Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 18 – Russia’s
regions at present do not have “any basis for any confederation, Irkutsk
historian Mikhail Kulekhov says; and consequently, any confederation formed in
Russia under current conditions would be “nothing other than the preservation
of the very same Empire but simply under a new name” (region.expert/confedempire/).
His comment comes in reaction to regionalist
commentator Pavel Luzin’s recent argument that Russia could become a
confederation of cities (http://region.expert/confederation/
discussed at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/12/discussions-about-russias-future-should.html).
A
confederation now could not promote economic ties because “economic connections
among the regions have never played an essential role in Russia” – and efforts
to promote that in Soviet times failed – and because – and this is critical – “economic
ties in general do not depend on political borders.”
“If
there are real preconditions, economic ties will arise without the
participation of politicians,” Kulekhov says; while “artificial maintenance of
economic ties for political reasons will always lead to losses, degradation,
impoverishment, and other ‘delights’ of our inescapable crisis.”
According
to the Irkutsk writer, “any former of state ‘union’ – and a confederation here
is no different from other forms – will mean the creation of a bureaucratic
system.” And such a system like the EU will create problems and those who are
part of it will seek to leave as the British now are.
Empires,
Kulekhov continues, are always “the unification of many various counties under
the power of a single bureaucratic system,” and it doesn’t make much difference
whether this is done by force or voluntary agreement. The bureaucracy rises,
and the individual components suffer.
For
that reason, if for no other, the Irkutsk observer says, it is time to stop
thinking about how to “’rearrange’” Russia and begin rather “to think about how
to live after it ceases to exist.”
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