COLUMN ONE : The Ethnic Patchwork Is Fraying : Among Russia’s 100-plus minorities, nationalist bluster runs high. Some fear the post-Communist country’s breakup. But one Tatar says, ‘I’m not worried. No single entity could survive on its own.’

On a tiny island at the confluence of the swollen Volga and Kama rivers stands a white pavilion built a century ago in tribute to Ivan the Terrible’s 1552 conquest of independent Tataria.

“When I was little, I used to dream of blowing up that monument, which seemed to me to glorify the Russian penchant to repress us,” recalls Tatar nationalist leader Marat A. Mulyukov.

“But now I think it should remain there,” he says with defiance, “as a reminder of the futility of efforts to deprive Tatars of their freedom.”

Mulyukov’s words resound with a bluster and rhetoric common in post-Communist Russia’s ethnic caldron, where more than 100 nationalities make up a population of 148 million--a human patchwork that spreads across 11 time zones and twice the territory of the United States.

Through centuries of conquests, annexations and expulsions, Russia has amassed arguably the most unwieldy federation on the planet. Ethnic diversity and geographic distance have conspired to create regional hot spots that pose serious threats to Russia’s claim to the borders that define it today.

Nationalist strivings for self-rule, economic incentives for locally managed development and ecologists’ demands for a freer hand to clean up the former Soviet Union’s poisoned environment are piling pressures on the evolving post-Communist leadership and increasingly calling into question whether the center will hold. A fracturing Russia would only contribute to the instability afflicting Eurasia and leave a weakened and resentful rump of predominantly Russian territory ruled by Moscow.

The federation’s future hinges on President Boris N. Yeltsin and his government fashioning a formula for unity strong enough to bind the sprawling territories into one nation, yet loose enough to let each of its peoples breathe.

Mulyukov’s insistence that the Republic of Tatarstan--about 500 miles east of Moscow--is again free of Russia, by virtue of its 4-year-old proclamation of independence, is one of many autonomy claims by Russia’s minorities. And although the loudest boasts of separatism usually come from the nationalist fringes, they are often validated by official expressions of support.

The only flags flying from government buildings in this Tatar capital are the red and green colors of ancient Tataria.

License plates on cars, trucks and buses do not conform to ones elsewhere in Russia. Tatarstan trade offices in Turkey, Australia and other countries are referred to as “embassies.” And in July, the local government decided to withhold federal tax payments of $1 billion to compensate Tatarstan industries for debts owed by Moscow.

In a more mature democracy, such expressions of self-rule would probably pose little risk to the country’s unity or the ability of its economy to function.

But in the fledgling Russia, where leadership and government have been improvised from the wreckage of the failed Soviet Union, upstart independence movements can undermine the country’s stability and even escalate into bloodshed.

Cracking a Fragile Veneer of Unity

The staggering death toll and destruction incurred by the war in breakaway Chechnya may give pause to some secession-minded ethnic groups chafing at their federal bindings. But Moscow’s ham-fisted crackdown there also disclosed the disarray afflicting the federal army, sending a message of subtle encouragement to other restless peoples that even a ragtag force can test the defense limits of a wounded superpower.

From the nearly extinct Karelians near the border with Finland to the Turkic-speaking Yakuts of the Far East, Russia’s fragile veneer of unity is being strained by its minorities’ demands to chart their own political course, mine their own riches, spend their own money and define their own values.

And in the more stridently independent areas, such as Tatarstan, ties with the Russian capital are already ominously frayed.

As an oil-producing region with important aviation industries and strategic railroad and river crossings, Tatarstan and its 4 million residents have succeeded in winning a broader degree of autonomy from Moscow than most regions.

The local economy has taken the same battering as Russia’s since highly centralized supply and production disappeared with the Soviet Union, and the ensuing decline in living standards has strained relations between the Tatars, who make up a slim majority of 51% in the region, and ethnic Russians, who account for most of the rest.

Tatars occupy a growing proportion of official and prestigious positions, as those elected to high office have emulated the ethnic cronyism that was previously practiced by Russians sent to govern the provinces. This reversal of the power balance has instilled deep resentment among the Russians toward the minorities they used to dominate.

“Russians here feel like they’ve been thrown away, that no one needs them in this age of ethnic definition,” complains Alexander L. Salagaev, a sociologist who heads Kazan’s Russian Cultural Society.

For centuries the dominant population, ethnic Russians across the country now fear that they will soon be overwhelmed by the minorities whose populations are expanding more rapidly than their own.

With Russians’ birthrates in decline for decades and mortality rates rising, Salagaev warns that Russians increasingly risk being ruled by minorities in many areas. He decries the current practice of drawing political boundaries around ethnic groups and bestowing the “title population” with the bulk of political clout.

“I like the American system, with a strong federal government but a good degree of independence for the states,” the university professor says. “But I don’t think federalism can have an ethnic face, as it has in Russia.”

He fears that the country is headed for recurring ethnic unrest and accuses Kazan’s Tatar leaders of discrimination against Russians.

“We could see a Chechnya situation here,” Salagaev warns.

Such expectations of ethnic fracturing are echoed by ethnic Russians throughout the vast federation, especially those finding themselves under the rule of minorities in autonomous states.

‘Ethnic Definition Is a Time Bomb’

“Russia’s regions should be granted a greater degree of economic autonomy, but what frightens us is that this federal system is developing an increasingly ethnic nature,” says Yevgeny I. Paltsev, head of a Russian cultural movement in the northwestern Republic of Karelia. “This ethnic definition of regions is a time bomb that threatens to explode Russia into pieces.”

Among the 89 republics and provinces that make up the Russian Federation, power-sharing agreements with Moscow range from total subjugation to the virtual independence enjoyed by influential regions such as Tatarstan and Yakutia.

Tatarstan Prime Minister Farid K. Mukhametshin concedes that federal power is weakened by the restlessness that pervades many regions. But he blames the unsteadiness on Moscow’s failure to enact reliable laws and structures, and insists that autonomy poses no danger of redrawing Russia’s borders.

“Strong subjects make for a strong Russia,” insists the savvy former Communist. “You don’t get a strong Russia when only Moscow has power.”

Underscoring his republic’s economic links with Russia, he notes Tatarstan’s dependence on federal military orders to keep its aircraft, automotive and electronics enterprises working.

In Moscow, the view is decidedly more wary.

“In the United States, you have states that enjoy a degree of autonomy. But you don’t have German states and French states, and neither should Russia be defining its regions in ethnic terms,” says Valentin P. Fedorov, former governor of the Russian-dominated Republic of Sakhalin and now head of a federal entrepreneurial agency. “The nationalities issue is a leftover from the Soviet era, and it is like a worm eating away at the interior of Russia.”

From the Islamic peoples of the Caucasus territories to the Chukchis, who are kin to Eskimos and inhabit the far northeast, Russia is a crazy quilt of former colonies, vanquished fiefdoms and peripheral land-grabs that have thrown European and Asian cultures into a huge, unmelted pot.

‘Look What Happened in Chechnya’

Resurgent ethnic awareness and the 1993 constitution’s recognition of each people’s right to “self-determination” have combined to wrest certain rights of government from Moscow for some peoples while leaving them to federal officials for the predominantly Russian regions.

“Why should Sakhalin have fewer rights than Tatarstan?” Fedorov demands, referring to the Pacific island republic he used to govern. “Yeltsin should use the lesson of Chechnya to rid himself and the country of this notion of ethnic autonomy. He could justify abolishing the current agreements by saying, ‘Look what happened with Chechnya.’ ”

Tatar officials deny that their differences with the Kremlin could ever deteriorate to a point at which the Chechen war scenario would be repeated.

But the laundry lists of grievances aired by ethnic activists from both communities make clear that there is a problem, here as elsewhere, in the professed brotherhood of Russian peoples.

“Russians think they’re better than us. That’s the root of the problem,” says Mulyukov, the nationalist leader. “Even an alcoholic Russian--a bum and a scoundrel--is convinced he is higher on the human scale than a Tatar.”

Fears Fuel Russian Nationalism

Russians’ grousing about losing power and privileges in ethnically distinctive regions like Tatarstan is dismissed by local authorities as predictable frustration now that the onetime overlords encounter resistance to the centuries-old practice of treating conquered territories as vassal states.

But Russian resentment is genuine, and it is that injured pride and lost prosperity that fuel chauvinist movements active across the federation. Nationalist political parties and prominent rabble-rousers like Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky feed Russian insecurities with exaggerated tales of minority schemes to gain domination by accelerated birthrates and plots to drive more Russians to drink.

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, the revered author and nationalist conscience, has led a chorus of voices in warning that if current birthrates among Russia’s peoples persist for 50 more years, Russians will become a minority in their own country.

Outnumbered in Tatarstan, Chechnya and the roiling Caucasus regions, Russians are battling against the drift of power from the center to local leadership that they fear could repress them.

Even some in the local majority community who have remained aloof from the nationalist drumbeating are worried by the trend toward weakening of the federal center.

“Independence is a political myth. We are too interconnected,” says Rashit R. Akhmetov, head of Tatarstan’s pro-reform Democratic Party of Russia. “I’m not worried about a breakup of Russia, because no single entity could survive on its own.”

Although the political situation in the country is volatile, with an ailing and reclusive Yeltsin and a parliamentary election free-for-all looming in December, Akhmetov believes that the peoples of Russia have grown weary of nationalist intrigues and will vote for more responsible leaders who will seek a balance between ethnic self-expression and cooperation for the common good.

‘Illness of Nationalism is Epidemic’

Marat G. Galayev, an economist and member of Tatarstan’s republic parliament, describes persistent focusing on ethnic problems as “the suicidal option.” Tatars live sprinkled throughout the Russian Federation, not just in Tatarstan, and discrimination against the Russian minority here will worsen the lot of Tatars living elsewhere, he warns.

“This illness of nationalism is epidemic in Russia,” says Albion V. Brechalov, a senior official with the federal Ministry for Minority Affairs and Regional Policy. He blames much of the instability on what he terms “a massive inferiority complex” among Russians, who make up 80% of the federation’s 148 million people.

Although Brechalov says that Moscow is fearful Russia could unravel at its ethnic seams, he predicts today’s feverish quest for independence will cool as, region by region, maturing political leaders recognize that Russia is a classic Gestalt entity, a whole that is much more than the sum of its parts.

“The major force holding Russia together is our shared history and our mutual fate,” he says. “Few can envision a life outside of Russia. We are first of all Russians and then citizens of a republic.”