After the Deluge: Regional Crises and Political Consolidation in Russia by Daniel S. s> Treisman (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 779 Treisman, Daniel S. AftertheDeluge.Regional Crises andPoliticalConsolidation in Russia.Universityof Michigan Press,Ann Arbor,MI, 200I. Xii+ 262 pp. Figures.Tables.Notes. Bibliography.Appendices.Index. $2 I.95: ,I 5.50 (paperback). WHAT was obviously an impressive PhD thesis has been transformedinto a quite successfulmonograph and perhaps something more. It addressessome interesting and important issues: namely, why did the Russian Federation, afterthe cataclysmiccollapseof the SovietUnion alongethnic-territoriallines, manage to hold togetherthroughthe stressesof radicaleconomic andpolitical reform? In its ethno-territorial subdivisions and the great diversity and territorialdispersion of its eighty-nine component units, it seemed to mirror its Soviet predecessor, yet President Yeltsin succeeded in avoiding the fragmentationthat many had predictedin the early Iggos. By a clever tour deforce of multiple and logistic regressionanalysis,as well as some judicious qualitative commentaries, Treisman dismisses (rather too facilelyat times)a number of common-sensicalexplanatoryhypothesesfor an alternative explanatory factor which he calls 'selective fiscal appeasement'; that is, buying off the potential secessionistforces by targeted fiscal rewards. What makes the findings especially interesting is that Yeltsin directed the meagre fiscal and other financial enticements not at the most loyal regional leaders but at those most demonstrativelythreatening to secede or otherwise to ignore the requirementsof federal integrity.In short, the author confirms the validityin the chaotic conditions of post-Soviet Russiaof the old Politics I principle that 'the squeakywheel gets the grease'. Yeltsin'sproblem was that therewas not enough 'grease'to go around,so it had to be carefullyrationed. Treisman arguesthat Yeltsin'sflexibilityand bargainingskillin buying the compliance and quiescence of the dissidentrepublicand provincialleadersat a time when the Russian military and police forces were too weak and disorganizedto mount a more assertivedefence of the Federationwere what really held the country together until the economic and political reformshad a chance to establishand institutionalizethemselvesand the organsof law and order were brought up to speed. By the mid-iggos, the great majorityof the regional leaders were convinced (especially after the showdown with parliament in September I993) of the inutilityof antagonizingthe centre. The author is a bit discomfitedby the special case of DjokharDudaev and his fight for the independence of Chechnya. For Dudaev, who had enjoyed the benefits of Yeltsin's largesse since i 99I, the payoff from independence evidentlylooked considerablybetterthanfrom'fiscalappeasement'.Treisman thinks the war in Chechnya was a mistake on Yeltsin'spart a failure of imagination, so to speak. However, subsequent events suggest that from the standpointof Russianleaderslookingto keepthe RussianFederationtogether, therewas no acceptable alternative. This lastpoint raisesa seriousproblem of the book. It was ostensiblysigned off for publication no later than the firsthalf of I998 before the economic collapse of I7 August that year, the subsequent revival of the economy, the advent of Yeltsin'schosen successor,VladimirPutin, and the beginning of the second war in Chechnya. That is, the publication process took three years, 780 SEER, 8o, 4, 2002 during which the Russian Federationbecame quite a differentcountry, with different domestic and foreign policy parameters to those analysed by Treisman.That is certainlynot his faultbut thepublisher's. There are otherproblemswith the book and its often obtrusivereliance on statistical techniques. Treisman uses these to argue that Russia's new democratic electoral norms have become a major factor in compelling regionalleadersto accept 'fiscalappeasement'fromMoscow: that is, pressure for compliance comes from below. Most of the anecdotal evidence suggests, however, thatit is the local leaderswho are able to manipulatepublicopinion, primarilythroughtheircontrol of the local media as well as the distributionof financial benefits, rather than acting as 'dependent variables'. By the use of content analysis of the regional press, Treisman might have been able to designregressionequationsto testthisflow of influence.In general,he ignores the role of the media and the use of 'hired PR guns' to influence political behaviour, for example in the remarkable turnabout in Yeltsin's electoral fortunesin I996. Chapter six representsan admirable effortto apply the lessons of Russia's success in holding together to explain the failure of integrative attempts in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the USSR, the other major examples of multi-ethnic federations. He concludes, quite rightly, that there was little potential for 'selectivefiscalappeasement'in these cases. In the firstand third cases the ethnic centrifugal forces were considerably stronger than in the Russian case (ethnic Russian accounting for more than...