ACADEMIA Letters Local self-government in Russia as political fluctuation Michael Martynov, Surgut State University The Constitution of the Russian Federation, adopted in 1993, consolidated the principle of local self-government, confirming that its bodies are not part of the state power system. It was a very democratic constitution article, fully consistent with the letter and spirit of the European Charter of Local Self-Government. The following law “On General Principles of Organization of Local Self-Government” of 1995 would also enhance its independence. However, immediately after the establishment of local self-government, the history of its liquidation began. It lasted for a quarter of a century and finally got its rightful conclusion in the amendment to the Constitution of the Russian Federation adopted in 2020, which proposed to consider local self-government as the lowest level in the system of public power. A new draft law on local self-government, being currently under discussion (January 2022) in the Russian Parliament, will be undoubtedly adopted and will consolidate this stipulation. It reiterates that local government bodies are not part of the system of government. Meanwhile, since 2015, the practice of replacing direct elections of mayors with a procedure for their competitive selection has been introduced in the regions of the Russian Federation. The municipal representative body only approves the candidate proposed by the competition commission, the decisive right to vote in which belongs to the representatives of the region state power, and “this practically guarantees and makes it a purely formal election of the representative body of the municipal formation of the candidate proposed by the governor” (Babun 2016: 12). The adopted constitutional amendments consolidate this practice. According to Article 131 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, “government bodies may participate in the formation of local government bodies, the appointment and dismissal of local government officials”.1 1 The Constitution of the Russian Federation. URL. https://base.garant.ru/10103000/bc135384d63245a4e9bbcc133d372822/ Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Michael Martynov, martinov.mu@gmail.com Citation: Martynov, M. (2022). Local self-government in Russia as political fluctuation. Academia Letters, Article 4808. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4808. 1 This directly contradicts the theory of local self-government, where the principle of electing municipal leaders by the people is regarded as mandatory. The same principle is affirmed by the European Charter of Local Self-Government, emphasizing the state non-interference in the formation of government bodies (Articles 6 and 8). Thus, the governance in cities and districts, in fact, turns into the local level of government, but is referred to as local self-government. Such imitation of the activity of a democratic institution by its state substitute, in addition to moral and legal costs, has negative practical consequences as well (Korsun 2021: 99). Political science about the reasons for the involutionary development of the local self-government institution. The processes of degradation of local self-government in post-Soviet Russia are reflected in the scientific discourse. For publications by Russian and foreign authors at the initial stage of political reforms in Russia in the 1990s the idea of local self-government as an institution that plays a huge role in democratic transformations in Russia, was prevailing. That was supposed to be the future (Arato 1995: Borodkin 1997; Offerdal 1998; Gilmanov 1998). However, since the beginning of the 2000s the tone of the publications has been significantly changing. The adoption of a new edition of the law “On the General Principles of Organization of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation” in 2003 indicated a tendency for the state to increase its influence on the life of local communities. “In the process of regime transformations, local self-government, without becoming a widely demanded democratic institution, has again turned into a subordinate lower level of the system of state power,” one of the well-known political scientists sums up the development of the institution (Gelman 2007: 8). Those results turned out to be really disappointing. By the end of 2003 only 4000 out of 11482 municipalities were actually performing their functions (Kruzhkov 2004: 57). More and more often authors conclude that local governments are losing their autonomy (Pankevich 2016). High expectations from the development of local self-government are being replaced by pessimistic conclusions. For example, studies have shown “an extremely low level of citizens’ trust in local self-government bodies, which, in theory, should be the authorities closest to them” [Petukhov 2017: 61; see also: Petukhov 2020: 27-34]. The reasons for the involutionary development of local self-government as a political insti(date of request 10.01.2022). Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Michael Martynov, martinov.mu@gmail.com Citation: Martynov, M. (2022). Local self-government in Russia as political fluctuation. Academia Letters, Article 4808. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4808. 2 tution are not a secret. There is no doubt about its financial insolvency, economic and political dependence on the state budget, as a result of which “local government does not fulfill its immanent functions as an agent of the local community and instead has become an agent of state power, both federal and regional” (Turovsky: 2015: 35). Earlier, we also paid attention to the fact that, in addition to this financial insolvency of local self-government, it is even more important that it lacks a social base represented the “middle class”. Since the establishment of local self-government in post-Soviet Russia was hasty and was made as an attempt to build an artificial political institution over an inappropriate social basis, “the main financial and economic problem of today’s LSG is not inadequate budgetary provision. The problem is the economic insolvency of people…. All these costs for the economically insolvent people are borne by the local budget. We see that it is these expenses that absorb the lion’s share of the budget. Obviously, with such a huge load of funds, these budgets will always be insufficient…. This is an objective reality arising from the impossibility of the majority of the people to exist without outside support” (Martynov 2003: 52-53.). However, from the point of view of scientific relevance, the explanation of the reasons for the gradual drawdown of the institution of local self-government today is not so important. It is much more important to understand, not why it disappears, but why it occasionally appears in the political system of Russia, despite the absence of objective conditions for that. The reasons for the sporadic emergence of local self-government in the political system of Russia. An appeal to the files of the 1993 Constitutional meeting, when the Constitution of the Russian Federation was being discussed, including the article on local self-government, shows that even then experts opposed its inclusion in the final document, pointing out the lack of necessary objective conditions (Constitutional meeting 1995: 226, 257). However, the representatives of the President of the Russian Federation B. Yeltsin lobbied for the inclusion of an article on local self-government in the constitution. To understand the reasons for this, one should consider the political situation in 1993. It was a time of confrontation between the two branches of power - the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation, on the one hand, and the presidential power of Boris Yeltsin, on the other. It was managing the privatization process the two parties were competing for. In other words, huge state property was the prize in the struggle. It would seem that the Supreme Council had an advantage in the regions in the form of support from the local Councils, the system of which it then headed. It was a powerful force, Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Michael Martynov, martinov.mu@gmail.com Citation: Martynov, M. (2022). Local self-government in Russia as political fluctuation. Academia Letters, Article 4808. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4808. 3 with about a million of officials in its ranks who controlled the situation on the ground. But it was them that B. Yeltsin managed to lure over to his side, promising to participate in the privatization and sharing of the “pie” of state property. The guarantee of this participation was the replacement of the former vertical of state authority at the local level with the institution of local self-government. This institution took local officials out of control from the top, making them independent from the state, and there had never been any control from below on the part of people. The officials themselves smoothly moved from local councils to the offices of municipal administrations. Public organizations created by them at that time, receiving the name “associations of cities”, became a political instrument that expressed their interests. On the eve of the referendum on the constitution, one of the leaders of such an association expressed their political interest very accurately: “Russian cities are ready to support the government that will make the development and strengthening of the self-government system its policy even without a referendum,” (Kiseleva 1993: 2). After the coup of October 1993, which led to the liquidation of the Supreme Council, the political need for support from the municipal authorities began to weaken. Moreover, conflicts between the heads of capital cities and governors, who gained strength, began. The pages of newspapers of the second half of the 1990s are full of descriptions of such conflicts. In these conflicts, the central government eventually took the side of the governors, from then on making local self-government a “bargaining chip” in a new political game. Thus, the fate of local self-government as an independent economic and political force was sealed. The following legislative innovations, up to the amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 2020 and the novelties of the current draft law on the organization of local selfgovernment are only acts fixing the enforcement of this sentence. If we turn to the earlier pages of the establishment of local self-government in Russia, we will be convinced that all three previous attempts to create it - by Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century, Peter the Great in the 18th century and the formation of the “Zemstvo” institution in the 19th century, were also of a situational political nature. The emergence of local self-government in the political history of Russia was so sporadic, and its existence turned out to be so unsustainable, that it is justified to use the metaphor “political fluctuation” to designate it in the political system. Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Michael Martynov, martinov.mu@gmail.com Citation: Martynov, M. (2022). Local self-government in Russia as political fluctuation. Academia Letters, Article 4808. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4808. 4 References Arato, A. 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