Bashkortostan: an outline for construction a new state

BashNatsPolit published a vision of the future structure of Bashkortostan proposed by a young Bashkir. The organization asks not to judge strictly, but to give your recommendations and advice on improving the program.

Today the opposition is doing nothing but scolding the authorities. Of course, I’m not saying that this work is not needed, all the crimes of the current authorities should be investigated, and the guilty should be punished. But few people talk about the alternative construction of the state, about how rich and successful Bashkortostan and all its inhabitants can be. People do not believe that our republic can be self-sufficient and developed, but I want to propose a plan to build a new order on the ruins of a dictatorship.

Sovereignty

The most important issue is the status of the republic. I am a supporter of building an independent Bashkortostan, with its own economy and international politics. I do not see a single chance for the return of the sovereignty of the 90s, as we see what the strengthening of the vertical of power leads to – it will simply start a new vicious circle: yes, at first we will have a new liberal head, we will develop and build democracy, and then suddenly there will be a new 98th, or a pandemic, or maybe a technological disaster or any other crisis that will inflame the revanchist sentiments of Russian imperialism, a new “strong leader” will come to power who, in conditions of free media, will speak harshly about this democratic leader, he will win elections in contrast and gradually establish a new authoritarian regime, and then corruption, censorship, war, devastation – and a new liberal democratic president? We don’t want to make the same mistakes and hope that things will be different this time.

Of course, Moscow will tearfully promise that this time we will create working democratic institutions that will create a balance of judicial, legislative and executive power, but enough, we do not believe it. Bashkortostan signed an agreement with the Moscow authorities three times – under Ivan the Terrible, under Lenin and under Yeltsin – and never Moscow kept its word. Historically, one can conclude that Russia cannot create a normal state, because of its size, it always breeds repression, wars and an unhappy population. As long as the power of one city over huge rich territories is maintained, imperialism will not die, it will create new dictators again and again.

Therefore, we demand independence and respect for the nation’s right to self-determination. Why, according to the logic of Russia, Crimea has the right to self-determination, while Bashkortostan, Tatarstan and Chechnya do not? In addition, after Russia loses the annexed territories of Ukraine (Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporozhye regions and Crimea), which, according to the Russian constitution, are part of the federation, why other territories that, according to the same constitution are part of the Russian Federation, do not have the right to leave the borders of Russia? This will create a dangerous precedent with a real threat to the existence of Russia as a single state.

In addition, from an economic point of view, there are much more prospects for an independent Bashkortostan in the world – at least it will not have to wait decades for sanctions to be lifted, Moscow will not need to constantly carry its wealth, it will not need to maintain a huge apparatus of power.

Form of government

At the very beginning, you need to clearly answer the question: what is a state? To put it simply, it is a body that defines laws, manages taxpayers’ money and resources. And it has only one task – to make the life of every citizen better today than yesterday. And this principle should be respected in power. I propose to introduce a maximum salary ceiling for government employees, and namely the minimum subsistence level, denoted by the letter P, will be determined, and the salary of officials will be equated to k*P, i.e.subsistence level multiplied by k, where k is coefficient, for example, equal to 2, i.e. the maximum salary of officials cannot be above 2 subsistence levels, which stimulates the work of officials really for the well-being of the people – after all, by increasing the subsistence level for the population, they themselves will also receive more.

Bashkortostan, of course, should be a parliamentary republic with its own democratic institutions. But any regime can slide into a dictatorship if one party has a majority in parliament. I propose to create 4 parties at once, namely:

• The Liberal Democratic Party
• The Party of environmentalists
• The Conservative Party
• The Party of business industrialists.

I am convinced that every resident of the Republic of Bashkortostan will be able to identify himself with one of these parties, and in the parliamentary elections (Kurultai) all parties will already have 13% in the legislative body even before the elections, and the voting will distribute the rest of the seats in parliament. Also, it will not be possible to sit in Kurultai more than 2 times.

In addition, each party nominates one candidate for the presidential elections, who is appointed only once per 6 years, you cannot run for position 2 times (in a row or not). In fact, this is a four-party government system of the state, where each party appoints certain ministers by intra-party voting. Let’s say the party of business industrialists will appoint a minister of trade and a minister of industry, and so each party has 3-4 of its ministers.

The winner of the presidential election becomes the President of the republic and he deals mostly with the international affairs of the state, the one who takes the second place automatically becomes the Prime Minister of Bashkortostan, the one who takes the third place becomes the Head of the Parliament of the republic, and the one who takes the fourth place becomes the Minister of Justice. In addition, independent authorities should be created from scratch, such as the prosecutor’s office, the court and the national bank of the republic. The conversation about the future political system can and should be continued, this is just a sketch, from what one can start.

Economy

Bashkortostan should restart the economy, press the reset button with the new launch parameters. The most basic is the nationalization of natural resources, the creation of a new currency, the introduction of an income taxation scale; in addition, we will buy back all loans from all banks in which the residents of Bashkortostan were given loans and repay them, this will stimulate the domestic economy greatly, and most importantly, a new program to support small and medium-sized businesses.

I consider it obligatory to pay attention to the point about creating own national currency. Bashkortostan, after the nationalization of natural resources, will be able to back up its new currency with gold, which will stabilize the exchange rate, and the republic will receive a development tool that will be controlled from Ufa.

For the first time, it will be necessary to impose duties on all products manufactured outside of Bashkortostan, which will allow domestic goods to be much more favorable on store shelves and, therefore, will stimulate the production and trade of local goods. We will also allow foreign investors and companies to enter the domestic market on favorable terms, which will create a huge number of new jobs and restart the economy.

This program will include a number of steps – from simplified registration of a new business for all residents and foreign investors, to preferential lending at 1-2% per annum with a yearly installment payment. Also, at first, a new business will be exempt from tax payments – all these measures will allow growing small and medium-sized business in greenhouse conditions, a business that will have to become a driver of the republic’s economy, providing millions of the republic’s residents with a stable income.

It is important for us that the new business survives at first, gets stronger, gets on its feet and starts to be profitable. I will refer to this program for supporting small and medium-sized businesses more than once.

Food security

Bashkortostan has huge agricultural capacities and livestock breeding potential. We can easily provide ourselves, and not only ourselves, with food in full. To do this, we will turn again to the above-described support program for small and medium-sized businesses. We will give start-up agricultural businesses the opportunity to cultivate fields, grow crops and work with livestock. We will allow taking advantageous loans with deferred payment and allocate land to those who want to build. We should simplify to a minimum the possibility of registering entrepreneurship from a bureaucratic point of view. Bashkortostan will be able to feed itself completely at its own expense, and we will also sell our products to other countries.

Energy

Bashkortostan is obliged to become a territory of clean energy in 10 years. We will also enable private companies to build wind, solar and hydroelectric power plants. We will fully support any private initiatives in clean energy issues, exempting them from paying taxes for decades. The state itself will create new hydroelectric power plants – fortunately, the geography of our region allows us to create a huge number of hydroelectric power plants and become completely energy independent.

I believe that Bashkortostan will become the center of ecological energy in the post-Russian space.

Education reform

Education in modern Russia leaves much to be desired – this evolved Soviet school of the 1950s and 1960s is hopelessly outdated in XXI century. I propose a large-scale education reform that will introduce completely new values ​​and subjects, new academic criteria, new approaches to education based on psychology, individualism and the interaction of man and modern technologies. We will divide education into compulsory and optional areas, and depending on the preferences of a student, he will study subjects in depth on electives, which will be directly supervised by universities. In turn, universities will rely on the needs of the market vacancies, which will allow a student educated in the republic to adapt very quickly and find a highly paid job in Bashkortostan.

Also, the language of instruction will vary from school to school – in Bashkortostan there will be schools in Bashkir, Russian, Tatar, English, Ukrainian and any other language that is desirable by the parents of students.

Children should love learning, and not be in constant stress, and teachers should become one of the most prestigious and well paid jobs in Bashkortostan.

Medicine

Doctors, along with teachers, fire departments and police, will become one of the highest paid jobs in the fourth republic. We will invest in modern medicine and delegate the production of medical equipment and drugs to private entrepreneurship under a program to support small and medium-sized businesses.

I don’t know much about medicine field – it would be dishonest for me to put forward some new revolutionary ideas on how to build medicine in the republic, but the state is obliged to invest a lot of money in maintaining and equipping hospitals.

I think that every hospital should acquire helicopters from Kumertau Aviation Plant, so that any appeal to the medical service, even from the most remote villages, can be provided with all the necessary assistance in a timely manner.

Army and police

Seeing today’s criminal war against Ukraine – Moscow authorities, having drawn all the regions into it, forced us to become an accomplice to these crimes, the punishment for which the Republic of Bashkortostan must certainly suffer – and so that this will never happen again, the fourth Republic will have its own independent contract army. We will focus on high-tech weapons and professionalism, and this army will be directly controlled by the parliament of the Republic of Bashkortostan, and not by the colonial empire with center in Moscow. As for the internal affairs bodies, the situation is more complicated: it’s no secret that today’s police is one of the most corrupt departments in Russia. And here we can turn to international experience, namely to Georgia. We will immediately dismiss all representatives of the internal affairs bodies and form a new police based on completely different values. Its backbone will be today’s partisan detachments operating on the territory of the Republic of Bashkortostan. It is in our power to create the police, at the sight of which ordinary citizens will not run away, but, on the contrary, will feel safe. We will introduce a new ranking system and will work on bringing to justice those who today loyally support fascism in Russia. Whether you are a propagandist, a minor official, a prosecutor or any official – if you think that you have a chance to live and work in peace after the regime change – you are mistaken, we will work closely with Ukraine to find and punish war criminals. Also, those who vehemently support z-patriotism today will be held accountable for justifying and agitating Putinism.

Large new construction and infrastructure

How many residents of Bashkortostan are forced to work on construction sites in the north, in Moscow, St. Petersburg or in other regions? This is a huge number of people, professionals who cannot find a decent job in the republic, at a time when our infrastructure, our roads, buildings, schools, hospitals are in a deplorable state. We will allow the creation of new construction companies that will be engaged in establishing the infrastructure of Bashkortostan. This is the construction of roads according to new standards, this is the construction of new bridges, residential areas with developed infrastructure. Each, who today is forced to work far from home will have a decent salary at home and opportunity to make the lives of their families comfortable. Bashkortostan will attract huge investments for the infrastructure, and will actively invest, making people’s lives comfortable and providing workers with high wages.

Electives for adults

In the new republic, the acute question will arise about the fact that many people will be lost in the new reality. And the government should take care of these people – we will need professional construction personnel, professional children’s coaches in various sports areas, professional employees of various businesses, and businessmen themselves.

So we will organize free electives in various areas with further employment and an individual approach for residents of all ages.

Pensions and pensioners

Pensions, of course, will be a heavy burden on the budget of the Republic of Bashkortostan. But we should ensure a decent life for our older generation. Pensions should be at a high level, which will be indexed to inflation every month. Also, for people of retirement age, it will be necessary to create new programs to support domestic tourism – this will finance tourism and medical industry at the expense of the state and give older people the opportunity to receive medical care and travel.

We have no right to leave pensioners to the mercy of fate, who in modern Russia are forced to survive by literally digging through the garbage. I believe that an indicator of the greatness of the state is the living standard of people of retirement age.

Tourism

Above, I have already outlined what kind of funding the tourism industry will receive from travel of people of retirement age, but, of course, tourism support in the republic will not be limited to this. The tourism potential of the republic is huge, we have amazing nature, we just need to develop everything together:

The Republic will introduce a strict high level of service and infrastructure, as well as allow private local and foreign companies to enter this market. We will conduct a marketing campaign to attract tourists from different countries to the republic, which will bring Bashkortostan to the forefront in tourism in 15-20 years and will bring, I am sure, the largest percentage of taxes to the republic’s budget.

Garbage and ecology

In part, the problem of garbage is interconnected with the problem of energy, since today there are technologies on earth thanks to which recycling of garbage can be converted into energy. An example of this is Norway, which, having processed all its garbage, buys it from Sweden and Denmark. We can initiate the arrival of this technology to the republic by creating profitable conditions for a Scandinavian company that will be able to implement its project in the republic, which will lead to the creation of new high-paid jobs and create a new energy system that we will introduce into the internal network of the republic.

Along with this, we will launch a large-scale propaganda against throwing garbage on the street and for the garbage separation. It will be necessary to equip the entire republic with collection points for separate garbage. We should leave clean air and the nature of our Motherland to our children.

Religion and society

All religions will coexist in peace and harmony on the territory of the fourth Republic of Bashkortostan. The state itself, of course, should be secular.

Above, I wrote about the reform of education – there I wrote about the introduction of new subjects, one of which will be a lesson on “religion and culture”, in which schoolchildren will study the history of different religions and their role in human life, cultivate respectful and tolerant attitude towards representatives of all religions and different cultures.

Bashkortostan has always been open to all nationalities and cultures and has developed religious tolerance and cosmopolitanism on its territory. I am sure, this is an indicator that all nationalities living in the republic will live in friendship and harmony.

Ufa

The biggest problem in Ufa is the number of cars in the city, the terrible infrastructure of urban transport and the impossibility of normal and safe movement of pedestrians. For such a city, of course, a new developed network of transport is needed – fast, inexpensive and eco-friendly. It is also necessary to stop the insane construction of buildings with a lot of people in the city – I am really surprised that people buy such housing without thinking that another 1000 people will live in this building with them, everyone has a car, everyone needs to go to work, to school, on business in the morning, but there is no normal infrastructure, often developers do not build a normal grounds, and the yards turn into one continuous parking lot and a dusty kingdom. Do not you yourselves mind living in such conditions? And if cockroaches appear in such buildings, then how to remove them from everywhere at once?

At a time when the whole world realized that low-rise construction is the most comfortable for life, Ufa is growing up, provoking new traffic jams, new problems for itself and the residents of the capital.

Therefore, the most important thing for the development of the city is to change its philosophy: it should be comfortable to live in the city, problems with the road infrastructure should be solved, and not getting worse. This, of course, concerns not only Ufa – the cities of the republic should become comfortable, convenient and attractive for life and investment.

Freedom Above All

Today we are witnesses to what totalitarianism leads to. We see that a huge number of people are persecuted simply because they do not agree with the regime. We see how journalists, activists, representatives of various minorities are made enemies of the people for their opinion.

We should educate future generations against dictatorship and guarantee pluralism of opinions. Without freedom there will be no development, without freedom we will  slide again into authoritarianism, war and devastation. But one need to fight and struggle for his freedom: if you are apolitical and amorphous, then totalitarianism will come, seize your freedom and send you to die.