HOW DO YOU SLAY A DRAGON?

For the opposition, centralism is a guaranteed way of defending citizens from the despotism of the local elites, whom they see as strongholds of reaction. The results of an experiment to introduce the idea of local self-government that was carried out by the young Tsar Ivan IV (later to be known as “the Terrible”) have still not been wiped from the historical memory. In the regions, power was seized from the governor by the strong “shouting men”, whose despotism was even crueller than people were used to from the tsar’s governor. As a result, the experiment had to be stopped in its initial phase.

Perhaps this is why many of the brains behind Russian liberalism support centralism, because they feel that de-centralising power in Russia would inevitably lead to incidents like the one in Kushchovskaya in 2010, when local gangsters killed 12 people. They fear that this could create a kind of confederacy of such lawless principalities, each run by criminal gangs. They believe that the only thing that could prevent this disastrous situation would be to give the dominant role to a “progressive” central authority, that would be controlled by “the correct” political forces; that is, the victorious westernised liberals.

Therefore, just like the reactionaries, certain Russian liberals speak out in favour of maintaining strict centralisation. Their principal area of disagreement is simply over who should control this united centre, and what signals the centre should send out to the regions. Those loyal to the regime believe that the centralised power should guarantee stability and prevent change; while this group of liberals and democrats think that the centre should ensure that necessary reforms are moved from the top down throughout the country.

It would be possible to consider the arguments from these liberals in favour of centralism wholly convincing, were it not for one thing: in a huge country like Russia, sooner or later centralism will inevitably lead to authoritarianism.

While there is a high degree of centralisation of power, it’s impossible to maintain for a long period a workable model of democracy in the country. However liberal the centralised power of the victorious “progressive forces” started out, it would quickly cease to be so and would simply become authoritarian.

There’s an obvious reason as to why the hyper-centralisation that’s been preserved in Russia ends up as a model of authoritarianism. Centralism presupposes the necessity for the constant redistribution of resources within a huge country (otherwise there’d be no material base). This means that enormous financial flows have to be serviced, and a massive bureaucratic structure is needed for this. And this, in turn, hangs over a society that doesn’t have the means to control it, nor ways of defending itself against it.

The chain is simple: centralisation – redistribution of resources – a huge structure to service this – pressure on civil society.

In other words (and this is very important), in Russian conditions centralisation inevitably breeds autocracy, and vice-versa.

Whatever innovative ideas the “revolutionary centrists” might have had when they came to power in Russia, they’ve already slipped into (and will continue to slide into) the same well-worn historical rut: imposing change from above – creating a powerful structure of centralised power – the necessity to focus resources on servicing this structure – turning this structure into a power that lords it over society – the formation of an authoritarian (at best) regime – the need for a new revolution.

So how do you break out of this vicious circle, and how do you get away from the authoritarian nature of this centralised power without becoming the hostage of the local criminal gangs?

The answer seems pretty obvious. You strengthen society’s control over power; decentralise power, giving balance and the division of powers; you allow for a strong opposition that is guaranteed a place in maintaining control over the authorities; and you have independent media.

But how do you achieve all this in a country where, for the last 500 years at least, there has been virtually no such political experience?

The decentralisation of the political system is perhaps the single most important political task facing the coalition of forces that in practice, not in theory, is trying to bring about the democratisation of Russia.

This is an extremely difficult task. It’s impossible to leap across this chasm in one bound and land immediately in a “decentralised paradise”. Too many archaic layers have formed in the Russian political system. It’s too difficult to bring them all down to a single common denominator; and there’s a great risk that in chasing after this ideal you lose sight of reality and end up disappearing into the chasm. At the same time, though, you can’t avoid making the jump. Because sooner or later all of these archaisms will tear the country apart at the seams.