11 October 2013
Gorbachev Foundation’s New Book Towards a New Model of Russian Federalism
Towards a New Model of Russian Federalism. Under the general editorship of Andrei Ryabov, Andrei Zakharov, and Olga Zdravomyslova. Moscow, Ves Mir Publishers, 2013. Pages: 328.
The new post-Soviet Russia has been officially proclaimed a federated state. In practice, Russian federalism is the result of interaction between a variety of political projects. Its foundation as an association of national territorial entities was laid down during the Soviet era. At the same time, the country’s modern federal structure has been heavily influenced by the political-legal and economic autonomisation of national territories, a process that began in the final years of the existence of the Soviet Union. At the time, the process was the result of growing nationalism and the ambitions of national bureaucracies. The weakness of central government after the disintegration of the USSR, the lack of the requisite resources for supporting the social and economic survival of the regions in the early years of the new Russia – all this also tended to strengthen federalist sentiments and aspirations in the regions.
As for the constitutional design of Russian federalism, it has been largely borrowed from the West, the main reason being that, in the early 1990s, the country opted to create a democratic society .
In the Russian context, the argument between the advocates and opponents of federalism reflects the complexities and contradictions in the emergence of Russian statehood over the past two decades. In effect, contemporary Russia is a “world of worlds” in which elements of post-industrial society, industrial and commodity-producing enclaves and the depressed periphery coexist. Opponents of the federated model in Russia claim that this poses a danger of alienation between territories, of growing social tensions in the regions. All this makes it exceedingly difficult to apply the models of federalism that have proved appropriate to other countries.
The book Towards a New Model of Russian Federalism is a collection of papers summarizing the findings of http://www.gorby.ru/en/activity/conference/show_1395/ the research project ‘Towards a New Model of Russian Federalism: Regional Perspectives’ carried out in January 2010 – November 2012 under the guidance of the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (The Gorbachev Foundation).
The book presents social research data and proceedings of a series of round tables that took place in regional centers of the Russian Federation. The contributors sought to outline and analyze both the historically, economically and politically established realities, and the emerging trends that could be seen as drivers of the search for solutions to develop Russian federalism.The book is intended for a anyone with an interest in understanding of the political and social problems of modern Russian as well as in political science and sociology. Contributors
Azat Badranov – post-graduate student at the Institute of State and Law, the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Nadezhda Borisova – Candidate of Political Sciences, Perm State University. Leonid Vardomsky – Doctor of Economics, Institute of Economics, the Russian Academy of Sciences. Igor Zadorin – Head of Zircon Research Group, senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dmitry Zaitsev – Candidate of Political Sciences, Project Manager at Zircon Research Group. Andrei Zakharov – Editor of Neprkosnovenny Zapas: Debates on Politics and Culture, Assistant Professor at Russian State University for the Humanities. Olga Zdravomyslova – Doctor of Philosophy, Executive Director of the Gorbachev Foundation. Casula Philipp – a research fellow and PhD candidate at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Igor Kosikov – Doctor of History, Professor, Associate Fellow of the Caucasus Department, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the North Caucasian Peace-keeping Mission Council, member of the Editorial Board of Political Science Problems. Meister Stefan – Associate Fellow, Center for Central and Eastern Europe of the Robert Bosch Stiftung, German Council on Foreign Relations. Andrei Makarychev – an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow in the Institute for East European Studies at the Free University of Berlin. Yelena Morozova – Professor, Head of the State Administration Department, Krasnodar State University. Oleg Podvintsev – Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor, Director of the Perm Branch of the Institute of Philosophy and Law, the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Perm. Mikhail Rozhansky – Candidate of Sciences (Philosophy), Center for independent Social Studies, Irkutsk. Ross Cameron – a senior lecturer in Politics, part of the School of Humanities, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK. Andrei Ryabov – Candidate of Sciences (History), Editor-in-Chief of World Economy and International Relations. Anatoly Savchenko – Candidate of Sciences (History), Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far-East, the Far-Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok. Andrei Starodubtsev – researcher at the Center for Modernization Studies, European University at St. Petersburg, Assistant Professor at the Applied Political Science Department, the National Research University – Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg. Rostislav Turovsky – Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor at the Applied Political Science Department, the National Research University – Higher School of Economics, Head of Regional Political Studies at NRU-HSE. Irina Umnova – Doctor of Law, Professor, Head of the Constitution and Law Studies Department, the Russian Academy of Justice, President of Law of Peace Center. Grigory Shvedov – Editor-in-Chief of kavkaz-uzel.ru Internet media. Olga Shnyrova – Candidate of Sciences (History), Assistant Professor at the Department of Modern and Contemporary History and International Relations, Ivanovo State University. |
The XXI century will be a сentury either of total all-embracing crisis or of moral and spiritual healing that will reinvigorate humankind. It is my conviction that all of us - all reasonable political leaders, all spiritual and ideological movements, all faiths - must help in this transition to a triumph of humanism and justice, in making the XXI century a century of a new human renaissance.
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