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THE FALL OF THE SOVIET UNION thrust the Russian Federation into a period of intense renegotiation of its most basic political, economic and social forms of organisation. In Russia various political actors stepped into the ensuing power vacuum, claiming the authority to govern as sovereign states in the absence of firm central control. Two republics of the Russian Federation whose status as member units of that polity has not deterred them from making claims to sovereign statehood in the postSoviet era are the former Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.
Political elites in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan are currently engaged in what I call `sovereignty projects': coherent, multi-faceted efforts aimed at fulfilling their declarations of sovereign statehood by investing them with empirical and discursive meaning. Describing efforts to construct sovereignty as projects is useful in a dual sense. The first is that sovereignty is constructed through the continuous work of political actors who mount a concerted 'project' towards this end which consists of both material and discursive efforts.1 Secondly, these efforts aim to bring sovereignty to life by 'projecting' specific definitions of the boundaries and contours of the `sovereign state' onto those external and internal audiences without whose recognition and complicity sovereignty does not exist. A sovereignty project conveys the idea that sovereignty is something which is continually negotiated between states and within states themselves.
For all states, the construction of sovereignty involves gaining recognition of their claims to sovereignty from both external audiences (the international community) and internal audiences (their domestic populations). However, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan are sub-state actors which are legally and nominally member units of the Russian Federation.2 Therefore their claims to sovereignty must be validated by an additional audience; the Russian Federation. The Russian republics' efforts to project sovereignty therefore are being carried out simultaneously in three arenas; the international community, the Russian Federation and the domestic realm.
This article explores one aspect of Tatarstan's and Bashkortostan's sovereignty projects-domestic educational reform. The discussion is composed of two parts. First I examine what concrete authorities are claimed in the realm of education in the name of sovereignty, and how those claims are legitimated by the use of the language of sovereignty. Next I address education reform in the Russian republics within...