Compare this to the UK. When Scottish devolution prompted new calls for England to have its own parliament, the disparity between England and the rest was advanced as the main reason why not. England’s dominance was so great, it was argued, that the UK could never be a genuine federation along the lines of, say, Germany. England’s Parliament was Westminster, even if it was shared.
When the calls could no longer be ignored, the then Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, proposed a compromise that entailed a more federated national structure with regional assemblies for England. This, however, was roundly rebuffed by the North East, which had been designated the pioneer. This looked less like representation for England than divide and rule. Devolution has been limited to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to this day.
The fate of the Soviet Union stands as a salutary example of what could happen next, and why David Lidington’s warning about the attitude of the English to the Union is so apposite. For break-up is not only about separatism at the periphery. It is also about the capacity, even the will, of the centre to hold.
The collapse of the Soviet Union is commonly ascribed to the unsustainability of the planned economy, the iniquities of Soviet communism, incipient bankruptcy forced by the USSR’s (vain) effort to keep up with the United States militarily, and growing separatism in some (but not all) of the constituent republics. Often disregarded, though, is another factor that played a big, even decisive, role: the frustrated national sentiment of the Russian majority.
Far from feeling privileged, many Russians felt that the other – mostly poorer – republics were a drag on their own well-being and development. A Rand Corporation report of 1991, published before the Soviet collapse, identified “a strong movement for self-assertion among the Russian people” and saw some of the writing on the wall.
Boris Yeltsin, the quintessential Russian in so many ways, gave voice to that resentment. He rode the wave of Russian aspiration, claiming the chairmanship of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet (a hitherto toothless legislature) in 1990 and winning the new post of President of the RFSFR a year later in a direct election. The RSFSR also set up its own Communist Party structure. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union was no more.
In championing the interests of the Russian Republic, Yeltsin found himself challenging, and then destroying, central, Soviet power. But this happened not just because of his force of character – though that was a consideration. It was also the reality that Russia could never be just one constituent republic of a genuine federation, or even first among equals. It was too big and too dominant in every way.
Within months of the RFSFR Supreme Soviet gaining real, in theory devolved, power, Russia’s new and revamped institutions were vying for precedence with their Soviet equivalents. Through the autumn of 1991, sections of power transferred almost by the day from the Soviet organs of state to those of Russia. Key personnel and money followed.
We have not yet reached that situation of dual, rival power in the UK, in part because England does not have the institutions that might allow it to realise its ambitions. But just as the part played in the Soviet break-up by frustrated Russian nationalism should not be underestimated, nor should the extent to which Brexit has been an English phenomenon, representing frustrated English national sentiment at not having its own institutional voice, unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Not to be underestimated either is the part in the Soviet break-up that was played by Russians’ indifference towards the Union. There came a point when Russia, as the dominant republic of a lop-sided federation, whose citizens felt they had been neglected by the centre and milked by the periphery for decades, lacked the will to keep the federal show on the road.
Brexiteers might note that the story of post-Soviet Russia has been the story of Russia’s national rebirth, with all the pluses and minuses that entails.
The English voice in the Brexit process might have been muted, but very similar forces are in play: unrepresentative state structures, a lop-sided devolution and an aggrieved majority. Giving the Russian Republic real devolved power contributed directly to the Soviet collapse. But not doing so is unlikely to have saved the Union, because by then Russia was – to use David Lidington’s word – profoundly “indifferent”, if not actually hostile, to keeping the Union intact.
This, quite as much as any move by Scotland or Northern Ireland to leave, is what could precipitate the break-up of the United Kingdom, too.
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