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 Analysis of the results
of Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow
In the previous part of this series, I wrote about the meeting of Josef
Resin, First Vice-Mayor, Head of Construction Complex in the Government
of Moscow, with the General Managers of the four biggest Chinese
construction Corporations. That meeting took place in Moscow, in 2004,
and during that meeting, it turned out that the number of builders
employed in each of the Chinese state corporations was several times
bigger than the population of Moscow, and the total number of employees
in these four Corporations was equal at least to half of population of
the whole of Russia (https://valerymorozov.com/news/3403 )
That was twenty years ago, before China's main economic breakthrough.
1. Remains and
Remnants of the Soviet Union
There was one aspect in that story that no one talked about at that
meeting, but that all the Russians present thought about, and that was
the fact that in the former Soviet construction companies, that
survived the collapse of the USSR and whose names continued to be
highly respected, there were only dozens of people working, among them
only few were builders...
Shortly before the meeting between Resin and the management of Chinese
Corporations, I had conversation with Andrey Shernin, project manager
of Glavmosstroy Corporation at the State Kremlin Palace. In Soviet
times, “Glavmosstroy” was one of the biggest state enterprises in
construction.
In 2004, my company JSC "Moskonversprom" and Glavmosstroy occupied
several premises for offices under the auditorium for 6,000 seats in
the State Kremlin Palace. Actually, all rooms were occupied by
“Moskonversprom” except one that was occupied by Glavmosstroy.
At that time, in 2004, our company signed two contracts with the State
Kremlin Palace. The first one was for renovation of the engineering
systems in the Palace, and the second one was for designing of
reconstruction and renovation of the Palace, technical supervision and
building control over the work carried out by other contractors,
including Glavmosstroy.
No matter how many times I went into rather spacious room, occupied by
Glavmosstroy, there were always two elderly women sitting in it,
silently working on computers. Shernin, project manager, occupied large
table in the center of the room. It was always quiet in the office, the
builders used to enter it modestly and quietly from time to time to
pick up documents from women or give them papers, and silently leave
the room.
Shernin visited the construction site early in the morning to accompany
our construction manager, architect and building control manager, and
to take notes. During the day he appeared at the construction site only
when the authorities from the Presidential Administration used to come
to check the progress of work.
Shernin was twenty years older than me, short but thick and red-faced,
as Russian builders usually are. In the space between the drawers and
the surface of his table, he always had clean glasses and in the bottom
drawer a bottle of vodka or cognac and snacks. Witnesses said that he
could outdrink any big man.
I used to visit his room very rarely and only of necessity. Once, he
delayed documentation, and I entered his room. Shernin sat angry and
unhappy. I rarely saw him like this.
- Valery, you are lucky man, - he said, answering my questions about
documentation and reasons for his bad mood. - You have real
construction company and people, who work, and I have no one here
except these two women!
- What are you talking about? - I asked in surprise. - You have
Glavmosstoy behind your back. My Company is only four years old, I have
two hundred people working in it, the rest are subcontractors, and
Glavmosstroy, as I heard from your President, have thirty-five thousand
builders.
- What!? There is almost no one! Compared to your Moskonversprom, we
are an empty box. Several men and a dozen of women. We have only
directors, secretaries, and accountants. You go around here, command
and demand from all, and I sit and make documentation, even quotation,
myself, and my women collect bills and reports from subcontractors.
That is all!
- How do you manage to run big projects? - I wondered.
- That is how!... We had big projects in the past. Now, we managed to
get into the Kremlin with the help of Resin and are trying to pretend
and survive. We are the cardboard box... You have modern construction
company, and we only have glorious past, name and connections... We are
collectors and distributors of funds, channels for money...
It turned out that the former Soviet “Main Directorate for Housing and
Civil Construction in Moscow (Glavmosstroy)”, one of the largest
construction enterprises in the Soviet Union that built the Kremlin
Palace of Congresses, now the State Kremlin Palace, where I met with
Shernin, as well as the Lenin Stadium and other Olympics-1980 projects
in Moscow, the main hotels, theaters and administration buildings in
the Soviet capital, in 2004, had become “cardboard money box”.
In the early 1980s, Glavmosstroy employed 130,000 builders, operated
more than 10,000 large construction ¬machines and annually built over
2,000 projects using the most modern computer construction management
system. In 2004, there were only few dozen “managers” and “accountants”
working...
By the end of 2004, Glavmosstroy’s contract for rather small part of
renovation works in the State Kremlin Palace was completed, but not
paid in full. Next year, the Corporation was sold to Basic Element,
former Siberian Aluminum, the financial group based in the British tax
heaven Jersey and headquartered in Moscow, owned by Oleg Deripaska.
After buying Glavmosstry, the new owner found out that he had bought
the name with great past and billions of debts. He managed to avoid
paying most of the debts and in few years, raised Glavmosstroy to the
level of “4000 employees” (according to its press-release) and tried to
sell it, but due to the crisis in 2008, it went into bankruptcy. Then
there was crisis of 2015...
The story of Glavmosstroy reflected the past thirty years of Russia,
since collapse of the USSR. In 1991, Russia's GDP was 520 billion US
dollars.
In 2004, when I worked with Glavmosstroy at the State Kremlin Palace,
Russia's GDP for the first time in the post-Soviet period, in 13 years,
exceeded the level of 1991. In the past twenty years, the Russian
economy has developed more successfully than in 1990s and early 2000s,
and by 2022, its GDP has more than tripled and reached $2,5 trillion
dollars.
Since 1991, China developed at a rate that did not fall below 6% per
year, and this happened only once, in 2018, during the covid. Its
annual rate throughout that period was around 10% and, in some years,
reached 14%. During the collapse of the USSR, in 1991, China's GDP was
about 400 billion US dollars, that is, more than 25% lower than Russian
GDP, and by 2004, China's GDP had increased by 5 times and amounted to
2 trillion US dollars, close to the level of modern Russia. In 2023,
China's GDP will exceed 20 trillion, tenfold over the past 20 years and
will exceed Russia's GDP by almost 8 times.
In terms of purchasing power, Russia's GDP is estimated at $4.7
trillion, Chinese GDP in terms of purchasing power exceeded the US GDP
by almost 30% and this year will reach $30 trillion dollars.
Today, China is country with cities, for example, Chongqing, with
territory that exceeds the territory of London by 50 times, or equal to
Scotland, or Austria, or 30 cities like Moscow. In terms of population,
Chongqing is five times the population of London and four times the
population of Moscow...
China and India, as well as some countries of Southeast Asia, became
locomotives of the world economy, and the fact that Russia has friendly
relations with most of these countries, primarily with China and India,
not only opens up opportunities , but also sets before the Kremlin, and
Putin personally, the tasks that if failed to accomplish, can plunge
Russia into another period of internal unrest. During the last visit of
Xi Jinping to Moscow, the Kremlin began to understand this...
Enormous prospects are opening up for Russia, and these prospects are
being opened up not only by China and India, but also by other
countries in Latin America, Southeast Asia and the countries of the
Islamic world, and behind them, Africa is making breakthrough.
However, China, personally Xi Jinping, became the actor who, in the era
of transition to new technological and world orders, set the level of
demands for Russia, personally to Putin, including level of effective
government and economic development, and that was done precisely during
Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow in March 2023.
However, that was not the subjective opinion or desire of the Chinese
leader, but was the result of objective historical process, the
development of relationships and interactions between Russia and China
over the past millennium, that made Xi’s offer not possible for Putin
to reject.
At this moment, we are to look back in history...
2. "From where is and came the Russian Land”
The creation of the first Russian state, in
the IX century, was due to
and caused by several processes, but one of them was decisive, and it
was based on the need to ensure reliable functioning of the trade
route, called in old Russian chronicles "from the Varangians to the
Greeks".
Traditionally, in Russia, the path "from the Varangians to the Greeks"
is shown as path from Byzantium to Scandinavia, from the Black Sea
along the Dnieper River and further along the rivers north to the
Baltic Sea. However, in the chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years"
written by the Russian monk Nestor in Kiev, in XII century, the first
that told about creation of Rus, the first Russian state, the “route
from the Varangians to the Greeks" was described as important segment
of the greatest system of trade routes used for exchange of goods by
countries, peoples, tribes in the territories of Central Asia, Persia,
Assyria, India and China in the East, and Byzantium and Europe in the
West.
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Goods went both to
the West and to the North, along the Danube, along
the Dniester and Dnieper Rivers, along the tributaries connecting them,
and along the Don and Volga, from the Black and Caspian Seas to the
Baltic Sea and back around Europe. Moreover, the routes in Eastern
Europe were actively used not only in the warm season, but also in
winter, especially in the northern and central now Russian territories,
where it was more convenient and faster, to transport goods along
frozen rivers than in summer.
In the X century, it became difficult to use trade routes from Asia to
Europe through the Middle East, North Africa, South Europe. By that
time, Islam had spread throughout the Mediterranean, including the
territory of modern Spain, and the conflict between Islamic states and
Christian Byzantium, created difficulties in trade between Asia with
Western Europe and North Africa. The role of transport routes across
the East European Plain for the supply of goods from Persia, India,
China, Transcaucasia and Central Asia to Europe has increased
dramatically.
In the X century, the territory that is now called the Russian Plain,
was populated by tens of the Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes, none of
them called Russians, and agriculture was their main activity. In most
of the regions, it was low profitable and required lot of hard work.
Thin fertile layer of soil and long winter period did not allow to
produce high surplus value. For rural communities, - that comprised
more than 98% of the population, - hunting, fishing, and gathering in
the forests surrounding community villages played important role.
However, trade was the most profitable, and not only in summer, but
especially in winter, when the harvest was collected, agricultural work
stopped for several months, rivers were covered with ice that made it
possible to quickly move around and to transport goods over long
distances. That is why at that time Novgorod that became the first
capital of Russia, was the largest and richest city on the territory of
the Slavic tribes, although the lands around it were unsuitable for
intensive agriculture.
When the significance of the trade route from East and South Asia
across the Russian Plain to Europe, dramatically increased, the
Germanic and Scandinavian tribes, primarily the Vikings, invaded the
East European Plain, trying to get important trade routes under their
control, destroying and robbing the Slavic tribes. The Slavic tribes
united in that war and pushed the Vikings out of their territory.
However, they failed to effectively use the trade routes and the
opportunities that opened up. To control the trade routes, they had to
provide peace and stability. That required tranquility, balance, equal
relations between the tribes, but tribal leaders, who were called in
old Russian chronicles “knyaz” (single) and “knyazya” (plural),
traditionally translated in English as “princes”, could not accept the
power of neighbors. One tribe could not submit and recognize themselves
as inferior to another. Instead of peace between the different Slavic
and Finno-Ugric tribes, struggle began for influence and power that
turned into continuous civil strife.
There was another problem. Scattered over vast territory of millions of
square miles, the tribes lived mainly in small towns and village
communities, separated and surrounded by vast forests. Both cities and
village communities were usually located along the banks of the rivers
that were used as transport routes, including in winter on the ice of
the rivers. Tens of thousands of the village communities consisted of
three to five families, and such communities could not provide
themselves with protection from external invasions of hostile tribes
and big robber groups.
Due to the low fertility of the land, it was difficult for tribes to
maintain big professional army. There were almost no professional
armies in the Slavic tribes. In peacetime, adult men worked for and
within their communities and joined militia to participate in armed
conflicts only under threat of attack and invasion from outside.
To protect trade routes over vast territory, to punish robbers and
aggressive neighbors for attacking and to deprive them of ability to
carry out new attacks, the professional army was needed that could
create belt of armed outposts, move quickly and conduct raids on the
territory of enemies, punishing and destroying those who invaded, in
order to ensure peaceful life for huge number of small peasant
communities, for towns and market places located along the riverbanks.
There was only one way out, and that was to call on an outside force
that had to be strong enough to protect the territory from external
enemies, to ensure the efficient and safe use of the transport and
trading system over the vast territory, to maintain peace and balance
between the tribes allowing foreign merchants and local population to
trade.
This force had to be weak enough to accept the conditions of the tribes
and not be able to impose its own conditions of government, to deprive
local tribes, their leaders, tens of thousands of communities of their
centuries-old traditions, rights and forms of communal ownership and
use of lands and resources in territories of their residence. Terms of
government were to be beneficial to both the tribes and the new rulers.
The squad, the army headed by three brothers, Truvor, Sineus and Rurik,
was precisely such outside force that was not able to conquer the
Slavic tribes but was able to operate as professional army and supreme
judge.
Agreement has been reached. The squad led by three brothers received
the right to collect tribute from the tribes, from each community for
performing functions as protector and peacemaker, and the tribes kept
the right to live according to their traditions, beliefs, preserving
communal territories and rights to use their resources.
After the death of his brothers, Rurik became the sole ruler, the Grand
Knyaz, the Grand Duke, of the new state - Rus. Novgorod became the
capital of Rus, but later, under the rule of Oleg, the capital of Rus
was moved to Kyiv located in the center of the trade and transport
system,the most convenient place to be used as main military base and
for the Grand Duke to rule.
3
Russian doll as
principle of creation of Rus
In the creation of Rus, we can see the
application of “matryoshka”, the
Russian doll, principle that I wrote about in part 1 of this series,
noting that Russia and China used that Russian doll principle to create
new zone within the existing system of international relations.
In XXI century, Russia and China intend to fight for the new world
order, using the Russian doll principle in existing international
organizations, primarily the UN and the G20.
For that purpose, OPEC +,
EAEU, SCO and BRICS became tools, like little dolls, for pursuing joint
Russian Chinese policy and reforming the UN, operating from within of
the UN and G20, not opposing or confronting them, but trying to reform,
to change and adapt them to the new order. It was on that principle of
the Russian doll that the first Russian state, Rus, was created.
At that time, none of the Slavic or Finno-Ugric tribes were called
Russians. The Rurik family, his clan and squad were called Rus. They
became the rulers over population that continued for several centuries
to consider themselves as separate tribes: polyane, drevlyane,
krivichi, slovene ... However, over time, all the people, all the
tribes that were ruled by the descendants of Rurik, began to be called
Rus, Russians, because the main principle of the functioning of the
social system on the Russian Plain was not national, but
territorial-communal.
Thus, Russia and the Russian people arose not according to ethnic or
national, but according to territorial-communal principle to ensure the
efficient and safe use of the important part of the Eurasian trade and
transport system on the territory of the East European Plain.
It is hard to overestimate the role in creation of Russia played by
trade and exchange of goods produced in Europe, Middle East, Persia,
Assyria, South Asia and China, as well as the role of merchants who
carried out the flow of these goods from town to town, from market to
market, to the Slavic lands, and then by rivers to Europe and back to
the South and the East of Asia.
From the very beginning of existence, Russia, its rulers and the tribes
that lived on this vast territory, became caretakers and guardians of
this section of the trade and transport system that transformed the
tribes over the centuries into the Russians.
To be continued...
References:
1. LUNT, HORACE G. (1995). "What the Rus' Primary
Chronicle Tells Us
about the Origin of the Slavs and of Slavic Writing". Harvard Ukrainian
Studies. 19: 335–357. ISSN 0363-5570.
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