The Paradox of Moscow’s Separatism: How the Imperial Center “Walked Out on Itself”

It was precisely she — the mother of the empire — who was the first to declare:
“The RSFSR is a sovereign state.”

Well then, it turns out the periphery did not break up the Union. The Union collapsed from within — when the center declared itself “independent.”

The irony lies here:

When Lithuania declared sovereignty, it was called “blatant separatism.”
When Ukraine voted for independence, it became “betrayal.”
But when Moscow stated it was leaving the USSR — it was, apparently, an “act of historical responsibility”!

But that is not yet the end of the story. Let’s go further, and read on:

“The sovereignty of the RSFSR is a natural and necessary condition for the existence of Russian statehood...”

How charming. So, Russia acquired statehood in 1990? And for the 70 years before that, it wasn’t statehood, but what? And for nearly 300 years before that, what exactly did Peter I proclaim by naming himself emperor? What was the entity that existed before 1990? A century-long construction project? A rotational labor camp? Or simply a phase of collective slavery under the “USSR” brand, from which a deeply nominal subject needed to separate as soon as possible? Did Yeltsin understand that in 1990 he wasn’t declaring secession, but presenting “Russia” to the world as a new phenomenon?

What about traditions?

It gets even better. In the document announcing to the world the emergence of a de facto new state — Russia — it speaks of a “centuries-old history” and “established traditions.” How so? What kind exactly? The tradition of keeping Moscow’s colonies under a boot? Or the tradition of walking out of a structure you yourself created, once the treasury is empty and can no longer feed everyone — when Moscow was used to eating for all?

But again, let’s go further.

Let us remember:

Moscow — the center of the Soviet empire — was the first to leave the Union.
Not under NATO pressure, not due to sanctions, and not as a result of a color revolution. But of its own volition. To applause.

That is, the first and most successful separatist of the USSR was not the Baltics, not the Caucasus, not Ukraine. It was the RSFSR. Moscow. 1990.

At the same time, let’s not forget that as it left, Moscow took everything — from the nuclear arsenal to the international representations, declared itself the “successor” to everything and everyone, and began blaming others for the collapse of the Union — which it was the first to leave.
And only then did the hysteria begin: how come others also decided to leave?

An empire that declared independence from itself

But the joke doesn’t end there. The Declaration of State Sovereignty of the RSFSR, adopted on June 12, 1990, represents a unique historical-legal phenomenon. For the first time in modern history, a state that essentially served as the foundation of an imperial construct declared independence from a supranational formation over which it itself had dominated.

The RSFSR — the core of the USSR, its administrative, military, ideological, and economic center — declared itself sovereign from the very structure it controlled and led.
A paradox emerged: an empire declared independence from itself, while retaining the center, the resources, the army, diplomatic representation, and international legal personality.

Following formal logic, the act of RSFSR's sovereignization represents the greatest separatist gesture of the entire Soviet era. Neither Lithuania, nor Ukraine, nor Georgia — none of the union republics possessed the level of institutional power, military force, or resource control that the RSFSR held at the moment of its “exit” from the USSR.

Independence revoked

In the first years after the declaration was adopted, June 12 was officially called “Russia’s Independence Day.”
Specifically, that is how President B. N. Yeltsin referred to it in his televised address to citizens on June 11, 1993.
However, already in 1997, Yeltsin himself proposed renaming it to “Russia Day,” which was officially fixed in 2002.

Why?

The reasons for renaming were not publicly stated, though they are obvious to anyone capable of distinguishing state-building from rhetorical camouflage.

Russia — in any of its forms: the Russian Empire, RSFSR, or USSR — is formally a federation but in essence an empire.
An empire cannot become “independent” from itself. It can only lose external possessions — but its essence, the control center, and the mechanism of subordination remain.
Moscow in 1990 did not “gain freedom,” it reconfigured the control system, seizing the key nodes of the old structure and calling it “sovereignty.”

Thus, if one strips away the propaganda layer, the 1990 declaration was not a manifesto of liberation, but a rhetorical disguise for the transformation of imperial power.
It’s like trying to call a prison — a health resort.

The essence of the prison did not change. It merely changed the sign above the door.

That is precisely why, once they realized in Moscow: keeping the word “independence” in the holiday name was dangerous — it was removed.
Empires cannot tolerate the words “independence” and “nation.”
They provoke a discourse uncomfortable for empire — about the right of nations to sovereignty and independence.
Russia is not a national country — and not a federation.
It was and remains an empire in democratic camouflage.

And anyway — from whom can an empire be independent?

As a result, we can observe how political rhetoric retreated, and the “Independence Day of the Empire” turned into a faceless “Empire Day” — with no clear history, no explanations, and no guilty parties.

A day when the chief overseer left the camp… taking all the keys from the cells with him.

Which, in fact, is the truth.
Because in each of the republics that later acquired sovereignty, power remained in the hands of those close to the Kremlin.