Yesterday, Moscow hosted a presentation of the Great Eurasia expert platform. "Over the past four years, the NPOs and new regional centers providing quality analytical products appeared in many regions of the Russian Federation, primarily in the border regions. The time has come for us to unite our efforts on the basis of a common expert platform, entitled ‘Great Eurasia’, the Executive Director of the Eurasian-Volga Region Information and Monitoring Center, Marina Lapenko explained.
"We are in favor of an open dialogue, we welcome both collective and individual membership and invite all those who are interested in the sustainable development of the Eurasian region, both from the socioeconomic and human capital development point of view. We invite political scientists, experts and young analysts, that is very important. It is necessary to create a talent pool, to train good analysts able to analyze the socio-economic situation and those processes that occur primarily in the framework of the Eurasian economic integration and within the framework of the Big Eurasia project as a whole," Lapenko said.
According to her, the work will begin with a preparation of the first analytical report, entitled ‘’Russia and the Countries of Great Eurasia. Development scenarios ". The report will be prepared by the representatives of the regional centers and the countries of Central Asia, the Greater Caucasus and Belarus. As far as the term ‘Great Eurasia’ is wide enough, its idea is to activate not only and not so much the Russian expert centers, but also to develop the partnership with foreign information and analytical platforms.
The coordinator of the Great Eurasia expert platform Sergey Masaulov said that a simple exchange of opinions does not provide much, therefore it is necessary to exchange notions systematically and structurally: ”A notion allows us to build a certain system of justification. After expressing notions, a person can develop a position, goals and a trajectory of movement towards these goals. So the idea appeared to produce some intellectual products.’’
Explaining the choice of such a vast region for research, Masaulov said: "In 2016, at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin said that we can think of an integration process within the framework of large Eurasia. There is a technological challenge for all countries, for us as well. I feel it in on the example of the relationship with my youngest son: Neither I can understand him, nor he can understand me - a complete technological change. This technological challenge must be answered. Over the past 10 years, our life has changed technologically.
In addition, there is a clear challenge to the structural changes in both economy and social sphere. The one who finds the answer to these two challenges will become a successful country. But it is almost impossible to respond to these challenges within the framework of one country, so unification is necessary. The idea of the Great Eurasia is to consolidate resources and possibility of joint action.’’
Among the potential participants of the platform, Masaulov named the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union and the CIS countries: "Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, China and Iran’s participation can be interesting. Europe faces the same challenges, so nobody discounts the opportunity to discuss these issues with European experts. "
