Rodion_Romanovic wrote:the creation of those soviet states did not make sense.
And the idiocies done in the 1990s were even worst than those
But the same would be for modern Russia also the creation of a USSR type union. Either just a vague combination of economic and military treaties (Euroasian economic Union, CSTO) or nothing at all. Russia must not repeat the same mistake.
The later is preferable; a loose security alliance against terrorism and a customs union/free trade zone/visa-free arrangement/common labour space.
Perhaps in time a better format can arise. Which is why I think the Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan news is important, assuming that it's not premature. Kazakhstan of course is a member of the Eurasian economic union with Russia.
Uzbekistan isn't, but in recent years it has been rapidly upgrading co-operation with Russia - a rapid growth of Uzbek students to Russian universities, an expansion of Russian-language learning in schools in Uzbekistan, and involvement of Russia in several large industrial projects in Uzbekistan. So this union state project could be a way for Uzbekistan to trial out Eurasian economic union membership too. Of course it gives both more leverage vis-a-vis Moscow than by themselves alone, but you can't fault them for that.
There are also other projects going on. China building a railroad through Kyrgyzstan and into Uzbekistan.
As well as a few projects involving Azerbaijan with industrial developments with Central Asia, together with Azerbaijan's projects with Iran for the North-South transport corridor. Azerbaijan being BTW a country that is quite rapidly adopting a pro-Russian and pro-BRICS position in the world and has recently championed seperatism in French New Caledonia among other things.
Azerbaijan is another candidate for future Eurasian economic union membership.
And none of these integration projects are Anglo-Turkish in origin. Although Turkey and all these states are members of the Turkic Union, these projects seem to be more linked to Moscow and Tehran and Beijing than to the activities of the Turkic Union.
The best would be to go back to the something more similar to the subdivision from before 1917. Fully included in the russian federation and split in various oblasts/ regions/ governatorates.
That shit's going to go down about as well in Central Asia as Tsarist Russia's announcement of conscription there back in 1916.
The local language should be maintained in addition to Russian (as they are maintained in bashkiria or Tatarstan), but they should not have other special privileges or advantages in comparison to other russian oblasts. Furthermore the forced kazakization campaign in what is now the north of Kazakhstan should be reverted.
You really can't turn back the clock in this sort of regard except through an exceptional and sustained long-term campaign of violence. And even then it's a dubious proposition.
Ask the Israelis about how they're doing with that.
If they have to be back they should be back as a bunch of oblasts and some of the territories also assigned to existing oblasts, like Orenburg.
Kazakhstan has currently 17 regions, some of the northern ones can be attached to existing russian oblasts, other combined among themselves, since there are way too many and the country is mostly desert.
For Uzbekistan similar consideration could be done (preservation of language and culture, but not of state borders and internal subdivisions), even if it is a smaller but much more densely populated country.
PhSt wrote:There doesn't have to be a USSR type entity, there is already the Russian Federation, but since Kazakhstan is too big, (thanks to gifting a large portion of Russia proper to the fake/ experimental country called Kazakhstan), the territory needs to be broken down to several oblasts, okrugs, and republics.
Or ask the French how that went in Algeria. They after all did not regard Algeria as some sort of colony, but as an integral part of France, split into the same provinces and so on. Did it prevent Algerian grievances and the Algerian war of independence?
Actually Russia managing directly the central Asian area could also prevent conflicts in the area between ex societ countries (like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan).
They'll have to learn how to do that themselves.
The only important thing, if Russia gets those lands back, would be not to subsidize them at a cost for russian regions, but to normally invest in them as they plan to do for each russian region without any advantages (but also without a french colonial approach).
Effectively you'll be massively subsidizing them, as they'll be far behind Russian regions. And always were.
But if instead these territories are not part of Russia, but are part of countries friendly to Russia and which have elites with ties to Russia and populations with relatives in Russia - then you don't have to subsidize them, at least not directly, and what's more these countries have the possibility of leveraging economic ties with not only Russia, but also China, Iran, India, Turkey and other countries to have a chance at becoming economic engines themselves one day, without having to rely on subsidies from other countries.
In fact Central Asian economies are already growing rapidly. Granted, a lot of that is linked to Russia and comes from remittances from workers in Russia, but their own economic expansion is going quickly too.
For Russia it would be also advantageous to have another large border with China (In the north west of china instead of just in the north east of china) and would ease rail connections between Beijing and Moscow.
And possibly Russia could also at least partially revert the environmental disaster of what was the Aral sea.
You forgot to ask why Russia would want those lands back?
I mean Tsarist Russia first colonized them for a multitude of reasons but it can basically be boiled down to good agricultural land in Kazakhstan and competition with Britain for what concerns the rest of Central Asia.
Fast-forward to today and Russia already has more agricultural land than it knows what to do with owing to better agricultural technologies and a warming climate that have opened up more of Russia's territory to cultivation. Russia also doesn't have the rapidly expanding population to get to work on all this fallow land. In fact some years ago it was in talks with Uzbekistan on importing Uzbek agricultural workers to cultivate empty Russian land. Central Asia is more likely to colonize Russia these days than the other way round.
While Britain is not in India anymore, so there's no rush due to that either.
PhSt wrote:This is a sound idea, over time, there needs to be both a subtle and forced Russification of the entire population, this is the only solution to make the future generations in these territories to see themselves as Russians.
A good example of a successful "Forced" assimilation of inhabitants in a conquered territory is the Muslim conquest in the year 600s. Before the Arabs burst out of Arabia proper, many territories in the present Arab world didn't speak Arabic before they were conquered by the Arab Muslims. The term "Arabization" refers to this process.
Anyways, the Re-Russification of former Soviet territories shouldn't be seen as brazen as the Arab conquests, since former soviet territories were once part of the Russian empire, so Russia is simply taking back what rightfully belongs to it.
But they're not Russians and won't see themselves as such. And you'll just be inviting more problems. Essentially turning Russia into a bi-national state, assuming for a moment that the Central Asians were to go along with this whole idea for a moment. And yes such states can achieve stability for some time but again I doubt Moscow will want to risk anything like that.
And pretending that everybody's Russian just because everyone speaks Russian is a policy that reminds one again of France, where they conduct censuses that make no mention of ethnicity or religion because apparently, everyone's just the same Frenchman if they have French citizenship. And what, has such a policy automatically led to a cohesive society in France?
I actually don't see a bi-national state of Slavs and Central Asians as something entirely unfeasible. Given the level of immigration into Russia at the moment from Central Asia maybe that's where we'll end up anyway, even without any territorial acquisition.
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