Ethno-Territorial Federalism and A. D. Sakharov’s Constitutional Draft

387 Ab Imperio, 4/2004 There are some other provisions where ambiguities can be noticed. Such is the case of Paragraph 20, where despite Sakharov’s commitment to peace he proposed, at the level of each republic, the establishment of military forces and other armed services. Or, in another instance, certain contradictions emerged when on the one hand he states that foreign policy will be the prerogative of the central level (Paragraph 19), and yet each republic will be able to establish direct international economic contacts (Paragraph 22). By opening access to international and global markets, republics will directly engage in shaping the context and application on the ground, in fact at the local level, of economic foreign policies and they will become agents of foreign policies. Despite these points of contestation, Sakharovs’ constitution is a visionary and formidable document committed to the rule of law, social justice, equality among all, and respect for human rights and basic freedoms. It is also a document that not only illustrates the density of Sakharov’s thought and the search for a democratic and humanistic future for the entire world but also reflects late Soviet dissidents’ worldview. In that sense, the document is a memorial to the great historical moment of social and political transformations of the late 20th century that Sakharov so much helped to spearhead. It is often difficult for contemporaries to understand what is going on in front of them. This is also true for the foreign observers of an event. When Gorbachev’s economic reforms and their painful consequences were attracting worldwide attention, both the citizens of the USSR and foreign observers Kimitaka MATSUZATO ETHNO-TERRITORIAL FEDERALISM AND A. D. SAKHAROV’S CONSTITUTIONAL DRAFT 388 Вспоминая конституционный проект А. Д. Сахарова... thought that the idea of reform was good, but that Gorbachev lacked the strong will to realize it in full or that he was encountering resistance by the nomenklatura. Several years after the collapse of the USSR, scholars began to argue convincingly that Gorbachev’s reforms themselves were destructive by their intention (to create a market economy without imposing adequate risks on enterprises) and implementation (voluntarism and leapfrogging changes in policies).1 In contrast to Gorbachev’s hyper-reformism, Sakharov’s constitutional draft (for the expected Union of Republics of Europe and Asia) impresses us by its conservatism, if we read it as a guideline for state building. Yet it is another example of how difficult it is for contemporaries to understand the real reasons for the crises they face. The draft confirms the traditional idea of ethno-territorial federalism, which premises the coincidence of federal constituents (union republics and other administrative territorial units) and the spatial distribution of ethnicities (Paragraphs 17 and others). According to this approach, each federal constituent has its titular nation, the members of which are more or less privileged in “their” republic.2 Remember that almost all the republics in the USSR, both union and autonomous, were named for some titular nation.3 The Russian Empire was built on a purely territorial principle. To be more precise, the Russian empire tried hard to avoid overlapping the administrative territorial boundaries with the ethnic distribution of the population. Imperial officials thought that ethnically homogeneous regions would provoke separatism among the population and make inter-ethnic relations more complex (a compromise between a population distribution of 90 percent and 10 percent is often more difficult to achieve than that between 60 percent and 40 percent). There were few exceptions to this principle: for example, the introduction of Kovno (Kaunas) Province in the 1840s and the Steppe Governor-Generalship in the 1880s. However, both of them had limited, concrete purposes: the former was planned to sever Lowland Lithuanians 1 Michael Ellman and Vladimir Kontorovich (Eds.). The Destruction of the Soviet Economic System. An Insiders’ History. Armonk, NY, 1998. 2 Therefore, the fact that in present-day Tatarstan ethnic Tatars, who compose only half of the population but make up 80 percent of the political elites, is a result of the realization (not distortion) of ethno-territorial federalism. 3 The only examples named after the place name were Crimea and Dagestan. But Crimea had its title nation (Crimean Tatars) and multiethnic Dagestan had and...