From the editorial office: below we present an article published in the government paper “Russian Gazieta”. The author, Sergei Karaganov, 1 of the most crucial Russian political scientists, erstwhile a Liberal and a trapdoor, writes about Russia's fresh strategy after the end of the war conflict in Ukraine.
Russia's place is seen in the east and Siberia. Apart from the European subject and its fear of "rebirth of Nazism", which seems to be a propaganda projection alternatively than an analytical, outlined program of geostrategic reorientation of Russia is surely seriously considered in the Kremlin and surrounded by Vladimir Putin. Disappointing the West and Europe beats this text in all sentence. There is besides the thought of losing the existing meaning of Moscow and Petersburg as centres working for centuries for the "European option". If this imagination of Karaganov is actual and seriously considered has the Kremlin – propaganda spells about how erstwhile Ukraine falls, Russia will decision on to "conquest" Europe – are worthless. Even if that were not the case, Russia would not be able to implement this plan, which was conceived by supporters of the war in the West (and in Poland). specified spells service only and only the support of European societies for war.
Here is the text of the article:
"The president is an authoritative and cannot say everything he thinks. I will effort to add "a look at a 3rd party". This may be useful for further state policy and for self-determination of society.
Many miscalculations of late russian and Russian abroad policy have emerged from the position of the current experience. They require an in-depth evaluation. For the time being, I will confine myself to general attention: the hopes and calculations of integration with the West as a sovereign power were not justified, in many respects they had the other effect.
It was worth issuing an ultimatum demanding that Russia's highly legitimate safety interests be taken into account in advance, preventing the West from preparing anti-Russian strike forces from Ukraine until the spread of resurgent Fascism in Europe penetrates so deeply. If there were fast triumph calculations, they were inaccurate.
The experience gained allows us to explain the objectives of this operation. This is, of course, the protection of Donbass and the unification of the first Russian lands of the South, the East, the demilitarization, that is, the demolition of the military machine, which can stay in the territory of today's Ukraine. And of course, denazification and reeducation of people infected with fascism like Germany after 1933. The russian Union in East Germany has done it, and it will gotta repeat it in fresh conditions. It is unacceptable to preserve Ukrainian statehood on the basis of a mixture of rusophobia and the monstrous compradorism of its elite, which erstwhile plundered a comparatively prosperous territory, and now they are trying to defend the right to sale Ukrainian meat to the West. This is not an easy and distant, but a mandatory perspective.
For now, it is essential to prosecute little apparent but not little urgent objectives. The SOP (Special Military Operation) allows to expel the 5th column from our country almost without repression, and from the minds – Western centrism, Westernism, which erstwhile helped Russia modernize, make large literature, but has been pushing us down for a long time.
Western elites, despairing of historical failure, the elimination of the five-century ability to pump out planet wealth in their favor, started a war to destruct Russia, in which they rightly see 1 of the causes of their problems. By defending our safety and national freedom, sovereignty, we undermined the foundation on which the centuries-old strategy of cultural, political, economical dominance, plunder – military advantage was based.
In anger, our opponents lose not only remnants of conscience, honor, decency, but besides reason. By their hostility, they contribute to the self-cleaning of Russian elites, their transformation and consolidation. The trapdoors stay either completely bribed or mentally unhappy.
Most people have long intuitively understood what lies behind the discussion about Europeanism, democracy and human rights.
Having lost their minds, the Western elites do another useful thing for Russia – they destruct sanctions, confiscation and imposition of Russia's Russian class of compasses, which grew excessively due to failed 1990 reforms. Now, in anger, he actively helps us nationalize our elites and their worldview.
With all the inactive limited successes “on the ground”, the SOP solves another crucial task – preparing the country and society for 2 decades of life in a failing planet order with an inevitable series of conflicts, a global earthquake that began in the second half of the 2000s and is inactive growing. It is clear that this planet earthquake requires a clear strategy of values, a partial change of elites and their reasoning – above all, a common service of the Homeland. Without it, all good, individual and public will collapse. Management reformatting is besides required.
All 3 affirmative processes – the overthrow of the counterproductive West, the compradorism, the transformation of management and life in fresh planet conditions – are underway, although they will require considerable effort and years. But they're already provided for us. Scattered, besides by our inaction, the Ukrainian wound cannot be cured quickly.
But not only is it essential to heal wounds caused by the past, but besides to usage the energy generated by military clashes to decision the country to fresh horizons.
The Ukrainian operation draws management and financial resources distant from the historically unpromising western direction of improvement of the country.
For 300 years, we have taken almost everything from Europe that could be useful. Europe will not only be relatively, albeit unevenly, but besides increasingly unstable in the coming decades. The European task is inexorably falling apart to prolong its life, its elites will unrestrainedly advance russophobia. This, like the sanctions of the last decade, is needed, and it is not hidden, like the rims that sustain the fragrant body of European integration. erstwhile it completely falls apart, the situation will be a small better. We will receive a historically known tangle of countries with expanding elements of fascism of all kinds, hopefully not Nazism with its misanthropic ideology, including Judeophobia. The current territory of Ukraine will be needed not so much as a bridge connecting with rich markets, but as a buffer separating from instability, military threats and all kinds of moral threats. Let us hope, however, that part of Europe will not go the way indicated above. In any case, we, people of Russian culture, must cultivate in ourselves what is good from the European culture that has become part of ourselves.
We will request to aid rebuild those parts of today's Ukraine that will return to Russia. However, it is improbable that the full Ukraine, plundered for 30 years of theft and struck by the present operation, especially its least culturally developed western-central lands, will be worth what our publicists call ukrofascism. After the large Patriotic War, the Russian Federation, including at the expense of its native lands, helped her get back on her feet. The consequence from a national point of view is negative. Central non-black-earth Russia has only begun to take on as specified in the last 15 years. Many regions of Siberia, which are rather promising from the point of view of its inhabitants, and which were peculiarly heavy affected in the 1990s, require renovation.
From an economic, geopolitical and ideological point of view, the improvement of the east flank is promising and profitable. If it hadn't started in the last 10 or 15 years, we'd have found ourselves, inevitably facing the West, in a much more hard situation.
But the phrase was only partially successful. 1 of the causes of comparative failure is the western centrism of the Russian elite, mainly technocratic, not kidnapping people with their visions. Nothing akin to the late word of the Russian Empire was proposed: “Forward to the large Ocean”, which touched the builders of the Trans-Syberian Railway, or russian Arctic development. This besides did not origin the population to be mobilised, although it did bring possible benefits. This plan is seen as “Moscow”. There was besides local resistance, who refused to change what I would find.
The fundamental mistake was not to include in the policy of turning towards new, promising economic, political and cultural markets of the East and the South of Siberia. For bureaucratic reasons or bad misunderstanding of Pacific Siberia – the Far East and then even the Arctic, which already looks rather absurd, were far from indigenous Western and east Siberia. And it itself, which has developed over many centuries as 1 organism in the human, cultural, economical and even managerial sense, has been torn apart. The problem of the "continental curse" of these subregions – isolation from neighbouring promising mainly Asian markets with constant focus on distant and little promising Western markets – has not been solved.
It was only in fresh years that pipelines and pipelines to the east began to be built. To date, there are almost no meridian paths (north-south) connecting with the markets of the future in the region. But possibly the most crucial thing is that the "return" strategy did not include the most developed regions of the country in terms of the quality of human capital, technological possible and highly industrially developed and superrich regions of the country. In these, the decline in demographic capital and the population was faster than in another regions of Russia.
So far this mistake has not been overcome. The fresh government strategy for the improvement of the Siberian national territory looks miserable, not only not kidnapping, but causes discouragement and irritation.
The Russian-Western confrontation in Ukraine should force us to yet engage in a Siberian strategy – turning the full country towards fresh east horizons, its “return to each other”‘. Russia would not defy the East European Lowland without the annexation and improvement of Siberia, without its "soft gold" – fur, "black gold" – oil, appropriate gold, another mineral resources, Siberian oil, Siberian regiments and, most importantly, Russian Siberian transnational character.
The last circular of the east return was conceived at the turn of 2000-2010. and began to be embodyed as a turn of the country, based on all of Siberia. The same thought was the basis of the concept of "Syberian improvement Corporation", promoted by Sergei K. Szojgu, then not the Minister of Defence yet. A year and a half ago, he came back to this idea. But he, like many members of the ruling class, is relentlessly drawn into the Ukrainian operation – crucial for preserving the country, ensuring its security, but geostrategically unpromising. We have nothing left to gain in the West.
Without alternative, the geostrategic situation dictates the request to present and vigorously advance the strategy of the fresh Siberian return of all Russia, the shift of the vector of its spiritual and economical improvement to the East. Administrative centres should be heading in the same direction, followed by ambitious and patriotic young people. The natural technological capital should be Novosibirsk-Tomsk. The president has already put forward this idea. But so far it's been waited out. Industry – Krasnojarsk and Irkuck, trade – Vladivostok. Petersburg will stay the capital of culture, Moscow – military-political. But with all its brilliance and splendor it must limit its function of sucking human capital out of the province.
With specified a configuration of a country looking to the future, but besides returning home, to itself, from a journey to the West, which exhausted its usefulness and attractiveness, Ukrainian lands, returned Russia, will become what is called past and geography – a gate to the south, to the Mediterranean; the western territories of Ukraine with their mandatory demilitarisation – a buffer, the border of Russia.
There is simply a shortage of labour in Siberia, but it is suitable for life, and even has reserves of fertile land, especially in the face of climate change. In the area of depression Minusinskaja the size of a tiny European or Asian country with black lands, water, akin to Crimea to the number of sunny days per year, which allows to grow apricots, can live here hundreds of thousands. There are also very attractive regions to live in Siberia. There, as in the times of Witty and Stolypin, it is essential to attract people from the surplus labour force of regions of Russia, republics of the erstwhile USSR, destroyed territories of Ukraine. The deficiency of an existing resettlement programme for refugees from Ukraine to specified areas of Siberia cannot be reasonably explained.
In 2019, in a speech at the global economical Forum in St. Petersburg, W.W. Putin presented the thought of advanced improvement of central regions of Siberia, including the Minusi Valley. But the thought hasn't taken form yet. And now it has become even more urgent.
The country's improvement program by moving its center to the east, to Siberia, should be prepared in Moscow. If we give it to the Siberians, I am afraid that the consequence will be apparent – Siberian regionalism, and the scalacity has failed many times. The destiny of the extraordinary patriots of Siberia N.M. Jadrincev, G.N. Potan, who in the late 19th century sought to accomplish independence, resisted the construction of the Trans-Syberian Railway, which, in their opinion, could undermine this identity, is well known. Their efforts were mostly fruitless. In addition, it turned out that there were places in a country where it could "send further than Siberia". They were sent to Archangelsk Province. But the creation and promotion of Russia's improvement strategy by Siberia is impossible without the full engagement of the most powerful intellectual capital of the Siberians, their experience and character.
One of the reasons why the last circular of return to the East began to run out was the minimal engagement of the Far East residents in its development. The renewal of the Russian ruling layer by the residents of St. Petersburg was fruitful. At least in Siberia, human possible is no less.
The fresh Siberian strategy should begin not so much with dry economical calculations, although existing are more than convincing, but with a spiritual, cultural return to the center of Russian self-consciousness wonderful, breathtaking past of Asian improvement of Russia. In Siberia, there was both hard work and Stalin camps. But she herself is the embodiment of the best and free in the spirit of men. There are thousands of creative people all over the country, scientists, writers, filmmakers, lovers of Siberia. We gotta light a green light for them.
Of course, it is essential to reconstruct and make the richest traditions of Russian Orientalism, the most promising of the humanistic teachings. The inability, or even the reluctance, of our education departments to make cognition of the East and the East, is profoundly questionable. To date, despite the apparent need, there are only 610 state-funded, i.e. free (budget) seats in the country for candidates who would like to survey Orientalism. We request almost a row the size of more.
But in order for Siberian and another large projects to come true, the country must supply at least minimal peace to avoid slipping, caused by the desperate attack of the West, towards the thermonuclear war.
The SOP is simply a consequence to this challenge, 1 of the first objectives of which is to halt the military-political expansion of the West, the surgical treatment of metastatic cancer, which is called NATO, which inevitably led to this war. Let's hope we did it, though late, but inactive on time.
The SOP will should be complemented by an active policy of moving on the atomic deterrence ladder, making it more convincing to Western elites who lost their fear of war, lost their leftovers of reason and self-preservation instinct. Without climbing this ladder, the Russian-Western start in Ukraine will last for a long time, diverting attention from Russia's return to fresh horizons. This distraction is 1 of the objectives of Western politics."
Sergei Karaganov
Photo: Vladivostok (public domain)
‘Russian Gaziet’, No45(8990)
