Unification of regions: who should wait, and who should be afraid

Novye Izvestia tried to figure out why the topic of the merger of territories and regions of our country has again become one of the main topics in the information field.

Victoria Pavlova

“I think we need to enlarge the regions - once. And second, you have to go to the agglomeration”, - said Marat Khusnullin at a roundtable at the Higher School of Economics. In his opinion, the Jewish Autonomous Region should be united with the Khabarovsk Territory in order to optimize the labor costs of the government, and the Kurgan Region with the Tyumen Region, in order to improve the living standards of the Kurgan population. Soon there was an official statement that such proposals were not considered in the government, and then Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin did not exclude the possibility of enlarging the regions - the main thing is that people want it.

So, in theory, the unification of regions is possible, but in practice, their implementation may face a lot of problems. The authorities, according to the "source in United Russia", already fear the potential strengthening of the governors of the future new united regions and regional separatism.

Ilya Grashchenkov, a political scientist and president of the Center for Regional Policy, told in an interview with NI how the unification of regions "according to science" might look like, what are the advantages in this process and, on the contrary, pitfalls.

To what extent, in your opinion, can we expect any real actions to start reforming the management structure, or is it just another information injection, will they talk and stop?

- There can be three options. First: Khusnullin made this statement on his own, rather unexpectedly, and without coordinating with anyone, as a private initiative. Second: this is a Kremlin-planned story, designed to distract everyone from some real problems. Instead of the economy, everyone will begin to discuss whether Mari El will suffer from the unification with Tatarstan. Well, the third option is that there is a certain reform plan (and it really exists and has been discussed for a long time) in the Government. And the time has come to implement this plan according to the calendar. It happens - it just coincided with the elections, with the story with Navalny, economic and other problems... Everyone is trying to somehow connect and pull these things together, but in fact there is no link - it's just time for officials to reform the management structure.

What, first of all, can be the advantages of such a unification of regions?

- On the one hand, the main motive for the consolidation of regions is the reduction of the bureaucratic apparatus. On the other hand, if we enlarge the borders of the region, this does not mean at all that our costs for municipal and local government are falling. The number of people in the field is still not decreasing. Therefore, usually the consolidation of regions is accompanied by the consolidation of some assets. That is, first of all, you need to look at the regional budgets: what can be combined and who will manage this consolidated budget. Khusnullin, in fact, started with this - he said that he was not interested in working with the Jewish Autonomous Region, because there are only a few hundred thousand inhabitants there, this is roughly like one of the districts of Moscow. What kind of regional development can we talk about here? And if we consider the territory, for example, within the framework of the Khabarovsk Territory, then it is already possible to work with such budgets. I would rather speak not about the unification of regions, but about the strategic unification of macro-investment regions.

Why, then, does the unification not take place in this particular format? What's in the way?

- Take, for example, the construction industry. What prevents the investment program of construction from being taken into a separate project, which will be supervised by some national project within the framework of a whole bush - the same Jewish Autonomous Okrug, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Birobidzhan, and so on? And what prevents those who want it within the regional framework (for example, in the same region of the Jewish Autonomous Region) to invest their personal money for construction? These are two parallel stories. In the end, if we now turn to modern process control systems, then they are exactly the same - there are some global ones, there are more local ones. They can be mixed. But for some reason everyone is agitated by this Soviet Stalinist story "let's merge everyone." We have many so-called identities and they are all afraid of getting lost. Let us recall the story of the Moscow region: several years ago it was proposed to unite part of the region with Moscow, and partly to join the Smolensk and Tver regions. And immediately it began: “we don’t want to go to Moscow, what if our relatives in Khimki will not be like that” and so on ... Even Moscow's preferences do not always impress people, as opposed to the question of identity.

In which regions can these very identity problems manifest themselves most clearly, as well as interethnic conflicts in the event of a merger?

- In fact, this fear of conflict is somewhat exaggerated. Let's take an example from the immediate past. 2008 year. The unification of the Chita region into the Trans-Baikal Territory, which included the Buryat Ust-Ordynsky District. Are the Buryats there somehow infringed upon now in Transbaikalia in comparison with the Irkutsk region? And there is also the Republic of Buryatia nearby. So the absorption of the Buryats did not take place. They exist there within the framework of this autonomous region. As, for example, within the framework of Kamchatka, the Koryak Autonomous Okrug has existed since 2008. As they lived, they live. There is no destruction. But there really is a fear that you will be joined. For example, along the same Khusnulli line, there is already a conflict - Tataria and nearby Bashkiria. Try to unite Tatarstan with Bashkiria. But fear here is more likely at a semantic level, at the level of a symbol. Although in reality there are hardly any threats.

Peskov said that the unification of the regions is possible, but this desire should come from the residents themselves. What do you think he meant and what might it signal?

- I think there is a decision to reconsider the approach itself. Let us recall the sad experience when the Arkhangelsk region and the NAO wanted to unite, and they began to prepare a referendum. So this was exactly the decision of the officials, and the people sharply rebelled against it. A conflict began - first of all, from the small but rich NAO, which decided that they wanted to take their money away, and level them out as part of this Arkhangelsk region. And all this union was canceled. And now Peskov can say that other formats are needed: gather some committee of small nationalities, honorary citizens and some other opinion leaders. It is clear that they are all affiliated with the government, but nevertheless. Thus, responsibility is shifted. If people dissatisfied go out into the street, they will already be told - well, what did you do, you yourself have decided, in any case, these are your representatives ...

Will unification really help raise the level of lagging regions without harming the leading regions? Are there any examples of regions that, after unification and loss of autonomy, will generally be forgotten, lose support and fall into depression?

- It's not always the same. The most striking example is the annexation of territories to the capital. Has something changed for them or not? Everyone expected that Troitsk would live like a district of Moscow. How did it get better in reality? Unclear. Or the example of Koryakia and Kamchatka. Koryakia became the periphery of Kamchatka. The new governor, Solodov, said that he wanted to abolish the Koryak representation in the government (there was such a government of the Koryak people there), the Koryaks were afraid that they would not be able to reach the regional authorities at all. The fear is understandable - instead of raising the standard of living, you will simply become the periphery of a stronger region. So it is with the example of Kurgan and Tyumen. If earlier, for example, it was possible to come to Kurgan to see Shumkov to solve problems, now it is already necessary to go to Tyumen ... If, for example, the same Tyumen is interested in investing in the development of new territories, then it will be good. But if this is a simple burden, if Tyumen is told: "Give money to Kurgan, because he is now yours," then Tyumen can say "but we ourselves do not have enough". And that's all. It turns out that in Kurgan, at best, nothing will change, and at worst, on the contrary, they will stop throwing money from the center like a depressed region.

That is, globally, nothing good will come of it if all these mergers take place for the sake of simplifying management and it is unlikely that anyone will calculate the risks and consequences for each region?

- If we consider it pointless - just unification for the sake of unification, then yes. But there is a concept of spatial development. It says that most of Russia in general today senselessly exists in those coordinates that remained as a legacy of the USSR. There were some cities in which something was mined before... now they are not. But the territory remained, and people there conditionally somehow feed, so that they just stay there, occupy these territories. But in reality they are no longer needed there. Spatial development is about how who can be combined with real benefits for everyone. Here we extract, here we process, here we have a financial center, and here we have a logistical leverage, here we invest. Then there will be some kind of logic in this whole process.