandwagoning-effect associated with Great Russian chauvinism, Putin seemingly clings to the latter as a cure-all formula for Russia’s crumbling political edifice. Potential for ethno-national bandwagoning in the North Caucasus stretches far beyond the as-yet-intact boundaries of Adygeya: Circassian nationalism is a broad, increasingly bellicose pan-republican phenomenon; tensions between Ingushetia and North Ossetia remain high; multi-ethnic Dagestan is growing increasingly unstable. In any of these cases, tensions will hardly be alleviated by the prevalence of a discernable chauvinistic streak in Moscow’s policies toward the region. Furthermore, political manifestations of this attitude only serve to encourage regional political opportunists like Ramzan Kadyrov. Thus, Moscow’s chauvinistic mentality could yet have significant ramifications for the political situation in the North Caucasus.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Kevin Daniel Leahy holds a postgraduate degree in International Relations from University College Cork, Ireland.