The treaty establishing the Eurasian Economic Union was signed May 29; to go into effect 01/01/15 following ratification. Modeled on the EU, its founding members are former Soviet republics Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan (BORAT: “Come grasp the mighty phenis of our great Vladimir / From junction with testes to tip of its face!”). Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia and Uzbekistan also are planning to join. And Ukraine (observer status only).
The USG does not like this.
But, look, this union is not the product of Russian tanks rolling in to crush national aspirations. These former Soviet states want to join, which means they probably see some material economic benefit in doing so, which means they’re probably right. They have institutional memories of being one economic unit from the Soviet days. They all speak enough Russian to communicate with each other and do business efficiently. Probably they will eventually use the ruble as common currency. So, they’ll form a customs union, trade freely with each other in a stable environment, and grow more prosperous, which means the world will be that much more prosperous. Why object?
Don’t really have much to add, but from what I’ve read, at least part of the reason for forming a customs union has come about because of China’s long-term plan to ship goods to Europe via Central Asia (rather than using an ocean route).
Belarus misses the USSR more than most and this does not change much.
Kazakhstan is more interesting. Support for Putin is high but squishy in Kazakhstan. Support for the Union there is more iffy but people are more worried about China than Russia. There are still lots of Russians in Kazakhstan, especially in the north. Language politics are a big issue. Still, Nazarbayev is a very skilled diplomat and will be careful to maintain Kazakhstan’s independence while not upsetting anyone too much.
Uzbekistan is tightly wound and Karimov even more so. They behave very erratically diplomatically and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them join and leave the Union a couple of times.
Kyrgyzstan is similar to Kazakhstan in many ways. The Ferghana Valley (that they share with Uzbekistan) is rowdy but Bishkek and the north is still very culturally Russified. The leadership there is the most open in Central Asia but this has good and bad implications for the country’s stability. They stand to gain a lot economically from closer ties with Russia. Most developed countries’ citizens don’t need a visa to go to Kyrgyzstan, so I’d recommend it while that is available.
Tajikistan is always in a bind and half of the working population lives in Russia already. You won’t hear Russian spoken there very much, though. They have the only legal Islamist party in Central Asia (last I checked) but it’s not popular.
Turkmenistan was not mentioned for good reason. It’s new President is not as crazy as the previous one, but he is quite repressive.
The USG is generally concerned with limiting Russia’s influence in Central Asia. That’s not really new. The implications for Central Asia itself, though, will be a lot more clear when the 2nd generation leadership takes over in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.
It’s down to ordinary great-power politics now, competing spheres of influence, etc. Russia wants to be the hegemonic power in the old USSR the way the U.S. has always insisted on being the hegemonic power in the Western Hemisphere.
BrainGlutton Belarus is an authoritarian socialist state, and they’ve taken fewer steps towards capitalism than the other republics. So they have a certain degree of ideological continuity with the Soviet Union, it’s unsurprising that they would miss it.
But that wouldn’t make them a very good fit with Russia as it is now (a one-party authoritarian state, but with no particular ideology beyond Russian nationalism).
I can’t find a cite right now, but I am pretty sure I remember a poll showing that Belarusians still had a lot of attachments to a “Soviet” identity, even now.
Soviet identity did involve stressing solidarity with Russians. The Belarus SSR Anthem, for one, mentions union with Russia and Kazakhstan SSR’s anthem straight up said “To the great Russian people, we say thank you!”
I’m for anything that stymies increased Russian power and influence anywhere. I am especially in favor of hamstringing them as long as that means frustrating Vladimir Putin.
Russia’s authoritarian, but its not a one party state. Opposition parties exist, although they’re harassed and the media is somewhat censored. (It should be added that the biggest opposition party, the Communists, would be at least as authoritarian as Putin if they were in charge. Liberal democracy is just not super popular in Russia).
Putin has been flirting with embracing a sort of conservative Christianity, and politicized Russian Orthodoxy as a guiding ideology, perhaps because he feels Russian nationalism isn’t enough. Along those lines, his spiritual advisor, Father Shevkunov, is a very interesting character.
Also, while Putin himself is a conservative and a man of the Right, he’s been happy to opportunistically support left wing regimes in Nicaragua, Venezuela and Belarus as a counterweight to western influence (which in my opinion we do need).
I know; I meant a “one-party state” in the sense that Mexico during the decades of PRI hegemony was a one-party state (i.e., only one party that could realistically hope to win most elections).
Nah. Rasputin was ‘interesting’ in a sui generis, charismatic eccentric kind of way. Shevkunov is representative of a strain of thought that’s common in Russian history (the ‘Russia as New Byzantium’ stuff), he’s just unusual by ‘our’ standards. Famously, he directed and starred in a masterful 2008 documentary about the Fall of the Byzantine Empire, which argues that Byzantium fell because it was spiritually corrupted by the west and lost its reason for being.
"Father Tikhon denies that he is anyone’s “ideologist”, but the label has begun to stick, especially after 2008, when Tikhon directed and starred in a documentary film and controversial political parable on the collapse of the Byzantine empire, shown three times during prime time on national TV: The Fall of an Empire – the Lesson of Byzantium. Russian hardliners are fond of the idea that Russia is “The Third Rome” – the inheritor of Byzantium’s fallen Orthodox greatness – and the message of the film does much to reinforce this historical connection, along with justifying in historical terms a profoundly anti-western world view. The Fall of an Empire glosses over the role of the Ottoman Turks, who conquered Constantinople in 1453, and instead argues that Byzantium rotted from within and succumbed to ideological predation by an envious west.
The film charges that rather than sticking to its traditions, Byzantium reformed at the behest of western (Venetian) bankers…The west’s individualistic culture sapped Byzantine resolve and destroyed its hierarchical values. The public lost faith in their rulers."
It’s pretty widely spoken in Kazakhstan too, especially in the North and in Almaty. Lots of people will also claim to be fluent in Kazakh when they actually aren’t. Russian legal status is more hazy but knowledge of Kazakh is used as an effective gatekeeper to keep the political elite ethnically Kazakh. Still, Russian schools are usually seen as better.
Kazakhstan is extremely diverse, with lots of Koreans, Uzbeks, Poles, and others besides Russian. Stalin sent a lot of people there. Russian is the common language of inter-ethnic communication in Central Asia.
In Bishkek, Russian is seen as more posh. Lots of young Kyrgyz women, especially, will speak Russian exclusively in public and Kyrgyz at home. I saw more than once friends who had claimed they only spoke Russian answer their cell phones and talk to their moms in Kyrgyz.
A big factor that has spread the use of Kazakh in Kazakhstan (aside from many non-Kazakhs, especially Germans and Russians, leaving) is the arrival of repatriated ethnic Kazakhs (Oralman), especially from China or Mongolia. They often don’t speak Russian well or at all.