An Interested Perspective

Editorial

Picture: Gleb Bozov

Exactly fifteen years ago, on the 25th of December of 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the first and only President of the USSR. The Soviet Union, the last empire in the recent history, descended into oblivion one week before the 69th anniversary of the Revolution.

Deprived of its state and economic infrastructure, the parts of the what had until then been an indivisible country began to rapidly scatter – under the flags of more or less visible nationalism, under the “umbrellas” of more or less sincere patrons and sponsors clinging to real or mythic symbols of their pre-Soviet grandeur. The decade of independence was hard for practically all of the former Soviet countries – for Tajikistan deep in the bloodshed of a civil war, for Russia, lost and deprived of half of its GDP, for the Baltic countries stuck in different forms of xenophobia.

In the last five years (or maybe four, or seven to eight depending on the country) the life of the former republics has begun to improve. For some the positive change has been very visible, for other states less so. The former have been challenged by looking for allies and additional sources for their development in the post-Soviet space (the Baltic republics are do not count –they are firmly within Europe’s orbit). The latter realized that they would not escape the poverty, devastation and almost universal reliance on remittances from their country’s gastarbeiters without outside help and foreign wide-scale investments.

As a result, a question about leadership – both regional and global (Eurasian) – has been raised in the post-Soviet space. Today many people both in Russia and the CIS countries see only Russia as a worthy and consensus leader. They pin their hopes for settling old conflicts in the Trans-Dneister Strip and Transcaucasus, and smouldering ethnic enmity in post-Soviet Central Asia only on Russia. However, is Russia capable of re-integrating the former Soviet space? Definitely not. The problem lies not only in a lack of material, military, and political resources but also in the ideological vacuum.

The old Soviet imperial ideology, heavily based on a global confrontation of two systems, died and a new ideological basis for Russia’s re-integrating the Eurasian space has not yet, at least, been elaborated. Therefore, Russia today is interested in the maximum strengthening of its neighbors. It wants to help them overcome their political infantilism; assist them in no longer living parasitically off of Russian resources and Russian influence; and it wants these states to assume as much responsibility for their countries as possible and the safety of their regions.

It does not mean that we turn away from those states. It does not mean that Russia is not interested in developing business in them and together with them. It does not mean that we will shut our eyes to attempts of other global and regional players to draw our neighbors into their spheres of influence. And it does not mean too that we will not react to those attempts. It does not finally mean that we are indifferent to the fate of the post-Soviet nations who are strongly tied to us – frequently by blood, more frequently by the language spoken, culture, history and ultimately by mindset.

Expert magazine’s special report “15X15,” –“How 15 countries of the former USSR are living today 15 years after gaining independence”- is reflects our interest in the fate of all 15 ex-Soviet republics. The summary of the project is a special edition of our magazine which you are holding in your hands now. Its main appeal – 14 country reports about the life of the CIS and the Baltic states written on location (we are sorry that we were unable to break the media blockade of Niyazov’s Turkmenistan, but we reported inere in the rest – country for all the other stories). This was an exciting initiative. We saw our neighbors as very different from the popular Soviet-era stereotypes, and quite unlike the common biases typical of modern Russian discourse. We saw successful nations and not so successful, united and not so united, restless, searching, and very alive.

The Soviet Union is no longer. And life goes on. Let’s get acquainted.