I thank the Chairman and I welcome this opportunity to give my views on a country that I first visited in 1967 and have been studying since 1961 when I went to Leeds University to study the Russian language. As Harry Moore would say, I have been doing it for more years than I care to remember. My purpose is not to attack or defend Russia or the EU's policies towards it. There is more collaboration than ever before between the EU and the former Soviet Union, including Russia, its largest member. Looking at websites, one can see that Russia participates in many international bodies that connect the EU and its new neighbours at many different levels. The relationship is less warm than many people hoped for after the collapse of the former Soviet Union 12 years ago. This is a neighbour with a complex historical relationship with Europe and conflicting attitudes towards Islam. Russia must be seen in many dimensions, as the European power it has always aspired to be and an Asian power.
When Mikhail Gorbachev was travelling through Europe he referred to a common European home but when he went to Vladivostok, China or Japan he referred to a common Asian home. It is an Asian power and still has realistic aspirations towards being a world power. It is the largest state and the former leader of the communist movement. This gave Russia its identity in the Soviet period. In losing the Soviet Union it lost much of its empire. We tend to view post-Soviet Russia as ex-communist. There are continuities but experts in the West have failed to fully explore the extent to which Soviet Union was a continuation of Russia. It is comparable with Britain, which Dean Acheson described as having lost an empire and not yet found a role.
Russia is struggling to come to terms with its reduced circumstances and is determined its circumstances will not be further reduced. It seeks to restore some of the prestige, authority, influence and power it enjoyed. The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, used to point at maps and identify areas Russia would reclaim. In his more adventurous moments he pointed to Alaska, which was part of the Russian empire until 1867 when it was sold to the United States for 2 cents per acre. One can imagine what the history of the world would look like in the 20th century if the czar had not been in financial difficulty.
Russia is a nation in distress, partly because of mismanagement of the dash for growth during the Soviet period. This is characteristic of what Stalin called socialism, followed by what Brezhnev called developed socialism. The consequences are high mortality, lower life expectancy and a declining population, particularly in the past few years. This situation, which President Putin has announced measures to counter, will put greater pressure on Russian pensions than Ireland will suffer with its pension problems. Other consequences include higher morbidity rates, illness, poor health care, severe environmental degradation, including water and air pollution, soil erosion, and problems of managing over 100 ethnic groups, some of whom are traditionally hostile to Russians and other groups. Chechnya is the most cogent example of this.
Crime became endemic as Soviet authority collapsed. We are led to believe that members of the mafia have come to Ireland from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. Infrastructure, including roads, buildings, housing stock and telecommunications, is in poor condition because of low standards of design and construction and poor quality materials. Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is spending enormous sums of money in Moscow but its vast hinterland awaits the modernisation of what is still the largest country in the world. This will require major investment and take considerable time.
As a European power, Russia is a near neighbour of the EU and a direct neighbour of Estonia, Poland and Lithuania. The EU border with Russia increased substantially after enlargement two years ago. For those who aspire to EU membership, such as Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia, Russia is a hegemon of recent memory and an oppressive power. For Poland and the Baltic states, it is the latest version of a country that incorporated them two centuries ago, long before the communist revolution in 1917. It retained those states within its sphere of influence until the past decade.
In the West, we must overcome a legacy of antipathy and suspicion towards the former Soviet Union and Russia. In coming to terms with post-Soviet Russia we must bear in mind that Russia is still not a liberal democracy. It never has been and may never be. Despite what Francis Fukuyama stated 15 years ago, we have not reached the end of history with the liberal, democratic market economy. Russia has some democratic procedures, particularly elections that are deemed to be free and fair, although Tartarstan is more authoritarian and less democratic. Certain features of democracy are absent in Russia, such as effective party competition or a party system. The party of power reformulates itself just before an election and usually wins. There is no tradition of open public debate and many in the West have commented on state control of television and the press. An authoritarian political culture imbues politicians and the population with a sense that people expect the Government to tell them what to do. There is a fear deep in the Russian psyche that the country will fragment further, which partly explains policies in Chechnya.
The West can consider what it could do to help democracy. If a system of democracy existed in Russia, with curbs on the political power of politicians, the Government and the President, it could be seen as less threatening. It has been Europe's policy to try to engage with Russia over the decades but this may not be sufficient. Russia could assist us in dealing with the last dictatorship in Europe, Belarus under Alexander Lukashenko.
However we answer these questions, Russia's future does not necessarily lie with a European orientation. As Europeans we are interested in the aspect that faces us but most of Russia is in Asia. Russia is not far from Alaska, formerly part of its empire, and also had colonies in California in the 1840s. The majority of the population lives in Europe but most of the country and its wealth are in Asia. For the past 20 years European Russia has been in decline. Its population is not reproducing enough and economic resources are becoming depleted. In European Russia, industrialisation and over-exploitation have had a heavy environmental impact that must be overcome.
Russia's relationship with Asia is rather different. In 1878, after the Congress of Berlin, Bismarck said that Russia should stay out of European affairs because there she only contracted nihilism and other diseases. He also stated that her mission lay in Asia because there she stood for civilisation. There have been many periods when western Europe has had a strong influence on Russian ideas. Russia regards itself as part of western civilisation, although not wholly part, and in that sense the Soviet Union, in taking European values to central Asia and elsewhere, was westernising that part of the world.
Let us consider the distribution of resources. Siberia has enormous wealth. Some former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan have oil and other resources that the world needs and those countries are still regarded by Russia as potentially, if not actually, within its sphere of influence. A few years ago there was a Shanghai co-operation agreement including Russia, China, Kazakhstan and others. Russia still has close relationships with central Asia, and closer relations with China. Relations with Japan are more problematic but India traditionally had warm relations with the Soviet Union. Central Asia, China, Japan, Korea and perhaps even India are closer to the wealth of Siberia than European Russia. Siberia is far away and European Russia is remote from it.
In the longer term, perhaps 30 or 50 years hence, there may well be political changes, with a new generation in China. Legal changes might allow Chinese or Japanese corporations to acquire resources in Siberia and, therefore, gain control of Russian assets. That could bring about a seismic change in the global economy. Siberian resources, Japanese technology and capital, Chinese labour, Korean ingenuity and perhaps also western inventiveness could lead to an economic boom to supply the Asian market of billions, including the Indian subcontinent and markets across the Pacific in what we were told ten or 15 years ago would be the century of the Pacific. Europe would become largely irrelevant to Russian ambitions. However, we must still deal with Russia right now and I suppose that the committee is interested in that.
