Politics

The Dog That Didn't Bark:
Tatarstan and Asymmetrical Federalism in Russia

By EDWARD W. WALKER
UC Berkeley, November 27,1996

Support for this research was provided by the Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, UC Berkeley in the form of a travel grant for a trip to Kazan in July 1995. The author is grateful to Rafael Khakimov for hosting his trip and for providing information and access to a wide range of information and individuals. He is also grateful to George W. Breslauer, Darren Hall, Gail W. Lapidus, Gul'nara Shaikhtidonova, and Ronald G. Suny for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

As centrifugal pressures on the Soviet Union intensified in 1990-1991, concerned voices in Moscow began to warn that, should the USSR fragment, Russia might well follow suit. Like the USSR, the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was a multinational "federation," the only self-defined federation among the USSR's fifteen Union Republics. The RSFSR was host to 130 officially-recognized ethnic minorities (or "nationalities" in Soviet parlance) that together made up 18.5 percent of its population. [1] More importantly, of its 88 constituent units at the time, 31 were ethnically-defined "avtonomii" (autonomous formations). These avtonomii were ranked in a three-tier hierarchy with varying rights and privileges -- 16 autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, and ten autonomous okrugs -- each of which had its own eponymous ethnic group, or "titular nationality." [2] What would prevent these avtonomii from following the USSR's union republics and demanding genuine autonomy, "sovereignty," and even full independence?
There were good reasons for this concern. The avtonomii covered over half the territory of the RSFSR and were rich in mineral wealth and other natural resources, and with only some fifteen percent of the RSFSR's total population, their per capita share of Russia's natural wealth, and the apparent benefits of economic "sovereignty," were considerable. Moreover, many of the national minorities in the avtonomii were culturally distant from the Russian majority and had inherited national mythologies of exploitation by, and resistance to, "Russian" imperialism.
This legacy would have created problems for post-Soviet Russia under the best of circumstances. But there were other complicating factors as well. Although Soviet geographers in the 1920s and 1930s had attempted for the most part to draw the RSFSR's internal borders in accordance with ethnic distribution, subsequent demographic changes and arbitrary, sometimes politically-inspired border changes meant that by 1989 the RSFSR's titular nationalities were a majority in only eight of 31 avtonomii, while ethnic Russians were a majority in 18. The titular peoples of many of the RSFSR avtonomii, like those in many of the USSR's union republics, were therefore worried about a loss of political influence in their ethnic homelands and pressures to assimilate to the dominant Russian culture.
There were other demographic complications as well. Certain nationalities lacked administrative homelands altogether (e.g., Ukrainians--Russia's second largest national minority, ethnic Germans, and many of the so-called "small peoples of the north"). In other cases, national minorities shared homelands (e.g., the Karbadins and Balkirs in Kabardino-Balkaria, the Chechens and Ingush in Checheno-Ingushetia, the Karachai and Cherkess in Karachai-Cherkessia, and the many peoples of Dagestan), while a significant portion of some titular peoples lived outside their homeland. Finally, the avtonomii confronted numerous territorial disputes, many with roots in the forced resettlement of nations under Stalin and contested repatriation under Khrushchev.
The salience of ethnic identity and the belief in collective territorial ownership had been reinforced (and in some cases, essentially created) by the peculiarities of the Soviet system of "ethnic federalism." [3] Beginning with the "korenizatsiia" (nativization) program of the 1920s, titular nationalities were afforded preferential treatment in various forms. In general, the division of labor was for Russians to predominate in enterprise management and the scientific and technical "intelligentsia," with titulars dominant in cultural institutions and well-represented in local party and state bodies. Most notably, the CPSU first secretary, the political boss of each region, was usually a member of the titular people while deputy first secretaries were usually Russians. Depending on their status in the federal hierarchy, titulars were also afforded various "privileges" such as their own native language newspapers, television programs, writers' unions, films, theaters, and even opera houses. As a result, avtonomii lower on the administrative ladder frequently pressed for higher administrative status.
Perhaps the most important contribution to the reification of national consciousness in the Soviet period, however, was the Soviet system of internal passports. Each citizen was required to possess an internal passport with a line designating nationality, with no option to chose "none," "mixed," or "Soviet." [4] Moreover, nationality was biologically determined. Passport holders had to designate their parents' nationality as their own, while in cases of mixed heritage, one had to chose between the nationalities of one's parents. Citizens of the Soviet Union were therefore constantly reminded that nationality mattered, and in very practical ways. Moreover, despite the regime's commitment to "proletarian internationalism," its legitimizing discourse further reinforced ethnic consciousness. Soviet citizens were taught that the "Leninist" principle of the self-determination of peoples, as embodied in the institutions of Soviet ethnic federalism, was morally superior to the "bourgeois" system of territorial federalism that denied minorities (e.g., African-Americans in the US) territorial recognition.
All these factors contributed to the preservation, and in some cases the deepening or even creation, of ethnic identities in the Soviet period. The immediate precipitant of the political mobilization of the RSFSR's titular nationalities, however, was the example set by the USSR union republics in their campaign for autonomy, sovereignty, and eventually full independence. Beginning in 1987, first the Baltic republics, then Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine engaged in a protracted struggle to wrest autonomous powers from the USSR national government, invoking the formal rights afforded them under Soviet law but denied them in practice (including a right of secession under Article 72 of the Soviet constitution). At the same time, they embraced the legitimizing idiom of national liberation and decolonization, relying in particular on the international community's putative commitment to the right of self-determination, as expressed in the UN Charter and numerous other international legal instruments. And finally, the union republics argued that they were perfectly capable of becoming independent states, and indeed would be better off economically having rid themselves of the burden of irrational economic policies adopted in Moscow and the deepening crisis of the Soviet economy.
This political program, which was received with considerable sympathy by Western publics (even if Western governments were more cautious), helped legitimate the demands of the RSFSR's avtonomii for equal treatment. The fact that they were not "union republics," they argued, resulted from arbitrary decisions by Soviet authorities, decisions that in many cases dated back to the 1920s and that had little to do with intensity of self-identity or viability as nations. If the union republics had a right to greater autonomy and even "sovereignty," then so did they. Accordingly, the sovereignty campaign of the union republics greatly facilitated the efforts of committed nationalists in the avtonomii to mobilize the titular peoples against Russian "domination" and "exploitation." At the same time, the example set by the union republics demonstrated that local elites and political entrepreneurs could benefit politically by aggressively championing greater autonomy for local governments. Doing so helped place the blame for the country's deepening economic and social problems squarely on the shoulders of the national government. And local elites could argue that greater autonomy would allow them to tailor economic policy to the specific needs of their regions, which in many cases meant avoiding the pain of economic reform and instead adopting a program of protectionism and even autarky, particularly in areas rich in natural resources (e.g., Tatarstan with its oil, the North Caucasus with its oil, Yakutia with its diamonds and gold, and indeed Siberia generally).
The weakness of the Russian state also contributed signficantly to the threat to Russia's territorial integrity presented by the avtonomii's "parade of sovereignties." Transitions from communism inevitably place a huge burden on the state, which must establish a legal system capable of protecting private property, fostering exchange, and enabling civil society even as it transfers a significant portion of the means of production from the state into private hands. This burden falls on state institutions that are themselves being radically transformed, and hence are generally disorganized, inadequately staffed, and internally divided. These problems were all the more serious in a country as large as Russia, with its extremely poor communication and transportation infrastructure. Finally, economic stabilization and restructuring, even when welldesigned, necessarily entail profound social stress, which tends to make national governments unpopular and undermines their ability to resist efforts by subnational governments to appropriate greater powers.
In the Russian case, these problems were reinforced by the weakness of Russia's political identity. Russia had never been a "nation state" in the modern sense. On the contrary, since the conquest of Kazan in 1552, "Russia" has been a multinational empire incorporating conquered peoples of widely varying cultures. The tsarist state, like the Soviet state after it, had celebrated its multinational character, abandoning occasional campaigns to transform its many peoples into a single "Russian" nation. Being "Russian," then, meant being a Russian speaker, a believer in Orthodoxy, and a subject of the Tsar or a Soviet citizen more than it meant being a member of a political community called "Russia." As a result, the borders it inherited in 1991 had little grounding in history--at no time had there been an independent Russian state with boundaries matching those of the new Russian Federation. Indeed, 25 million Russians lived outside the Federation's borders. History, then, was of little help in defining "Russian" territory.
The position of Russians in the Soviet Union further contributed to the ambiguity of Russian political identity. As champions of proletarian internationalism, Soviet authorities generally attempted to contain what Lenin had called "Great Russian chauvinism" (the notable exception came after Stalin appealed to the Russian nation to mobilize Russians against the Germans invaders in World War II). As a result, Russians lacked some of the institutional privileges afforded the titular nationalities of other union republics, including their own communist party, academy of sciences, and cultural institutions. And while Soviet propaganda acclaimed the multicultural heritage of the peoples of the USSR, it treated the political expression of that heritage-nationalism--as a bourgeois atavism with no place under socialism. As a result, Russians, who did not experience the petty, often unconscious insults endured by non-Russians, tended to equate nationalism with fascism and were more likely than other nationalities to see themselves as Soviet citizens first and Russians second.
For all these reasons, many predicted that the country would not survive the collapse of communism. [5] Yet, five years after the Soviet implosion, the Russian Federation endures. Indeed, it is the only self-designated "federation" in the former Soviet bloc to have done so--the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia have all fractured. And not only is it still in existence, but it has managed to preserve the entirety of its territory--not even Chechnya (although it may yet prove an exception) has received international recognition as an independent state, the mark of a successful secessionist campaign.
The question is, why? Why, despite these centrifugal pressures, has Russia's territorial integrity been preserved? To help answer this question, I focus on Tatarstan, the ethnic republic within Russia that, along with Chechnya, seemed the most likely to secede in late 1991. While Chechnya has been the most radical of Russia's republics, Tatarstan has been the most influential-- indeed, many in Moscow, including Yeltsin and his allies, argue that the "Tatarstan model" for resolving tensions between Moscow and its autonomous republics will prove the savior of the Russian Federation. What is this "model" and how has it contributed to the preservation of Russia's territorial integrity?

The Roots of Tatarstan's Political Identity

The Republic of Tatarstan (or the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, as it was officially designated in the Soviet period) is located some 450 miles east of Moscow and west of the Ural mountains in the Volga-Urals region of central Russia. The landlocked republic is entirely surrounded by other constituent units of the Russian Federation and lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers along European Russia's lines of communication with Siberia and the Russian Far East.
The Volga Tatars are Russia's largest national minority, numbering 5.5 million in 1989 out of a total RSFSR population of 147.0 million, or 3.8 percent. An additional 1.1 million Tatars lived outside the RSFSR in other Soviet union republics, bringing the total number of Tatars in the USSR to 6.6 million (see Table 1). [6] Of the RSFSR's 5.5 million Tatars, however, only 1.7 million (32 percent) actually lived in the Tatar ASSR (see Table 2), with large concentrations in Bashkiria (1.12 million), other areas of the Volga-Urals region, Central Asia, and Azerbaijan. [7] Because so many Tatars lived outside the republic, Tatars were not an absolute majority of the republic's population. Of Tatarstan's 3.6 million residents, only 48.5 percent were Tatars (see Table 3). [8] Russians were almost as numerous--43.3 percent.[9] In total, Tatarstan's population of 3.6 million was larger than that of five of the union republics -- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkmenistan, and Armenia -- while territorially it is larger than the three Baltic states combined.[10]
By Soviet standards, Tatarstan was relatively developed socio-economically (see Table 4). In 1989, 73 percent of the population lived in cities, although Tatars were significantly less urbanized than Russians--63 percent to 86 percent (see Table 5). [11] It was also highly industrialized, with significant defense, petrochemical, and timber/pulp/paper industries. Officials in Tatarstan's capital, Kazan, frequently noted in the late 1980s that the industrial output of the republic was greater than that of the three Baltic republics together. The republic has the former Soviet Union's largest truck manufacturer--the massive Kama Automobile Plant (KamAZ) in Naberezhnye Chelny--as well as a major producer of helicopters, the Kazan Helicopter Works. It is also home to significant oil reserves--proven reserves total some 700 to 800 million tons, with production at around 12 million tons per year (approximately seven percent of Russia's annual output in 1994). The republic's oil is, however, of poor quality and is expensive to produce. Tatarstan also has significant reserves of natural gas, coal, and other natural resources, and it is home to one the largest oil and gas pipeline systems in Eastern Europe, with pipelines running west to Nizhny Novgorod and from there to Moscow and the West, and to the east towards Cheliabinsk and Perm.
The Volga Tatars are a Turkic-speaking, Sunni Muslim people of the Hanafi school. Linguistically, they are descendants of Turkic-speaking Kypchak tribes that migrated across the Urals in the ninth and tenth centuries and mixed with already present Finno-Ugric and Slavic peoples in the region. The roots of Tatar culture, however, are contested. Some historians argue that Tatar culture was strongly influenced by the Mongols of the Golden Horde, who conquered the region in the 13th century. Others, including most Tatar nationalists, argue that, despite the conquest, the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Volga-Urals region retained much of the preexisting culture of the Bulgar civilization, which dates back to the end of the ninth century (conversion to Islam came in the Bulgar period, in 922, before the conversion of Russians to Orthodoxy). [12] Regardless, there is agreement that a distinct "Tatar" culture had emerged in the region by the time the Golden Horde collapsed and the Kazan Khanate (circa 1445-1552) was established. By the sixteenth century, a distinct Tatar literary language using Arabic script had developed.[13]
During its 107 years of existence, the Kazan Khanate fought episodic wars with Muscovy and alternated between periods of relative independence and relative dependence. These cycles came to an end with the storming of Kazan by Ivan in the Terrible in October 1552. Motivated largely by militant Orthodoxy, Ivan put much of the population of Kazan to death, expropriated the lands of the Tatar nobility, and devastated the local economy and traditional Tatar social system. He then celebrated his victory by laying the cornerstone of the Orthodox Cathedral of the Visitation in Kazan and St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.[14]
In the following centuries, as Russia's imperial reach extended across Siberia and to the south into the Caucasus and eventually Central Asia, Moscow's colonial policies alternated between harsh campaigns of religious conversion and cultural assimilation on the one hand, and relative tolerance toward non-Russian, non-Orthodox peoples on the other. The Muslim peoples of the Volga-Urals region (the ethnonym "Tatar" was used equivocally by Russians prior to the twentieth century, sometimes designating Muslims, sometimes Turkic-speaking peoples, and sometimes all "Orientals," and it was not accepted by the Volga Muslims themselves until late in the nineteenth century) reacted with episodic rebellions, participating, for example, in the great uprisings of Stepan Razin and Emilian Pugachev. These rebellions were put down harshly by the Tsar's troops. Nevertheless, in the main there was relatively little violence between Russians and the Volga Tatars, despite a steady in-migration of Russians. Indeed, by the end of the eighteenth century the territories of the former Kazan Khanate had a majority Russian population while Tatars had been dispersed throughout the Russian empire and beyond.
The Volga Tatars were at the same time subject not only to demographic but to cultural pressure as well. Russian popular culture makes much of the victimization of Russians at the hands of Genghiz Khan and the Golden Horde. Russian children are raised on stories of Russian heroes repelling the attacks of Mongol-Tatar barbarians, with no distinction made between Tatars and Mongols. There is also a long tradition in Russian intellectual history of decrying the pernicious influences of Asiatic barbarism on the Russian soul, an influence that allegedly accounts for Russia's "backwardness" relative to the West. And again, Russian intellectuals are rarely interested in the nuances of Tatar history or the persistence of the Tatar's pre-Mongol Bulgar heritage.
Nevertheless, the Tatars demonstrated a remarkable cultural resiliency over the centuries of Tsarist rule. [15] At times, this resiliency was accepted by Moscow -- under Catherine II, for example, the first Central Muslim Religious Board was established in Orenburg in 1783. But with the Tsarist conquest of Central Asia in the nineteenth century, Moscow again grew intolerant of Islam, renewing its efforts to create a Christian and Russified Tatar elite that would be loyal to, and dependent upon, Moscow. The Tatar intelligentsia responded by embracing jadidism. The movement's founder, Imam Shihabeddin Merjani (1818-1889), was an ethnic Tatar and a Muslim scholar who had studied and conducted research in Bukhara and Samarkand on Islamic thought, the natural sciences, and history. He returned to Kazan in 1887, where he played an important role in the development of the jadidist movement, the central themes of which were the right of individuals to interpret the Koran without mediation by the clergy, the importance of free of thought, and the value of education. [16] Over this same period, Kazan University was acquiring a reputation as one of the leading universities in Tsarist Russia. By the end of the century, the Volga region had become a leading center of intellectual learning and enlightened Islamic thought in the Russian empire, while the Tatar intelligentsia was engaged in a project of cultural and religious revival familiar to students of nationalism in Europe and elsewhere.[17]
To be sure, the Volga Tatars had rather complicated relations with the other non-Russian peoples in the Volga region, many of whom felt threatened by Tatar assimilation. [18] This was particularly true of the Tatar's close linguistic, religious, and cultural cousins, the Bashkirs. The ethnogenesis of the Bashkirs is even more obscure than the Tatar's, but a distinct Bashkir culture seems to have emerged by the ninth or tenth century based on an economy of nomadic cattleherding, in contrast to the more mercantilist and sedentary pastoralist economy of the Bulgars. Together with the Tatars, the Bashkirs were absorbed into the Russian empire after the fall of Kazan. In the following centuries, their lands witnessed a large in-migration of both Tatars and Russians, although the Bashkirs remained considerably less developed culturally than the Tatars -- they had yet, for example, to develop a written language by the end of the nineteenth century. As the revolution approached, the use of Bashkir appears to have been declining while Tatar was increasing. Accordingly Bashkir nationalists were as concerned about the possibility of Tatar acculturation as they were about assimilation by Russians.
The 1905 Revolution contributed to the politicization of the Tatar nationalist movement. Tatar activists began to demand autonomous status and even full independence for a Tataria that would incorporate Tatars, Bashkirs, and the Finno-Ugric peoples of the region--the Udmurts, Chuvash, Marii, and Mordvinians. Predictably, their demands were rejected by conservative governments in Moscow. But the chaos of 1917 presented Tatar nationalists with another opportunity to pursue their political agenda. On November 29, 1917, a Tatar Milli Medzhlis (National Assembly) declared the formation of an independent "Idel'-Ural Republic" covering the territory of modern-day Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, much of Orenburg oblast, and territories extending south to the Caspian Sea. The Republic was short-lived, however. The Bolsheviks dissolved it in the spring and created instead a "Tatar-Bashkir Soviet Socialist Republic" on March 23, 1918. The Bolsheviks promptly evacuated the area in the face of an advancing White army, however, and when they finally reoccupied Kazan the following year, they signed a treaty on March 23, 1919 with the Bashkirs (who had been quicker than the Tatars to switch allegiance from the Whites to the Reds) establishing a separate Bashkir Soviet Socialist Republic, the first such republic within the RSFSR and the only one to enter on the basis of a bilateral treaty.
It was not until a year later, on May 27, 1920, that a Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was established. Bashkiria was left with a good deal of territory with a nominally Tatar majority, the number of which increased when Ufa guberniia, an area with a predominately Tatar population that had been a buffer between the two ASSRs, was made part of the Bashkir ASSR on July 14, 1922.[19] In the coming decades, differences between Bashkirs and Tatars would widen. Not only was there now a separate Bashkir ASSR with its own political elite and a cultural intelligentsia, but the Bashkirs acquired a more distinct language after Soviet linguists, instructed to create a written language for the Bashkirs, chose the Bashkir dialect most distinct from Tatar as the standard for use in books, television programming, and schools.
Although the Bolsheviks purged the nationalists who had established the Idel'-Ural Republic, they were soon confronted by Tatar nationalists in the first celebrated case of socialist "national deviationism." Mirsaid Sultangaliev was a Tatar teacher who became involved in the anti-tsarist socialist opposition after 1905 but did not join the Bolsheviks until 1917. He quickly rose to become the highest ranking Muslim in the new socialist state. While he considered himself a committed Marxist, Sultangaliev also believed that the oppression of Muslim peoples at the hands of the colonial powers (including Tatars at the hands of Russians) made them de facto proletarians and turned their national revolutions into proletarian revolutions. [20] As essentially classless peoples, Muslims could forgo the class struggle. He called for the establishment of an independent Muslim Communist Party, a separate Muslim army, and a separate Muslim state uniting all the Muslim peoples of the tsarist empire that would be called "the Republic of Turan." After his views were emphatically rejected by Stalin, Sultangaliev was arrested in 1923. He was freed in 1924, but he was later arrested again and finally executed in 1939.
Following Sultangaliev's first arrest in 1923, Stalin launched a crackdown on "Sultangalievism" that led eventually to the annihilation of the bulk of the Tatar political and cultural elite.[21] He also unleashed a devastating assault on Islam that included the destruction of most of Tatarstan's mosques. The terror in Tatarstan only abated in 1940 after the Mufti of Ufa convinced Stalin to sign a decree legalizing Islam and establishing an official Islamic administrative apparatus.
Despite the purges, Tatar nationalism survived, surfacing most notably in 1936 when the Stalin constitution was adopted for the USSR. Representatives of the republic asked that, in view of the size of its population and territory and the distinctiveness and vitality of Tatar culture, Tatarstan's status be raised to that of a full union republic. The petition was denied, however, the official explanation being that the republic lacked an external border. Tatarstan would raise these same demands, and again be denied, during public discussions of the draft Brezhnev constitution of 1977.
In the years following World War II, Tatarstan experienced a period of rapid urbanization and industrialization, thanks in part to the discovery of oil in 1946. [22] Russian in-migration increased as Russians arrived in search of jobs, particularly in the cities. Assimilation pressures on Tatars accordingly intensified. By the end of 1980s, only 12 percent of Tatar children in the republic were being educated in their native language. And although Tatars had a high rates of native language retention -- 96.6 percent of Tatars in Tatarstan, and 83.2 percent for Tatars in the USSR as a whole (see Table 6) -- the use of Tatar at home was declining, particularly for the younger generation (see Table 7 and 8). [23] Russian was the language of government and the workplace, while Tatar was becoming essentially a "home language." Native language retention was declining particularly rapidly among Tatars outside the republic, in part because Tatars living outside the republic had lost many of the cultural benefits afforded them before World War II. [24] Very few Russians in the republic bothered to learn Tatar (1.1 percent in 1989), although 77 percent of Tatars could speak Russian. [25] The rate of intermarriage between Tatars and Russians was high-- roughly one-third of all marriages in the republic--and the use of Tatar in mixed marriages was extremely low. And the percentage of Tatars who considered themselves believers in Islam was low and declining--17.9 percent in 1967 and 15.7 percent in 1980. Thus, while the Tatars had managed to preserve their distinct identity, Tatar nationalists could credibly argue by the late 1980s that Tatar culture was under serious and intensifying pressure.[26]
As Gorbachev's glasnost' campaign began to provide space for the articulation of nationalist sentiments across the USSR beginning, it appeared that Tatarstan had all the ingredients for a potent nationalist movement and violent conflict between Tatars and Russians. The Tatar people had a strong sense of ethnic distinctiveness rooted in their traditional Islamic beliefs, distinct language, and record of intellectual and cultural achievement. To mobilize Tatars against Moscow or Russian "colonialists" in the republic, Tatar nationalists could plausibly argue that Tatar language and culture were in crisis, while "ethnic entrepreneurs" could employ a centuries-old history of resistance to Russian domination and "colonialism," the Russian disdain for Tatar culture as manifested in Russian representations of the "Mongol-Tatar yoke" and "Asiatic backwardness," and a record of resistance and episodic rebellion against Russian occupation. Moreover, Tatarstan's political elite faced the same incentives as the elites in the union republics and avtonomii throughout the disintegrating Soviet Union to "play the ethnic card" in an effort to mobilize popular support and preserve their position.
To be sure, other factors seemed to militate against radical nationalism in Tatarstan. Its location made it particularly vulnerable to pressure by the Russian government. Russians made up almost as large a percentage of the republic's population as did Tatars. There were more Tatars living outside the republic than inside, while relations between Tatars and Russians had been relatively good, as evidenced by the high rate of intermarriage and the very low incidence of violence between Tatar and Russian communities in the republic, both historically (Tatar rebellions had for the most part been directed against the Tsarist state) and in the Gorbachev period. Yet the presence of these same factors did not prevent secessionist struggles or interethnic violence elsewhere in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism. Nagorno-Karabakh, like Tatarstan, was an enclave surrounded by the state (Azerbaijan) from which it has fought to secede. Strategic vulnerability and a seemingly hopeless military balance did not prevent the Chechens or the Abkhaz from declaring independence and waging wars of secession. Moreover, Abkhazians made up a far smaller percentage of Abkhazia (17.8 percent) than Tatars in Tatarstan, and the Abkhaz were a much smaller minority of the total population in Georgia than Tatars were in Russia. High rates of intermarriage and seemingly harmonious relations did not keep the Croats, Serbs, and Muslims from fighting a brutal interethnic war in Bosnia. And a large diaspora did not prevent Russia from pressing for independence from the USSR, and indeed seem to have spurred the virulent German nationalism of the Nazi era. Tatarstan's Sovereignty Campaign: 1988- March 1992
Signs of ethnic polarization in Tatarstan after the launching of Gorbachev's glasnost campaign are therefore not surprising. By early 1988, Tatar intellectuals were beginning to articulate grievances that had previously been expressed only in private. Complaints were directed initially at the unflattering portrayal of Tatars in Soviet history books. [27] In 1989, a political club was formed that dedicated itself to the ideas of Sultangaliev. [28] Tatars began to complain about the treatment of Tatar draftees in the Soviet military, about Moscow's decision to construct a nuclear power plant in the republic, about the lack of opportunity for Tatar children to be educated in their native language, and about the under-representation of the avtonomii in the USSR Council of Nationalities and other central institutions. Finally, republic officials complained that only two percent of the enterprises located in the republic belonged to Tatarstan, while some 80 percent belonged to the USSR and 18 percent to the RSFSR. [29]
In February 1988, a new organization, the Tatar Public Center (Tatarskii obshchestvennii tsentr, or TOTs) held its founding Congress in Kazan. [30] Modeled on the "popular front" organizations in the Baltic republics, TOTs was initially moderate in its program, calling for a Tatarstan that would embrace both Tatars and Russians. Nevertheless, it insisted that Tatarstan be made a union republic; demanded that Moscow stop the further industrialization of the republic in order to reduce Russian in-migration; and organized frequent demonstrations in support of greater autonomy for the republic, greater protections for Tatar culture, and a gradual approach to full independence. By early 1990, it was calling for a boycott of the March 1990 elections to the newly-formed RSFSR Congress of Peoples' Deputies. Predictably, TOTs was viewed with considerable suspicion by Russians in the republic.
Tatar nationalists were given a considerable boost at the end of 1989 by the long-delayed "nationalities plenum" of the CPSU Central Committee. The plenum offered representatives of the republic an opportunity to articulate Tatar resentment at the republic's second-class status. [31] These complaints, which were echoed by representatives of other avtonomii, led to the adoption of an April 26,1990 law entitled, "On the Delinetion of Powers between the USSR and the Subjects of the Federation." The law, which Tatarstan would cite frequently in its coming struggle with the Russian government, declared that
the autonomous republics are Soviet socialist states (gosudarstva) that are members of the USSR federation. Autonomous republics and autonomous formations are a part of union republics on the basis of the free self-determination of peoples, and they possess all state power on their territory, with the exception of the powers they have transferred to the jurisdiction of the USSR and union republics.[32]
Article 4 went on the assert that "in the field of economic, social, and cultural construction on its territory, an autonomous republic has the same rights as a union republic, with the exception of those that, by mutual agreement, are assigned to the union republic's jurisdiction." The law also specified that the autonomous republics could establish direct economic and cultural relations with each other. Nevertheless, it included numerous provisions providing particular powers and privileges to the union republics that were not afforded the avtonomii.
The plenum was followed by the further mobilization of Tatar nationalists. In March 1990, a radical nationalist group, the Ittifak (Alliance) National Party, was established and began to challenge TOTs for leadership of the nationalist movement. Ittifak insisted on immediate independence and openly articulated a program of "Tatarstan for Tatars." It insisted that Tatar be made the republic's sole state language and that Russians be denied citizenship, and it articulated Tatar territorial claims on Bashkiria and Perm and Ul'ianovsk oblasts. The most prominent leader of the group, Fauzia Bairamova, was particularly blunt in her hostility to Russians, reportedly demanding an end to mixed marriages. By the end of 1990, Ittifak was bolstered by the formation of the Azatlyk (Freedom) Tatar youth organization, which called, inter alia, for the formation of a Tatar army.
Along with demands for greater autonomy and independence for the republic, Tatar activists began articulating pan-Turkic, pan-Tatar, and pan-Islamic agendas. In November 1989, representatives of the republic attended a meeting of Turkic peoples of the USSR (Kazan Tatars, Crimean Tatars, Uzbeks, Meskhetian Turks, Siberian Tatars, and Azeri Turks) in Baku that called for a federation of the Turkic peoples of the Soviet Union. In June 1990, a "Congress of Bulgars of Kazan" (reflecting the nationalists preference for "Bulgar" as an ethnonym) brought some 200 delegates to Kazan from Moscow, Kiev, Astrakhan, Orenburg, Ul'ianovsk, and elsewhere. The Congress announced the establishment of a "Bulgar National Congress" to protect Tatar culture throughout the USSR.
The republic also witnessed an accelerating revival of Islam. Mosques that had been converted to other uses in the Soviet period were returned to the Muslim clergy and restored, including the prestigious Azimov Mosque in Kazan. New mosques were built, with particularly elaborate mosques appearing in Naberezhnye Chelny, Nizhnekamsk, and Bugul'ma. [33] The number of pilgrims to Mecca began to increase, and Muslim clergy in the republic became much more active in educational and missionary work. The Islamic revival in the republic was given a particular boost by the celebration in August 1989 of the eleventh centennial of the adoption of Islam by the Volga Bulgars. A poll taken that year indicated that the percentage of Tatars professing belief in Islam had increased to 43.4 percent, up from 15.7 in 1980.[34]
As in the Baltic republics, Russians responded to the mobilization of nationalism among the titular majority by organizing to protect the rights of Russians in the republic. There was, however, an important difference. Whereas Russians in the union republics turned to the all-union Soviet government for support, and particularly to communist conservatives who were the most vocal defenders of the USSR's territorial integrity, Russians in Tatarstan turned to the Russian government, and particularly to the anti-communist and anti-Soviet "democrats" who were then beginning to unite around Boris Yeltsin. As a result, the most significant pro-Moscow political force in the republic at the time was the Tatar branch of the Democratic Party of Russia (DPR), a Russia-wide democratic-centrist party headquartered in Moscow.
The architect of Tatarstan's political course in the coming years was Mintimer Shaimiev, an ethnic Tatar who had been appointed CPSU first secretary in the republic in October 1989. [35] Whether for reasons of expediency or conviction, Shaimiev made clear from the outset that he was committed to policies that reached out to both Tatars and Russians and to a multinational understanding (mnogonatsional'nost') of Tatarstan's statehood. His strategy, which he would adhere to with great consistency, was to defend the rights of Russians within the republic, oppose radical Tatar nationalism while supporting Tatar cultural revival, and press Moscow vigorously for greater autonomy for Tatarstan while taking a cautious and equivocal stance on independence.
An indication of the importance Shaimiev attached to mnogonational'nost' came in early 1990 as the election campaign for the RSFSR Congress of Peoples' Deputies got underway. Under Shaimiev's direction, Communist Party officials organized a Poland-style roundtable that brought together representatives from leading political movements to promote understanding, tolerance, and even cooperation between Tatars and Russians. The roundtable also stressed, however, the importance of greater autonomy for the republic. Accordingly, Kazan issued an appeal to Moscow in which it demanded that the RSFSR government officially recognize that the republic had a special "treaty-based" relationship with Russia.
Available evidence suggests that from the beginning, Shaimiev's moderate political course, including his emphasis on mnogonatsional'nost', was supported by a majority of the republic's electorate.[36] In March 1990, Shaimiev won a seat at the RSFSR Congress of Peoples' Deputies, as did many members of Tatarstan's political elite. The results seemed to confirm that it was possible for Shaimiev to win popular support by presenting himself as an experienced and prudent politician who would promote social stability and interethnic harmony while wresting greater autonomy for the republic from Moscow.
On June 12, 1990, the RSFSR issued its "Declaration of State Sovereignty." The declaration made clear that Russia, too, would adhere to a doctrine of mnogonatsional'nost'. The declaration's preamble asserted that it expressed the will of the "peoples" of the RSFSR, not of "the Russian people"; Article 1 reiterated that the RSFSR was "a sovereign state created by the peoples united within it"; Article 3 asserted that the "RSFSR's multiethnic people are the repository of sovereignty and are the source of state power"; and Article 4 stated that the RSFSR's sovereignty was being proclaimed in order to guarantee, inter alia, the right of "every people to selfdetermination in their chosen national-state and national cultural form." [37] At the same time, it went on to assert the supremacy of the RSFSR constitution and laws on RSFSR territory over those of the USSR, and it stated that the RSFSR would hand over to the all-union government certain powers as delineated in a new "Union Treaty." The declaration said nothing, however, about a special status for Tatarstan.
Disappointed, Shaimiev announced that he would support a declaration of state sovereignty for the republic. In need of the avtonomii as allies in his intensifying struggle with Gorbachev, Yeltsin responded by supporting Tatarstan's sovereignty claims. On August 5, 1990, he arrived in Kazan and made his famous statement urging the avtonomii to take "all the sovereignty you can swallow."[38] And in an interview in Kazan with Sovetskaia Tatarstana, he stated, "We will welcome whatever independence the Tatar ASSR chooses for itself.... I will say: if you want to govern yourselves completely, go ahead."[39]
The Tatar Supreme Soviet responded promptly. On August 30, 1990, it issued its own sovereignty declaration.[40] The declaration renamed the republic "the Tatar Soviet Socialist Republic-The Republic of Tatarstan," leaving out the term "autonomous republic" and implying thereby that it was a union republic. It made no mention of being a constituent unit of the RSFSR: rather, the declaration was to serve as the basis for a new constitution, the conclusion of a "Union Treaty" for the USSR, and for "treaties with the RSFSR and other republics." It also asserted that Tatarstan's constitution and the laws of the republic were "supreme" (verkhovenstvo) on the territory of the republic.
At the same time, this first fundamental legal statement of late-Soviet Tatarstan reiterated the republic's commitment to mnogonatsional'nost'. Its second line referred to the "the multinational people of the republic," while Article 3 identified both Tatar and Russian as the republic's state language and guaranteed to all residents equal treatment under the law regardless of "nationality, social position, religion, and political beliefs." The only hint of an ethnic definition of statehood came in the preamble, which referred to the "inalienable right of the Tatar nation (natsiia) and all peoples of the republic to self-determination."[41]
As the declaration suggested, Tatarstan's principal objective at the time was to win greater autonomy through a change in status from autonomous republic to union republic, putting it on an equal footing with the RSFSR. Two weeks after the issuance of the declaration, Shaimiev stated unequivocally that Tatarstan's government no longer considered the republic a part of the RSFSR. Shortly thereafter, plans were announced for the formation of an independent (samostoiatel'naia) Tatar Communist Party, even as Shaimiev resigned as CPSU first secretary, indicating not only that the Party was becoming increasingly marginalized but that Shaimiev did not want to be subjected to Party discipline by the center.
Despite Yeltsin's earlier support for the sovereignty demands of the avtonomii, RSFSR officials began to oppose the political program of Tatarstan and the other avtonomii that had issued sovereignty declarations. Ruslan Khasbulatov, first deputy chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet, and Ramazan Abdulatipov, chairman of one of the two houses of the RSFSR Supreme, made clear that the RSFSR legislature rejected the right of the avtonomii to change their status unilaterally. Tatar nationalists responded by organizing more demonstrations in the republic, and the tone of these demonstrations grew more radical. Islamic flags were accompanied by banners reading, "Tataria Is Not Russia--Down with Russian-Soviet Slavery," and "Tatars, Throw Off the Russian Yoke." Russians, possibly at the instigation of Moscow, responded by announcing plans to establish a "Zakamsk Republic" in the Russian-dominated areas around Naberezhnye Chelny and Nizhnekamsk that would separate from Tatarstan and join the RSFSR if Kazan pressed to secede from the RSFSR.[42]
The growing tensions in late 1990 between Tatars and Russians and between Kazan and Moscow received sparse attention in the national media which was then preoccupied by the deepening crisis of the Soviet state. Having rejected the radical "500 Days" economic reform program at the end of 1990, Gorbachev seemed to be abandoning the cause of reform. His turn to the right became particularly evident after he condoned the use of violence to suppress Lithuanian nationalists in January 1991. In the hope of recovering political momentum, Gorbachev proceeded to announce a USSR-wide referendum for March 17, 1991 on the preservation of the USSR "as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, in which human rights and the freedom of people of all nationalities will be fully guaranteed." The RSFSR Supreme Soviet, with Yeltsin as its Chairman, announced in turn that it would attach an additional question to the referendum in the RSFSR. Voters in Russia would be asked whether they approved the establishment of an elected Russian president. Having criticized Gorbachev for not putting his own leadership to a direct popular election, Yeltsin was looking to acquire the democratic legitimacy that Gorbachev lacked.
As the referendum approached, Tatarstan announced that it would not include the question about the Russian presidency on the ballot. Kazan wished to demonstrate that the RSFSR legislature had no authority on its territory. The outcome of the referendum made clear that voters in Tatarstan considered the USSR government an ally in their campaign for greater autonomy -- 87.5 percent of those voting in the republic supported the preservation of the USSR, well above the 71.3 percent in the RSFSR as a whole. And in an early indication of the limited writ of the RSFSR government in the republic, the ballot in Tatarstan did not included a question on the establishment of a RSFSR presidency, which passed in the rest of the RSFSR with the support of 69.85 percent of those voting. In the wake of the referendum, the Tatar Supreme Soviet amended its constitution, declaring itself a sovereign state and asserting that the laws of Tatarstan took priority over those of both the RSFSR and the USSR whenever they were in conflict.[43]
Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the leaders of the other union republics then began to negotiate the terms of a new USSR Union Treaty. The avtonomii, led by Tatarstan, demanded a role in the negotiations. When, on April 24, 1991, Gorbachev announced that an agreement on general principles had been reached, he indicated that only the federal government and the union republics, not the avtonomii, would be parties to the treaty. Two days later, the USSR Supreme Soviet adopted a law equalizing the rights and obligations of the avtonomii and the union republics. Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the leaders of the RSFSR's autonomous republics then met again and reaffirmed the latters' "sovereignty," and in a compromise formulation, they agreed that the avtonomii would be parties to the Union Treaty as constituent units of both the USSR and the RSFSR. [44] Shaimiev, however, made clear that Kazan would only sign the treaty as a member of the USSR, not the RSFSR. Only then would Tatarstan conclude a bilateral treaty with the RSFSR.[45]
As the negotiations over the Union Treaty proceeded, the RSFSR government announced that elections would be held on June 12 for the newly established Russian presidency. The announcement was met by large demonstrations in Tatarstan opposing the republic's participation in the elections. Ittifak activists, including Bairamova, began a hunger strike. Tatarstan's Supreme Soviet responded by announcing that the republic would hold its own elections for a new Tatarstan presidency on June 12. It also announced that the republic's government would not facilitate the RSFSR presidential elections, although neither would it try to prevent them from being held in the republic. [46] Shaimiev then confirmed that he would be a candidate in the republic's presidential elections, and he picked an ethnic Russian, Vasilii Likhachev, to be his running mate.
Elections were held as planned on June 12. Yeltsin received 57 percent of the vote in returns from across the RSFSR, defeating his closest opponent decisively. Only 36.6 percent of eligible voters in Tatarstan took part in the RSFSR presidential election, however, of whom only 45.0 percent voted for Yeltsin. In contrast, over two-thirds of eligible voters participated in Tatarstan's presidential elections, with Shaimiev, the only candidate, winning with an overwhelming majority of the vote.[47]
On July 24, 1991, Gorbachev finally announced a breakthrough on the Union Treaty. However, Tatarstan and the RSFSR government had yet to reach an agreement on Tatarstan's status. Late in the month, Shaimiev appointed a delegation headed by Vice-President Likhachev to represent Tatarstan at the Union Treaty talks and to begin discussions over a separate treaty with the RSFSR. [48] In an indication of his willingness to negotiate some kind of deal with Tatarstan at the time, Yeltsin appointed a delegation headed by Russian State Secretary Gennadii Burbulis that included Yeltsin advisors Sergei Shakhrai and Oleg Lobov, all of whom would play important roles in negotiations between Kazan and Moscow in the coming years.
The delegations met in Moscow for the first time on August 12-15, 1991 and signed a protocol that in effect accepted Kazan's demand for a treaty-based relationship with the RSFSR. The protocol's first point stated that the delegations had agreed "to establish relations on the basis of treaty-forms of regulation, taking into consideration their key interests but without infringing on the interests of other republics and the Union as a whole." It also recognized "the desire of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic and the Republic of Tatarstan, as participants in the Treaty on the Union of Sovereign States, to renew and raise their status."[49]
It appeared, then, that Tatarstan would be a party to the Union Treaty scheduled for signing on August 20 in Moscow. The day before the signing ceremony, however, Moscow conservatives launched their long-anticipated and ultimately abortive coup. Shaimiev, either because he was convinced that Yeltsin and his democratic allies represented the greater obstacle to Tatarstan's autonomy or because he was convinced the coup would succeed, made the most serious mistake of his presidency by siding with the putchists. He flew to Moscow and met with one of the coup leaders, Gennadii Yanaev, and then, returning to Kazan, made a radio address in which he stated that the reasons for the coup were justified and that decrees by Yeltsin and the RSFSR government had no legal status in Tatarstan. Some 600 anti-coup demonstrators were then dispersed from Kazan's central square and a handful were arrested.[50]
With the failure of the coup, Yeltsin and the RSFSR government emerged greatly strengthened. Naturally, they were not pleased by Shaimiev's support for the putschists, and they concluded that Shaimiev was at heart a communist conservative and an opportunist who was using Tatarstan's sovereignty campaign to save his political career. Accordingly, Ruslan Khasbulatov, who had replaced Yeltsin as Chairman of Russia's Supreme Soviet, threatened to disband the Tatar parliament.
Although Khasbulatov's threat was not carried out, it reinforced Kazan's belief that the "democrats" in Moscow were the republic's political enemies. Relations between Kazan and the RSFSR deteriorated further after Yeltsin declared a state of emergency and dispatched federal troops to Checheno-Ingushetia to suppress radical nationalists in the republic. In the face of armed resistance by the Chechens and opposition from the RSFSR Supreme Soviet, Yeltsin lifted the state of emergency and withdrew Russia's troops from the republic, but officials in Tatarstan nevertheless interpreted Moscow's resort to force as further evidence that Yeltsin would be no more tolerant of the political aspirations of the RSFSR's ethnic republics than Gorbachev had been of the USSR's union republics.
Within Tatarstan, the polarization of Tatars and Russians reached the point where interethnic violence appeared imminent. Reports surfaced that paramilitary groups of nationalist Tatars and Russians were forming. On October 12, Ittifak's Bairamova published a vitriolic antiRussian article in a little-known Kazan newspaper that was republished in the Russian language newspaper Kazanskie vedomosti and later excerpted in Izvestiia. Bairamova wrote:

The great tragedy is that the nation has lost its pride. Would a nation that has any pride really allow such self-mockery in its history; would it really sell the Russians its language, religion and customs; and would it really accept their much worse traditions? Would a Tatar who had any pride really mix his genealogy with that of his enemy? Would a Tatar who had any pride really look on calmly as his sacred lands were parceled out to others? Would a Tatar who had any pride really toil like a donkey for four centuries, pulling along the Russian newcomer?...
Just how can we hold a discussion about independence, make demands on Russia, and protect ourselves by forming an army? Just how can we shut up the local Russians who are raising a howl against independence? The leaders of Tatarstan are still pretending to be good fellows, while both the Russians and the Jews are laughing at us in a mocking way. They eat our bread, but they don't even consider us human beings...

Half of Russia's territory is Tatar lands.... The time has come to raise the question of annexing to Tatarstan the lands that belonged to the Tatars of old, lands where they now dwell--the lands of Simbirsk, Saratov, Samara, Astrakhan, and Orenburg, the expanses of the Ufa plateau and all of the Urals' western slope. The Siberian Tatars and the Sergach Mishars are a special question; their lands are also Tatar lands.[51]

Bairamova went to declare that, if necessary, Tatar nationalists would resort to armed struggle if Russia rejected Tatarstan's legitimate demands for independence. Complementing this anti-Russian rhetoric were inflammatory statements by Russians. The newspaper of the Tatar nationalist faction, Suverenitet (Sovereignty), published an article entitled "The Birth of Fascism?" that consisted of letters to the editor from angry Russians with passages such as, "Kill all the stinking ethnics." The article also pointed out that a Russian-language newspaper had printed a campaign promise by the extreme Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky: "And I'll resettle the Bashkirs and the Tatars in Mongolia. There's filth and syphilis there, so let them live there." [52]
Khasbulatov, who had replaced Yeltsin as the Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet and was becoming notorious among Tatar nationalists for his aggressive anti-Tatar rhetoric, aggravated tensions further. Shortly after the coup, he reportedly stated that Shaimiev "should be brought to Moscow in an iron cage" and threatened a "second taking of Kazan. [53] "Russia," he continued, "is getting nothing [from Tatarstan]. Tataria's foul chemical industry isn't giving anyone anything." The republic's oil, he added, was "disappearing from Russia," and he went on to insult the republic's leadership: "You have no real leader today.... You have people who want to hold on to their official positions." The Tatars, he went on, "are building a feudal principality. You like medieval obscurantism, is that it?" And he argued that the republic's sovereignty claims resulted from efforts by the pro-USSR KGB to mobilize the avtonomii against the RSFSR, and he bluntly stated that "there will be no independent state on the territory of the RSFSR." [54]
Khasbulatov's rhetoric contributed to the further radicalization of Tatar nationalism. [55] Matters came to a head on October 15, 1991, the anniversary of Ivan the Terrible's storming of Kazan. For years the occasion had been officially celebrated as a "day of liberation" for the republic. As deputies to Tatarstan's Supreme Soviet met to discuss a referendum on the republic's status, a crowd numbering some 2,000 gathered outside in Kazan's Freedom Square. The protesters demanded not only an end to the practice of celebrating the fall of Kazan but also a full break with the RSFSR. When they learned that the Supreme Soviet had voted against a declaration of independence, they attempted to storm the parliament building. They were turned back by a police cordon, but the clash left six demonstrators and five militiamen in the hospital, two with serious injuries.[56]
As it turned out, the October 15, 1991 incident would prove to be the only significant "ethnic violence" the republic experienced during its sovereignty drive from August 1990 through February 1994 (the date it finally signed a power-sharing treaty with Moscow--see below). Rather then attempting to exploit te situation for political gain by siding with the Tatar nationalists, Shaimiev continued to attempt to ameliorate tensions within the republic. He condemned the violence and issued a decree banning paramilitary groups. At the same time, he indicated that the concerns of the demonstrators, if not their methods, were justified. He therefore asked Tatarstan's Supreme Soviet to decree that October 15 would no longer be a republic holiday or otherwise officially celebrated, and the Supreme Soviet gladly complied. This was followed on October 24, 1991 by a Supreme Soviet declaration entitled, "In Regard to an Act on the State Independence (nezavisimost') of the Republic of Tatarstan." [57] In addition to asserting various rights for the republic in all-union bodies (the USSR still legally existed), the declaration charged the republic's Council of Ministers with studying the consequences of a declaration of full independence.
As the final demise of the USSR approached in late 1991, it became increasingly clear that the politics of the new Russian state would be complicated not only by a deepening conflict between Yeltsin and conservatives in the RSFSR Supreme Soviet Supreme but also by tensions between Moscow and the sub''ekty.[58] Hoping to overcome Russia's "federation crisis," legislators in Moscow considered various schemes for redesigning the federation in a new constitution, including proposals to eliminate ethnically-defined sub''ekty altogether, creating instead a system of some ten to fifteen "gubernii" modeled on the administrative divisions of the Tsarist period. [59] After opposition from the republics helped scuttle these plans, Yeltsin announced that a "Federation Treaty," modeled on the now abandoned union treaty for the USSR, would define a new and genuine division of powers between Moscow and the sub''ekty. Tatarstan, however, made clear that it would not be a party to a federation treaty that did recognize it as a sovereign state associated with Russia on the basis of a bilateral treaty. It also moved to seize control of the defunct USSR's property on its territory.[60]
Still, both governments in Moscow and Kazan continued to indicate that their willingness to reach a compromise. [61] On January 22, 1992, an intergovernmental agreement (the first of many such agreements over the next two years) on economic cooperation was signed by acting Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and Tatarstan Prime Minister Mukhammat Sabirov. [62] The agreement recognized the validity of Tatarstan's claim to the ownership of land and natural resources on its territory, but it added that some enterprises in the republic belonged to Kazan, some to Moscow, and some to Moscow and Kazan jointly. It did not, however, specify exactly which enterprise belonged to which government and in which proportion. The exception was the oil industry, which was placed under the "control" of Kazan. The two governments also agreed not to interfere with cross-border trade, and they specified that export quotas for the republic would be agreed to on a yearly basis. Finally, Kazan and Moscow agreed to provide financial support to the republic's enterprises at the same level as in 1991.
Despite the pragmatism evidenced by both governments, Tatar nationalists continued to pursue an agenda of political independence for the republic. In early February 1991, an all-Tatar Kuraltai (Congress) covened in Kazan. [63] Organized by Ittifak and attended by Tatars from around the former Soviet Union, the Kuraltai declared Tatarstan's independence, proclaimed Tatar to be the republic's only state language, adopted a state flag, and elected a 75 member Milli Medzhlis (National Assembly). When the Milli Medzhlis convened in late March, it declared itself the supreme legislative body of all Tatars and asserted the right to veto any laws or decrees that violated the spirit of Tatarstan's sovereignty declaration or the interests of ethnic Tatar living inside or outside the republic. Shaimiev declared, however, that the Kuraltai and Milli Medzhlis had no legal authority within Tatarstan, and he reiterated that Tatarstan would pursue its autonomy demands "exclusively in a civilized and constitutional way." [64] But he also reiterated his sympathy for their desire to provide Tatars outside the republic with greater cultural rights and protections.
As pressure mounted on Tatarstan to endorse Yeltsin's Federation Treaty, Kazan decided that the time had come to hold a referendum on Tatarstan's status. The language of referendum, however, was the subject of heated debate. Radicals, led by the parliamentary faction Suverenitet, demanded a straightforward vote on independence, while federalists, led by the pro-Russian faction "Narodovlastie," were opposed to any referendum. Eventually, a compromise formulation was agreed upon: the referendum, to be held on March 20, 1992, would read: "Do you agree that Tatarstan is a sovereign state and a subject of international law that is building relations with Russia and other republics and states on the basis of equal treaties?"
Although the question was ambiguous, it tersely captured Tatarstan's position at the time. As a sovereign state and a subject of international law, the republic had the right to enter into bilateral, state-to-state treaty with the Russian government, or any other government, in which it would voluntarily delegate some of its sovereign powers. The most provocative part of the claim, and the one that Moscow would consistently reject, was that the republic was a "subject of international law." Taken literally, this would have meant that Tatarstan was an independent state. Claims to "statehood" and "sovereignty," in contrast, were more acceptable--each had an ambiguous meaning inherited from Soviet period, and ambiguity provided room for compromise. At the same time, the referendum's wording allayed the fears of Russians and Tatar moderates. It did not suggest, for example, that Tatars were demanding "self-determination," which would have implied that Russians were either second class citizens or aliens in the republic. Nor did it indicate that the republic would press for full independence and international recognition. Indeed, the ambiguous wording of the referendum seems to have enhanced its popularity--polls indicated that a significant majority of Tatarstan's electorate favored increased autonomy and "sovereignty" but that an even greater majority opposed secession.[65]
Tatarstan's referendum plans alerted officials in Moscow to the seriousness of its deepening conflict with Kazan and provoked the most serious crisis in Moscow-Kazan relations in the postSoviet period. Immediately, the Russian government began to step up pressure on the republic. Russia's vice-president, Aleksandr Rutskoi, called on Yeltsin to declare a state of emergency and to blockade the republic, and he predicted that a "yes" vote on the referendum would destroy Russia.[66] As he put it:

If we do not understand in our heart that Russia is no chance accumulation of territories and tribes but a living, historical organism not subject to arbitrary dismemberment, then we are not worthy of our great common past. Not only for us, who have seen everything, but for mankind.... Shortsighted politicians who satisfy their ambitions by courting cheap popularity and play the "nationalities question" card will inevitably become the victims of their bloody game.[67]

Equally confrontational was Vice-Premier Sergei Shakhrai, who described the referendum as a coup d'etat.[68]
Shortly after the referendum was announced, Russia's Supreme Soviet appealed to Kazan to reconsider and sent a delegation to meet with the chairman of Tatarstan's legislature, Farid Mukhametshin, to make clear its objections to the referendum. [69] When this failed to bring about a change of course in Kazan, it petitioned Russia's newly-formed Constitutional Court to examine the constitutionality of the referendum.
The Court took up the issue on March 12, 1992. Kazan, which denied that the Court had any jurisdiction on its territory, refused to send a representative to the session. Petitioners raised objections to the fact that the referendum consisted of three separate questions but permitted only one answer. They also pointed out that Tatarstan's referendum law required a turnout of only fifty percent and approval by a majority of those voting for passage, which meant that approval by only a quarter of the republic's electorate could determine the status of Tatarstan for this and future generations. The next day, the Court ruled that both the referendum and the republic's 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty violated the Russian constitution because both assumed that Tatarstan was not a part of the Russian Federation.[70]
These developments in Moscow were accompanied by efforts to mobilize Russians in the republic in opposition to the referendum. Radio Rossii reported that the legislature in one of Tatarstan's Russian-dominated cities, Bugul'ma, had announced its own referendum on secession from Tatarstan.[71] When on March 7 a crowd of several hundred demonstrated against the referendum, Tatar nationalists claimed that the demonstration had been organized by agents of Moscow and that Russian enterprise managers had provided transportation and forced workers to participate. Most ominously, rumors began to circulate of Russian troop maneuvers in Cheliabinsk.
The Russian Interior Ministry informed Tatarstan's officials that all heavy weapons in the possession of the local militia were being removed from the republic, a move that Kazan interpreted as preparation for armed intervention. [72] In turn, the RSFSR Procurator General weighed in by announcing criminal charges against Ittifak's Bairamova for inciting interethnic hatred. He then sent a delegation to the republic to inform local election officials that they would be criminally liable if they helped carry out the referendum. The head of the procuracy in the republic, an ethnic Russian, approached the head of the republic's election commission, Ilduz Galiev, and ordered him to have his subordinates close the polling stations. [73] Finally, leaflets were distributed throughout the republic urging a "no" vote.[74]
Despite the pressure, Tatarstan's parliament refused to cave in. On March 16, 1992, it reaffirmed its intention to proceed with the referendum and rejected suggestions that the referendum's wording be changed. It reiterated, however, that the referendum did not ask the electorate to approve secession. This was not enough to satisfy Moscow. On March 18, the chairman of Russia's Constitutional Court, Valerii Zorkin, addressed the Russian parliament and urged it to enforce the Court's ruling. [75] Yeltsin, too, condemned the referendum, and while he stated that "the main thing is to act carefully, gradually, and in a friendly manner," he issued a public appeal to Tatarstan's Supreme Soviet asking it to comply with the Constitutional Court's ruling. [76] And he expressed his concern that nationalists would use the referendum "to inflame interethnic enmity," warning, ominously, that "the consequences of such a course would inevitably extend beyond the borders of the republic and lead to a worsening of interethnic relations in others regions of Russia," a statement that Tatar nationalists interpreted as a threat of reprisals against Tatars living outside the republic. [77] Finally, he bluntly asserted that he would "not allow Tatarstan to leave to the Russian Federation." In a separate appeal to the people of Tatarstan broadcast on national radio the evening before the referendum, he made clear his belief that, despite Shaimiev's reassurances, the main goal of Tatarstan's leadership was full independence.[78]
Shaimiev responded by making his own appearance on local television in Tatarstan. Reiterating that the republic was not asking for an endorsement of secession, he asked the citizens of Tatarstan to vote "yes." Tatarstan's television stations then ran clips of Yeltsin's summer 1990 visit to Kazan during he had made his statement urging the republic to "take all the sovereignty you can swallow."[79]
The night of the referendum, Tatarstan's officials were deeply concerned about the possibility that the local militia would comply with the orders of the procuracy and close down the polling stations. They were also afraid that election officials would refuse to implement the referendum or that "spontaneous" street violence would break out. To their relief, and to the surprise of many in Moscow, the referendum proceeded without incident on March 20. Indeed, Moscow's pressure tactics seemed to backfire. The referendum was approved by 61.4 percent of those voting, and equally importantly, turnout was very high at 81.6 percent. [80] As a result, just over 50 percent of eligible voters approved the initiative. Equally disappointing for Moscow was the fact that many Russians had apparently voted for the referendum. On the other hand, it was clear that Tatars had voted "yes" in greater numbers than Russians--support for the referendum was higher in predominantly rural areas (75.3 percent), while in urban areas, where there were higher concentrations of Russians, only 58.7 percent voted "yes." In particular, 51.2 percent of those voting in Kazan voted "no."[81]

From Crisis to Compromise: March 1992-February 1994

The results of the referendum cheered Tatar nationalists. The chairman of TOTs, Marat Muliukov, described the results as a "great victory." Tatarstan, he asserted, was now an independent state that deserved UN recognition, while parliamentary deputies who had opposed the referendum should be removed. [82] Shaimiev was more cautious. He sought to ameliorate fears of secession in Moscow and to allay the concerns of Russians in the republic. Tatarstan, he asserted, would "always be with Russia," and he argued that "we must not break centuries-old economic and cultural links." The republic's goal was not secession--rather, it was a bilateral treaty with Moscow in which powers assigned to the national government in areas such as defense and foreign policy would be delegated from below.[83] Yeltsin, too, made clear that he preferred compromise, indicating that he was not opposed in principle to a treaty with Kazan. And he asserted that force should never be used to resolve Moscow's disagreements with the republic.
With Yeltsin's and Shaimiev's support, negotiations on a bilateral treaty began almost immediately. Delegations from Moscow and Kazan met in Moscow on March 30-April 2, 1992 even as the Federation Treaty was being signed by the federal government and the sub''ekty on March 31, 1992, which only Tatarstan and Chechnya refused to sign.
Initially it appeared that agreement on a power-sharing treaty would be reached quickly. Serious differences were reportedly limited to Tatarstan's demand for a "single channel" tax system whereby Kazan would collect all taxes on its territory and determine its own budget, with the amount turned over to Moscow agreed upon in advance. Differences proved significant enough, however, to prevent agreement. The negotiations concluded with a protocol that merely confirmed that the two sides would reconvene later that month, although the protocol reiterated that both governments were committed to guaranteeing the "rights and freedoms of individuals independent of national, confessional, or other differences."[84]
Over the next two years, periodic negotiations between Kazan and Moscow would result in a series of intergovernmental agreements (soglasheniia) that resolved, at least temporarily, many of the most pressing conflicts between Moscow and Kazan. However, agreement on a treaty (dogovor) would not come until February 1994. Over this two year period, Shaimiev faced a considerable political challenge. He had to secure his political standing in the republic by maintaining the support of both Tatarstan's electorate and its political and economic elite, which required a firm hand in negotiations with the Russian government. But he also had to avoid provoking Moscow's hardliners, many of whom continued to advocate the use of force to "restore constitutional order" in Tatarstan. And to accomplish both these tasks, he had to preserve peace between Tatars and Russians within the republic.
Shaimiev began by moving to isolate the republic's radical nationalists. He announced that the government would host a "Congress of Peoples of Tatarstan" in May that would stress the importance of ethnic peace and the republic's traditions of cultural tolerance, in contrast to the nationalist agenda of the all-Tatar Kuraltai held in February. The Congress convened on May 23- 24, 1992 and was attended by some 500 delegates from Tatarstan and approximately 200 from outside the republic. In his opening speech, Shaimiev noted that that despite its many problems, the republic had managed to avoid significant interethnic violence, in contrast to the many ethnic "hot spots" around the former Soviet Union. Extolling the multinational character of the republic, he went on:

By virtue of its geopolitical location, Tatarstan and its capital, Kazan, have played the role of a connecting link between West and East. They have been a meeting place of different civilizations, cultures, and confessions. Having lived together for centuries, people have worked out their own form of multinational intercourse (obshchenie) that has facilitated, and still facilitates, the mutual enrichment of languages and cultures and deep traditions of understanding and cooperation.[85]

The Congress expressed its "respect for the achievements and the rights of people of all nationalities living inside Tatarstan and outside its borders," reaffirmed Tatarstan's sovereignty, identified the republic's "multinational people" as the bearers of that sovereignty, asserted that stability in the republic would have to be based on the constitution and laws of the republic, and passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a multinational "Association of NationalCultural Societies" to promote interethnic trust and civil harmony.[86]
At the same time, Shaimiev sought to win the support of moderate nationalists by supporting a program of Tatar cultural revival. New Tatar-speaking primary and secondary schools and gymnasiums were established, state support increased for Tatar language-training in Russianspeaking schools, a Tatarstan Academy of Sciences was created, Tatar cultural centers were established in cities in Tatarstan and elsewhere, and Tatar-language newspapers and other publications proliferated. At the same time, Kazan continued to evidence its support for mnogonatsional'nost' by supporting not only Russian-language schools but also schools where the language of instruction was Chuvash, Udmurt, Mordovan, and Marii.
Indeed, the government was careful not to embrace the entirety of the cultural agenda of Tatar nationalists, particularly on symbolic issues. For example, Tatarstan's tricolor flag has a green stripe at the top to represent the Tatars, a red strip at the bottom to represent the Russians, and a white stripe in the middle representing the other minorities of the republic. The republic also moved slowly to change communist-era names of streets, towns, factories, squares, and so on. Changing the names of public spaces confronted Tatarstan's authorities with a choice between contradictory mythologies of the past, one of which portrayed Russians as conquerors while the other portrayed them as liberators and modernizes. To name a street after even a seemingly noncontroversial Russian, such the founder of non-Euclidean geometry and rector of Kazan University, Nikolai Lobachevsky, appeared to be an endorsement of Russia's "modernizing" mission. Ignoring Russian figures and symbols, on the other hand, raised concerns in the Russian community about discriminatory treatment. The government therefore tried to be even-handed as it slowly abandoned the symbols and mythologies of communism, a task made easier by the weakness of the anti-communist movement in Tatarstan.
The republic also proceeded cautiously on economic reform. Tatarstan's "soft entrance to the market" (miagkoe vkhozhdenie v rynok), as it was called, entailed a gradual liberalization of prices and a slower approach to privatization than Moscow's. The fact that Shaimiev was from the communist nomenklatura may have had an influence on the republic's economic program. So, too, did Tatarstan's political experience during the Gorbachev era which made its leaders suspicious of "marketization from above" by Moscow's "democrats." But Tatarstan's leaders were also concerned that "shock therapy" would contribute to Russian-Tatar polarization. Instead, measures were taken to preserve welfare protections for the population, and a major, and reportedly quite successful, anti-crime campaign was launched in March 1993. Tatarstan's electorate viewed these measures as prudent attempts to counter the negative consequences of marketization.
The republic distanced itself economically from Moscow in other ways as well. On May 21, 1992, the Tatarstan Supreme Soviet adopted a law that effectively secured its "fiscal sovereignty" through the implementation of a single channel tax system. Moscow responded by cutting off all federal disbursements to Kazan's budget. Kazan stopped virtually all payments to the federal treasury even as it began to cooperate with other republics attempting to assert their fiscal autonomy.[87]
Nevertheless, Kazan continued to take steps to reassure Moscow of the reasonableness of its political agenda. For example, it made clear that it was willing to negotiate a settlement with Moscow on fiscal matters even before agreement was reached on the republic's legal status. And it frequently reminded Moscow that, unlike Chechnya, Tatarstan was not pushing for a complete break with Russia. Accordingly, the republic would not set up its own border controls, create a separate customs regime, print its own currency, or create its own national guard. [88] And it decided not to press for international recognition, despite the language in the March 21 referendum characterizing the republic as "a subject of international law." After approaches were made to the UN and other international organizations about the possibility of recognition, Kazan realized that the international community would not recognize its independence without prior approval by the Russian government. The republic's leaders were also concerned that the UN or some other international organization would designate Tatarstan a colony or "non-self-governing territory," a decision that would likely exacerbate interethnic tensions and create additional obstacles to the peaceful resolution of differences with Moscow. Kazan therefore remained silent on the issue of its status under international law, although it used the threat of an appeal to the international community as an implicit bargaining chip in its negotiations with Moscow.[89]
A new round of talks began in early August 1992. Again it was reported that an agreement on a treaty was imminent. However, when Yeltsin and Shaimiev finally met on September 15, 1992, the legal status of the republic, Tatarstan's obligations to the federal government's budget, and the question of service obligations in the Russian military for Tatarstan's citizens reportedly prevented agreement. Tatarstan responded by proceeding with plans to ratify a new constitution. Earlier in the year, a draft constitution had been prepared and approved on the first reading by the republic's Supreme Soviet, but a decision had been made to postpone ratification pending the outcome of negotiations with Moscow. With talks at a standstill and the federal government increasingly preoccupied by the executive-legislative crisis in Moscow, Tatarstan's Supreme Soviet voted to ratify the constitution on November 6, 1992.
The new constitution reaffirmed many of the principles expressed in the 1990 Sovereignty Declaration. Article 1 asserted that "state sovereignty is an inalienable attribute of the Republic of Tatarstan," while Article 59 stated that the laws of the Republic "are supreme over all its territory if they do not contradict the international obligations" of the republic. [90] Similarly, Article 165 asserted that the republic's constitution is the fundamental law of the republic and "supreme" on its territory. Article 61 affirmed that the republic "is a sovereign state and a subject of international law that is associated with the Russian Federation--Russia on the basis of a treaty on the mutual delegation of powers and jurisdictions," while Article 9 declared that "the land, mineral wealth, waters, forest and other natural resources, fauna and flora, the means (sredstva) of the state budget, the assets of state banks, and the objects of cultural and historical value (tsennosti) of the peoples of Tatarstan and other assets (imushchestva) that ensure the economic independence of the republic and that preserve material and spiritual culture, are the property of the whole people." Finally, Articles 12, 14, and 15 stated that executive, legislative, and judicial bodies of Tatarstan are completely autonomous, while Article 58 declared Tatarstan a nuclear free zone and required that military service be performed on the republic's territory or "on the basis of foreign obligations."
Equally importantly, Tatarstan's constitution reaffirmed the non-ethnic basis of the republic's statehood. Article 1 stated that Tatarstan was "a sovereign democratic state that expresses the will and interests of the entire multinational people (vsego mnogonatsional'nogo naroda) of the republic"; Article 4 identified both Tatar and Russian as the official languages of the republic; and Article 19 provided for republic citizenship, adding that "citizens of Tatarstan acquire (obladaiut) citizenship of the Russian Federation" (apparently automatically) and provided for dual citizenship. Finally, Article 20 provided equal protection for all citizens under the law regardless of birth, social status, property, race, and nationality, inter alia, and guarantees all citizens the right to the use their own language.
Predictably, Tatarstan's new constitution was criticized by both hardliners and moderates in Moscow. In a speech before the Congress of People's Deputies, Valerii Zorkin, chairman of Russia's Constitutional Court, insisted that Russia's constitution included no provision for the "associated status" demanded by Tatarstan, and he demanded constitutional order should be established in Tatarstan and elsewhere. [91] Yeltsin, however, continued to advocate a negotiated compromise. This was confirmed most dramatically on November 23, 1992, when Gennadii Burbulis stated bluntly that Moscow was ready to accept an "asymmetrical federation" that recognized Tatarstan's special status. Asymmetrical federalism, he went on, would allow the national government to negotiate a division of powers with the other sub''ekty, thereby accommodating their particular conditions, needs, and abilities. [92] And Yeltsin, addressing the Congress of People's Deputies the same day as Zorkin, argued that the sub''kty should be afforded greater autonomous powers, especially on economic matters.[93]
It therefore appeared by the end of 1992 that Shaimiev's strategy was paying off. Not only had relations with Moscow stabilized but tensions between Russians and Tatars in the republic were abating. Polls indicated that radical nationalist parties like Ittifak were supported by less than two percent of the electorate. [94] Support for Shaimiev and the Tatarstan government, on the other hand, was growing despite popular disappointment with the economy.[95]
That December, Yeltsin finally convinced the Russian legislature to hold a Russia-wide referendum to resolve the acute executive-legislative impasse in Moscow. Yeltsin's opponents refused, however, to put a new constitution for Russia to a direct vote. Instead, members of Russia's electorate would be asked whether they "trusted" the president, supported his "socialeconomic policies," supported pre-term elections for the presidency, and supported pre-term elections for parliament, questions that Yeltsin's opponents felt would be particularly likely to embarrass him. After much controversy, it was finally agreed that the referendum would be held on April 25, 1993.
Meanwhile, Shaimiev and Yeltsin had met in mid-January to discuss the terms of a bilateral treaty. Again, they were unable to reach agreement on Tatarstan's legal status, but they did agree that negotiators should focus on economic, ecological, and other less contentious issues. In a sign that Kazan would nevertheless continue to pressure Yeltsin into being more conciliatory by playing Yeltsin off against his opponents in the Russian parliament, Shaimiev stated that he felt a referendum was unnecessary since Russia already had a legally elected parliament and executive. Yeltsin and his allies, who believed that their opponents in Moscow would be much tougher on Kazan if they managed to limit the powers of the president, were clearly irritated by Shaimiev's lack of support. They therefore canceled talks between Shaimiev and Yeltsin scheduled for February 16. Nevertheless, Tatarstan stood firm, and in early March Tatarstan's parliament announced that, while it would not prevent the referendum from being held in Tatarstan, it would again preclude officials of the republic from facilitating it, and it urged Tatarstan's voters to boycott the vote.
When the referendum finally took place on April 25, 1993, only 20 percent of eligible voters turned out in the republic. The low turnout again suggested not only that Tatars but also a majority of Russians in the republic supported Kazan in its struggle with the federal government. Across the country, however, the referendum gave Yeltsin a major political victory. Despite predictions that his economic program in particular would be rejected by the voters, he won majority support on all four questions: 58.7 percent indicated they supported the president; 53.1 percent supported his social-economic policies; a slim majority voted against pre-term elections for the president; and 67.2 percent voted for pre-term elections for parliament.[96]
Although many Yeltsin supporters called on him to disband the parliament after his referendum victory, Yeltsin chose a less confrontational approach. He called for the convening of a Constitutional Assembly, to be attended by representatives from all major political groupings and from each sub''ekt, to approve a draft constitution, which would then be ratified either by the Congress of Peoples' Deputies or by a referendum. Yeltsin's draft constitution, however, came in for much criticism at the convention, particularly by representatives from the republics. The draft, they pointed out, failed to describe the republics as sovereign states, did not afford the republics a right of secession, and did not indicate that their incorporation in the federation was purely voluntary.
After much discussion, Tatarstan decided to send a delegation to the Assembly. Shaimiev persuaded Tatarstan's Supreme Soviet that a delegation could press the Assembly to include a provision confirming Tatarstan's "associated" status and that Tatarstan could effectively support the agenda of the other republics. As it happened, the demands of the republics received little sympathy at the Assembly, with four out of five working groups opposing their designation as "sovereign states." The draft that was finally approved on June 16 did not, therefore, identify the republics as sovereign states. Nor did it include any language on Tatarstan's associated status. And finally, language was included that appeared to equalize the powers of republics and the other sub''ekty, which the republics interpreted to indicating that their powers would be limited to those of the regions. Accordingly, on June 24 Shaimiev and Mukhametshin announced that Tatarstan was withdrawing its delegation from the Assembly.
Despite the continuing conflict over the republic's status, bilateral negotiations between Moscow and Kazan continued and began to produce important results. On June 22, 1993, three additional intergovernmental agreements were signed in Kazan during a visit by the Russian prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin. [97] The first agreement reaffirmed the division of assets in the republic into federal, republic, and joint property; the second confirmed that Tatarstan would apply the federal system of tariffs and duties; while the third dealt with the military-industrial complex. There were additional signs of progress at a May 27 meeting between Yeltsin and Shaimiev, with reports that agreements were ready for signing on environmental protection, higher education, oil transport, and property.
The Constitutional Assembly adjourned at the end of June and the draft constitution was sent to the executive and legislative bodies of the sub''ekty for comment. It soon became clear, however, that many local legislatures and executives would either reject the draft or attach unacceptable amendments. [98] Yeltsin tried one more ploy to win the backing of the republics and regions in his struggle with Parliament. At a meeting in Petrozavodsk in August, he called for the creation of a "Federation Council" that would include one representative from each of the legislative and executive branches of the sub''ekty. Yeltsin apparently hoped that the Federation Council would insist on new parliamentary elections, ratify a new constitution, and act as an interim legislature until new elections were held. At the same time, he offered political leaders in the republics and regions a seductive incentive--the Council might serve as the upper body of a new legislature. Shaimiev supported Yeltsin's suggestion for the establishment of a Federation Council, but he also indicated that Tatarstan would accept only observer status in the new body until an acceptable treaty was signed with Moscow. And he reiterated that he was against early parliamentary elections, thereby confirming suspicions among Yeltsin's supporters that Shaimiev, like many republic leaders, wished to see the executive-legislative crisis, and the resultant weakening of the center, persist.
Indeed, by early September 1993 it had become clear that Yeltsin's plans for adopting a new constitution that would resolve the executive-legislative impasse in Moscow was faltering. By convening the Constitutional Assembly, he had lost the political momentum provided by his April referendum victory. He therefore abandoned his efforts to find a legal solution to Russia's deepening crisis of power and launched his "democratic coup" of September 21 by decreeing the disbandonment of parliament. Many Supreme Soviet deputies refused to comply, however, and instead incited supporters to launch an armed uprising in Moscow. Yeltsin responded by ordering the Russian army to storm the Supreme Soviet, which took place on October 4, 1993.
Having learned his lesson from the August 1991 coup, Shaimiev was careful not to take sides during the October crisis. With the successful storming of the parliament, however, Tatarstan's Supreme Soviet indicated that the republic recognized the new balance of power in Moscow by announcing that it would agree to Yeltsin's demand that the existing system of soviets of the city level and below be disbanded and new legislatures be established.
Yeltsin followed up his victory over his Supreme Soviet adversaries by moving quickly to adopt a new constitution for Russia. The final draft of the constitution, which was to be put to a referendum on December 12, 1993, did not please Kazan. It neither recognized the republics as "sovereign states" nor included language on Tatarstan's special status. Moreover, the verbatim text of the Federation Treaty had been removed while the rights of the republics and the regions had been equalized. As a result, leaders of most republics urged their constituents to reject the constitution. Tatarstan, however, went further, announcing once again that, while it would not prevent the referendum from taking place on its territory, neither would it facilitate it. Nor would Shaimiev or the republic's other major political figures run for election to the new Russian legislature. Shaimiev complained that the new constitution would turn Russian into a unitary state "dressed up" like a federation, and television and radio stations in the republic urged residents of the republic not to turn out for either the referendum or the parliamentary elections. Sergei Filatov, the head of Yeltsin's Presidential Administration, reacted by asserting that the leaders of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Tuva were "seeking not the sovereignty of the republics but the sovereignty of power." [99] And in a veiled threat, he added that Tatarstan's actions "disturb our services, armed forces, and interior ministry bodies stationed on their territories."
The day of the referendum Tatarstan's electorate again indicated its support for the republic's leadership by refusing to vote--only 13.8 percent of eligible voters participated in the constitutional referendum. Earlier, it had been announced that elections in Tatarstan for representatives in the new Federation Council, the upper body of Russia's new legislature, would not proceed because three candidates could not be found to run. One of five district elections for the State Duma could not proceed for the same reason, and in the districts where elections were held in the republic, the validation threshold of 25 percent was not reached. [100] As a result, Tatarstan would not send a single representative to Russia's new legislature. As for official returns from around the country, 58.4 percent of those voting approved the constitution, with turnout at 54.8 percent, just above the 50 percent threshold. As a result, Russia's new constitution came into force on December 24, 1993.
Despite much criticism, the new constitution was not a disaster for Russian federalism. It preserved Russia's federal structure and defined, albeit imprecisely, a workable division of powers between the national government and the sub''ekty. Of particular importance, Article 78.2 allows executive organs of the federal government, by mutual agreement, to transfer (peredavat') a part of their powers to the executives of the regions and republics. Likewise, Article 78.3 allows the executive organs of the regions and republics to transfer a portion of their powers to the federal government. Together, these provisions establish the constitutional basis for the development of "asymmetrical federalism" in Russia whereby Moscow and the individual sub''ekty are able to negotiate their respective powers.
Having resolved the executive-legislative impasse in Moscow, the national government moved quickly to overcome the federation's crisis of territorial integrity by pressing ahead with efforts to reach agreement with Kazan. While Yeltsin was particularly anxious to present himself as the consolidator of Russian statehood, Shaimiev was apparently chastened by Yeltsin's willingness to use force against his opponents and decided that it was time to institutionalize Tatarstan's autonomous status to the extent possible by coming to terms over the treaty. By midJanuary 1994, there were signs that Moscow and Kazan were moving toward an agreement. Shaimiev asserted that the treaty should be signed before make-up elections for the Federation Council and State Duma, scheduled for March 13, were held, and after meeting with Yeltsin in Moscow, he informed Tatarstan's parliament that, given the extent of the progress at the negotiating table, he would encourage voters in the republic to turn out for the March 13 vote.
Still, the announcement on February 14 that an agreement had finally been reached came as a surprise. Entitled "On the Delimitation of Jurisdictional Authority and the Mutual Delegation of Powers Between the State Bodies of the Russian Federation and State Bodies of the Republic of Tatarstan, the treaty was signed by presidents Yeltsin and Shaimiev and by prime ministers Chernomyrdin and Sabirov on February 15, 1994. An additional five inter-governmental agreements were signed that same day, bringing the total number of agreements to twelve.[101]
The treaty entailed concessions from both parties. The key passage states that both parties consider that the Republic of Tatarstan, as a state (gosudarstvo), is united with (ob''edinena s) the Russian Federation on the basis of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the Constitution of the Republic of Tatarstan, and the Treaty on the Delimitation of Jurisdictional Authority and the Mutual Delegation of Powers Between State Bodies of the Russian Federation and State Bodies of the Republic of Tatarstan, and participates in (uchastvuet v) international (mezhdunarodnykh) and foreign economic (vneshneekonomicheskikh) relations.
Thus, while Tatarstan accepted that it is "united" (ob''edinena), not merely "associated" (assotsirovana), with Russia, as stated in its constitution, it nevertheless insisted that it was not a constituent unit (v sostave) of the Russian Federation. Rather, it was united with Russia on the basis of the treaty, and the two parties to the treaty are formally equal. Accordingly, Tatarstan considers that the Russian constitution is binding on its territory only to the extent that it regulates the Russian state in carrying out the specific powers assigned to it by the treaty. And although its officials are reluctant to state this publicly, Kazan insists that the treaty takes precedence over both the republic's constitution and the Russian constitutions. Moscow, on the other hand, accepted wording specifying that the treaty is "guided by" (rukovodstvuias') both the Russian Federation constitution and the constitution of Tatarstan, thereby recognizing the latter despite its contradictions with the Russian constitution. And in another concession, it agreed to laguage affirming the "universally recognized rights of peoples to self-determination."
Tatarstan's "state powers" are delineated in Article II. These include the right to determine its own budget and levy its own taxes, to establish its own state bodies, and to enter into political and economic relations with other sub''ekty and with foreign governments to the extent that these relations do not violate the Russian constitution. The powers of the national government are delineated in Article IV. Of particular importance is Article IV.6, which assigns to the national government the establishment of the legal foundations of a single market; financial, monetary, credit, and customs regulation; monetary emissions, and the foundations of pricing policy. Finally, the treaty identifies numerous issues that are the subject of joint jurisdiction or that will be resolved by intergovernmental agreements. These include the demarcation of republic, federal, and joint property; the creation of a state bank of Tatarstan; the extent of foreign economic activity carried out by Tatarstan; the conversion of military enterprises; military mobilization (i.e., conscription), and the procurement of military hardware produced in the republic (goszakazy).
In sum, the treaty is a compromise. While Tatarstan is not described as a "sovereign" state, neither is its "sovereignty" denied. And while the treaty does not recognize Tatarstan as a subject of international law, it asserts that the republic "participates in" international political and economic relations. And while the treaty, like the Russian constitution itself, is silent on the question of secession, it in effect signifies Moscow's willingness to accept both legal ambiguity in the interest of compromise and the development of asymmetrical federalism in Russia.

An Unstable Relationship

Because it was not an "international" agreement between independent states, the treaty did not require legislative ratification in either capital -- rather, it came into force automatically seven days after the signing ceremony (Article IX). Moderates in Moscow and Kazan welcomed the agreement. At the signing ceremony, Yeltsin argued that "treaties of this kind are, basically, the sole constitutional way of removing contradictions between the Russian Federation constitution and republican constitutions in a civilized way." Shakhrai, by then Russia's Minister for Nationalities and Regional Policy, hailed it as "a great breakthrough in the promotion of federal relations" and "the sole means to preserve the nation's territorial integrity." And he expressed the hope that the treaty would serve as a model for the resolution of Moscow's disagreements with Chechnya. [102] Shaimiev agreed, arguing that the treaty "affirms a new model of relations founded on the principles of law and justice."[103]
There were, however, also vigorous critics of the Treaty in both capitals. Gennadii Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), characterized it as "unacceptable." [104] Others argued that it would cause a further enfeeblement of the Russian state. In Kazan, in contrast, many Tatar nationalists viewed it as a betrayal of Tatar interests by a leader that they had always viewed with suspicion. As the Tatar writer, Zulfat Hakim, put it a in a letter to Shaimiev:
According to the Russia custom you have exchanged three kisses with Yeltsin. For your long-suffering people, living in particularly difficult days, it is as if you had spat three times in their faces from the height of a Russian Golden Dome...

This treaty... will bring no blessings to the people of Tatarstan. On the contrary, tragically, it has confirmed the subjugation of Kazan to Moscow. It is the first time in our history that a document, legalizing the rule of Russia over Tatarstan, has been signed. It is a crime against our ancestors, a crime against the nation. To accept this yoke is a betrayal of our forefathers who fought to defend Kazan in 1552.[105]

Despite the criticism, Moscow proceeded in the following months to sign additional powersharing treaties with Kabardino-Balkaria (July 1, 1994), Bashkortostan (August 3, 1994), North Ossetia (March 31, 1995), Sakha-Yakutia (June 29, 1995), and Udmurtia (October 17, 1995), and later began to sign similar treaties with various regions. [106] Yeltsin described the treaties as a "finetuning" of Russia's evolving intergovernmental relations, the basic framework of which had been established by the new constitution.
With parliamentary elections approaching in the fall of 1995 and presidential elections in June 1996, Yeltsin and his advisors apparently decided that, rather than trying to convince a skeptical Russian electorate about the benefits of an economic reform program that had been extremely painful, Yeltsin's contribution to the consolidation of Russian statehood would be the central theme of his reelection campaign. [107] There was, however, a glaring anomaly. Unlike Tatarstan, Chechnya continued to insist on full independence. Moscow therefore launched an initiative in late 1993-early 1994 to reach an agreement with Dudaev. In late May, it was announced that Yeltsin and Dudaev would finally meet to discuss Chechnya's status. Unfortunately, however, a car bomb badly damaged Dudaev's car several days after the announcement, reportedly killing Chechnya's Interior Minister and one of his deputies. Chechen officials accused Moscow of orchestrating the assassination attempt, and discussions between Moscow and Grozny immediately broke down. Moscow reacted by stepping up pressure on Dudaev through increasing military and financial support for the Chechen opposition. Despite this support, Dudaev's Chechen opponents were defeated in a battle in Grozny in November, and the Chechen government proceeded to parade captured Russian soldiers before national television cameras. Yeltsin and his Security Council responded to this humiliation by ordering the Russian military to invade.
Eighteen months later, the Russian army was still fighting a brutal and debilitating war that showed no signs of ending. The war had caused some 20,000-30,000 deaths, destroyed much of the infrastructure of the republic, drained untold resources from the federal budget, and totally demoralized the Russian armed forces. It had also virtually guaranteed that the Chechens, who had been internally divided before the war, would remain united in their hostility to Moscow and would never become a "normal" member of the Russian Federation. Contrary to Moscow's hopes, then, the war has only increased the likelihood that Chechnya will secede, de facto or de jure, once Moscow concludes that it cannot "win" a war of attrition with the Chechen rebels.
In contrast, over this same period relations between Moscow and Kazan improved significantly. Elections in Tatarstan for the federal legislature took place as scheduled on March 13, 1994, despite calls by Tatar nationalists for another boycott. Turnout was again high (68 percent), a remarkable endorsement of the republic's leadership when contrasted with the 14 percent turnout in December. Shaimiev was elected to the Council of the Federation with 91.2 percent of the vote, as was Mukhametshin, with 74.1 percent, defeating an ethnic Russian and the Deputy Speaker of the parliament. Of the five deputies elected to the Duma, however, three were Russian, one was Tatar, and one was Jewish.[108]
Shaimiev's willingness to cooperate with Yeltsin was reconfirmed shortly thereafter. He agreed to sign the Yeltsin-sponsored "Civic Accord" agreement that called on Moscow's political elite to abide the rules of the political game established by the new constitution. In turn, Yeltsin made a two-day visit to the republic in late May. After stopping at KamAZ and promising it financial support to recover from a devastating fire suffered in December 1993, he proceeded to Kazan where he reiterated that the treaty with Tatarstan was a model for the further decentralization of the Russian Federation. It was also announced that a "Supervisory Committee for the Implementation of the Treaty" had been formed and would be headed by Tatarstan's Prime Minister Sabirov and Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets. The Commission began meeting almost immediately, and in the coming months it reached agreement on the implementation of the Treaty as well as on other bilateral issues. By the end of the year, relations between Kazan and Moscow had improved to the point where Russia's Foreign Ministry was arranging foreign trips for Tatarstan's officials, inviting them to Russia's embassies and consulates, and helping them make contacts with foreign investors.
Despite the improvement, Kazan's relations with Moscow remain unstable. Of particular concern are unresolved legal ambiguities regarding Tatarstan's status and contradictions between the Russian and Tatarstan constitutions. [109] The latter, for example, asserts that the republic's constitution is "supreme" on its territory and that republic laws preempt those of the federal government. The Russian constitution, in contrast, asserts that it is binding throughout the territory of the Federation and that federal laws have priority unless they violate the federal constitution. Likewise, Tatarstan's constitution asserts that the republic is "associated with" (assotsiirovana s) Russia, while the treaty uses the term "united with" (ob'edinenna s) and the Russian constitution describes the republic as "part of" (v sostave) the federation and identifies Tatarstan as one of Russia's 21 republics. Nor is it clear that Kazan would accept the federal Constitutional Court as an arbiter in the event of disagreements over the interpretation of the treaty, particularly given the likelihood that the Court would take the position that the Russian constitution is fully applicable on the republic's territory. [110] And it is also unclear how Tatarstan would react if a citizen of the republic brought a case against it for violating rights defined in the federal constitution and then appealed to the Constitutional Court for protection or damages.[111]
There are other unresolved legal and political ambiguities as well. For example, despite language in the Treaty specifying that the staffing of judiciary, police forces, procuracy, arbitrage courts, and notary services fall within the joint jurisdiction of Kazan and Moscow, there is no indication of how disagreements on staffing questions will be resolved. Of particular concern are appointments to the judiciary, the procuracy, and the police. Article II.7 of the Treaty states that Tatarstan establishes "the system of state organs of the Republic of Tatarstan and the procedures for their organization and activity," while Section V of Tatarstan's constitution provides for the establishment of an autonomous judiciary for the republic, including a constitutional court, supreme court, and court of arbitration. Article 143 specifies that all judges of the republic will be elected, either directly or indirectly by republic or local legislatures. Similarly, Articles 153-156 provide for the establishment of an autonomous procuracy and police. Article II.17 of the treaty, however, states that "cadres of judicial and law enforcement organs" is a matter of joint jurisdiction, while Article IV.13 asserts that Moscow has jurisdiction over "the legal system" (sudoustroistvo). Given that to date Tatarstan has only a single hierarchy of courts inherited from the Soviet past, as well as a single procuracy and militia, the issue of which government has the right to appoint judges and law enforcement officials is not clear. In practice, Tatarstan's officials insist that they control appointments to the judiciary, procuracy, and militia. Still, there is clearly a measure of dual sovereignty in the republic, and while the two governments may have agreed to accept legal ambiguity in the interest of compromise, these ambiguities could serve as the source of, or a pretext for, conflict in the future.
Tatarstan's economic arrangements with Moscow are also unstable. While a de facto single channel tax system has been accepted by Moscow, tax collection is technically subject to joint jurisdiction. Again, Tatarstan's officials indicate that the republic appoints the heads of the State Tax Inspectorate and the Tax Police and consequently controls their activities, as confirmed by the republic's ability to announce unilaterally in the summer of 1995 that it would stop payments to the federal budget (see below). While Kazan determines its own budget and taxation rates in the republic, its contributions to the federal budget are specified by agreement. The republic is obliged to turn over a percentage of three types of taxes (Tatarstan can keep all other tax revenue collected on its territory): thirteen percent of the profits tax; one percent of the personal income tax; and an agreed upon percentage--currently 50 percent--of the value added tax (VAT).[112] While the former two are fixed for the term of the agreement, the latter is adjusted by agreement on a yearly basis. Given that approximately 30 percent of Tatarstan's revenue comes from the VAT, this puts a considerable burden on the ability of the two governments to reach an agreement every year on revenue sharing.
Of the total tax revenue collected in the republic, approximately 20 percent was turned over to the Moscow in 1995.[113] In return, Moscow helps finance certain institutions in the republic, including technical colleges (VUZy), universities, and "dual subordination" ministries. Moscow also has the right to issue state purchase orders (goszakazy) to the defense industries in the republic, although it is obliged to pay for the orders at negotiated prices. In addition, Moscow receives a considerable cut of the republic's export earnings, again on the basis of intergovernmental agreement. In 1994, for example, Moscow received approximately 30 ecus per ton of crude oil exported, and 23 ecus per ton in 1995, out of a selling price of approximately $100 per ton on international markets. Given that almost 75 percent of Tatarstan's export earnings are from oil, a considerable share of the republic's hard currency earnings is therefore flowing to Moscow.[114] Again, both governments need to reach agreement on a regular basis on Moscow's share.
Despite progress on fiscal issues, there are still serious disagreements on budgetary matters. Most notably, the Russian Defense Ministry has repeatedly fallen into arrears on payments for purchases from enterprises in the republic. By the summer of the 1995, it reportedly owed some 96 billion rubles (approximately $19 million). Initially, Tatarstan attempted to cover the shortfall from the republic's budget to ensure that workers would be paid. However, Kazan finally announced on July 11, 1995 that it would stop all payments to the federal budget until the debt was paid, which took approximately six weeks.[116]
There are other economic issues that require ongoing cooperation as well. Predictably, the collapse of the Soviet state led to a conflict between Kazan and Russia over the ownership of the USSR's assets in the republic. The June 22, 1993 intergovernmental agreement noted earlier gave Tatarstan the bulk of the USSR enterprises and other property on its territory. Exceptions were the property of the Ministry of Defense, the Security Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Meteorological Service, and several minor federal bodies.[117] Moreover, certain enterprises, including KamAZ, are still owned jointly by Tatarstan and the federal government (and in some cases, by private shareholders as well). Kazan and Moscow have also committed to several new joint ventures. As a result, the two governments need to agree on their respective shares of investment, the distribution of profits, management issues, and so on. They also continue to negotiate special deals for particular enterprises. For example, KamAZ pays no duty for spare parts imported from abroad, while Tatarstan charges lower prices to Moscow-owned enterprises on inputs such as fuel.[118]
Finally, there are a number of strictly political disagreements that continue to create tensions in relations between the two governments. In particular, conservatives in Moscow object to Kazan's political and economic ties with foreign governments and other sub''ekty and local governments in Russia. Kazan has signed treaties and agreements with numerous other republics and regions, as well as with the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Ekaterinburg. It also has agreements with most Soviet successor states, including Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan, Moldova, and Georgia, as well as with Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, France, Germany, and the US. Of particular political important was a May 1995 "treaty" with Turkey, which provided for cooperation on trade, economic, scientific, technical, and cultural matters, as well as the establishment of a Turkish trade mission in the republic. A similar "treaty" has been signed with Bulgaria.
Tatarstan's most controversial foreign ties, however, have been with Abkhazia and other secessionist-minded entities of the former Soviet Union. An autonomous republic within Georgia before the Soviet collapse, Abkhazia has been waging an intermittant war of secession from Georgia since 1992. In search of allies to support its autonomy campaign, Tatarstan signed an interstate Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Abkhazia on August 17, 1994. Initialed by Shaimiev and Vladislav Ardzinba, Abkahzia's "head of state" and parliamentary chairman, the Treaty commits the signatories to respecting eachother's "state sovereignty." The Georgian Foreign Ministry, which considered the treaty an endorsement of Abkhazia's secession, condemned the Treaty as an illegal interference in the internal affairs of Georgia, while the Russian Foreign Ministry described it as a violation of the Russian-Georgian Friendship Treaty of February 1994. Clearly, Moscow was worried that Tatarstan's "foreign policy" would complicate its own initiatives in this volatile region. Nevertheless, Tatarstan and Abkhazia have refused to repudiate the Treaty, and Tatarstan continues to support the Abkhaz cause despite the fact that by doing so, it finds itself allied with extreme Russian nationalists and hardline communists who support Abkhazia's professed desire to unite with Russia.[119]
Tatarstan has also been a consistent and vigorous opponent of the war in Chechnya. Chechen delegations made numerous visits to Kazan prior to Russia's December 1994 invasion. As relations between Grozny and Moscow deteriorated over the course of 1994, Shaimiev offered his services as a mediator, indicating that he would try to convince Dudaev of the benefits of a treaty-based relationship with Moscow. Shaimiev also urged Yeltsin, both publicly and privately, to meet with Dudaev as a gesture of goodwill. However, neither Moscow nor Grozny responded to his offers or advice with great enthusiasm. When Moscow finally launched its invasion, Kazan viewed it as a political disaster not only for Chechnya and for Russia but for Tatarstan as well. Accordingly, Shaimiev has continued to call for a cease-fire and a negotiated solution to the conflict, and to help mediate the conflict.[120]
There are disagreements between Moscow and Kazan over military service obligations for the republic's citizens. In the summer of 1992, Tatarstan's Supreme Soviet announced that citizens of Tatarstan could no longer be conscripted into the Russian military. Article 58 of the republic's constitution states that military service "shall be carried out within the territory of the Republic of Tatarstan or, on the basis of the obligations of the Republic of Tatarstan, abroad." The power-sharing treaty seems to grant the federal government a right of conscription--Article II.9 states that the republic has the right to establish the terms of alternative military service within Tatarstan but only "for citizens who have a right to have their military service commuted under federal law" (emphasis added). The right of the federal government to draft citizens of the republic is further affirmed in an inter-governmental agreement on military issues signed on March 5, 1994. Article 1 states that the federal government determines the procedures for military service for citizens of the republic, and Article 8 states that Tatarstan's conscription quota is determined by agreement with the republic and that only volunteers from the republic can serve abroad. The republic has interpreted this to mean that the federal government cannot send conscripts from Tatarstan to Chechnya (thereby implying that Chechnya is independent), and it has therefore objected to the fact that some conscripts from Tatarstan have been forced to serve in Chechnya.
All these sources of tension in Kazan's relationship with Moscow require a considerable degree of goodwill and pragmatism in both capitals if they are to be resolved peacefully. Confrontational politics in Moscow or Kazan, by either current or future governments, could lead to a rapid deterioration in relations, bringing a halt to negotiations that are required to manage their complicated relationship. Likewise an outbreak of Tatar-Russian violence would almost certainly precipitate a crisis in relations between Moscow and Kazan, particularly if it were perceived as having been provoked by either government.

Politics and Interethnic Relations in Tatarstan

For the time being, Shaimiev appears to be firmly in control in the republic. In December 1994, the republic's parliament amended Tatarstan's constitution to create a new 130-member legislature, renamed the State Council. Elections took place on March 5, 1995, with turnout at 59.7 percent. Only six representatives of opposition parties made it into the new parliament--four from Tatarstan's Communist Party, one from the pro-federation electoral bloc "Equality and Legality," and one from Ittifak.[121] Most of the remaining "non-aligned" candidates were closely tied Shaimiev. The informal "party of power," as the opposition dubbed it, is dominated by heads of local administrations, government ministers and their deputies, and members of the presidential apparatus.
Shaimiev's influence over the republic's electorate was reconfirmed by the December 1995 elections for Russia's State Duma. Prior to the election, Russian Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, with whom Shaimiev has good personal relations, came out in support of a major investment by General Motors in the Yelabuga Automobile Factory (YelAZ) in Tatarstan. Shaimiev responded by expressing his support for Chernomyrdin's centrist party, Nash Dom--Rossiia (Our Home is Russia) in the parliamentary elections. Turnout in the republic for the election was 59 percent, and Nash Dom Rossiia received 28.6 percent of the vote, well above the 10.3 percent it received across Russia as a whole. In contrast, the CPRF received only 15.4 percent of the vote in the republic, below its overall 22.7 percent. Finally, Zhirinovsky's extreme nationalist LDPR received a mere 4.8 percent of the vote in Tatarstan, less than half of its 11.4 percent of the vote Russsia-wide.[122]
More important for Shaimiev personally was his reelection as Tatarstan's president on March 24, 1996 for a second five-year term. Although Shaimiev publicly urged the opposition to field one or more candidates, three candidates failed to gather the 50,000 signatures needed for inclusion on the ballot. A fourth candidate, Ramil Gabdurakhmanov, a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the manager of a vinegar factory in Kazan, withdrew just before the registration deadline, after polls revealed that no challenger, including Gabdurakhmanov, would receive more than 1.5 percent of the vote. Gabdurakhmanov was reportedly persuaded by CPRF leader Gennadii Ziuganov not to run because of his fear that a decisive victory for Shaimiev was prove a major political embarassment.[123] As a result, Shaimiev ran unopposed, winning 97.5 percent of the vote. And despite the fact that there was only one candidate, turnout in the election was high, at 78 percent. The vote confirmed that Shaimiev remains extremely popular in the republic, and it supports the claims of his supporters that he indeed would have preferred someone to run against, since he would then have been afforded the additional legitimation provided by a decisive victory in a contested election.
Although he is frequently criticized by the Tatar intelligentsia for authoritarian tendencies, the evidence suggests that Shaimiev has been, and continues to be, supported of a substantial majority of the republic's electorate. Maintaining this support in the long run, however, will likely be tied not only to his ability to manage relations with Moscow but also to the republic's economic performance. Fortunately for Shaimiev, there are signs that the republic's economy is starting to turn around. While industrial production in the republic fell 13 percent in 1993 and 21 percent in 1994, in the first six months of 1995 output was 100.8 percent of same period in 1994, with June at 104.5.[124]
Nevertheless, the republic faces a host of serious economic problems. Agriculture has been severely depressed, and although the constitution provides for private ownership of land and a major agricultural reform program was begun in late 1995, Tatarstan is unlikely see a significant improvement in output in the near future (controlling for weather). At the same time, Tatarstan's extensive military industries are suffering from federal cutbacks in defense procurements. Again, the government has, with the support of Moscow and foreign governments, tried to convert many enterprises from military to civilian production, but progress has been slow and costly. And while the bulk of Tatarstan's enterprises have been formally "privatized," property rights are not clearly defined and many loss-making enterprises have failed to restructure or reduce costs.
Tatarstan's leaders are aware that if economic restructuring is ultimately accompanied by high rates of unemployment, the costs of reform will be born disproportionately by Tatars. Russians are over-represented in management and skill positions, while Tatars are over-represented in blue collar jobs, the most likely positions to suffer major cutbacks. The problem is particularly acute at KamAZ in Naberezhnye Chelny, which is already the most ethnically polarized part of the republic. In addition, Tatars are overrepresented in the cultural and scientific intelligentsia, a group that has been hit particularly hard by reduced government support. Already, Tatar resentment is heightened by the perception that many members of the economic elite, most of whom are Russians, have benefited from "nomenklatura privatization" and are enriching themselves at the expense of Tatars.
Other issues will also have to be managed carefully if interethnic harmony is to be preserved. Tatars are over-represented in legislative and executive bodies, both in Kazan and in local governments. For example, 73 percent of the deputies in the State Council are Tatars, while only 25 percent are Russians.[125] Tatar nationalists claim that this is only fair, pointing out that three out of five deputies to the State Duma in Moscow are Russians, that the national legislature in Moscow is dominated by Russians, and that the 3.8 million Tatars living outside the republic have not a single Tatar representative in the federal legislature. Most of the republic's government ministers are Tatars, although informal policy is that whenever a minister is from one ethnic group, the minister's deputy will be from the other, a practice that has survived from the Soviet period. Nevertheless, Russians complain about the extent to which Tatars dominate the republic's political class.
Language policies are another source of tension. Tatars are pressing for an increase in the number of schools using Tatar as the primary language of instruction. The government has responded by building new schools rather than converting existing schools from Russian to Tatar, which authorities believe will provoke unnecessary resentment from Russians. However, the republic lacks funds for build enough new schools to satisfy Tatar nationalists. Moreover, most official business continues to be carried out in Russian, while all official documents are written in Russian (Tatar officials point out that Tatar has not had the opportunity to develop a sophisticated legal or social science vocabulary). The dominance of Russian in the workplace and in official discourse is resented by the Tatar nationalist intelligentsia. So, too, is the fact that there is only one republic television channel that broadcasts for several hours in the morning and evening, with only a portion of its programming in Tatar.
For their part, Russians complain that mosques are being built more rapidly than Orthodox churches, leading Russians to suspect that the government is favoring Islam over Orthodoxy. Tatars respond that mosques are cheaper to build (Orthodox churches are by tradition lavish) and that Muslims tend to be more generous than Russians in making donations to the church. Reflecting these concerns was a recent controversy over the ownership of a building slated to be used for newly established medresse (Islamic university) in Kazan.
Another source of tension is the republic's long-delayed citizenship law. Intially, the law was particularly controversial because it would have determined eligibility for privatization vouchers. However, the government avoided the issue by deciding to distribute vouchers to all registered voters. Even so, the length of residency requirements in any new law are nevertheless important to recent arrivals, most of whom are Russians, while opportunities for Tatars living outside the republic to obtain citizenship is an issue of importance to Tatar nationalists. So, too, is the fact that the republic's citizens have to carry Russia's new passports when traveling abroad-- Tatar intellectuals consider the double-headed eagle adorning it a symbol of Russian imperialism. Indeed, many of Tatarstan's intellectuals continue to oppose the treaty and to portray Shaimiev as a quisling.[126]
Despite the problems, the political situation in republic appears to be generally stable. Polling data indicates that relations between Tatars and Russians are much improved since the end of 1991. Only four percent of the republic's Russians indicate that they intend to leave, a significantly lower figure than in many of Russia's other republics.[127] Indeed, many Tatars and Russians plan to immigrate to the republic from Central Asia (a possible source of increased tension, however, given the limited housing stock). The republic's political and economic elite also appear to be reasonably unified around Shaimiev. And as noted above, Shaimiev continues to enjoy the support of a substantial majority of the population, including many Russians. And unless something untoward happens, he will remain in office for the next five years.[128]
In sum, Tatarstan's history since 1988 demonstrates that neither the political victory of "ethnic entrepreneurs" nor interethnic or secessionist violence are inevitable despite facilitating structural factors. Had Shaimiev attempted to "play the ethnic card" by promoting an ethnic understanding of the state, by playing up the historical grievances of Tatars against Russians, or by stressing current inequities and threats to Tatar culture, he very likely would have initiated an episode of interethnic violence. Indeed, despite his efforts to promote interethnic tolerance, ethnic Russian and Tatars appear to have come close to a significant clash in late 1991. Had significant violence broken out, it would have been difficult to contain. It also might very well have provoked military intervention by Moscow. By embracing a non-ethnic definition of Tatarstan's statehood, by demonstrating sensitivity to the concerns of both Tatars and Russian, and by resolutely pressing Moscow for greater autonomy, Shaimiev isolated the Tatar nationalist movement, won the support of both Tatars and Russians in the republic, and forced Moscow to accept considerable autonomy for the republic.

Conclusion: Bargaining, Leverage, and Autonomy

As Russia approached independence in late 1991, critics of the Soviet system of ethnofederalism argued that the new Russia should become a purely "territorial" federation without ethnically-defined constituent units. A country as large and ethnically diverse as Russia, they held, could neither remain united nor sustain democracy if internal borders reinforced ethnic consciousness. Instead, Russia should abolish the administrative borders inherited from the Soviet past and recreate the Tsarist system of large, non-ethnic "gubernii."[129]
Wisely, these proposals were rejected. Even resolute supporters of territorial federalism recognized that redrawing Russia's internal borders would lead to a deepening of Russia's crisis of authority. Local elites, faced with a loss of position, and titular nationalities, faced with a loss of preferences and protections, would almost certainly have mobilized in opposition to the move, perhaps violently. It was also far from clear that, even in the long run, an elimination of the republics would have eased centrifugal pressures on Russia. Ethnic minorities would have harbored resentments for years over the loss of rights and privileges associated with territorial recognition, and ethnic elites would have been in position to mobilize their co-ethnics by demanding a return of their "homelands." Nor was there any guarantee that non-ethnic gubernii would have been any more compliant than the republics. Indeed, the political leverage of one rebellious guberniia would been much greater than the leverage of one of 89 sub''ekty, while sustained collective action by a handful of Russian-dominated gubernii pressing for greater autonomy would have been far easier than collective action by 89 highly diverse regions and republics with highly diverse populations and interests.
By early 1992, most public officials in Moscow had therefore concluded that Moscow had no choice but to accept Russia's inherited internal borders. Rather than committing to a massive redistricting project, Yeltsin attempted instead to formalize and regularize Moscow's relationship with the sub''ekty through the adoption of a federation treaty. The effort failed, however. Not only was the treaty rejected by Tatarstan and Chechnya, but it did not resolve a great many contentious issues. And equally importantly, it lacked credibility as a binding instrument because of the national government's inability to enforce its provisions. The sub''ekty continued to press for greater powers and preferential treatment, and Yeltsin and his opponents in the Supreme Soviet, vying for the support of the sub''ekty in their own conflict, accommodated many of these demands. Despite the treaty, then, it had therefore become clear by the end of 1992 that Russia was, willy nilly, moving to a system of asymmetrical federalism in which individual sub''ekty would negotiate varying degrees of autonomy with Moscow.
To be sure, there were many critics of asymmetrical federalism for Russia. With considerable justification, they argued that assymetrical federalism was both unjust and unstable. Individual sub''ekty would win preferential treatment not on the basis of need but because of their political influence: poor and politically weak republics (e.g., Tuva) would suffer, while economically advantaged and politically influential republics (e.g., Tatarstan would benefit. More importantly, bilateral agreements, treaties, and deals with particular sub''ekty would promote a competitive game of one-upmanship in which each sub''ekt would attempt to outbid others in forcing concessions from the center, the result of which would be the eventually fragmention of Russia.
Defenders of asymmetrical federalism responded that the only alternative to negotiated federalism was armed force. Force, however, would create far more problems than it would solve. In view of Moscow's relative weakness and the varying demands and needs of the sub''ekty, hopes for a well-defined, just, and entrenched federal regime embedded in a constitution and backed by federal laws, while understandable, were simply unrealistic. "Legal dogmatism," as Yeltsin advisor Emil Pain put it, would solve nothing.[130] Instead, Russia would be forced to "grow into" federalism by negotiation.
Implicit in this argument was an assumption that assymetrical federalism would not lead to the disintegration of the federation. On the contrary, negotiated federalism was the most effective means for ensuring that Russia's territorial integrity would be preserved. Moscow, it was assumed, had sufficient leverage over the sub''ekty, which were themselves divided by their different interests, to keep them from pushing too far with their autonomy demands.
Russia's evolving relationship with Tatarstan, along with the outcome of the ill-considered war in Chechnya, suggest that these latter arguments were correct. As we have seen, relations between Moscow and Kazan have improved significantly since the signing of the February 1994 treaty. If Moscow continues to take a reasonable approach toward Kazan, it is very unlikely that Tatarstan will push for secession in the foreseeable future. In contrast, Moscow's use of force in Chechnya has been a military and political catastrophe, and it has made Chechnya's eventual secession more, rather than less, likely. Even more ominously for Russia, it has reduced the likelihood that democracy will survive in the country, thereby increasing the risk that an authoritarian government will attempt, with catastrophic consequences, to crack down on the republics and regions.[131]
If Tatarstan is a "model," then, it is not so much the particular arrangement that Tatarstan has worked out with Moscow that is worthy of emulation. That arrangement is simply one among many, and indeed may well prove short-lived. Rather, Tatarstan is a model in the sense that the history of its relations with the center, and the results of Shaimiev's commitment to mnogonatsional'nost', demonstrate both that negotiating "autonomy" with individual members of a federation is not tantamount to negotiating independence and that structural conditions facilitating ethnic conflict do not make conflict inevitable.
Indeed, in most cases national governments have considerable leverage over subnational governments, leverage that will usually limit how far subnational governments will go in pressing for autonomy or independence. In Tatarstan's case, Moscow's leverage was clearly substantial. In the first place, Moscow's position was greatly strengthened by the fact that the international community would not recognize Tatarstan's independence without Moscow's approval. As a result, it could afford to be patient, knowing that formal recognition, with all its implications of finality under international law, was not imminent. Popular beliefs notwithstanding, the principle of "the self-determination of peoples" has never been understood by the international community as a right of secession from independent states with internationally-recognized borders.[132] Had Tatarstan unilaterally announced its independence, it would have been deprived of many of the most important symbolic attributes of statehood, including a seat at the UN, diplomatic representation and consular services abroad, and foreign missions in Kazan. Moreover, had Tatarstan unilaterally declared independence, Moscow could have have applied economic pressure and then waited for popular support for independence in the republic to wane or for a new government to come to power in Kazan that was willing to negotiate the terms of Tatarstan's status in the federation.
In addition, Kazan's inability to obtain international recognition provided Moscow with considerable economic leverage. Lacking internal resources for investment, Tatarstan needed international investment for its economic recovery. Because it was the internationally-recognized sovereign power in the republic, however, Moscow could insist that foreign investors abide by Moscow's laws.[133] It could also discourage foreign investors by warning of the risks of conflict and by portraying the republic's leadership as a cabal of old guard communists, as it in fact did on a number of occasions. Consequently, Moscow was in a position to make Tatarstan an extremely costly and risky place to invest.
There were other factors militating against Tatarstan's secession as well. The direct costs of independence--including the costs of creating a foreign ministry and a diplomatic corps; of establishing some sort of representation in foreign capitals and international organization; of membership fees in international organizations; of setting up border controls and collecting customs duties (assuming no customs union); and of creating some kind of military that would raise the costs of invasion to Moscow--would have been a considerable burden. But even more important would have been indirect costs. A different legal regime would have increased the transactions costs of doing business in the republic, possibly significantly, while foreign investment would have been limited by fears of conflict with Moscow or interethnic violence within the republic.
Tatarstan was also very vulnerable to direct political and economic pressure by Moscow. Had Kazan pushed too far, Moscow could have established border controls, levied duties on crossborder trade, and even imposed a full-scale trade embargo. Despite its oil extracting facilities, an embargo would have imediately created an acute energy crisis in the republic because of Tatarstan's lack of oil refining capacity.[134] Moscow could also have denied Tatarstan citizens a right to dual citizenship with Russia; insisted that citizens of the republic obtain visas before entering Russian territory; rerouted pipelines around the republic to eliminate transit fees; and charged fees for the use of Russia's airspace and the transshipment of Tatarstan's exports across Russian territory. Finally, despite being a party to various human rights conventions, Moscow could have attempted to poison interethnic relations in the republic by playing up threats to Russians in the republic even as it discriminated against the 3.8 million Tatars living in Russia and incited anti-Tatar feelings in Russia's oblasts and krais.
On the other hand, Tatarstan brought considerable leverage of its own to the bargaining table. After its failure to prevent the March 21, 1992 referendum, Moscow realized that it could not rely on the police or procuracy in the republic to carry out its orders. At the same time, the absence of a significant military presence in the republic deprived Moscow of the opportunity to use locallybased troops to intimidate Tatarstan's government or to arrest its leaders and "impose order" in the event of a crackdown. Rather, Moscow would have had to dispatch federal troops to the republic to impose its writ, which would almost certainly have been met by armed resistance in the republic. And while the extent of this resistance would likely have been limited, Moscow would nevertheless have been forced to govern a hostile population under the critical eye of the international community. Moreover, Russia's other republics and regions would have vigorously resisted the use of force against a republic that, unlike Chechnya, had consistently indicated a willingness to negotiate and had never expressed an intention to secede.
Moscow's economic leverage over the republic was also constrained by Tatarstan's ability to impose economic costs on Russia. Tatarstan's defense industries produced hardware that was essential to Russia's military. As a result, the Defense Ministry was opposed to an economic embargo. Moreoever, Tatarstan could also have reacted to an embargo by cutting off the flow of oil and gas through the republic's vital pipeline system. Moreover, many in Moscow realized that creating an economic crisis in the republic would likely radicalize Tatars and might well provoke interethnic violence. It would also make Shaimiev's political position precarious, and any replacement might well be more, not less, hostile to the national government. Finally, with its significant industrial capacity, natural resources, and economic infrastructure, Tatarstan was less dependent on budgetary subventions from Moscow than most of Russia's other ethnic republics. As a result, the suspension of intergovernmental budgetary transfers had a limited impact on the republic.
Tatarstan's most important leverage, however, was its occupation of the moral high ground. Kazan constantly reminded Yeltsin of his statement in August 1991 urging the republics to take "all the sovereignty you can swallow." Indeed, the republic used the very same arguments in defense of its autonomy and "sovereignty" that Yeltsin had used in his campaign for autonomy and sovereignty for Russia in 1989-1991. To have used force against a republic that had managed to contain interethnic conflict, that had consistently advocated negotiations to resolve differences with Moscow, that posed no security threat to Russia, and that was not pressing for secession would have been an act of naked hypocrisy. And perhaps worse from Yeltsin's perspective, it would put Yeltsin in the position of repeating Gorbachev's mistakes in his effort to preserve the Soviet Union.
As a result, Kazan's leverage has allowed it to carve out a very considerable degree of autonomy--indeed, it is now largely self-governing. Officials in the republic proudly note that the Russian flag does not fly over government buildings in the republic. Tatarstan defines its own structure of government, elects its own president and legislature, adopts its own laws, collects all taxes on its territory, determines taxation rates in the republic, and has trade and political links with other republics and regions and with foreign governments. And it will be difficult for Moscow to limit this autonomy significantly in the future. The treaty is entrenched by Article IX, which specifies that neither the treaty itself nor its individual provisions "may be unilaterally repealed, altered, or supplemented," as well as by the fact that no termination date is set. Should the federal government try to impose its will unilaterally, Tatarstan will simply ignore decisions that it considers violations of the February treaty or the inter-governmental agreements. The only recourse for hardliners in Moscow would then be to use force, with all its consequences.
But the federal government has little cause to use force against Tatarstan. It has negotiated a reasonable solution with Kazan that can be adjusted, on a negotiated basis, as circumstances warrant. Even Moscow hardliners will likely be reluctant to use force to solve Russia's federation problems in view of the debacle in Chechnya. The "lessons" of the US Civil War notwithstanding, Chechnya has demonstrated that resorting to force to preserve a federation is usually unnecessary and counterproductive. Indeed, the great tragedy of Russia's post-communist transition to date has been that Moscow's decision to invade Chechnya was in part the result of a failure to appreciate the strength of the integument binding Russia together under a regime of asymmetrical federalism.

[1] Natsional'nyi sostav naseleniia RSFSR, Moscow: Goskomstat, 1990.
[2] In addition, the RSFSR consisted of 57 non-ethnically defined constituent units (45 oblasts, 10 krais, and the "federal cities" of Moscow and Leningrad). In 1991, the autonomous oblasts, with the exception of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Russian Far East, were given the status of autonomous republics, and together they were renamed "republics" (respubliki). In 1992, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR formally split into separate Chechen and Ingush Republics. As a result, the Russian Federation today is comprised of a total of 89 sub''ekty (including Chechnya): 21 republics, one autonomous oblast, ten autonomous okrugs, 55 oblasts, and six krais. While consideration was given to changing the name of the constituent units of the federation from "subjects" (sub''ekty) to "members" (chleny) on the grounds that the former connoted greater subordination than the latter, the term "sub''ekty federastsii" was retained in the 1993 constitution. The conventional distinction in Russian political discourse is between respubliki (the 21 "republics") and the regiony (the 66 oblasts and krais, or "regions"), a practice I follow below. I also adopt the Russian term sub''ekt for the constitutuent units of the federation as whole, much as the German LĪnder is used in English to refer to the constituent units of the Federal Rebublic of Germany.
[3] For background, see Walker Connor, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984; Philip Roeder, "Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization," World Politics, vol. 23, no. 2, (January 1991), pp. 196-233; and Ronald Grigor Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.
[4] See Victor Zaslavsky, The Neo-Stalinist State; Class, Ethnicity and Consensus in Soviet Society, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1982; and Victor Zaslavsky and Veljko Vujacic, "The Causes of Distingration in the USSR and Yugoslavia," Telos, Summer 1991, pp. 120-40. In Yugoslavia, individuals could list "Yugoslav" as their nationality on census questionaires and certain other governmental forms, while internal passports did not ask about nationality.
[5] See, for example, Aleksandr Tsipko, "Crisis of Russian Statehood," Rossiia, July 6-12, 1991, as translataed in Current Digest of the Soviet Press (CDSP), vol. 43, no. 28, p. 7; and Andranik Migranian, "An Indissoluble Union," Izvestiia, September 20, 1990, as translated in CDSP, vol. 42, no. 39, p. 2.
[6] Throughout this paper, I will use the terms "Russians" and "Tatars" to designate ethnic Russians and ethnic Tatars, respectively, notwithstanding the fact that almost all Tatars are Russian citizens and many Russians are citizens of Tatarstan.
[7] D. M. Iskhakov, Tatary: Populiarnyi ocherk etnicheskoi istorii i demografii, Nabereznhye chelny: Gazetno-knizhnoe izdatel'stvo KAMAZ, 1993, p. 18-21. The 1989 census listed 157,376 Tatars in Moscow alone.
[8] Russian demographers estimate that by 1995, given a higher birthrate for Tatars and Tatar in-migration after 1989, Tatars made up over 50 percent of the republic's population.
[9] Appendix 1, Sovremennye natsional'nye protsessy v respublike Tatarstana, Kazan: Kazanskii nauchnyi tsentr, Institut iazyka, literatury i istorii im. g. Ibragimova, 1992, p. 128. In neighboring Bashkiria, there were almost as many Tatars (1.12 million) as in Tatarstan (1.77 million), and more Tatars than ethnic Bashkirs (28.4 percent to 21.9 percent of the total population, with Russians at 39.3 percent).
[10] Natsional'nyi sostov, op.cit., p. 110.
[11] National'nyi sostav, op.cit., p. 123.
[12] Azade-Ayse Rorlich, The Volga Tatars: A Profile in National Resistance, Stanford: The Hoover Institute, 1986.
[13] Ron Wixman, "The Middle Volga: Ethnic Archipelago in a Russian Sea," in Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., Nations and Politics in the Soviet Sucessor States, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 187.
[14] Marie Benningsen Broxup, "Tatarstan and the Tatars," in Graham Smith, ed., The Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States, New York: Longman, 2nd edition, 1996, p. 76.
[15] Some Tatars were converted, however, and there is therefore a significant community of Tatar starokhreshchennye (Old Christians) as well as novokhreshennye (New Christians), the difference being when they converted.
[16] Rorlich, op.cit., pp. 48-64.
[17] Ibid, p. 71. See the well-known treatments of the emergence of nationalism by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, New York: Verson, revised edition, 1991 (1983); and Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
[18] Wixman, op.cit., pp. 425-33.
[19] Ann Sheehy, "Tatarstan and Bashkiria: Obstacles to Confederation," RFE/Rl Reports, vol. 1, no. 22, pp. 33-37.
[20] Douglas Taylor Northrop, "Reconsdiering Sultan-Galiev," in Selected Topics in Soviet Ethnopolitics, Berkeley: Berkeley- Stanford Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, 1992, pp. 1-44.
[21] Benningsen, op.cit., pp. 79-81.
[22] Iskhakov, p. 15.
[23] See Jerry F. Hough, "Sociology, the State and Language Politics," Post-Soviet Affairs, forthcoming.
[24] Wixman, op.cit., pp. 442-43, and Rafael Mustafin, Pravda, January 25, 1989, p. 3.
[25] D.M. Iskhakov and R. Musina, "Sovremennye mezhnatsional'nye protsessy v Tatarskoi SSR," Kazan: Kazanskii nauchnyi tsentr, 1991.
[26] R.I. Musina, "K voprosu o meste i roli religii v zhizni sovremennykh Tatar," in Sovremennye natsional'nye protsessy v respublike Tatarstana, D.I. Iskhakov and R.I. Musina, ed., Kazan: Kazanskii nauchnyi tsentr, 1992, pp. 52-64.
[27] See, for example, the article by the Tatar poet, Renat Kharis, in Literaturnaia Rossiya, December 15,1989.
[28] Sultan-Galiev was formally rehabilitated in May 1990. See Izvestiia, May 31, 1990, p. 3.
[29] Pravda, September 1, 1990, p. 3.
[30] For a description of political groups and parties in Tatarstan in this early period, see D.M. Iskhakov, "Neformal'nye obedineniia v sovremennom Tatarskom obshchestve," in Iskhakov and Musina, op.cit., pp. 5-52.
[31] See, for example, the speech of G.I. Usmanov, then the republic's CPSU first secretary, excerpted in Pravda, September 22, 1989, p. 3.
[32] Izvestiia, May 3, 1990, pp. 1-2.
[33] A. Sabirov, Izvestiia, August 17, 1989, p. 6.
[34] Musina, op.cit., p. 54.
[35] Pravda, October 2, 1989, p. 2. Shaimiev had been the chairman of the republic's Council of Ministers, having made his way up the party ladder as an apparatchik with a background in agriculture.
[36] At the 1989 "nationality plenum," Tatarstan's CSPU first secretary reported that a poll showed that 67 percent of respondents wanted to see Tatarstan's status raised to that of a union republic. Pravda, September 22, 1989, p. 2-5, translated in CDSP, vol. XLI, no. 40, p. 14.
[37] "Declaration of the State Sovereignty of the RSFSR," in Perestroika in the Soviet Republics: Documents on the National Question, Charles F. Furtado, Jr. and Andrea Chandler , eds., Boulder: Westview, 1992, pp. 325-26.
[38] Argumenty I fakty, no. 35, September 1-7, 1990, translated in FBIS-SOV-90-172, September 5, 1990, p. 113.
[39] Pravda, August 9, 1990, p. 2, translated in FBIS-SOV-90-155, August 10, 1990, p. 59.
[40] Reprinted in Rafael Khakimov, ed, Belaia kniga Tatarstana: Put' k suverenitetu, 1990-1993, Kazan, 1993, p. 4 (henceforth BK).
[41] BK, p. 2.
[42] Literaturnaia gazeta, Oct. 31, 1990.
[43] See the interview with Shaimiev in Pravda, May 18, 1991, p. 2.
[44] Izvestiia, May 13,1991.
[45] Pravda, May 18,1991, p. 2.
[46] Kommersant, No. 22, 1991, p.12.
[47] Izvestiia, June 13, 1991, p. 2.
[48] BK, p. 17.
[49] BK, pp. 18-19.
[50] Nezavisimaia gazeta, August 22, 1991, p. 3.
[51] As translated from Tatar into Russian in Kazanskie vedomosti and republished in Izvestiia, Nov. 25, 1991, p. 4, and translated into English in CDSP, vol. 43, no. 47, 1991, p. 3.
[52] Nezavismaiia gazeta, Nov. 26, 1991, p. 3, as translated in CDSP, vol. 43, no. 47, p. 1.
[53] Khasbulatov reportedly made these remarks during an interview with reporters from Izvestia Tatarstana. According to Nezamisimaia gazeta, in an issue in which it reprinted excerpts of the published version of the interview, a decision was made not to publish his more incendiary remarks in Izvestia Tatarstana because of fears that they would promote tensions in the republic. However, as the Nezavisimaia gazeta article put it, "Remarks about the `iron cage' in which those who disagree with the Russian Republic lawmakers will supposedly be taken to Moscow and about a possible second taking' of Kazan have already become part of the folklore of Tatarstan's politicians." Nezavisimaiia gazeta, November 27, 1991, p. 3, as translated in CDSP, vol. 43, no. 47, p. 4.
[54] Ibid.
[55] See, for example, Pravda, October 16, 1991, as translated in CDSP, vol. 43, no. 42, p. 28.
[56] Pravda, Oct. 17, 1991, as translated in CDSP, vol. 43, no. 42, p. 29.
[57] Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta Tatarstana, 1992, no. 3.
[58] For a discussion, see Edward W. Walker, "The New Russian Constitution and the Future of the Russian Federation," The Harriman Institute Forum, vol. 5, no. 10, June 1992.
[59] See, for example, the interview with Moscow mayor Gavriil Popov in Izvestiia, October 3, 1991, p. 1, 3.
[60] Nezavisimaia gazeta, no. 26, 1991, p. 3.
[61] Russia's national media was beginning to change its position on Shaimiev--having vilified him as a supporter of the putchists in mid-1991, it began describing him as "an island of stability, continously buffeted by criticism from both sides" in the republic. Ibid, p. 2.
[62] BK, pp. 20-22.
[63] Izvestiia, February 3, 1992, p. 2.
[64] RFE/RL Daily Report, February 4, 1992.
[65] Konstitutsionnyi vestnik, no. 14, Moscow, 1992, p. 66. The deliberate ambiguity of the referendum anticipated by several years the similarly ambiguous referendum on Quebec's sovereignty in 1995. Tatarstan's leaders were, however, more explicit in their denials that they were pursuing independence than were Quebec's leaders.
[66] RFE/Rl Daily Report, March 19, 1992.
[67] Rossiiskaia gazeta, March 3, 1992, as translated in FBIS-SOV-92-051, March 16, 1992.
[68] Izvestiia, March 17, 1992, p. 2.
[69] Rossiiskaia gazeta, March 7, 1992, p.[X].
[70] Rossiiskaia gazeta, March 16, 1992, pp. 1-2.
[71] RFE/RL Daily Report, March 4, 1992.
[72] Author's intereview with Rafael Khakimov, July 22, 1995, Kazan.
[73] Moscow News, March 25, 1992.
[74] One leaflet, for example, depicted two voters sitting at the end of a branch of a tree labelled "Russia," while the branch was labelled "Tatarstan." The voters were depicted sawing off the branch at its base. (Personal recollection of Arthur Matirosyan, Conflict Management Group, Cambridge, MA, who was in Kazan at the time.)
[75] Rossiiskaia gazeta, March 19, 1992, p. 1.
[76] TASS, March 21, 1992.
[77] Rossiiskaia gazeta, March 20, 1992, p. 1.
[78] Rossiiskaia gazeta, March 21, 1992, p. 1.
[79] Author's interview with Rafael Khakimov,Kazan, July 24, 25, 16, 1995.
[80] Izvestia, March 23, 1992.
[81] Reportedly, a division of paratroopers in Ul'ianovsk was put on maneuvres to intimidate the republic. (Author's interviews with Rafael Khakimov, July 21, 22, 23, 1995, Kazan). Khakimov also recalled that on March 22, 1992, all stockpiles of weapons were withdrawn from the republic, he argued that international obervers in Tatarstan at the time were a major a deterrent to intervention by Moscow because "at the time Russia was afraid of America."
[82] Rossiiskaia gazeta, March 24, 1992, p.1.
[83] RFE/RL Daily Report, March 24, 1992.
[84] BK, p. 23.
[85] Materialy s''ezda narodov Tatarstana, Kazan: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1993, p. 8.
[86] Ibid, p. 148.
[87] For example, Tatarstan, Yakutia, and Bashkorostan issued a joint statement condemning language in a July 13, 1992 Russian Federation law on the budget system that gave the Russian governmet and the Central Bank the authority to punish sub''ekty that did not meet their obligations to the federal budget. Nezavisimaia gazeta, August 15, 1992, p. 1.
[88] For background, see Kontseptsiia natsional'noi bezopasnosti Respubliki Tatarstana: osnovnye polozheniia politikovoennogo kharaktera, Kazan: Vsetatarskii obshchestvennyi tsentr, 1994.
[89] Author's interviews with Rafael I. Khakmiov, July 21, 22, 23, 1995, Kazan.
[90] The constitution can be found in Sovetskaia Tatariia, December 12, 1992, pp. 1-16.
[91] Rossiiskaia gazeta, December 3, 1992, p. 6, in CDSP, vol. XLIV, no. 48, 1992, p. 9..
[92] RFE/RL Daily Report, November 24, 1992. See also Ann Sheehy, "Russia's Republics: A Threat to Its Territorial Integrity?," RFE/RL Reports, vol. 2, no. 20, May 14, 1993, pp. 34-40.
[93] RFE/RL Daily Report, December 2, 1992.
[94] Mnogonatsional'nyi Tatarstan, op.cit., p. 48, and Musina, op.cit., p. 7.
[95] A poll of Russians taken in certain Soviet successor states and Russia's republics in the summer of 1992 showed that the desire of ethnic Russian to emigrate from Tatarstan was, along with the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, quite low, at only 6 to 11 percent, compared to 37 percent that wished to leave Checheno-Ingushetia. Nezavisimaia gazeta, July 31, 1992, p. 5.
[96] Rossiisskaia gazeta, May 19, 1993, p. 2.
[97] BK, pp. 40-48
[98] For a discussion of Yeltsin's efforts to win the support of the republics in his struggle with the Supreme Soviet in 1992-93, see Gail W. Lapidus and Edward W. Walker, "Nationalism, Regionalism, and Federalism: Center-Periphery Relations in PostCommunist Russia," in Gail W. Lapidus, ed., The New Russia: Troubled Transformation, Boulder: Westview, 1995, pp. 79- 113.
[99] Segondia, December 9, 1993, p. 1.
[100] I have analyzed the constitution's federation provisions in "Federalism-Russian Style: The Federation Provisions in Russia's new Constitution, Problems of Post-Communism, July-August, 1995, pp. 3-12.
[101] The treaty and all twelve agreements are in BK, pp. 20-22 and 37-63. A thirteenth agreement was signed on March 5, 1994 (BK, pp. 54-57). The agreements deal with, in turn, (1) economic cooperation (January 22, 1992); (3) higher education (June 5, 1993); (4) the transportation of oil and petroleum products (June 5, 1993); (5) environmental protection (June 5, 1993); (6) property (June 22, 1993); (7) defense industries (June 22, 1993); (8) customs duties (June 22, 1993); (9) foreign economic ties (February 15, 1994); (10) banking, credit, and monetary policy (February 15, 1994); (11) budgetary relations (February 15, 1994); (12) crime prevention (February 15, 1994); and (13) on military affairs (March 5, 1994). Each agreement has a term of five years, and, with one exception, is autonomatically renewed unless one side notifies the other of its intention to terminate the agreement with six months advance notice. The exception is the budgetary agreement, which is not autonomatically renewed.
[102] ITAR-TASS World Service, February 15, 1994, and INTERFAX, in FBIS-SOV-94-032, p. 37.
[103] Krasnaia zvezda, Feruary 17, 1994, in FBIS-SOV-94, February 18, 1994, p. 15.
[104] Federal Information Systems Corporation, Official Kremlin International News Broadcast, February 16, 1994.
[105] Quoted in Broxup, op.cit., p. 87. Broxup is herself highly critical of the treaty.
[106] The terms of these treaties are quite different, however. Local officials tend to describe their particular power-sharing treaty as "better" than all the others, although in practice the economic and political aspects of the relationships between individual sub''ekty and Moscow are extremely complex and extend well beyond the subject matter of the treaties. (See below for an analysis of the current Kazan-Moscow relationship).
[107] See George W. Breslauer, "Why Invade Chechnya?" in Russia: Political and Economic Development, The Keck Center: Claremont, CA, 1995, pp. 1-24.
[108] Rashit Akhmetov, "Tatarstan: The Post-Electoral Ethno-Political Situation," in Bulletin: Network on Ethnological Monitoring and Early Warning of Conflict, Cambridge, MA: Conflict Management Group, June 1995, p. 53-54.
[109] For an analysis, see Irina A. Umnova, "Konstitutsiia Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Konstitutsiia Respubliki Tatarstana, Dogovor Mezhdu Rossiiskoi Federatsiei i Respubliki Tatarstana," June 1994, unpublished paper.
[110] The treaty merely states that Moscow and Kazan have the right to appeal if they feel that a law of the other party violates the agreement and that disputes are to resolved "in accordance with an agreed upon procedure" (Article VI).
[111] Significantly, Article III.1 specifies that the protection of human and civil rights fall within the joint competence of both Tatarstan and the federal government.
[112] BK, pp. 51-52. In 1994, 30 percent of the republic's budget revenues came from the VAT, 17.5 percent from the profits tax, and 23.4 percent from privatization. "Doklad prem'er-ministra Tatarstana," manuscript of speech of the Prime Minister of Tatarstan to the Tatarstan Supreme Soviet, in author's possession.
[113] Interestingly, Bashkortostan has apparently struck a better deal with Moscow on fiscal matters: only 8-12 percent of the total taxes collected in the republic go to the federal budget. (Author's interview with Irek S. Muksinov, Deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation from Bashkortostan, July 21, 1995.) See also Vladimir Todres, "Bashkortostan Seeks Sovreignty - Step by Step," RFE/RL Reports, May 12, 1995.
[114] In total, natural resources account for just over 90 percent of Tatarstan's export earnings, with trucks and helicopters making up most of the remainder.
[115] For background, see "Doklad," op.cit. p. 11.
[116] In May 1994, Soskovets and Panskov had signed a document committing Moscow to paying the debt, but Moscow had failed to abide by the agreement.
[117] BK, pp. 43-44.
[118] Author's interview with Filza Khamigullin, Advisor on Economic Affairs to the President of Tatarstan, July 21, 1995, Kazan, and with Marat G. Galeev, Chairman of the Commission on Economic Affairs, State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan, July 20, 1995, Kazan.
[119] Most notably, in July 1995, as the Russian government was beginning to distance itself from Abkhazia and other secessionists movements in the wake of the debacle in Chechnya, the speaker of the Federation Council, Vladimir Shumeiko, accused the Abkhaz of genocide and compared Ardzimba to Dudaev. Shaimiev condemned the remarks and called for a debate in the Federation Council on Shumeiko's statement, but his proposal was rejected. Since the strong communist performance in the December 1995 elections, the Duma has become even more pro-Abkhaz.
[120] See, for example, the joint letter from Shaimiev, the president of Bashkortostan, M. Nikolaev, and the president of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and to Yeltsin of July 3, 1995, reprinted in Bulletin: Network on Ethnological Monitoring and Early Warning of Conflict, Cambridge, MA: Conflict Management Group, 1995, pp. 15-16. For a brief period in the late spring of 1996, it appeared that Shaimiev might be accepted by both Moscow and Grozny as a mediator, but the initiative came to naught when Dudaev was killed in late May.
[121] One of the four Communist Party deputies subsequently resigned from the Party.
[122] Rossiiskaia gazeta, January 4, 1996.
[123] OMRI Daily Digest, No. 60, March 25, 1996.
[124] "Doklad, " op.cit. Over the first six months of 1995, Tatarstan's economy outperformed Russia's as a whole (97 percent), as well as that of neighboring Nizhegorodskaia oblast' (99.8 percent) and Bashkortostan (98.7 percent). Ibid.
[125] Rashit Akhmetov, op.cit., p. 53.
[126] Particularly noteworthy was an article critical of the present regime written by an influential advisor of Shaimiev, Rafael Khakimov, entitled "God upushchennykh vozmozhnostei," ("A Year of Lost Opportunities"), Kazan: Tsentr gumanitarnykh proektov i issledovanii, 1994, and published in Vatanym Tatarstan, March 30 and April 2, 5, 9, 1994. In it, Khakimov argued that the time had come to press ahead with additional measures to democratize the republic and well as with eonomic reform.
[127] Leokadia Drobizheva, "Nationalism and Democracy in the Post-Soviet Russian Federation," in Gail W. Lapidus and Renee de Nevers, eds., Nationalism, Ethnic Identity and Conflict Management in Russia Today, Center for Intenational Security and Arms Control, Stanford University, 1995, p. 17.
[128] Drobizheva, ibid, p. 23, and Airat Aklaev, "Ethno-political Conflicts and Crises in the Russian Federation and the Problems of Legitimacy: Four Cases with the Russian Federation," in Lapidus and de Nevers, op.cit., pp. 31-45.
[129] See, for example, the interview with Oleg Rumiantsev, the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet's Constitutional Commission at the time, in Moscow News, no. 10, 1991, p. 5.
[130] See Emil Pain, "The Breakup of Russia is No Longer a Problem," Moskovskie Novosti, no. 23, 1994, p. A5, tranlated in CDSP, vol. XLVI, no. 23, 1994, pp. 9.
[131] Unfortunately, Russian political figures continue to discuss the possibility of doing away with the ethnic republics and creating a purely territorial federation. See Vera Tolz, "Unease Grips Moscow and the Ethnic Republic," Transition, Jamuary 26, 1996, pp. 42-44, 64.
[132] There is an enormous literature on the subject, but see especially Hurst Hannum, Autonomy, Sovereignty, and SelfDetermination: the Accomodation of Conflicting Rights, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania press, 1990, esp. pp. 14-49.
[133] See Alexander Barmin and Boran Doeh, "The Legal Framework for Foreign Investment in the Russian Petroleum Industry," Peteroleum Economist, August 30, 1994.
[134] The republic is, however, trying to reduce its dependency on refineries in Russia--its first refinery came on line in the summer of 1994.

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