Russian Senator Shenderyuk-Zhidkov speaks at the East-West Forum: “Türkiye should be an independent pole”

Editor’s note: Alexander Shenderyuk-Zhidkov, Representative of the Kaliningrad Region in the Federation Council of Russia and First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Budget and Financial Markets, evaluated post-Cold War Russia-West relations and current geopolitical fault lines in his address at the East-West Forum held in Istanbul on September 26. Stating that Moscow opened its doors in good faith to the liberal world in the 1990s but faced hunger and conflict in return, Shenderyuk-Zhidkov noted that the West’s anti-sovereignty stance triggered these crises. Grounding the Russian conception of civilization in the legacies of Dostoevsky and Immanuel Kant, the Russian representative expressed that genuine universalism lies in understanding the other without compromising one’s own identity. Pointing out that artificial intelligence technology must not turn into a new tool of unipolar domination, the senator called for the preservation of a multipolar world order.

I’m from Kaliningrad. I was born in Kaliningrad. I have lived in Kaliningrad for 43 years. And you know, Kaliningrad was previously named Königsberg and it is the motherland of Immanuel Kant. And you know, for example, my wife, she’s now in Holland. She walks past the so-called philosophical path of Immanuel Kant every day because she has to go to university. And that is why if you are born in Kaliningrad, it’s very difficult not to be a philosopher, you know. And of course, perpetual peace.

That said, as Ulrike Guerot said a few hours ago, it is in the heart of any Kaliningradian, so let me talk a little bit about our view on peace and our view on the story. Everybody on this panel talked about 1992. Let me start from this. And you know, in 1992, we were very open to the new liberal world. American analysts sat in the Kremlin and helped our president Boris Yeltsin to make a new Russia. And what we got was hunger. And as a result, the Chechen war. So we opened our heart to the liberal world and received a war in our home.

And we were so sad. And we understood that the liberal world doesn’t need our happiness, they need our sovereignty. And when Putin in 1999 came to become Russian president, he came with only one phrase: let’s make Russia great again, 16 years before Trump, you know. And you know, we tried to build our sovereignty again. We tried to rebuild our country brick by brick. We tried to gather our lands. And as a result, the liberal world was not happy with this and brought us war in 2022 again. And of course, we are not so happy again.

And you know, I have a Ukrainian last name. I have two last names, Shenderyuk and Zhidkov. And both of them are Ukrainian. The founder of my family, Yakov Zhidkov, who was a Ukrainian Cossack, came to Emperor Peter the Great in the 18th century and asked him for land in the center of Russia, more than 1,000 kilometers from Kyiv. And the Russian Empire was not against it. It did not divide Russians into Ukrainians and Russians. We were all one nation. And you know, Oswald Spengler called us a young Russian civilization. He called us children of Dostoevsky. He called all Russians children of Dostoevsky.

But maybe some of them have not read Dostoevsky. I read Dostoevsky. I made a monument to Dostoevsky in the center of Kaliningrad and would like to say a few words about how we see Dostoevsky’s civilization, Russian civilization, and our Russian future. You know, that is why I need to look into my notes.

You know, Dostoevsky spoke of universal responsiveness of Russians. Not about dissolving into what is foreign, but about understanding the other while remaining oneself. That is the gift to enter another world without giving up your own. Liberal universalism offers the opposite from my point of view: first give up your history, your tradition, your form of life, then perhaps we will recognize you. And that is not openness from our point of view. You can’t be open to other nations and other countries if you are not a pure Russian.

You can’t be open to other countries if you are not your own nation. And this is our view and Dostoevsky’s view on this. But anyway, we are open to any country. And from my point of view, it is very close to perpetual peace. What Immanuel Kant was talking about. I can give you an example.

In 2005 we celebrated 750 years of Königsberg. And Mr. Putin attracted the President of France Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister of Germany Schröder to celebrate with us in Kaliningrad 750 years. And moreover, Mr. Putin named my university, my alma mater, after Immanuel Kant. And as of today, my alma mater is called Immanuel Kant University. Without link to any situation in the world. But times have changed. And my view is that mostly it was changed by Europeans and Americans. And now the situation is different. And all of us are talking about AI. And I would like to say that from my point of view, I like the Chinese way of viewing AI.

And I fully agree that one of the very important things with AI is that it should be open to all of us and we should know how it works. It is because of two things. First of all, I think all of us are worried that AI will destroy our lives. And the second is also very important. We should do our best to ensure that AI does not return us back to a unipolar world. Our world today is multipolar. And no country should have a chance to turn us back.

You know, I would like to say a few words about Germany, if you are not against it. Mr. Brzezinski in the middle of the 90s wrote his famous book The Grand Chessboard. And in this book he pointed out that Poland and Türkiye should be… That Americans should focus on Poland and Türkiye to help them stop Russia. And of course, this is the idea of sea civilization. If you are a civilization like America, you should turn your attention to very important centers like Istanbul, where the whole sea… And it was a very good idea from the NATO point of view.

But now Türkiye has the second largest NATO army in the world. First is the US. The US is only the fourth or fifth trade partner of Türkiye. China and Russia have much more, and the EU has a bigger trade turnover with Türkiye than the US. And my question is, why do you need Türkiye to be a partner of the USA? First, maybe you should be a new pole, part of our multipolar world. And Poland.

You know, Brzezinski was a very clever guy. And if you look at our Ukrainian war, it was taken from the pages of this book. But you know, this story with Poland turned out bad not only for Russia, it turned out bad also for Germany. My house is 40 km from the Polish border. And I know how for the last 30 years the Polish built their economy, used EU money, and built their roads. And I know that today Polish roads are better than German ones, unfortunately. I know that Mr. Dostoevsky lived in Germany for a long time and he liked Germans.

And I feel that anywhere, anywhere in this multipolar world, every one of us can find a vector, a multi-vector, how to link to each other and have peace between each other. And we believe that we can build new bridges. You know, Kaliningrad, that’s also like Istanbul, a city of bridges. Maybe you know the Seven Bridges of Königsberg puzzle. And you know, in April we built a new pedestrian bridge in our city in Kaliningrad to the grave of Immanuel Kant. I hope this forum can give us a chance to build a new bridge. Thank you very much.