Do we need "westernization"?

In early July, President Putin approved the new national security strategy of Russia. And although the previous version of this document was adopted only 6 years ago, in 2015, probably the “zeroing” of the presidential terms and the actual elimination of the actual competitive policy in the country, the authorities were forced to clarify their strategic positions.

The Pskov regional deputy Lev Schlosberg was most accurately and concise most accurately and concisely: "Vladimir Putin set himself and before the state the task of escaping from the entire stream of world civilization, from the path of natural development of all mankind." This document actually contrasts Russia with the whole developed world, portraying the country as a “besieged fortress”, which the West is trying to conquer and destroy.

But if you distract from this "geopolitical" dogma, it is curious to look at the strategy from the standpoint of the internal interests of the Russian regions - how does it protect them, what development path offers them? And here we (hardly with particular surprise) find that this latest strategy directly resembles the program of the CPSU with their characteristic contrast between excellent goals and the sad reality that we tried to "not notice."

For example, strategy refers to the need to "eliminate imbalances in the economy and territorial development." But for today's Russia, this goal is as realistic as the Soviet "building of communism." In the conditions of the enhanced “vertical of power” and the abolition of the remnants of federalism, the economy is also inevitably centralized, tightening all resources and finances in the “metropolis”, and leaving only subsidized survival.

One of the leaders of the Shiev protests, deputy of the State Council of the Komi Republic Oleg Mikhailov states : “We see how relations between the regions and the federal center are developing. The Arkhangelsk Region and the Komi Republic are transferred to the center in the form of taxes. In exchange we are brought in Moscow garbage. There are people of the first -grade, there are a second -grade. This is a colonial policy.” And although it was possible to stop the construction of the garbage training ground in the north, this centralist worldview itself has not gone away, and in recent years it has even intensified.

For example, in the spring, Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin “became famous” for his statement that he “does not need” the Jewish autonomous region, because she and other subsidized regions take a lot of time from such occupied federal officials as he. In the normal federation, where federal politics is built on the basis of their interests of the regions, such an official would not have lingered in his chair. But Khusnullin continues to compose the projects "enlargement of the regions" , not at all interested in the opinion of their inhabitants.

In the National Security Strategy, the long -standing thesis of Alexander Solzhenitsyn about the "savings of the people" is repeatedly repeated. In reality, the regions of Siberia and the Far East today are experiencing a demographic crisis - the outflow of the population from them is hundreds of thousands of people a year and tends to increase. The Kremlin metropolis needs only cheap raw materials mined in these territories, but not in their modern development, which would hold local residents and even attract new immigrants.

Instead of projects of regional development, the authors of the strategy dress up in preaching cassocks and broadcast that the Russians de has a "priority of spiritual over material." These statements look especially cynical against the background of the statistical data of Forbes, which in 2021 in Russia 117 dollar billionaires in Russia. It is curious that in the "dashing 90s" this list was calculated only by units , but when Russia "stood from the knees" under Putin-he exceeded a hundred. Well, “someone yachts and palaces, and someone is spirituality in consolation,” political scientist Konstantin Kalachev ironically comments on this situation.

Another double standard of the new national security strategy is despite the fact that most of these Russian billionaires live mainly in the West, in the document one of the main dangers is called “Westernization”. However, it is not difficult to find an explanation for this paradox - if modern Western laws acted in Russia that require financial transparency, maybe in the Putin era there would be no such number of court billionaires against the backdrop of a rather modest standard of living of the majority of the population?

The westernization in the broad sense includes the genre of Western, which tells about the history of the American development of the "Wild West". The historical result of such westernization can be called the appearance in California of Silicon Valley - the largest scientific and technological center in the world. It is significant that its formation, at least since the 1960s, took place naturally-scientific and creative figures attracted by a high level of freedoms from government regulation, which dominated the east coast of the United States, gathered into the Far West.

It is difficult to compare the Novosibirsk Academgorodok with this global phenomenon - it was created around the same years, but not on the independent initiative of Siberian scientists, but in the spirit of the Russian centralized tradition by order from Moscow. In the 1990s, Akademgorodok could gain a second wind-he managed to attract international investments in modern scientific developments, but subsequently he fell victim to centralization policy: the federal government began to build Skolkovo, which was loudly proclaimed by the "Russian Silicon Valley". True, in its effectiveness, he completely does not before her, no matter how much the state finances it. There is a radical difference in the very philosophy of spatial development: in these federations, residents of various regions themselves freely implement such projects, and in Russia a unitary approach dominates, in which the authorities seek to control all regional initiatives.

Local government is a necessary element of westernization. In July, the anniversary of the Khabarovsk protests was noted, when the inhabitants of the region massively went to the streets in defense of their right to free elections of local authorities. But I would like to pay attention to the event less known to the general public, which, nevertheless, vividly indicates that civil will to local self -government in the region is strong. In the spring of this year, residents of the Ayano-May district of the Khabarovsk Territory achieved a district referendum on the construction of a Chinese chemical plant for the production of methanol on their territory. Despite the fact that the prosecutor's office tried to cancel the referendum, it was still held, and the vast majority of the population opposed this poisonous colonial enterprise. And if instead of this public westernization in the region would have defeated “Chinese”, this plant would easily build, not paying any attention to the protests of local residents. So the new Russian national security strategy, which affirms the "strategic partnership" with China, places in places very unsafe for the Siberians ...

Vadim Shtepa - journalist

The "Opinion" expressed in the heading of the point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial office