Intimidation in matters of union is a well-known business for centuries. Who would want to just start paying more taxes if threats don’t seem realistic? Political scientist and frequent guest of television shows funded by the Russian government, Sergey Kurginyan, finally decided that it was time to move from global generalizations, representing the relationship of hundreds of thousands of people like moves of chess pieces – “everything is clear – this is geopolitics”, at least to some specifics, mentioned both Issyk-Kul and Manas.
“The Kyrgyz have an epic about Manas, who went to China and then ran away from there “faster than a deer,” but there is at least some epic. What do these peoples have? What are we talking about? What states? What non-Soviet state history?” – Sergey Kurginyan.
Suppose Manas stayed briefly in China. But what does this prove or disprove at all? One might think that the “heroic” victors of the Boxer Rebellion, including the Russian Tsar, were there for a long time.
“If Russians know how to forgive and love, then there it is just coldly indifferent to them. There they need their Issyk-Kul and much more just like that – “without accompanying slaves” – Sergey Kurginyan.
What is the indicator of “love” when it comes to nations as a whole? And isn’t the proposal of “taking care of slaves” an alternative approach to “necessity just like that”?
“We need to be stronger with Russian history, we need to connect with Soviet history, we need to take this succession and build everything on the maximum convergence, looking towards China.” – Sergey Kurginyan.
In previous broadcasts, Kurginyan pays a lot of attention to the fact that Russian-speaking people must realize the inevitability of the connection of their destinies with the idea of recreating the empire – “joining lands.” The acute Kremlin need for such efforts is the real reason why in Central Asia – the only territorial segment of the old empire, monolithic in terms of traditional religion and possessing a greater mobilization resource than all other parts of it combined – they are really interested in understanding the logic of both Russian and Soviet history. Other landscape and climatic parameters – as it happened beyond the Arctic Circle – always led to the fact that the typical managerial activism of the Russian state would turn into a dummy here. And all other forms of activism in Russian social structure are associated with those who are interpreted in Russian tradition as dissenters – those who directly refuse to link their self-realization with the dominant model in the Kremlin.
Having practiced with the arrivals of various conquerors for millennia, Central Asia has become adept at ignoring anything officially proclaimed important. But if we look at the situation politically correctly – as a set of challenges and opportunities at the same time, then the combination of the potential for independent integration and the contribution that non-Kremlin-oriented parts of Russian-speaking culture can make can produce completely new fruits here.
