Post-Soviet Territorial Autonomy – Why So Resilient?

Abstract

The article considers the reasons why most territorial autonomies in Northern Eurasia have survived to date after the Soviet Union’s collapse despite authoritarian rule, homogenizing policies, and national elites’ sceptical attitudes towards ethnic and regional particularism. The author highlights the insufficiency of the existing explanatory frameworks resting on the notions of path dependence, contentious politics, sham arrangements, and political informality. The article seeks to offer a new supplementary perspective through analyzing autonomy arrangements in the framework of governmentality, depoliticization, and consent-based rule. The article’s point of departure is that Soviet territorial autonomy was a complex institutional setting that generated ambiguous and eclectic narratives coupled with durable routines of governance. During the USSR’s demise and the turn to public politics, these organizational and discursive forms demonstrated endurance. The further overview of functionable autonomy arrangements in seven countries shows similar dynamics and patterns independent of authoritarian or pluralist environment. The author concludes that these common features can be addressed as the overall societal reluctance to engage in contentious politics in favor of post-political technocratic rule. Concurrently, the formal recognition of territorial autonomy serves as a minimal necessary condition for the societal consent about the basics.