Humanitarian background of Eurasian project

A conference on the role of public organizations in forming the Eurasian Union has recently been held in Yerevan. Experts from Moscow, Yerevan and Astana discussed the Eurasian project.
Gagik Arutyunyan, the head of the ‘Naravank’ Science and Education Center (Armenia)

The idea of the Eurasian Union, of Eurasianism, has deep roots: as far back as the 1920s, Trubetzkoi and Savitski promoted it. Now we see the evolution of this Eurasian project. As Vladimir Putin suggests in his article, it will be a transitive stage on our way towards creating a ‘Big Europe’. This is very important, because today Armenia participates in the ‘Eastern Partnership Program’ of the EU, and we believe that this project doesn’t hamper the other, even more, these two projects help each other. Both European and Eurasian partnership projects are very important for Armenia. I would like to stress the humanitarian aspect of it, as for now we don’t have a general image of the Eurasian Union yet, we don’t have a common information field. For example, in Armenia we recently marked the day of commemoration the genocide victims, but this event had very weak informational support in the Eurasian space (it already exists in a way). These issues are very important for us, and I would like to stress that Armenia, which is beginning its way towards Eurasian integration, could prove to be a unique resource in this project. It is not only our territory in the South Caucasus, it is the vast resource of the diaspora. There’s an Armenian community in Kazakhstan, today some 2.2 million ethnic Armenians live in Russia. The same can be said about Europe and America. This is a unique resource, as we could champion this idea not only on Armenian territory. The project needs a positive image, and there are some issues to be resolved in this regard. We should discuss problems as well as talk about the good aspects. I believe that the project is really great, as ‘it is time to gather stones’. All the disintegration processes that took place after the collapse of the USSR have now reached their critical point and now it’s time reverse them. The expert community thus highly appreciates it. And we also believe that it is the expert community that has a considerable role to play in the formation of this common space. We should organize such forums as this more often, we should create opportunities to discuss these questions, like magazines, and so on. We should make it look good as well as be good.

Alexei Vlasov, ‘Vestnik Kavkaza’ editor-in-chief

If we’re talking about the humanitarian aspect of the integration we should emphasize three major aspects of it. First of all, it is the information support of the Eurasian project, and I believe this is the most important aspect. In fact we have to acknowledge that we are losing the first round. This can be said about all the main participants of this integration project by Putin and Nazarbayev: Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. For now it is unclear how the information support of the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space is progressing. There are not so many public speakers supporting these projects, and they also appeal only to the macro-economic implications of the process. But, as Mr Baykadamov has said, the integration process starts to work out only when each family can feel its advantages for their budget. Yes, we have to wait for that for some time; we have to wait through the adaptation period until new resources emerge from this summation of national economies. But people want to see the positive image of the integration process right now. Our world is competitive, and our partners from the South Caucasus and Central Asia (I mean, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) now feel the attraction of the Eurasian integration idea. But this is only the attraction of an idea, and now it’s time for us to show (through the media, through successful business stories) how the Eurasian economic project really works. The second important task relates to the youth. People who are 20 years old now were born after the collapse of the USSR and they have no experience of Soviet communal life. Yes, there’s the family nostalgia, but these young people are more pragmatically disposed. They have no connection to the values that bring the members of older generations together, who are now the experts organizing all these forums, round tables and so on. So youth policy should be singled out as a separate area of the Eurasian project implementation. This could be the organization of summer camps, of some internet social networks, which is also very important, I think. We should also ponder the prospects the Eurasian project offers for the realization of young people’s ambitions. This is also very important. Young people should be able to see the prospects of their future careers, of their future lives, of their future success in this Eurasian project. And the third aspect is educational and scientific integration. We’ve just recently conducted a joint forum with the Institute of Parliamentarianism under the Popular-Democratic Party ‘Nur-Otan’ (Kazakhstan) in Volodarsk. We discussed the idea of creating a network of Intellectual Centers, for now for Russia and Kazakhstan. These would be centers where the members of our countries’ (including Belarus) intellectual elites would meet. But it would be an open system, and all those who are interested in Eurasianism and are ready to invest their intellectual and education resources into it could join it too. These centers would develop new, modern, 21st century ideas connected to the practical implementation of Eurasianist ideas. It is also connected to the problem of youth, as these centers should attract young people. The Volodarsk forum was quite a success, and I would like to thank Mr Baykadamov who sent his representatives there. And now it is time to start creating a network of business communications, of information communications within the Eurasian project, a network of youth centers. I know that the project ‘Eurasian business-link’ is already launched and it will start its operations after the May holidays. There are another three or four projects working in this direction too. We need a strategy. There’s the initiative, the public organizations are ready to work on it, as well as our universities. As they say about the epoch of Peter the Great, the nation was waiting for a leader. I hope that after May 7 the situation will change cardinally, as one of the Eurasianism idea's co-authors, Vladimir Putin, will become President again, and it will provide an additional boost not only to our CIS policy, but will also put implementation of the Eurasian project at the top of our state’s agenda. And I think that the public would definitely support him.
Bolat Baykadamov, the head of the Institute of Parliamentarianism under the Popular-Democratic Party ‘Nur-Otan’
Our priorities remain the same. It is first of all economic integration, as this gives our countries an opportunity to feel secure within the framework of this integration process. What people need most of all is to know how it would affect them on a personal level. And of course the need for humanitarian consolidation is also great, I mean the areas of culture, education, sports. This aspect of the project becomes more systematic. I know that some projects in this area have already been launched. For example, our hockey teams play in one Continental League, we have a number of joint educational projects. There’s a branch of the Russian State University for the Humanities in Astana, in Russia there are also some similar projects. They all show how important this is. But it is vital not only to meet the demands of our countries’ elites and politicians in all these projects, we need to consider the demands of the common people. According to sociologists, the interests of these two groups regarding the project in question differ. So it is very good that today we’ve gathered in our three capitals and are discussing it. We all believe that we need to render the integration project more attractive, we need to fill the Eurasian project with humanitarian content. Along with moving towards a common market we need to consolidate our higher goals (and every country has such goals). We need to restore the status of the Russian language, which was unfortunately lost in all these years. We need to restore the old traditions of popular democracy. I think that the young generations of our countries don’t remember the atmosphere that existed in our common state, while the members of the older generations still remember it.

Andrei Smirnov, the head of the International Forum “Public organizations’ role in forming the Eurasian Union” organizing committee
I would like to say that today we seem to have a unique opportunity: after the 20 years of disintegration processes we have a chance to move closer together and try to create a new format of communication and interaction. This new format could allow us to restore our positions in theconomy as well as in the area of inter-personal contacts, education, culture and so on. The enthusiasm we met while preparing this forum, the reaction of the CEOs of the non-governmental organizations of different post-Soviet states we’ve invited here – it all gives us inspiration. The people agreed to our proposition to take part in this forum right away. Public organizations have an opportunity to go further than the heads of our states. Yes, economics and politics are very important, but I think that the humanitarian aspect of the integration, which unites active people, people who want to work with each other and want to restore that what was lost. And these people could push our governments towards closer integration both in economic and political areas. Of course we’ll try to work systematically. The fact that we’ve invited public organizations to our forum in Yerevan… First of all, I would like to thank our colleagues from the Russian-Armenian Public Organizations’ Union. I think it is very important that such a forum is taking place not in Moscow, but in Yerevan. It proves the interest of the post-Soviet states towards integration, towards interaction. Our peoples reach out for each other. And as for the area of the economy, we will also try to treat it systematically and we’ll try to conduct the first Yerevan ‘Eurasian Business Breakthrough’ forum in the framework of the 5th Russia-Armenia Expo. It would allow us to broaden the number of participants in this event. We won’t limit ourselves only to Russia and Armenia, last year Kazakhstan also participated in this expo. We’ll talk about the benefits of economic integration in the framework of this forum. So, as I say, we’ll try to work systematically. We are launching this project and we are intent on developing it. I think we have good chances of succeeding if you take the enthusiasm we meet into account. Thank you.