Putin’s Eurasian Union: a new Russian Empire?

RUSSIAN Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has dropped a bombshell by declaring his intention to form a 'Eurasian Union' between countries of the former Soviet Union. "We are talking about a model of a powerful supranational union capable of becoming one of the poles in the modern world," wrote Putin in Russian daily Izvestia. He stressed that the economic model of the proposed union would be more European than Soviet.

Putin's vision would spring out of an existing customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, which has been in place since 2009 and will become a 'unified economic zone' next year, allowing freer movement of trade and travel. The Prime Minister believes Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan will also sign up, with others to follow. However, the reactions to Putin's disclosure have been largely cynical and few analysts believe his intentions are innocent.

What would Eurasia look like?

Not like the Soviet Union, says Andrew Osborn in The Daily Telegraph. "Mr Putin will never succeed in uniting all the 15 republics that once made up the Soviet Union", he says. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have already joined the EU, and Georgia will not easily forgive Russia for the 2008 invasion.

Even within the existing Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan core there is suspicion. The co-chairman of Kazakhstan's Social Democratic party Azat has spoken out about the "very dangerous risk of another political union" that would tie his country to Kremlin policy.

What's in it for the junior partners?

Putin has promised "economic benefits" without going into detail, but for many analysts the Eurasian Union would be a euphemism for Russian control. In the Financial Times, Isabel Gorst weighs up whether the customs union has proved a good move for Kazakhstan thus far. The oil-rich state has benefited from "access to a market ten times as large", she grants, but on the other hand, the flood of mainly Russian goods into Kazakhstan is driving up prices and discouraging the development of a local manufacturing base.

The return of the Russian empire?

Charles Clover, also in the FT, raises the spectre of the dystopian Eurasia, one of three continually warring superstates in George Orwell's 1984.

But, he reveals, for a dedicated group the concept of a Eurasian union is no dystopia. "We have waited for 25 years for these words to be uttered in public by our leadership," the leader of the Eurasianist Movement, Alexander Dugin, said in Moscow on Tuesday. He claims that his group helped to prepare Putin's article in Izvestia.
 
Clover writes: "Eurasianism was originally a movement of White Russian émigrés, fleeing the Bolshevik revolution". He says that the core belief is: "The former Russian empire formed a natural geopolitical and cultural unit that was destined to remain whole."

What Clover doesn't mention is that, prior to the Bolshevik revolution, the Russian Empire included Finland, parts of Poland - and Alaska.
  ·