On Russia's Global Importance

 Over the last 30 years, Western officialdom's policies concerning Russia have grown increasingly irrational. Europeans tend to forget that long before the US or the Ukraine ever existed, Russia was always there in their hour of need. Unfortunately, after the latest events, Russia might not be there for us any longer.

For me as an historian, the only Slavic state that deserves all the respect and consideration of social scientists is the Russian state.

Unfortunately, the European Slavs proved an absolutely incredible inability to create solid states that would last over time and prosper. Neither the Serbs, nor the Czechs, nor the Slovaks or even the Poles have proved to Europe or the world that they have the attributes necessary to live in peace with each other, to build well-organized or consolidated state structures (see Ukraine).

To be sure, the Poles disappeared for 200 years from modern history, reappearing as a state only since 1918. Federal Yugoslavia disappeared after only 70 years, Czechoslovakia around the same time. Most of the time, these branches of the Slavic people became the victims of their stronger neighbours - Turks, Germans, Russians or Austrians - because of this inability to build solid state structures.

Please compare the European Slavs now with the Russians, who have a millenary history of existence as a state, although their central position in Eurasia is an extremely difficult one geopolitically. During the Middle Ages, they managed to defeat both the Mongol invaders and the Tartars, not to mention the Turks. In modern times, they colonized Siberia as far as the Pacific and came to expand their territories in the west to the borders of Romania or Poland. All this time, Russia has overall been a factor of stability in Europe, being a reliable ally of both the Germans and the Western powers - England and France, but also the United States - in the first half of the twentieth century.

Nowadays most of the European Slavs have joined the NATO umbrella and are barking like puppies at the big dog, Russia, which has done nothing to antagonize them in recent decades, on the contrary. The Russians have instead been busy rebuilding their economy and developing their agriculture. From an importer of wheat during communism - according to Gorbachev they used to purchase it with gold bullion at one point - they became one of the biggest exporters of grain.

Russia has always been run by the secret services, whether we are talking about Tsarist Ohrana, the Soviet KGB or now the FSB. This is one of the secrets of the Russian state's longevity and stability, since the Russians are not at all convinced that professional politicians or Western-type democracy could ensure their survival as a state. They were willing to give it a go during the nineties, but the experiment failed miserably and was never going to be repeated.

Of course, the West would prefer Russia to be run by an alcoholic like Yeltsin or someone like that. But the Russians - who have recovered economically from the disaster of the 1990s under Vladimir Putin, have paid off their outstanding debts, rebuilt their army and amassed important financial reserves for the first time in their recent history - have other options. In fact, this is the fundamental reason why Putin is not liked by leaders in the West, the rest is just propaganda.

In terms of international relations, Russia cannot agree to a unipolar world  ruled exclusively by Washington, just as China does not agree. The Russians' preference for a multi-polar world, in which they have a say, is hundreds of years old. They were the ones who put an end to the French hegemonic plans in 1814, they were also instrumental in the fight against German hegemony that caused two world wars last century. 

Russia had peacefully and voluntarily given up, without armed conflict, the bi-polar world that appeared after 1945, but it cannot agree not to participate at all in global decision-making. This approach is an extremely dangerous neoconservative utopia, which could trigger World War III, even a nuclear one. Unfortunately, since the inhabitants of the Anglosphere  are not Russians, I don't think they will peacefully give up their plans for a unipolar world that the American neoconservatives have been trying to impose globally for 25 years now ...

Vladimir Putin's Take on Russian History

 

British historian Dominic Sandbrook tries to explain to Western audiences bored with the study of history that for the nations of Eastern Europe history matters enormously.

He claims that Vladimir Putin is by no means the successor of Stalin - who was Georgian - but that he considers himself as a successor at the helm of the Russian state built by Peter the Great . Thus, in a historical essay published on the website of the Russian presidency, Vladimir Putin states unequivocally that the Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians all have the same origin and hail from the Ancient Rus, even if throughout history there have been divisions between them.

Romanians can very well relate to this approach to Russian history. For at least two centuries, all Romanian intellectuals have stated with one voice that Moldovans, Wallachians and Transylvanians "all hail from Rome", that they belong to the same people, sharing a common origin and language. Putin says exactly the same thing about Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians, and I - as an historian - don't think he is wrong .

In other words, Putin is not a kind of post-Soviet leader like Nazarbayev, for example, eager to rebuild the USSR, as the recent neocon campaign in the US would have us believe. No, he is a nationalist leader and is mainly interested in restoring unity to the Russian world. That's why I don't think Putin is a danger to the former Soviet satellites, like  Romania . Bringing the USSR back to life in a  new form is not on the Kremlin's geopolitical agenda.

What is happening now with regard to Ukraine is therefore the consequence of Putin's nationalist approach to the history of Russia, which in his view involves a multidimensional effort aimed at restoring in time the economic and political unity of the Russian world, in the sense that it was first achieved  by Peter the Great in the 18th century.

The Eurasian Union: Two Competing Geopolitical Visions

 March 21, 2012

The implosion of the Soviet Union has in many ways adversely affected the stability of the Central Asian republics like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan. Since 1991, a loose alliance of 11 former Soviet republics, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), was formed in order to preserve, at least in part, the Soviet-era heritage in regional economic integration.

The geopolitical competition for influence in Central Asia has ceased to be a Russia-only affair, however. China is rapidly becoming a big player in the energy sweepstakes, if its direct dealings with Turkmenistan and others are any guide. Closer to Europe, Turkey has also been willing to take the lead in promoting Eurasian integration. Thus, on the 5th of February 2010, Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu has stated during a business conference that “there is a need to embark on a new vision in order to have the Eurasia region regain its historical importance”. Assembling the five “stans” into an Eurasian common structure would, in Davutoglu’s view, be useful to establish “a link between energy-supplying countries and energy-receiving countries”.

Turkey’s ability to foster Eurasian regional integration is based on common cultural and religious roots of the inhabitants of the Central Asian republics. To further its diplomatic aims, Turkey has founded TURKSOY in 1993 in Alma Aty (Kazakhstan), as an international organisation for the promotion of Turkish culture abroad.

As the Arab revolutions have forced Turkey’s diplomats to put the Eurasian project on the back-burner, the opportunity has astutely been seized by Vladimir Putin. In an article entitled “A New Integration Project for Eurasia: The Future in the Making” published by Izvestia on the 4th of October 2011, Vladimir Putin has outlined his vision for the creation of an Eurasian Union larger in size than the European Union. Putin argues that the objective is to build “a new, strong, supranational union that could become one of the poles of the modern world, and could play the role of an effective bridge between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific region”.

His proposed union would be much more than a mere customs union and would include such common institutions as an Eurasian Commission, similar to the one in Brussels, an Eurasian parliament, as well as an Eurasian common currency. To foster regional integration, the Eurasian union “should be built on the inheritance of the Soviet Union: infrastructure, a developed system of regional production specialisation, and a common space of language, science and culture” (V.Putin).

Putin claims that the impetus for the regional integration plans was provided by the financial crisis – a reason invoked by the Chinese, as well, in plans to build their own trade bloc together with the ASEAN countries.

According to Mars Sariev, a Kyrgyz political scientist, Putin and the Russian foreign policy elite have had little choice but to come up with a blueprint for integrating the former Soviet republics into a regional bloc. The alternative, he claims, would be for Russia to become a mere supplier of raw materials for the EU and China. Recently, during an Eurasian Economic Community summit involving Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, their leaders have decided to postpone the creation of the Eurasian Union until 2015. Curiously enough, the project’s most vocal opponent was Belarus’ president Lukashenko, although Ukraine’s president Yanukovich, whose country was present at the summit as an observer, also expressed serious reservations regarding Putin’s plans.

Professor Gerhard Simon of the University of Cologne assesses the chances of success for the proposed Eurasian Union project as “slim to none”. The president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, considers the project as being the blueprint for “a new Soviet Union”, a charge vehemently denied in his Izvestia article by Vladimir Putin.

The biggest misgivings concerning the Eurasian project come from countries like Azerbaijan and Georgia, which together with Turkey have already formed a geopolitical team that benefits from US assistance. Both countries experience ethnic turmoil, Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and Georgia in South Ossetia. Azerbaijan would rather export its oil and gas directly to Europe, through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. SOCAR, the Azeri state oil company has invested 1 billion US dollars in Georgia and controls 80 percent of the latter’s fuel stations. Georgia, meanwhile, is strongly courting NATO and EU membership and is complaining about Brussels’ foot-dragging regarding its accession hopes.

To be sure, the geopolitical competition between Turkey and Russia for the creation of an Eurasian union is heating up. Whilst it is hard to envisage an Eurasian union built around Russia, given its enormous size and colonial record, Turkey’s recent policy paralysis does not qualify it as a strong regional leadership contender, either. (sources: EurActiv, Voice of America News, Deutsche Welle, The Atlantic, Izvestia, Today’s Zaman, www.TurkishCentralNews.com)