• The land west of the Taz and east of the Tobol rivers becomes known as Ma wara al-nahr, the new Trans-oxiana;
• Vladivostok’s Oriental Institute is renamed for the Islamic scientist, Abu Nasr al-Muhammad al-Farabi;
• A great revival in the philosophical works of Abu Ali Ibn Sina, known to the West as Avicenna, sees copies of his books roll off newly-established Islamic printing presses in Kostroma and Tula;
• ‘The Soviet kolkhoze-haust, sometimes spoken of kindly as collectivisations of a hundred years ago, led to the genocide of a third of our people. They closed mosques and arrested our ulema. But it was the Kazakhs who made up Panfilov’s men who stopped the Germans tanks outside Moscow! It was Sultan Baimagambetov who saved Leningrad! Ghani Safiullin who won Stalingrad! And it was Rakhimzan Koshkarbayev who raised the Red Flag over the Reichstag. And now it will be the Oralmen’s army that that seizes Orenburg and Omsk for the Nurli Zhol’, said Maxat Sarinzhipov, the new Kazakh President, speaking from the Temple of Peace, a sixty-two-metre-high pyramid in Astana;
• Sarinzhipov, holder of the Kurmet Order, declares his country’s borders open between China, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Russia. ‘There should be no need for visas at Maikapchagai, Chongkapra, Kolzhat, Karkara, Aisha Bibi, Sypatai Batyr, and Khorgos. No barriers between brothers!’;
• Within months, the Kazakhstan Khanate announces that provocations by Rus separatists, disciples of Viktor Kazimirchuck in Kazakhstan’s border regions, has necessitated special forces seizing Kazakh-Russian border crossings at Roslavka, Taskala, Ust-Kamenogorsk, and Semipalatinsk. Justifying his country’s actions, Sarinzhipov said, ‘As a consequence of these security measures, we are guaranteeing safe passage of migrants from the east as part of our humanitarian mission’;
• In response to questions posed by the Russian authorities in Krasnoyarsk Krai, the President said, ‘Kazakhstan has long been a crossing point between east and west. What is different now?’;
• The Trans-Caucasian Federative model is abandoned in favour of independent tribal Caliphates;
• Within weeks, new laws are introduced expelling ethnic Russians, Germans, and others from their homes in Karaganda, Pavlodar, Akmola, and Kostanay;
• Plaques commemorating the Russian and Kazakh intellectuals Dostoevsky and Chokan Valikhanov are torn down in Petropavlovsk. Monuments to Pushkin are replaced by those of Abai Kunanbaev;
• Urban guerrillas fighting for Novarossiya in Oskemen are seized and executed at the foot of the Bayterek Tower in Astana;
• Latin inscriptions carved by Roman centurions in the first century AD, indicating Azerbaijan was the previous eastern frontier of Europe, are destroyed by acid attack.
They talked through the evening. Each took turns raising the traditional toast of Russian intellectuals, ‘Let us drink to the success of our hopeless cause!’ Chopsticks danced, teeth gnashed on salad and seaweed garnish. Glycerine-brown trails of glutinous slug-blood dotted bowls of soy sauce.
Replete, Grigori sat back, mountainous in his lugubrious joy. He was a committed member of several political groupings, including the Slavyansky Soyuz Nationalist Movement and the Izborsky Club. Clever like a fox, his eyes surveyed the body language of each of his little reception party and their unguarded personal interactions. Tom recognised how Grigori orchestrated the conversation, sometimes with a venomous appeal to base instincts, other times with deft poetic phrases. His lips jitterbugged with humorous anecdotes.
‘Listen’, Grigori said over brandy and coffee. ‘It is good we come together because this is a very serious business.’ They all shuffled expectantly in their seats. ‘The truth is we can no longer speak as freely as we once did. Babel is set to introduce laws to silence opposition. Our brother Egor Kholmogorov, editor of Russian Surveyor, famed for applauding the removal of the Yanukovych regime, was hospitalised after a mysterious altercation on the street. Soon we will be back to the days of Soviet soup kitchens and doors being kicked in during the night. Our influence is limited, and time is running out. These last elections were a pantomime. Dugin’s Eurasian Party could never hold together. We all know who is pulling the strings. Who is at the back of all this financial turmoil. It is the same people who manipulate the White House, the EU, and the UN. Our people need true leadership, not presidents and prime ministers who play musical chairs while NATO surrounds us with missiles and EU troops prepare to enter our near abroad. I mean, just look at Ukraine. Washington, Brussels, and Tel Aviv are the real enemy, not our Slavic brothers in Kiev. It is divide et impera by the same people who are selling Europe out to the Muslims of Pakistan and the dark hordes of northern Africa.’ Then, in an aside to Tom, he said, ‘Is that how you see it?’
‘Yes, a case of divide and conquer’, Tom affirmed. ‘Prime Minister Cameron even sent British military advisers there at the request of his rabbinical brothers.’
Grigori continued, ‘The Third Rome is under siege. Not just from the West but also from the East. What we need is a Moscow, Minsk, and Kiev axis unifying Slavs, not dividing them. Damn Astana’s steppe bandits and all of Eurasia, I say. We all know what is happening in the Caucasus. They are calling for the establishment of a Caliphate. Even as we sit here, the reformed Sassanid Army led by the Caliph Harum al-Rashid Division pushes on the Derbent Gates, the entry point into the Eurasian Steppe. Where did all these people come from? Have you been to Irkutsk recently?
• The Tbilisi Trade Accords: a delegation from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) composed of American, EU, Chinese, Islamic Federation, and Israeli representatives meet with the newly-elected Russian President following the collapse of the Eurasian Economic Community to agree to the division of Russia into four distinct economic trading areas: namely the Slavic, European Russia, lying in the Volga basin and linked to New York and Brussels; Caucasian Russia, between the Black and Caspian seas, linked to Istanbul and Baku; and the Ural and Siberian Russia, linked to Astana and Beijing;
• Ancient Lake Baikal, in eastern Siberia, the world’s largest freshwater resource, is claimed by China, which immediately begins draining its 23,000 cubic kilometres of water from Angara to supply the growing population of the Sino-Siberian hinterland;
• The Sino-Muslim Development Treaty bans Russian industrialists from the strategic Altai mountain range where the borders of Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan intersect, apportioning the land at the headwaters of the Irtysh, Orb, and the Sayan down to the Gobi to the Altaic family of nations;
• Major industrialisation begins on the Uvs, Khyargas, Drogon, and Khar watercourses.
‘If we do not link up with the rest of the White world, Siberia will be lost forever. The government has abandoned the country. There are only seven million Russians now, compared to the hundred million in China’s most northeastern province. Our people have to defend themselves. The 18th Machine Gun Artillery Division was completely over-run in Irkutsk. I have witnessed the mass movement of six hundred thousand illegals through the border. And now the Islamic Uighur separatists of Xinjiang are committing suicide bombings in markets and stabbing people on railway platforms. It is a tidal wave of human material, I tell you, flooding along the Tunguska and the Kolyma. It is a new Mongol yoke that will make the time of Ghengis Khan’s yasa look like Christmas holidays.’ His audience became anxious. ‘You know, there is a story my uncle told me about a closed lecture he attended many years ago with a functionary of the Foreign Ministry. When someone in the audience answered that capitalist imperialism was still the greatest threat to socialism, he laughed contemptuously. It is China, he shouted. To postpone dealing with the Chinese problem is especially dangerous because time is on their side, and the longer we or the West waits, the more difficult this problem will become.’