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The Russian Republic: In Search of Global Status
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19909 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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4 / 1992 |
3,064 Words |
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Nikolaos A. Stavrou
Nikolaos A. Stavrou is professor of international affairs at
Howard University. |
December 8, 1991, marked the demise of the USSR, an empire that spread over one-sixth of the earth's landmass and comprised 132 nations, nationalities, and ethnic groups. Historically, when empires collapse a power vacuum ensues that is followed by intense competition to fill it. That is the state of affairs of Russia today. Diverse forces within the republic and competing international powers seek political benefits from a growing internal chaos, driven as it is by the collapse of 70 years of command economy.
Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first-ever elected president, moved quickly to secure for his "country" the lion's share of what used to be "Soviet power" and to assume the old federation's status in the world arena. At least temporarily he seems to have succeeded, but the problems for the largest republic of the former Soviet Union are only beginning.
Russia retained 6.6 million square miles (72.2 percent) of the Soviet territory (twice the size of the United States); it controls the vast majority of natural resources, and over 65 percent of the total GNP estimated at 1991 prices. By any account, it is hardly a dwarf. With a nuclear arsenal that equals (and in megatonnage may even exceed) that of the United States, the Russian republic has retained all the essential elements that define a major power. But the issues it faces are complex, and the search for their solution would inevitably include a central role for Russian nationalism.
Contrary to popular perception, Russia, like the rest of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) members, is not monoethnic. It comprises 16 "autonomous republics," and numerous ethnic-based administrative divisions. Of the 147 million population, 81.5 percent are Russians, the rest being made up of a variety of ethnic groups with aspirations of their own. Several "national" republics within Russia have already claimed "sovereignty" and thus planted the seeds of independence. Crimean Tatars, Germans and Cossacks, among others, who have been lobbying for "autonomous status" based in ethnicity, are now searching for foreign sponsors to achieve nation-statehood, the goal of "the ultimate political community." In other words, nationalistic revival in the former Soviet Union and Russia itself has yet to reach its peak.
In Russia today, fears are being expressed by an unlikely alliance of forces that sooner, rather than later, the Yugoslav model will be repeated, albeit on a larger scale, in their own country. Former communist apparatchiks, members of the Orthodox clergy who resent what they
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