By Vestnik Kavkaza
Eurasian integration is not a PR project, it is a strategy, and we should explain it to people. Investment in the youth sphere is necessary, Yevgeny Kozhokin, president of the Labour and Social Relations Academy, believes.
A round table organized by RIA Novosti was devoted to the intellectual support of Eurasian integration. Experts and political scientists discussed establishing a Eurasian information and communication strategy.
According to Kozhokin, to develop the strategy, new special structures with their budgets and staffs are not needed. Such structures already exist. One of them is Rossotrudnichestvo which is aimed as the information support of state programs abroad. Rossotrudnichestvo involves such institutes as houses of the Russian science and culture abroad.
“It is appropriate to explain advantages of the Customs Union, as well as its drawbacks,” the political scientist stated. “For example, we don’t want to bury the CU, but we also don’t want it to extend rapidly. Today the main audience of information work is young people who were born after the dissolution of the USSR,” Kozhokin thinks. “Many Russian universities have branches in the CIS countries; this is an element encouraging integration. There are other elements – the so-called “Slavic universities”: Russian-Kyrgyz, Russian-Armenian, Russian-Tajik, Baku, and so on. They are partially sponsored by the Russian budget. And they provide such an important process as teaching in the Russian language.”
Even though, it seems working with young people have no direct results, it is very important and must be extended, “if we seriously think about a complicated Eurasian project,” the political scientist emphasized. Kozhokin reminded the EU example. He thinks the EU’s glue is the Berlin-Paris link. “These countries invest huge sums in development of academic mobility of their young people – organization of various festivals, forums, other projects; which brings results in years,” the expert noted.
The other direction is to show people what interesting in Russia is. “We have not only journalists and political scientists, but a lot of prominent humanitarian scientists – historians, linguists, philosophers who are well-known in France, Germany, Japan, but are unknown in Kazakhstan, for instance,” Kozhokin said. “Demonstration of intellectual fortune means working on Eurasian integration.”
