Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 14 – Unless Russia’s “ruling class”
comes up with a sufficiently grandiose project capable to inspire the
population and give it a new “passionate impulse,” there is little chance that
the country will remain “a unified state,” according to a scholar at the
Presidential Academy of Economics and State Service.
In an essay in “Yezhednevny zhurnal”
yesterday, Ivan Starikov, an economics professor there, argues that Russia has
lost its way and that it does not have a “well-thought-out project of it
national-state future even for the middle term,” a lack that is leading its
regions not to look to Moscow but to foreign states (ej.ru/?a=note&id=12741).
For the last “quarter of a century,”
he continues, “Russian civilization has been living in a complex of national
defeat and deepening depression.” And it
won’t be rescued from that by any Olympic Games or any other international
competition, however much PR experts will promote them.
Starikov points to five reasons for
his conclusion: “the erosion of the central Russian authorities over the
territory of the country,” reliance on raw materials for economic growth, the
collapse of the scientific and technical base “inherited by Russia from the
USSR,” the lack of investments in infrastructure outside of the petroleum
sector, and the growing sense among people in many regions that they are Moscow’s
“’colonies’” rather than part of the country.
That “’colonial complex,’” he suggests
is especially strong in Siberia and the Far East where “separatist tendencies”
are arising. Moreover, an increasing
number of regions are looking not to Moscow but “to foreign centers of
influence”: “the Far East and Eastern Siberia to China and Japan, [and] the
North Caucasus to Turkey and the Arab world.”
Many officials are ignoring this and
accepting as a given Russia’s infrastructure problems as a given rather than
something that must be overcome not only to boost the country’s growth rate but
also to tie it together. Indeed, various ministers recently cited
infrastructure “limitations” as the reason why Russia can’t grow as fast as the
leadership wants.
These limitations are in fact all
too real, Starikov says. In 2012, the
average speed of the movement of cargo on Russian railways fell to 9.1
kilometers an hour, “a sad record” especially in comparison with the 70
kilometers an hour in Europe and the 90 kilometers an hour in China and a
measure of “the scale of our technological backwardness.”
The Trans-Siberian railroad now
carries only 50,000 containers between Asia and Europe each year, a tiny
fraction of the 42 million carriers that go between those two industrial
centers, mostly by sea, annually. That is something Russia can and must change,
and doing so is the kind of national project that can inspire the country, Starikov
suggests.
A “high-speed railway route” across
the Russian Federation would be itself “ensure the transition of the country to
a different economic model,” from one based on raw materials to one initially based
on transportation and then on the industries that would grow up along this
route. Indeed, that is what the original Trans-Siberian project did a century
ago.
Built between 1891 and 1916, at an
annual rate of 300 to 400 kilometers, the 9288.2 kilometer-long Trans-Siberian
required then “not only material means but also unthinkable human efforts” as
it lined together “two parts of the earth, 12 oblasts and 87 cities,” Starikov
points out.
Just reconstructing the
Trans-Siberian or BAM is not enough. A new high-speed rail corridor must be
developed between Europe and Asia. Of that 12,000 kilometer line, 9,000 would
be in Russia and so Russia would have the most to gain from such a project,
even though it would inevitably be an international one, at least in terms of
financing.
The Russian section of this new line
would “connect 25 subjects of the Russian Federation, create from 5.5 to 6.5
million new jobs, and attract international financing and the most advanced
technologies,” Starikov says. But it would do more than that: it would provide
inspiration to all Russians, just as the Trans-Siberian once did.
Some people have objected that such
a project would involve corruption, but that can’t be an excuse. You have to
work with the government you have, Starikov says, because you can’t wait for
the government you want. And the
involvement of international investors will limit the level of corruption.
He says that his “preliminary”
estimates of the cost for the Russian section of this rail line are in the
range of 220 to250 billion US dollars, an amount that would not be difficult to
raise internationally although it would certainly require “the creation of an
international consortium” to carry it out.
In the fall of 2016, Starikov notes, Russia
will mar the centennial of the opening of through-traffic on the
Trans-Siberian. That would be “the most
suitable moment” to announce the beginning of construction of “a new project”
that would not only connect Europe and Asia but help tie Russia together.”
But to do that, Russians “must now
where we are going” and that requires that “the ruling class turn away from
philosophy” and focus “only on the here and now. In a word, [that class must]
overcome the infrastructure limits of the brain.” And doing that is likely to prove a more
difficult problem than any the new railway would present.
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