THE FEDERAL CENTER’S POLITICAL LEEWAY IN CHECHNIA AND ITS ECHO IN RUSSIA’S SOUTH

Abstract

It is highly important today to assess what policy the leaders of Russia are pursuing in the Chechen Republic (CR), to identify all of its possible alternatives and their impact on Russia’s South. Let’s have a look at what was done between 2000 and 2004. In 2000 the Center restored its power in the republic, set up a system of military commandants across its territory, created a national administration and tied Chechnia to the federal budget system. The republic, however, remained a scene of the counterterrorist operation.

In February 2001 the RF government adopted a Federal Target Program of Rehabilitation of the Economic and Social Sphere of the Chechen Republic for the Year 2001 (Resolution No. 96). According to expert assessments, it was fulfilled by 15 percent for lack of coordination among the federal partners in the program and their inadequate approach to its realization. Strange as it may seem the reasons lied outside the republic. The failure is explained by the low culture and practice of drafting, adopting, and realizing federal target programs of regional development adopted for implementation since the 1990s. (All of them remained practically unfulfilled.) This says that many of the top government bureaucrats have not completely realized that it was them who are responsible for the success or failure of such programs. In the European Union, for example, similar territorial programs are one of the most important elements of the states’ regional policies, which explains why the aims and schedules are faithfully observed, while the results improve the living standards and create more jobs for the economically active population in such regions.

As distinct from the European countries the RF has not yet made its target programs an efficient instrument of its regional policies—they are still mere declarations. There is no consistent information about the political and socioeconomic development of the Chechen Republic in recent years. Even though the statistical service of the CR has been functioning since 2002 there are too many gaps in the graphs related to Chechnia, which means that information either does not reach the Center or is merely ignored. In fact, the republic’s statistical service leaves much to be desired: the summary statistical material On the Socioeconomic Situation and the Progress of Restoration Works in the Chechen Re-public for the Year 2003 (the Construction-Restoration Works section) was based on the figures sup-plied by the RF State Committee for Statistics that received them from the corresponding federal ministries and departments. The figures look doubtful to say the least. I am not talking about the money (4,234.9 million rubles) spent. My doubts about the restored facilities are based on independent assessments by those who saw the progress of restoration works with their own eyes. This says that the status of the CR services responsible for gathering and summing up statistical data and presenting them on time to the RF State Committee for Statistics should be elevated.

It is the Federal Center that is responsible for Chechnia’s future and its real integration into the country’s political and socioeconomic system; the Center is carrying out this policy in the republic and the Southern Federal Okrug (SFO) as a whole. Today, real peace and stability in Chechnia, an indispensable condition for its successful development, depend on the Center, which makes forecasts of its policies in the republic extremely important. Today, this trend is coming to the fore at the expense of forecasts of Chechnia’s development based on the republic’s endogenous factors and its potential. Indeed, political processes in Chechnia and its real integration into the country’s political system is a painful and contradictory process. There is no adequate law enforcement system, the human rights are not observed, there is no stability and even less personal security in the republic, as well as there is no respect for the constitutional rights of citizens in the republic.