A GENETIC URGE TO BE INDEPENDENT

Any state entity must have a legislation and, even better, a Constitution. If such an entity is part of another, bigger state, as is the case with Tatarstan, some conflicts of laws become inevitable. President Putin has recently issued a decree concerning the establishment of a commission to «prepare proposals for amendments to be made in the treaty signed by the Russian Federation and the Republic of Tatarstan concerning the delimitation of terms of reference and the mutual delegation of powers between government authorities of the Russian Federation and government authorities of the Republic of Tatarstan». Marat Galeev, member of the above commission, member of parliament of the Republic of Tatarstan and member of the Presidence of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan, has granted an interview to «Ogonyok» to comment on the present state of relations between Russia and Tatarstan

A GENETIC URGE TO BE INDEPENDENT

— What are today the main issues where there is discord between Russia and Tatarstan?

— They have mostly to do with official status. First, it is important to remember how did Russia develop its official status as a State. It all began on 12 June 1990 when the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, which was then an administrative unit of the USSR, adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Russia. Forty five days later Tatarstan adopted a similar declaration of its own. These two documents did not fit together. On 13 August 1991, delegations of Russia and Tatarstan started negotiations and eventually signed a protocol confirming that relations between us will be governed by written agreements. During that period both Russia and Tatarstan declared sovereignty and elected their Presidents. To legitimize its status, Russia also held a national referendum that confirmed the establishment of a Presidency in Russia. But Tatarstan did not take part in this referendum. It chose not to participate either to the elections of Russian President, because it was all happening in the USSR which also had a President, and our people thought that Gorbachev and our President were all we needed. Fox the next two years, negotiations were re-started several times. In the meantime, a conflict was growing between different branches of government at federal level. The Supreme Soviet was drafting more than one thousand amendments to the Constitution, and many of them were contradicting each other. Another referendum was held to give a vote of confidence to the President and the Supreme Soviet of Russia. Again, we did not participate. The conflict finally exploded, and the infighting led to the abolishment of parliament and of the Constitution. A new Constitution was already being drafted by a Constitutional assembly established in 1993. We were part of it, but none of our proposals were ever accepted, so eventually we had to withdraw from it. Our people later refused to participate to the national referendum which approved the present Russian Constitution. As a result, Tatarstan, in a way, was left outside of the legal framework of Russia, and this obviously prompted Moscow to re-start the negotiations. But before that, in 1992, Burbulis came up with the idea that a referendum was also needed in Tatarstan to confirm that our people were indeed supporting our declaration of sovereignty, so we held one, about self-determination. The question people had to answer dealt with three parts: own statehood, full status under international law and relations governed by treaties with Russia. In autumn of 1992, we also adopted our new Constitution that said, among other things, that we would have a treaty with Russia, even though there was still no such written agreement between us and its nature was not yet clearly defined. Earlier that year, in February, all members of the Russian Federation except Tatarstan signed the federation treaty that formalized the Russian Federation as a State after the collapse of the USSR. Because Tatarstan did not sign this treaty and did not participate to all related referendums and elections, it remained not bound by it. So Moscow had to quickly negotiate a solution with us, and two months later we signed our treaty.

In essence, we recognized Russian Constitution and Russia recognized ours. Thus Russian Constitution in Tatarstan was legitimized by this treaty, not by a referendum like in the rest of Russia. Therefore, this treaty establishes the statehood of Russia and Tatarstan and the special relationship between the two that does not exist with other members of the federation. The treaty shows the delimitation of powers between Russia and Tatarstan, and where powers are delegated to the federal center Russian Constitution has priority; where powers are left with us, our own Constitution is the law.

During all the 12 years of our contemporary history, our position in all these matters has been clear and openly stated. We did not hold any secrets, and we never changed our attitudes. In Russia, on the contrary, legislators passed many laws that for some reason did not take into account our treaty. They were pushing through, like bulldozers, law after law that prescribed more and more power to the central authority and restricted still further those left to the provinces, even beyond the limits set by the Russian Constitution.

— What kind of laws do you think Russia needs?

— Everything in Russia is so diversified, and realistically laws can only set general frames. As an example, Ingushetia has a tradition of men having several wives. During his presidency, Aushev passed a law authorizing it, but then later Putin abolished this piece of legislation. Law or no law, up to this day, anything between 25 and 40 % of men in Ingushetia have two wives. They do have a different mentality and a different civilization there, and it must be taken into account. Claiming that they should nevertheless live under uniform federal laws that are in contradiction with their custom does no good to anyone. Yet since 1917, there was this illusion that all these different peoples must have one ideology and one law. When the system collapsed, everybody could see that values of different civilizations were different. In Moscow, they disregard this reality and still think that we are all the same. We can indeed have one set of rules for things like military service or taxation, but nothing else.

— As a result, we could end up being a confederation.

— So what? Does it really matter what we call ourselves? From a formal point of view, Switzerland is a confederation, but in practice it works much more like a federation. We don't have any experience of either, our only experience is of a unitary State. How do we know what will be the best for us? Moreover, Tatarstan will always remain with Russia, no matter what cultural differences there might be between us. There are also so many things which, historically, we have in common. And then, there are territorial realities and common threats from outside.

— What are you doing now to settle existing constitutional disagreements?

— We believe that there should be no conflicts between us and Moscow. We made substantial amendments to our Constitution, bringing it mostly in line with Russian Constitution. But we cannot change the will of our people, translated by the referendum on self-determination. It has priority over any law. Moreover, we have a binding treaty with indefinite validity, which cannot be invalidated unilaterally by any of the parties.

— On the other hand, to avoid conflicts, and given the specifics of present federal legislation, you do need to make respective changes in your laws that will be contrary to your referendum.

— True, and we are doing our best, as long as no harm is done to anyone. Showing this good will in our treaty, we delegate to federal authorities more powers than our Constitution provided for. The federal legislation, on the contrary, sometimes goes against our conciliatory amendments to the treaty. Under the treaty, in our economic relations with foreign countries, we have the right to deal direct with foreign States. The latest federal laws do not allow this. As a result, we are now on a collision course, and this worries us.

— Does the law forbid your participation in international relations?

— That is how the office of the Attorney General sees it, by simply checking our Constitution against federal laws. But we are talking about a political and legal process, and a Constitution is by definition more complex than just a law. Therefore a simple legal assessment by the Attorney General, which is not involved in political matters, is not what we need. Moscow must come to realize that in a unique country like Russia a uniform and rigid legal formula does not work.

— So the Attorney General is going too far?

— That is how I see it. We have agreed to have a civilized relationship, and we have signed a binding treaty. We also had our referendum and the expressed will of our people. No matter what they say or wish in Moscow, we cannot negate our peoples decision, it is our duty to uphold it. For this very reason, after we signed the treaty, we have stability and we are permanently among the three most attractive members of the Federation for foreign investors. Stability only comes as a result of a specific policy and hard work. We value these achievements, but Moscow does not want to hear about it. They say: «There is the Russian Constitution and enacted laws, so bring everything in conformity with them». You can't do that, not with Tatarstan. Why don't they see the special value of our treaty? Why don't they use it as an example of a working solution for conflicts? Tatarstan and Russia are the only members of the Federation that had statehood in their history. Understandably, Tatars have some sort of a genetic urge to be an independent state. If the logic of Putin's reforms is followed, we should forget about it, but we do not want to and we will not .

Mikhail DOVZHENKO