A similar combination of geopolitical megalomania and wishful thinking could be found in another admirer of the Eurasian idea, Aleksandr Dugin, the founder of an international Eurasian movement. Dugin similarly pleaded for a reconstitution of the Soviet Union. And like Panarin he did not want to stop at the frontiers of the former empire, but wished also to incorporate the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (except the former GDR), as well as Manchuria, Xinjiang, Tibet, Mongolia, and the Orthodox world of the Balkans. Dugin’s main focus, however, was Ukraine, the independence of which he considered to be an anomaly. For him, “the battle for the integration of the post-Soviet space is a battle for Kiev.”[7] It might not come as a complete surprise that Dugin is an admirer of Italian fascism. In his book Konservativnaya Revolyutsiya (The Conservative Revolution) he praised the “third way,” which was “not left and not right” and was embodied in “Italian fascism in its early period and also in the time when the Italian Social Republic [Mussolini’s mini-fascist state at the end of the war—supervised by the Germans] existed in Northern Italy.”[8] Dugin was also a source of inspiration for the Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who in 1994 had spoken out in favor of the formation of a Eurasian Union.
FEAR OF LOSS OF SOVEREIGNTY
On November 18, 2011—only six weeks after the publication of Putin’s article in Izvestia—the presidents of Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan, acting as the “Founding Fathers” of the future Eurasian Union, took the first concrete steps. In Moscow they signed a treaty installing a “Eurasian Economic Commission.” This Commission, to be located in Moscow, consisted of nine persons (three from each country), who were given the title of federal minister.[9] The Commission was headed by a council consisting of the deputy prime ministers of the three participating countries. In Moscow the three presidents also signed a declaration on Eurasian economic integration, a road map that would lead to the Eurasian Union.
However, in the speeches of the three presidents during the ceremony different accents could already be heard. Although Russian president Medvedev reassured his colleagues that “the decision making mechanism in the Commission’s framework absolutely excludes the dominance of any one country over another,”[10] it was clear that the question of a possible loss of sovereignty was, indeed, in the back of the minds of Russia’s two junior partners. During the ceremony president Lukashenko reminded the audience that at home people were against this process. “One could understand who were standing behind these people,” he said,[11]—a reference to secret foreign enemies that certainly would not have displeased his Kremlin hosts. Lukashenko added: “But we overcame all this and clearly said: yes, we will not lose any sovereignty, nobody is driving anyone anywhere…. Any question can be brought to the level of the heads of government (the three of us) and only by consensus can we make any decision.”[12] Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, spoke in the same vein. He was in fact the auctor intellectualis of Putin’s new project, because in 1994 he had proposed the formation of a Eurasian Union in a speech to students of Moscow University. At that point in time his proposal fell on deaf ears. Yeltsin considered it an unpractical pipe dream. However, Nazarbayev’s proposal met with more sympathy in Putin’s Russia, and when he relaunched his project in 2004 he asked the Eurasianist Aleksandr Dugin to write a book on the subject. As a result Eurasianism got a prominent place on the political agenda—not only in Kazakhstan, but also in Russia. However—just as in Belarus—in Kazakhstan also not all shared this enthusiasm for integration projects with Russia. “In March 2010,” wrote Laruelle, “175 members of the Kazakh opposition parties, as well as non-governmental organizations and people from the world of the media, signed an open letter to President Nazarbayev asking him to pull out of the [Customs] Union.”[13] The opposition feared that deeper economic integration would cause not only political, but also economic problems by opening up Kazakhstan to the competition of Russian manufacturing and chemical industries, thereby reducing Kazakhstan to a market where Russia could dump its goods. The opponents argued that economic integration with Russia would hinder rather than promote the necessary modernization of the Kazakh industry. This criticism of the opposition seemed to be confirmed, when, in 2011, Kazakhstan’s exports to Russia and Belarus amounted to $7.5 billion, while imports from these countries rose to almost $15.9 billion, causing a large trade deficit.[14] The higher external tariff barriers that were imposed on Kazakhstan also had a negative effect on its trade with China.[15]
On November 18, 2011, at the Eurasian summit in Moscow, Nazarbayev addressed his opponents, declaring: “During this time we heard a lot of criticism coming from all sides: from the West, from the East, from within our countries…. They say, in the first place, that we will lose our sovereignty. However, nobody mentions the fact that each of us… will gain a great sovereignty… because we will vote there by consensus, we will solve questions together. That is the first thing. In the second place, they tell us that Russia is initiating the reincarnation of the Soviet Union—that the empire attacks again…. But tell us, please, how one can speak of a reincarnation? The Soviet Union was a rigid administrative command system with total state ownership of the means of production and one communist idea as the embodiment of the communist party. Could you imagine us reinstalling now the Gosplan [committee in Soviet Union responsible for economic planning] and Gossnab [Soviet central State Committee for the allocation of producer goods]? We need to tell people that these are just irrational fears of members of the opposition or simply of our enemies, who don’t want such an integration taking place on this territory.”[16]
7
Dugin quoted by Marlène Laruelle,
9
Cf. “Evraziyskie komissary poluchat status federalnykh ministrov,”
10
“Vstrecha prezidentov Rossii, Respubliki Belarus i Kazakhstana,”
13
Marlène Laruelle, “When the ‘Near Abroad’ Looks at Russia: The Eurasian Union Project as Seen from the Southern Republics,”
14
“Evraziyskiy tamozhennyy soyuz i ego vliyanie na Tsentralnuyu Aziyu,”
16
“Evraziyskiy tamozhennyy soyuz i ego vliyanie na Tsentralnuyu Aziyu.” Putin, in his speech, said: “The combined GDP measured in purchasing power parity of countries such as India and China is already greater than that of the United States. And a similar calculation with the GDP of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—surpasses the cumulative GDP of the EU. And according to experts this gap will only increase in the future.” (Cf. “Putin’s Prepared Remarks at 43d Munich Conference on Security Policy,”