Russia Should Divest Western Parts and Move Capital to Siberia

 

A while ago I wrote an article about how to divide Russia into several independent states. Such division would allow newly independent states to actually grow and develop. Moscow central control keeps most of the country undeveloped and unable to reach its potential. There I suggested that current elites should be left in charge of Siberia as they do nothing else buy live off resource export.

However, that plan is possibly tad too ambitious. It would be good for the people involved but Moscow elites are unlikely to agree to that as that will leave them too small and weak. They do like to envision themselves as superpower, not a country with less people than Canada.

Thus, I decided to modify the plan and reduce its scope. I will also bring arguments on why such divestment will be beneficial to these resource extracting elites.

Rules for Rulers Video, that I so often like to reference in many of my blogs, have this to say about dictatorships and democracies. Both wealthiest democracies and most backward dictatorships are very stable, however in between them lies valley of instability and revolution. Grey further mentioned that if people in a dictatorship become somewhat educates and somewhat connected, they get every reason and opportunity to revolt against dictatorship.

 

The stable kind of dictatorship something, you possibly never heard of, like Equatorial Guinea. Yet this country is very wealthy with its huge for its size oil reserves. The entire economy consists of just oil extraction, It's a literal country with just two roads, one from presidential palace to airport and other from oil rigs to port. President and ruling family lives in unheard luxury, while general population, completely disconnected from its state, does not know what electricity is, much less democracy or revolution.

Russia currently is near the bottom of this valley of revolution. All Russian allies are in the same situation. Belarus, Iran, China, North Korea, Syria during Bashir Assad all share the same traits that puts them in the bottom of the valley. These countries have both highly educated and connected to the world populations in capitals and key cities. At the same time, they have backward disconnected stuck in pre-19th century lifestyle people spread across the vast space. 

While backward scattered people can effectively be governed by a dictatorship, educated key cities people could not. That is why every of the abovementioned countries struggle with security and each of these dictators so afraid of another uprising or a civil war that will kick them out like it did to Bashar Assad, less than a year ago. In 2020 that almost happened to Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Belarus, and in 2012 to Putin himself. 

Nowadays Putin wages war in Ukraine, partly triggered by Euromaidan revolution that overthrew Yanukovych in favor of democracy. The only reason Putin cares about Ukraine is because he is afraid to end up just like Yanukovych. All his and Russian foreign and domestic policy is geared to protecting themselves from a revolution they see coming.

That approach is fundamentally flawed. You cannot undo democracy and democratic leaning of people. You cannot govern democratic minded people in autocratic way without risks. History teaches just that. Bourbon Restoration did not eliminate liberal ideas from France, despite Russian, Austrian and Prussian wishes. Both former Astria and Prussia and most of the Europe is now democratic and liberal. Liberal ideas move east as certain as Sun moves the sky and are just as unstoppable. Attempts to stop or undo them are fundamentally impossible. The only outcome of such efforts will be eventual revolution.

War against newly established democracies is even worse. Conquered democratized lands will spread its ideas to the rest of the country and make regime even more unstable. Even if Russian in Crimea celebrate "reunification with Russia" now, they will be grounds for future instability. People that got used to having their opinions and wishes heard, will not just roll over when Putin suddenly does something they do not like.

Fundamentally a modern 21st century connected man and pre-19th century backward one, cannot be governed in the same way. They each need their own state that is run the way they understand and support. If kept in the same state, they will fight each other for control and there will always be instability. 

There is only one way for a dictatorship to become more stable and move back from the valley of revolution closer to Equatorial Guinea levels of stability. That is to cede liberal areas into an independent nation or several. 

Without Moscow Russia will be much a more stable dictatorship, just Iran's regime will not experience protests if Tehran was not part of it. For China, Hong Kong and Shanghai are much bigger issues than Beijing, but fundamentally China does not have enough resources to continue as a dictatorship.

For Russia situation is much easier in that regard. Most of Russian wealth comes from oil and gas that is located in Siberia. On the other hand, most of Russian instability comes from Moscow and St Petersburg, that is far from Siberia. This moving capital to Yekaterinburg or Novosibirsk and divesting Moscow and other western regions will solve all of Moscow's problems.

Unlike my original proposal there is no need to go all the way to Urals. Most of Volga River areas can be kept under the Russian state, that will keep population levels high and allow manning of the military. Just areas close to Moscow as well as those bordering Ukraine or Baltic states have to be divested. A Don River State, Muscovy and St Petersburg area state will together create a buffer between EU and remainder of Russia. 

Border between divested states and the rest of Russia has to be drawn over low population areas to avoid strong economic connections across border. There should be freedom of navigation on Don and Russia can retain sovereign usage of pipelines.

Historical experience proves my point. Russian wealth and importance came not from conquests but from wealth Siberia produced: fur back then and oil and gas now. Conquests only followed and were done mostly for vanity reasons such as uniting Rus or reclaiming Constantinople. 

Russian exploration of Siberia was for the most part smooth conflict free affair. In contrast Westward expansion was always rife with conflict and instability. The further Russia pushes west, the more resistance it faces. In better days Russia could just fight Poles and other opponents, but these days have long gone. Russia lost a lot of lands already and is about to lose it all if it does not pre-empt events. Divest liberals before they overthrow the government.

Fundamentally it was a mistake for Russia to conquer Novgorodian republic, that was a member of Hanseatic Trade League. Because of this conquest liberal ideas have spread in Moscow and other parts of Russia. Strife and disagreements between democratic minded descendants of Novgorodians and autocratic Muscovites continue to this day. Fundamentally Novgorodian interests lie west, and Muscovite lie east, that is why they will never understand each other or get along.

There were many successful examples of moving capitals and divesting territories. For example, Roman Emperors did moved capital from Rome to Constantinople and then abandoned the former to its fate. It abandoned Italy and all of its original lands. New Byzantine Rome managed to survive another 1000 years thanks to that. Russia can do that too or stay as it is and wait inevitable liberal revolution. 

In current war in Ukraine Russia fights for control over unprofitable economically depressed regions. They will not add any wealth or stability to Russian state. Even a temporary boost in popularity will eventually be erased by expectation of prosperity from newly conquered regions. They love for Putin and Russia will soon evaporate if their standards of living will not improve. They will start looking west and add to the discontent that is already there.

Ukrainians, who fight for freedom from tyranny, fight much better than Russians who were forced to the frontlines by dictator's abusive power. Tyranny cannot win against democracy.

There is one final reason why Russia cannot neglect Siberia any longer. China has surplus of people who need place to live and shortage of land and resources. All these problems can be solved by taking Siberia away from Russia and colonizing it themselves. Russia will lose everything to China if it does nothing.

Russia is at a threshold now, it can either streamline and divest lands to stay autocratic resource extracting state or do nothing and wait until eventual liberal revolution will put it on the same path as Ukraine. Time to make decision is running out.