How will the “unified air defense system of Russia and Kyrgyzstan” work, the agreement on which Russian officials presented for signing to Vladimir Putin the day before?
Many relocator workers with some concern pay attention to integration initiatives involving the Kremlin’s longtime special operator, while they usually do not raise concerns among the Kyrgyz. What is the ideological difference here?
Can Kyrgyzstan become an Asian version of Belarus?
There were times when the lands of Minsk were called convenient for IT specialists and equally comfortable for travel – close to Europe, with an airport that serves flights anywhere and cheap tickets. But now it is difficult to imagine a flow of people wanting to distance themselves from the charms of society under the shadow of the Kremlin regime in Belarus. Planes no longer fly there, police actions are even less predictable than those of fans of power bluffing according to the Kremlin model.
“Unified air defense system” being established in the context of two issues – the lack of actual technological security and the complete openness of Kyrgyzstan to possible landing operations within the formal framework of the CSTO, potentially giving the opportunity to “encircle” not only Kazakhstan but also other neighbors – appear to be signs that the scenarios of events here may go along the lines of “starting with dissolving the Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug in the Perm Krai and ending with the admission of the last of the former Soviet republics in the form of scattered governorates into the new “super-strong” Russian kingdom”.
The Achilles’ heel of illusions about strength
The nature of the relative support for the Kremlin’s actions “at the civilizational level” in Kyrgyz society is that in Asia, politics is built around “strong leaders” – first, organize an “unshakable onslaught”, relying on the maximum resources that can be concentrated, then try to achieve a list of possible goals by war, and “after what is proclaimed as a victory” pretend to be merciful and generous “in those issues that are not critical.”
And from our perspective, it’s funny to see the likeness of Manas in a dreary clerk-manipulator, covered in mold generously spreading from the bureaucratic machine. From the outside and without knowledge, and often even without the desire to know the “inner workings”, with a tendency to forget and drift on waves of illusions, the image of such a character can look different.
The problem is that the modern Russian authorities have been able to understand that their only competitive advantage is not just the canonical pressure, but also the absence of constraints and counterbalances, which is unimaginable even in the Asian communities. Meanwhile, this factor also makes the society of the Russian Federation weak, because any pressure inevitably ends with the loss of vital energy by a certain generation. Even if the youth can be “educated as a replacement,” there are few who are willing to repeat the erroneous vector among the active part of the next generation. The first police suppression “for the sake of fulfilling key national tasks” may seem like a successful trick, a “beautiful multi-step move,” but for the second, it will inevitably be associated with the image of career and perspective collapse. While concentrating on a limited list of tasks, other societies manage to break far ahead in many other directions.
The absence of balance is not an advantage
Just like in the nature of the northern continent, in Russian politics one sharp political season follows another. In itself, this is not a problem and will always be renewed as part of the connection between nature and society. The problem is that the regime tries to “overdo it”, to portray inflexibility, by completely canceling all other directions, and using the unexpectedness and even harshness of the transition as a trick. Only by civilizing such transitions can a society move forward.
Two integration models
In Bishkek, the monument to Lenin is not “moved to the far corner of the park,” but still occupies influential positions, and this is not so much a manifestation of conservatism. Vladimir Lenin as a political figure represents not so much Bolshevism as the concept of integration, which can be called the Volga model, in contrast to the Moscow or St. Petersburg model. It implies that creating a finely sliced empire with a mono-capital, following the example of France, is not such a great achievement because it provides not so much “millennia of peace for the bureaucratic apparatus and other politically troubled neurotics on the probability of collapse,” as it does the erasure of ambitions along with cultural differences.
On the right: Lenin in Nizhny Novgorod, where he was conceived. The huge span of arms, strong hands and pronounced athleticism of the upper body, not hidden by a light city coat, represent the physiological characteristics of a veteran rower.
Russian society will be strong enough to launch integration processes even here without smashing its head against the wall, only if it is ready to use both models simultaneously, rather than suppressing one another in an attempt to achieve another illusion of “complete and final victory”, the era of which will again be short-lived. However, it will only be able to achieve a sufficient level of internal balance by becoming such that it does not need to lie, for the sake of triumph of which all other opinions are canceled; and in the police suppression of everything, the vector of which we do not like.
Begging for missiles, oh you bourgeois refugee
Meanwhile, today the Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation, Siluanov, announced the introduction of a 10% tax on the sale of businesses by foreign companies.
