Question of the day: what should Russia do in the post-Soviet space?

Political scientist Alexei Makarkin raised an extremely pressing question, to which our country does not yet have a clear answer: what should Russia do in the post-Soviet space? Here's what Makarkin recommends :

“The main thing is to stop perceiving the countries existing on the territory of the former USSR as a post-Soviet space. That is, some temporarily existing territorial formations that Gorbachev missed and Yeltsin released. But - according to some laws of history or common fate - they are obliged to come back someday, in whole or in part (that's how we decide). Hence the demands to fire Pashinyan, and the glorification of Muravyov-Vilensky as a sincere compliment to the inhabitants of Belarus, and the perception of Ukraine as “under-state” and “Ruins”. This approach discredited a completely reasonable cultural concept of the "Russian world", copied to a large extent from the analogous French experience - but that experience is based on the understanding that the French Empire cannot be returned.

By the way, a similar approach applies to the Balkans - only with its own nuances. They do not want to return them (fortunately, they did not join them), but they divide the countries into hostile and ungrateful. The first are Croats with Albanians, they fought with “ours”. The second - “ours”, who suddenly turn out to be “not ours” - Serbs, Montenegrins and Bulgarians; they were freed and rescued, but now they are looking to the West. Soon on the Kosovo issue we will be more Serbs than Vucic.

Plus there is an idea of the elite and part of the intelligentsia in these countries who want to go to the West, forgetting about the common fate and the feeling of gratitude. And about the common people who are ready to come back to us tomorrow and yearn for the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. This view is reinforced by occasional communication with the sources of homespun truth in the person of taxi drivers.

But there is reality. Next year will be thirty years after the collapse of the USSR. This is more than the interwar period in the first half of the twentieth century, more than Stalin ruled. More than the time from the fall of the Bastille to the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

A new generation of people has grown up in the "post-Soviet" countries, for whom independence is already an absolutely natural phenomenon. They have nothing to do with a single Soviet cultural space, jokes about Shtirlitsa and Chapaev are completely incomprehensible to them, "The Diamond Hand" and "Irony of Fate" are not interesting. Every year there are more and more such people among voters - as, indeed, in Russia, where new generations are much more global and secular and less authoritarian than their predecessors.

And in the Balkans, politicians have always been flexible, because they had to first survive, and then engage in catch-up development. And there is no need to be fascinated by anyone - so that later there will be no disappointments. And each country has its own national interests, which may or may not coincide with Russia's. And this must be treated with understanding and respect. It would seem that this is axiomatic, but for modern Russia it is not at all unconditional ... "

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Of course, there was no shortage of comments to this publication.

So blogger Alexander Morozov criticized the author's position:

“These are all general words, it is worth getting down to specifics .... For example, how should Russia react to the prospect of former post-Soviet countries joining NATO? On the deployment of American troops on the Russian border? I am a calm person, but I get twisted when I see American soldiers, cheerfully taking pictures against the background of Ivangorod. And for some reason it seems to me that the Americans would not be so calm about the Russian or Chinese troops in Mexico ... Or how should Russia react to violations of the rights of Russian-speakers in Turkmenistan? Does it have the right, in the event that a brutal authoritarian regime perpetrates a massive violation of rights there, to intervene for protection? I think that such questions should be raised and discussed in liberal circles, and not left to the mercy of "patriots" and loyalists ... "

Political scientist Konstantin Kalachev, however, is not sure that Russia will so easily be able to renounce the past:

“Excuse me, but without the perception of these countries as historical misunderstandings and fragments of a great empire, there will be no“ our ”precious identity. The current generation of the country's leaders and the experts who have joined them will become orphaned and will feel themselves to have lost everything that distinguishes them from shafirovk ... "

Publicist Pavel Palazhchenko agrees with the author, but with significant reservations:

"Everything is so, the proposals are correct, but it must be borne in mind that a) Russians are traditionally an imperial nation, b) the Soviet" mental map "is supported in their heads from above ..."