Reality and romanticism

The Scottish people go to the polls today to elect their parliament. Undeniably there is the the most pressure to vote in such a way as to open the path for choosing Scottish independence, since the Act of Union was signed 300 years ago.

What is the form that dissolution of a federal state might take? The most recent dissolution of a European federated state was in 1991.

When Yeltsin decided to disband the Soviet Union he did so constitutionally. Russia and the governments of Ukraine and Belarus were parties to the Treaty of the Union of 1922 and, on 8 December 1991, the leaders of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian republics met in Belavezhskaya Pushcha near Minsk and signed the Belavezha Accords ‘declaring the Soviet Union dissolved and replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).’ Gorbachev described this as an unconstitutional coup, but this was rejected, and anyway it could not be halted.
On 12 December 1991 the legislature of the Russian Soviet Republic formally accepted the secession of Russia from the Soviet Union by ratifying the Belavezha Accords and denouncing the 1922 Treaty on the creation of the Soviet Union.
On 17 December ‘twelve of the fifteen soviet republics signed the European Energy Charter in the Hague as if they were sovereign states, along with 28 other European countries, the European Community and four non-European countries.’

On 21 December 1991 ‘representatives of all Soviet Republics, except Georgia, signed the Alma Ata Protocol, confirming the dissolution of the Union ‘ .. 'all former Soviet republics, except the three Baltic States, agreed to join the CIS.’ Russia was authorised to succeed to the UN membership of the USSR, and take the USSR seat in the Security Council. Russia was accepted as the successor state to the USSR on 31 December 1991.

All powers still vested in the presidency of the USSR were ceded to the president of Russia , Yeltsin, and on 26 Decembe 1991, the Supreme Soviet ‘recognized the extinction of the Union and dissolved itself. By 31 December 1991 all official Soviet institutions had ceased operations and individual republics assumed the central government's role.’ (this is an extensively edited and shortened version from Wikipedia’s excellent entry, and from other sources).

The plainness of this account belies the knife-edge avoidance of descent into open violence and armed repression, involving tanks on the streets, the courage of the White House defenders, military mutiny, and attempts at re -seizing power by Soviet elites.

This is the dissolution of a much larger federated state, it faced different problems and was motivated by only some of the forces driving the desire for Scottish independence; furthermore it was the principal state of the Union, Russia, that sought the dissolution.

The United Kingdom does not face economic collapse, despite the doomsayers; England has no major political force seeking dissolution of the Union, quite the contrary, all parties want its maintenance; Scotland will achieve no economic benefits from secession - pace models of celtic tiger and oil-fired growth - indeed the economic evidence points to relative impoverishment; there will be no ready acceptance of its independent status by supra national states or organisations, other member states of the European Union have no desire for such an example to make good , and the EU policy of regionalism is designed to avoid this kind of member- state fragmentation. Losing a Security Council seat (which would surely happen if the UK broke up) flies in the face of the current UK administration’s entire foreign policy and, presumably that of any opposition party. There is no other part of the UK with which Scotland could ally against the Westminster administration - mutatis mutandis the Supreme Soviet - for Wales and Northern Ireland are no Ukraine and Belarus.

To break up a federated Union, then, requires constitutional routes, external overpowering threat of the order of economic collapse, cultural and historical links and memories, powerful allies , and international acquiesence if not encouragement. Scotland has the third of these requirements, and may have the first.

Independence may require also the facing down of physical threat by the Union state, and there has been a lot of practice in just this - ask the people of Northern Ireland.