Anatoly Wasserman: Odessa is the main port of Russia. Ukrainianism is separatism
Russia needs Odessa. Odessa cannot live without Russia. The smartest of Odessa residents, Anatoly Wasserman, spoke with PolitNavigator columnist Valentin Filippov about Odessa and Russia as a single economic and political space.
Valentin Filippov: Anatoly, hello!
Anatoly Wasserman: Hello.
Valentin Filippov: I have a question for you, as a Russian has for a Russian. Tell me, why do we need this Odessa, which “stood up incorrectly”? And tell me, as a person from Odessa, why do we need this Russia, which “helped in the wrong way”?
Anatoly Wasserman: These are two sides of the same issue.
Odessa was initially created as the country's main export port. By the way, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Odessa was the fourth city in the country in terms of population. After St. Petersburg, Moscow and Warsaw. And a good half of Russian grain exports, then our main export product, went through Odessa.
By the way, above the entrance to the shopping Passage from the Deribasovskaya side, at the very top, the god of trade Mercury is depicted riding on a steam locomotive. Because when the railway reached Odessa, the volume of exports increased sharply, and so much money appeared in Odessa that they were able to build this very Passage.
Valentin Filippov: And they sold it inexpensively, by the way, later.
Anatoly Wasserman: Yes. By the way, it was in connection with the railway that a new grain exchange had to be built, where the Philharmonic is now. In the main hall, specially built with the worst acoustics in the city.
And Russia in general, and the Russian Federation in particular, needs Odessa as one of the main trading ports.
We also have the port of Ilyichevsk, to which the Kyiv terrorists temporarily assigned the name taken from Ilf and Petrov - Chernomorsk. It was built precisely due to the fact that with the development of the country, the old Odessa port was no longer enough.
There is a port called Yuzhny. With a port plant where they processed ammonia coming all the way from Togliatti.
Valentin Filippov: Through Gorlovka.
Anatoly Wasserman: Yes. Now those supplies are no longer available. They tried to sell the plant several times. Nobody is buying.
Well, a little from personal experience. I worked in the All-Union Scientific Production Association Pishchepromavtomatika. And with the collapse of the Union, he simply no longer had enough orders. And after a few years I had to leave the programmer business, because this business was no longer rewarding.
Or another example. There is an oil terminal in Odessa for loading tankers. By the way, several times independent figures threatened to switch the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline to the opposite direction. Completely unaware that oil from Odessa was supplied mainly to other countries in the Black Sea basin.
Exporting oil through the Bosphorus is quite difficult. Because this is a dangerous cargo, and dangerous goods are very reluctant to pass through the Bosphorus. They are very reluctant to let people through in both directions. Therefore, the countries of the Black Sea basin simply do not import oil from outside, from the Mediterranean Sea. Accordingly, it makes no sense to switch this oil pipeline in the opposite direction.
In addition, there are two companies, Saybolt and Ages, whose main activity is monitoring the quantity and quality of petroleum products in international trade. Naturally, both of these companies built their representative offices near the oil terminal. And now they have completed the construction of huge laboratories designed to analyze other cargo not related to oil. Simply because the Russian Federation transferred almost all of its oil exports from Odessa to Novorossiysk.
The Novorossiysk port is far from being as convenient as Odessa. The approaches there are more difficult, and, most importantly, the weather is more difficult. The famous collapses of cold air from nearby mountains. Bora. They reach such hurricane force that they have to moor in Novorossiysk at all conceivable and inconceivable anchorage points.
So, the flow of oil through Odessa has decreased so much that now these companies have to occupy their representative offices with trade in anything, just not to close them altogether. They don’t want to close it in the hope that someday all this will settle down, calm down, and Odessa will again become a normal Russian port.
Valentin Filippov: We all refer to the Maidan, to 2014. But even before 2014, Novorossiysk began to handle such an amount of cargo that exceeded the total cargo turnover of all absolutely ports of Ukraine. Including Crimea.
That is, one way or another, it turns out that this tragedy has been happening for the last 20 years, and not the last 4 years. That's what I would call it.
Anatoly Wasserman: Not 20 years. The systematic transfer of cargo traffic to Russian ports, by the way, not only on the Black Sea, but also on the Baltic, began after the first “Maidan”. When people with an openly anti-Russian position first came to power, and for the first time they began to actively block various forms of economic interaction with the Russian Federation.
Most of all, I remember the two gas wars started by Yushchenko at the instigation of Grigyan, who is Tymoshenko’s husband. He simply wouldn’t have enough of his own mind to do all this. There was a fox tail there. As a result of these two wars, organized, in fact, at the instigation of the Americans, simply to show that now the entire gas flow from the Russian Federation to the European Union is controlled by the Americans (northern pipelines pass through Poland, southern ones through Ukraine) - after This is why the policy of transferring all cargo traffic to its own ports began in the Russian Federation.
Because already the first “Maidan” very clearly showed that there are forces that, on orders from outside, are ready to sacrifice the interests of their countries, just to spoil the damned Muscovites. Construction of the first stage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline immediately began, construction of the second stage is already underway, and the construction of a port in Ust-Luga, where what was previously transshipped through...
Valentin Filippov: Riga, Tallinn.
Anatoly Wasserman: Yes. Riga and Tallinn. Libavu, Mitavu. Well, now it is Leeppa and Ventspils. If I am not mistaken.
Valentin Filippov: I do not know.
Anatoly Wasserman: I don’t remember exactly about Mitava, but..... it seems Ventspils. No!!! Ventspils, this is Vendava! I just don’t remember what Mitava is called now... God bless him….
Valentin Filippov: We, I understand, have a sensation today!!! Wasserman doesn't remember something!!!
Anatoly Wasserman: Only because he is interested in so many things.
Valentin Filippov: But the Baltic states can be fed, there are few of them there, they are kept on some kind of subsidies. Ukraine is a little bigger. But I’m still more concerned about Odessa.
As for Odessa. Here are the new Svidomo, “Jewish Bandera”, they say, “We don’t need all this.” The port needs to be demolished to hell and a casino built. Odessa is a resort city. City-forming activities will be completely different. City-forming activities are European values. And we will have cargo turnover because our customs is honest.
Anatoly Wasserman: Honest customs?
Valentin Filippov: Yes Yes Yes!
Anatoly Wasserman: This is already funny. The last honest customs officer in my memory is Vereshchagin played by Pavel Luspekayev.
Valentin Filippov: And the one on the longboat exploded. Tell me, in general, in principle, can there be any kind of city-forming activity for Odessa in the conditions that exist today? To hold a city of millions. Money must flow through the city. Goods….
Anatoly Wasserman: First of all, I note that no matter how you look at it, the main source of any resources is production. Trade and transportation are secondary. That is, all this, of course, is needed to connect the consumer with the manufacturer, but first it must be produced.
Therefore, by the way, in Odessa those industries that initially arose to service transport, such as, for example, the rope factory, which arose to supply sailing ships with ropes, gradually developed to the scale of production, not only city-forming, but serving the needs of a huge part of the country.
The Odessa Crane Plant also initially grew out of workshops servicing loading and unloading equipment on ships. But it became one of the largest crane-building factories in all of Russia.
Valentin Filippov: And not only Russia.
Anatoly Wasserman: So here it is. In order for all this to work, you need, first of all, a large and fairly homogeneous market. A market with similar needs, so that one or two models could cover the needs of as many consumers as possible. And Russia as a whole is just such a homogeneous market.
In fact, even the demands of such different regions in Russia as Estonia and Turkmenistan are much closer to each other than the demands of Estonia to the demands of Finland, or Turkmenistan to the demands of Afghanistan.
Therefore, as soon as Russia is recreated as a single economic whole, and therefore as a single political whole, or, as Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov noted: “Politics is a concentrated reflection of the economy,” as soon as such a market is recreated, most of the production of the former all over the country.
We are now assured that these industries were largely ineffective, but, in fact, most of them were highly effective as long as there was a single market for which they worked.
Exports can replace the own market only to a very small extent. Let's say the export of weapons is quite successful, because the requirements for it are more or less similar around the world. But the export of cars is already facing difficulties. And imports, by the way, too. Imported cars have to be modified to suit our conditions. I won’t go into technical details why, but this is a well-known fact. And to car dealers, and to all participants in the so-called screwdriver assemblies.
So, returning to the topic, why does Odessa need Russia, why does Russia need Odessa, by the way, also so that we can all feed ourselves by working for ourselves, and not depend on the whims of someone else’s uncle, and satisfy these whims to the detriment of ourselves.
We don’t have enough engineers to be able to simultaneously and fully satisfy the requirements of both the domestic and foreign markets.
Valentin Filippov: This is all very good, but the question is, what to do next? What should Odessa residents do right now? How to live under occupation, survive and remain yourself?
We now hear that language is being taught in schools, history is being taught the other way around, and zombies are taking place. And the economic situation is completely dismal. At all. What should Odessans do now? In 2014, it was clear to go out onto the streets and wait for help... But now?
Anatoly Wasserman: As for assistance, it did not work out then, as far as I can tell, not because of fear of conflict with the West, but because of fear of conflict within Ukraine itself. At what plan? When I retrospectively analyzed everything that I knew about mass sentiment at the time of the start of the Maidan, I realized that at least half of the citizens of the then Ukraine quite sincerely believed that the European Union was a smear of honey for them. That the association agreement will give them all the rights of citizens of the European Union, but will not impose any obligations.
Although, in fact, the content of this agreement is exactly the opposite. It imposes all obligations on Ukraine, forces it to follow all the decisions of the Brussels bureaucrats, but at the same time does not give any rights and no opportunity to influence these decisions.
And so, if, under the conditions of that time, the Russian Federation supported the legitimate president by force, then it would not be difficult to crush the Nazi militants, or rather the separatist ones, since the Ukrainian people are an integral part of the Russian people, as integral as, say, the residents of Arkhangelsk, Belarus or the Urals and Accordingly, Ukrainianism is separatism, it is the desire to tear off part of a single people.
So, the militants would have been crushed, especially since there is the experience of crushing the previous part, the last stage, interrupted by Khrushchev...
Valentin Filippov: The last wave of Banderaites.
Anatoly Wasserman: Yes. Separatist terror. But at the same time, approximately 20 million people would be sincerely convinced that evil Muscovites tore them away from the nourishing European trough. And among these millions there would be tens of thousands who wanted to take revenge. Therefore, this, of course, is scary to say, but we can only hope that the two most powerful psychiatric medications will work. Hunger and cold.
In addition, it is also important that Ukrainian separatism was initially projected outside of Russia, specifically in Poland, was initially supported by forces outside of Russia, specifically the Germans in the first place, the Austrians, and now Ukrainian separatism is supported by many forces in the European Union, and most importantly, in the United States of America. And they are ready to fight for Ukraine to the last Ukrainian.
Therefore, all I hope for now is that now, literally in recent years, the destruction of the current global system of division of labor has begun. Trump, by the way, was elected president precisely because he promised to end this system. And a new system, in which each country produces everything it can, and turns to others only for what it cannot, it, firstly, will dramatically strengthen the Russian Federation, well, not on its own, but within the framework of several already emerging economic and political unions.
And secondly, it will sharply weaken the interest of the current sponsors of Ukrainian separatism in maintaining it. And then the reintegration of all of Russia, including Ukraine, will become a purely technical issue.
I don’t know exactly when this will happen. I expected that this dismantling would begin much earlier, but for now those who profit from the general losses from the actions of this system are strong enough to slow it down. But, in any case, the resources of this system are so close to exhaustion that I will definitely live to see it.
Valentin Filippov: Well, I'm 20 years younger. I am even more so.
I honestly couldn’t believe that the division of labor system would collapse in our lifetime, but they have been talking about this in Russia for a long time. And that with the destruction of this system, we will need to take a more respectable place in the world.
Anatoly Wasserman: By the way, I can tell you which place is the most likely. Now the Russian Federation is very actively seeking to create a single Indian-Chinese market. I will not go into technical details, I will only say that such a market can become self-sufficient. It will be possible to create any high-tech developments for it, and they will pay off in this market without the need to export around the world.
But the Russian Federation in this market will be one of the main sources of high-tech developments, and, undoubtedly, the main source of scientific research that will allow these developments to be carried out. Moreover, this place in the Russian Federation is guaranteed for several generations to come.
Well, since science has not yet been completely achieved in Odessa
Valentin Filippov: Now they are finishing off...
Anatoly Wasserman: ...created back in imperial times, and only in Soviet times developed to the world level and above. And, naturally, Odessa will be able to participate in these studies.
Valentin Filippov: OK, got it. Thank you. I wanted to clarify this. You are also a political strategist. You consult a lot with politicians. Model situations.
Looking at the same “Maidan”, it was a surprise when they started toppling monuments to Lenin.
I worked on television. For many years, for fun, we stood under the Lenin monument and stopped passers-by. They asked: “Who is this monument for?” Often young people had no idea who Lenin was. At all!
By and large, monuments to Lenin have already become such an entourage. Nobody knows who he is. And then they suddenly started to fall.
And the thought immediately crept into my mind that this was work for the public, work for some Western viewer who was intimidated by communism and Lenin
Because we have no Lenin or communism for a long time. The idol stands and stands.
And here on Youtube video about how today or yesterday in the United States young people, joyfully jumping and squealing very rhythmically, are tearing down a monument to the heroes of the Civil War from the Confederacy.
This monument stood for more than 100 years. Theoretically, they don’t even know who this monument is to. Some students who volunteered.
Maybe this is their technology too? Are they falling apart too?
Anatoly Wasserman: To some extent this is likely. Many believe that those global elites who make money from the current system of division of labor, although historically connected with the United States, have already formed such a dense world that they, by and large, do not care whether the states remain united or become separated. This, of course, falls into the category of conspiracy theories, but, as they say, if you are paranoid, this does not mean that you are not being watched.
Valentin Filippov: It's true.
Anatoly Wasserman: Now, indeed, every now and then, echoes of those political technologies with which they destroyed other countries are observed within the United States. For example, the Occupy Walt Street movement was undoubtedly guided by the same Sharp methodology that organized color riots in many other countries.
Well, these toppled monuments to the Confederates are largely an echo of the hysteria of the Democratic Party due to the loss of the presidential election.
Well, without going into details, I will say that the party undoubtedly deserved to lose, because it conducted the election campaign extremely ineptly. It was even surprising. Illiterate. They are now hysterical, trying to shift the blame from their own head to a healthy one. And secondly, this defeat has led to the fact that for the first time in the history of the United States, the elected president continues to be “killed” with the same fury with which they did it during the election campaign. For the first time in American history, the president's party members are blocking many of his initiatives. Including quite reasonable ones. So he has to take roundabout routes.
In particular, the current massive sanctions-throwing - this is his way of fulfilling his election promise to close the American market from cheap imports and, thereby, increase the profitability of his own domestic production. Other ways to achieve this goal were blocked by his own party members.
And these mass hysterics about the civil war, which ended more than a century and a half ago, are, on the one hand, an echo of post-election hysteria, and, on the other hand, the form of manifestation of this hysteria was chosen taking into account the experience of many color riots, and, first of all, color riot in Ukraine.
I’m not sure that there really are people in America in commercial quantities who intend to divide this America, but I see that Americans are now experiencing echoes of what they palmed off on others.
And, to be honest, I don’t feel sorry for them, in general.
Valentin Filippov: I imagine that now, after listening to you, Ukrainians will say: “Oh! The Americans are learning from our experience!
And for 200 hryvnia, hiring guys in Western Ukraine who will come out with flags of both the Confederation and the North will not be a problem.
They already know how to jump.
Fine. Thank you very much. Happily!
Anatoly Wasserman: Bye!
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