Concerning Russia, the post-Soviet region and the Eurasian project, I would like to ask three questions: what do we need it for, why is everything so complicated and who is to blame for it?
The first answer is obvious: we need to conceive the ideology of this project, to define the common field of values; economic pragmatism is good to be used, but we need additional consolidating elements that will explain to people in the difficult period of the adaptation of SME to the new conditions why they should tolerate this.
This case seems to be a Freudian one: it is not a revival of the USSR, it is not a new empire, it is not a restriction of our sovereignty. Well, what is it, if we have already found out what it is not? It is necessary to define the Eurasian house precisely. The problem is finding somebody who will assume this responsibility.
The point is that the establishment of national projects and values hasn’t been accomplished, neither in Russia nor in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan or Azerbaijan, and their elaboration goes across Soviet ideology and national ones.
There is the same situation in Eastern Europe. As a result, nationalism and xenophobia are wide-spread, as well as the wish to separate “us” from “them”. After all, if the changes happen ahead of the ability of a society to adapt to changing conditions, if a society is not morally consolidated, and if there isn’t any clear motivation to integration, the risks to the system increase substantially.
Who is to blame? As ever, the reason for all of it is external circumstances. Besides, our new ideology is being generally formed top-down; the Eurasia project has not become a people’s project yet, and this is a serious risk. The dependence on certain people is too high, and we know each other quite poorly.
This is very important, because in the current conditions we can hardly make progress in our intention to reach stable development due to integrationwithout understanding what the specific character of every country is. Ideal models don’t work anymore, when the relations between leading actors in international politics and economics seem to be in chaos.
International markets are collapsing, there is no economic balance between world currencies, investors take note that there are no more safe havens for investments because of lack of clear rules of the game which could became the basis for forecasts, at least in the short run. The same thing is happening in modern geopolitics. We see a transition from a unicentric system of decision-making to a polycentric one. The day before yesterday, the G8 was the leading actor; nowadays the G20 is trying to control the situation; Nursultan Nazarbayev has already mentioned the possibility of operating within the framework of G-Global.
But the principle is the same: nobody has confidence in each other, new psychological barriers are being created, and our epoch is a period of double-standards, which is proven by the Kosovo precedent. That’s why it is quite difficult to consider the problem of the co-existence of the European project and the Eurasian one without taking into account the immense crisis of values which has been happening to the world political and business elite.
No wonder that we often see that the politicians who appealed for pragmatism and de-ideologization after the collapse of the USSR are now speaking about the necessity of resurrecting moral values and searching for new ones in order to carry out new integration projects. No wonder that the concepts which became generalisms in Europe such as freedom, democracy, solidarity, individual rights, peace and welfare, freedom of expression, freedom of meetings and freedom of conscience are put into question. The discussion is being resumed, but the political elites aren’t hurrying to moderate the discussion, preferring to discuss moral values in theory but not practically.
If we abstract away from the wording, it turns out that the elites, from Lisbon to the Urals, are worried about the same problem: when the economic mechanism doesn’t work, it is impossible to rely on the idea of high living standards or this idea isn’t so strong as it could be in the framework of a new integration project, it is necessary to find a new consolidating idea which is able to balance the system.
Only precisely formulated values, which are, to my mind, necessary for the Eurasian integration project, can become such an element.
It is important to note that this ideology cannot be only “an elites’ project” based on several ideal models of Eurasian values. At the moment we, three independent states, have a unique chance of solving a problem which couldn’t be solved by our national elites for 20 years: we can try to involve our citizens in the development of Eurasian integration values. Only in this case can we avoid misssing solutions, when instead of national ideology we get some state programs or eclectic formations such as Liberal Empire or sovereign democracy.
The role of the Russian academic community can become crucial in this process. This is the first side of the coin. The second is that we can build a geopolitical bridge to the European project without conflicts, after elaborating a clear ideology.
It is a known fact that collectivism and traditionalism are the foundations of oriental civilization. That’s why justice, respect for elders and a certain authoritarianism are its historical values. Western civilization is based on individualism and adapting the environment to the individual’s interests. That’s why the key values of Western civilization are freedom, leadership, individuality, equal rights etc. The Eurasian moral values can become the synthesis of the Western project and the oriental one in such values as collectivism, openness, tolerance, morality and social freedom.
Our aim is to fix positive values, to reformulate them as a national ideology, and to provide a succession in its perception from the elders to the young. This problem is relevant to Russia, where this succession was broken off. Nowadays it is quite fashionable to use the term “geopolitical bridge”. I suppose Russia is a country which can contribute to the mutual enrichment of the Eurasian project and the European one, their ideologies and values. Not only in the economy and international security models, but also formulating a common world-view and prospects can become the connecting block which will allow us to call our countries our common home more effectively than visa abolition agreements, because a “common home” is not only a common space, but is also common rules of coexistence based on the principle of equal rights.
Economic integration should be followed with broad humanitarian dialogue. Otherwise, we will inevitably get farther from each other. Our elites should understand this fact very well.
