Читаем Putin's Wars полностью

On November 18, 2011, at the Eurasian summit in Moscow, Nazarbayev addressed his opponents, declaring: “During this time we heard a lot of criticism coming from all sides: from the West, from the East, from within our countries. . . . They say, in the first place, that we will lose our sovereignty. However, nobody mentions the fact that each of us . . . will gain a great sovereignty . . . because we will vote there by consensus, we will solve questions together. That is the first thing. In the second place, they tell us that Russia is initiating the reincarnation of the Soviet Union—that the empire attacks again. . . . But tell us, please, how one can speak of a reincarnation? The Soviet Union was a rigid administrative command system with total state ownership of the means of production and one communist idea as the embodiment of the communist party. Could you imagine us reinstalling now the Gosplan [committee in Soviet Union responsible for economic planning] and Gossnab [Soviet central State Committee for the allocation of producer goods]? We need to tell people that these are just irrational fears of members of the opposition or simply of our enemies, who don’t want such an integration taking place on this territory.”^[16]

Eurasian Union Versus European Union

Putin, in his Izvestia article, had already tried to dissipate fears concerning his new integration project. “Some of our neighbours have made clear that they don’t wish to participate in advanced integration projects in the post-Soviet space,” he wrote, “because this allegedly goes against a European choice. I think this is a false alternative. . . . The Eurasian Union will be built on universal integration principles as an integral part of Greater Europe, united solely by the values of freedom, democracy and market laws. . . . Now dialogue with the EU will be undertaken by the Customs Union, but later it will be the Eurasian Union. Therefore, entering the Eurasian Union . . . will leave each of its members in much stronger positions to integrate more quickly into Europe.”^[17] In fact in his article Putin used three arguments:

The first argument was that the Eurasian Union was a project similar to the European Union. It was presented by him as a supranational project with similar institutions to the EU, which would include a commission, a council, a court, and—in time—a common currency.

The second argument was that the Eurasian Union—like the European Union—was built on shared values. As examples of these shared values he mentioned freedom, democracy, and a market economy.

A third argument was his suggestion that no competition existed between the Eurasian Union and the European Union. A choice to adhere to the Eurasian Union, according to him, would not imply a definitive geopolitical choice that would exclude future integration with the EU.