Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 3 – Siberia, which
some analysts have called the source of a resource “curse” on Russia, can be a political
“blessing” for that country if the values which infuse its population are
extended to that of the Russian Federation as a whole, Vladislav Inozemtsev and
his co-author former Krasnoyarsk governor Valery Zubov argue in a new book.
The book
entitled “The Siberian Blessing” is set to be released in Russian this
week. The introduction which lays out its
basic argument appeared on Inozemtsev’s web page yesterday (inozemtsev.net/) and has has
already sparked discussions on several major Siberian sites (globalsib.com/18496/ and sibinfo.su/news/sfo/1/43904.html).
The authors
begin with the argument that Siberia “really has been a colony of the Muscovite
state,” although unlike many Siberian oblastniki, they suggest that this status
has not been “completely negative” for the region, although it has represented
a far greater “curse” for Russia as a whole than many now think.
“The methods of the advance of
Russians to the East were at the initial stage analogous to those which drove
the Western settlers in North America,” the authors say. “Migration to Siberia reduced
the sharpness of potential social and religious conflicts in Muscovy” by
allowing those most opposed to the regime to move away and live their own lives
by exploiting the natives.
Inozemtsev and Zubov continue by
arguing that “Siberia for centuries has remained a territory to which by their
own will or that of the state people with initiative and free thinking
came. But this fact means also that the
European part of Russia was deprived of many of those who could have made the
country as a whole less conservative and retrograde.”
Moreover, the two suggest, “although with the
unification of Siberia, Russia became wealthier and more successful, this did
not mean the acceleration of development for either the European or the portion
of the country beyond the Urals.”
“In contrast to the traditional
colonies of the European powers,” they write, “Siberia never manifested
separatist tendencie” – a claim many would dispute – and thus “it to a large
extent protected Russia from turbulence but at the same time it protected the
country from progress as well.”
Siberia’s natural wealth meant in
short that Russia for the last several centuries has suffered from “the curse”
of dependence on those resources, something that has kept the country from
modernizing economically or politically by giving the central elites a source
of rent that left them uninterested in changing the situation.
Thus, Inozemtsev and Zubov say, “the
thesis about ‘a Siberian curse,’ as advanced by certain Western authors in fact
is deper than this may seem at first glance an dpossibly even deeper than the
supporter of this idea hve in mind.”
To support this argument, the two
authors compare the development of what they describe as the two largest
colonies in the world: the American West and Siberia. They suggest that these
regions developed in fundamentally different ways that in turn have played out
at the national level.
On the one hand, they argue, “The
Siberian campaign was a centralized
effort for the unification of new lands to an already existing ‘nucleus,’ a kind
of ‘campain for incomes for the center. From this came centralization, an
impoverishment of life in the new territories, and their inclusion within the
borders of the state by military advance.” In the American West, the lands were
first settled and organized by “’cowboy adventurers’ and only then” included in
the US.
“The Siberian campaign” approach
continues to be “a serious problem today,” the authors add. “how many rational decisions can be madefrom
the center under conditions of the growing dynamism of contemporary economic
competition? We are ceretain that not many can,” and unless Siberia is not
ruled by “the vertical,” Russia will not become “genuinely successful.”
On the other hand, they point out, the difference
in the way Siberia and the American West were added to the metropolitan country
played a role in the kind of attitudes of the state toward entrepreneurialism. “The goal of movement to the West was income
based on new types of activities. The goal of movement to the east was income
obtained from the exploitation of natural resources or the local population.”
“Even in the 20th century, this logic in
relatin to Siberia was preserved,” they say.
But if Siberia has been a curse to Russia because
of that approach, it can become a blessing if Russia recognizes that Siberia is
the future and that Russians need to accept Siberian values, Inozemtsev and
Zubov say.
“The task of Siberia does not consist nor can it
exist in separation fro Russia.” Were it to become independent, it would join “the
list of states which provide raw materials to more developed countries” and “the
new Muscovy would be converted into a powerless borderland of ‘greater Europe.’”
According to the two authors, “the mission of
Siberia is in the transformation of a still great state, in shifting it from
its traditional paradigms to new paths of development, from stagnation to experimentation,
and from bureaucratism to freedom.”
If Siberia has been a curse to Russia, so too
Moscow has been “a curse for Siberia” because of Moscow’s “imperial ambitions, bureaucratic
spirit, outdated ideas about national interests, and a foreing policy build on
the canons of the previous century,” Inozemtsev and Zubov conclude.
Thus, they add, “Siberia for Russia is not a source
of problems as it appears to many of us and to many abroad. It is a source of new vital forces and a new
dynamism for the country which is tired of being too celtralized, stratified,
and bureaucratized. Siberia is a curse
for a Russia which looks to the past, but a blessing for a Russia open to the
future.”
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