Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 3 – For most of the last 500 years, Russia has financed its imperial project by exporting natural resources from east of the Urals through what is typically called European Russia to Europe, ensuring that the central government effectively controls the wealth that comes from Siberia and the Russian Far East.
But now, commentator Aleksey Roshchin says, the situation is changing because wealth from Siberia and the Far East is going directly abroad and not through the western portion of the country. “It is one thing when Siberia gas and oil must pass through pipes to the West … and it is quite another” when they don’t have do but can go to Asia (publizist.ru/blogs/113970/44568/-).
This is something Siberians and others east of the Urals are already beginning to appreciate and may act on, but it is something Russians west of the Urals are going to have to think about as well. After all, what will those Russians be in a position to export and get the money they have been getting from Siberian sources?
According to Roshchin, it may soon happen that they “will sit in the dilapidated skyscrapers of the Moscow pseudo-city, overlooking the embankments of a Moscow river overgrown with weeds and conclude that well, Europe has thrown us over … That is a real prospect.”
“I must tell Ivan the Fool: it would be a good thing to sell his plot in Crimea and buy on somewhere near Chita. The title of Siberian will soon be worth a lot.” Russia won’t be the only country affected. Ukraine will as well. It will lose its role as a transit state but with better soil, it will be easier for that country to make its way in the world as an agricultural exporter.
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