The New Detour to the East: Russia and Siberia in the Socio-Cultural Eurasian Space

Summary:

The article examines the place of Russia and specifically Siberia in the next civilizational shift toward a new philosophy for human progress, and how Russia should react to the changes occurring in the world with the shift of power from the West to the East. The article consists tries to answer three main questions: What is Greater Eurasia? What are Russia’s geopolitical tasks in this emerging Greater Eurasia? And what is the civilizational mission of Siberia?

In the introduction, the authors claim that the growing conflict between Russia and the West demonstrate that the civilizational choice toward the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union was a historical mistake for Russia. The “civilized world” sees Russia as no more than a raw materials appendix for the West and a large market for its finished products. The hastily formed Russian capitalism in the 90’s turned out to be a mere comprador that did not work towards the country’s development. Instead of restoration, Russia actually went backward, losing its socialist gains and reproducing archaic structures of “wild” capitalism with an unrestrained thirst for individual enrichment.

Therefore, today Russia faces two crucial questions. First is the need to reshape Russia’s geopolitical orientations as a Eurasian power. Second, since the current global crisis, deepened by the conflict in Ukraine and between Palestine and Israel, is in fact a crisis of the Western civilizational project, it is crucially important to join other non-Western countries in the search for new alternative civilizational models for human progress. The authors emphasize that Siberia should be at the center of a guided thinking by Russia to define its global civilizational mission.

The first section of the article examines the concept of “Greater Eurasia” as geopolitical project. This concept was introduced in 2013-2014 in both Russia and China, with scholars from other countries quickly embracing it. However, the “Greater Eurasia” concept is usually defined based on political and economic realities without any consideration to geopolitical and sociocultural constants and perspectives. Therefore, the authors suggest that the Russian version of “Greater Eurasia” should be developed using a civilizational approach toward a full activation of the region’s historical capabilities. Such an approach could highlight Siberia’s central missions as a “meeting point” of several civilizational corridors within Greater Eurasia and a unique location to realize a global and historical “civilizational breakthrough”.

The authors define “Greater Eurasia” as the Eurasian continent without Europe, or the so-called “West” dominated by individualism, rationalism, liberal-market values, and cultural dominance. Thus, Greater Eurasia includes two main parts: the Orient, with western Islamic world, India, and the Southeast Asia civilizations, and the internal Eurasia with the Russian World, Finno-Ugric cultures and the Turkic World. This new geopolitical space has a mission to build a global system based on equality, peacemaking, cooperation and mutual respect for local cultures and identities, a mission that the West failed to achieve with enlightenment’s principles of freedom, justice and humanism, which were transformed into a cult of consumption-driven liberal values.

The second part of the article discuss Russia’s geopolitical tasks in “Greater Eurasia”. First, Russia should priorities the unification of internal Eurasia into a strong political, economic and cultural integration of the ex-Soviet countries. However, the authors make it clear that this should not be understood as a call to recreate a Soviet Union-like state, but rather believe that such integration is crucial for the competitiveness of continental countries against the oceanic powers, which are in a better position in the current global economic system.

Second, as Russian-Chinese relations are of great importance in the region, Russia should work to encourage China to support Eurasian integration through a well-planned program which would be difficult to reject.

Third, Russia should seek to reinforce its relations and cooperation with India and Mongolia, who both represent durable and reliable geopolitical allies for Russia. Russian-Indian relations could be stronger if the existing military cooperation was accompanied by economic and humanitarian cooperation and a broad contact was established between the regions of two countries, especially between the region of Altay in Russia and the northern states in India.

Additionally, the authors argue that despite its cultural uniqueness, Mongolia can be considered a mega-civilization of internal Eurasia, as it holds extreme geopolitical value in linking Russia and China through logistic infrastructure and gas pipelines.

Firth, Greater Eurasian integration as an alternative for western globalism dictates the necessity to create a new cultural model for human progress which is definitely not consumerism, nor liberal-capitalism, nor totalitarian-socialism. The new model stands on cultural and ecological values.

As such, for Russia, the most important task is to develop a philosophical framework for global civilizational development. The authors believe that this will be Russia and Siberia’s main contribution in the integration of Greater Eurasia.

Civilizational mission of Siberia:

In the third part, the authors discuss Siberia’s pivotal role in the next transformation of the global order. Based on diachronic aspect of the civilizational approach, the authors classify human civilization into three types: traditional, technogenic and noospheric. This calcification is based on industrial production patterns, how information is created, stored and transmitted, and on spiritual culture and anthropological aspects.

Traditional old cultures had appeared in East next to the big rivers. Where the natural condition helped in building strong agriculture and developing other handcrafts, ancient megapolis had flourished. Whereas the technogenic civilization of the West appeared in the Italian cities of Venice and Florence. In the mid-19–century, classical capitalism managed to spread across the world. The authors believe that Siberia with its cultural and biosphere resources is set to become the “starting platform” for the next step of human civilization: noospheric civilization.

The author argues that only a strong and focused Russia can achieve the integration of internal and Great Eurasia on the basis of unity, humanism, civilizational principles, and rules for the common interests of all countries and nations. However, Russia, who for centuries has looked up to the West, should now turn toward its eastern regions, especially Siberia by achieving the following:

First, develop Siberia based on noospheric philosophy to become a central region in Russia and in Great Eurasia. The development of Siberia should be based on waste-free raw materials processing, high added value production, and the development of “organic food” agriculture. From a spiritual and cultural point of view, the authors call to revive the moral values of selflessness, peacemaking and leadership, and reinforce  official support to the cooperative and collective and self-organized economic and social institutes, and, of course, promote science and education with leading innovation centers in cities with major universities, like Tomsk and Novosibirsk.

Second, Russia must develop a functioning multilateral cooperation in Eurasia, not only within the Eurasian Economic Union, but beyond to cover the whole region of Greater Eurasia.

Third, Russia needs to develop complex cross-border interactions with other countries of the Greater Eurasian region, focusing on the Russian-Chinese border area and the revival of Russian-Indian relations.

The authors conclude that Russia needs its own project of strategic development with clear civilizational goals for internal and global progress. In this program, Siberia should become the core of the upcoming global tectonic civilizational shifts. The authors argues that the success of those ideas depends on one important condition: the famous prophecy of Mikhail Lomonosov that says “Russian power will grow in Siberia” must be embraced by the federal authorities in Russia as: “Russia will grow with the power of Siberia”.

This article is part of an academic and intellectual movement currently taking place in Russia that call to embrace and promote Eurasianism as the leading geopolitical philosophy in Russia’s foreign policy. The article uses a civilizational approach to defend this philosophy, where Siberia should become a central region in the new geopolitical order in Eurasia. The authors, who are scholars based in Siberian universities, offer a different point a view on Eurasianism, where the eastern regions of Russia should play a bigger role in the intellectual efforts to build a new global civilization and in the international relations of the region to enforce the multilateral Russian relations with other major actors in Greater Eurasia, namely China and India.

By: Rachid Kaouar, P.h.D. Candidate, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, RUDN University, Moscow-Russia