Moscow’s Colonial Approach to Far East has Important Ideological Function but is Again Doomed, Luzin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 29 – The Kremlin’s plan to develop the Far East through massive investment and state planning performs an important ideological function in that it gives Russians across the country the sense that they are participating in something larger than themselves, Pavel Luzin says.

            But this colonial approach which has the additional virtue as far as the Kremlin is concerned of allowing the diversion of enormous sums to Putin’s entourage is doomed to failure, the Russian regionalist insists. It won’t bring Moscow any real profits or reverse population flows. Instead, it will set the stage for another round of decolonization (region.expert/frontier/).

            For the Kremlin, Luzin argues, “the Far East represents a kind of Klondike, a final frontier, ‘the mastery’ of which is required for the continuation of colonial relations in Russia.” It does so by suggesting that such colonies will more than pay back the investments made in them, when in fact that won’t happen.

             In the past, there have been “several stages of colonization of the regions to the east of Baikal,” the regionalist notes.  Between the 17^th and 19^th century, it was led by Cossacks, hunters and peasants fleeing serfdom. The in the 20^th century, “the chief instrument of the colonization of the Far East became the sadistic expansion of Stalinist concentration camps. And in the last two decades of Soviet power, the army played this role.

            “Here it is important to understand,” Luzin says, that any colony of any empire is above all an economic enterprise. It must bring the metropolitan center wealth or at least preserve and support those colonies which do so.  As soon as the colonial burden ceases to bring profit, de-colonization begins.”

            According to the regionalist writer, “the experience of the past century showed this clearly. More than that, the world of global trade which came in place of the colonial world, guarantees receipt of much greater wealth.”  But “the Kremlin continues to play the colonial game which economically is a net loss.”

            “The mechanism of redistribution in major Far Eastern projects is already failing considering the scandals arising from the non-payment of wages and salaries even at the ‘Vostochny’ cosmodrome.”  That shows the colony isn’t profitable but has to be kept afloat by continuing and ever larger infusions of cash from the center.

            These “additional trillions at the next stage of the powers’ ‘development’ of the Far East,” Luzin argues, “will of course support the mechanism of redistribution but will never reproduce the wealth” that is being spent by the center. And that failure will be compounded by Moscow’s inability to reverse the flow of population out of the Far East.

            The Kremlin’s colonial model, one dominated by state companies and corrupt levers of power, “is simply not attractive for those who are prepared to show private initiative.”  That means the economy will not grow and that current residents will continue to leave when they can.

            It is worth recalling, Luzin suggests, that “the result of the failure of the Soviet camp and army colonization of the Far Eat became its catastrophic criminalization in the 1990s.” The looming failure of the current colonial effort “at a minimum will lead to a deepening of social-economic depression” of the region and a growth of “the criminal network” as well.

            Both those developments will cast a shadow far beyond the borders of the Russian Far East, making the Kremlin’s bet on the region an even more counterproductive one, the regionalist says.