KATRI PYNNÖNIEMI New Road, New Life, New Russia International transport corridors at the conjunction of geography and politics in Russia ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be presented, with the permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Tampere, for public discussion in the Lecture Room Linna K 103, Kalevantie 5, Tampere on May 31st, 2008, at 12 o’clock. UNIVERSITY OF TAMPERE ACADEMIC DISSERTATION University of Tampere Department of Political Science and International Relations Finland Distribution Bookshop TAJU Tel. +358 3 3551 6055 P.O. Box 617 Fax +358 3 3551 7685 33014 University of Tampere [email protected] Finland www.uta.fi/taju http://granum.uta.fi Cover design Juha Siro Layout Sirpa Randell Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 1314 Acta Electronica Universitatis Tamperensis 723 ISBN 978-951-44-7315-9 (print) ISBN 978-951-44-7316-6 (pdf) ISSN 1455-1616 ISSN 1456-954X http://acta.uta.fi Tampereen Yliopistopaino Oy – Juvenes Print Tampere 2008 …a weeping of trees precedes the clear-cuts – it is like a distant, unattainable horizon fleeing before you no matter how much you try to reach it. Please, do not get angry, you small birch trees and pines. Please do not complain. Because to overcome the distance – that truly is the destiny of Russia. Yevgeni Yevtushenko1 In Russia it is always the future that is thought of. John Steinbeck2 1 An extract from the poem “Clear-cut” (Hakkuu). Cited in Backström 1979. I thank poet and researcher Tero Mustonen for kindly translating the poem for me. 2 Steinbeck 2000, 59. Acknowledgements The writing of this thesis would not have been possible without the support of the two Academy of Finland Research projects, The Conditions of Constructing a New Russia at the University of Joensuu (2001–2003), and Russia’s European Choice at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (2004–2007). I would like to express my gratitude to Docent Sari Autio-Sarasmo, Docent Markku Kangaspuro and Dr. Antti Laine for inviting me to take part in the former project and for their valuable advice at the beginning of my research career. Equally, I would like to thank Dr. Tapani Vaahtoranta for inviting me to work at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. I thank all the participants in the Russia’s European Choice project for their encouragement and critique during the research process. I would also like to extend thanks to Juha Hyvärinen, Martti Miettinen, and authorities at the Ministry of Transport and Communications Finland for taking an interest in my work and for providing me with access to empirical material crucial to the completion of the project. In the same way, I would like to thank experts and officials in Russia for sharing their views on country’s development. A very special acknowledgement goes to Ambassador Antti Karppinen and Dr. Ilmari Susiluoto, whose insightful commentary on Russian affairs I have had the privilege of sharing. To my supervisor, Docent Helena Rytövuori-Apunen I owe a great debt of gratitude for her skillful guidance on my meanderings and for encouraging me to complete the work. I would also like to thank Professor Iver B. Neumann and Docent Pekka Sutela who approved the work for publication. Their supportive and constructive comments were very helpful when it came to improving the quality of the initial manuscript. I am also grateful to Lynn Nikkanen who corrected and revised my English and Sirpa Randell who kindly prepared this work for publication. I also want to thank my colleagues and friends who have helped me with my journey into Russia. I have greatly benefited from conversations and critique from my colleagues at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, in particular Dr. Sinikukka Saari, Dr. Arkady Moshes, Dr. Vadim Kononenko, Hiski Haukkala, and former colleague, Dr. Kristi Raik. I also thank Dr. Christer Pursiainen and Dr. Anni Kangas for their valuable comments at different stages of my work, and Dr. Sergei Medvedev for encouragement to continue photographing and for inspiration to study Russian space thematic. Tero Mustonen I thank for his comments to the manuscript and for numerous discussions about many other things. The deepest gratitude belongs to my parents Raija and Jouko Pynnöniemi and to my husband Arseniy Svynarenko, who have always been there for me. Last but by no means least, this book would have been very different without the delight and joy my son has brought me. It is his growing into the ‘language-games’ that made me see the world in a different way. This book is dedicated to him. In Helsinki on April 10th 2008 Katri Pynnöniemi Preface Close to my childhood home is a path that we kids used as a playground. On one occasion we decided to dig a hole in the ground in the middle of this path, and we found a rusty spike. Some twenty years later, when travelling in the depths of Siberia, I came across a similar spike, this time on an existing pair of rails on the Circum-Baikal railway. The two spikes were almost identical because they had the same function: to nail the railway tracks to the wooden sleepers. But for me, the chance encounter with that spike on the shore of Lake Baikal was an instance of recognition, a trace of remembrance that transported me back to my childhood and which, at the same time, marked the beginning of the story about the roads of Russia. The path where we played had once been part of the industrial railway line. The traffic along this narrow gauge track had ceased in the early 1970s. Today, the only trace of the route’s previous function is semantic: local people call it paana. The word has a similar root to the German word bahn and the English word path. However, the narrow gauge of 1435 mm is commonly known as the standard gauge, used by sixty per cent of the world’s railways. But in Finland the narrow gauge is regarded as an exception, since Finnish railways use the ‘broad gauge’ of 1524 mm. It is slightly wider than the one used in Russia (1520 mm), but both gauges are interchangeable in practice. The eighty-one millimetre difference between the Russian railways and the railways used in most European countries dates back to the mid-nineteenth century when the tsarist government in Russia was building its first major railway between St. Petersburg and Moscow. At the time of planning in 1842, the current standard had not yet been considered as such and the Russian railway planners preferred the broad gauge because, as suggested by foreign advisers, it would ensure stability at high speeds. Thus, when the railway from St. Petersburg to Moscow was inaugurated in 1851, a technical barrier to the integration of the Russian and European economies was created at the same time.3 3 Westwood 1964, 30–31. Today the broad gauge is used in the Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasian and Central Asian republics, and Mongolia. The main railway networks of Spain and Portugal use a wider gauge than the standard one. However, the new high-speed passenger lines in Spain have been built to the standard gauge to allow these lines to link to the European high-speed network. In the United States several gauges were used until 1886 when the railways were converted to the standard gauge. In an interview for the Russian radio station Mayak in June 2004, the Russian Minister of Transport Igor Levitin referred to this gap when he commented on the cooperation between Russia and the EU in the transport sphere. According to Minister Levitin, the principal problems reside in the sphere of ideas rather than practices. “A deeply rooted belief among Europeans that Russia does not have normal roads” is more harmful for Russia’s aspirations to reinforce its status as a transit country between Europe and Asia than the technical difference between the narrow European and the wide Russian railway gauges. Minister Levitin admitted that the “myth” about Russian roads is not entirely false, but emphasized that “a positive change is underway”.4 The title of this thesis is taken from the ceremonial opening of the federal road section between Chita and Khabarovsk in Eastern Siberia in February 2004.5 The slogan “New Road! New Life! New Russia!” captures the crucial relationship between infrastructures and the emerging new ‘form of life’ in Russia. The private car owner, truck driver or taxi driver is no longer a de facto participant in “illegal economic activities”6 but uses his or her constitutional right to travel and to do business. However, the wonderful word ‘road’ has retained its profoundly paradoxical meaning in the context of the post-Soviet Russian politics. The ‘road’ denotes a vision of the fast movement forward “into the disappearing distance…”.7 This embraces the idea of the dynamic, far-reaching change that has been taking place, from the heroic digging of the Socialist future to the continuous rearrangement (obustroistvo) of the new and old elements. In this latter sense, the word “road” carries with it a reference to incompleteness. This incompleteness is a feature of the lack of roads and the poor condition of existing ones. Yet, the common conception that Russia’s roads are often best described as mere directions has a positive undertone. The wayward character of Russian roads is frequently romanticized. For, as expressed by Dmitri Lihatshev: “fast driving is striving for an open space”.8 The fast driving compensates for what Russia lacks in the organization of its space into a network of roads. In this regard, former President Putin’s reflection upon the perception of Russia offers a slightly different vision.