Paul Goble
Staunton,
September 10 – Vladimir Putin has regularly talked about the need to invest and
develop Russia east of the Urals. Indeed, the Kremlin leader has declared that
this is Russia’s “main priority in the 21st century. But the results
of Sunday’s elections call attention to his failure to make much progress in
that regard, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.
Three
of the four regions where United Russia candidates for governor failed to win
outright in the first round were in that region, the Moscow economist points
out. Moreover, the ruling party lost numerous mayoral posts as well as a
guaranteed majority in many of the regional assemblies (echo.msk.ru/blog/v_inozemcev/2275116-echo/).
Compounding national anger at Putin’s
pension plan in that enormous region, Inozemtsev continues, is the fact that
nothing he or Moscow has done has “stopped the outflow of population from the region,
reduced the break with neighboring China and Japan or essentially improved the
quality of life of local people” – and they responded with their votes.
According to the analyst, there are two reasons for this
failure and these votes. “On the one hand, ‘the turn to the East’ was forced.”
It was the product of Russia’s problems in the West rather than of any
calculation of economic interests in the East. And consequently, there is no
Moscow policy which views the Far East as a territory “open for development.”
“The
Kremlin has forgotten that the earth is round … and has been trying to find an
alternative to the West in the East. But since the conflict with the West was
conditioned by political factors, cooperation with the East has turned out to
be extremely politicized – and therefore irrational,” Inozemtsev says.
In
essence, Moscow’s policy has been reduced to expanding relations with China
which is pursuing its interests in the Russian Far East rather than Russian
interests or to engaging in showy actions that don’t justify the money spent on
them rather than on real tasks which could have a positive impact.
“On
the other hand, residents of the region ever more clearly recognize that they
have become a kind of supply chain between Russia and China: beginning in 2009,
in the framework of cooperation with our ‘best friend,’ have been launched
numerous projects for extracting resources but not one for processing them”
within the borders of Russia.
Chinese firms have cut down Russian forests “in a barbarous
fashion.” Railroads have been developed only to increase the export of coal
from Russia to China, and electricity is being exported to China “even below
the cost of production.” None of this
promotes the development of the region, but it may invest some of Putin’s
cronies in Moscow.
According to Inozemtsev, “China is interested in
using Russia but not in developing it: the largest industrial power of the world
does not have any reason to support the establishment on its northern border of
new industrial centers. As a result, today, Russian exports to China are dominated
by raw materials to an even greater degree than they are to the European Union.”
If
Moscow continues this approach, the economist argues, Russia “will not be able
to modernize this region at any point in this century – and a recognition of
this state of affairs is clearly playing into the hands of the LDPR … and the
KPRF” even if neither is able to change things on the ground, at least not yet.
Of
course, even the change of local leaders will hardly be able to change the
overall situation, “but the causes of the failures of ‘the party of power’ in a
region which is much closer to the most economically dynamic region of the world”
are clear to its voters if not yet to those in power in Moscow.
“Russia
thus has not turned to the East,” despite what Putin et al say. Instead, it is steering
the country in the very same way in the east as it does in the west. But “now, on a ship that is proceeding in an
unknown direction, the sailors are in revolt” – and that clearly is one of the
most important messages of the September 9 elections.
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