NOT BY BREAD ALONE

In late February 2008, speaking at an informal meeting of the heads of CIS member states in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin told his colleagues that the Commonwealth of Independent States was an obvious and permanent priority of Russia's foreign policy. This statement was mainly caused by the fact that the pro-Western foreign policy conducted by post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s and the early 2000s did not meet Moscow's expectations. As a result of such a policy Russia not only failed to be accepted into the European family, but also has significantly lost its geopolitical influence on the countries of the former Soviet space, with which it was, until recently, part of a single union state.

Making use of the current situation, the Western countries did not fail to occupy the niches lost by Russia.

In 2009, during the presidency of Dmitriy Medvedev, Moscow jointly with Washington pressed a "reset" button to avoid the deepening of geopolitical confrontation with the West, though it did not really help restart the relationship. On the contrary, tough rhetoric intensified in this dialogue with every passing year. The fact that the West was gaining ground in the post-Soviet space has always been and continues to be a source of particular irritation for Moscow. That is why Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin came out with the article "A new integration project for Eurasia: The future in the making" during his presidential campaign in early October 2011. The article noted that the Customs Union, which began to function in 2011, and the Eurasian Economic Community might become the basis of a future Eurasian Union the creation of which would be a major integration project and a milestone not only for the three countries - Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan - but also for all post-Soviet states. However, in his article Putin pointed out that it was not about recreation of the USSR in one form or another, but about close integration on a new value, political, and economic basis, as required by the time. Essentially, this article can be viewed as a program of Russia's foreign policy during the third term of Vladimir Putin. It became clear that Moscow, in opposition to various Western projects in the former Soviet space, would promote its own programs to deepen the integration process and attempt to transform the amorphous CIS into a more effective formation, what we are witnessing now. However, Russia's plan encounters certain political and economic problems on this path. Successful implementation of this project requires, first of all, large financial resources which are relied on by the post-Soviet candidate countries experiencing serious economic difficulties. Despite its sufficient gold reserves, Russia is unlikely to be able to take on such costs in the face of the economic sanctions imposed by the West. In this context, an ideal option for Moscow would be to form two or three centres in the post-Soviet space that would be willing to play the role of financial agents of the Eurasian Union. For example, in the western direction, this role could be performed by Russia itself; in Central Asia, this function could be assigned to Kazakhstan; and in the South Caucasus, this responsibility could be entrusted to Azerbaijan, a regional leader in all respects. By the way, this is one of the main reasons why Moscow is interested in Azerbaijan's participation in the Eurasian Union. However, given the principle "he who pays the piper calls the tune," the potential financial centres of the would-be formation are unlikely to agree to take on such a role without receiving specific political and economic preferences. Meanwhile, the reality is that none of the post-Soviet countries - not even Armenia that is economically entirely dependent on Russia - wishes to give up its political and economic ties with the West in exchange for hypothetical prospects in the Eurasian Union. Furthermore, Moscow has not demonstrated - in deeds, not in words - a sufficiently unambiguous position concerning the territorial integrity of potential members of the Eurasian Union. Russia's proposal on this issue is not quite clear: should the political and economic relations between the former Soviet countries be formalised after the event or should they be based on the inviolability of borders that existed under the Soviet Union and were recognised by the United Nations? In the first case, it would be very problematic for Moscow to find allies in its endeavours because in the 1990s Russia's political leadership continued the practice of the late Soviet regime leaders of providing various support to separatist movements in some of the post-Soviet countries. True, since the beginning of the 2000s, Moscow has somewhat distanced itself from such policies. However, Russia's recognition of the separatist regimes of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008, as well as Moscow's decision to annex Crimea in March this year, showed that Russia's current authorities were unable to avoid the temptation to continue the practice of supporting separatist aspirations in post-Soviet countries. In this connection, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, which signed association agreements with the EU, have vanished from membership in the Eurasian Union at least in the near term. Logic suggests that Russia, which recently enacted a law to toughen criminal liability for public incitement to separatism, should have abandoned the above policies altogether, which would have seriously facilitated the implementation of the Kremlin's projects in the former Soviet space. The political will of Russia's current authorities to carry out the political and legal assessment of the events that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the USSR would have been even of greater help in this respect. However, it appears that Moscow is still far away from such indisputable truths, though it repeatedly received clear signals even from its allies in the Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Community - Kazakhstan and Belarus - to the effect that Armenia could accede to these organisations exclusively within the boundaries enshrined in the UN documents, i.e. without the occupied Azerbaijani territories. This position of Astana and Minsk plainly shows that none of the post-Soviet countries is willing to become - even indirectly - an accomplice to whosoever's aggressive policy at the expense of relations with other countries. Incidentally, the same position was demonstrated in connection with the events in Ukraine. The Eurasian Union can hardly have great appeal against the background of these developments.

Other important aspects are the ethno-confessional, ethnolinguistic, ethnocultural, civilisational, and ideological components of the proposed formation as the Eurasian Union project is more in the nature of - not an economic, but a geopolitical project, which has its roots in the early 1920s. According to the classical Eurasians, Russia that is in the middle between Asia and Europe and at the junction of two civilisations - eastern and western - is a particular socio-cultural world combining both components, with the dominant role of the Asian component. That is, the Asian factor played a more significant role than the Slavic factor in the formation of both statehood and the Russian concept of culture. Russia acts as a unifying centre despite all national, racial, religious, cultural, linguistic, and ideological diversity. Russian scientist Lev Gumilev, the founder of neo-Eurasianism, called the type of culture that historically formed in Eurasia the Scythian-Siberian "steppe" style: "The middle continent (Eurasia) had become a "melting pot" for Slavic-Turkic peoples which finally formed an organic fusion of the Russian super-ethnos. We must recognise the fact that we are neither Slavs nor Turans (though our biological ancestors included representatives of both ethnic groups), we are Russians. The culture of this super-ethnos was based on Eurasian culture, which is synthetic in nature." In the geopolitical context, Lev Gumilev followed the idea of one of the founders of Eurasianism, Pyotr Savitskiy, to its logical end, namely, that Russians were not just a branch of the Eastern Slavs but a specific ethnos formed on the basis of the Turkic-Slavic merger. According to his concept, the Tatar-Mongols had not been the oppressors but rather the custodians of the Russian state safeguarding it from the Catholic aggression on the part of Europe.

This implies that the Eurasian project is of a clearly civilisational and ideological nature. Much will depend on what cultural-and-civilisational and ideological basis is offered to potential partners in this respect. As the saying goes, man shall not live by bread alone. For example, the fundamental basis of the EU are the European values and tenets of the Roman Catholic Church. Since the Eurasian space is distinguished for its ethno-confessional, ethnocultural, and ethnolinguistic diversity, Russia has to offer conditions demonstrating its objective moderating capacity devoid of bias and nationalism, in both economical and political aspects. Only such a Eurasian Union has prospects for success.