Secessionism from the bottom up: Democratization, nationalism, and local accountability in the Russian transition

World Politics

Volumn 58, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 276-310

  Giuliano, Elise ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AUTONOMY; DEMOCRATIZATION; ETHNIC GROUP; NATIONALISM; SECESSIONISM;

EURASIA; RUSSIAN FEDERATION;

EID: 33750118930     PISSN: 00438871     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/wp.2006.0025     Document Type: Article

References (144)

1. Philip Roeder popularized this term in Roeder, "Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization," World Politics 43 (January 1991).
2. Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
3. Svante E. Cornell, "Autonomy as a Source of Conflict: Caucasian Conflicts in Theoretical Perspective," World Politics 54 (January 2002);
4. Carol Skalnik Leff, "Democratization and Disintegration in Multinational States: The Breakup of the Communist Federations," World Politics 51 (January 1999);
5. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, "Political Identities and Electoral Sequences: Spain, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia," Daedalus 122 (Spring 1992);
6. Roeder (fn.1);
7. idem, "The Triumph of Nation-States: Lessons from the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia," in Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, eds., After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004);
8. Ronald Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1993).
9. Nancy Bermeo, "The Import of Institutions," Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002);
10. Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Henry Hale makes the more fine-grained argument that ethnofederal collapse is more likely when states contain a core ethnic region.
11. See Hale, "Divided We Stand: Institutional Sources of Ethnofederal State Survival and Collapse," World Politics 56 (January 2004).
12. In practice, however, the autonomy of all ethnic regions was very limited. Ruth Lapidoth, Autonomy: Flexible Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996).
13. Thus, I exclude republics that were elevated from autonomous oblast to republic in 1991: Adygei, Gorni Altai, Khakassia, and Karachai-Cherkessia. I also exclude Ingushetia, which split off from Checheno-Ingushetia in 1992. These republics displayed very little separatism and therefore add no variation to the original sixteen.
14. The three main comparative studies on secessionism in the Soviet republics are Kisangani Emizet and Vicki Hesli, "The Disposition to Secede: An Analysis of the Soviet Case," Comparative Political Studies 27 (January 1995);
15. Daniel S. Treisman, "Russia's 'Ethnic Revival': The Separatist Activism of Regional Leaders in a Postcommunist Order," World Politics 49 (January 1997);
16. and Henry Hale, "The Parade of Sovereignties: Testing Theories of Secession in the Soviet Setting," British Journal of Political Science 30 (January 2000).
17. See also Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, "Federalism and Regionalism" in Stephen White, Alex Pravda, and Zvi Gitelman, eds., Developments in Russian Politics 4 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 239.
18. This logic was originally delineated by Ernest Gellner, Donald Horowitz, Michael Hechter, Peter Gourevitch, and Tom Nairn. Gourevitch and Nairn hypothesize that relatively economically advanced ethnic elites in politically peripheral regions support secessionism to develop their regions' potential. Horowitz and Hechter argue, by contrast, that relative economic backwardness inspires ethnic groups to increase their region's prospects through secession. See Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 147-78;
19. idem, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1983);
20. Donald Horowitz, "Patterns of Ethnic Separatism," Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (1981);
21. idem, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985);
22. Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975);
23. idem, "Group Formation and the Cultural Division of Labor," American Journal of Sociology 84, no. 2 (1978);
24. Peter Gourevitch, Paris and the Provinces (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980);
25. Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism (London: NLB, 1977).
26. In the same vein, Yoshiko Herrera's study of sovereignty movements in Russia finds that regional wealth did not drive campaigns for sovereignty among Russia's nonethnic regions in the early 1990s. Instead, in certain oblasts, economic interests were constructed in ways that produced demands for sovereignty. See Herrera, Imagined Economies: The Sources of Russian Regionalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
27. Leff (fn. 2), 210.
28. The term titular denotes the ethnic group for which the republic is named, for example, Tatars in Tatarstan.
29. I use the post-Soviet names of Russia's republics throughout this article for consistency, except when discussing Checheno-Ingushetia before Ingushetia separated from the republic in 1992.
30. Anatoly Khazanov, After the USSR: Ethnicity, Nationalism and Politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 219.
31. Oksana Genrikhovna Dmitrieva, Regional'naia ekonomicheskaia diagnostika (Regional economic diagnostics) (St. Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universiteta Ekonomiki i Finansov, 1992), 128-32.
32. Similarly, Russia's wealthiest ethnic regions - the autonomous okrugs of Khanty-Mansisk and Yamal-Nenets - also failed to make separatist demands. Though these regions, as okrugs, had fewer institutions, rights, and privileges than republics, they were far richer, producing 80 percent of Russia's oil and gas. Roy Bahl and Christine I. Wallich, "Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations in the Russian Federation," in Richard M. Bird, Robert D. Ebel, and Christine I. Wallich, eds., Decentralization of the Socialist State (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1995), 326. After federal relations had stabilized in the late 1990s, okrug leaders demanded administrative independence from Tyumen oblast to retain more control over natural resources.
33. See "Khanty-Mansi Avtonomnyi Okrug," in Regiony Rossii: statisticheskii sbornik (Russia's regions: Statistical handbook) (Moscow: Goskomstat, 1999).
34. This argument can be found in Roeder (fn. 2);
35. Treisman (fn. 6);
36. and Jeff Kahn, Federalism, Democratization, and the Rule of Law in Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 126-32.
37. Dmitri Gorenburg's work is an exception. He shows how local institutions produced variation in mass nationalist mobilization across Russia's republics, in Gorenburg, Minority Ethnic Mobilization in the Russian Federation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Hale recognizes that masses may have different preferences than leaders, but he posits that macroeconomic factors influenced all actors in the republics uniformly.
38. See Hale (fn. 6).
39. See Emizet and Hesli's (fn. 6) use of the timing of Supreme Soviets' sovereignty declarations as a single indicator of secessionism (p. 500);
40. and Treisman's (fn. 6) miscoding of Tuva (pp. 224-25).
41. Leading Russian specialists also identify these republics as the most separatist. See Valery Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 58;
42. Leokadia Drobizheva, Natsional'noe samosoznanie i natsionalizm v Rossiiskoi Federatsii nachala 1990-x godov (National consciousness and nationalism in the Russian Federation in the early 1990s) (Moscow: Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1994).
43. Thus, a majority of the electorate in the ARS (82.6 percent) voted to preserve the USSR in the March 1991 referendum. See Edward Walker, Dissolution: Sovereignty and the Breakup of the Soviet Union (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 96, 102, 117;
44. Vladimir Shlapentokh, Roman Levita, and Mikhail Loiberg, From Submission to Rebellion: The Provinces versus the Center in Russia (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), 91;
45. and Yurii Baturin, "Shakhmatnaia diplomatia v Novo-Ogarevo," Democratizatsia 2 (Spring 1994).
46. E. Chernobrovkina, "Reshat'vam samim," Vechernaia kazan (August 10, 1990), 1.
47. Ann Sheehy, "The All-Union and RSFSR Referendums of March 17," RFE/RL Research Report 3 (March 29, 1991), 22.
48. Results of the presidential election in June 1991 indicate the same pattern: Yeltsin won 50.6 percent of the votes in the autonomous regions compared with 58.4 percent in the RSFSR as a whole. Walker (fn. 19), 117, 123-24.
49. Elizabeth Teague, "Center-Periphery Relations in the Russian Federation," in Roman Szporluk, ed., National Identity and Ethnicity in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 42;
50. and Darrel Slider, "Federalism, Discord, and Accommodation: Intergovernmental Relations in Post-Soviet Russia," in Theodore Friedgut and Jeffrey Hahn, eds., Local Power and Post-Soviet Politics (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 249.
51. Ingushetia and North Ossetia declared bankruptcy and also reduced tax payments to Moscow; Shlapentokh, Levita, and Loiberg (fh. 19), 169.
52. See also Jeremy Azrael and Emil Payin, Conflict and Consensus in Ethno-Political and Center-Periphery Relations in Russia (Santa Monica, Calif: Rand Conference Proceedings, 1998), 29.
53. Teague (fn. 22);
54. Vera Tolz, "Thorny Road toward Federalism in Russia," RFE/RL Research Report 2 (December 3, 1993);
55. and Kahn (fn. 15), 126-32.
56. This perception was reinforced ten days later when Tatarstan refused to sign the Federation Treaty. Ann Sheehy, "Tatarstan Asserts Its Sovereignty," RFE/RL Research Report 1, no. 203 (April 3, 1992), 1.
57. In fact, the actions of these four republics convinced Moscow of the need to replace the Federation Treaty with a new federal constitution; Tishkov (fn. 18), 62.
58. Most constitutions asserted control over natural resources and gave both Russian and the titular language official status. See Teague (fn. 22), 43;
59. Kahn (fn. 15), 82-84;
60. and Gorenburg (fn. 16).
61. For the full text of the constitutions, see Iu. A. Dmitriev and E. L. Malakhova, Konstitutsii respublik v sostave Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Republican constitutions of the Russian Federation) (Moscow: Izdatel'skaia Firma Manuscript, 1995).
62. Bashkortostan, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Mari-El, Chuvashia, Mordova, and Ingushetia voted against Yeltsin. In Tuva a majority endorsed him in questions one and two, but voted for early presidential elections - a rejection of Yeltsin. Wendy Slater, "No Victors in the Russian Referendum," RFE/RL Research Report 2 (May 21, 1993). However, an anti-Yeltsin vote was not necessarily a challenge to federal authority, since some republics voted against him to signal support for the Supreme Soviet's conservative policies of preserving federal subsidies to the regions.
63. Ralph Clem and Peter Craumer, "The Geography of the April 25 (1993) Russian Referendum," Post-Soviet Geography 34 (October 1993).
64. Chechnya boycotted the referendum, while Tatarstan's administration discouraged voting, resulting in a 22.6 percent voter turnout, which invalidated the republic's results.
65. Seven republics voted for the constitution, five voted against it, and voter turnout was under 50 percent in two republics. Gail W. Lapidus and Edward W. Walker, "Nationalism, Regionalism, and Federalism: Center-Periphery Relations in Post-Communist Russia," in Gail Lapidus, ed., The New Russia: Troubled Transformation (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995), 100-101.
66. On local elections, see Elizabeth Teague, "North-South Divide: Yeltsin and Russia's Provincial Leaders," RFE/RL Research Report 2 (November 26, 1993).
67. Donald Horowitz, "Patterns of Ethnic Separatism," Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (April 1981), 168-69.
68. This assumption commits the fallacy of retrospective determinism. I use the terms secession, separatism, and autonomy campaigns interchangeably throughout this study.
69. Yuri Slezkine, "The USSR as Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism," Slavic Review 53 (Summer 1994), 433.
70. See also Roeder (fn. 1);
71. and Suny (fn. 2).
72. Moshe Lewin describes how these processes transformed the entire Soviet population in Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
73. The same was true of Yakuts in Yakutia. G. S. Denisova, Etnicheskii faktor v politicheskoi zhizni Rossii 90-x godov (The ethnic factor in Russia's political life during the 1990s) (Rostov-on-the-Don: Rostov State Pedagogical University, 1996), 86-88.
74. See also Leokadia Drobizheva, "Processes of Disintegration," in Vladimir Shlapentokh, Munir Sendich, and Emil Payin, eds., The New Russian Diaspora: Russian Minorities in the Former Soviet Republics (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 47.
75. These ratios were compiled by the author based on unpublished raw data collected by Goskomstat, the State Statistical Committee of the USSR, as part of the 1989 All-Union census. See Professional'no-otraslevoi sostav intelligentsia naseleniia titul'noi i russkoi natsional'nostei absolytnie znacheniia (Titular and Russian ethnic group composition of white-collar economic sectors). I thank Dmitri Gorenburg for providing the data.
76. Only in Chechnya and Mari-El do Russians dominate white-collar sectors, although Chechens constitute 40 percent of Checheno-Ingushetia's white-collar workforce and 54 percent of its total workforce. Chechens form 55 percent of the republic's total population.
77. Mari El and Tuva are exceptions, although Tuvans still constituted 40 percent of directors in Tuva. See Narodnoe khoziaistvo RSFSR (The economy of the RSFSR) (Moscow: Goskomstat, 1989).
78. According to ethnic competition theory, rising job competition may spur mobilization as groups begin competing for resources in a common economic niche, especially following sudden macroeconomic change. Frederik Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969);
79. Susan Olzak, The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1992).
80. Gellner (fn. 7, 1983), 1.
81. Working in two Moscow libraries, I culled through five years of at least two newspapers published in each of Russia's sixteen republics. I collected between forty and one hundred articles from each republic that address some aspect of ethnic politics. The articles include standard news reports, official statements by political leaders, editorials, letters to the editors, and statements by nationalist organizations.
82. The social movements literature identifies these dimensions as critical. See David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, "Master Frames and Cycles of Protest," in Aldon Morris and Carol McClurg, eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 137;
83. and David Snow and Robert Benford, "Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment," Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000).
84. V. Kopylov, "Kogo pugaet suverenitet?" Yakutia 14 (October 1992), 2.
85. Damir Iskhakov, Sovremennie natsional'nie protsessi v respublike Tatarstan (Current ethnic processes in the Republic of Tatarstan) (Kazan: Russian Academy of Sciences, 1992.)
86. This underscores John Breuilly's point that nationalism is not "the expression of pre-existing national values and practices in political form." See Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 69.
87. See Andrew Wilson's discussion of nationalism in Ukraine in Wilson, The Ukrainians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000);
88. and Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
89. Jeffrey Hahn, "Introduction: Analyzing Parliamentary Development in Russia," in Hahn, ed., Democratization in Russia: The Development of Legislative Institutions (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1996).
90. Olga V. Kryshtanovskaia, "Transformation of the Old Nomenklatura into a New Russian Elite," Russian Social Science Review 37 (July-August 1996).
91. Kotkin (fh. 46), 75-85.
92. Stephen White, Graeme Gill, and Darrell Slider, The Politics of Transition: Shaping of a Post-Soviet Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
93. Only in the union republics of Moldavia, the Baltics, and Armenia, as well as in parts of Ukraine, did independent candidates win a significant number of seats in Supreme Soviet elections.
94. For example, in Tatarstan, nationalists won one-third of the seats in the Supreme Soviet and came to control approximately 120 out of 250 votes by winning over independent deputies. See I. V. Terent'eva, R.Iu. Beliakov, and M.F. Safarov, Politicheskie partii i dvizhenie Respubliki Tatarstan (Political parties and movements in Tatarstan) (Kazan, 1999);
95. and Gorenburg (fn. 16), 135.
96. See also Gavin Helf and Jeffrey Hahn, "Old Dogs and New Tricks: Party Elites in the Russian Regional Elections of 1990," Slavic Review 51 (Fall 1992).
97. See Herrera's discussion (fn. 8) on breaking the Soviet doxa (pp. 98-142).
98. Subsequently, several members of the Bashkir nationalist movement joined the republic's interim leadership. RFE/RL Research Report 2, no. 8 (February 23, 1990);
99. and "Plenary Sessions Held," Current Digest of the Soviet Press 42, no. 6 (1990).
100. "Jeffrey Kahn, interview with Boris Leonidovich Zheleznov, professor of law, Kazan State University, Kazan, June 6, 1997. Similarly, the Union of Bashkir Youth marched on Bashkortostan's television station and went on air to denounce the Supreme Soviet's vote to delay presidential elections. RFE/RL Research Report 3, no. 47 (November 22, 1991).
101. See Elise Giuliano, "Who Determines the Self in the Politics of Self-Determination? Ethnicity and Preference Formation in Tatarstan's Nationalist Mobilization," Comparative Politics 32 (April 2000).
102. This began after Gorbachev passed the 1987 Law on Cooperatives. Eric Hanley, Natasha Yershova, and Richard Anderson, "Russia - Old Wine in a New Bottle? The Circulation and Reproduction of Russian Elites, 1983-1993," Theory and Society 24 (October 1995).
103. As did former nomenklatura political leaders. For example, the oil company Tatneft underwent tittle restructuring and remained controlled by Tatarstan's Soviet-era managers. See Leo McCann, "Embeddedness, Markets and the State: Observations from Tatarstan," in McCann, ed., Russian Transformations (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004);
104. and Jozsef Borocz and Akos Rona-Tas, "Small Leap Forward: Emergence of New Economic Elites," Theory and Society 24 (October 1995).
105. White, Gill, and Slider (fn. 50), 103.
106. Gorenburg (fn. 16), 62-63, 72.
107. Timur Muzaev, Etnicheskii separatizm v Rossii (Ethnic separatism in Russia) (Moscow: Panorama Publishers, 1999), 159-63.
108. White, Gill, and Slider (fn. 50), 101.
109. See Mark Beissinger's discussion of the meaning of nationalist event; Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 18-28.
110. The variables of ethnic demonstrations and ethnic violence are from Mark Beissinger's data set of mobilization events in Soviet Union. I am grateful to him for providing these data. Beissinger defines an ethnic demonstration as a "voluntary gathering of persons with the purpose of engaging in a collective display of sentiment for or against public policies." All demonstrations had a minimum of one hundred participants. Beissinger defines a mass violent event as "a mass political action whose primary purpose was to inflict violence, either in the form of an attack on people or on property." Violent events had a minimum of fifteen participants. The data set does not include hunger strikes or general strikes. See Codebook, "Non-Violent Demonstrations and Mass Violent Events in the Former USSR, 1987-1992," 4, 6.
111. For more on the procedures utilized in collecting the data, see Mark R. Beissinger, "Event Analysis in Transitional Societies: Protest Mobilization in the Former Soviet Union," in Dieter Rucht, Ruud Koopmans, and Friedhelm Neidhardt, eds., Acts of Dissent: New Developments in the Study of Protest (Berlin: Sigma Press, 1998);
112. Beissinger (fn. 63);
113. and http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/~beissinger/research.htm.
114. Concerning repatriation issues, Akkintsy clashed with neighboring ethnic groups in Dagestan, Balkars challenged Kabardins in Kabardino-Balkaria, and Ingush made claims in the Prigorodnii region of North Ossetia. In terms of the regional armed conflicts, North Ossetia supported South Ossetia against Georgia by taking Ossetian refugees and sending aid and volunteer fighters, while Kabardino-Balkaria took the side of Abkhazia against Georgia. See Jane Omrod, "The North Caucasus: Confederation in Conflict," in Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., New States, New Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
115. Tomila Lankina discusses ethnic conflict and mobilization in North Ossetia in Governing the Locals: Local Self-Government and Ethnic Mobilization in Russia (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004).
116. I use the diverse-case method and the typical-case method to select cases, according to John Gerring's typology in Getting, Case Study Research: Principles and Practice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
117. Moscow appropriated what little gold, uranium, cobalt and coal Tuva, one of Russia's poorest republics, did contain. Zoia Anaibin, "Ethnic Relations in Tuva," in Marjorie Balzer, ed., Culture Incarnate (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995).
118. Ann Sheehy, "Russians the Target of Interethnic Violence in Tuva," RFE/RL Research Report 2, no. 37 (September 14,1990).
119. According to one Russian analyst, Tuva's Popular Front represented a serious force in republican politics due to its mass popular support. Muzaev (fn. 61), 186-89.
120. A question exists as to whether the violence was Tuvan on Tuvan rather than interethnic. It was nevertheless perceived by the press and the general population as ethnic violence. Toomas Alatalu, "Tuva: A State Reawakens," Soviet Studies 44, no. 5 (1992).
121. See also Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, "From Ethnicity to Nationalism: Turmoil in the Russian Mini-Empire," in James R. Millar and Sharon L. Wolchik, eds., The Social Legacy of Communism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
122. Overall, by the mid-1990s, approximately ten thousand Russians, including highly skilled engineers, teachers, and doctors, were estimated to have migrated out of Tuva. Stefan Sullivan, "Interethnic Relations in post-Soviet Tuva," Ethnic and Racial Studies 18, no. 1 (1995).
123. Khostug Tuva went a step further, calling for the republic to hold an immediate referendum on secession from Russia; Drobizheva (fn. 18), 125.
124. Tuvans formed 65 percent and Russians 32 percent of the population in 1989. Tuva was nominally independent from 1921 to 1944, when it was incorporated into the USSR. Before 1921 it held the status of a Russian protectorate. Balzer (fn. 71), 124.
125. Anaibin (fn. 68), 104, 110.
126. The popular vote took place on December 12, 1993. Tuva's Supreme Khural had voted to adopt Tuva's constitution earlier that fall, in October, while Yeltsin was busy bombing the federal parliament. A. Kuzhuget and M. Tatarintseva, Etnopoliticheskaia situatsiia v Respublike Tyva, Research Monograph, no. 74 (Moscow: Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1994), 9.
127. Ann Sheehy, "Tuva Adopts New Constitution," RFE/RL Daily Report no. 203 (October 26, 1993), 2.
128. I address the decline of mass nationalism in my book manuscript, in Giuliano, "Why Secession Fails: The Rise and Fall of Ethnic Nationalism in Russia."
129. See, for example, Daniel R. Kempton, "The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia): The Evolution of Centre-Periphery Relations in the Russian Federation," Europe-Asia Studies 48 (June 1996).
130. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, "A State within a State: The Sakha Republic (Yakutia)," in Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff, eds., Rediscovering Russia in Asia (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995).
131. After declaring sovereignty, Yakutia changed its name to The Sakha Republic (Yakutia).
132. F. M. Zykov, Etnopoliticheskaia situatsiia v Respublike Sakha do i posle vyborov 12 dekabria 1993 g., Research Monograph, no. 71 (Moscow: Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1994).
133. Khazanov (fn. 12) writes that Nikolaev "liked to point out [during negotiations with Yeltsin] that he acted under heavy pressure from Sakha Omuk and that some decisions of Yakutia's parliament were made against his will" (p. 183).
134. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer and Uliana Alekseevna Vinokurova, "Nationalism, Interethnic Relations and Federalism: The Case of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia)," Europe-Asia Studies 48 (January 1996).
135. Drobizheva (fn. 18) notes that this threat indicated a very radical mood among Yakuts since it would have meant replacing a Yakut with an ethnic Russian (pp. 135-52).
136. Ibid., 137;
137. see also Muzaev (fn. 61), 206-10.
138. Mari-El passed a language law in 1995. Iurii P. Shabaev, "National Movements in the Eastern Finnic Republics of Rossiia," Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia 37 (Fall 1998).
139. Muzaev (fn. 61), 159-63;
140. V. D. Sharov, Etnopoliticheskaia situatsiia v Respublike Marii El, Research Monograph, no. 63 (Moscow: Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1994), 5.
141. Sharov (fn. 87), 15.
142. Muzaev (fn. 61), 160-61.
143. Ronald Wixman and Allen Frank, "The Middle Volga: Exploring the Limits of Sovereignty," in Bremmer and Taras (fn. 65).
144. Muzaev (fn. 61), 162