Россия, 90-е годы: метаморфозы становящейся политии

Abstract

The article attempts to examine the era of the 1990s through the prism of communication in the system “center — regions”. The author interprets the epoch itself as a special, chaotic state of affairs. The political structures and instruments inherited by the new Russia from the Soviet times did not disappear, but lost their foundation (which corresponded to the model of Russian power described by Yuri Pivovarov), transformed into the mode of an autonomous drift along unauthorized trajectories. The new foundation (“the path of civilized countries”) came into conflict with the structures and instruments themselves. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the rejection of that foundation deprived the political center of its legitimacy, since it was perceived and legitimized as a driver of the transition from socialism into the world of “civilized countries”. The article shows that it was the space of dialogue (bargaining) between the center and the regions that combined the principles of the Russian power and a new legitimizing foundation stemming from the “civilized countries” The author identifies three stages of such a dialogue. During the first stage, there was no adaptation, and the dialogue ended with a violent confrontation. As a result, two parallel realities emerged — the reality of legal norms and declarations and the reality of survival. The second stage, labeled by the author as “taming Europe”, witnessed democratic procedures uniting with the practices of the Russian power and recreation of the distributive economy at the regional level. At the same time, the dual legitimacy of the regional rulers — from the regional community and from the federal center — bound the country’s territory much stronger than enforcement agencies or future “spiritual staples”. The last stage, which is usually considered to take place after the 1990s, is associated with the transfer of practices that have developed in the regions to the center. However, according to the author’s conclusion, this is not the end of the constituent era and the formation of the polity, but a continuation of the quest.