The Special Military Operation, or more precisely – the next war imposed and waged by Europe (we have already begun pushing the US out of it), is entering its endgame. We hope that a ceasefire will come relatively soon. The problem of the hostility of the failing Euro-elites will not be solved until we achieve the breaking of their will to continue the war and to incite hostility towards Russia. This can only be obtained through a sharp increase of reliance on nuclear deterrence. We hope – without the actual use of nuclear weapons against targets in Europe, although the Euro-elites, who have lost the remnants of reason and sense of self-preservation, are asking for it. The usually restrained, cautious (some may think, too cautious) V. Putin, is losing patience, and has begun to say that if Europe continues to push for war, a response will follow, after which “there will be no one to negotiate with”[1].
But this article is about more pleasant, though no less important matters – about the strategic course Russia should take after an interim and, of course, the decisive victory. For me, as for a rapidly growing group of associates – scholars, public figures, businessmen from across the country – the direction of this course is obvious and non-alternative – a shift of the center of the country’s spiritual, economic, human, and even political development to the East, towards Russian Asia, to Siberia with its boundless expanses and resources, with its already superior human capital which needs to be multiplied.
At the end of last year, the second Tobolsk Readings were held in Moscow at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics. The first, naturally, were held in the beautiful Tobolsk Kremlin – the only one in Siberia – where the Tobolsk Club was founded, a community of people united by the common idea of launching a great project for the new development of Siberia and Russia.
The second “Readings”, which gathered about 80 enthusiasts and leaders of the program (half of them Siberians), were devoted to one of the most important aspects of the future strategy – “Paths and Roads of Siberia” – the development of logistics and transport infrastructure of Siberia and all of Eurasia, especially along the meridional North-South lines. A working group led by A. Pyzhev, an already leading, though still quite young, economic scientist working simultaneously in Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk, is preparing a report based on the discussion of his draft at the “Readings”. The report will be presented to the country’s leadership, society, and the business community approximately in a month. For now, I shall share some conclusions from the discussion, which is heating up.
The strategy cannot be built, as in recent decades, primarily on economic indicators, aimed at quick profit (although economic indicators are important, especially now, when many resources are spent on military operations). The transport strategy must be the foundation of the country’s overall development strategy, leading this development. There are many proofs. One is enough: what would have happened if Count Sergey Witte and his associates had not convinced thousands in the elite and Alexander III of the necessity of building the Trans-Siberian Railway? Russia in the 20th century as a great country would not have happened or simply would not have survived. Most likely, it could not have won the Great Patriotic War. Let us recall the Siberian divisions that saved Moscow, which played a key role in Stalingrad as well, Siberian meat, sheepskin coats, factories that were evacuated beyond the Urals and supplied the front.
The transport network must not follow people, but lead them to the development of new territories. The Cossacks and millions of Russians who followed them turned East European Rus’ into Great Russia.
Climate change makes Siberia, already quite comfortable for life (contrary to the entrenched myths about it as a penal colony), much more attractive. Scientists have already begun to call permafrost “long-term”. It is receding, providing the space for productive and comfortable living. We need to think now about a third latitudinal transport corridor, 300-400 kilometers north of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), opening up new lands for development. This corridor could reach Magadan in the future, and its southern and northern branches in perspective could connect Asia with America via a bridge or tunnel crossing the Bering Strait. Once, before its appearance, Eurasia and America were a single continent.
But the main task now is to focus on creating meridional North-South routes, linking the Northern Sea Route with the southern regions of Siberia itself and further – with the rest of Asia. North-South transport corridors must be planned not only through Iran’s territory but also by connecting to Russia’s transport network, to China’s “Belt and Road”, which, among other things, provides an outlet to the Indian Ocean.
One of the dozens of projects pouring in on us is using the experience of Chinese road builders and Chinese capital, as well as currently idle Ethiopian workers trained by the Chinese, to build transboundary “links”, which could be paid for through an independent financial system by bartering with supplies of fertilizers and agricultural products, already becoming surplus in a number of Siberian regions, but also having enormous growth potential. Let us recall that Siberia once supplied butter to Europe. To the south lie the regions of Western China, Central Asia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa, experiencing need for clean water and food.
It is extremely advantageous to create energy-intensive production using electricity from existing and new hydroelectric power stations. There are dozens of proposals. One of the most powerful projects is being developed under the auspices of S.K. Shoigu, now the Secretary of the Security Council, – a cascade of new hydroelectric power stations to provide energy for a complex of rare earth metal production up to electronic engineering in the Angara-Yenisei region.
New technologies provide opportunities for a qualitatively different level of connectivity for Russian Siberia, both internally and with the rest of Asia. This includes digitalization, where we already lead in the field of transport. These are autonomous systems, the revival of small aviation, even airship construction, uniquely suited to Siberia’s vast roadless expanses. Projects for creating transport, including autonomous airships, as we learned, are already being developed, including in Omsk, Yakutsk and in China. These and many other projects offered to us, and which, after preliminary expert review, we will incorporate into the plans for “Siberization”, may sound fantastic. However, much more fantastic was the almost instantaneous, by historical standards, conquest of Siberia. The Cossacks, driven by Providence, a striving for boundless freedom, for “soft gold” – furs – in six decades traveled from the Urals to Kamchatka, laying the foundation for Russia’s might and greatness. Then part of the furs went to China. None of them became truly rich. But they opened for the country and the people untold wealth, yet to be fully developed. In exchange for furs, along the new “Silk Road” silks, porcelain, and tea came to Russia and through Russia, enriching tens of thousands of people and the treasury. According to calculations, each caravan coming from China allowed Peter the Great to equip and arm a regiment.
From there will spread the metastases of moral decay, the aggression habitual for Europe and being reborn again. And then instability. Naturally, no Russian patriot should renounce the best that the “European inoculation” gave us in the past – the greatest literature, great music, cinema. But the West of Eurasia – that is the past.
In the liberated regions, especially in Donbass, it is necessary to partially restore housing stock for normal life, some industries, but under no circumstances should we repeat the historical mistake made, among others, by the Soviet leadership, when the regions of Ukraine liberated from German fascists were restored first and foremost at the expense of central Russian and Siberian regions.
The movement towards Siberia, among other things, is intended for a new demographic and urban development policy through massive low-rise wooden construction (which are cheaper than in cities). Siberians and settlers, including the heroes of the military operation, should have better living conditions than even in Central Russia. This will also partially solve the demographic problem: many children will not be born in “human anthills”. And there is more than enough land in Siberia. What we need is a future-oriented state strategy, relying on scientific justification, private initiative, but firmly directing it.
The demographic and urban development aspects of “Siberization” will be covered in the next reports of the Tobolsk Club.
Now about the most important issue. The war made the country and the people stir, to discover their best traits within themselves, but it cannot go on forever. This is unacceptably costly in terms of the loss of lives of our best men, and it is politically dangerous. But Russia cannot develop without great projects. Once, these were the Trans-Siberian Railway, Komsomol construction projects, the Soviet development of the North. Now such a project is called to become the new development and rise of Asian Russia, Siberia. Through it lies Russia’s path to the future.
This article was first published in the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
