On Saturday the president of Russia Vladimir Putin appealed to the Federal Assembly of his country with an annual message; by many people it might be estimated as a recurrent dry account on the work done by the government and the president, the plans for the nearest perspective having no real grounds. This speech is harldy imaginable to evoke interest with citizens of a different country, insomuch sa it couldn’t exert tangible influence upon a solution of issues common people beyond the boundaries of the Russian Federation are mostly anxious about nowadays. But everything went otherwise this time. The major part of the oration pronounced by the head of the Russian state in regard to the foreign policy of the country was devoted to integration within EurAsEC frameworks. It was not difficult to grasp from all Vladimir Putin told to what extent the attitude of Russia towards its nearest allies, to Tajikistan in particular, did change. It seemed to me, the person who had been a witness of multiple attempts of business partnership establishment between Russia and Tajikistan after the USSR collapse being, unfortunately, a failure, that in the long run Russia comprehended its errors which had resulted into significant abatement of its positions in Central Asia. Every word of Putin in regard to an urgency of undertaking real steps in the cause of economy ties strengthening his resorting to such locutions as “our friends”, “people of the unified European culture”, “laboring migration”, seemed to be as an implication suggesting the attitude towards Tajikistan, to the Tajik people. To say honestly, at that moment I began to feel pride for my Motherland, for tiny Tajikistan which has no vast territory, but which became, at last, important for Great Russia. I won’t be surpsrised if tomorrow the citizens of our country get certain benefits in Russia, it concern, first and foremost, laboring migrants.
How can we account for Russia having turned its face to Tajikistan, after all? If, on the one hand, it may be imputed to the consequences of its irresolute policy which entailed the weakening of its positions in the world and the threat for its national security, on the other hand, the change of its attitude to neighbors and strategic partners should be attributed to the consecutive and persistent demands on the part of Tajikistan Republic leadership to present real evidence of strategic partnership between our countries. In this connection I don’t exclude the consideration that the president of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmonov has managed to convince his colleague during the latter’s recent visit to our republic that Tajikistan is entitled to the right of laying accounts with certain privileges being an advanced psot of Russia beyond the boundaries of its south frontiers. I suppose the sense of the talk between Putin and Rahmonov to be to the following effect: “If not you, then there are others”. It is no ultimatum, but a real estimation of the socio-economic situation shaped in the country.
Against this back ground the statement of Sergey Mironov, speaker of the upper chamber of the parliament, in Volgograd in reference to the signing of the agreement between Russia and Tajikistan on laboring migration being on the agenda inspires hopes. In this plane it is very important to what position the head of the Russian government sticks. His attitude to laboring migrants from CIS countries is characterized quite obviously by his speech before deputies when he told that this process had to be regulated from the point of view of the degree of that usefulness participation of laboring migrants from the post-Soviet space may bring to the Russian economy. Beyond doubts, the advantage will be enjoyed by the industrious and disciplined Tajik people given preference by the majority of employers in the Russian Federation.
As for participation of Russia in large-scale economic projects, the first step in this direction has been done as well - they signed the agreement between the government of Tajikistan and Russian “Gazprom” on joint tapping, extraction, exploitation of gas deposits on the territory of Tajikistan, realization of production. May be, this time we shan’t be waiting for long unitl Russian companies together with the Kazakh friends dispatch at last a stream of investments into the power engineering branch of Tajikistan. To put it briefly, the first steps towards uniting have been doen in a decade after the rupture of economic relations. We needed the whole epoch to have understood that peoples can’t exist alone, by themselves exclusively.