Известия высших учебных заведений. Поволжский регион: Общественные науки (Apr 2023)
Federalization of post-autocratic Russia on its western borders and in the central European part (historical and state analysis)
Abstract
Background. The federal organization of the state has its pros and cons, which largely allow us to analyze the history of the formation of federations. Among the latter, the experience of the formation of the USSR, whose 100th anniversary is celebrated in Decem-ber 2022, is of great interest. Materials and methods. An analytical review of the events that took place on the western borders and in the central European part of the former Rus-sian Empire is presented. The article examines the materials not only in the historical and factual plane, but also through the prism of numerous factors – foreign and domestic, socio-economic, ethno-cultural and others. The authors proceed from the assumption of the tradi-tional excessive concentration of the Russian elites in the western direction. Results. The article states the lack of desire and incentives for a deep territorial and organizational re-form of autocratic Russia. At the same time, the obvious weakness and instability of the Provisional Government prevented it from moving forward along the path of optimizing domestic relations. As a result, after the October Revolution of 1917, the former Russian Empire got rid of its most problematic or ethnically alien units – Poland, the Baltic states. At the same time, the new government had to enter into a sharp struggle for Ukraine, an ethnically close territory with a complex national composition and a thin aggressive nation-alist stratum. The temporary German occupation and the regime of Hetman Skoropadsky complicated the alignment of political forces, and the inglorious retreat of the German troops saturated Ukraine with weapons and additionally dragged out the Civil War, as well as the successes of the White movement. The offensive of the White Poles and the right-wing nationalist S. Petlyura became the final chord of the confrontation in 1920. The dura-tion of the struggle for Ukraine prompted the Bolsheviks to make unnecessary concessions to the nationalist forces, which became a strategic mistake. This was not allowed in Belarus because of its great compactness and unambiguous internal political situation, the weakness of local nationalism. Conclusions. The authors come to the conclusion that the western lands remaining in association with Soviet Russia – Ukraine and Belarus, closely adjoined (economically, socially and culturally) to the original Russian lands, from which Muscovite Rus was formed in the 14th–16th centuries. The core of the RSFSR, and later the USSR, was made up of areas with unconditional Russian dominance. The first phase of proto-federalization (1917–1920), highlighted in the article, became a necessary launching pad for the subsequent phase (1921–1922), during which the spontaneously formed allied rela-tions were subjected to streamlining, and subsequently to constitutional consolidation.
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