The Politics of Eurasianism: Identity, Popular Culture and Russia’s Foreign Policy

The Politics of Eurasianism

The Politics of Eurasianism Identity, Popular Culture and Russia’s Foreign Policy

Edited by Mark Bassin and Gonzalo Pozo

London • New York

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd. Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Selection and editorial matter © 2017 by Mark Bassin and Gonzalo Pozo Copyright in individual chapters is held by the respective chapter authors. The preparation of this collection was supported by a generous grant from the Foundation for Baltic and East European Research, Stockholm. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: HB 978-1-78660-161-2 PB 978-1-78660-162-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bassin, Mark, editor. | Pozo, Gonzalo, editor. Title: The politics of Eurasianism : identity, popular culture and Russia’s foreign policy / edited by Mark Bassin and Gonzalo Pozo. Description: London ; Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016036574 (print) | LCCN 2016051403 (ebook) | ISBN 9781786601612 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781786601629 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781786601636 (electronic) Subjects: LCSH: Eurasian school. | Nationalism—Russia (Federation) | Russia (Federation)—Ethnic relations. | Russia (Federation)—Foreign relations—Asia, Central. | Asia, Central—Foreign relations—Russia (Federation) Classification: LCC DK49 .P68 2017 (print) | LCC DK49 (ebook) | DDC 320.540947—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016036574 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction1 Mark Bassin and Gonzalo Pozo PART I: EURASIANISM, NATIONALISM AND IDEOLOGY

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1 Defining the “True” Nationalism: Russian Ethnic Nationalists versus Eurasianists Igor Torbakov

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2 “What Is More Important: Blood or Soil?” Rasologiia Contra Eurasianism39 Mark Bassin 3 Geopolitical Imagination and Popular Geopolitics between the Eurasian Union and Russkii Mir59 Irina Kotkina PART II: THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF EURASIANISM

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4 Eurasian Symphony: Geopolitics and Utopia in Post-Soviet Alternative History Mikhail Suslov

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5 Genghis Khan, the Golden Horde and Neo-Eurasianism in Russian Feature Films Christine Engel

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6 Empires of the Mind: Eurasianism and Alternative History in Post-Soviet Russia Konstantin Sheiko and Stephen Brown

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PART III: “PROJECT EURASIA” AND RUSSIA’S FOREIGN POLICY

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7 When Eurasia Looks East: Is Eurasianism Sinophile or Sinophobe? Marlene Laruelle

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8 Eurasianism in Russian Foreign Policy: The Case of the Eurasian Economic Union Gonzalo Pozo

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9 Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism and the Russian-Ukrainian War Anton Shekhovtsov

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10 The Age of Eurasia? Richard Sakwa

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PART IV: EURASIANISM BEYOND RUSSIA

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11 Useful Eurasianism, or How the Eurasian Idea Is Viewed from Tatarstan Victor Shnirel’man

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12 Strange Bedfellows: Turanism, Eurasianism, and the Hungarian Radical Right Balázs Trencsényi

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13 Geopolitical Traditions in Turkey: Turkish Eurasianism Emre Erşen

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14 Kazakhstani Neo-Eurasianism and Nazarbayev’s Anti-Imperial Foreign Policy Luca Anceschi

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15 “The German in the Kremlin”: The Rise and Fall of German Eurasianism Ian Klinke

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Bibliography319 Index361 About the Contributors

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Introduction Mark Bassin and Gonzalo Pozo

Eurasianism, in its broadest possible sense, refers to a loosely connected body of writings, produced by a very diverse collection of intellectuals over a large range of different periods and conditions from the 1920s to the present.1 In their various ways, all of these works affirm the coherence, uniqueness and significance (be it historical, civilizational or geopolitical) of a Eurasian space – a geography without universally agreed contours but roughly coextensive with the Tsarist Empire (minus Poland and Finland) or the Soviet Union. Over its long history, Eurasianist tropes and ideas have been shaped by a diverse set of influences and specific concerns, and have taken many different guises and modulations – to the extent indeed that it is more accurate (if not more elegant) to speak today about multiple Eurasianisms rather than to refer to a single cohesive Eurasianist canon. To be sure, from its classical formulations to the articulations of contemporary ideologues such as Aleksandr Dugin, Eurasianism might simply be used to describe nothing more than a wide intellectual agenda, a tenuously related set of common problems referring to the singular status of a Eurasian space that is conceived as ethnically and nationally plural, and distinct from the West. Not much more can be added about Eurasianism generally that will suit all of its many metastases and variations, old or recent, other than to point out that its development has been historically contingent and fragmented in ways that strongly evoke what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari described as “rhizomatic.”2 A good way of beginning to assess the sprawling and ductile story of Eurasianist ideas is to unpack the term semantically. Eurasianism obviously refers to Eurasia, which is itself a profoundly ambivalent geographical term. On the one hand it conjures up the conjoined amalgam of Europe, Russia and Asia, but at precisely the same time evokes the distinctiveness of an inbetween space, which connects Europe and Asia as a bridge but in fact is part 1

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of neither. Further, while the word “Eurasianism” would indicate that we are dealing with a school of thought, an ideology or a movement, in Russian, evraziistvo denotes both a particular doctrine as well as a more nebulous quality (something closer to “Eurasianness”).3 The conceptual instability of Eurasianism proves more complicated given the fact that it is operational on several scales simultaneously: its insights might be deployed in the analysis of local (and stateless) ethnic and national identities (for example, in Tatarstan), as platforms of state-national ideologies (as in Kazakhstan), or as useful codifications for regional integration and/or domination (as, one might argue, in the case of Russia and the “Eurasian Economic Union” [EEU]). Additionally, the ideas and tropes of Eurasianism, while originally a creation of Russian intellectuals, can today be deployed within a variety of different national-geographical contexts, both within Russia’s current borders (in Tatarstan, Sakha-Yakutia or Bashkortostan) as well as beyond the limits of the former Soviet Union (in Turkey, Hungary or Germany). The beguiling complexity of Eurasianism is much enhanced by the fact that, over the last two decades or so, Eurasianist images and concerns have spilled over from academic discourse not only into official state policies but also into popular culture: literature, film, art and music all have taken Eurasianist themes as their subjects. In particular, the Russian blogosphere has provided fertile ground not just for the dissemination, but for the continued contestation of Eurasianism’s many meanings.4 Eurasianist thought thus exists as a dynamic constellation, and the closer one examines it, the more one loses a sense of unity and regularity. Yet despite, or perhaps precisely because of, these ambiguities, Eurasianism today enjoys a resonance and level of popular engagement that is unmatched in its long history. In addition to the semantic, scalar and conceptual entanglements of Eurasianism, it is important to consider its political status and location. Eurasianism has been the subject of serious academic debate since it first re-emerged in the early 1990s, and with the development of the EEU project after the mid-2000s, it has attracted yet more intense analysis and commentary. It is fair to say, however, that most of this attention focuses on two interrelated questions: Why have Eurasianist ideas gained so much popularity as a new vision of Russian identity after the collapse of the Soviet Union? In what ways and to what ends have they come to being officially embraced by the Kremlin? While these are both crucial issues, it is our general argument that they raise more questions than they answer, especially insofar as they tend to focus on the role of Eurasianism at the level of the Russian state under Putin. The chapters in this book, by contrast, make a case for a horizontal, comparative and interdisciplinary consideration of Eurasianism, which takes full stock not only of the meaning and reach of Eurasianism under the Putin presidency (particularly in his third term) but additionally of the way other

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actors invoke and mobilize Eurasianist tropes in pursuit of very differentiated ends. Our intention, then, is not to develop an argument about what Eurasianism is as such, but rather to explore how it becomes appropriated, interpreted, modulated and deployed politically by a variety of different agencies, including nationalist leaders, oppositional forces (left and right), intellectuals, artists and, of course, also government elites. What we are calling the politics of Eurasianism refers not only to the proliferating and dynamic uses of Eurasianism inside, but also beyond, the Russian Federation. Beyond this, the contributions collected here ultimately seek to map Eurasianism’s myriad intellectual, cultural and geopolitical ramifications, underscoring its extraordinary political pull, its great adaptability and its surprising geographical mobility. The originality of our collection lies in its emphasis on the complex vibrancy and pliancy of Eurasianism as a contemporary political phenomenon. Viewed less as an official Russian political doctrine and more as a remarkably pervasive spatial metanarrative (opposed to the essentially temporal/historical logic of Western liberal cosmopolitanism, for instance), Eurasianism represents a dynamic element in the turbulent flux of contemporary post-Soviet and more broadly European politics, acquiring new connotations and meanings at every turn. Ultimately, it is Eurasianism’s broad political presence which provides the rationale for this book: however loose and unsystematic, the vitality and resilience of Eurasianist thinking tells us that it has a future and that it will continue providing a key to understanding the ideological, cultural, national and territorial development of the postSoviet world. Elsewhere, in many parts of Europe, its presence is and will continue to be felt not only by strategists and geopoliticians but on the street, where it is plays a prominent role in the resurgence today of radical conservatism and the European New Right.5 The chapters in this book offer insights into why Eurasianist ideas have found so many different interested audiences and how they are able to engender ever-new renditions and orientations in the former Soviet Union and further afield. CONSTRUCTING A EURASIANIST METANARRATIVE: ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION The doctrines of Eurasianism were originally formulated in the 1920s and 1930s by Russian nationalists who had fled the revolution and regrouped in the capitals of Western Europe to rethink their country’s predicament and its future.6 Its progenitors were outstanding representatives of fin-de-siècle Russia’s intellectual and cultural elite, including Prince Nikolai Trubetskoi, Petr Savitskii, George Vernadskii, Petr Suvchinskii, Roman Jakobson,

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Prince Dmitrii Mirskii and many others. They were strongly influenced by the legacy of nineteenth-century Russian nationalism, with its vision of Russia as an autonomous world civilization; in a sense they saw their challenge as the positive reformulation of this tradition in response to the Bolshevik Revolution. On the one hand, they had little sympathy for the Eurocentric Romanov ancien regime and thus welcomed its demise as a political order. At the same time, however, they were categorically opposed to the territorial fragmentation of the imperial state which followed the Bolshevik victory, as a succession of subject peoples and regions – Ukraine, Crimea, Russian Turkestan, the Caucasus and others – declared their national independence. Under these circumstances, the great motivating objective of the Eurasianist project from the outset was to reverse the process of disintegration and re-establish the traditional geopolitical unity of the Russian state. Towards this end, the Eurasianists argued that the peoples of the former empire, very much including the Great Russians, represented a unified and organic polyethnic entity. Over many centuries of social, economic and military interaction, the nations inhabiting the vast spaces of the Eurasian continent had developed close interconnections, and had coalesced into a tightly cohesive geohistorical, geocultural and geopolitical amalgam. Eurasia represented a multinational “community of historical destiny” – a “symphonic personality” and “unity in diversity,” as the Eurasianist Nikolai Trubetskoi put it – that was separate from and superior to the European West. The final point was critical. Following faithfully in the nationalist spirit of Fedor Dostoevskii, Nikolai Danilevskii and Konstantin Leont’ev, Eurasianism insisted on the endemic opposition between the interests of Russia and the West. The Eurasianists depicted Russian history as a grand elemental struggle against the unremitting hostility of the European West, from the Teutonic barons of the medieval Baltic through the Napoleonic invasions, down to the carnage of the First World War. The historical and civilizational coherence of Eurasia’s many peoples, they maintained, had originally been conditioned by the natural geographical–ecological unity of the Eurasian spaces they occupied. These spaces – a cluster of adjacent steppes or grasslands – formed what was essentially a single vast lowland expanse, the flatness and emptiness of which facilitated centuries of rapid movement across and easy communication and interaction among their far-flung inhabitants.7 The openness and unity of this Eurasian expanse fostered not only the development of common social and cultural values, but most importantly facilitated their eventual political consolidation into a unified state structure. The first attempt to realize this geopolitical potential was the great Mongol Empire, whose cavalries of nomadic warriors conquered the lands of Kievan Rus’ in the early thirteenth century. The Mongol conquest and the ensuing two and a half centuries of

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domination were typically characterized by Russian historians in disparaging terms as a “Mongol yoke” which had brought Russia great suffering and widespread destruction. The Eurasianists, by contrast, while not denying the harshness of this experience, emphasized instead the one grand positive result of the “legacy of Genghis Khan,” namely that it revealed the vital geopolitical teleology towards political unification that inhered in Eurasian space – a teleology they believed was destined to be consummated in later centuries by the Russians themselves. As a part of this revisionist reading of Eurasian geography and early Russian history, the steppes and their nomadic inhabitants became extremely powerful Eurasianist images, providing the basis for a novel Russian-Eurasian identity whose affinities were with the Asiatic peoples of the East rather than the Europeans of the West. The Eurasianists did not believe that the future reconsolidation of a unified Russian-Eurasian state necessarily involved the re-establishment of the old imperial model, in which the Great Russians ruled as colonial masters over their subject peoples. Very much to the contrary, they were influenced by the novel postcolonial discourses of “national liberation” and “selfdetermination” that proliferated after 1918. Correspondingly, they envisioned the Eurasia of the future as a post-imperial order, in which the integrity and equality of all its member peoples would be recognized, and their right to organize their national lives would be guaranteed. Nonetheless, while acknowledging the legitimacy of the ethnonational identity of the empire’s formerly subject peoples – what they called Eurasia’s “lower level” – the Eurasianists consistently subordinated these interests to the priority of “upper level” polyethnic cohesion across Russia-Eurasia as a whole. The role of ethnic Russians in this two-tier arrangement was ambivalent. While Trubetskoi insisted that Russians must abandon any pretence of colonial overlordship, and indeed summoned them rather weirdly to surrender their Great Russian nationalism in favour of “pan-Eurasianism,” the assumption of Russia’s preeminent “first among equals” status in the Eurasian fraternity did not entirely disappear. Beyond this, the Eurasianists were also strongly influenced by the political systems developing in interwar Italy and Germany, and they projected Russia-Eurasia as an authoritarian and “ideocratic” state, similarly organized on the basis of economic autarky. They did not however share European identification of national groups as races and the associated linkage of national welfare to the maintenance or establishment of racial purity. To the contrary, Eurasia for them was manifestly a multinational community, whose population cohered not by reason of genetics but rather on the basis of historical experience and civilizational affinity. In the Soviet Union itself, the émigré Eurasianists were denounced as bourgeois nationalists and their teachings suppressed. Beginning in the postStalinist 1960s, however, many of their ideas were taken up by Lev Gumilev,

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the son of the poets Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilev.8 A historian, geographer and ethnographer, Gumilev developed on classical Eurasianism in two vital respects. Embracing the general vision of Russia-Eurasia as a multinational civilization, he maintained that it had developed into a continental derzhava (great power) not through conquest and domination, but rather collaboratively through the cooperation of all of its constituent peoples, Russians and non-Russians alike. Russia had never been a hegemonic empire on the Western model, but was rather characterized at all times by harmonious relations between its many nationalities. Gumilev consistently stressed the important positive contribution that non-Russian peoples made to the construction of the imperial state and Russian-Eurasian civilization, even to the point of downplaying the role of Great Russians themselves. This approach was clearly apparent in his historical revision of the original Eurasianist account of ancient Russia’s encounter with the Mongol Empire. Gumilev repeated the positive spin that his predecessors gave to this experience, but went much further in his insistence on the brotherhood and shared destiny of the two groups. Indeed, he denied that the Mongols had ever conquered or dominated Russia at all, maintaining instead that the two sides had been in fact comradely allies united against the common enemy of the West. Most sensationally, he concluded that the modern Russian etnos, or nation, originated out of the symbiotic interaction between them. Gumilev’s other development of Eurasianist ideas was his greater emphasis on “lower level” questions of ethnicity and ethnonational identity. In the decades after 1945, the so-called national question was an overriding preoccupation in Soviet society, stimulated among other things by apprehensions regarding the officially supported project for the sliianie or merging of the various Soviet nationalities into a supra-ethnic “Soviet people.” In the 1960s the articulation of a scientific theory of “ethnos” became a general preoccupation for Soviet ethnographers. Gumilev made his own unique contribution to this debate, in the form of a naturalistic description of national groups or ethnies as biological organisms which could not be combined or merged. However, Gumilev shared the environmentalist bias of the classical Eurasianists, and thus argued that the biology of ethnicity was based on external geographical factors rather than internal physiological constitution and genetics. The nature of the etnos was determined by its unique ecological relationships to the local natural-geographical landshaft in which it developed and to the biosphere as a whole. Gumilev’s environmentalism meant that he, again like the classical Eurasianists, did not believe that nations or ethnies represented genetically conditioned races, and maintained to the contrary that they are always formed out of a mixture of different racial elements. In presenting his vision of ethnicity, Gumilev deployed a colourful and distinctive lexicon of terms that he either invented or adapted from the natural sciences,

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such as symbiosis, chimera, superethnos, anti-system, complementarity and passionarnost’. As several chapters in this collection indicate, these terms have today become very popular. The Eurasianism, or neo-Eurasianism, that is the specific subject of this book began to take shape at the end of perestroika, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.9 In a striking re-enactment of the scenario of the revolutionary period, the Russian-Soviet state was once again confronted with the prospect and then the reality of territorial fragmentation. And once again, conservative Russian nationalists endeavoured to resist this by embracing a novel doctrine that could re-establish the necessity and the legitimacy for maintaining geopolitical cohesion. The manifold disillusionments of the perestroika period meant that such a doctrine could not redeploy discredited slogans of SovietMarxist solidarity towards this end, and it turned out that no better ideological alternative was available than to resurrect the old arguments of Eurasianism – a perspective that had either been forgotten or at least effectively marginalized by the Soviet mainstream. If this was a Eurasianist revival, however, neo-Eurasianism looked very different from its initial formulation, for it combined the classical with the Gumilevian legacies – a combination that served to enhance Eurasianism’s thematic scope, and consequently its ideological flexibility, quite dramatically. The remarkable consequence of this situation is apparent across all of the chapters in this collection. Eurasianism today appeals to and is useful for a wide variety of constituencies of post-Soviet society, constituencies which are animated by very different and even contending political and national agendas. Their various deployments of Eurasianism are distinguished from each other by substantial differences in interpretation and purpose. There are certain common elements, to be sure, but anything that might be called a post-Soviet Eurasianist “minimum” would be general and tenuous in the extreme. It would include on the one hand the original belief in the organic unity of Eurasian space as a single political entity, and on the other a vision of Eurasian civilization as a multinational and polyethnic mosaic of peoples bonded together by deep-running cultural and historical affinities. In regard to virtually all concrete points, however – the specific nature of the “political entity” that Eurasia is supposed to represent, the specific list of nations that are part of it and even its precise geographical boundaries – there is not only no consensus but often quite significant divergence. The degree to which post-Soviet Eurasianism has become conceptually Balkanized in this manner can be illustrated by briefly describing four different versions, all of which (among others) are discussed in the chapters that follow. The first to emerge was the “populist” Russian neo-Eurasianism noted above. This was developed by a melange of revanchist nationalists such as Aleksandr Dugin and Aleksandr Prokhanov, who offered it as an ideological

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rationale for their determination to resurrect some sort of neo-Soviet imperial entity out of the rubble of the former Soviet Union, hostile as always to the European and trans-Atlantic West.10 As with the classical Eurasianists, the priority of this Eurasianism is squarely on the upper level of Eurasian society, in which spirit it opposes all manifestations of lower-level ethno-separatism and supports the establishment of a highly centralized multinational state returned to the traditional leadership of Russia-Eurasia’s “backbone” and “system-forming” nationality, namely ethnic Great Russians. Since the mid-1990s, the Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has promulgated his own version of Kazakh Eurasianism, which featured the project of formally assembling the states of the former Soviet Union into a “Eurasian Economic Union.” Drawing now on the lower-level potential inherent in Eurasianist doctrines, Nazarbayev projected the EEU not as a unified derzhava or state in itself but rather an assembly of equally enfranchised and sovereign national states, the political independence of which would in no way be infringed by their economic integration. Beyond this, Eurasianism in Kazakhstan takes on an additional dimension, for it is also deployed for the purposes of constructing a “Kazakhstani” identity focused exclusively on Kazakhstan’s own multinational population and does not include the Russian state at all. Some years later, the Republic of Tatarstan joined this tendency with its own officially sponsored version of Tatar Eurasianism. It highlights Gumilev’s arguments for the historical importance of the medieval MongolTatar contribution to the creation of the Russian state and also for the ethnogenetic parity between the two parties, all in order to advance Tatarstan’s political agenda of maximizing the republic’s authority and autonomy within the Russian Federation. Finally, a sort of “official” Russian Eurasianism is promoted under the current administration of Vladimir Putin.11 During his election campaign for a third presidential term, Putin gave his full support for the realization of Nazarbayev’s project of assembling the states of the former Soviet Union into an EEU. This entity, which came into official existence in January 2015, represents a group of sovereign states, as was originally intended. In his initial formulations, Putin was careful to emphasize no Eurasianist hostilities towards the European West but spoke rather about the affinities between the two, and even specified the possibility of mutual integration with the European Union. Nevertheless, Putin’s project is by no means disassociated from the Eurasianism of the populists. Dugin for example is an enthusiastic supporter and enjoys an obvious (if erratic) measure of official support, while Putin’s own pronouncements have become increasingly Russo-centric and anti-Western in tone. Important though it is, however, the question of Eurasianism’s degree of officialdom during Putin’s third term – the focus of much excellent work on

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the subject – tends to leave aside an essential point.12 Clearly, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Eurasianism has re-emerged as a key conceptual generator of tropes and narratives with sufficient internal doctrinal flexibility and geographical scope to harness many different kinds of concerns: from questions of national and ethnic identity to officially endorsed state-national doctrines, and from the post-imperial status of Russia to multinational efforts at regional integration. Additionally, Eurasianism has become highly appealing for popular culture and artistic production, and its presence is evident in several different registers beyond academic or official pronouncements.13 Given that it is politically alive across such a wide array of places and in so many discursive spheres, Eurasianism today must be taken as much more than primarily a (Russian) nationalist or conservative type of ideology, or as a more or less consistent set of views informing (Russian) foreign policy – even if these dimensions are essential to it. At the same time, however, the fact that there is no single Eurasianist vision or interpretation, or that it cannot be inflected exclusively from any one privileged position (even if so many of its key texts have been written in Russian and by Russians), suggests that Eurasianism has a presence which can be most usefully detected at a level prior to explicit doctrinal formulations, official endorsements or public and artistic uses and modulations. What perhaps explains the ubiquity of Eurasianist themes and concerns, then, is precisely the fact that they operate not as a first-reference body of thought, but more abstractly, by informing on the most general level, a profusion of views on the meaning and distinctiveness of the Eurasian space. THE POLITICS OF EURASIANISM As mentioned above we have suggested that Eurasianism is a kind of metanarrative, particularly relevant given its geographical spread, its many registers and its contemporary importance in post-Soviet (and also European) politics. We have grouped the contributions in this book into four sections, as a platform for our argument that Eurasianism has a strong political and ideological resonance at a level prior to its implication in actual state policy. Our primary concern, therefore, is to locate and explore Eurasianism in its postSoviet intellectual context, particularly within debates relative to Russian nationalism, ideology and cultural politics. In his opening chapter, Igor Torbakov, considers the polemic between the impertsy (among them, the Eurasianists) – who defended some kind of restoration of a multinational/polyethnic empire after the Soviet collapse – and Russian ethnic nationalists, who argued that the end of the Soviet Union presented a historical opportunity for the creation of a truly Russian nation state.

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As Torbakov shows, this old controversy acquired a new turn after 1991, at a time when any imperial return had been belied both by the new reality of a Russian Federation where ethnic Russians were an overwhelming majority and simply by the new state’s incapacity to engage in any credible empire reconstruction. Examining the ideas of writers such as Mikhail Remizov, Sergeii Sergeev, Konstantin Krylov and Valery Solovei (who see themselves as a nationalist “Third Wave”), Torbakov maps out the position of these democratically minded nationalists in contrast to Eurasianist thinking – an essential focal point of nationalist critique – and relates the defeats and divisions handed down from a ruling Kremlin elite which, particularly after Crimea, has emerged as Russia’s first nationalist force. His discussion makes clear that despite its impressive revival after 1991, Eurasianism is neither alone nor without ideological opponents in the post-Soviet intellectual context. Another such opponent of Eurasianist thinking, as Mark Bassin shows, is rasologiia – raceology or racial studies. Rasologiia, much like post-Soviet Eurasianism, originated in the “red-brown” opposition politics of the 1990s, and though by no means prevalent, it has succeeded in gaining some visibility and ensuring an audience for itself. Despite its manifestly unscientific character and its relative marginality, Bassin links rasologiia’s increasing appeal to growing social tensions within the Russian Federation, above all the mounting hostility to non-ethnic Russians from the Caucasus and Central Asia. These are precisely those peoples, Bassin notes, whom Eurasianism greets and seeks to enlist as equals and, indeed, as brothers. Finally, Irina Kotkina demonstrates how post-Soviet Eurasianism has recently acquired an important-sounding board in the idea of the Russian World (Russkii Mir). Particularly after the annexation of Crimea, a number of slogans and ideological lightning rods (such as evocations of a “Russian Spring” or the rediscovery of the Novorossiia [New Russia]) have made their appearance in close proximity with the notion of a Russian World. Kotkina traces their uses and interpretations not only at the level of formal intellectual debate but also at the “lower” sphere of popular discourse, where ideas of Eurasianist pedigree and other concepts closer to the Russian World begin to overlap, appealing to apparently similar geopolitical emotional regimes and visions. Ultimately, Kotkina claims what these intersections and crossovers expose are Russia’s deep geopolitical sense of vulnerability, resentment after the collapse of the Soviet Union and demands for recognition of its estranged great-power status. In its second section, our book turns to the cultural politics of Eurasianism, as it appears in cinema, literature and alternative history. Perhaps the most famous case of Eurasianist tropes in fiction is the seven-volume series Eurasian Symphony, written by Khol’m van Zaichik (a collective pen name standing for the real authors, Igor’ Alimov and Viacheslav Rybakov). In his essay on this series, Mikhail Suslov dissects it as a reflection of all key ideational

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nodal points constitutive of Russian geopolitical culture during Putin’s third term. He argues that Ordus’, the fictional geographical realm in which the novels’ narrative space is located, does not consistently represent the civilizational autonomy reclaimed by Eurasianists but can serve as a Russia made better through its de facto assimilation of Westernism – effectively by being a better, more progressive and more civilized kind of Europe than the real Europe itself. This eventually gives way, however, to an underlying wish to evoke the fictionally reconstructed vision of the Soviet Union as an alternative to Western globalization. While Eurasian Symphony does not seek to present its historical fantasies as anything other than fiction, the so-called “alternative history” of Anatolii Fomenko and his followers has managed to spin together a dazzling alternative account of Russian and world history which claims genuine historical veracity without any fictional presumptions whatsoever. For Konstantin Sheiko and Stephen Brown, the specific brand of alternative history practised by Fomenko and others is a typically post-Soviet phenomenon, reflective of a deep longing for glorified and hopeful images of the Russian past (regardless of their fanciful and contrived nature). Sheiko and Brown dissect the ways in which this pseudo-history – closely connected to Russian nationalism – has gone about Russifying the historical insights of key Eurasianist figures such as Nikolai Trubetskoi or Lev Gumilev, cleansing Great Russia’s steppe heritage of any Mongol traces in the process, and, more disturbingly, being met with considerable editorial, media and political acclaim. This section on the cultural politics of Eurasianism concludes with Christine Engel’s critical analysis of neo-Eurasianist motifs and concerns in three major late and post-Soviet films: Nikita Mikhalkov’s Urga, Sergei Bodrov’s Mongol and Andrei Borisov’s Taina Chingis-Khana (The Secret of Genghis Khan). Through a close dissection of the films, and their different sources and politics, Engel reveals their clear neo-Eurasianist references and stances, particularly the representation of Russia as a great (and redemptive) civilizational alternative to the West. One of the most important questions associated with the geopolitical aspect of Eurasianism relates to the international role and status of those states claiming to be a part or even the centre of Eurasian space. The third section of our book turns to the foreign policy of Russia, focusing in particular on what are arguably the three most relevant foreign-policy events for the Kremlin during Putin’s third term: the strategic povorot or reorientation towards China (which actually started earlier, but was intensified during this time); the official launch of the EEU in January 2015; and of course the war in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea. Powerful Eurasianist overtones and intimations are present in each of these episodes, but, unsurprisingly, never in a straightforward or consistent way, such that further clarifications and caveats are necessary in order to establish exactly what role Eurasianism

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has played in each. As Marlene Laruelle demonstrates, Putin has revitalized Russia’s pro-China and pro-Eurasian efforts mostly as a reaction to the abysmal deterioration of relations with the West. These attempts to renew a strategic partnership with China, however, sit uneasily with Eurasianist thinking, old and new, given its generally anti-Chinese stance – apparent for example in Lev Gumilev’s enthusiastic support for the anti-Chinese biases of Soviet officialdom and society in his day. Laruelle explores Eurasianism’s attitudes towards China and examines in detail the work of Mikhail Titarenko, virtually the only exponent of Sinophile Eurasianism. She draws a crucial distinction between Russia’s pro-China and pro-Eurasian stances on the one hand and the ambivalent nature of Kremlin’s relations with Beijing on the other. With regard to the annexation of Crimea, Anton Shekhovtsov’s chapter shows the deep intellectual and political involvement of the Russian neoEurasianist movement, led by Aleksandr Dugin. Such support for separatist positions in Ukraine was not sudden or improvised, as Shekhovtsov argues. Conceptually, neo-Eurasianists interpreted the independence of Ukraine as a threat to Russia as well as a geopolitical absurdity. Dugin’s neo-Eurasianists (particularly the youth wing of the movement) have practically followed his various injunctions to bring Ukraine closer to Russia’s sphere of influence and undermine Ukrainian independence by “hybrid” (non-military as well as military) methods. Gonzalo Pozo’s chapter on Eurasian integration analyses the evolution of the EEU, looking at the chasm between its specific economic and political imperatives and the loose Eurasianist statements sometimes used in order to justify the initiative. However inconsistently and even tangentially formulated, a range of Eurasianist references are present in the rhetoric surrounding the EEU, and for good reason, given its role in legitimating what, according to Pozo, is essentially a neo-imperial agenda for the post-Soviet region. Eurasianism here is pragmatically held and instrumental to a specific elite project that is thoroughly comfortable with its traditional emphasis on a strong state and capable of formulating Russia’s leadership role in the “near-abroad” on a hegemonic scale. More generally, however, the results and prospects of the EEU are only a part of a wider sense in which Eurasian integration has become meaningful again. As Richard Sakwa reminds us, the appeal to Eurasia needs to be registered but more importantly, properly understood. Sakwa believes, not uncontroversially, that Putin’s “pragmatic Eurasianism” in no way seeks a repudiation of Europe (a stance acceptable for only minority elements of the ruling elite), but it does reflect a move away from it. At the same time, while originally attempting to cement multipolarity, Eurasian integration has come, according to Sakwa, under pressure from the forces of Atlanticism on the one hand and the challenge of the Asian new powers on the other, in a predicament that is ultimately expressive of the persistence of

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Cold War divisions in contemporary Europe’s foreign policy and security outlook. The final section of our book considers non-Russian forms of Eurasianism, found both within as well as outside the Russian Federation. In going beyond the borders (and language) of Russia, the sense of its doctrinal plasticity becomes intense. As noted earlier in this chapter, non-Russian Eurasianism can be inflected from the standpoint of Tatar nationalism, which in Victor Shnirel’man’s forensic view has become a key resource for local nationalist intellectuals and officials in Tatarstan in their attempts to strike a balance between Russian citizenship and full national and ethnic recognition (a form of ethnic federalism). But such a balance, as Shnirel’man indicates, is far from straightforward or evenly accepted. If the national struggle in Tatarstan involves people without an independent state, however, at the opposite end we have the case of Kazakhstan, a sovereign nation state, which has similarly embraced Eurasianism and turned it into an official doctrine – in Luca Anceschi’s felicitous formula, “regime neo-Eurasianism.” According to Anceschi, Eurasianism accomplishes several goals directed at buttressing the legitimacy of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s charismatic leadership, through which ultimately pass all ambits of policymaking. Here, then, is Eurasianism in its most official guise, an umbrella ideology which operates domestically to cement Nazarbayev’s highly authoritarian rule, and internationally to justify Kazakhstan’s aspirations to regional leadership in Central Asia while at the same time legitimating its self-representation as the bulwark against Russian designs of political and economic domination over the postSoviet space. This is an officially endorsed, anti-imperialist Eurasianism. Entirely beyond the former Soviet Union, the fortunes of Eurasianism are similarly conceptually complex and variegated. One important example is Turkey, where Eurasia (Avrasya) is a popular concept that figures frequently in formal academic writing. As Emre Erşen explains, Turkish Eurasianist thinking has been developed and interpreted through several phases: first, as the unity of Turkic peoples and newly independent Central Asian republics; then as form of alter/anti-Western geopolitical critique; and finally, under the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) rule, in civilizational terms. In Erşen’s view, however, what remains constant in Turkish Eurasianism is that, no matter how influenced by intellectual or political registers, Eurasia is always only geopolitically important when Turkey is at its leading centre. Taken together, the three cases not only illustrate, but ultimately offer a key to Eurasianism’s usefulness for so many different constituencies. Eurasianism can be used to stress the special role of one Eurasian people over all others (Russia, but also Kazakhstan or Turkey), or, by contrast, to formulate the coexistence of several national aspirations within another state (Tatarstan), with several other shadings and possibilities in-between.

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When dealing with its non-Russian articulations, Eurasianism is generally considered almost exclusively in terms of its impact on the politics, elites and audiences of the “East” and is assumed, with good reason, to be an essentially Eastern intellectual phenomenon. It comes as something of a surprise, then, to learn that, on closer inspection, Eurasianism is also playing a notable role in the way some Western and Central European discourses (and a resurgent European populist right) have begun to favourably reassess their position towards Russia. As Ian Klinke shows, strong parallels can be found between contemporary forms of Eurasianist thought (most saliently, the revival of classical geopolitics and anti-liberalism rampant in Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism) and that of a number of German intellectuals. Particularly important here is the prominent geopolitical thinker Alexander Rahr, whose ideas on Russia have attracted some support within Berlin’s foreign-policy establishment (crucially, that of Frank-Walter Steinmeyer, Germany’s Social-Democratic minister of foreign affairs). Yet more striking, perhaps, is the fact that Eurasianist resonances can also be found at a much more grassroots level – for example, in the declarations of the ideologue Jürgen Elsässer, a favoured speaker at meetings of the xenophobic anti-immigrant grouping Pegida and linked to the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland party. Such sentiments, moreover, are not confined to Germany. As Balázs Trenczényi argues, even for the Hungarian far right, where anti-Russian sentiments have always been deep, Eurasianist tones and tropes are now vibrant in the writings of intellectuals active in the orbit of Jobbik. In their commitment to the establishment of an “anti-liberal democracy,” the nationalist neo-conservative ruling party FIDESZ and its leader Viktor Orbán have also incorporated some Eurasianist references. This engagement, once again, is not only the result of Dugin’s substantial influence and links with the Hungarian far right but also inspired by Gumilev’s legacy, and it is written into the history of Hungarian conservative nationalism, which in its anti-Enlightenment and anti-European strands conjured up the vision of a Eurasian steppe land as the primal space of modern-day Hungarians. NOTES 1. For overviews of the development of Eurasianism, see Marlene Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008); Dmitrii Shlapentokh, ed., Russia Between East and West: Scholarly Debates on Eurasianism (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Mark Bassin et al., eds., Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015); Mark Bassin, “Eurasianism ‘Classical’ and ‘Neo’: Lines of Continuity,” in Beyond the Empire: Images of Russia in the Eurasian Cultural Context, ed. Tetsuo Mochizuki (Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, 2008): 279–294.

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2. First introduced in 1976, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari developed the notion of “rhizome” in their landmark text A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). 3. For a reflection on the different meanings and nuances of “Eurasianism,” see Marlene Laurelle, “Eurasia, Eurasianism, Eurasian Union: Terminological Gaps and Overlaps” (PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo, No. 366, 2015). 4. Mikhail Suslov and Mark Bassin eds., Eurasia 2.0. Russian Geopolitics in the Age of the New Media (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2016). 5. Marlene Laruelle, Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2015); Vladimir Ivanov, Alexander Dugin und die rechtsextremen Netzwerke (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2007); Mark Bassin, “Lev Gumilev and the European New Right,” Nationalities Papers, 43: 6 (2015); Anton Shekhovtsov, “Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism; The New Right a la Russe,” Religion Compass 3–4 (2009): 697–716. 6. On the emergence and early history of Eurasianism, see Bassin et al., eds., Between Europe and Asia; Otto Böss, Die Lehre der Eurasier: Ein Beitrag zur russischen Ideengeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Otto Harassowitz, 1961); Sergei Glebov, Evraziistvo mezhdu imperiei i modernom (Moscow: Novoe Izdatel’stvo, 2010); Marlène Laruelle, L’idèologie eurasiste russe, ou comment penser l’empire (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999); Stefan Wiederkehr, Die eurasische Bewegung. Wissenschaft und Politik in der russisschen Emigration der Zwischenkriegszeit und im postsowjetischen Russland (Cologne: Boehlau, 2007); Leonid Luks, “Die Ideologie der Eurasier,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 34 (1986): 374–395; Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, “The Emergence of Eurasianism,” California Slavic Studies 4 (1967): 39–72; Ilya Vinkovetsky, “Classical Eurasianism and its Legacy,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 34, no. 2 (2000): 125–139; David Chioni Moore, “Colonialism, Eurasianism, Orientalism: N.S. Trubetzkoy’s Russian View,” Slavic and East European Journal 41, no. 2 (1997): 321–340; G.E. Orchard, “The Eurasian School of Russian Historiography,” Laurentian University Review 10 (1977): 97–106. 7. Mark Bassin, “Nationhood, Natural Region, Mestorazvitie: Environmentalist Discourses in Classical Eurasianism,” in Space, Place and Power in Modern Russia: Essays in the New Spatial History, ed. Mark Bassin, Chris Ely, and Melissa Stockdale (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010): 49–80; Marlene Laruelle, “Conceiving the Territory: Eurasianism as a Geographical Ideology,” in Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism, ed. Mark Bassin, Marlene Laruelle, and Sergey Glebov (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). 8. Mark Bassin, The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2016); S.B. Lavrov, Lev Gumilev: Sud’ba i idei (Moscow: Svarog i K, 2000); Marlène Laruelle, “Lev Nikolaevic Gumilev (1912–1992): biologisme et eurasisme dans la penseé russe,” Revue des Études Slaves No. 1–2 (2000): 163–189; Bruno Naarden, “‘I am a genius, but no more than that.’ Lev Gumilev (1912–1992), Ethnogenesis, the Russian Past, and World History,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 44 (1996): 54–82; Victor A. Shnirel’man and Sergei Panarin, “Lev Gumilev: His Pretensions as Founder of Ethnology and his Eurasian Theories,” Inner Asia 3 (2001): 1–18.

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9. Dmitri Trenin, The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border Between Geopolitics and Civilization (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002); Aleksei Podberezkin et al., Evraziia I Rossiia (Moscow: MGIMO Press, 2013); Valerii Badmaev, “Eurasianism as a Philosophy of Nation,” in Eurasian Integration – The View from Within, ed. Piotr Dutkiewicz and Richard Sakwa (London: Routledge, 2015): 31–45; A.P. Tsygankov, “Hard-Line Eurasianism and Russia’s Contending Geopolitical Perspectives,” East European Quarterly 32, no. 3 (1998): 315–334; Franciose Thom, “Eurasianism: A New Russian Foreign Policy?” Uncaptive Minds 7: 2 (1994): 65–77; Mark Bassin, “Eurasianism and Geopolitics in Post-Soviet Russia,” in Russia and Europe, ed. Jakub Godzimirski (Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 1996): 33–42; Mark Bassin, “Is There Room For Russia In Eurasia?: Neo-Eurasianism and the Problem of Russian Nationalism,” in Ofiary imperium – Imperia jako ofiary, ed. Andrzej Nowak (Warsaw: IH/PAN, 2010): 169–180; Jens Fischer, Eurasismus: Eine Option russischer Aussenpolitik? (Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1998); David Kerr, “The New Eurasianism: The Rise of Geopolitics in Russia’s Foreign Policy,” Europe-Asia Studies 47, no. 6 (1995): 977–988; Marlene Laruelle, “The Two Faces of Contemporary Eurasianism: An Imperial Version of Russian Nationalism,” Nationalities Papers 32, no. 1 (2004): 115–136; Natalia Morozova, “Geopolitics, Eurasianism and Russian Foreign Policy Under Putin,” Geopolitics 14: 4 (2009): 667–686. 10. Alexander Höllwerth, Das sakrale Eurasische Imperium des Aleksandr Dugin: eine Diskursanalyse zum postsowjetischen russischen Rechtsextremismus (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2007); John Dunlop, “Alexandr Dugin’s ‘Neo-Eurasian’ Textbook ...,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 25, no. 1/2 (2001): 91–127; Jacob W. Kipp, “Aleksandr Dugin and the Ideology of National Revival: Geopolitics, Eurasianism and the Conservative Revolution,” European Security 11:3 (2002): 91–125; Marlene Laruelle, “Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?” (Kennan Institute Occasional Papers, No. 272, n.d.), http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/ default/files/op272_structures_russian_discourse_Sokolovski_1999.pdf, accessed on 24/2/2014; Anton Barbashin and Hannah Thoburn, “Putin’s Brain: Alexander Dugin and the Philosophy behind Putin’s invasion of Crimea,” Foreign Affairs 31 (2014). 11. Uwe Halbach, “Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Union,” SWP Comments 1 (2012); Paul Pryce, “Putin’s Third Term: The Triumph of Eurasianism,” Romanian Journal of European Affairs 13: 1 (2013): 25–43; Charles Clover et al., “Putin calls for new ‘Eurasian Union,’” Financial Times (2011), http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3901988ceea2-11e0-9a9a-00144feab49a.html#axzz2mcmTI99T, accessed on 19/1/2014; Sergey Markedonov, “Putin’s Eurasian Aspirations,” The National Interest (2012), http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/putins-eurasian-aspirations-6973, accessed on 10/7/2014. 12. See for example, David Lane and Vsevolod Samokhvalov, eds., The Eurasian Project and Europe: Regional Discontinuities and Geopolitics (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Piotr Dutkiewicz and Richard Sakwa, eds., Eurasian Integration – The View from Within (London: Routledge, 2015). 13. On Eurasianist-themed literature, see Tatiana Filomonova, “Eurasia as Discursive Literary Space at the Millennium,” in The Eurasian Project and Europe. Regional Discontinuities and Geopolitics, ed. David Lane and Vsevolod Samokhvalov (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015): 117–128.

Part I

EURASIANISM, NATIONALISM AND IDEOLOGY

Chapter 1

Defining the “True” Nationalism Russian Ethnic Nationalists versus Eurasianists Igor Torbakov When an empire ends, there are basically three main modes in which the post-imperial community can be reimagined: civic, ethnic and (neo) imperial. Russia’s case is no exception. The country’s liberals – clearly a “minority faith” – uphold the provisions of the 1993 Constitution that characterize Russia as a civic community of Russian citizens – rossiiane – enjoying equal rights throughout the entire territory of the country. For their part, Russian ethnic nationalists claim that the disintegration of the Soviet Union created – for the first time in Russian history – an opportunity to build a specifically russkii (Russian) nation, capitalizing on ethnic Russians’ numerical strength within the borders of the Russian Federation. By contrast, the impertsy (champions of empire) – a disparate group of thinkers that also includes the Eurasianists1 – contend that Russia’s current post-imperial condition is a mere prelude to the restoration of empire. They refer to the country’s long-standing tradition, arguing that throughout its entire history Russia has never been a nation state – either ethnic- or civic-centred – but has always been an empire. This chapter will explore how the issue of Russian identity is being contested in the debates involving Russian ethnic nationalists and Eurasianists focusing primarily on the ethnic nationalists’ critique of Eurasianism as well as on their efforts to craft a “true” Russian nationalism. RUSSIAN NATIONALISM’S PERENNIAL DILEMMAS Remarkably, the words “empire” and “nation” – essentially Western European concepts – came to be known in Russia simultaneously. They were introduced by learned churchmen (mostly of “Ukrainian” origin who drew heavily on Polish sources) between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century, at a time when Russia had already evolved 19

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as an imperial polity. At first, these notions were used interchangeably as synonyms – as both basically meant a “sovereign state.” It took almost two centuries before “nation” started to be interpreted in Russia mainly as a political community – the locus of people’s sovereignty that is counterposed to the divine right of monarchs with its main attribute being political participation.2 In Russia, the political understanding of “nation” posed before the people who espoused such a conceptual approach – Russian ethnic nationalists – two fundamental questions. First, who is russkii? Who is included in and who is excluded from the narod (community of Russian people)? And second, how should the ethnic nationalists treat the imperial state? Is it their state in its entirety or not? These two questions remained unresolved throughout both the imperial and Soviet periods of Russian history, which resulted in what Ronald G. Suny famously called an “incomplete nation-building.”3 Not only were the ethnic nationalists unable to agree on how to define russkii, but they also found it difficult to identify with the imperial state, either tsarist or Soviet, because it tended to distance itself from Russian ethnic nationalism, seeking to preserve a delicate balance in a culturally diverse and multi-ethnic polity. To be sure, imperial bureaucrats could at times deploy Russian ethnonationalist imagery and highjack nationalist rhetoric (e.g. during the late imperial period and again during late Stalinism), but most of them were conscious of the supranational nature of the state they governed. “Since the time of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great there has been no such thing as Russia; there has been only the Russian Empire,” Sergei Witte, Russia’s prime minister in 1903–1906, wrote in his memoirs.4 The same applies in even greater measure to the Soviet Union whose very name excluded any reference to a particular ethnonational territory. True, the Soviet state did not become, as its founder Vladimir Lenin hoped, a worldwide proletarian commune but it definitely was not a Russian national homeland either. Among the fifteen Union republics of the Soviet federation the largest was called the “Russian” (Rossiiskaia) republic but the latter was also a federation whose many territorial units, noted Pavel Miliukov in his seminal 1925 essay on the “national question,” “were named after particular tribes (narodnosti) so that the map of Russian administrative territories resembled a historical-ethnographic map. A regular Russian learned about the existence in Russia of the ‘Mari’ people and the ‘Komi’ (Zyriane) people – names that scholars knew from [medieval] chronicles.”5 How did the situation change after the Soviet Union’s collapse? The 1993 Constitution characterizes post-Soviet Russia as the state of the “multinational people” – rossiiane. It inherited a legacy of Soviet federalism: a “territorialization of ethnicity” whereby a number of ethnic groups have their “national homelands” where they are recognized as “titular nations.” There is no official document that would explicitly call ethnic Russians a statebearing people; instead the government promotes a civic (rossiiskaia) identity that encompasses the Russians along with many other rossiiskie ethnicities.



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Ethnic Russians do not have their specially designated “national homeland” within the Russian Federation. Furthermore, there is one complicating aspect which did not exist before 1991: millions of Russians have found themselves “stranded” outside post-Soviet Russia’s borders in what effectively is the post-imperial debris – the “newly independent states” that quickly transformed themselves into “nationalizing states.”6 Russia’s current “post-imperial condition” is deemed unsatisfactory by the two largest groups of Russian nationalists. While the impertsy (including the Eurasianists as their subspecies) regard the present-day Russian Federation as a polity that is not “imperial” enough, Russian ethnic nationalists argue that the time has come to rid Russia of the residual vestiges of empire and build at long last a truly national state – the Russian state (gosudarstvo russkikh) in which national minorities would live alongside the Russian “master of the house.” Debates between the two camps go back to the twilight of the Soviet era and the early 1990s: suffice it to mention the nationalist Russian historian Apollon Kuz’min’s sharp criticism of the Eurasianist concepts advanced by the maverick scholar Lev N. Gumilev (Kuz’min accused Gumilev of Russophobia and of the intent to sacrifice the interests of Russian people for the well-being of the Turco-Mongol world)7 or the heated polemic between the ethnonationalist writer Kseniia Mialo and Eurasianists.8 Yet these debates, argue the representatives of the new generation of Russian ethnic nationalists, are increasingly becoming pointless because history itself has resolved the empire–nation dilemma for the Russians. First, the empire – the Soviet Union – has disintegrated. Second, contemporary Russia simply lacks resources for legitimating imperial/supranational power – as both dynastic and “ideocratic” principles are missing. Finally, following the Soviet Union’s implosion, Russia has been profoundly reconfigured geographically: having shed its imperial dominions, Russia has shrunk down to what the late geopolitical thinker Vadim Tsymbursky called “its pre-imperial cultural and geographical core with solid and absolute Russian [ethnic] majority.”9 These developments have radically changed the correlation between “national” and “imperial” projects in Russian history. In the past, argues Mikhail Remizov, Russian nationalism has served as a kind of “reserve historical project” for Russia and the Russian people: it coyly manifested itself at some turning points of the country’s history but was in no position to seriously challenge the imperial mainstream. But now there is no realistic imperial project that could be a viable alternative to the national project. What remains are only the imperial phantom pains.10 NEW-GENERATION NATIONALISTS COMING OF AGE It is noteworthy that Remizov and other intellectual leaders of the new generation of Russian ethnic nationalists clearly distinguish themselves from

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their predecessors, styling their group (which, besides Remizov, includes Sergei Sergeev, Konstantin Krylov, Valery Solovei, Pavel Sviatenkov, Oleg Kil’diushov, Oleg Nemensky, Aleksandr Samovarov and Aleksandr Khramov) as the “Third Wave” of the Russian nationalist movement.11 Symptomatically, one of their first tasks has been to explore the complicated relationship between Russian ethnic nationalism and the Russian (imperial) state. They hold that this relationship needs to be thoroughly reinterpreted. Here is a brief summary of their take on this issue. The Russian state in all its historical forms (imperial, Soviet and post-Soviet) has been – and remains – anti-national. Throughout the Russian history there existed an eternal contradiction between the mass of Russian people (who served as a principal human resource for empire-building) and the largely cosmopolitan imperial elite. The contradiction between the narod and the elites seen by the common folk as the “other” generated an internal tension that would periodically burst out onto the surface during the periods of Russian smuta – the recurrent “time of troubles.” Both in the 1917 Revolution and in the 1991 political upheaval there was an element of Russian national revolt against the empire. In both cases, it was a combination of the cultural and social protest against the rulers whose outlook on the fundamentals of social life sharply differed from that of the Russian masses. There is also an interesting paradox: in both cases (i.e. in 1917 and in 1991), the Russians managed to destroy the “anti-national” state but they did it under “cosmopolitan” slogans (internationalist communism in 1917, and universal values in 1991), and as a result ended up under imperial rule again. The “Third Wave” ethnic nationalists also made a critical analysis of the Russian nationalist tradition and arrived at conclusions that challenge the basic étatist assumptions of both the impertsy and Eurasianists. First, they clearly see the objective anti-imperial role of Russian ethnic nationalism. Russian nationalism undermined imperial loyalty in two ways. In the empire’s borderlands, Russian nationalism stimulated the rise of other ethnic nationalisms, while in the Russian core lands it was striving to make traditionally unconditional Russian loyalty to the state conditional – predicated on the Russian national character of the ruling regime. This is precisely the reason why both tsars and communist commissars were wary of Russian ethnic nationalists. Second, the “Third Wave” nationalist thinkers correctly note that the objective anti-imperial role of Russian nationalism has never been properly understood by nationalists, nor would they draw logical conclusions from it. The thing is that, subjectively, Russian ethnonationalists always wanted the impossible: they were longing for a Russian national state that at the same time would remain an empire. Thus they ended up having contradictory relations with the state: they challenged it as well as relied on it for support, being unable to give up the empire which they perceived as the most precious creation of the Russian people. Finally, the new cohort of



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nationalist thinkers conclude that, historically, Russian nationalism had a contradictory (and at times, hostile) attitude towards democracy. The objectively democratic character of nationalism as the ideology championing selfdetermination and people’s sovereignty would almost never prompt Russian ethnonationalists to rise against the authoritarian political system. The explanation is simple: any attempt to realize full sovereignty for the Russians in the multi-ethnic, land-based empire would inevitably lead to other ethnic groups within the state seeking to exercise the same right. The result would be multiple secessions and the end of the imperial state, which Russian nationalists believed was “theirs” too. Yet in a situation in which the old empire is gone, with a new imperial project looking increasingly impractical as it lacks both material and ideational resources, and with ethnic Russians now making up more than 80 per cent of the country’s population, the new-generation nationalists seem to have fully embraced democracy. A Russian national state, their leading thinkers now contend, can be viable only if it is democratic.12 Such a political outlook sharply contrasts with the ideal of an authoritarian government championed by the impertsy and Eurasianists. It would appear, though, that what ethnic nationalists really want is “democracy of ethnic majority,”13 which would help them impose their will on all those who, for whatever reasons, are not included in the russkii in-group. They flatly reject the ostensibly civic term rossiiskii as completely useless if not downright harmful, claiming that it has been introduced as a substitute of “Soviet” to again “dissolve” ethnic Russians in a supranational rossiiskii community. Furthermore, protection of minority rights does not figure prominently in their vision of the russkii nation.14 However, to believe that the workings of democracy (one man, one vote) will do the trick for them – mostly because ethnic Russians constitute an overwhelming majority of the population – is naïve. Any attempt to implement “democracy of ethnic majority” into practice in a multi-ethnic state is a recipe for disaster. ETHNONATIONALISTS, EURASIANISTS AND THE INTEGRITY OF THE IMPERIAL GEO-BODY One important implication of the Russian ethnic nationalists’ embracing of democracy is that, unlike the statist/“imperial”/Eurasianist nationalists, the ethnic nationalists do not appear to be hell-bent on preserving the “territorial integrity” of the present-day Russian Federation at all costs, or always resorting to raw force against any “nationalist sedition” in non-Russian regions. By contrast, the creation of the democratic Russian national state, according to their view, might make the redrawing of the existing Russian state borders

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in certain cases inevitable. Some of the leading nationalist ideologues, such as Valery Solovei, foresee the secession of Northern Caucasus, Russia’s classical imperial possession, as well as the possible loss of other “non-Russian” territories “during our lifetime.” Solovei argues that many Russians have long stopped perceiving Northern Caucasus as an “inalienable part of Russia.” In fact, he says, “it is perceived as an alien entity. A psychological alienation is but a prelude to political separation.”15 Yet the territory of the Russian state might not only contract; it might also expand – not least because of Russian ethnic irredentism.16 Russia’s conduct in Ukraine is the case in point: Russian official propaganda often portrays the exploits of “Russian rebels” in Crimea and Donbas in unmistakably ethnic terms – as the struggle to reconquer parts of Rossia irredenta (territories historically and/or ethnically related to Russia but now under Ukraine’s political control). Notably, the land grab in Crimea and the policy of fomenting and supporting pro-Russian separatism in Eastern Ukraine produced multiple and contradictory reactions on the part of Russia’s nationalist milieu. Some segments of ethnic nationalists appear to be greatly impressed by the manifestation of “people’s power” in Ukraine and seek to distance themselves from the Kremlin’s vicious anti-Ukrainian propaganda campaign and its reckless military adventures. While supporting the need to safeguard political and cultural rights for the Russians in Ukraine, some Russian ethnonationalists have been quick to note Putin’s hypocrisy: the Kremlin leader’s sudden concern with the issue of self-determination of ethnic Russians in Ukraine seems to contradict his intent to suppress any genuine political competition within Russia itself.17 At the same time, the annexation of Crimea was enthusiastically supported by both the impertsy and Eurasianists as well as by the bulk of ethnonationalists – albeit for different reasons: while the former saw the move as the first step towards the rebuilding of empire, the latter hailed it as a successful example of the ethnic Russian reconquista.18 However, this second category appears to constitute a tiny minority among Russian nationalists. Aleksandr Khramov bemoans what he calls the persistence of the “neo-imperial paradigm” and criticizes various strands within the Russian nationalist movement – both supportive and critical of the Kremlin’s Ukraine policy – precisely for their inability to see the developments through the Russian ethnonationalist lens. Some nationalists, for example, Dmitrii Demushkin and his allies, Khramov notes, do not see much sense in the local manifestations of Russian irredentism because these endanger the “unity of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.” From their point of view, instead of annexing “only Crimea,” Moscow would have been better served if it found ways of bringing “entire Ukraine” under its fold. On the other hand, the majority of nationalists who did support the Kremlin’s aggressive course also tend to interpret events from the “supranational standpoint” and see Russia’s involvement into the Ukraine crisis “not the demise



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of the imperial project but, on the contrary, the first serious steps aimed at the resurrection of empire – simultaneously in its pre-revolutionary and Soviet incarnations.” Even many key political actors in Crimea and in the secessionist regions in Eastern Ukraine do not conceive the unfolding drama as a Russian irredenta. The imperial idea, Khramov sadly concludes, still dominates the minds of many Russians and the decisive turn from the empire to a Russian national state should not be expected any time soon.19 Yet even if the Ukraine crisis and Russia’s reaction to it caused some controversy among Russian ethnic nationalists, most of them share a rather dim view of “Eurasian integration” – a Russia-led process of forging an economic association of ex-Soviet republics known as the Eurasian Economic Union.20 The general consensus among them is that preventing what they see as the social degradation of Central Asian societies is futile, thus it is folly to seek an alliance with them. Simply stated, Russian nationalists believe Central Asia will drag Russia down.21 This trend towards disengagement appears to be a by-product of a profound shift in Russian public attitudes. In the minds of a growing number of Russians, the millions of labour migrants now working in Russia (mostly from the Caucasus and Central Asia) are associated with drug smuggling, violence and criminality.22 Migration is a complex phenomenon across the board, and it plays a particularly controversial role in relations between Russia and ex-Soviet nations. On the one hand, labour migrants constitute one of the strongest links connecting Russia to post-Soviet Eurasia. But, on the other, it acts as a major irritant, fostering alienation and enmity among ethnic communities and spurring xenophobia among Russian ethnonationalists.23 It is noteworthy that the segment of Russian society that is critical of labour migration is far broader than just pockets of skin heads. In fact, migration-related issues are becoming an important element in the discourses on Russian foreign policy and Russian identity. “Today only a blind person cannot see this: a grave threat that is looming large is Russia’s radical Asiatization,” argues the historian Sergei Sergeev, an editor of the journal Problems of Nationalism. The prospect of “Asiatization,” he goes on, seems “more realistic in the beginning of the 21st century than it had been during the time of the Mongol yoke.”24 And this is not just a “civilizational metaphor,” Sergeev contends, but a statement of fact. He and other like-minded ethnonationalist intellectuals refer to the “government-sponsored policy of population substitution” that leads to the massive influx of “Central Asians” and “Caucasians” into Russian cities where those “aliens” lord it over the local Russian population. Moreover, ethnic nationalists claim, “in Asiatic autonomous republics of the Russian Federation the process of building national states is in full swing,” while the Russians are prevented from pursuing the same goal – which makes them the “second-class people in their own country.”25 This sorry situation, Russian ethnonationalist intellectuals argue,

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is a clear evidence of the persistence of imperial legacies in the present-day Russian Federation. One such legacy that continues to make itself felt today is a peculiar non-ethnic nature of the metropole in both the Russian empire and the Soviet Union. It was not the Russian people who acted as an “imperial race” but rather a governing institution: the multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan nobility under the tsars and ethnically diverse nomenklatura under the communists. The second legacy is geopolitical: an imperial desire to keep Eurasia under Moscow’s control. For Russia, to complete a transition from empire to nation state, the new-generation nationalists contend, it is crucially important to realize a two-pronged task: to rethink the contemporary Russian Federation as a Russian (russkoe) national state and to thoroughly revise Russia’s role in the post-Soviet space. The very existence of both the Russian and Soviet empires, they say, was subordinated to the logic of historic Russia’s dominance over Eurasia. The Soviet Union’s breakup appears to not have changed this logic as the series of agreements with ex-Soviet states sponsored by Russia – on the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, on the creation of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, on the establishment of the Customs Union and of the Eurasian Union – pursued the goal of the strengthening of Russia’s influence in its former imperial backyard. Yet in reality, Russian nationalist thinkers argue, Moscow’s attempt to realize its neo-imperial ambition rests on a rather primitive principle – “money in exchange for loyalty,” with Russian taxpayers paying dearly for the Kremlin’s imperial pipedream. Thus, they conclude, supporting all neoimperial alliances in the post-Soviet state is a formidable obstacle preventing Russia from becoming a modern country with a developed market economy and a regular nation state that is more interested in the gathering of Russian people than in the gathering of the former Russian lands.26 DEBATING RUSSIAN EURASIANISM Remarkably, the “Third Wave” nationalists point to Eurasianism – both classical and neo – as the source of the cultural-historical confusion of Russian society as well as the main intellectual wellspring providing the “ideological justification” for government policies. Eurasianist mythology, asserts Yegor Kholmogorov, negatively affected contemporary Russian historical scholarship which, in turn, produced studies that largely disoriented broad Russian publics. Gumilev and his voluminous writings seem to have been designated as the principal culprits. It was “the [brilliant] literary talent of Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev, a person enamored of [Asian] nomads,” wrote Kholmogorov in a recent commentary tellingly titled “The Joke That Has Gone Too Far,” “that created an atmosphere in which the myths born out of his historical



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imagination came to be perceived as historical facts.” Among the Eurasianist myths that need to be resolutely repudiated Kholmogorov mentions the notion of the “Russian-Turanian symbiosis,” the idea that Russian statehood is the inheritor of the long tradition of imperial governance set up by Eurasian steppe empires of the antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the thesis that Muscovy owed its political rise to the Khans of the Golden Horde. Notably, he also points to the political utility of these Eurasianist tropes when they were first deployed by the Yeltsin-era politicians in the early 1990s. “Back then, in the epoch of the ‘parade of sovereignties’, it was absolutely crucial to come up with whatever [intellectual] pretext to keep Turkic republics of the Middle Volga within Russia,” wrote Kholmogorov. But now, when the threat of secession is history, Eurasianist ideas only bring harm, confusing immature minds. Instead of repeating after Gumilev and other Eurasianists that historic Russia “was more like a [Turkic] horde,” it’s time to forcefully state that “Russia was not a state that continued the history of the Golden Horde but rather a state that put an end to its history.”27 In an article titled “The Twist of Mind,” the historian Sergeev lashes out at Eurasianism’s founding fathers, criticizing their writings as “flawed,” “un-scientific,” and downright “Russophobic.” Yet, he concludes, it is classical Eurasianism that is most “congenial” to the nationality policy of today’s Russia, whose leaders “are nostalgic about the notion of the ‘Soviet people.’” Likewise, Russia’s leadership finds the concept of the “Eurasian nation” quite appealing – especially in that it assigns ethnic Russians a secondary role in a state “that has been created by their sweat and blood.”28 Such an attitude, Russian ethnic nationalists claim, puts the Kremlin in direct opposition to the “authentic” Russian nationalist thought represented by the Decembrists, Slavophiles, Westernizers and late imperial Conservatives, while linking it to rather “unorthodox” Eurasianist and Bolshevik intellectual legacies. When President Putin, in his 2013 Valdai speech, positively referred to the nineteenth-century Russian thinker Konstantin Leontyev while metaphorically describing Russia’s ethnic diversity as a “blossoming complexity,”29 Russian ethnic nationalists immediately pointed out that Leontyev, besides being a spiritual precursor of Eurasianism, was also an enemy of Russian nationalism and democratic government. There is a striking parallel, they argue, between Leontyev’s and the Kremlin’s view on the political utility of keeping the “national borderlands” within the “multinational” Russian state. Leontyev, a deeply conservative thinker who passionately upheld the values of the ancien regime’s hierarchical society, was seriously disturbed by what he saw as the spreading of the Western-type liberal and democratic ideas that affected some of his Russian co-ethnics’ minds. Russians in general and Russian intelligentsia in particular, Leontyev asserted, are especially susceptible to this Western ideological “poison,” while “Muslim peoples are much more resistant to liberalism.”

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All our non-Russian and non-Orthodox peoples are much better grounded in conservative values than we, Russians. … That’s why for our still very much diverse empire the colorful [national] borderlands are very useful. … [Polish] Catholic priest, and Tatar mullah, and even the most wild and mean Cherkes [Circassian] are better and more harmless for us than some of our brothers in blood and faith.30

This line of argument, some ethnonationalist thinkers claim, is not dissimilar from one behind the current political arrangement between the Kremlin and the leaders of some national provinces of the Russian Federation, particularly in the North Caucasus. In exchange for substantial financial subsidies provided by Moscow, the corrupt local elites ruthlessly suppress dissent and swear political loyalty to the “centre” – which includes, among other things, securing “correct” voting results in their respective regions. Thus, not unlike in Leontyev’s time, the national borderlands prove to be politically “useful” in post-Soviet Russia in that their subservience to the central government counterbalances more democratically minded and potentially restive ethnic Russian urbanites residing in Moscow, St Petersburg and other large Russian cities.31 While flatly rejecting Leontyev as a “proto-Eurasian” and anti-national theorist, the new-generation nationalists champion Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov, another prominent nineteenth-century political thinker and influential journalist, as the father of “true” Russian nationalism. What is most appealing to contemporary ethnonationalists in Katkov’s voluminous writings can be boiled down to the three main theses: (1) a civilized state means a national state; (2) in a national state only one nation is possible; and (3) in Russia this nation can only be the Russian nation. When Putin, in his programmatic 2012 article on the “national question” in Russia characterized the country as a “poly-ethnic state-civilization,”32 Russian ethnonationalist thinkers saw this as yet another attempt to dilute “Russianness” in a broader supranational entity and did not waste time to rebuff what they perceived as quasi-imperial “neo-Eurasianist heresy” by a quote from Katkov: A multiplicity of nations making up the state is a sign of its weakness rather than its strength. …33 The totality of entities that are alien to each other and the unity of the supreme power meant to rule over them and bind them together is absurdity, an internal contradiction and impossibility.34

“We know,” Katkov continued, “that in the Russian state there aren’t many nations that would deserve to be so named. There is only one nation – the Russian one.”35 So far, Russian ethnic nationalists note, the Kremlin persists in pursuing its flawed policy that promotes “multinationality” and thus



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continues to implement the worst Soviet practices as well as some negative aspects of the late imperial nationality policy that blocked the formation of the Russian national state.36 This is likely going to continue, they say, until Russian governing elites become Katkovians and come to understand that the present-day Russian Federation is a Russian national state and not the so-called Russia Inc. run by the corporation of oligarchs and bureaucrats who are equidistant from all of Russia’s peoples.37 Russian ethnic nationalists’ thorough critique of Eurasianism and their deep scepticism about Russia’s imperial prospects define their position on the crucial question of what kind of civilization Russia belongs to. While for the impertsy and Eurasianists Russia is a “world unto itself,” a “unique civilization” that is opposed to the “Romano-German”/“Atlanticist” West, the “Third Wave” nationalists characterize Russia as an essentially European country. “The Russians are a European people, and Russia is a European country,” asserts Konstantin Krylov. “It is such according to its essence, to its very nature.”38 For most Russian ethnic nationalists (as Sergeev readily admits), Siena’s Piazza del Campo – one of the most spectacular European medieval squares – is culturally and aesthetically much closer than Prince Nikolai Trubetskoy’s “Russo-Turanian” synthesis, reeking of “burnt cow dung, horse sweat and camel hide.”39 Granted, Russia, being an Orthodox majority country, is the “other Europe” – but it is Europe nevertheless. Remarkably, contemporary Russian nationalists have recovered this ideal of Russian Europeanism – one that combines Russian ethnic nationalism with a sense of belonging to the European civilization – from the writings of Katkov. The latter was probably the first Russian thinker who clearly formulated a painful dilemma that this rare species of nationalist-minded Russian Europeans were confronted with back in the last third of the nineteenth century. “We are perceived as some ugly accident,” wrote Katkov, but the trouble is only that we, while feeling deep in our hearts our Russianness, inseparable from that and also deeply feel our connection with European civilization. We would be forgiven if our Russian national feeling was akin to some dark fanaticism, wild passion or what is usually called volkisch patriotism. … But we cannot be forgiven simply because in our understanding the Russian cause is at the same time the cause of [European] civilization and humankind.40

Sergeev and other like-minded contemporary ethnic nationalists characterize Russian Europeanism as a treasured legacy of the Russian nationalist thought and their profession de foi (profession of faith) – a stance that is worlds apart from the isolationist and anti-Occidentalist Eurasianism.41 A political corollary of Russia’s civilizational Europeanness is unambiguous: the most suitable sociopolitical system for Russia is European-style

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democracy. The “Third Wave” nationalists are deeply critical of Russia’s current political system, which they define as ordynstvo – referring to its purported Oriental/Asian/Mongol origins and its un-European ways. According to Krylov, the Kremlin leadership “is far from being [Russia’s] ‘only European’; on the contrary, it is the only Asian in [today’s] Russia.”42 Contrary to the European political ideal whereby an individual human being and his/her rights are placed front and centre, the “Russian System,” in the words of Yegor Kholmogorov, is essentially “Oriental” – a type of society in which a true subject and main agent of change is not an individual but “a kind of [collective] entity: a family, clan, horde, despotic empire, etc.”43 For Russia, some liberal-minded nationalists believe, the way forward towards the realization of the European political ideal lies in the completion of a national-democratic revolution – one that is similar to those that took place in the Eastern European countries between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. “One should not forget,” notes Kirill Rodionov, “that all anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe were shot through with nationalism” as local reformers were driven by the desire to turn former Soviet colonies into sovereign nation states.44 In the early 1990s in Russia, the forging of an “organic national-democratic synthesis” was severely complicated by the country’s status as a metropole that had just lost its colonial dominions. The post-imperial ressentiment, Rodionov argues, explains why Russian nationalists and Russian liberals were the main adversaries on the Russian political scene. Their rivalry culminated in the flare-up of the civil war in the streets of Moscow in October 1993.45 Now, however, some strands in the Russian nationalist movement and some strands in Russian liberal milieu believe the national-liberal synthesis is both possible and highly desirable: Today the interests of [Russian] nationalists and liberals coincide in the most important respect. Their mutual goal is the destruction of the dominant power structure that now is beyond public control. This structure is both anti-national (since it creates all kinds of obstacles to the formation of Russian nation as an independent political subject) and anti-liberal (since it grossly infringes on the rights and liberties of Russian citizens).46

As early as 2006, Pavel Sviatenkov argued that there was a public demand in Russia for a new kind of nationalism that would inevitably clash with what he characterized as an archaic structure of the contemporary Russian nationalist movement – one that is clericalist, racist and anti-immigrant. The new nationalism, Sviatenkov wrote, that would replace the outdated one of the Yeltsin-Putin epoch, should probably be called the “Young Russian Nationalism.” This nationalism would be civic, liberal and democratic.47 The newgeneration nationalist thinkers are convinced that Putinism – an embodiment



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of ordynstvo and aziatchina (derogatory term for all things Asian), which are the worst elements of Russian political culture – is historically doomed. CRAFTING THE “TRUE” RUSSIAN NATIONALISM? Writing in the early 2000s at the dawn of the Putin era, Simon Cosgrove seemed to have foreseen some of the key trends that I discussed above. “The return to state traditions of authoritarianism,” Cosgrove mused, seeking to entrench the divide between state and civil society, may also in the long run revive, in the new forms, the traditional bifurcation between popular and statist tendencies within Russian nationalism. Popular nationalism, in the minds of a new generation of Russians, may develop as an idea imbued with liberal values and opposed to the statist nationalism promulgated by the authorities.48

Such a “bifurcation” has indeed occurred as the most promising strand within Russian ethnic nationalism – a national-democratic one – seriously challenged the intellectual positions held by statist nationalists, impertsy and Eurasianists. However, at the time of this writing, Russian nationaldemocrats find themselves in a deep crisis.49 The reasons for this crisis are twofold: external and internal. As it happened more than once in the past, Russian political leadership has again managed to outmanoeuvre its most outspoken nationalist opponents, including the leading nats-dem (nationaldemocratic) ideologues such as Krylov and Sergeev. By skilfully drawing on various intellectual traditions of Russian nationalism depending on the concrete circumstances and making a kind of postmodernist collage out of all of them, by investing considerable resources in the propaganda of state patriotism, and by having its formidable propaganda machine at full throttle during the peak of the Ukraine crisis, the Kremlin succeeded in styling itself as Russia’s leading nationalist force.50 This ambition was neatly reflected in President Putin’s recent remark when he called himself “Russia’s top nationalist.”51 “For the ruling bureaucracy,” the historian Yaroslav Butakov perceptively notes, “‘Russian nationalism’ is only a [useful] assortment of memes to better manipulate public opinion.”52 The regime’s spin doctors are not particularly concerned with the difference between ethnic nationalism and Eurasianism in terms of the intrinsic “theoretical value” of these two schools of nationalist thought. What matters is their immediate political utility. However, for the autocratic rulers of the multi-ethnic Russian Federation, the statist/imperial/Eurasianist ideas would always appear more germane than the potentially disruptive focus on Russian ethnic majority. For now, the Russian governing elites’ flirting with the ethnically marked

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notion of the “Russian World” appears to be over. “A honeymoon in the relations between [Russian] leadership and Russian [ethnic] nationalism has ended in the predictable divorce. In Russian worldview it is imperialism that again has the upper hand.”53 The other reason why the Kremlin was successful in splitting and marginalizing the democratically minded ethnic nationalists is the internal weakness and contradictory nature of their political outlook. On the one hand, the nationalism of the new-generation national-democrats appears “to be imbued with liberal values,” as Cosgrove had put it. After all, it was this group of Russian nationalists that has coined a perfectly liberal formula: “Nation is above all a package of rights.” Indeed, there seems to be a growing understanding that civic and political freedoms should be the main preoccupation of true Russian nationalism. Yet, on the other hand, many Russian ethnic nationalists are still engaged in the divisive discourse of nation, struggling to define who is and who is not a “genuine Russian,” who is entitled to the full “package of rights” in the future “Russian national state” and who should be relegated to second-class citizenry. Furthermore, even the most intellectually advanced and politically astute ethnic nationalists do not have a coherent position on the fundamental socio-economic questions that Russia is currently facing. The new-generation nationalists seem to be more focused on the perceived threat of the “culturally alien migrants” than on the truly burning issues of social justice, which they erroneously believe is the exclusive realm of Russian “lefties.” To think that migrants are the largest evil presenting an “existential threat” to the “embattled Russian people” is political infantilism, some critics within the nationalist movement say,54 which indicates that Russian nationalism has not yet fully come of age. “Will Russia’s future give birth to a new liberal nationalism?”55 That is the question with which Cosgrove leaves us at the very end of his fine book’s epilogue. At the moment, this seems to be a moot point. Yet in the long run, the answer to Cosgrove’s query can only be a resounding “yes.” The thing is that “for Russia,” as Vladimir Pastukhov aptly put it, “there is no other way to overcome the crisis and return to the [universal] track of historical development than make modern [liberal] nationalism [Russia’s principal] ideology.”56 Such nationalism – not an archaic and conservative lore of yore but an enlightened and forward looking one – might well be called “true” Russian nationalism. CONCLUSION The relationship between empire and nation lies at the heart of Russia’s modern history. “Since the 19th century,” notes Emil’ Pain, “the history of Russia has been the history of empire that wanted to look like



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a nation-state.”57 Neither the Romanov empire nor the Soviet Union managed to resolve this identity conundrum. Some of the most perceptive students of Russian history have long noted that Tsarist Russia was very good at state-building and empire-building but that its inconsistent attempts at forging a multi-ethnic “Russian nation” within the formidable imperial shell failed miserably. Russian imperial bureaucrats did not succeed either in creating a viable civic national identity based on pan-imperial citizenship, or in forming a Russian ethnic nation based on Russian (russkii) ethnicity. According to Ronald Suny and other like-minded scholars, the Russian empire’s story is one of the “incomplete nation-building.” Likewise, the Soviet Union disintegrated within the context of its top leadership’s erratic attempts at turning this unique “affirmative action empire”58 into a more modernized and more democratic multi-ethnic state.59 A new state entity – the Russian Federation – that has emerged following the Soviet Union’s unravelling appears to be a country that many Russians “did not expect to see and which they are now not ready to accept as a reality.”60 According to the prominent Russian geographer Vladimir Kagansky, “The Russian Federation has not yet become a country named Russia; so far, it is not a country at all, it is just a space for reassembling the fragments of the [former] USSR.”61 “Everyone does not like our current pseudo-model,” asserts the empire apologist Mikhail Iuryev, adding that while “this dislike is probably not too strong, it is universal.”62 The general sense of confusion and dissatisfaction is neatly encapsulated in the evocative lines penned by Aleksandr Beliakov, a Russian poet from Yaroslavl’, for whom post-Soviet Russia is the “imperial corpse resembling the enemy’s Zeppelin that is drifting through the skies.”63 As Geoffrey Hosking aptly noted, post-Soviet Russia has emerged from under the rubble of the Soviet Union’s implosion as a “bleeding hulk of empire.”64 The country’s future direction, he argued, would largely depend on what kind of Russian identity – the national or the imperial – would take the upper hand.65 This chapter has demonstrated that political and intellectual competition between the two main strands of Russian nationalism – ethnonationalists and imperial Eurasianists – is far from over. Over the past quarter century both camps have been engaged in continuous ideological skirmishes, with each seeking at the same time to influence the position of Russia’s top leadership. The Kremlin, for its part, has adroitly manoeuvred between the two groups, borrowing freely from both the ethnonationalist and Eurasianist discourses to craft its own eclectic ideological platform while simultaneously playing ethnonationalists and Eurasianists off against one another. This tactic appears to be paying off so far: at the time of this writing, Putin seems to have “managed to steal the thunder from both groups.”66

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NOTES 1. Following political upheavals triggered by the 1917 Revolution and the breakup of the Romanov empire, a group of Russian émigré thinkers (who chose to characterize themselves as “Eurasianists”) advanced a new vision of “post-imperial” Russia as a special world unto itself – neither European nor Asian but “Eurasian” – that, without being a formal empire, would still preserve the territorial unity of “historic Russia.” This unity, the Eurasianists contended, was an organic one as it was based on the solid foundation of multiple bonds forged by numerous ethnic and religious groups residing in “Russia-Eurasia” in the course of their common history. Significantly, in the wake of the 1991 Soviet implosion, post-Soviet Russia (as well as other ex-Soviet republics) saw the revival of Eurasianist ideas as the disparate groups of neo-Eurasianists sought to make sense of the new post-imperial situation – one that bore strong structural resemblance to the conditions produced by the “Russian catastrophe” of the late 1910s. See Mark Bassin, Sergey Glebov, and Marlene Laruelle, eds., Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). 2. Aleksei Miller, “Istoriia poniatiia natsiia v Rossii,” in Poniatiia o Rossii’: K istoricheskoi semantike imperskogo perioda, ed. Denis Sdvizkov and Ingrid Schierle (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012), 7–49. 3. Ronald G. Suny, “Dialektika imperii: Rossiia i Sovetskii Soiuz,” in Novaia imperskaia istoriia postsovetskogo prostranstva, ed. Ilia Gerasimov et al. (Kazan: “Tsentr Issledovanii Natsionalizma i Imperii,” 2004), 188. See also his “Learning from Empire: Russia and the Soviet Union,” in Lessons of Empire: Imperial Histories and American Power, ed. Craig Calhoun et al. (New York: The New Press, 2006), 73–93. 4. Sergei Yu. Vitte, Vospominaniia. In 3 Vols. (Moscow: Izd. sotsial’noekonomicheskoi literatury, 1960) 3: 274–75. 5. Pavel N. Miliukov, Natsional’nyi vopros (Proiskhozhdenie natsional’nosti i natsional’nye voprosy v Rossii) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennaia publichnaia istoricheskaia biblioteka Rossii, 2005), 150. 6. Rogers Brubaker, “Aftermaths of Empire and Unmixing of Peoples: Historical and Comparative Perspectives,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 18, no. 2 (1995), 189–218. 7. Apollon G. Kuz’min, Marodery na dorogakh istorii (Moscow: Russkaia panorama, 2005). On Gumilev, see Mark Bassin, The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016). 8. Kseniia Mialo, “Evraziiskii soblazn,” Moskva, no. 11–12 (1996); “Evraziistvo i sovremennost’. Krugly stol,” Alma Mater (Vestnik vysshei shkoly), no. 5 (1993), http://liv.piramidin.com/politica/kruglyi_stol_evraziistvo/kruglyi_stol_evraziistvo. htm. See also Mialo’s latest book, Posle SSSR: Rossiiskaia Federatsiia i nepriznannye gosudarstva (Moscow: Institut Afriki RAN, 2012). 9. See Vadim Tsymbursky, “Ostrov Rossiia,” in V. L. Tsymbursky, Ostrov Rossiia: Geopoliticheskie i khronopoliticheskie raboty 1993–2006 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2007).



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10. Mikhail Remizov, “Russkii natsionalizm i rossiiskaia geopolitika,” Rossiia v global’noi politike, no. 3 (2012), http://www.globalaffairs.ru/number/ Russkii-natcionalizm-i-rossiiskaya-geopolitika-15596. 11. Sergei Sergeev, “‘Rusizm’: tret’ia volna,” Politicheskii klass, no. 6 (2008), http://www.intelros.ru/intelros/reiting/reyting_09/material_sofiy/8625-rusizm-tretyavolna.html. Two previous “waves” of Russian nationalism have been the so-called “Russian Party” of the late Soviet era and neo-Eurasianism of the 1990s. 12. Valery Solovei, “Natsionalizm pobedit tol’ko v soiuze s ideei demokratii,” Nazdem.info, June 23, 2010, http://nazdem.info/texts/132/. 13. Russian ethnic nationalists criticize Western democracy precisely because “it works for the benefit of minorities, not the majority, although originally democracy means power of majority. That is why contemporary system of Western democracy is a deviation of democratic idea.” See [Sergei Sergeev], “‘Iz tsarstva vseobshchego terpil’stva – k svobode i demokratii.’ Interv’iu s nauchnym redaktorom zhurnala ‘Voprosy natsionalizma,’” Russkaia narodnaia liniia, July 18, 2011, http://ruskline.ru/analitika/2011/07/18/ sergej_sergeev_iz_carstva_vseobwego_terpilstva_k_svobode_i_demokratii/. 14. Ethnic nationalists’ readiness to treat minorities’ rights lightly or even dismiss them altogether betrays the persistence of Russian imperial self-awareness. As the leading St Petersburg historian Evgenii Anisimov contends, Russian national consciousness is imperial consciousness – and it would seem that this pertains also to the group of young nationalist intellectuals who appear to have taken a firm antiimperial stand. Contrasting rossiiskii with russkii, Anisimov argues, is a “linguistic hypocrisy”: rossiiskii is understood as russkii by ethnic Russians themselves and by non-Russian peoples whose languages do not make distinctions between these two terms. See Evgenii Anisimov, “Istoki imperskogo mentaliteta v Rossii,” Asia-Russia, January 12, 2015, http://asiarussia.ru/news/5718/. 15. Solovei, “Natsionalizm pobedit.” Echoes Sergei Sergeev: “In fact, the psychological separation of the North Caucasus has already taken place: it is precisely the Russians who separated themselves from the Caucasians. They do not regard them as ‘ours’ and consider them [culturally] alien.” Sergeev, “Iz tsarstva vseobshchego terpil’stva.” See also “Chto Rossii delat’ s Kavkazom. Kruglyi stol ‘Voprosov natsionalizma,’” Voprosy natsionalizma, no. 6 (2011), 10–33; Ivan Rusakov, “Kavkaz i ‘mal’tuzianskaia lovushka,’” Voprosy natsionalizma, no. 12 (2012), 148–159. 16. Aleksei Miller has presciently analysed the potential threat of Russian irredentism in his “Natsiia kak ramka politicheskoi zhizni,” in Nasledie imperii i budushchee Rossii, ed. A. Miller (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2008), 492–525. 17. See Nikolai Lysenko, “Ukrainskie pokhorony Rossiiskoi imperii,” APN.ru, February 25, 2014, http://www.apn.ru/publications/article31126.htm; Sergei Sergeev, “Maidan kak problema russkogo natsionalizma,” APN.ru, February 24, 2014, http:// www.apn.ru/publications/article31117.htm; Idem, “Proshchanie slavian,” APN.ru, March 3, 2014, http://www.apn.ru/publications/article31162.htm. 18. Some ethnic nationalists believe that imperialism and irredentism can actually go hand in hand. “When we become a normal national state, then we can start thinking also about some ‘imperial’ projects,” muses Sergei Sergeev. “In this sense, I am

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in full agreement with the impertsy: a strong national state has a tendency to become an empire and bring back to its fold previously lost lands.” See Sergeev, “Iz tsarstva vseobshchego terpil’stva.” 19. See Aleksandr Khramov’s remarks in “Russkii natsionalizm v krizise? Ekspertnyi opros,” Voprosy natsionalizma, no. 20 (2014), 25–26. 20. Vladimir Bliznekov, “Evraziiskii Soiuz – uniia Rusi i Ordy,” Voprosy natsionalizma, no. 11 (2012), 12–19. 21. Mikhail Remizov, “Rasshirenie Tamozhennogo Soiuza: kuda i zachem?” Voprosy natsionalizma, no. 11 (2012), 26–29. 22. Rostislav Antonov, “Migrantizatsiia Rossii,” Voprosy natsionalizma, no. 12 (2012), 3–5. 23. Pavel Sviatenkov, “Vizovyi rezhim so stranami Srednei Azii – blago dlia Rossii,” Pravyi Vzgliad, March 4, 2013, http://www.rusimperia.info/catalog/2882.html. 24. Sergei Sergeev, “‘Umstvennyi vyvert’: Zametki o ‘klassicheskom’ evraziistve,” Voprosy natsionalizma, no. 11 (2012), 36. 25. Ibid., 37. 26. Kirill Rodionov, “Pochemu ne stoit boiat’sia raspada strany,” Forbes, January 30, 2012, http://m.forbes.ru/article.php?id=233680. 27. Yegor Kholmogorov, “Shutka, kotoraia zashla slishkom daleko,” Izvestiia, September 9, 2015, http://izvestia.ru/news/591226. 28. Sergeev, “Umstvennyi vyvert,” 40. 29. Vladimir Putin, “Vystuplenie na zasedanii mezhdunarodnogo diskussionnogo kluba ‘Valdai,’” September 19, 2013, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/ transcripts/19243. 30. Konstantin Leontyev, “Pravoslavie i Katolitsizm v Pol’she,” Grazhdanin, no. 101 (1882), http://www.sedmitza.ru/lib/text/443703/. 31. Sergei Sergeev, “Putinist Konstantin Leontyev,” APN.ru, September 27, 2013, http://www.apn.ru/publications/print30191.htm. 32. Vladimir Putin, “Rossiia: natsional’nyi vopros,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, January 23, 2012, http://www.ng.ru/politics/2012-01-23/1_national.html. 33. Mikhail Katkov, “Znachenie natsional’noi politiki dlia Rossii,” Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 174, August 8, 1864, http://dugward.ru/library/katkov/katkov_znachenie_nacionalnoy_politiki.html. 34. Mikhail Katkov, “Tsel’nost’ i odnorodnost’ Russkogo gosudarstva,” Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 252, November 17, 1864, http://dugward.ru/library/katkov/katkov_celnost_i_odnorodnost.html. 35. Katkov, “Tsel’nost’ i odnorodnost’,” Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 254, November 19, 1864, http://dugward.ru/library/katkov/katkov_znachenie_nacionalnoy_politiki.html. 36. Sergei Sergeev, “Mikhail Katkov protiv Vladimira Putina,” Russkaia platforma, February 10, 2012, http://rusplatforma.org/publikacii/node528/. 37. Ibid. 38. Konstantin Krylov, “O natsionalizme, imperstve, liberalizme i prochikh takikh materiiakh,” Rosndp.org, August 27, 2013, http://rosndp.org/o-nacionalizme-imperstve-liberalizme-i-prochih-takih-materiyah.htm.



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39. Sergeev, “‘Umstvennyi vyvert,’” 46. Trubetskoy’s quote is from his essay “The Legacy of Genghis Khan.” See Nikolai S. Trubetskoy, Istoriia. Iazyk. Kul’tura (Moscow: Progress, 1995), 261. 40. Mikhail Katkov, “Otvet na knigu [D.K.]Schedo-Ferroti [F.I. Firks],” Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 195, September 5, 1864, http://dugward.ru/library/katkov/ katkov_otvet_na_knigu.html. 41. Sergei Sergeev, “Eshche raz o russkom evropeizme,” Russkaia platforma, March 18, 2012, http://rusplatforma.org/publikacii/node590/. 42. Krylov, “O natsionalizme.” 43. Yegor Kholmogorov, “Predchuvstvie ordy,” Voprosy natsionalizma, no. 8 (2011), 10–22. 44. Rodionov, “Pochemu ne stoit boiat’sia raspada strany.” 45. Ibid. 46. Sergei Sergeev, “Natsionalizm i liberalizm,” Russkaia Platforma, July 1, 2012, http://rusplatforma.org/publikacii/node724/. 47. Pavel Sviatenkov, “Mladorusskii natsionalizm,” APN.ru, November 3, 2006, http://www.apn.ru/publications/article10821.htm. 48. Simon Cosgrove, Russian Nationalism and the Politics of Soviet Literature: The Case of Nash Sovremennik 1981–91 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 146–47. 49. For a thoughtful analysis of this crisis by one of the leading intellectuals of Russian national-democrats, see Sergei Sergeev, “Zhelaemoe i deistvitel’noe: Zametki angazhirovannogo istorika,” Voprosy natsionalizma, no. 20 (2014), 33–42. 50. See Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud, eds., The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism, 2000–2015 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016). 51. See “Zasedanie mezhdunarodnogo diskussionnogo kluba ‘Valdai,’” October 24, 2014, http://kremlin.ru/news/46860. 52. See Yaroslav Butakov’s remarks in “Russkii natsionalizm,” 17. 53. Semion Novoprudsky, “Imperializm pobedil,” Gazeta.ru, October 30, 2015, http://www.gazeta.ru/comments/column/novoprudsky/7853531.shtml. 54. Butakov’s remarks in “Russkii natsionalizm,” 18. 55. Cosgrove, Russian Nationalism, 147. 56. Vladimir Pastukhov’s remarks in “Russkii natsionalizm,” 22. 57. Emil’ Pain, Rasputitsa: Polemicheskie razmyshleniia o predopredelennosti puti Rossii (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2009), 112. 58. For an astute analysis of Soviet policies aimed at managing multi-ethnicity, see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). 59. Serhii Plokhy, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (New York: Basic Books, 2014). 60. Gasan Guseinov, Karta nashei rodiny: ideologema mezhdu slovom i telom (Moscow: OGI, 2005), 103. 61. Vladimir Kagansky, “Rossiiskaia imperiia—SSSR—RF,” Russkii zhurnal, December 6, 2004, www.russ.ru/culture/20041206_kag.html.

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62. Mikhail Iuryev, “Estestvennym dlia russkikh variantom gosudarstvennogo ustroistva iavliaetsia smes’ ideokratii i imperskogo paternalizma,” in Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo: vchera, segodnia, zavtra, ed. Igor M. Kliamkin (Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2007), 167. 63. “Sharmanka vzamen triumfal’nykh trub, Sivukha vzamen blagorodnykh vin, A v nebe kochuet imperskii trup, Pokhozhii na vrazheskii Zeppelin.” See Aleksandr Beliakov, [“Poet v postsovetskoi Rossii”], in Nestolichnaia literatura: Poeziia i proza regionov Rossii, ed. D. Kuz’min (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2001), 574. 64. Geoffrey A. Hosking, Russia: People and Empire, 1552–1917 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 485. 65. Geoffrey A. Hosking, Rulers and Victims: The Russians in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2006), 400. 66. Pål Kolstø, “The Ethnification of Russian Nationalism,” in The New Russian Nationalism, 44.

Chapter 2

“What Is More Important: Blood or Soil?” Rasologiia Contra Eurasianism Mark Bassin The dislocations of the post-Soviet period have stimulated ever more intense and extreme manifestations of Russian nationalist sentiment. Eurasianism itself is a particularly potent example of this tendency. From the extremist fringes in the Yeltsin years, Eurasianism entered the political mainstream after 2000 and – as the chapters in this collection indicate – it has proven to be remarkably responsive and adaptable in multiple political contexts that are all in constant flux. But however appreciable its ideological successes, Eurasianism does not possess a monopoly on Russian nationalist sentiment. To the contrary, it coexists with a broad assortment of alternative perspectives and orientations. The subject of this chapter, rasologiia (Rassenkunde, “raceology” or racial science), is one of the more distinctive of these.1 Although rasologiiia refers to its field of study as “racial” or “metaphysical anthropology,” there is nothing scholarly or scientific about it.2 Very much to the contrary, it draws on tendentious sources ranging from the original Rassenkunde of National-Socialist Germany to American eugenicists and heriditarians such as William Shockley and Arthur Jensen in order to articulate a racialist Weltanschauung for the purposes of Russian nationalist mobilization. Like Eurasianism, rasologiia first emerged out of the “red-brown” opposition of the 1990s, and while it has not come to enjoy the mainstream recognition and authority of the former, it has succeeded nonetheless in establishing a sort of niche status for itself as an ideological option for Russian nationalism. It is enthusiastically promoted by a variety of ideologues, at least two of whom have achieved a certain degree of visibility and even a certain political presence in Putin’s Russia: Vladimir Borisovich Avdeev3 and the Duma deputy Andrei Nikolaevich Savel’ev.4 Their writing and ideas form the basis of this chapter. Although there are important differences between them, as will become apparent, their collaboration is long-standing. Together they created 39

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a book series Biblioteka rasovoi mysli (The Library of Racial Thought), which has published dozens of contemporary and historical works on the subject and serves as a central rallying platform for their movement.5 Rasologists consider Eurasianism to be the most significant contender for Russia’s national idea and thus see it as their chief ideological rival. Their overall verdict is unsparing: Eurasianism is an ideological “swamp” and its adherents “genetic trash (otbrosy)” and “parasites on the mighty body of the Russian idea,” who seek “to intellectually suck in (umstvennoe zasasyvanie) unsuspecting victims who have lost sight of the [true] distinguishing markers of their own race.”6 Avdeev expresses his contempt for the very concept of “Eurasia,” suggesting that the conjunction of Russian words Evropa (Europe) and Aziia (Asia) should be inverted such that Evraziia becomes Aziopa – and thus resonates phonetically with a particularly vulgar Russian word. “In the final analysis, a term should accurately reflect the essence of its subject.”7 Rasologiia presents its critique of Eurasianism most extensively in its publications, but also engages Eurasianist partisans in more public skirmishes in the media. Savel’ev has debated Aleksandr Prokhanov (a well-known Eurasianist writer and editor of the newspaper Zavtra) on the popular prime-time TV show Poedinok, and Valerii Korovin (deputy to Eurasianism’s ideologue-inchief Aleksandr Dugin) more recently on the Internet programme Den’ TV.8 BIOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT AND RACE Rasologiia describes itself as a “science of the human breed (poroda).” It views ethno-national groups as discrete races, and asserts that the differences between them vary according to inherited racial-biological characteristics and genetic laws. “The worldview of any given person – more accurately, of a carrier of a particular racial archetype – is eighty per cent dominated by an inherited racial component.”9 Rasologiia draws on the legacy of Soviet genetics and eugenics developed in the 1920s and 1930s, but it is more fundamentally inspired by the pioneering theoreticians of German racial science such as Ludwig Clauss, Hans Günther, Ludwig Woltmann and Walter Scheidt.10 “People behave in a certain way because they are constituted differently, on the basis of inherited racial-biological characteristics. The world view of any individual person – more precisely of any carrier of a respective racial archetype – is dominated … by its inherited racial components.”11 It is these racial characteristics, and not abstract social laws, that shape the historical development of all nations.12 Ethnic or national groups represent races that are in principle homogeneous and possess a “specific genetic-biochemical constitution” unrelated to factors of social conditioning, language or culture. Racial qualities are thus



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real-existing objective facts, which can be measured by experts “with mathematical precision.”13 “Every people (narod) of any historical significance has a single racial foundation, one racial core, with the help of which it dictates its ‘rules of the game’ to its racial periphery, that is to racially impure crossbreeds (pomesiam).”14 The high degree of racial homogeneity among the Russian people is exemplary. “Research into the genotype of the Russians allows us to consider it an objectively-existing community – not a mixture of the genes of different peoples but the carrier of its own genetic characteristics, different from all of its neighbors to the West and the East.”15 The basic challenge for the true Russian patriot was to protect this racial purity: “Our mission is to resist mixing, [racial] equality, and chaos. Our task is to destroy the very category of racially impure culture. … We do not support racial mixing, rather we support apartheid.”16 Rasologiia criticizes Eurasianism most fundamentally for refusing to acknowledge Russia’s racial-genetic essence. Instead of supporting the imperative to maintain racial separation, Eurasianism celebrates Russia’s intermingling with other nations, historically and in the present day. Such a position raises the threat of “genetic anarchy,” a “chaos of the blood” (khaos krovi) which might serve the interests of other peoples in Eurasia but fatally undermines the genuine welfare of the Russians themselves.17 In the final analysis, the ideology of the Eurasianist “philosopher-nomads” has only one goal, namely “to enable biologically inferior degenerates to parasitize on the pure and healthy [Russian] breed.” This is a malicious scheme hatched by “genetic bloodsuckers” (geneticheskii krovosos) who propagate a rabid ideology of Eurasian unification and racial mixing.18 The roots of Eurasianism’s anti-racialist position are traced back to the pre-revolutionary philosopher Konstantin Leont’ev, who maintained that the defining qualities of any “tribe” are determined not by its blood, but rather by its religious beliefs and state system. Scandalously, Leont’ev offered strong praise for what he saw as the positive influences of the racially foreign “Turanian elements in our Russian blood.”19 This is precisely the position endorsed by Eurasianists today, who insists that the Russians were so historically “mixed with numerous Finno-Ugric, Turkic and other tribes that there is simply no question about any purity of ‘blood.’”20 As discussed in the Introduction of this book, Lev Gumilev’s ideas are a source of special inspiration for post-Soviet Eurasianism, and the progenitors of rasologiia are well aware of this. “The Eurasianists conceal the [racial] origins of their grandparents and instead declare their love for Gumilev: this is their tactic,” asserts Avdeev.21 But Gumilev’s appeal exerts a sort of weird fascination on the savants of rasologiia itself, and they find themselves irresistibly drawn to his theories about the nature of ethnicity by an uneasy mixture of veneration and contempt.22 The reasons for their ambivalence are not

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difficult to understand. Precisely like them, Gumilev had embraced a naturalistic biosocial perspective which identified ethnic groups or nationalities as biological organisms, and it was he who formulated the first and only Soviet theory of ethnicity that treated the subject unconditionally in these terms. By virtue of this, Gumilev’s work is particularly compelling for rasologists, and they simply have no choice but to acknowledge his pioneering achievements. His works are routinely cited in rasological writings and his authority on the subject respectfully recognized.23 More than this, rasologiia makes constant use of the special “scientific” terminology he developed (passionarnost’, komplimentarnost’, superethnos, ecological niche) in its own arguments about the biological-racial foundations of ethnic life – even when the arguments themselves are manifestly un-Gumilevian.24 At the same time, however, rasologiia diverges sharply from Gumilev’s insistence on the pre-eminent influence of external environmental factors on shaping ethnonational attributes. There can be no question, it insists, concerning the “superiority” (glavenstvo) and “absolute supremacy” (pervoverkhovenstvo) of blood over soil for determining racial attributes and qualities. The external environment may play a role of some sort, as Gumilev maintained, but it is a minor one that is clearly subordinated to inner geneticphysiological factors.25 “It is enough to look at the geographical distribution of racial types across the earth to understand that it is in no way connected with geographical conditions.” The white race – that most powerful and capable of all races – can adapt to live wherever it likes, for its essential power consists precisely “in its ability to disregard geography.” Indeed, this freedom from geographical determination provides the most vital evidence of robust racial hygiene and vigour. “Man is an active and dynamic force for progress, and it is he who influences the landscape, and not the other way around.”26 Gumilev, they scoff, exaggerates “the role and significance of the geographical factor in ethnogenesis.” Contrary to his geo-deterministic “ravings” (bredni), the geographical landscape “either has no influence whatsoever or only a very small degree of influence” on the process of ethno-racial formation.27 RUSSIA’S PROBLEMATIC IMPERIAL LEGACY The sharpest critique of the rasologists is however focused not on these ethnobiological principles themselves, but rather on the manner in which they are refracted through the prism of Russia’s historical experience. Rasologiia presents two alternative views of Russia’s historical legacy, both of which are articulated in specific contrast to the Eurasianist perspective. Most proponents take a negative view of Russia’s imperial experience in toto, claiming that it represented a protracted historical disaster for the Russian people.



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The centuries-long processes of expansion, conquest and absorption of foreign lands and peoples led the builders of empire to neglect the vital principle of racial purity. Instead of this, maintained the writer of rasologiia-inspired histories A.A. Shiropaev, the unification of the Russian state proceeded exclusively “on the principle of soil,” and as the assemblage of ethnic groups within the imperial state structure grew ever larger it provided ever greater opportunities for miscegenation between them. The inevitable result was the progressive dilution and debasement of the Russian nation-race: a veritable “racial entropy” that conditioned the steady dissolution of the Russian people into the surrounding Turkic and Finno-Ugric masses.28 Seen from this grim standpoint, the ideals of Velikaia Rossiia and greatpower derzhavnost’ at the centre of the Eurasianist narrative represent nothing more than “a cunning mental trap,” thanks to which the Russian people were subjected to centuries of sacrifice and deprivation.29 In the final analysis, the result “was not to combine in our blood the advantages of West and East, but rather to spread around all of their flaws.” The freedom of the individual – carefully fostered in the West – was misshapen in Russia into a “vain servility (suetnoe nizkopoklonstvo) and an unconscious need for the tyranny of a satrap.” Eurasianism’s obsessive insistence on Russia’s identity as an empire “dulled all of our exalted feelings of race and individuality … and crushed Russia’s genetic memory about its divine Aryan origins.” To the extent that the Russian national character has negative features – Avdeev identifies laziness, servility, envy, spiritual slavery and anarchism – these “have been brought into our cultural archetype through the mixing of blood” and as a result of empire.30 In principle, Russia’s imperial existence could have developed very differently. The imperial powers of Western Europe, rasologiia suggests, clearly appreciated their racial differences from as well as their culturalcivilizational superiority over their non-European colonies. This appreciation was expressed in a perceptual “verticalization” of the north-south imperial axis, which elevated the racial superiority and the higher levels of cultural development of the European colonizer as a “sacred hierarchical expression of European expansion.” Here, there was no problem of mixing between colonizer and colonized, not so much because of the enforced prohibition as the fact that all parties understood it to be naturally undesirable. In Russia, by contrast, imperial space was perceptually organized on an entirely different basis. The Russian (rossiiskoe) state was founded on the basis of “non-racial criteria of Eurasian mixing, rather than the principle of racial purity.”31 West and East – colonizer and colonized – “were not differentiated, not contrasted to each other, not arranged hierarchically” but rather combined along a single racial and civilizational axis that was not vertical but horizontal. From the outset, the Russian imperial imagination and imperial practice assumed the essential commonality and equality of European colonizer and Asiatic

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colonial, either as a given fact or – much worse – as an aspirational goal. The latter was most evident in the Soviet doctrine of druzhba narodov, the leading ideological inspiration of the final and most destructive phase of Russia’s imperial existence.32 For rasologiia, Eurasianism represents the ideological culmination of this catastrophic historical legacy of racial mixing and debasement.33 It is a means of justifying “one’s own impure blood,” and as such is suitable for “all sorts of deviants, perverts, and maniacs. … Its proponents know that it is easy to hide their genetic defects on the broad expanses” of the Eurasian continent.34 The fundamental misjudgement of the Eurasianists – their emphasis on environmental factors – reveals in turn “the fundamental philosophical question lying at the basis of each large state organism. … Which is more important (chto vyshe): blood or soil?” Clearly opting for the latter, Eurasianism celebrates the construction of a multinational state founded on the “principle of soil,” in which unity is achieved “on the basis of the vastness of its territory.”35 The entire Eurasianist narrative of Russian history is founded on the environmentalist misapprehension that geopolitics trumps biopolitics.36 It preaches that “the quantity of territory that we acquired automatically compensated for (pokryvalo) all the qualitative shortcomings of the population. … The quantity of territory diluted the quality of the blood – this is the basic crime of the Eurasianism concept.”37 Once again, Gumilev acts as something of a lightning rod in attracting special critique. According to his account, rasologists assert, the Russian state was constructed by “enterprising and lucky half-breeds,” comic-book heroes and “barbarian-Gumilioids (gumileidy), [who were] savage and disorderly.”38 Shiropaev’s categorically negative evaluation of Russia’s imperial experience is announced in the very title of his book – The Prison House of Peoples – and he explicitly described his work as an “anti-Gumilev” tract analogous to Friedrich Engels’s polemic Anti-Dühring (directed against the German philosopher Eugen Dühring). Indeed, he had originally wanted to call the work From Russia to Rus’ – an inversion of the title of one of Gumilev’s most popular histories From Rus’ to Russia that would have fixed the critical connection yet more unmistakably.39 Gumilev is derided by rasologists as a Turkophile, an apologist for the Tatar yoke sympathetic to “GreatTurkish chauvinism,” and a Russophobe who “openly despises Russia and Russians.”40 With their enthusiastic accounts of the interethnic complementarity and symbiosis that supposedly characterized every stage of Russia’s imperial development, Gumilev and his fellow Gumiliod-Eurasianists wilfully overlook the vital racial differences that in fact always separated the peoples of the empire. “To view Russia as Eurasia is to define it as the Golden Horde. Lev Gumilev is an IDEOLOGIST OF THE HORDE, who created a Horde version of Russia. … His entire theory is an attempt to turn Russia into



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the Horde. The notion that equates Russia with Eurasia is the most grievous betrayal of the Russian soul.”41 It is striking to note, however, that such virulent critique does not prevent at least some exponents of rasologiia from accepting Eurasianism’s factual narrative of Russia’s historical development. Despite his emphatic rejection of the Eurasianist interpretation, for example, Shiropaev is nonetheless at pains to emphasize that his own reconstruction of Russia’s historical development “precisely does not contradict” those of Gumilev or Aleksandr Dugin. He accepts the historical reality of Russia as a Slavic-Turkic “superethnos” and its role as a multinational melting pot, and he conceded that the specific argumentation of his own book “draws in many respects” on these authors. “The Eurasianist version of Russia’s ethno-state [etno-gosudarstvennyi] development is entirely justified.” The more important point, of course, related to the evaluation of this historical record, and here the differences were manifest. “Where our [Eurasianist] patriots place a plus [i.e. celebrate polyethnicity and mixing], I place a minus.” And where the Eurasianists maintain that the “influence of foreign races enriched the Russian people, I am convinced that it fouled and weakened it.”42 There is an alternative view in rasologiia which offers a rather different perspective. It joins the Eurasianists in celebrating Russia’s historical existence as a great empire, but unlike them it identifies the empire in all its manifestations as the creation of the Russian nation-race alone. “Egypt was built by the Egyptians, the great Roman Empire by Latins, the Chinese empire by the Chinese, and the Russian (rossiiskoe) empire – by the Russians (russkie).”43 Where Eurasianism emphasized the historical fraternity and cooperation between Russians and other nationalities, in particular the Mongol-Turkic forces of the Golden Horde, rasologiia here speaks instead about “a white empire, in which the Russian people were everywhere and at all times the master (khoziain).”44 The Russians and the Golden Horde had not in fact been friends and allies but rather bitter enemies, and their interactions had brought the Russians great suffering. Neither the Tatars nor any other non-Russian nationality made any positive contribution whatsoever to the Russian imperial state.45 Indeed, this state had never really been a multinational formation at all. Rather, it was a Russian national empire in the same sense that the French empire was French or the Spanish empire Spanish, and it subjugated and dominated its foreign colonial subjects in precisely the same manner.46 Konstantin Leont’ev’s fanciful notion about Russia as a symphonic “blossoming [polyethnic] complexity,” rhapsodically echoed in the present day by Dugin, is a transparent historical fiction and the crudest form of “Russophobia,” the ultimate effect of which is to deny the Russians “their state-forming (gosudarstvoobrazuiushchaia) role” altogether.47

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The Eurasianist model of historical fraternization and harmony between the different nationalities of the empire was expressed most succinctly in Gumilev’s concept of “superethnos,” and this term thus attracts special critique. “Under examination, the Gumilevian ‘superethnos’ turns out to be nothing more than an unstable, unsustainable and internally contradictory ‘conglomerate’ of different ethnies, artificially cobbled together by the blind force of circumstance.” There neither is nor ever was any genuine commonality among Russia’s many nationalities, who to the contrary were always locked in an internecine struggle for domination – a struggle that is ongoing and will persist until the conglomerate finally disintegrates under its own weight and breaks apart along its “natural” racial-ethnic boundaries.48 The “superethnos” concept was nothing more than an “outstanding achievement of the Russian totalitarian mind,” which distorts the reality of Russian statehood (gosudarstvennost’) into the fiction of the “Eurasianness” (evraziiskost’) of its peoples and cultures. Gumilev’s thinking is a transparent reflection of the Soviet determination to reduce all of its constituent nationalities to the same low level by denying the differences that in fact separated and opposed them. The myth of a “united Eurasia” was never more than “an idea of totalitarian power,” unsupported by any sort of genuine racial or even cultural-religious affinity.49 This rejection of the “superethnos” concept, however, exposes in turn yet another vital ambivalence within rasologiia. We have noted the latter’s emphatic declarations that the Russian people were “Eurasianized” and racially debased through mixing with other nationalities, and that this experience served to spoil their qualities as nation-race. But if in fact there had been no “superethnos” in the Russian national empire, no Eurasian symbiosis and no genuine multinational fraternization, then perhaps racial mixing itself had not really been such a problem. Vladimir Avdeev and others argue precisely this point – irrespective of the fact that elsewhere they proclaim the precise opposite.50 Throughout all its historical “multi-tribal” tribulations, they explain, the Russian people succeeded heroically in preserving their racial-genetic purity essentially undiluted down to the present day. From this standpoint, the Gumilevian “mixing” we have described above as a gruesome historical reality mutates vaguely into a contrived and ideologically driven historical fiction – still connected, to be sure, to the warped biases of Eurasianism.51 “The mythical [!] racial mixing with the Finns and the Tatars which the Eurasianists attribute to the Russians are nothing more than unfounded fantasy.” Throughout the entire course of Russian expansion and colonization, genuine racial mixing indeed “could not have taken place” because of the differences between both the population size of the different ethnic groups as well as their respective “biological strategies for survival.”52 It is thus not surprising, maintained Avdeev, that learned geneticists and anthropologists today



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conclude “in a single voice” that the Great Russians are the “most [racially] homogeneous peoples (narod naibolee odnorodnyi) in the world today.”53 To be sure, miscegenation between the Russian and indigenous groups did take place, but its only effect was to increase the proportions of “Nordic blood” in the latter. “By influencing the blood of others (vliiaia na chuzhuiu krov’)” in this way, “the Russians were able to safeguard their own.”54 This point was made with emphasis by Andrei Savel’ev during his debate with the Eurasianist Valerii Korovin. Reacting to the latter’s point that the Russians “absorbed” (pogloshchat’) other peoples across the centuries, Savel’ev declared: AS: I only want to object that the Russian people never absorbed any other ethnies. VK: What about the Finno-Ugrians, or Turks? AS: Well … the Finno-Ugrian peoples exist, and their individual representatives did become part of (vlivat’sia) the Russian people, without any question. [But this involved only] individual representatives, and not [entire] ethnies. The latter never happened, because the Russians are a self-sufficient (samodostatochnyi) people. VK: But what about assimilation? AS: Assimilation takes place on an individual level, perhaps on a family level, but not on the level of an [entire] ethnos. In its entirety, a [foreign] ethnos never became part of the self-sufficient Russians in an anthropological [i.e. racial] sense. The Russians are pure precisely as a tribal community (rodovoe soobshchestvo). VK: A community determined by blood (kak krov’)? AS: Yes, precisely, determined by blood. Russians are pure in terms of their blood.55

Indeed, not content with the assertion that the Russians preserved their racial purity, Avdeev goes yet further to claim that they have done so to a degree practically unmatched by any other race. The study of the genotype of the Russian people demonstrates that it is not a mixture of the genes of different peoples, but rather is a unique structure that differs from that of its neighbours to the west and east.56

VISIONS OF THE RUSSIAN FUTURE Rasologiia rejects the projections by Dugin and other Eurasianists of Russia’s future organization as a multinational federation.57 The Eurasianist principle of polyethnicity involves a misguided overvaluation – indeed, an “absolutization (absoliutizatsiia)” – of the notional equality between ethnies. Its effect

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is to threaten the interests of ethnic Russians by supporting the demands of non-Russian nationalities for special advantages while at the same time denying Russia’s own natural pre-eminence.58 Such federalist schemes would “drown Russians in an ethnic flood of nations large and puny (narodtsy), for each of which the Russian race is expected to provide the means of survival, defence and population growth.”59 Indeed, Eurasianist federalism becomes a veritable horror image: a “salad-bowl society” which would see Russia transmogrified into a dystopic “United States of Aziopa.”60 Such a vision is useful only for non-Russian “ethnicists” and “ethno-parasites” in their quest for legitimation and empowerment as a new Eurasianist “ethnonomenklatura.” Rather than developing genuine political and social cohesion across the country, Eurasianism in fact promotes precisely the opposite, namely an ethnocracy which enables non-Russians to claim evermore ethnically based rights and entitlements on their road to full ethnic separatism.61 The result can only be increased discrimination against Russians on the part of a Eurasianist-inspired and Russophobic “ethnic mafia” and “parasitic International of ethno-separatists,” intent upon “sucking the blood out of the Russian people.”62 The essence of the Eurasianist programme, according to Avdeev and others is a transparent reformulation of the internationalism promoted by the Bolshevik leaders of the Soviet Union. It summons the nations of the former Soviet Union “to somehow live together in order to become a Eurasian people, to unite into some sort of Eurasian nation and call their nationalism Eurasianism – in other words to become something which the communists tried to create: a Soviet nation (sovetskii narod).”63 Indeed, it is claimed that these principles are already operative in the Russian Federation in the present day.64 “I believe,” sighed Savel’ev, that the Eurasianist doctrine has already “come to power” in Russia. “Not in its entirety, of course” he clarified, but “various theoretical aspects of it that are useful for propaganda purposes have been adopted.”65 Beyond the Russian Federation, moreover, the spirit of Eurasianist federalism distorts relations across the entire political space of the former Soviet Union. The most flagrant example is in Kazakhstan, where President Nursultan Nazarbayev has adapted Eurasianism for his own purposes and installed it as an official ideology.66 While this has been greeted rapturously by Russian officialdom as “just the right recipe for our good neighborliness [and] our collaborative activity,” in fact it is a deceptive scheme for duping (obolvanivaniia) the Russian people in order to maximize the advantage of Kazakhs and other nationalities, at Russia’s expense.67 Rasologiia is equally sharp in its critique of Eurasianism’s perspective on Russia’s international position. The Eurasianists’ binary opposition between Russia-Eurasia and the West has the effect of projecting Russian territory as an empty “polygon,” a marginal boundary zone upon which the struggle



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between the civilizational alternatives of Eurocentrism and “Asiophilia” (vostokofiliia) can be waged.68 In this struggle, moreover, Eurasianism identifies Russia’s interests strictly with the latter. The “crafty Eurasianists” are determined to convince the Russian people of one single idea: “that a nomad from the steppe is spiritually, morally and even intellectually closer to us than a Swede, German or Dutchman.”69 But in fact, rasologists insist, the very opposite is the case. Rather than representing a “mixture of races and cultures with an Asian bias (s prioritetom Vostoka),”70 Russians today are racially homogeneous – and to the extent that they are racially related to anyone, it is to the peoples of the West rather than the East. They represent a model “Nordic branch of the Europoid race” whose racial physiognomy – shape and dimensions of the head, face, nose, and body height – make them “the most typical Europeans.”71 The blood of Tsarina Catherine II – originally a Prussian princess of German parentage – is “identical to the blood that flows through the veins of Russians today.”72 The racial similarities connecting Russians and Europeans point to civilizational affinities that are no less significant. “Despite all the cultural and political differences among the peoples of European civilization, we all nonetheless belong to a single, Indo-European cultural community.”73 The Gumilevian insistence that Russia and Europe have been locked in endless struggle for all eternity obscures the genuine historical role played by Russian statehood as a “sacred … expression of European expansion,” in which advanced cultures conquered and dominated over more primitive peoples.74 And these historical and civilizational commonalities have clear political implications for the present and future. As Savel’ev explained: Russia is a European country, no matter how hard certain historians attempt to demonstrate the connections of the Russian state tradition to Turkic systems of power. Russia is made up, above all, of ethnic Russians (russkie). And ethnic Russians are anthropologically and culturally close to Europe. For them, Europe is much closer than Asia. … Indeed, the Russian nation (Russian empire) is inconceivable without Europe. Russia has no alternative political ally against its enemies. … And Europe, including Russia, has no alternative cultural partner besides the native Aryan world, to which both Europe and Russia belong as fraternal members.75

Dugin’s declaration of war between Atlanticism and Eurasia is a “mythical opposition,” cynically manufactured by Eurasianists in order to inflame hostilities between “racial and religious brothers” while at the same time “quietly and insidiously – in good Asiatic fashion – debasing the blood of the Aryan race with all sorts of impurities.”76 In his debate with Korovin, Savel’ev asserted that Russia “needs to be closer to Europe and to those European forces with which we are connected

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culturally and historically.” To the startled objections of his interlocutor that Europe in the present day is in fact hostile and “Russophobic,” he responded that this was not the “real Europe” of traditional Christian civilization but rather a corrupt and globalized political and business elite.77 Russia today must reject the fatuous belief in some sort of kinship with the Asiatic steppe and recognize instead its genuine affinities with the traditions and peoples of the European West. As Avdeev noted sardonically, it is not the mysteries of the barkhany – distinctive crescent-shaped sand dunes found in the deserts of Central Asia – that Russians need to admire, but rather “the magic of the Nordic runes.”78 While there is agreement among rasologists that Russia needs to develop as an “ethnically Russian national state” (russkoe natsional’noe gosudarstvo), dedicated above all to supporting the “unity of the tribe” (plemennoe edinstvo),79 they diverge once again in regard to what such a state would actually look like. Most proponents believe that Russia should become a “new Empire”80: a multinational state in which Russians enjoy clear predominance and control. This would be a polyethnic community (soobschestvo), to be sure, but one based on a “Russian national core” as its backbone (sterzhen’),81 in which supreme political authority rested in the hands of the Russian nationrace. Other nationalities would be tolerated, but their legal status would be subordinated formally to that of Russians. “Russia (Rossiia) should be a country of ethnic Russian (russkii) national culture, under whose patronage and protection the cultures of other peoples can exist.”82 The latter would also be subject to a vigorous process of cultural – but of course not conjugal – assimilation to Russian nationalist values and interests.83 Moreover, an official policy of “positive eugenics” should be put in place to assure the desired “ethnogenetic passionary growth” of the Russian nation-race.84 The principle of Russian ethno-racial predominance would be necessary to, among other things, resist separatism and maintain the geopolitical unity of the polyethnic polity. One rasologist additionally calls for a massive programme of “positive eugenics” in order to stimulate the demographic growth of the Russians. “The Russian empire cannot exist without the qualitative (demographic) and quantitative (genetic) domination (dominirovanie) of the Russians – the leading imperial ethnos.”85 “If the primacy of the Russia nation … is not maintained,” explained Savel’ev, “then the kernel of separatism will begin to grow, under the cover of Eurasianism.”86 While such a formation would not be a replica of the old Romanov empire, the determination that a future Russian order should re-engage with the “imperial methods” of the pre-revolutionary past is very clear.87 At the centre of this would be the re-establishment of the geopolitical corpus of Velikaia Rossiia, as it existed before the revolution and was maintained by the Soviet state.88 Geographically, the Russian Federation of today represents “only a



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part of historical Russia,” and, as such, it “awaits reunification” with the territories that were illegitimately detached from it. This, Savel’ev declares, will enable Russia to re-assume rightful control over all of the “geographical expanses (prostor) necessary for the development of its state-civilization.”89 The prostor that Savel’ev has in mind here amounts to the entirety of the post-Soviet space – “our primordial lands,” as he puts it, which should “voluntarily rejoin” a unified state. Only in this way, re-established in “its natural, historically established boundaries, can Russia pull itself together and cast off the burden of vicious geopolitical competition. The [geopolitical] gathering of the nation is the reunification of the nation, the reunification of peoples who have experienced a shared life and a common fate.”90 And this territorial reconsolidation of imperial Russia would in turn stimulate an awareness of its historical mission. The proactive programme of “assimilation” of nonRussian nationalities noted above was an expression of Russia’s timeless cultural mission – precisely as had been the case in the old Russian empire. In this manner, Russia would be able to reclaim its world-historical role. “There can be no imperial nation without a conception of its ‘special path.’ In Russia, this is based on centuries of historical development. Returning to this path will determine Russia’s place in world history.”91 This bold vision of a polyethnic Russian “national empire” re-established on Russia’s traditional geographical expanses does not however appeal to all adherents of rasologiia. Apparently unaware of the enthusiasm with which such a project is embraced by his own co-thinkers, Vladimir Avdeev dismisses it as yet another misguided Eurasianist scheme. The imperial idea itself is harmful for Russia, he insists, for history provides ample demonstration of how it has always served the interests of non-Russians while undermining those of the Russians. For its future, does Russia “really need an empire for other peoples which is built primarily on Russian bones?” Why should the Russian people be “sacrificed” in such an outrageous manner on the altar of Eurasianism?92 An empire necessarily places the interests of the state above those of the race or nation, while Russia’s most vital ethno-racial imperatives can be addressed only by inverting these priorities. In the conditions of the present day, Avdeev explains, the original question “which is more important: blood or soil?” can be reformulated as “which is more important: the nation or the state?”93 For him, the answer is self-evident. The nation – conceived in racial terms – is more important, and the state must be based on it, rather than the other way around. All energy must be focused exclusively on the interests of the Russian race-nation, to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. This is precisely what a multinational and “racially impure” imperial Eurasianism will not and cannot recognize.94 This comprehensive Russo-centric focus can be achieved only by abandoning all Eurasianist fixations on the “invisible beauty of the multi-national soul”

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in order to create a non-imperial Russian national state that is mono-ethnic, self-sufficient and isolationist, based on the principles of strict racial hygiene and purity.95 The political and social structures of such a state would correspond absolutely to the racial and genetic features of its population. Social stability and prosperity, Avdeev maintained, “is possible only in conditions of the greatest possible racial homogeneity. Common origins and the predictability of behavior that they provide, make it possible to avoid social tensions. The racial purity of the society is the best means to achieve individual freedom for each of its members.”96 Although he does not explain exactly how he intends to carve a racially homogeneous Russia out of its current mixed population, he does at least reassure us that the historical legacy of uncontrolled, Eurasianist racial mixing with neighbouring inferior peoples does not represent an insurmountable obstacle. The fact that mixed races are capable of undergoing a spontaneous natural “cleansing (ochistiki) of impurities” has been “scientifically proven,” he claims, and he even provides the corresponding German term from the lexicon of Rassenkunde to enhance the scientific cachet of the concept: Entmischung. This means that “elements of foreign races, provided they are not too numerous, can through many generations be entirely eliminated from the layers of embryonic racial plasm.”97 Thanks to this natural process, Russians have every reason to look forward to the prospect of creating their own genuine and exclusive racial utopia. CONCLUSION The ideological confrontation between rasologiia and Eurasianism suggests mixed conclusions. It is, to begin with, unclear how seriously the former should be taken. To a much greater degree than Eurasianism, rasologiia draws on notorious and odious doctrines that are universally well known and nearly universally discredited. Eschewing all attempts to camouflage these historical antecedents, moreover, rasologiia recklessly flaunts its brash and hysterical extremism and lays proud claim to the legacy of Nazi Rassenkunde. The credibility of rasologiia is further challenged by the general Russian scepticism regarding both the science and the social implications of racialism – a scepticism of which Lev Gumilev himself, for all his outlandish biologism, is an excellent example.98 Even if we do take rasologiia seriously, however, its critique of Eurasianism is compromised not only by its multiple ambivalences and contradictions but also by the fact that, on a number of significant issues, the two do not seem to be particularly at odds. We have seen, for example, how rasologiia’s attacks on the arch-Eurasianist Gumilev are diluted by its obvious partiality for the weird but distinctive and (seemingly) effective lexicon he devised



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to express his naturalist perspective. Rasologiia’s verdict that Eurasianist federalism would weaken the dominating position to which Russians are historically entitled is similarly undermined by the fact that neo-Eurasianists themselves have expressed their explicit support for this domination.99 And in a similar spirit, some proponents of neo-Eurasianism – notably Dugin himself – display a sense of cultural and geopolitical solidarity with Europe that resonates with rasologiia’s own claims to be part of the Aryan legacy.100 These points notwithstanding, the two ideologies nonetheless reflect very different perspectives on Russia’s character and its national future. Eurasianism speaks the language of multiculturalism and social and political inclusion. It supports an internationalist vision of Russian society as a polyethnic assemblage, to which each national group has contributed historically and in which each accordingly possesses its rightful position and entitlements. While the specific nature of these entitlements may be contested, the fundamental principle is not, and that is the most important point. Rasologiia, by contrast, speaks a language of social exclusion, and advocates an extremist ethnonationalism and racialism founded “scientifically” on the precepts of biology and genetics. As Eurasianism over the past decade (and increasingly with the political support of the Putin regime) has expanded its influence and appeal, so too has the influence and appeal of extremist Russian ethnonationalism. The latter is fed by social tensions within the Russian Federation, above all by the growing hostility to non-ethnic Russians from the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Volga region, Siberia and elsewhere – precisely those peoples whom Eurasianism greets as fraternal brothers. In these conditions, the racism preached by rasologiia would seem to be taking root. Its insistence on essentialized racial differences resonates with and provides legitimation for the discourses and practices of discrimination in a way that the internationalist Eurasianism simply cannot. It may be expected, therefore, that Russian nationalist discourse will continue to develop its struggle with Eurasianism along the fault lines identified in this chapter. NOTES 1. For an example of a somewhat different nationalist tendency see the chapter by Igor Torbakov in this collection. 2. V. A. Shnirel’man, “‘Tsepnoi pes rasy’: divannaia rasologiia kak zashchitnitsa ‘belogo cheloveka,’” in Verkhi i nizy russkogo natsionalizma, ed. Aleksandr Verkhovskii (Moscow: Tsentr “Sova,” 2007): 188–207; V. A. Shnirel’man, “Rasologiia v deistvii: mechty deputata Savel’eva,” in Verkhi i nizy russkogo natsionalizma, ed. Aleksandr Verkhovskii (Moscow: Tsentr “Sova,” 2007): 162–187; Richard Arnold and Ekaterina Romanova, “The ‘White World’s Future’? An Analysis of the Russian Far Right,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 7:1 (2013): 79–107; Dan Michaels,

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“Vladimir Borisovich Avdeyev: Race and the Russian ‘New Right,’” The Occidental Observer (2011), http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/01/vladimir-borisovichavdeyev-race-and-the-russian-%E2%80%9Cnew-right%E2%80%9D/, accessed on 2/12/2015. 3. An engineer by training and radical right-wing extremist by inclination, Avdeev was active in pagan and anti-Christian circles before switching his interests to racial matters in the mid-1990s. Shnirel’man, “‘Tsepnoi pes rasy.’” 4. Savel’ev was politically active from the early 1990s, first as a deputy in the City of Moscow Soviet, then as a political analyst and adviser to the nationalist politician Dmitrii Rogozin. In 2003 he was elected to the Duma as a representative of the party Rodina, and in 2007 became the leader of the ultra-right-wing party Velikaia Rossiia. Savel’ev has a kandidat degree in physics, but in 2000 he defended a doctoral dissertation on the subject of “political mythology.” Although he describes himself as a “monarchist-legitimist,” his perspectives are based heavily on the precepts of racial anthropology and Rassenkunde. Shnirel’man, “Rasologiia v deistvii”; V. Malakhov, “Sovremennyi russkii natsional’izm” (2006), http://iph.ras.ru/page50523858.htm, accessed on 2/4/2014. Savel’ev is a grand master at Tai Kwon Do, and his martial skills stood him in good stead when in 2005 he got into a fistfight with Vladimir Zhirnovskii in the Duma chamber, after the latter spat on him (www.youtube.com/ watch?v=yiwC2L3g00c). 5. Shnirel’man, “Rasologiia v deistvii,” 165. 6. V. B. Avdeev, Metafizicheskaia antropologiia (Moscow: Belye al’vy, 2002): 122; V.B. Avdeev, “Snachala Evraziia, teper’ Aziopa,” in Metafizicheskaia antropologiia (Moscow: Belye al’vy, 2002): 43–67: here 46. 7. Avdeev, “Snachala,” 43–44. Avdeev’s anti-Eurasianist website is named Aziopa: http://nationalism.org/aziopa/. 8. “Poedinok: Prokhanov VS Savel’ev” (2009?), https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=PguRbx9cGjE, accessed on 14/2/2016; “Evraziiskaia imperiia ili Respublika Rus’?” Den’ TV 19 September (2014), http://dentv.ru/content/view/evrazijskayaimperiya-ili-respublika-rus/, accessed on 9/1/2015. 9. V. B. Avdeev, “Nado uchit’sia prikladnoi biologii,” Zavtra 32 (2005), http:// www.zavtra.ru/content/view/2005-08-1081/, accessed on 8/4/2014. 10. V. B. Avdeev, “Novaia traditsiia i rasovaia modernizatsiia,” in Rasovyi smysl russkoi idei (Moscow: Belye al’vy, 2000): 403–425, here 419, 421, 423; V. B. Avdeev and A. N. Savel’ev, “Rasa i ruskaia ideia,” in Rasovyi smysl russkoi idei (Moscow: Belye al’vy, 2000): 3–15, here 5. Indeed, Avdeev’s weighty magnum opus on the subject is little more than a compendium of citations from these and other sources. V. B. Avdeev, Rasologiia (Moscow: Belye al’vy, 2005); also see Shnirel’man, “‘Tsepnoi pes rasy.’” 11. Avdeev, “Nado.” 12. Avdeev, Rasologiia. 13. V. B. Avdeev, “Rasologiia protiv rusofobii: otvet lzhetsam i nedobrozhelateliam russkogo naroda” (n.d.), http://www.xpomo.com/ruskolan/rasa/otvet.htm, accessed on 11/4/2015. 14. Ibid.



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15. Mikhail Diunov, “Ob izuchenii matchasti,” Russkii Proekt September (2007), http://arc.rus-obr.ru/people/1531.html, accessed on 28/09/2007. 16. Avdeev, “Snachala,” 60; Avdeev, “Detskaia,” 22. 17. Avdeev, Metafizicheskaia antropologiia: 8. 18. Ibid., 254, 8. 19. Avdeev, “Rasologiia protiv rusofobii.” 20. Ibid; A. N. Savel’ev, “Ostorozhno: evraziistvo!,” Natsional’naia Besopastnost’: Mezhdunarodnyi Zhurnal 5–6 (2001), http://www.savelev.ru/article/ show/?id=21&t=1, accessed on 10/5/1015. 21. Avdeev, Metafizicheskaia antropologiia: 21. 22. One book on the subject devotes an entire chapter to “Gumilev: pro et contra”: A. N. Sevast’ianov, Etnos i natsiia (Moscow: Knizhnyi mir, 2008): 42–50. 23. For positive appraisals of Gumilev see A. N. Savel’ev, Obraz vraga. Rasologiia i politicheskaia antropologiia, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Belye Al’vy, 2010): 41, 48–49, 53–55, 149; Sergei N. Marochkin, “Narod. Sreda. Kharakter,” in Rasovyi smysl russkoi idei (Moscow: Belye al’vy, 2000): 43–66; V. L. Makhnach, “Russkii sever: krov’ i dukh,” in Rasovyi smysl russkoi idei (Moscow: Belye al’vy, 2000): 115–128. Salvel’ev even defends Gumilev against attacks from his liberal Russian critics: A. N. Savel’ev, Vremia russkoi natsii (Moscow: Knizhniy mir, 2007): 213. 24. Platon Ianycharov, “Rasovedenie i regeneratsiia russkogo etnosa,” in Rasovyi smysl russkoi idei (Moscow: Belye al’vy, 2000): 426–444, here 427–428; Sevast’ianov, Etnos i natsiia: 46, 50; A. N. Savel’ev, “Ot biologii k politologii,” in Obraz vraga. Rasologiia i politicheskaia antropologiia (Moscow: Belye Al’vy, 2007): 74–78, http://www.savelev.ru/article/show/?id=102&t=1, accessed on 26/6/2014; Avdeev, “Nado,” A. N. Kol’ev, Politicheskaia mifologiia: realizatsiia sotsial’nogo optya (Moscow: Logos, 2003): 252. “A. N. Kol’ev” is a pseudonym for Savel’ev. 25. Avdeev, Metafizicheskaia antropologiia: 6; Shnirel’man, “‘Tsepnoi pes rasy,’” 203–204. 26. Avdeev, “Nado” (quote); Sevast’ianov, Etnos i natsiia: 43. It is significant to note that this anti-environmentalist bias of post-Soviet rasologiia reproduces quite precisely the chronic antipathy of German Rassenkunde from the late nineteenth century through the interwar period to the geographical determinism of interwar Geopolitik. See Mark Bassin, “Blood or Soil? The volkisch movement, the Nazis, and the legacy of Geopolitik,” in How Green were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich, ed. F-J Brüggemeier, Marc Cioc, and Thomas Zeller (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2005): 204–242; Mark Bassin, “Race contra Space: The Conflict between German Geopolitik and National Socialism,” Political Geography Quarterly 6 (1987): 115–134; Mark Bassin, “Nurture is Nature: Lev Gumilev and the Ecology of Ethnicity,” Slavic Review 68: 4 (2009): 872–897; S. S. Beliakov, Gumilev syn Gumileva (Moscow: Astrel’, 2012): 543. 27. Sevast’ianov, Etnos i natsiia: 46–47. 28. A. A. Shiropaev, Tiur’ma narodov: Russkii vzgliad na Rossiiu (Moscow: FERI-V, 2001): 3. 29. A. A. Shiropaev, “Ot Rossii–k Rusi! Eshche raz o russkom separatizme” (2002– 2003), http://www.rusrepublic.ru/nnpr1/stat/shir/russep2.htm, accessed on 19/6/2014.

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30. Avdeev, “Snachala,” 59–60. 31. Ibid., 59. 32. Kol’ev, Politicheskaia mifologiia: 248–249; Shnirel’man, “Rasologiia v deistvii,” 166. 33. Andrei Novikov, “Katekhizis popokummunizma: evraziistvo kak artefakt kul’turnogo samosoznaniia Rossii,” Ataka 201 (1998): 56–63, http://nationalism.org/ aziopa/novikov.htm, accessed on 29/6/2014. 34. Avdeev, “Snachala,” 58, 60. 35. Avdeev, Metafizicheskaia antropologiia: 5. 36. Michaels, “Vladimir Borisovich Avdeyev: Race and the Russian ‘New Right.’” 37. Avdeev, “Snachala,” 59–60. 38. Ibid., 45. 39. A. A. Shiropaev, “Est’ russkaia Rus’!” (2002), http://www.rusrepublic.ru/ nnpr1/stat/shir/inshir.htm, accessed on 19/6/2014. 40. Avdeev, “Snachala,” 49–50; Sevast’ianov, Etnos i natsiia: 50; V. E. D’iakov, “Stoit li zaostriat’ vnimanie na nashikh razlichiakh s Zapadom?” (2005), http:// www.polemics.ru/articles/?articleID=5433&hideText=0&itemPage=1, accessed on 19/6/2014; {Avdeev, 2002 #3138}Beliakov, Gumilev: 461. 41. Novikov, “Katekhizis popokummunizma” (emphasis in original); Shiropaev, Tiur’ma narodov: 15; Diunov, “Ob izuchenii matchasti.” 42. Shiropaev, “Est’ russkaia Rus’!” 43. Avdeev, “Rasologiia protiv rusofobii”; Shnirel’man, “‘Tsepnoi pes rasy,’” 200–201. 44. “Poedinok: Prokhanov VS Savel’ev.” 45. Mikhail Diunov, “Istorik i politika” (2007), http://xn–80aa2bkafhg.xn–p1ai/ article.php?nid=346162, accessed on 23/7/2015. 46. Kol’ev, Politicheskaia mifologiia: 309; Shnirel’man, “‘Tsepnoi pes rasy,’” 200. 47. Savel’ev, Obraz vraga: 446–449; Diunov, “Istorik i politika.” 48. Sevast’ianov, Etnos i natsiia: 45–46. 49. Novikov, “Katekhizis popokummunizma.” 50. Shnirel’man, “Rasologiia v deistvii.” 51. A. I. Nikitin, “Russkaia krov’: istoriia i geopolitika,” Zolotoi Lev 269–270 (2011), http://www.zlev.ru/index.php?p=article&nomer=54&article=3305, accessed on 28/11/2012. 52. Avdeev, “Rasologiia protiv rusofobii.” 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. “Evraziiskaia imperiia ili Respublika Rus’?”; also see Diunov, “Istorik i politika.” 56. Avdeev, “Rasologiia protiv rusofobii.” 57. “Evraziiskaia imperiia ili Respublika Rus’?” 58. Savel’ev, Obraz vraga: 537–539. 59. Savel’ev, “Ostorozhno: evraziistvo!”



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60. Savel’ev, Obraz vraga: 446–449; Avdeev, “Detskaia,” 2; Shnirel’man, “Rasologiia v deistvii,” 177. 61. Savel’ev in “Evraziiskaia imperiia ili Respublika Rus’?” 62. Savel’ev, Obraz vraga: 537–539. 63. “Evraziiskaia imperiia ili Respublika Rus’?”; Savel’ev, “Ostorozhno: evraziistvo!” 64. Savel’ev, Obraz vraga: 446–449. 65. “Evraziiskaia imperiia ili Respublika Rus’?” 66. See the chapter on Kazakh Eurasianism by Luca Anceschi in this collection. 67. “Evraziiskaia imperiia ili Respublika Rus’?” 68. Savel’ev, “Ostorozhno: evraziistvo!”; Savel’ev, Obraz vraga: 446–449. 69. Avdeev, Metafizicheskaia antropologiia: 8. 70. Savel’ev, Obraz vraga: 446–449. 71. Avdeev, “Rasologiia protiv rusofobii” (emphasis original); Shnirel’man, “‘Tsepnoi pes rasy,’” 190, 196. 72. “Poedinok: Prokhanov VS Savel’ev.” Avdeev is particularly scandalized that Gumilev denied any German element in Russian blood, choosing instead to explain Russian creativity as the product of “the hunger pangs of the Turkic steppe and uncontrolled sexual libido.” Avdeev, Metafizicheskaia antropologiia: 108–109. 73. Avdeev, Metafizicheskaia antropologiia: 127. 74. Novikov, “Katekhizis popokummunizma” (emphasis in original); Shiropaev, Tiur’ma narodov: 15; Diunov, “Ob izuchenii matchasti.” 75. Kol’ev, Politicheskaia mifologiia: 325–326 (quote); Avdeev, “Snachala,” 45. On the Europhilia of rasologiia, see Arnold and Romanova, “The ‘White World’s Future’?” 85–91; Shnirel’man, “‘Tsepnoi pes rasy,’” 207. 76. Avdeev, Metafizicheskaia antropologiia: 8, 21. 77. “Evraziiskaia imperiia ili Respublika Rus’?” 78. Avdeev, Metafizicheskaia antropologiia: 8. 79. Shnirel’man, “Rasologiia v deistvii,” 167. 80. Kol’ev, Politicheskaia mifologiia: 310. 81. Ibid., 292, 310–312, 317; Ianycharov, “Rasovedenie i regeneratsiia russkogo etnosa,” 439–40; Aleksandr Verkhovskii, “Ideinaia evolutsiia russkogo natsioinalizma: 1990-e i 2000-e gody,” in Verkhi i nizy russkogo natsionalizma (Moscow: Sova, 2007): 6–32; Shnirel’man, “Rasologiia v deistvii,” 177. 82. Shnirel’man, “Rasologiia v deistvii,” 177. 83. “Evraziiskaia imperiia ili Respublika Rus’?” 84. Ianycharov, “Rasovedenie i regeneratsiia russkogo etnosa,” 439–440. This is a good example of how rasologists use Gumilev’s terminology for making what are actually very un-Gumilevian points. 85. Ibid. 86. Kol’ev, Politicheskaia mifologiia: 310. 87. Savel’ev, Obraz vraga: 446–449. 88. Shnirel’man, “Rasologiia v deistvii,” 177, 178–179. 89. Savel’ev, Obraz vraga: 446–449; Kol’ev, Politicheskaia mifologiia: 310, 292. 90. Savel’ev, Vremia russkoi natsii: 71.

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91. Kol’ev, Politicheskaia mifologiia: 286; “Evraziiskaia imperiia ili Respublika Rus’?” 92. Avdeev, “Detskaia,” 19. For an outraged reaction to this ethno-racial exclusivity by a prominent derzhavnik from the Gumilev camp, see “Poedinok: Prokhanov VS Savel’ev.” 93. Avdeev, Metafizicheskaia antropologiia: 7. 94. Avdeev, “Snachala,” 62. 95. Avdeev, Metafizicheskaia antropologiia: 6; Avdeev, “Nado.” 96. Avdeev, “Snachala,” 62–63. 97. Avdeev, “Rasologiia protiv rusofobii.” 98. For discussions on the deep-running resistance to the framing of ethnic and nationality issues in racialist terms, see Eric D. Weitz, “Racial Politics without the Concept of Race: Reevaluating Soviet Ethnic and National Purges,” Slavic Review 61 (1) (2002): 1–29; Amir Weiner, “Nothing but Certainty,” Slavic Review 61 (1) (2002): 44–53; Francine Hirsch, “Race Without the Practice of Racial Politics,” Slavic Review 61 (1) (2002): 30–43. Also see Amir Weiner, “Nature, Nurture, and Memory in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet Socio-Ethnic Body in the Age of Socialism,” American Historical Review 104: 4 (1999): 1114–1155: 1115–1116, 1123. Indeed, even self-avowedly fascist Russian émigrés in the 1930s and 1940s, who affirmed their solidarity with their German counterparts, did not for the most part embrace their racialist vision as far as Russia was concerned. Susanne Hohler, “Russian Fascism in Exile: A Historical and Phenomenological Perspective on Transnational Fascism,” Fascism 2 (2013): 121–140, here 136. 99. To Savel’ev’s insistence that non-Russians could live in Russia only “under the patronage [pokrovitel’stvo] of ethnic Russians,” the Eurasianist Korovin solemnly responded eto da: “I fully agree.” “Evraziiskaia imperiia ili Respublika Rus’?” Also see Shnirel’man, “Rasologiia v deistvii,” 182n. 100. This is noted by the rasologists themselves: Kol’ev, Politicheskaia mifologiia: 279–8n.

Chapter 3

Geopolitical Imagination and Popular Geopolitics between the Eurasian Union and Russkii Mir Irina Kotkina

This chapter analyses the divergence between two prominent geopolitical ideologies in Russia today. The first – Eurasianism – boasts an illustrious pedigree that can be traced back to the classical Russian Eurasianist émigré authors of the early 1920s. The second (a relative newcomer into Russian intellectual life) is the concept of the Russkii Mir or the Russian World, which in spite of the ardent support from the Russian Orthodox Church, did not enjoy widespread recognition until the Russian annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. Both Eurasianism and the Russkii Mir concept are, in many ways, attuned to making sense of Russia’s post-imperial situation: the former appeared as an intellectual response to the collapse of the Russian empire after the Bolshevik Revolution, whereas the latter gained salience during the disintegration of the Soviet empire.1 The main problem dealt with in this chapter is the extent to which these two ideologies can be compatible and mutually supportive. Russkii Mir and Eurasianism cannot be seamlessly connected without incurring a logical and political tension, perhaps mainly on account of the irredentist implications inherent to the Russkii Mir concept, which met with strong opposition by the Kazakh leadership and substantially eroded the efforts attempting Eurasian integration. Further, the religious underpinnings of Novorossiia in the wake of the war in Ukraine or the nationalist discursive appropriation of Crimea (the notion that “Crimea is Russian,” or Putin’s comment describing it as “our Temple Mount and Jerusalem”) undermines the very essence of Eurasianist inclusiveness.2 Conversely, the recently advanced Eurasianist integration (the establishment of EaU on 1 January 2015) has not advanced the projection of Russkii Mir. On the level of popular geopolitical imagination in Russia, the Russkii Mir idea (and its concomitant set of references) is more widespread and deeply 59

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entrenched than Eurasian integration through the EEU. Judging from the debates on the blogosphere, the conflict in Ukraine is emotionally tangible and easy to visualize, whereas the EEU belongs to the sphere of high politics, providing only infertile ground for popular imagination. In stark contrast, Eurasianism has a firm grasp on that same geopolitical imagination, offering mental frames which allow an understanding of Russia as a multinational heterogeneous empire, and which portray Russia as the embodiment of the Eurasian heartland in eternal struggle with a Western (decadent) “maritime” civilization. As this chapter shows, these two ideologies lean upon the same geopolitical ways of thinking; they both represent a similar intellectual endeavour – however successful – to comprehend the disintegration of empires. Their intellectual vigour hinges on the effort to overcome the Westphalian notion of an international system of sovereign states, stretching the reach of Russia beyond its borders in an attempt to conceptually reintegrate the lost imperial borderlands. Eurasianism, as originally formulated by Prince Nikolai Trubetskoi and George Vernadskii, involved a project for the national homogenization of the post-imperial landmasses and peoples on the principle of hyphenated or nested identities: for instance, Russian-Eurasian, or Kazakh-Eurasian, or, as Igor Torbakov explains in his analysis of Vernadskii’s thought, a Ukrainian-Russian-Eurasian entity, where “Eurasian” serves as a common denominator.3 In an analogous way, the Russkii Mir principle extends Russian nationalism into the political field of non-Russian peoples, inscribing itself as the second part of the hyphenated nationality: Latvian-Russian, BelarusRussian and the like. Thus, both Eurasianism and the Russkii Mir idea fight on two fronts at the same time: against the nation state and against the empire state. As a result, such juxtapositions create ambiguities and internal ideological tensions, which have not been overcome in Eurasianism and which seem to be far from resolution in the Russkii Mir concept. In any case, the binary formed by the unstable relation between Eurasian ideas and the notion of Russkii Mir relates directly to the salient political role of the Eurasian tradition, as well as the Russian state’s relative ability (and willingness) to set a final, official interpretation to its historical and international identity. Over the last years, attempts have been made to regain the sense of historical time and to ideologically embed the current Russian regime into a “big picture” of “universally important destiny.” Russia’s search for cultural and spiritual authenticity is imprinted in the new “Fundamentals of State Cultural Policy” [Osnovy Gosudarstvennoi Kul’turnoi Politiki] (accepted 24 December 2014), which stress the dominance of Russian culture and “Russian values” over those of all peoples inhabiting the territory of the state.4 It is obvious from this document that Russia is searching for a new ideology that can show a universal appeal and act as a uniting force. Nevertheless, there is no clear sense as to which ideological line might become the official one,



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because except for some very general nationalist statements and the vague glorification of a friendship of peoples and a “Russian cultural code,” the new “Fundamentals of Cultural Policy” does not actually contain any coherent ideological programme. It could be that such a programme is still in the making. Another possibility, however, is that the Kremlin prefers to avoid clear ideological formulations, thus remaining above the fray and keeping its distance from all radical stances. An important sign of this is that Eurasianism and the Russkii Mir ideologies appear as distinct on an official level, but when they are deployed at the level of popular debate and commentary, they become blurred. The Kremlin’s apparent reluctance to fix “correct” interpretations thus results in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, it keeps an ambiguous distance from any specific ideological take, but on the other, it gives up exerting a direct, discursive control on notions which, therefore, take their own momentum as they are debated on the popular sphere. In methodological terms, the following study is based on the research of both online sources and publications by the leading theoreticians of geopolitics, which include among others Aleksandr Dugin, Leonid Ivashov and Sergei Glaz’ev, and the use of websites with official governmental information, such as www.kremlin.ru, along with those of the leading Russian newspapers. The text also concentrates on the online platforms of various representatives of the Eurasianist movement, such as the webpage of the Eurasian Youth Economic Forum, the website of the Belarusian Eurasianist Alexander Dzermant, the blogs of Iuri Kofner and his “Young Eurasia” movement, and the information portal of the Russkii Mir Foundation. Additionally, this chapter focuses closely on information from social media and blogs, taking them as a partial representation of popular opinion and showing how they refract and adopt official (formal) geopolitical formulations. The chronological frame of the sources under investigation stretches from the early 2000s until 2015, but the most important part of the materials belongs to 2012–2015. The close focus of this piece is the change in public opinion before and after the Ukrainian conflict, and its impact on the ideas about the Russkii Mir and Eurasian Union, but the more general aim is to highlight the importance of Eurasian tropes in contemporary Russian debates about ideology and politics, particularly in dynamic contrast to the discussions on Russkii Mir. TWO BIG IDEAS IN PUTIN’S FIRST PRESIDENCY There exist two seemingly contradictory and incompatible projects within the Russian sphere of ideas, each of which proposes a different direction for Russian ideological development. The first such project could be loosely

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defined as neo-Eurasianism (or Putinist Eurasianism), which for a time appeared to be the most probable candidate for the role of the new statesponsored ideology. What this Putinist version of neo-Eurasianism represented can be gleaned from the president’s programmatic article in the October 2011 issue of Izvestiia. In that text, Putin provided the rationale for a deepening of Eurasian integration, which soon thereafter (1 January 2012) passed through the stage of the “Single Economic Space” involving Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan and which would culminate with the creation of the EEU on 1 January 2015. Putin’s views can be condensed into three statements: first, the EEU would act as a bridge between the European Union and the growing EastAsian economies; second, the EEU would use cultural and structural resources of integration inherited from the Soviet Union; third, the EEU should not be opposed to the European Union, by contrast, as members of the EEU, countries could negotiate with the European Union on better terms.5 The single most ideologically important speech made by Putin on this line, however, was on September 19th, 2013, during a session at the Valdai Discussion Club in which he linked history, ideology and the making of the EEU with his vision of how the world order of the twenty-first century was to be shaped.6 At Valdai the three points of his Izvestia article boiled down to two principles: first, the historical and, second, the geographical unity of the post-Soviet space. At Valdai, Putin argued that the EEU would become a new geopolitical centre in Eurasia, raising its members from the backwater periphery of world processes to the role of strategic leaders. At the same time, the EEU would symbolically reconnect post-Soviet history with the region’s Soviet and pre-revolutionary past, mending the torn fabric of Russian history. As the following lines indicate, the implied idea of cultural authenticity was of the highest political value. What Russia is experiencing today is not only the objective pressure of globalization on its national identity, but also the effects of the national disasters of the twentieth century. We have twice experienced the collapse of our statehood. The result was a devastating blow to the cultural and spiritual code of the nation, we faced the break of traditions and rupture of history, and also the demoralization of society with a deficit of mutual trust and responsibility. These are the roots of many pressing issues that we face today.7

Not only Putin, but other important figures in the Russian government actively came out in favour of his idea of Eurasian integration. For example, Vladimir Medinskii, Russia’s minister of culture, warmly supported Putin’s programme calling it the major “macro-task” of Russia and hailing it as a key doctrine of Russian inner and foreign policy. In September 2012, the right-wing political analysts backed by the Kremlin’s money and “organizational resources” established the so-called Izborskii Club. Medinskii was the



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honorary representative of the Russian government who welcomed the new conservative think tank, the main task of which was to provide conceptual support for the EEU. In his interview in February 2012, Medinskii claimed that the creation of a Eurasian Union could prove as important for the future several generations of Russian people as was the creation of communism in the Soviet Union. Neatly reflecting on the “time of presentism,” Medinskii scathingly remarked: In the many years that passed I could not understand why and what for the Russian Federation continues to exist. What is the essence of its existence? … What is the task of our state? Of our power?

He continued to elaborate on the contours of the future teleology: Russia always used to be a country, capable of solving different macroeconomic tasks. Russia was either building the Third Rome, or fighting over the Dardanelles, or uniting all Orthodox believers, or building common Communist happiness, or saving the world from the Antichrist – Napoleon, or the Antichrist – Hitler. It was a task for which people were ready to overcome sufferings. … And it was like this during a thousand years of Russian history. And now we do not know what we are living for. But what our power did in 2011 made me hope that we might have the new macro-task in front of us. Let us not be shy and name this task, which the future Russian president would have to solve. This task is the re-creation of the new great country.8

In contrast to this strand of thought, the second ideological project of the Kremlin, of no less importance than Eurasian integration, is the creation and promotion of the Russkii Mir movement, fundamentally focused on engaging the Russian-speaking diaspora. The first official acknowledgement of the importance of the diaspora was made in 1999, when the federal law “On the State Policy of the Russian Federation in Relation to the Compatriots Abroad” [“O Gosudarsvennoi Politike Rossiiskoi Federatsii v Otnoshenii Sootechestvennikov za Rubezhom”] was issued.9 In 2002, the International Council of Russian Compatriots was created. Simultaneously, the Russkii Mir concept made its first entry into the Russian public debates, sponsored by such intellectuals as Mikhail Gefter, Petr Shchedrovitskii, Sergei Gradirovskii and Boris Mezhuev.10 The Russkii Mir concept evokes an international and transnational community, which is transcendently united by a commitment to Russian language and Russian culture.11 In it, the word “Russian” indicates the historical roots of an inheritor of ancient Rus’, while the word “mir” stands simultaneously for “the whole world,” “all people,” and homonymically, “peace,” so that the formula “Russkii Mir,” an evident play on words, is partly predicated on the implication that a Russian world makes

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for a peaceful world. The notion of the Russkii Mir, then, is invested with a civilizational meaning, signifying a spiritual and sociocultural entity. This entity comprises about a third of a billion of Russian speakers and all the territories where the former post-Soviet citizens live, as well as a community grounded on a distinctive set of cultural fundamentals. The supporters of the idea imply that almost every twentieth person on the planet has spiritual and mental ties with Russia and cares about its fate.12 Within the official discourse, the Russkii Mir concept was introduced in 2007, when the state-sponsored Russkii Mir Foundation, headed by Viacheslav Nikonov, was launched. For President Putin, Russkii Mir denoted first and foremost the world of Russophonia.13 In 2006 he gave a speech in the Derzhavin House in St Petersburg, which was dedicated to the future “Year of the Russian Language” (2007). As he claimed then: “The Russkii Mir can and must unite all those who cherish the Russian language and Russian culture, no matter where they live, in Russia or abroad. Use this phrase – Russkii Mir – as often as possible.”14 President Dmitrii Medvedev similarly established the “Russian Language Day” in 2011, which from then on was celebrated every year on June 6, dedicating this holiday to “the birthday of the great Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literary language Alexander Pushkin.”15 The Russian government also proclaimed 2013 the “Year of the 1150th Anniversary of Slavic Literature” in Russia, marking out the work of St Method and St Cyril, founders of the Cyrillic alphabet. Additionally, the year 2014 was proclaimed the “Year of Culture” in Russia, while 2015 was the “Year of Literature.” The initial Russkii Mir project was shaped as a network structure, consisting of the Russian mainland and the Russian-speaking diaspora abroad. Importantly, according to Shchedrovitskii’s views, the Russian diaspora was even more important than Russians within Russia themselves, providing the access to funds (i.e. in terms of remitting more money) and technology (having broader access to the social media and Internet than within the Russian mainland).16 The Russkii Mir Foundation has operating centres (the socalled “Russian Centres”) in 45 countries.17 Russkii Mir magazine comes out in print, and an Internet portal is in operation, gathering information about Russian organizations in the world in order to promote their interaction and communication with a remote possibility of learning the Russian language. Radio and TV stations are also functioning, and there are plans for global online broadcasting. There are also governmental grants, distributed on a yearly basis, for the individuals and organizations that promote and teach the Russian language abroad. At the beginning of 2010, the International Council of Russian Compatriots united 140 organizations from 53 countries in the world. The main purpose of the council was to support the Russian diaspora and spread the Russian language abroad by promoting the unification and coordination of activities of public associations of compatriots.18



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By 2006, although Russia was chairing and hosting the summit of the Group of Eight (G8), it had begun developing a pronounced hostility towards the West. While the relationship between Russia and the West had been volatile during the 2000s, a general anti-Western shift was to become undeniable in the second half of the decade. According to Mark Galeotti, there has always existed the struggle with the West in people’s mind. This is “the frontline of the struggle for not just Russia’s place in the world but Russia’s distinctive culture and identity.”19 The Russkii Mir idea had gained wider currency in public discourses, but at the same time, its meaning had seen an important shift. The Russian “compatriots living abroad” became increasingly associated with the “Russian quinta columna,” meaning the Russian nationals living abroad who were opposed to the Putinist regime and who were financed by certain clandestine conspiracy organizations working for the destruction of the contemporary Russian state.20 At the same time, the Russkii Mir became increasingly connected with the idea of territorial and national irredentism.21 This dynamic gained unexpected momentum after the Maidan Crisis and the Crimean conflict between the end of 2013 and the summer of 2014 which had spurred, among others, the Novorossiia concept.22 The newly proclaimed independent Donetsk and Luhansk Republics became an essential part of the success of the Russkii Mir. Generally, the Ukrainian crisis led to a substantial reinterpretation of the Russkii Mir as a geopolitical concept and as a constellation of popular representations. From the weak and fragmented diaspora, as it was seen in the previous years, Russkii Mir acquired a spiritual, ideological and geographical centre both officially and popularly. Now it began to be associated with Eastern Ukraine, dubbed Novorossiia in Putin’s famous “direct line” TV programme on 17 April 2014.23 For pro-Kremlin activists Novorossiia became an outpost of the Russkii Mir on the Western border of Russia. It not only symbolized the Russkii Mir, but also proved its importance and political presence. Viacheslav Nikonov, the chairman of the Russkii Mir Foundation, claimed that although the ‘“Novorossian identity’ is still weak today,” it still represented an important opposition to the “Ukrainian mono-nationality concept, implemented by the anti-Russian leadership of Ukraine.”24 For the political establishment, Russkii Mir continues to signify the Russian-speaking diaspora, even though in the everyday usage of this concept, it has long become a synonym for expansionism and post-Soviet irredentism. Thus, in November 2015, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s minister of foreign affairs since 2004, spoke about the consolidation of the Russkii Mir. He insisted that the compatriot repatriation programme, that is, of the ethnic Russians from abroad, primarily from the post-Soviet countries, was now stronger than in the previous years. He also called the Ukrainians “compatriots,” which meant that Kremlin still held imperialist ambitions in considering the whole of Ukraine to be a part of the Russkii Mir. Further, Lavrov connected the idea of the Russian-speaking diaspora with the situation in Ukraine, arguing that

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1.2 million Ukrainian refugees in Russia constituted the largest share (ca. 50 per cent) of all returned compatriots.25 As can be seen from the discussion so far, both projects, the Russkii Mir and the Eurasian Union, owe much to one of the key assumptions in classical geopolitics – the antagonism between maritime and continental powers. To give a recent illustration of this, a new textbook on Russian politics once more highlights the exceptional civilizational mission of Russia, not only as the defender of the territory of the whole Russkii Mir, but also as the only country which is able to oppose its values and outlook to the “rotten” and “liquid” ideology of the West.26 As opposed to the “liquid” maritime civilization, which has the “ability to easily move, to leak and to flood the land,” Russkii Mir, qua civilization, is considered “solid.” As the volume also states, “Instead of primitive acquisition of territory, what now it is needed is to knock out the desire to set their own rules out from the enemy’s head.” The implication here is that “Atlanticist” civilization, peaceful at a first sight, in fact seeks to sneak everywhere like water, setting its own rules. The Russkii Mir is considered the only civilization that can oppose this new tendency of establishing a new hegemony in the world.27 In the official sources the unifying potential of Russkii Mir is highlighted only at the level of the Russian language; but, by contrast, in popular sources such as, for example, Russian Wikipedia, the geopolitical discourse surrounding Russkii Mir is dense and far-reaching. Russian Wikipedia argues that each human community has its own separate territory.28 By implication, this suggests that Russkii Mir, which currently exists only as a concept, must eventually grow to acquire its appropriate geopolitical form, which would correspond to the “civilizational choice” of people distributed along the territories of today’s Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and beyond. This entry continues by claiming that Russkii Mir as a geopolitical entity is linked not only with “Holy Russia,” an idea recently propagated by Patriarch Kirill,29 but also with the former Russian empire. Wikipedia thus claims that Russkii Mir, although rooted in the distant past, must eventually acquire a geopolitical form.30 As we can tease out from this statement, the vision of the Russkii Mir on the popular Internet encyclopaedia is perfectly compatible with a maximalist programme of Eurasian integration, which also implies the reassembling of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union on a new ideational basis framed by Putinist neo-Eurasianism. RUSSO-CENTRISM AS A UNIFYING FEATURE The chief unifying feature of both the ideological projects discussed here is their considerable Russo-centrism. It is not just a common “cultural code,”



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it is the “Russian cultural code,” and it is not just “common high spiritual values,” but “Russian high spiritual values,” which are appealed to. Russia is clearly seen by Putin not only as the centre of the Russkii Mir idea, but also as the centre of the Eurasianist civilization, providing his contemporary and pragmatic form of Eurasianism with a Russian inflection. In his inaugural speech in 2012 Putin lucidly proclaimed: The historical progress of the Russian state and our nation today depend on us. It depends on the progress in building new economy and modern standards of living, on our efforts … to support Russian families, on our persistence in developing the huge Russian space from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean, on our ability to become leaders, and the center of gravity for the whole of Eurasia.31

Russian Orthodox Church officials also supported this vision. As Patriarch Kirill has argued in his speeches: “There is a perfectly clear physical centre for the spiritual community of the Russkii Mir, which is the contemporary Russian Federation. ... It becomes the centre of a huge civilization far beyond geographical borders of the country.”32 Both projects suggest that Russia clearly dominates both in the Russkii Mir and in Eurasian Union, because Russia already has its natural allies and spheres of influence.33 Both projects imply that Russia has to ensnarl different parts of the world into its orbit of influence. The Russkii Mir is centred on the popular representation of Russia as a Western country by and large, even if it has its important specificities, whereas the Eurasian project firmly embeds Russia within Asia. It is important to stress that Putin does not juxtapose the Eurasian Union and the European Union; instead, he maintains that the Eurasian integration is complimentary to European integration.34 This nonantagonistic vision of the Eurasian Union opens a window to a more inclusive interpretation of the Russkii Mir as well: if the EEU and the European Union are compatible, it is definitely so with the EEU and the Russkii Mir. Another dimension of these two integrationist projects is that Russia is considered as a “civilization” of its own, which does not fully enter into either Europe or Asia. The civilizational approach and the language of civilizations are broadly used in the documents of both projects.35 Notwithstanding the fact that both projects are based on highly abstract rhetoric and the glorification of spirituality, they have in fact a very clear utilitarian application. Through these projects, Russia takes on the role of an alternative centre of the world system. Despite this practical concern, and the geopolitical logic and the civilizational approach common in both projects, Eurasianism and the Russkii Mir have different intellectual origins. This precludes them from being seamlessly combined in the ideological domain. Russia entered into the EEU

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(as of 1 January 2015) on an equal basis with other countries while upholding the superiority of the Russian language and nation within the Russkii Mir concept. Nothing in Putin’s speeches upholds the EEU as vehicle for Russkii Mir. Unlike the Russkii Mir, the EEU is clearly not a predominantly cultural or linguistic initiative. Nevertheless, in the popular discourse existing in the Russian blogosphere, the Eurasian Union and the Russkii Mir are combined into a single ideological narrative. Significantly enough, the websites that provide a platform for this discussion have an image of serious international academic institutions or governmentally sponsored think tanks (though they are not). Clearly, bloggers who initiate this discussion (on sites existing not only in Russia, but also over the whole post-Soviet space) aspire for some leverage in the political field, so they feign proximity to the Kremlin in order to make their statements seemingly weightier.36 Central authorities, however, try to distance themselves from these discussions and bloggers. They do not acknowledge their existence on the official websites and do not enter into discussions, probably fearing that Web 2.0 discussions are charged with dissident potential. We can assume that bloggers try to find a clear-cut ideological configuration, in which notions of the Eurasian Union and the Russkii Mir are compatible, whereas government officials try to intentionally distance themselves from clearly formulated ideological statements, given that any clarification would constrain them and make it necessary to follow a particular path. Both official and unofficial web publications try to knock together the Russkii Mir and Eurasian integration by arguing that Eurasianism is a Russian ideology and Eurasianist ideas present a solid basis for a Russian national idea. The distinction is that officially sponsored resources do not provide extreme political statements. For example, a project called “The Russkii Mir of Eurasia” appeared on this Internet.37 Characteristically, the domain extension of this web page was “su,” which refers to the Soviet Union. The owners of the web resource, who act under the title of Dugin’s International Eurasian Movement, include, among others, many important official figures such as Alexander Torshev (vice-speaker of the Federation Council of the Federal Committee of the Russian Federation) or Aslambek Aslakhanov (assistant of the president). This project was implemented by S. Krivosheev, the chair of the analytical department of the International Eurasian Movement, with the financial support of the state for non-governmental and non-profit organizations.38 The platform creators obviously wanted to highlight the international dimension of the project going beyond the Russian borders and pointing at the common Soviet legacy. The main goal of the project is the creation of a unified information platform dedicated to the integration processes on the post-Soviet space, as well as the activities of the Russian-speaking diaspora outside Russia. As we can see, the creators of the web page did not find any



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tension between these projects, representing them as two sides of the same integrationist process. A very different approach could be seen on unofficial Internet resources, which are in fact also propagandistic and pro-Kremlin. The ideas expressed on such Internet resources are sometimes bold and revolutionary. For example, the Belarusian website Cytadel was created in order to support a host of international initiatives by the Kremlin but contained, at the same time, many appeals for political activism.39 In his article “Russkii Mir and Eurasianism – Why There Are No Contradictions between These Two Projects,” Alexander Dzermant, one of the site’s creators, spoke about Belarus’s supposed “shockabsorbing” role in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. For him, there exists a need to support the compatibility of the two projects. By tilting his article the way he did, he raised the question of the extent to which Eurasianism and the Russkii Mir might be seen as compatible and non-contradictory, which, though seemingly essential for this writer, was a question he left without a clear, affirmative answer. Not questioning the dominant role of Russia and its culture in Eurasian and Russkii Mir projects, Dzermant insisted on a very important role of other territories in order to make both projects sustainable after the Maidan protests in the winter of 2013–2014. For that reason, Dzermant formulated a number of “imperatives of survival,” which included the “creation of a common military-political bloc” with a “high degree of economic self-sufficiency”; a “new industrialization”; the construction of a “fair social and political model, minimizing the impact of the clan-oligarchic structures on the politics and economics”; “preventive and remedial policy regarding manifestations of nationalism”; an end to the war in Ukraine; and finally, a “balanced demographic and migration policy as a way to strengthen the ethno-cultural core of the Russkii Mir and the organization of its creative work in the Caucasus and Middle Asia.”40 It might be worth pointing out that the website Cytadel, where attempts at combining Putinist Eurasianism and the idea of the Russkii Mir have found a platform, was created by a young blogger and was intended for the support and discussion of contemporary integration processes by the pro-Russian youth. A more direct link can be seen in the Russian government’s funding of the Eurasian Youth Economic Forum, which takes place within the Ural State Economic University. This forum takes place on a yearly basis, and it has its own Internet platform.41 Mikhail Fedorov, the dean of the Ural State Economic University, opened this forum with an article titled “Eurasianism Is a Basis for the Russian National Idea,”42 though the piece’s thrust is mainly “people’s diplomacy” or “public diplomacy” implemented within the framework of the Eurasian project as a special manifestation of the will and aspirations of all peoples for a “happy world order.”43 Fedorov intentionally stresses that the forum constitutes an “apolitical and non-religious, scientific

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and educational intellectual movement, seeking to involve young people in the field of creativity, innovation, economics, computer science, cultural studies and political science.”44 So for this ideological platform Eurasianism and the Russkii Mir are, once again, natural bedfellows, without essential logical or political contradictions. And once again, what comes to the fore is an apparent unwillingness to establish specific “correct” interpretations and understandings of either Russkii Mir or Eurasianist invocations which might force the Russian state ideologically to commit to them. The state seems to avoid fixing ideological meanings; while this ambiguity might be advantageous at times, it has the strategic limitation of ideologically disorienting the regime’s own supporters, excluding writers, who ideologically express loyalty to the state by trying to make sense of different, sometimes contradictory, political messages. However, by doing so they unwillingly expose the internal structure of domination. Both the Russkii Mir and Eurasian Union projects were designed and staged as ideological instruments of the Kremlin, that is, as attractive, universally applicable concepts. Both represented the idea that Russia was striving for a more just world order in which external hegemony has no place. Eurasianism, for example, stands for the unrestrained authentic development of all cultures within Eurasia. The Russkii Mir, in its initial formulation, also implied a networked and decentred community of Russian speakers. But as this text shows, on the grassroots level of ideological creativity, while trying to accommodate both logically incommensurable projects, bloggers can do so only by rereading the hegemonic Russia-central nature of both projects. THE RUSSKII MIR AND THE EEU AFTER NOVOROSSIIA (UKRAINIAN CRISIS) The reappearance of the Russkii Mir overshadowed the establishment of the EEU in the popular imagination and, at the official level, in the discourses of public intellectuals. Putinist Eurasianism, which has claimed the role of Russia’s official (mainstream) geopolitical ideology, is now trying to appropriate this concept and to play with this imaginary. This conceptual seizure is happening on two levels: theoretical and popular. Specifically, Eurasianism provides a civilizational platform for interpreting the Russkii Mir. Many important figures thinking within a geopolitical paradigm provide an interpretation of the Russkii Mir which underlines its value as an autonomous civilization in Eurasianist terms. Aleksandr Dugin, for instance, closely observed the Ukrainian events and published a book titled Ukraine: Moia Voina. Geopoliticheskii Dnevnik (Ukraine: My War. Geopolitical Diary) (2015), where he assessed the “Russian spring” as an “epoch making event” (epokhal’noe sobytie) in



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Russia’s return to historical significance and authenticity (or the regaining of Russia’s true self, which for him is connected to the Russkii Mir concept).45 Before these events, according to Dugin, Russia lacked its own national identity, but after Crimea, “Russia completely returned on to the world stage. It is ready to fully participate in the Great War of Continents.”46 For Dugin, in this respect, Novorossiia is the core of Russia’s renaissance and since Russia possesses the “Eurasian heartland,” the core of Eurasian renaissance, “Putin clearly proved that the unification of Crimea with Russia is irrevocable and that the South-West of Ukraine is ‘Novorossia,’ which belongs to the Russkii Mir, Russian Civilization.”47 For Dugin it was easy to comprehend the Ukrainian crisis within the plotline of his central geopolitical statement about the irreconcilable antagonism between the Eurasian/Continental and the “Atlanticist”/maritime civilizations. According to this interpretation, the crisis in Ukraine was framed as the result of the “Atlanticists’” attack on the Eurasian heartland within the concept of the so-called “Anaconda” strategy. As he writes: DNR [Donetsk People’s Republic] and LNR [Luhansk People’s Republic] started not only the process of their return into Russia, but the process of building a Great Russia, one which does not exist in the present and which is resurrecting now. … Great Russia is the result of the unification of two geopolitical entities – the Russian Federation (the Eurasianist heartland) and “Novorossia.” … This is not just an annexation into the Russian Federation … but the construction of the new Russkii Mir. This is the signal for the Russian Awakening – not based in Moscow, but in their own powers.48

This Eurasianist conceptualization provided the chief explanation and strategy for those who went along with the “Crimea is ours” vision, since the annexation of the Crimean peninsula has been interpreted as a rescue from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Dugin also praised the creation of the DNR and Novorossiia as the creations of a grassroots-organic movement, which made obvious that the ideas of the Russkii Mir and the Eurasianist civilization are innate to a majority of the inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine. [The] DNR now is not just Russia, it is more than Russia. This is New Russia. Russian people here, without regard for anybody else, took their destiny in their own hands. … Here people are not surrounded by the sixth column, by oligarchs, by political technologists, by professional politicians, by masks, they are natural, the way they are.49

Dugin’s last book shows, perhaps better than any other example, his affinity to the Russkii Mir and Novorossiia, and critically, his reluctance to displaying and theorizing the ideological differences between this rhetoric and his dearest brainchild – Eurasianism.

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Likewise, much of the Novorossiia discourses have been focused on the idea of opposing Ukraine as a vehicle of US interests – one of the links in the above-mentioned “Anaconda” strategy. Among the most prolific theorists of this interpretation is the head of the so-called Academy for Geopolitical Problems Lieutenant General Leonid Ivashov. Ivashov has denounced the United States’s aggressive politics towards the entire Russkii Mir, its desire to dictate its will upon all the European countries and its ultimate aim of disempowering the Russian and Ukrainian peoples (the most active members of the Russkii Mir). Ivashov formulates his conclusions using the logic and lexicon of Eurasianists. As he puts it: The natural process of globalization today manifests itself in the fierce struggle for global governance of planetary processes, for the formation of the new world order, and the way of life of the humanity in the twenty-first century. The leading players on this front are Western civilization, the resurgent civilization of the East (including the emerging Latin American civilizational matrix), and the transnational community of international finances. The West and the “transnationals” are usually united together against the East, but they compete with each other. Western civilization considers all the countries of the world as their hunting ground. The East is far from uniform and has no apparent ideological and religious leader. Putin will answer the question of whether Russia is able to be a geopolitical centre of the continental civilization and Eurasia, and whether he personally can lead an anti-Western coalition towards the creation of a more just and more secure, new world order.50

Likewise, for a part of the Russian political elite, Eurasianism and the Russkii Mir concept are perfectly compatible, just as they are compatible, for example, for Sergei Glaz’ev (economist, Duma deputy and Izborsk Club member). For Glaz’ev, the Eurasian Union and the Russkii Mir are like a matryoshka (Russian doll): the Russkii Mir is the core of the Eurasian Union, and by extension, a Western attack on the Russkii Mir in Ukraine can be taken as a strategy to attack the Eurasian Union. Glaz’ev elaborates: “If Russia is not going to formulate its own platform for an integration in the framework of ‘Great Eurasia,’ then tectonic Transatlantic and Trans-Pacific platforms will crush us.”51 The Russkii Mir is also involved in his argument as a “heartland” of what he calls “Great Eurasia”: The war in Ukraine, according to the Americans, would lead to the dissolution and destruction of the whole Russkii Mir. After the actual occupation of Ukraine, they plan to destroy Russia. Moreover, it is not accidental that Ukraine was selected as the main battering ram in this case. The war in Ukraine provides an opportunity to destroy Russia and undermine the process of Eurasian integration. The reason is that Russia cannot fight with Ukraine using weapons of mass destruction. For Russia that would be the same as fighting against herself.52



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The annexation/reunification of Crimea generated yet another interpretation of Eurasianism after the Ukrainian crisis. In his writings, the leader of the “Young Eurasia” (Molodaia Evraziia) movement Iurii Kofner portrays Crimea as the metonymy of Eurasianist integration, because of the mixture of religions, ethnic communities and cultures on the peninsula: From the ideological and cultural-historical point of view Crimea, is Eurasia in miniature, where Slavs, Turks and other peoples and religions should cohabit peacefully together. Crimea like Tatarstan, could be an example and set a new world model for the whole Eurasian space.53

Importantly this “Eurasian integration” is seen as a re-enactment of Russia’s cultural and political dominance; the model, which is dear to all Eurasianists and which is to be extended to the whole of the Eurasian continent. As Kofner writes: Russkii Mir is a part of Eurasian civilization, they mate. Personally, I think that we have to operate with the concept of “Eurasian civilization,” which includes four principles: the Russian language; the priority of spiritual over material values; social justice and democracy.54

A number of Eurasianist ideologists, including Iurii Kofner, attempted to extend the above-mentioned model to the Novorossiia concept, which refers back to the historical concept of Novorossiia established by Catherine the Great and her court in the late eighteenth century, and which implied the extension of the Russian empire into the Black Sea region with its polyphony of cultures and religions. Together with another representative of the “Young Eurasia” movement, Igor Kachanov, Kofner wrote an online article in which the authors prove that Novorossiia is not just a region, but a relatively new nation, different from Ukraine, established by Catherine the Great: “Novorossia” – is new nation, which is just being born and located in the territories of Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Kirovograd region, and possibly Transnistria. The “Novorossia” nation is composed of representatives of different ethnic groups: Russian, Ukrainians, Jews, Moldovans, Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians and Cossacks. This new nation began to be formed relatively recently – in the XVIII century, after the Russian empire established order in these lands and began to settle in and explore them. In 1764, by decree of Empress Catherine II, “Novorossia” province was formed.55

Novorossiia and Crimea established another powerful connection with Eurasianism, namely the legacy of the Golden Horde (Zolotaia Orda),

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specifically the powerful Crimean Khanate, which historically presented itself as a rival to Moscow Rus. In this context, taking both territories into Russia would symbolically imply the reconnection with the Golden Horde as the Eurasian power par excellence.56 On the other hand, in some radical Orthodox web platforms the struggle for Novorossiia is perceived as the struggle for real Orthodoxy, and “real” religious values of the Russkii Mir, which is depicted as the “current continuation of Kulikovo battle” or compared to the Sevastopol defence during the Second World War.57 CONCLUSION Such ideas and visions as “Crimea is ours,” “the Russian Spring,” and Novorossiia made a spectacular entry into all the three levels of geopolitical knowledge: practical, formal and popular geopolitics (Tuathail, 2000).58 All these concepts are tightly connected both with the idea of the Russkii Mir and with Eurasianism, because they focus on the representation of Russia as an autonomous civilization leading a struggle against a “maritime” or “Atlanticist” (Western) civilization. When these concepts “descend” to the popular level of geopolitical knowledge, they begin to share common geopolitical emotional regimes, visions and practices. This complementarity means that the doctrinal production of these ideologies is to a great extent synchronized. And in turn, this synchronicity implies an ideological and structural proximity of the producers of the geopolitical knowledge to each other. In other words, the same constellation of ideological tropes and references supplies the ruling elites with the ideas of the Russkii Mir and Eurasianism (the Izborskii Club, the circle of neo-conservatives and so on). A second implication follows from all this, namely, that such ideological proximity could be described in terms of compatible ideological building blocks: the idea of great power, a vision of Russia on a continental scale, the notion of the civilizational distinctiveness of Russia, the resistance to the normative hegemony of the West and so on. Thus, when we consider the debates on Eurasianism and the Russkii Mir on a popular level, all the sophisticated ideological constructions melt down into the above-mentioned conceptual fundamentals, exposing Russia’s intellectual and structural vulnerabilities – especially the demand for recognition as a great power, resentment over territorial contraction after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the search for the true authentic self and its fear of losing control over its own destiny. NOTES 1. An interesting parallelism is to be noted: Eurasianism was first formulated around four years after the Bolshevik Revolution, while roughly the same amount of time elapsed between the end of the Soviet Union and the first writings by



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Peter Shchedrovitskii and Sergei Gradirovskii articulating the idea of the Russkii Mir in 1995–1996. 2. See http://newsland.com/news/detail/id/1467556/, accessed 24.11.2015. 3. Torbakov, Igor, “Between Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia: Georgii Vernadskii’s Search for Identity,” in Empire De\Centered, Sanna Turoma, Maxim Waldstein, eds., Farnham: Ashgate, 2013, pp. 61–85. 4. “Ob Utverzhdenii Osnov Gosudarstvennoi Kul’turnoi Politiki,” Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, 24 December 2014, No. 808, http://base.garant. ru/70828330/#friends#ixzz4C2fUCVpa, accessed 16.06.2016. 5. Putin, Vladimir, “Novyi integratsionnyi proekt dlia Evrazii – budushchee, kotoroe rozhdaetsia segodnia,” Izvestiia, 3 Oct. 2011, http://izvestia.ru/news/502761, accessed 21.10.2015. 6. “Vystuplenie Vladimira Putina na Zasedanii Kluba ‘Valdai,’” Rossiskaia Gazeta, 19.09.2013, https://rg.ru/2013/09/19/stenogramma-site.html, accessed 16.09.2016. 7. Ibid. 8. Vladimir Medinskii on Eurasian Union (Ria-Novosti Press Conference), February 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ts1vKYZ1EQ, accessed 21.10.2015. 9. “O Gosudarsvennoi Politike Rossiiskoi Federatsii v Otnoshenii Sootechestvennikov za Rubezhom,” Federal’nyi Zakon 24.05.1999, No. 99-ФЗ (ed. 23.07.2013), http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_23178/, accessed 16.06.2016. 10. Laruelle, Marlene “The ‘Russkii Mir’: Russia’s Soft Power and Geopolitical Imagination,” http://globalinterests.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FINAL-CGI_ Russian-World_Marlene-Laruelle.pdf, accessed 21.10.2015. 11. Tishkov, Valerii, “Russkii Mir: Smysly i Strategii,” Moskovskii Dom Nacional’nostei, http://www.mdn.ru/cntnt/blocksleft/menu_left/nacionalny/publikacii2/stati/va_tishkov3.html, accessed 28.11.2014. 12. For the official definition of the Russkii Mir and its role, see the official website of the Russkii Mir Foundation http://www.russkiymir.ru/fund/, accessed 16.06.2006. 13. On the ideology of Russkii Mir, see, for example, Putin, Vladimir, “Vystuplenie Presidenta Rossii na Pervom Kongresse Rossiiskikh Sootechestvennikov,” VKSRS, 11 October 2001, http://vksrs.com/publications/vystuplenie-prezidentarossii-vladimira-/, accessed 16.06.2016; Gorham, Michael, “Virtual Rusophonia: Language policy as ‘soft power’ in the new media age,” Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media, 2011, Vol. 5, pp. 23–48; on the ideology of Russkii Mir, see, for example, Petrov, S., “Sootechestvenniki kak modernizatsionnyi resurs,” Baltiiskii mir, 2011, Vol. 2, pp. 18–19; Sycheva, Lidia, “Russkii iazyk, russkaia kul’tura, russkii mir,” RF Segodnia, 17 March 2007, http:// russia-today.ru/old/archive/2007/no_14/14_look.htm, accessed 16.06.2016; Zatulin, K., Rossiiskaia diaspora kak faktor ukrepleniia natsional’nykh interesov Rossii na postsovetskom prostranstve. Moscow: In-t stran SNG, 2011. 14. “V Komplekse ‘Dom Derzhavina’ Proshla Vstrecha Vladimira Putina s Predstaviteliami Rossiiskoi Intelligentsii,” Prezident Rossii, 29 November 2006, http:// www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/36733, accessed 14.01.2016. 15. “Medvedev Uchredil Den’ Russkogo Iazyka,” Aktual’nye Kommentarii, 6 June 2011, http://actualcomment.ru/medvedev_uchredil_den_russkogo_yazyka. html, accessed 14.01.2016.

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16. Shchedrovitskii, Petr, Dumat’ – eto professia, Moscow: Zhurnal Ekspert, 2000, p. 89. 17. See, for example, the catalogue of the Russian centres posted on the following page http://www.russkiymir.ru/rucenter/catalogue.php, accessed 16.06.2016. 18. See, for example, http://www.russkiymir.ru/ – informational portal of the Russkii Mir Foundation, accessed 14.01.2016. 19. Benyumov, Konstantin, “‘The West and Russia are already at war.’ An interview with NYU’s Mark Galeotti,” Meduza, 13 February 2015, https://meduza.io/en/ feature/2015/02/13/the-west-and-russia-are-already-at-war, accessed 16.06.2016. 20. See, for example, “Chto takoe ‘Piataia kolonna’?” Pravdorub, 8 August 2014, http://pravdoryb.info/chto-takoe-171pyataya-kolonna187-.html, accessed 16.06.2016. 21. Suslov, Mikhail, “The ‘Russian World’ Concept in Online Debate during the Ukrainian Crisis,” in Suslov and Mark Bassin (eds.), Eurasia 2.0: Post-Soviet Geopolitics in the Age of New Media, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016, pp. 295–316. 22. Laruelle, Marlene, “The Three Colors of Novorossiya, or the Russian Nationalist Mythmaking of the Ukrainian Crisis,” Post-Soviet Affairs, 32; 2016, pp. 55–74; Suslov, Mikhail, “‘Novorossiya’ Reloaded: Geopolitical Fandom in Online Debates,” Europe-Asia Studies 69 (2017), forthcoming. 23. “Priamaia Linia s Vladimirom Putinym,” Prezident Rossii, 17 April 2014, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20796, accessed 16.06.2016. 24. Emel’ianenko, Vladimir, “Fakty protiv mifov: proekt ‘Novorossia,’” Fond Podderzhki i Zashchity Prav Sootechestvennikov, Prozhivaiushikh za Rubezhom, 21 July 2014, http://pravfond.ru/?action=view&id=694&module=articles, accessed 17.11.2015. 25. Lavrov, Sergei, “Russkii mir na puti konsolidatsii,” SNR24, 3 November 2015, http://snr24.com/obschie-novosti/12447-sergey-lavrov-russkiy-mir-na-puti-konsolidacii.html, accessed 17.11.2015. 26. Sokolova, R., Shevchenko V. and Spiridonova, V., Sovremennye Problemy Rossiiskogo Gosudarstva. Filosofskie Ocherki. Progress-Traditsia: Moscow, 2015, pp. 18–21. 27. Ibid. 28. “Russkii mir,” Wikipedia, https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Русский_мир, accessed 16.06.2016. 29. Suslov, Mikhail, “‘Holy Rus’: The Geopolitical Imagination in the Contemporary Russian Orthodox Church,” Russian Politics and Law 52:3, 2014, pp. 67–86; Suslov, Mikhail, “The Utopia of ‘Holy Russia’ in Today’s Geopolitical Imagination of the Russian Orthodox Church: A Case Study of Patriarch Kirill,” Plural: Journal of the History and Geography 2, no. 1–2, 2014, pp. 81–97. 30. See “Russkii mir,” accessed 14.01.2016. 31. “Inaguratsia prezidenta Vladimira Putina (polnaia versiia),” 1 Kanal, 7 May 2012, http://www.1tv.ru/news/2012/05/07/91670-inauguratsiya_prezidenta_rossii_v_ putina_polnaya_versiya, accessed 16.06.2016. 32. “Kommunike Kruglogo Stola ‘Sootechestvenniki i Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’: Opyt Sorabotnichestva v Latinskoi Amerike” (22–23 Avgusta 2010, BuenosAyres, Argentina), Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’, Oficial’nyi Sait Moskovskogo



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Patriarkhata, 24 August 2010, http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/1256579.html, accessed 14.01.2016. 33. See the debates on Russia’s spheres of influence in Hast, Susanna, Spheres of Influence in International Relations: History, Theory and Politics, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014. 34. See, for example, Putin’s programmatic article in Izvestia, in which he says: “The Eurasian Union will be built on the universal principles of integration as an integral part of greater Europe.” Putin, Vladimir, “Novyi integratsionnyi proekt dlia Evrazii – Budushee, kotoroe rozhdaetsia segodnia,” Izvestia, 3 October 2011, http:// izvestia.ru/news/502761, accessed 16.06.2016. 35. See Scherrer, Jutta, Kulturologie: Rußland auf der Suche nach einer zivilisatorischen Identität, Wallstein: Essen, 2003; Laruelle, Marlene, “The Discipline of Culturology: A New ‘Ready-Made Thought’ for Russia,” Diogenes, vol. 51, no. 4, November 2004, pp. 21–36. 36. See, for example, main site, Tsentr Issledovania i Razvitia Evraziistva, http:// eurasianism.ru/, accessed 16.06.2016; Centr Evraziiskikh Issledovanii, http://iampdamid.ru/index.php/tsentr-evrazijskikh-issledovanij, accessed 16.06.2016; Institut Evraziiskikh Issledovanii, http://ea-studies.ru/, accessed 16.06.2016. 37. “Russkii Mir Evrazii,” http://www.eurasia.su/about/, accessed 16.06.2016. 38. Ibid. 39. “Proekt Cytadel,” http://www.cytadel.org/, accessed 01.04.2016. 40. Dzermant, Aleksei, “Russkii Mir i Evraziiskii Soiuz. Pochemu mezhdu nimi net protivorechii,” 12 September 2014, http://cytadel.org/articles/russkij-mir-i-evrazijskij-soyuz, accessed 14.01.2016. 41. “Eurazia Infom: Edinyi Informacionno-Analiticheskii Tsentr,” http://eurasiainform.md/, accessed 16.06.2016. 42. Fedorov, Mikhail, “Ideia Evraziistva – Osnova Russkoi Nacionalnoi Idei,” Eurasia Inform, 23 May 2013, in http://eurasiainform.md/ideya-evrazijstva-osnovarusskoj-nacionalnoj-idei-mixail-fyodorov.html, accessed 14.01.2016. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Dugin, Aleksandr, Moia Voina, Moscow: Centrpoligraf, 2015, pp. 282–83. 46. Ibid., p. 31. 47. Ibid., p. 209. 48. Ibid., pp. 282–83. 49. Ibid., pp. 264–65. 50. Ivashov, Leonid, “Putin i novaia geopoliticheskaia missia Rossii,” Putin Segodnia, 15 April 2014, http://www.putin-today.ru/archives/2676, accessed 18.11.2015. 51. Glaz’ev, Sergei, Ukrainskaia katastrofa, ot amerikanskoi agressii k mirovoi voine? Moscow: Kinzhnyi Mir, 2015, p. 228. 52. Ibid., p. 271. 53. Guba, Kirill, “Evraziets Iury Kofner: Iugo-Vostok Provozglasit Novorossiiskuiu Respubliku i Voidet v Sostav RF,” Novoross.Info, 20.03.2014, http://www. novoross.info/general/24178-evraziec-yuriy-kofner-yugo-vostok-provozglasit-novorossiyskuyu-respubliku-i-voydet-v-sostav-rf.html, accessed 23.11.2015.

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54. Dremliugin, Alexander, “Jury Kofner: ‘My Evrazia a ne ‘nedoevropa,’” Kont, 9 October 2014, http://cont.ws/post/57173, accessed 22.11.2015. 55. Kachanov, Igor, and Kofner, Jury, “Novorossia: Vchera, Segodnia, Zavtra,” Novosti bez Cenzury, 3 April 2014, http://malorossia.info/events-world/79-novorossia.html, accessed 23.11.2015. 56. See, for example, Spitsyn, Evgenyi, “Istoria Novorossii kak Sostavnaia Chast’ Istorii Rossii,” Russkaia Vesna, 13 August 2014, http://rusvesna.su/recent_opinions/1407956096, accessed 23.11.2015. 57. Admin (Anonym), “Novorossia – Stalingrad dlia Pravoslavia,” Russkaia Sila, 21 July 2014, http://rusila.su/2014/07/21/novorossiya-stalingrad-dlya-pravoslaviya/, accessed 23.11.2015. 58. Ó Tuathail, Gearóid, Critical Geopolitics, London: Taylor & Francis, 2000.

Part II

THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF EURASIANISM

Chapter 4

Eurasian Symphony Geopolitics and Utopia in PostSoviet Alternative History Mikhail Suslov

This chapter discusses the uses of Eurasianism in the alternative history book series Eurasian Symphony, written by Igor’ Alimov (b. 1964) and Viacheslav Rybakov (b. 1954) under the collective pen name Khol’m van Zaichik. The series of seven books published between 2000 and 2005 describes a vast Eurasian power called Ordus’, which in the setting of alternative history was formed in the thirteenth century as a combination of the Golden Horde (Orda, in Russian) and ancient Russia (Rus’, hence – Ordus’). Like the highly successful alternative history project of Anatolii Fomenko, Eurasian Symphony pictures the Russo-Turkish-Mongolian-Chinese union as the real master of Eurasia.1 However, unlike classic and contemporary neo-Eurasianism, the project of Alimov and Rybakov, both being professional and reputed Sinologists, has a distinctive “China bias.” Eurasian Symphony reflects on today’s Russian anxiety mixed with intense interest in relation to China. This ambiguous relation has a long pedigree, beginning in the racist paranoia of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century (“Yellow peril”), which spread throughout the “Western world,” Russia included. Alimov and Rybakov capitalize on this anxiety, suggesting a scandalously opposite vision of a united state whose centre of gravity lies in China. Thus, Eurasian Symphony, in spite its title, is not only an alternative version of Eurasianism, but also to a certain extent a counter-Eurasianist project. The fictitious pivot of history in the world of Eurasian Symphony took place in the 1250s when Khan Sartak, the grandson of Genghis Khan who adopted Christianity, concluded a treaty with Prince Aleksander Nevskii, which stipulated the creation of a united state of Rus’ and the Golden Horde on equal terms. Thus Ordus’ was established. In historical reality Sartak died (he was perhaps poisoned) around the year 1256, and this rapprochement never in fact happened. At the end of the fourteenth century (in the 81

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fictitious universe) China joined Ordus’ as a federative part and soon became the cultural and political centre of the state, by virtue of its advanced civilization. In the fictitious present, Ordus’ includes almost the whole of the Eurasian continent “from the radiant tropics of Indo-China to chilly waters of the Suomi Gulf [Gulf of Finland],”2 and enjoys an international reputation as a prosperous and omnipotent empire, albeit with a tinge of authoritarianism and negligence of Western standards of liberal democracy and human rights. Only Western Europe, Japan and India remain beyond the orbit of this mammoth empire, whose capital is in Khanbalyk (Beijing) and whose major centres are in Aleksandria on the Neva River (St Petersburg) and Karakorum (Kharkhorin, Mongolia). This chapter interprets Eurasian Symphony as both a diagnosis of today’s Russian society and the instrument of its reproduction. As its authors note, the universe of Ordus’ is an intellectual experiment in mastering the forces of globalization and making sense of them; it is an attempt to contemplate a globalized world in which Russia – however this political entity may be called – continues to occupy an honorary, perhaps even the first, place having successfully overcome the problems that beset it in the present day.3 In this sense, analysing Eurasian Symphony resembles a (dis)section of the geopolitical culture of the Putin era, which exposes contemporary dreams, fears, ideological nodal points, emotional tensions and hopes of millions of Russians. This dissection shows us some of the ideational tracks upon which Russian society smoothly glided in the period of Putin’s third presidency: the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas and the confrontation with the West. Viacheslav Rybakov maintains that Eurasian Symphony should not be seen as an idealized world, but rather as a method of attacking the stereotypes and false assumptions on which our society is based.4 This may have been correct for the pivotal time in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the book series was launched, but today Eurasian Symphony reads as a political manifesto, or – to express it in the idiom of the authors – as a pinying, a reigning motto of the decade and a half following the reign of Boris Yeltsin, which condenses in itself the national preoccupations with geopolitics, antagonizing the West, securitization of the national identity, religion and faith, family values, hostility towards Ukraine, rapprochement with China, and others. Indeed, many observers including Rybakov and Alimov themselves recognized that Eurasian Symphony anticipated numerous subsequent developments in Russian politics. Similar to Vladimir Sorokin’s anti-utopian prognostication in Day of the Oprichnik (2006), The Sugar Kremlin (2008) or the recent (2014) futuristic video clip by the punk-rock band Leningrad called “Nikola,”5 Eurasian Symphony astutely grasped these tendencies. In contrast to the sarcastic gloom of liberal intellectuals, however, Rybakov and Alimov produced an



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optimistic fiction – a true utopia6 – which is now being transformed into reality. The beginning of the 2000s is marked by two interrelated intellectual trends: the popularity of neo-Eurasianism on the one hand, and the spread of geopolitics as a worldview and a style of thinking on the other.7 Eurasian Symphony provides a distinctive version of Eurasianism that heavily emphasizes the Chinese component of its imaginary Eurasian empire. Alimov and Rybakov have built their societal ideal on Confucian ethics, privileging family values, statehood, law-abiding behaviour, principles of “culturedness” (kul’turnost’) and education. The authors thereby implicitly reject the national romanticism of neo-Eurasianism with its ideas of a “Conservative Revolution,” national regeneration, Fuehrerprinzip (leader principle) and the Promethean thrust to reject Western culture in toto.8 In terms of audience reception, Eurasian Symphony has consolidated its own fandom, with several active groups on social media. A telling episode occurred during the national census of 2010 when a number of especially ardent fans indicated their nationality in the official questionnaire as “Ordussian.”9 In this spirit, various public intellectuals and even professional historians have approved of the main tenets of the project. As Iskander Ismailov, a noted historian from Kazan’ Federal University, reflected on Eurasian Symphony: Reading these novels, you see that we lost an opportunity to create such a huge Eurasian empire, a state which would have been even bigger and more powerful than Russia. … There would have been neither xenophobia, nor [the offensive labeling of] “persons of Caucasian nationality” [litso kavkazskoi natsional’nosti]. … There would have been no internal conflicts, no separatism, no religious intolerance.10

ALTERNATIVE HISTORY AND ANTI-WESTERNISM The Eurocentric historical scheme as a unidirectional line of progress places Russia on the periphery of the civilized world, where it is fated to perpetual failure in its quest for complete Europeanization. In order to revise this worldview, Khol’m van Zaichik adopts an alternative historical narrative, which creates a proper temporal setting for staging the criticism of Eurocentrism in two ways. First, this historical frame privileges Asian peoples and marginalizes Europe historically, in the same manner that it is marginalized in the Eurasian mind geographically, that is, as a relatively small peninsula on one

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extremity of the huge Eurasian landmass. For example, in the novel Delo nepogashennoi luny (2005) Rybakov and Alimov, for their own purposes, make symbolic use of one of the most important episodes of the twentieth century for Western historical and ideological imagination, namely the story of the Holocaust. In the alternative world, when the fascist European regimes threatened to destroy the Jews, Ordus’ came to their rescue. In a feat of self-negation and altruism, the empire’s Palestinian Muslims granted them a generous strip of land (an analogue of our-world Israel), and the Ordusian government negotiated and sponsored their relocation. The Holocaust thus never happened, at once removing the historical basis of human rights philosophy and consolidating Eurasian space as the locus where the really important things in history took place. This story well corresponds to the Eurasianists’ interpretation of the Jewish question. They claimed that Jews as well as the Russians are essentially Eurasian national groups, which can join together in the struggle against their common deadly adversary: the cosmopolitan, modernist West. Indeed, some Eurasianists in the 1920s had even voiced an idea of creating a state of the Jews in Palestine as a Russian protectorate.11 Second, the alternative historical narrative revisits the linear historical model, offering a “multiple civilizations” approach, and attacks the idea of progress as a “universal,” that is to say narrowly European principle. In this sense, Eurasian Symphony repeats the philosophy of history worked out by classical Eurasianists. In a dialogue between Bogdan, one of two main protagonists, and a Western detective, the latter voices a position profoundly alien to the authors: “There is only one culture, but some [nations] advanced on this track better than others.” To this, Bogdan counters that there are no more or less cultured peoples, only different cultures.12 The authors proudly maintain that Eurasian Symphony is the first “civilizational utopia,”13 which explores how far a non-European civilization could have advanced had there never been Western colonial intrusion. Continuing this thought, Viacheslav Rybakov develops the idea of a never-ending contest between civilizations, comparing it to a car race: “How interesting indeed! ... As if you were driving a powerful racing car, with excitement and mastery, you press for a faster speed, greater power and maneuverability from the unique … mechanism [of your civilization].”14 This kind of philosophy of history revisits and questions the entire idea of progress. Viacheslav Rybakov explicated the rationale of his writings as follows: “To show that not everything which we usually and thoughtlessly consider progressive, is actually so.”15 He refers to the book The Snail on the Slope (1966) by his teachers, the cult science-fiction writers Arkadii and Boris Strugatskii. This novel depicts a dystopian world of the Forest, in which a race of moronic and brainless aboriginals (one of them is Hopalong, Kolchenog) is constantly harassed and killed by a superior race of



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the Amazons who procreate by parthenogenesis. These two groups are in turn supervised by a rational and bureaucratic “Administration.” Yvonne Howell argues that the relation of Amazons to aboriginals stands for the Holocaust of the Jews and racial engineering in Nazi Germany, whereas the Administration approximates Stalinism in its mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission) towards a semi-barbarian country under its jurisdiction.16 In this context, the Strugatskiis developed a powerful criticism against inhumane, totalitarian and repressive regimes. Rybakov quoted from The Snail on the Slope: “What do I care if Hopalong is a pebble in the millstones of their progress? … I’ll do everything I can to stop those millstones.”17 The keyword, he stresses, is “THEIR progress,” implying “horrendous sexless bitches.” In this manner Rybakov, who reproached the Strugatskiis for “choosing the wrong target,” suggests a manifestly different interpretation of this phrase. In Rybakov’s opinion, the Amazons assumed the position of the progress, from which they view the Foresters as underdeveloped, whereas they themselves are even worse than just “underdeveloped,” they are highly unnatural, lifeless hybrids18 – in other words an embodiment of the Western perverts and the West in general in Rybakov’s mental world. For him, the West cultivates sickly deviations while propagating them as signs of progress, such that new humans grow up as wretched creatures who “cannot make love because they need stimulants and dildos, cannot give birth because they need in-vitro fertilization, cannot even die because they need euthanasia. … Is this progress?”19 Comparing this kind of progress to cancer and calling for it to be cut off, Rybakov weaves anti-Westernism and a civilizational approach to history together with a host of organic metaphors that are characteristic of romantic nationalism. Echoing speculations of intellectuals like Ivan Kireevskii from the mid-nineteenth century,20 Rybakov maintains that each country has its own future; when Russia attempted (in the 1990s) to experiment with a “foreign future,” it was immediately rejected by the very fabric of the Russian life and culture, just like an organism rejects an implanted organ.21 Russian science fiction has always been sensitive to the problem of contact with a superior (often extraterrestrial) civilization, a concern inherited from the Western experience of colonial encounter with the Oriental Other.22 The inverted colonial situation, in which “we” are confronted by the more advanced “Others” who treat “us” exactly as “we” used to treat African and Asian aboriginals, haunted much of the Russian and Western science fiction, from Kurt Lasswitz’s Auf Zwei Planeten (1897) and H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1897), to Aleksandr Bogdanov’s Red Star (1908) and Strugatskiis’ Ugly Swans (1967). The Russian specificity consists in the fact that Russia had a real experience of contacting the superior “Other,” the West, and thereby sensitized itself to a much greater extent to

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the Hegelian master-slave dialectic.23 The Russian intelligentsia developed a quasi-colonial syndrome of sorts, because its perception of the West was similar to the educated elite of the colonized countries: a paradoxical mixture of its negation and desperate attempts to mimic it.24 Like classic Eurasianism, Khol’m van Zaichik’s book series is built on the rock of anti-Westernism. Indeed, as Go Koshino has pointed out, Ordus’’s heterogeneity could be only sustained by means of the othering of the West.25 So, in spite of the proclaimed multiple civilizations approach, Khol’m van Zaichik actually claims a moral superiority of Ordus’ over the West – an inconsistency deeply engraved into the Eurasianist worldview in general. Following the logic of a geopolitical style of thinking, the idea of the irreconcilable hostility of the West – and specifically the United States26 – is embedded into the plotline of the Eurasian Symphony, where crimes and criminals are invariably associated with the West or Western influences. The central motif of the Western plotting against Ordus’ is explained as a craving for the immeasurable natural riches of the empire.27 For this purpose, Russia’s enemies dream of splitting Eurasia and turning its wretched debris into obedient slaves.28 Even the story debunking ethnic Russian nationalism revolves around the genetically modified American leech which injects the nationalist viruses when it bites.29 In the universe of Khol’m van Zaichik, Khan Mamai and Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich, who in historical reality were adversaries on the Kulikovo field, were comrades-in-arms in a common struggle against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In this manner, Rybakov and Alimov’s fiction ironically repeat the iconoclastic interpretation of the Kulikovo battle by Lev Gumilev as the fight between Russia and the nomads on the one side, and the West on the other.30 Likewise, in his political journalism, Rybakov follows the same line of argumentation, maintaining that at Kulikovo in 1380 Russians and Tartars, standing shoulder to shoulder, crushed the unlawful usurpers (the Western proxy) of the throne of the Golden Horde and re-established “a constitutional order” both among the Mongols and the Russians.31 In Eurasian Symphony’s somewhat playful rearrangement of historical reality, the decisive battle of this war is described as taking place near Prokhorovka village – the scene of a fierce tank battle between the Red Army and Wehrmacht in 1943 – and the final defeat of the West happened in Grunwald (Tannenberg), where the Teutonic Order was crushed by the united Slavs in 1410.32 Alimov and Rybakov want to integrate the myth of the Great Patriotic War, central for today’s Russian propaganda and popular imagination, into their alternative history. In this rendition, the theme of the eternal struggle of Russia against the Western aggressors is re-enacted as the East-West antagonism and the manifestation of Russian solidarity with Asian peoples. With a reference to Halford Mackinder’s celebrated essay “The Geographical Pivot



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of History” (1904), Alimov and Rybakov provide a geopolitical substantiation of this solidarity as a necessity to consolidate the continental landmass of Eurasia – primarily those occupied by Russia and China – in order to withstand the pressure of the maritime powers.33 POST-SOVIET NOSTALGIA In terms of literary method, Eurasian Symphony returns to a classic model of the utopia as a critical study of social imperfection in the present day, similar to the narrative thrust of Thomas More’s paradigmatic Utopia (1516). Devoid of the romantic drama between a rebellious hero and the oppressive society, characteristic of twentieth-century anti-utopian literature, Eurasian Symphony is subtitled “There Are No Bad People.” Indeed, Rybakov and Alimov intended to go beyond the panoply of anti-utopias in contemporary Russian and international literature and to produce something positive,34 such that the main conflict in the book series consists in the ironical juxtaposition between the Possible World of their utopia and the present-day order, in which, we may assume, there are plenty of “bad people.”35 Eurasian Symphony, thus, is perfectly escapist as a depiction of the exact opposite of what is deemed to be characteristic of post-Soviet Russia: stability, wealth, security, social harmony and cohesion, brotherly communitarianism, geopolitical might, selfesteem and preservation of cultural authenticity.36 The concept of the therapeutic effect of the alternative history37 is a useful starting point, which gives us a framework for understanding Eurasian Symphony as a specific mechanism of “re-membering” the defunct and dismembered Soviet empire. As has been observed in scholarly studies, “All contemporary Russian fantasy novels have switched their attention from utopian futures to alternative concepts of history. … All writers are more or less preoccupied with the topic of the vanished empire.”38 The pleasure of reading Eurasian Symphony consists not in its amusing novelty but rather in the soothing sensation of repetitiousness and the recognition of a forgotten past, because Ordus’ is framed as a “considerably improved Soviet Union of our dreams.”39 This carefully staged nostalgia for the Soviet times permeates the narrative throughout. Viacheslav Rybakov describes his ideal readers as the working middle-aged intelligentsia with a Soviet background. This readership should be able to understand the hints and jokes based on Soviet-era cultural products, but at the same time should reject anti-Soviet and anti-Russian humour characteristic of the more refined intellectuals of the dissident circles.40

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The authors constantly draw parallels between imaginary Ordus’ and the Soviet past. The following, taken from the novel Delo nepogashennoi luny, are indicative: the brand name for a TV set is “Broad horizon,” which playfully resonates with the most advanced Soviet-era TV set called “Horizon”; the match factory is named “Red Tenth Month” (i.e. “Red October”), thus conflating the Soviet match factory “Red Star” and the chocolate factory “Red October”; the advertising board in a Chinese restaurant offers large crayfish for 5 Choh (Chiao) and a small one for 3 Choh, which reminds anyone born in the Soviet Union of the comedian Roman Kartsev’s famous humoristic monologue from the 1970s;41 there is a cigarette brand name “Chernomor,” which sounds like a frivolous mixing of one of Alexander Pushkin’s fairy-tale characters with the Soviet cigarette “Belomorkanal” (usually shortened as “Belomor”), named after the White Sea – Baltic Channel – constructed by the forced labour. There is also a play on the canon of Soviet detective novels, in which all people are called comrades but criminals are called citizens, so that the change in a person’s status is apparent when a detective addresses him or her as “a citizen” not “a comrade.” In Ordus’, a usual address is edinochaiatel’, literally, “who desires the same [things],” which means someone who has the same goals in life, but when an edinochaiatel’ commits a crime, he or she is called the “subject” of the emperor of Ordus’. Although such allusions and parallels may seem trifling, for people born in the Soviet Union they are deeply meaningful and in a way even endearing. The narrative of Eurasian Symphony re-members the Soviet Union in the sense that it sutures together its sundered members by means of finding a bifurcation point in the past when history “went wrong,” resulting in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and rectifying this “wrong.” The trauma of 1991 is not represented here, but nevertheless experienced as a desire to undo what has been done in the historical past,42 specifically the violent Westernization of Peter I in the early eighteenth century, the Bolsheviks’ revolution, the bloody Great Patriotic War, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In the universe of Eurasian Symphony the last war in Europe took place between France and Prussia in 1870–1871.43 The alternative history setting provides the proper context for the ideal society, and its utopian protagonists are vested with a single task – to preserve and maintain this status quo. Both central heroes in Eurasian Symphony work for secret services and law enforcement agencies, so they are not iconoclasts and revolutionaries but rather conservatives in thought and deed. Here lies one of the central paradoxes of the series, once again akin to the internal irony of Eurasianism in general, which absorbed much of the “Conservative Revolution” ideology into its own thinking. On the one hand, it represents a backlash of traditionalism in the context of the avalanche of modernization. On the other, it is grounded on the assumption of the almost endless



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malleability of human nature – the very assumption, in other words, which makes modernization possible in the first place. Eurasian Symphony offers a utopian vision of a radical reform brought about with the help of institutions that are righteous, legislation that is thoughtful, and state power that is just and humane. IRONY IN EURASIAN SYMPHONY Opposing their critics, Rybakov and Alimov used to say that Eurasian Symphony is not a political manifesto but rather intended to provide humour and entertainment. However, laughter and un-laughter can be strategies of political engagement or resistance,44 and the humour in Eurasian Symphony – veering between good-natured kidding to vitriolic stiob45 – is indeed by and large political. Postmodern irony belongs to the post-Soviet Russian cultural mainstream and may be found everywhere, from Vladimir Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik to Grazhdanin Poet, a TV project of Dmitrii Bykov and Mikhail Efremov. Their irony attacks the conservative turn in contemporary Russian politics, in a manner similar to how the late Soviet stiob mocked official discourse. Conservative science fiction also uses irony, perhaps even more actively than the liberal literary mainstream, in order to “smuggle” patriarchal values in under its cover.46 Aleksei Yurchak works out a useful understanding of irony as overidentification with the hegemonic discourse, which blurs the dividing line between wholehearted support and veiled mockery and effectively destabilizes the hegemonic power in the manner of the good solder Schwejk.47 Irony in Eurasian Symphony works along the same lines, but it relocates the hegemonic master outside the country, to the West. In principle, this is nothing new: Aleksandr Blok’s famous poetic declaration “Yes, we are Scythians” (1918) identifies with the position of the external authoritative voice (of the West), which supposedly wants to belittle the Russians by comparing them to the semi-mythical Oriental nomads. By doing so, Blok distorts the hegemonic narrative. The actual meaning of the phrase could be conveyed as “you want to offend us by saying that we are barbarian. Indeed, we are, but this means that we are not worse, but better than you are, because we are not corrupted by the pernicious influences and false truths of your civilization.” The whole of Eurasian ideology could be identified stylistically as ironic overidentification with the imaginary Western perception of Russia as the Orient.48 Aleksandr Dugin recently maintained this very point, addressing the imaginary West: You called us gendarmes of Europe. Yes, this is true. We are gendarmes. We maintain order, law, legality and security. We punish criminals and put rebels

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into irons. We are standing guard over the healthy family and justice. We defend culture and spirituality. [We defend] faith and morality. [We defend] identity and Tradition. We are holy gendarmes.49

Following the same irony of Eurasianism, the alternative world of Alimov and Rybakov represents Ordus’ as an Oriental and Orientalized society, featuring some hypertrophic features of what the West perceives as the “barbarous East,” but at the same time, Ordus’ accumulated such immeasurable cultural and material riches that it is the Western Europeans who seem to be pathetic barbarians. Eurasian Symphony ironically exaggerates certain unclear moments in Eurasianism, and by so doing, refines its central ideological messages. For example, Eurasianists occasionally referred to the people of the West as the real “barbarians,” whereas Khol’m van Zaichik makes this a recurrent theme at the centre of much of the books’ humorous effect. “Barbarians” is a common word, translated from Chinese for the term “Westerners” in Eurasian Symphony. For added effect, Alimov and Rybakov mention that in our tolerant epoch, there is a public campaign to stop using the term because of its derogative connotations. So, in the quid pro quo game on the pages of Eurasian Symphony, the West dons the mask of the oppressed, the wretched of the Earth, who require protective help. At the same time, Ordus’ is pictured as a cultural hegemon, which decides itself who to call a barbarian. For example, the French second wife of Bogdan, the key protagonist of the story, is condescendingly called “a beautiful barbarian,” and the authors halfmockingly and with much enthusiasm and humour prove that even a Frenchwoman can be well cultured, tenderly loving, intelligent and so on. The sexualized trope of a noble savage girl in Western literature is thereby being reverted and projected upon the Westerners themselves.50 Here the authors play with self-Orientalization in yet another way by normalizing the Muslim norms of polygamy in Ordus’. The salt of the episode is that the polygamous person is an ardent Orthodox believer and a high state official. His first (Muslim) wife finds and introduces him to his second wife for the period of her pregnancy. This produces a curious blend of the Soviet-era “friendship of the peoples” rhetoric – which attached much importance to international marriages – and overidentification with the Western myth of the sexual lechery of Asians. Yet, the narrative does not stop at this point, but goes further to claim that while polygamy is morally sound and healthy, the “Western barbarians” are notorious for their sexual excess because monogamy encourages conjugal infidelity.51 Another blatant violation of the Western canon of civility is corporal punishment, which is common practice in Ordus’. In defence of their position, authors argue that it is unfair to penalize convicts by taking their money because the imposition of the same fine on financially unequal people is



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not just, whereas all people equally suffer from physical pain. It is hard to decide whether the authors really think that birch rods are better than fines, or whether they themselves would like to live in such a society, but by exaggerating this extravagant position, they fight against notions about the universality of human dignity. Thus, while they might very well not be serious about birch rods, they are entirely serious in their intention to question the Western canon of ethics. A further vignette on the same topic is illustrative. It concerns a cigarette lighter, mentioned in the novel Delo lis-oborotnei. The Western detective gave one to Bagatur, another main hero, as a sign of his friendship and gratitude. Bagatur wants to thank him for the present by writing in the following way: “It is so pleasant to touch, and is as reliable as if it had been produced in Ordus’.” The authors press on this detail once again on the next page, saying that Bagatur was proud to write such an ornate and friendly phrase to his colleague, who “would certainly be flattered to know that the lighter is equal to Ordussian ones. Almost equal” (Zaichik, 2001a, pp. 184–186). This “almost equal” is the punchline of the joke. The authors stress the fact that the superiority of Ordus’ is so unquestionable – not only on a spiritual plane of existence, as Eurasianists would readily acknowledge, but also technologically52 – and so deeply entrenched into Bagatur’s mind that in all seriousness he believes the highest praise he can give to a device produced abroad is to declare it almost as good as an Ordussian one. The effect of irony is achieved by juxtaposing this firm belief with the reverse situation in “reality,” when everything Western is taken as a priori better than Russian – hence the notorious Soviet-era campaign to fight with “idolatrous attitudes towards the West” – which sounds as an echo in the ears of Soviet-born readers of the books. THE EAST AND EURASIA Eurasian Symphony, as its title suggests, reclaims the intellectual legacy of Eurasianism, and explores the idea of the organic unity between Russian and Asian peoples, in particular the Chinese, Mongols and Turks. Likewise, the book series dwells on the specific harmonious affinities between Orthodoxy, Buddhism, Confucianism and Islam (naturally excluding from this religious international Catholicism and Protestantism). As classic Eurasianists profess, Russia’s relation to Asia is “intimate and warm” because they are relatives.53 However, the Eurasianist emotion rather than a rational argument can host a wide range of possible practical implications. The group of Vostochniki (Easternizers) of the late imperial period insisted on Russia’s Asian historical and geographical positioning but called for Russia’s absolute superiority and leadership in the East. On the extreme opposite side one can find the thoughts of Vsevolod Ivanov (1888–1971), who also believed in Russia’s Asiatic

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nature but maintained that Russia should fully identify with and probably even dissolve in the East.54 Classical Eurasianism, with its notion of Russia as a separate Eurasian continent differing in equal measure from both the East and the West, is located in the middle. Eurasian Symphony is closer to the position of Ivanov, because it conspicuously excludes Russia from the game and reduces its importance in the Eurasian empire. Indeed, what could be called “Russia” in the world of Ordus’ is only its far northeastern part, the “ulus of Aleksandria.” The capital is in Beijing, the imperial language is Mandarin, and Orthodoxy is only one of many confessions – indeed, perhaps not even the most publicly visible one, since even Orthodox believers deem it necessary to attend Confucian temple in order to resolve moral dilemmas. A utopian Russia cum Ordus’ is thus bigger than Russia proper and at the same time much smaller than Russia in historical “reality.” This exposes the dialectic pulsation of Eurasianist imagery between intimately interrelated self-belittling and self-aggrandizing. It reinforces the parallel with the Soviet Union’s national construction as an “affirmative action empire.”55 The principle of the “friendship of peoples” is epitomized by the duet of protagonists, Bagatur, a Mongolian who confesses Buddhism, and Bogdan, a Russian Orthodox believer. Rybakov draws attention to an episode in Delo lis-oborotnei. It relates the story of the friendship between two priests, Orthodox and Buddhist, who both live on Solovki Island. Their loving attitude to each other is shown as a tacit mutual compassion. The Orthodox regrets that his friend is likely to destroy his soul because of Buddhism, whereas the Buddhist similarly bemoans that his friend is likely to never achieve nirvana because of his Christian convictions.56 In Rybakov’s vision, this compassion to the difference, while being adamant in one’s own ancestral faith, represents the cornerstone of Ordussian stability. It implies that all religions, however different they may seem, share some common ethical core, such that the more faithful a believer is to their own religion, the more likely it is that they will find a common language with a representative of another religion.57 The authors claimed that Khol’m van Zaichik is saving Russia because he offers an acceptance of difference, which is so badly needed in today’s Russia, where “civilizational divides run inside [of the country].”58 Following the line of self-Orientalization, Alimov and Rybakov created an idiosyncratic “newspeak” of Ordus’, mixing up ancient Russian and Chinese words in order to replace Western borrowings in the Russian language and thereby to symbolically replay the history of Russian Westernization, representing its alternative version as “Chinesification.” So, the car is called povozka, the apartment is terem, an SUV – “jeep” in Russian – is Chinesified to tsipuche. All administrative titles are also Chinese; thus, a policeman is lachzhun. The gastronomic routine of Ordus’ is under the unquestionable influence



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of China, with only weak traces of European cuisine, so people drink ergotou instead of vodka or wine and eat Oriental dumplings. These linguistic games, contributing considerably to the popularity of the book series, entered into the fandom of the Eurasian Symphony, so it is considered good taste in this community to sprinkle online speech with words like those above. This tendency resonates well with the strong interest of the classical Eurasianists in linguistics.59 They pointed to the many borrowings in Russian from Asian languages, which from their perspective served to confirm Russia’s “Asian” soul.60 The foundation of Ordus’ on Aleksandr Nevskii’s and Khan Sartak’s brotherhood is playfully commemorated in a popular Ordussian song featuring such verses as “Unbreakable union of cultured uluses \\ Aleksander and Sartak are welded forever to stand,” which resonates distinctly with the anthem of the Soviet Union, well engraved into the memory of Rybakov and Alimov’s readers: “Unbreakable Union of freeborn Republics, \\ Great Russia has welded forever to stand.”61 Indeed, the whole Ordus’ project seems to be a re-enactment of the Soviet affirmative action model, revamped by even more radical self-belittling of Russia’s geopolitical ambition and its well-developed practices of federalism. Unlike the Bolshevik project of dealing with the national question by means of “nationalization” (korenizatsiia), Khol’m van Zaichik instead highlights confessional rather than national heterogeneity. Ordus’ is structured by religious communities, which may or may not coincide with national divisions. This model of an illiberal multiculturalism reminds us of the vilayet (province)-like communitarian ideal of self-governing culturally heterogenous societies within the Ottoman Empire, which, however, did not leave much space for individual freedom.62 This all appears rather like a hybrid of both classic Eurasianism and Lev Gumilev’s idiosyncratic ethnographic theory. However, Eurasian Symphony differs meaningfully from Eurasianist images and metaphors which evoke the continent of Eurasia as an unbounded virgin expanse offering unlimited possibilities but often depict it visually as a barren steppe or wild desert, inhabited by nomads living in symbiosis with nature (as in Nikita Mikhalkov’s film of 1991 Close to Eden [Urga]). Such a vision is completely alien to Alimov and Rybakov, who represent Eurasia as a densely populated land of ancient culture, sophisticated knowledge and minutely organized and well-ordered lifestyle. The authors of the book series are much more interested in China and its culture and philosophy, than in steppe nomads. At the same time, however, Alimov and Rybakov assume a gaze that is very Western. The fact that the very name of the narrator Khol’m van Zaichik63 is inspired by the Dutch Orientalist Robert Hans van Gulik establishes the West as a point of observation

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of the utopian landscapes to the east of Europe. This point of view resembles a tradition of the thinkers of the Enlightenment, who were fascinated by the Orient and portrayed it for the purpose of intellectual experiments of estranging and critiquing the present-day reality. Leibnitz, for example, marvelled at the Chinese religious tolerance and practical morality, maintaining that “we need missionaries from the Chinese,” not the other way round.64 The admiration of the Orient in Khol’m van Zaichik resembles the Sinophilia of the eighteenth century, with its vision of China as a paragon of rationality, education and tolerance, represented as an aesthetically exotic but attractive place. The Sinophilia of Catherine the Great did not exclude Russia’s emphatic self-identification as a part of the West. The nineteenth century, however, brought a more ambiguous vision of the East: a place of backwardness and tyranny that was at the same time a source for the rejuvenation of Russia, which could help it regain cultural authenticity and distinctiveness from the West.65 The Russian School of Orientalist Studies was established at the Faculty of Oriental Languages of St Petersburg University by the end of the nineteenth century. It struggled with stereotypical image of the East as a realm of cruelty and barbarity. As a purely Western academic enterprise in the service of the Westernized empire, this Orientalist school nevertheless meaningfully questioned postulates of “othering” the East and criticized Eurocentrism, prefiguring, and perhaps even influencing, the ideas of Eurasianists, especially those concerning Russia’s cultural proximity to the world of Islam and the role of the Golden Horde in the Russian history.66 Rybakov and Alimov, both professional Sinologists, graduated from the same Orientalist faculty (reorganized and renamed in 1944) in 1976 and 1986, respectively. Rybakov, affiliated with the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, is a specialist in medieval Chinese legislation. His recently defended (2009) Dr. habil. [doktorskaia] dissertation focuses on the Chinese bureaucracy of the Tan period (618–907), whereas Alimov’s Dr. habil. (2010) is devoted to the study of the written sources of the Song dynasty (960–1279). Thus, contrary to the intellectual thrust of classic Eurasianism to connect the history of Eurasia with the legacy of Genghis Khan, the Golden Horde, and the nomadic civilization of the Eurasian steppes, Khol’m van Zaichik relocates attention to China, which considerably changes the architecture, ideational underpinnings and metaphorics of the Eurasian empire in their vision. The book series’ central idea is that healthy traditionalism and religiosity make people happy and society harmonious. The two pillars of Ordus’, Confucianism and Orthodoxy, do not exclude Buddhism, Islam and Judaism from the public sphere.67 This echoes the ruminations of early Eurasianists such as Petr Savitskii, who argued that the common people of



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Russia are organically striving towards the grassroots of the East, which makes Russia “an Orthodox-Muslim, and an Orthodox-Buddhist” country.68 Alimov and Rybakov, however, are notably more infatuated with the ethics of Confucianism. Confucianism is the ideational glue that keeps Ordus’ tight. In his Dr. habil. dissertation Rybakov reconstructs the debates between Confucians and Legalists in ancient China, arguing that Legalists praised formal justice and the triumph of law and they failed, whereas Confucians proposed to lean on morals and the patriarchal family, and they invented the magic formula of China’s greatness. This is because moral people (“good people,” cf. the subtitle of the franchise “There Are No Bad People”) are more efficient as bureaucrats in an imperfect system than immoral people working within the formally perfect bureaucracy. He continues arguing that family is the only institute which can produce moral, altruistic people, so the task of state builders would be to cherish families and to model the state as an extended patriarchal family, in which people don’t steal public goods, not because of the fear of punishment but because it would be disgracefully repugnant for them.69 This family centred ethics is the core of Eurasian Symphony’s social ideal. One of the corollaries of this is the securitization of sacred objects. The plotline of the first novel in the series, The Case of a Greedy Barbarian deals with the criminal investigation of the theft of one of the most sacred treasures of the empire, the Code of Genghis Khan. This case is represented as the utmost sacrilege, the gravest crime imaginable against the state. As the story progresses, the protagonists find out who has commissioned the offence – a certain Western businessman Shmoros – the literary counterpart of George Soros. Prefiguring much of the “sacrilege discourses,” spurred by the Pussy Riot affair in 2012, this book centres on the inviolability of symbols of civilizational identity and on the everlasting encroachments of the West on Russia’s inner self, integrity and cultural authenticity. Sacrilegious attacks on a venerated relic are considered to be the worst possible crime, effectively an attempt to overthrow the existing order.70 This resonates with the later statements of Vsevolod Chaplin, the spokesman of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), who in 2011 professed that sacred objects are more important than human rights, even than the right for life.71 CONCLUSION In spite of its exotic entourage and Eurasian overidentification with a position of a “barbarous” East, Eurasian Symphony is paradoxically Western in its ideational structure. It follows the Western Orientalizing gaze on Asia as an outpost for the critical attack on the present-day order and to stage the construction of the utopian alternative world. Fascinated with Chinese

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culture and Confucian ethics, the authors of the book series instrumentalize this exoticism as typical Westerners, or even Westernizers, because, behind the façade of Ordus’, one can discern two ideas originating in the European Enlightenment – the idea of endless social perfection and the idea of endless human development by means of applying external forces (institutions, legislations, etc.). Following Rybakov’s metaphor of progress as a cancer on the body of Western humankind, one can assume that he reserved himself a role of a surgeon, prepared to operate on the afflicted civilization with the scalpel of his anti-Western irony. This means that contrary to the pathos of “multiple civilizations,” the position of Eurasian Symphony is in fact a position of moral superiority verging on Western-style Messianism. This Western gazing of the East enables Eurasian Symphony to revisit the old concept of Russia as the “true Europe.”72 Indeed, the intellectual thrust of the book series pictures Ordus’ as Russia writ large, whose qualities serve to make Russia an even better Europe than Europe itself. Ordus’ is technologically advanced, multicultural, ethnically heterogeneous and religiously tolerant. It is an absolutely law-abiding, well-functioning and well-ordered society that enjoys developed local self-governance and political participatory mechanisms. Hijacking Europeanness from Europe, Ordus’ recycles Eurasianism for the purpose of re-membering (reconstructing) the Soviet Union as an alternative to the global West. NOTES 1. Konstantin Sheiko and Stephen Brown, History as Therapy: Alternative History and Nationalist Imaginings in Russia, 1991–2014 (Stuttgart: ibidem, 2014), 213. 2. Khol’m van Zaichik, Delo zhadnogo varvara (St Petersburg: Azbuka, 2000), 7. 3. Zaichik, Delo nezalezhnykh dervishei (St Petersburg: Azbuka, 2001), 6; Zaichik, Delo sud’i Di (St Petersburg: Azbuka, 2003), 6. 4. Correspondence with Viacheslav Rybakov, 5 October 2015. 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV76RsmUag8. Accessed 1 November 2015. 6. Cf. their statement “we are fed up with anti-utopias” (Viacheslav Rybakov, Rul’ istorii (St Petersburg: Soiuz pisatelei Sankt-Peterburga, 2012), 46); Rybakov and Igor’ Alimov, “Voprosy, chasto zadavaemye perevodchikam i ikh konsul’tantam,” FAN-tastika, no. 10 (2008), 97. 7. See, for example, Graham Smith, “The Masks of Proteus: Russia, Geopolitical Shift and the New Eurasianism,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24, no. 4 (1999), 481–494. 8. See, for example, Marlene Laruelle (ed.), Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015).



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9. See, for example, Igor’ Alimov, “Mozhem otplyt’ v dalekii Kitai,” http://www. piteropen.ru/conference/alimov.html. Accessed 1 July 2016. 10. Aleksandr Gavrilenko, “Tatarskoe igo – bylo ili ne bylo?” Elita Tatarstana, no. 5 (2011). http://nailtimler.com/articles_page/tatar_yoke.html. Accessed 1 June 2016. 11. Marlen Lariuel [Laruelle], Ideologiia russkogo evraziistva, ili Mysli o velichii imperii (Moscow: Natalis, 2004), 169. 12. Zaichik, Delo sud’i Di, 162. 13. Rybakov, Napriamuiu (St Petersburg: Limbus Press, 2008), 110. 14. Rybakov, Rul’ istorii, 69. 15. Correspondence with Viacheslav Rybakov of 5 October 2015. 16. Yvonne Howell, Apocalyptic Realism: The Science Fiction of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (New York: Lang, 1994), 129–138. 17. Translated from Russian by Alan Meyers. Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, The Snail on the Slope (New York: Bantam Books, 1980). 18. One can add that they are female; Strugatskiis’ repugnancy of women’s rule (Diana Greene, “Male and Female in The Snail on the Slope by the Strugatsky Brothers,” Modern Fiction Studies 32, no. 1 (1986), 97–108) should be very much to the liking of Rybakov, for whom gynaecocracy stands for repulsive Western-style feminism. 19. From correspondence with Viacheslav Rybakov of 5 October 2015. 20. In his famous article “A Survey of Today’s State of the [Russian] Literature” he elaborated a metaphor of the Western Enlightenment in Russia as a flower, torn from its roots and implanted on a foreign soil – the flower is going to wither and at the same time to block the growth of “native” plants (Ivan Kireevskii, “Obozrenie sovremennogo sostoianiia literatury,” in Kireevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1861 [1845]), vol. 2). 21. TV show “Noch’ na piatom” (2 October 2010): http://vk.com/ video85732658_169798829. Accessed 1 November 2015. See also: Rybakov, Rul’ istorii, 50. 22. See, inter alia: John Rieder, Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008). 23. Mikhail Suslov, “Po tu storonu imperii: Prostranstvennye konfiguratsii identichnostei v rossiiskikh literaturnykh utopiiakh rubezha XIX–XX vv.,” Ab Imperio, no. 4 (2011): 325–356. 24. Structurally Russia really is a “subaltern empire” as Viacheslav Morozov dubs it: Viacheslav Morozov, Russia’s Postcolonial Identity: A Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 25. Go Koshino, “Image of Empire and Asia in the Contemporary Science Fictions of Russia,” Acta Slavica Iaponica no. 26 (2009), 188. 26. Zaichik, Delo pobedivshei obez’iany (St Petersburg: Azbuka, 2002), 244; Rybakov, Rul’ istorii, 241. 27. Zaichik, Delo zhadnogo varvara (St Petersburg: Azbuka, 2000), 212. 28. Rybakov, Rul’ istorii, 114. 29. Zaichik, Delo o polku Igoreve (St Petersburg: Azbuka, 2001). 30. Mark Bassin, “Narrating Kulikovo: Lev Gumilev, Russian Nationalists, and the Troubled Emergence of Neo-Eurasianism,” in M. Bassin, S. Glebov and M. Laruelle

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(eds.), Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories, and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), 165–186. Rybakov acknowledges the importance of Lev Gumilev’s writings but distances himself from his theory of passionarity (from correspondence with Rybakov of 5 October 2015). 31. Rybakov, Napriamuiu, 137. 32. Zaichik, Delo zhadnogo varvara, 74. 33. Zaichik, Delo zhadnogo varvara, 276. 34. Rybakov, Napriamuiu, 46; Rybakov and Alimov, “Voprosy, chasto zadavaemye,” 96–97. 35. On the concept of “Possible Worlds,” see Darko Suvin, “Locus, Horizon, and Orientation: The Concept of Possible Worlds as a Key to Utopian Studies,” Utopian Studies 1, no. 2 (1990), 69–83. 36. See, for example, Maria Iudanova, Krizis kul’tury v sovremennoi russkoiazychnoi fantastike (PhD thesis, Moscow: Rossiiskii Institut Kul’turologii, 2012). 37. Sheiko and Brown, History as Therapy, 31. 38. Birgit Menzel, “Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature,” in Stephen Lovell and B. Menzel (eds.), Reading for Entertainment in Contemporary Russia: Post-Soviet Popular Literature in Historical Perspective (Muenchen: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2005), 149. 39. Israel’ Shamir, “Nashe proshloe – delo nashego budushchego,” Novaia russkaia kniga, no. 3/4 (2001). http://magazines.russ.ru/nrk/2001/3/shamir.html. Accessed 5 July 2016. 40. From correspondence with Rybakov on 5 October 2015. Rybakov’s criticism of liberal intellectuals (called “sectarians”) is staged in the book Delo pobedivshei obez’iany (p. 161), which re-enacts the old Slavophile (here I mean specifically Konstantin Aksakov’s essay “The Public and the People” from 1857) distinction between the imitative, Westernized, senseless “public,” and the organic, authentic, wise “people” (Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought (Oxford University Press, 1975), 271–272. 41. Roman Kartsev, “Raki po piat’ rublei,” https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=PDM0GNgxPcM. Accessed 1 November 2015. 42. Alexander Etkind, Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), 14. 43. This war serves as a point of bifurcation for Rybakov’s earlier tremendously popular experiment in alternative history Gravity Flyer “Tsesarevich” (1994). 44. Klaus Dodds and P. Kirby, “It’s Not a Laughing Matter: Critical Geopolitics, Humour and Unlaughter,” Geopolitics 18, no. 1 (2012): 45–59; Moira Smith, “Humor, Unlaughter, and Boundary Maintenance,” Journal of American Folklore 122, no. 2 (2009): 148–171. 45. Stiob is the Russian term for scathing mockery. See Dominic Boyer and A. Yurchak, “American Stiob: Or, What Late-Socialist Aesthetics of Parody Reveal about Contemporary Political Culture in the West,” Cultural Anthropology 25, no. 2 (2010), 179–221; Michael Klebanov, “Sergej Kurechin: The Performance of Laughter for the Post-Totalitarian Society of Spectacle. Russian Conceptualist Art in Rendezvous,” Russian Literature 74, no. 1–2 (2013), 227–253.



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46. Mark Yoffe, “The Stiob of Ages: Carnivalesque Traditions in Soviet Rock and Related Counterculture,” Russian Literature 74, no. 1–2 (2013), 207–225; Mark Lipovetsky, “Post-sots: Transformations of Socialist Realism in the Popular Culture of the Recent Period,” Slavic and East European Journal 48, no. 3 (2004), 356–377; Boris Noordenbos, “Ironic Imperialism: How Russian Patriots Are Reclaiming Postmodernism,” Studies in East European Thought 63, no. 2 (2011), 147–158. 47. Aleksei Yurchak, Eto bylo navsegda, poka ne konchilos’: Poslednee sovetskoe pokolenie (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2014). Cf. Merje Kuus, “Švejkian Geopolitics: Subversive Obedience in Central Europe,” Geopolitics 13, no. 2 (2008), 257–277. 48. Cf. with Hayden White’s study on meta histories, stylistically different genres of historical writings (Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973]). Indeed, lacking a coherent ideological system, Eurasianism could be better defined as an emotional or stylistic phenomenon (cf. Nikolai Berdiaev, “Evraziitsy,” in L. Novikova and I. Sizemskaia (eds.), Rossiia mezhdu Evropoi i Aziei: Evraziiskii soblazn: Antologiia [Moscow: Nauka, 1993], 292–300). 49. Aleksandr Dugin, Ukraina: Moia voina (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2015), 40. 50. Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003); Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). 51. Zaichik, Delo lis-oborotnei (St Petersburg: Azbuka, 2001), 177. 52. Ordussian advanced technologies, the object of envy of the “Western barbarians,” are also mentioned in Delo zhadnogo varvara (p. 11). 53. “Evraziistvo: Opyt sistematicheskogo izlozheniia,” in L. Novikova and I. Sizemskaia, Mir Rossii – Evraziia (Moscow: Vysshaia shkola, 1995), 402. 54. Lariuel’, Ideologiia russkogo evraziistva, 163. 55. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). 56. Zaichik, Delo lis-oborotnei, 87. 57. Rybakov, Rul’ istorii, 123. 58. Rybakov and Alimov, “Voprosy, chasto zadavaemye,” 97. 59. See, for example, Sergey Glebov, “The Empire of Language: Space and Structuralism in Russia’s Eurasianism,” in Sanna Turoma and M. Waldstein, Empire De/Centered: New Spatial Histories of Russia and the Soviet Union (Surrey, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013). 60. Lariuel, Ideologiia russkogo evraziistva, 133. 61. Zaichik, Delo zhadnogo varvara, 104. 62. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 63. The name sounds a humorous note by contrasting its Western- and Russianstyled parts. It could be roughly translated as “Holm van Bunny.” 64. Jonathan Spence, The Chan’s Great Continent: China in Western Minds (London: Penguin, 2000), 85.

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65. David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, “The East,” in William Leatherbarrow and D. Offord (eds.), A History of Russian Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 217–240. 66. Vera Tolz, “Sobstvennyi Vostok Rossii”: Politika identichnostei i vostokovedenie v pozdneimperskii i rannesovetskii period (Moscow: NLO, 2013). 67. Delo nepogashennoi luny (2005), the last book in the series, was awarded the literary prize established by the Russian Council of Muftis (2006). 68. Petr Savitskii, “Povorot k vostoku,” in Iskhod k vostoku. Filosofiia evraziistva (Moscow: Dobrosvet, 2008 [1921]), 38. 69. Rybakov, Kitaiskaia biurokratiia perioda Tan (618–907 gg.) po materialam istoricheskikh i iuridicheskikh istochnikov. (Dr. hab. [doktor nauk], St Petersburg, 2009), 37–51; Rybakov, Rul’ istorii, 7, 79; Zaichik, Delo sud’i Di, 12. 70. Zaichik, Delo zhadnogo varvara, 82; Zaichik, Delo pobedivshei obez’iany, 165. 71. Vsevolod Chaplin, “Tsennosti very, sviatyn’, Otechestva – vyshe prav cheloveka” [2012], http://pravovrns.ru/?p=4797. Accessed 5 July 2016; cf. also recent statement from the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill (Gundiaev), in which he attacked the “global heresy of human-worshipping,” which had “put human rights higher than the word of God” (Kirill (Gundiaev), Patriarkh, “Slovo Sviateishego Patriarkha Kirilla …” [2016], http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/4410951. html. Accessed 5 July 2016). 72. Iver Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International Relations (London: Routledge, 1996).

Chapter 5

Genghis Khan, the Golden Horde and Neo-Eurasianism in Russian Feature Films Christine Engel

When President Putin put forward the idea of Eurasianism in 2011 as a guiding line for Russia’s future, there was no doubt that it would find broad approval among the Russian people. The ideological construct of Eurasianism claims that due to the distribution of its land mass in Europe and Asia, Russia is not only a political system in itself – very different from the West – but also an entire (sub)continent and therefore is subject to its own rules.1 The concept of Eurasia offers the promise of healing the collective feeling of a great loss and a vacuum, which came about after the collapse of the Soviet empire. According to a survey conducted in 2008, three-quarters of the respondents wanted to live in a very big country, respected and perhaps even feared by all others, and proactively defending its culture and its traditions.2 A small, comfortable but inoffensive country, or a liberal-minded country open for any modern trend attracted only a minority of 18 per cent. “Eurasia,” moreover, offers a unifying national idea.3 Since his time as prime minister under President Boris El’tsin (1999) Putin has been convinced that Russia needs such a unifying idea in order to maintain the internal cohesion of the empire and to draw the line against the West.4 The success of the idea seems to prove him right, since government supporters as well as (ultra) conservatives critical of the government’s use of “Eurasia” as a projection surface for their respective visions of Russia. The core ideas of Eurasianism were originally developed by intellectuals of the White Russian emigration in the 1920s, above all by Nikolai Trubetskoi, Georgii (George) Vernadskii and Petr Savitskii.5 Common issues of classical Eurasianism of the 1920s and the neo-Eurasianism of today6 concern, first of all, the interpretation of the past. The territories of the European and the Asian part of Russia are being provided with an uninterrupted common history which is projected back into the Middle Ages. The so-called 101

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Tataro-Mongol Yoke is no longer looked upon as a history of subjugation, but as a productive cohabitation of Russians and Tataro-Mongols. According to this interpretation the Tataro-Mongols – starting with Genghis Khan – were the first to consolidate the vast space into a unified empire, but then between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the centre and the unifying power shifted from the Golden Horde to the Principality of Moscow. Since then, it is argued, the cohesion of this (sub)continent has been guaranteed by Russia, its language, literature and religion. Due to geographical specifics, a long common history and the shared experience that ensued, a particular type of people is said to have developed in Eurasia: a homogenized product of all the ethnic groups living there,7 with deep spirituality and a craving for strong leadership and strict rules as well as a strong dislike for liberal democracy. For neo-Eurasianists it is important to establish Eurasian space as an entity of its own in the global play of the world powers. By the use of the catch-all formula of a “polycentric world order,” Russia considers itself not only a political counterpart to the “unipolar” United States, but also generally sees itself as an antithesis to “Atlanticism” and its negative characteristics of globalization, capitalism and democracy. Apart from classical Eurasianism, another source of inspiration for neoEurasianism are the publications of Lev Gumilev (1912–1992), who spoke of himself as “the last Eurasianist”8 and popularized his ideas from the 1960s onwards. A central issue in his historical, ethnological and anthropological studies is the question of ethnogenesis: why do certain ethnic groups at a certain point in history form civilizations and experience a rapid, explosive expansion? The reasons for such developments are ascribed by Gumilev to the phenomenon of “passionarity” (passionarnost’), an energy derived from solar and other extraterrestrial sources. According to Gumilev, such an outburst of passionarity occurred between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when the “amorphous, scattered, nomadic Mongolian tribes managed to unite into a single ethnos, form a mighty army, and within the next several decades conquer the immense territory from Japan to China in the East to the Adriatic sea in the West.”9 Gumilev’s publications have been very popular since the 1980s because his organistic and polycentric view of history offers an alternative to the Enlightenment’s linear concept of progress, which assigns Russia the status of a backward country.10 Aleksandr Dugin, the leader of the Eurasianist movement and an active propagator of Gumilev’s ideas, adds conspiracy theories to this ideological concoction and gives it an openly politically aggressive slant with his anti-Atlanticism. Dugin’s articles in the nationalist weekly Zavtra and his positions as professor at Moscow State University and as editor-in-chief of the journal Elementy offer him a convenient platform for his ideas.



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A further ingredient of neo-Eurasianism is the writings of Ivan Il’in (1883–1954), a staunch supporter of the monarchist white movement who was pushed into emigration in 1922.11 For Il’in the territorial integrity of the former Russian empire has always been the top priority, the realization of which – he believed – could only be guaranteed by means of the Orthodox Church as a unifying bond and a national, patriotic and authoritarian form of government. Vladimir Putin has elevated Il’in to his top philosophical authority, since they share a common worldview. Il’in had already, in 1950, predicted that after the collapse of the Soviet regime – to which, in spite of his dislike, he gave credit for holding the empire together – foreign powers would actively pursue the dismemberment of the former empire. In his opinion they would exploit the ensuing chaos and present it falsely as the triumph of liberty, democracy and decentralization, and he made suggestions on how to save Russia from the evils of the Western world.12 Il’in’s position with its stance on imperialism and autocracy can be integrated into neo-Eurasianism without any difficulty. A good example for that is the movement “Young Eurasia” (Molodaia Evraziia) with its chairman Iurii Kofner, who called Il’in “Putin’s Eurasianist philosopher”13 and hailed him as the mastermind of the “Fourth Political Theory” (Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia), which – in a renunciation of postmodern positions – demands a return to tradition, religion and teleology.14 The neo-Eurasianist patchwork ideology finds a remarkable resonance and popularization in literature, art and films. When we take a closer look at Russian cinema since the year 2000, we can see that neo-Eurasianism intertwines with the general desire of the Russians for domestic film productions with an emphasis on patriotic topics. In the first decade of the new century, the Russian film industry had to reinvent itself after its breakdown in the 1990s. Although it aimed at becoming a player in the globalized market, we can observe the general tendency to cater much more for the national market with its profoundly Russian topics.15 After years of films dealing with social problems in the 1990s and after an abundance of Latin American soaps on TV in the early 2000s, the Russian film business has been especially successful from the middle of the decade with films combining patriotism and history,16 usually linking a tale of war, a religious fable, a masculine hero, and a revision of wartime taboos.17 Fantasy histories like 1612 (Vladimir Khotinenko, 2007), which depicts the liberation of Moscow from the Polish occupiers as a patriotic epic, treated Russian history “in the style of Pop” and had successfully “simulated a new national idea.”18 This tendency coincided with Putin’s effort to stress happy history and to introduce compulsory history standards in Russian schools.19 Although the government’s directive to promote a positive self-image is not an attempt to censor directly, it is an unambiguous invitation to self-censorship.20 This tendency is further intensified by a shift of

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governmental subsidies favouring patriotic blockbusters. That means, overall, that cinema can be a very effective catalyst of political processes. In what follows, I chose a set of films, which have their settings in the steppe and negotiate the relationship between Tataro-Mongols and the Russians. Most of the films engage in fantasy histories with the character of Genghis Khan playing a special role, since the films clearly use specific techniques of manufacturing the past. In my analysis I will pay special attention to the interconnections of the chosen films with Eurasianist discourses and texts – either classical or neo. To begin with, I want to discuss the prominent role of film director Nikita Mikhalkov, a pertinent example of combining ideology, politics and film to promote (neo-)Eurasianist positions on the screen and in cultural institutions. NIKITA MIKHALKOV AND THE STEPPE In the Soviet era up to perestroika it was taboo to discuss Eurasianist topics publicly because their nationalistic undertones ran counter to state-prescribed Soviet patriotism. Indeed, the 1981 publication of an article by the writer and literary critic Vadim Kozhinov in the journal Nash sovremennik21 led to the dismissal of its deputy editor-in-chief. Ten years later when the erosion of the Soviet empire accelerated, there were more and louder voices in favour of a Eurasianist option as an alternative to the Westernization of Russia. Film director Nikita Mikhalkov was one of the first to raise his voice in that respect and to call himself a Eurasianist. In an open letter in the Pravda (November 7, 1991) he addressed then Prime Minister Ivan Silaev (whose adviser he had then been for one and a half years) with the warning that “we are not the West, and we will never be.” Shortly afterwards, in an interview in Rossiiskaia gazeta (December 14, 1991) he explained in greater detail that Russia needed a new state ideology, one which only Eurasianism could offer, and argued that the conflict between the Reds and the Whites could not be overcome by any other means. He finished the interview with the words: “I must repeat once again: at the bottom of our hearts we Russians are neither Slavophiles nor Russian populists (as it is generally presumed) nor Westerners (as many would like to see us). We are Eurasianists. ... We are not the backyard of Europe, but the gate to Asia.”22 At that time Mikhalkov directed his feature film Urga (1991),23 in which he emphasizes the commonalities between the Mongol nomadic people and the so-called Russian “ordinary man.” The story tells of the Russian truck driver Sergei and the Mongol shepherd Gombo, both of whom have to make their way from the steppe to the nearest city. Gombo is supposed to buy contraceptives because according to Chinese law he is not allowed to have a fourth



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child with his wife, while Sergei is travelling there as a migrant worker. The movie contrasts the topography of the modern city, whose noise and rush impinge upon the men, with the steppe landscape, whose contemplative images portray an ideal union of nature and being. This harmony is threatened by two sources of danger: one danger comes from the large-scale technical projects that destroy landscapes and living spaces in Inner Mongolia as well as in Russia. A second danger is embodied by the Chinese birth-control policy. Gombo is now depicted as a clever man who escapes from this burden by not buying contraceptives and by fathering a fourth child instead. At the same time, however, he becomes a victim of American consumerism and the mediated images which flicker across the TV screen. By taking a TV set, a baseball cap and a bicycle from the city into his yurt, he breaks his loyalty towards the traditional way of life. This conjures up visions of his ancestor Genghis Khan, who appears to him on the TV screen along with a group of horsemen from the steppe to pronounce his discontent. The central message of the movie points towards the assumption that the Russian heartland as well as Central Asia equally suffer under the pressure of modernization and globalization. Landscape pictures of the steppe and Sergei’s memories of Russian landscapes emotionalize the spectator and visualize the values which, according to the narrative, are about to get lost. Sergei, the Russian, comes to the Mongolian steppe as an ordinary man, and no longer, like in earlier Soviet films, as a hero bringing civilization or as a military conqueror. Through the upheaval wrought by perestroika, his own home country has become unfamiliar to him and has no use for him any longer. In his search for his lost national identity he does not look for solidarity in the West, but finds soulmates in the East.24 With a view to Nikolai Trubetskoi’s essay “Nasledie Chingiskhana” (1925)25 the film director’s choice of a nomad from the steppe achieves an additional dimension. In this seminal work Trubetskoi – one of the founders of classical Eurasianism – elaborates on the political unification of Eurasia. He states that Genghis Khan in his conquests and in the administration of his empire relied exclusively on the nomads of the steppe since he neither respected nor trusted sedentary societies. For him only nomads had the highly valuable virtues of loyalty, devotion, steadfastness and courage, “while settled societies generally consisted of people with the psychology of slaves” and with personal characteristics such as treachery, treason and cowardice.26 The film implicitly conveys the message that a renewed union between Russians and the inhabitants of the steppe is beneficial for both sides. The last shots of the film evoke an undesirable future which would loom without such a union. While the urga, the traditional shepherd’s staff of the Mongolian nomads as well as a fertility symbol, is fading and is superimposed by a fuming factory chimney, the off-screen voice of the fourth son of the nomad

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family is telling the story of his life. His parents called him Temudzhin, which was the name of Genghis Khan in his childhood. He tells the audience that instead of the yurt and the urga of his father there is now a chimney which can be seen from his window in the big house where he is living. He works at a nearby gas station, and although he is married, he does not have any children. But he enjoys travelling, and he mentions that the year before he went to the Baikal, where there once had been a lake and Russians had lived there. After the success of Urga,27 Mikhalkov stayed in the fast lane and continued to pursue his Eurasianist aims without wavering. Through the important functions he has held and his closeness to the inner circle of the Putin administration28 he could achieve far-reaching aims, as for instance the transfer of the mortal remains of Ivan Il’in from Zollikon in Switzerland to Moscow (2009).29 Just in time for the run-up to the re-election of President Putin in 2012 Mikhalkov completed a TV documentary about Il’in,30 which he personally presented at the Astana Film Festival in 2011. In his interviews and public appearances in Astana, Mikhalkov promoted his idea of Eurasianism, which is – similar to Il’in’s – first of all the idea of an intact Russian empire. As he says, none of the Central Asian states on their own would be needed by anyone. Only Eurasia as a whole under the leadership of Russia could confront an ageing Europe. He wants to strengthen the common biological, cultural and civilizational memory (tsivilizatsionnaiia pamiat’)31 in order to reinforce the “Russian world” (Russkii Mir). In spite of all the freedoms Eurasian regions should have, Mikhalkov thinks that it is inevitable to have Moscow as a strong centre which consolidates the necessary vertical power of Eurasia.32 Mikhalkov did not tire of repeating that the peoples of the former Soviet Union cannot live without each other and that they need a dictatorship (diktatura), because any authoritarianism – even a cruel one – creates order and is much better than anarchy.33 GENGHIS KHAN ON THE RUSSIAN SCREEN A similar line of argumentation to Mikhalkov’s is pursued by film director Sergei Bodrov. Bodrov grew up in the far east of the Soviet Union, more specifically in Khabarovsk and on the Pacific coast. He has lived in Los Angeles since 1992, but is still preoccupied with the fate of Russia, which he considers in the context of Eurasianism. As he said in a 2015 interview: “Russia should have turned to its East already a long time ago. We keep creeping towards the West, which we do not understand. And they do not understand us. We are an Asian country, there are our roots. … We should learn from the East – endurance and wisdom.”34 In his feature film Mongol (2007)35 Bodrov captures the early years of Genghis Khan on screen and portrays the ruler as the personification of



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the virtues ascribed to the nomads by Trubetskoi. The film tells us that Temudzhin (Temuchin), as the ruler was called before he became Genghis Khan, is in constant mortal danger. The danger comes from foreign Mongol and Turkic tribes, who poison his father, kidnap and impregnate his bride Berte (or Borte) and enslave Temudzhin together with his mother. Owing to his exceptional willpower and a capacity for suffering exceeding human measure, he manages to survive these tortures as well as the ordeal he is put through by hostile Tibetan Tanguts. During this time his determination grows to unite all Mongol tribes under his own leadership, even against their resistance and regardless of the death toll. To facilitate his scheme he issues a binding law, violations of which are draconically punished. The film ends when Temudzhin is acknowledged as the Great Khan.36 Genghis Khan’s motivation, as portrayed in the film, is that of a loving father who wants to protect his little family to spare them the experiences that he had to go through. In the end, the movie creates a type of conqueror who is diametrically opposed to earlier representations of a fierce and gruesome Genghis Khan. He is a smart young man, with a winning smile and an appearance which evokes that of Jesus Christ. As Oleg Petrov, in a critical commentary about the film, has put it, “Suddenly Sergei Bodrov exchanged all dark colours for light ones. He transformed Genghis Khan into a good spirit, smiling, wise, just, handsome, loving and patient.”37 At first glance Mongol is a typical Hollywood-style melodrama. It is, as Alexander Prokhorov states in his review, “a story of love, fall, and redemption, in fact a story of a bourgeois nuclear family threatened by historical forces beyond the heroes’ control at the film’s beginning. The lovers’ many separations caused by larger-than-life historical forces, enhanced by superb camerawork, editing, and CGI, end up with the eventual reunification of the protagonists.”38 Apart from that, a closer look into the film shows that its main topic is a reinterpretation of the two and a half centuries in which the Russian territories were a province of the Tatar-Mongol empire. As mentioned before, Eurasianists (both classical and neo) do not consider this period as a “Tatar Yoke,” but rather as a productive time in which a common great empire could emerge. The carnage perpetrated by the Mongols or the burning of Russian cities are not paramount in their discourses but the desirable realization of this grand project. Beginning with classical Eurasianism, the key figure for all processes of reassessment and identification in this regard is Genghis Khan, who conquered the whole of Central Asia, China, Khoresm and Transcaucasia.39 Trubetskoi is therefore full of praise for the ruler, who had succeeded in fulfilling the necessary and inevitable destiny of this region by creating this empire: “Thus Genghis Khan was successful in accomplishing the historical task set by the nature of Eurasia, the task of unifying this entire area into a single state, and he accomplished this task in the only way possible – by first

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unifying the entire steppe under his power, and through the steppe, the rest of Eurasia.”40 For Trubetskoi Genghis Khan was the decisive milestone until Russia itself could take up the torch: “In time the unity of Eurasia began to break up. Instinctively the Russian state has strived and is striving to recreate this broken unity; consequently, it is the descendant of Genghis Khan, the heir and successor to his historical endeavors.”41 Kievan Rus’, however, could never have been the successor of Genghis Khan, because its doom had already been mapped out: it was not united, had frequent internal armed conflicts, and it would never have been able to conquer the steppe.42 As a main source for his film Bodrov uses Boris Vladimirtsov’s biography Chingis-Khan (1922).43 Vladimirtsov (1884–1931), an Orientalist from St Petersburg and a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, supported the ideas of the Eurasianists. For the biography he utilized reports by Western travellers as well as Chinese and Mongolian sources like The Secret History of the Mongols (Sokrovennoe skazanie o mongol’skom narode). This Mongolian epic narrative was written around 1240 and depicts the ruler in a very favourable way, since it was composed for the dynasty of the Chingisids, the descendants of Genghis Khan. In his characterization of the ruler, Vladimirtsov includes such motifs as the one that Genghis Khan spared loyal servants of his enemies but executed betrayers of their former master, or the motif that Genghis Khan had been neither cruel nor bloodthirsty.44 Another motif from Secret History is the idea of Genghis Khan being a godsend, a tool of God Tengri, the “Everlasting Blue Sky.” Such a direct bond with a Supreme Being affords Bodrov an opportunity to include in his film dramatic atmospheric phenomena such as thunder and lightning and to introduce a grey wolf as the incarnation of God Tengri and as a guardian spirit for Temudzhin. Another point which Bodrov takes from Vladimirtsov is Genghis Khan’s “aristocratic” attitude. For Vladimirtsov it bears repeating that Genghis Khan was free of any democratic impulses whatsoever. He emphasizes that the council which the ruler occasionally convened in critical situations must not be compared to a (bad) Western-style parliament, since the ruler’s power was without any limits, and he ends the first part of his book full of admiration: “Now all bowed to the iron will of the iron Emperor, who had travelled the hard way from a half-starved existence in a forsaken tent of the Onon, to the imperial headquarters of an organized Empire.”45 The image of Genghis Khan shown by Vladimirtsov and taken over by Bodrov is that of a strong charismatic personality who successfully pursues a great idea and realizes it with single-minded discipline. Another important source of inspiration for Bodrov is the writings of Lev Gumilev, whose theories he finds to be entirely suitable for his intentions: “I studied all relevant publications on the Russian-Mongolian period. But Gumilev’s ideas proved to be the closest ones to my mind.”46 He shares



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Gumilev’s belief in the importance of passionarity in general, and particularly that of Genghis Khan: “Genghis Khan is the answer to the question as to where Russia comes from. His passionarity has caused great changes in the Russian mentality.”47 In his theory of ethnogenesis, Gumilev assumes that a successful unification of different ethnic or tribal groups into a common superstate could only come about by a “passionary push” (passionarnyi tolchok) which happens every few centuries by means of forces in the cosmic biosphere and initiates a sudden mutation with a rapid increase of bioenergy.48 As far as today’s Russia is concerned, Gumilev notes that the country would only have a future if it realized its Eurasian basic constellation,49 since such a realization had worked once before, after the decline of the Kievan Rus’. In his works on Russian history Gumilev puts great emphasis on Genghis Khan’s life.50 In his opinion, Genghis Khan divides people in passionaries and sub-passionaries. Accordingly he only chose passionaries who excelled in bravery, ingenuity and stamina to serve him. Similar to the negative characteristics attributed to sedentary tribes by Trubetskoi, Gumilev believed that sub-passionaries always valued security and well-being more than personal dignity and honour and that among them betrayal and cowardice were the order of the day. Since the number of sub-passionaries rises with the age of a state and the concomitant level of civilization increases, it is no surprise that the highly civilized Tanguts could not withstand Genghis Khan’s onslaught and that their whole civilization was razed to the ground. As Bodrov’s film only covers the first part of Genghis Khan’s biography, the annihilation of the Tanguts is not yet an issue; however, the decadence and feminization of masculinity is indeed part of the film’s message and becomes evident in the sequences depicting the captivity of Temudzhin by the Tanguts. Bodrov also takes up the attributions given by Gumilev to Mongol passionaries: people of “long willpower” (liudi dlinnoi voli) or “white bone” (belaia kost’).51 In the movie Genghis Khan’s long willpower shows during his long imprisonment by the Tanguts52 in a cage open to the looks of the public: Temudzhin perseveres there, in his outward appearance unmoved, immersed in meditation, but with his inner eye directed towards the future. And likewise a “white bone” plays an important role in the movie as a symbol of Temudzhin’s unwavering relationship with his first wife Borte. The heavy emphasis on the leadership abilities of the so-called “strong leader” raises the question why somebody like Genghis Khan with his drastic measures and his craving for evermore territories could be considered a “good ruler.” But Gumilev as well as Bodrov emphasize the impact of peace and order inside the country – an argumentation which is similar to that of Stalin’s rule. Moreover, Gumilev states that Genghis Khan cannot be accused of the sort of desire for world domination as that which motivated Adolf Hitler: “His only aim was to unify all the tribes of the Great Steppe in order

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to establish peace, order, and security. He was forced into all his other wars from the outside. It is a different story that his opponents regarded his policy of unification and – to use a modern term – his security policy as the prelude to world-wide expansion.”53 Gumilev argues further that Genghis Khan actually annihilated only a few of the many tribes he annexed, and that not even all of the latter had been conquered. To the contrary, many of them became allies, as was the case with the successors of the Kievan Rus’. From the viewpoint of cultural studies Bodrov’s film Mongol has made a contribution to the ongoing positive reinterpretation of the figure of Genghis Khan in Russia and his inclusion in the pantheon of Russian heroes. Through this appropriation Genghis Khan has become – from a Russian viewpoint – “one of us” and the one who has supplied the blueprint for controlling Eurasian space. Two years after Mongol was released, another director turned his attention to the figure of Genghis Khan. Andrei Borisov in his movie Taina Chingis Khaana (The Secret of Genghis Khan)54 also focuses on the ruler’s childhood and early years, and his eulogizing presentation leaves no doubt about his positive assessment of Genghis Khan’s undertakings. Despite being essentially a rather bad film, it is still worth discussing since it represents an important political project, a kind of demarcation involving influential people of the Russian Autonomous Sakha Republic. The film is based on the novel Po veleniiu Chingiskhana (1998; At Genghis Khan’s Behest) by the Iakutian writer Nikolai Luginov. Luginov, who like Bodrov relies on Vladimirtsov as a main source, also had a hand in the screenplay. But the point is that Luginov is not only a writer but also is active as the vice president of the Theological Academy (Akademii duchovnosti) of the Sakha Republic, which is responsible for the moral and ideological orientation of the population. Director Borisov fulfils a similarly political function as Iakutia’s culture secretary, and he is fully aware of the movie’s political implications. In an interview he expressed his conviction that it was time to create a Russian Genghis Khan of our own.55 This may be a sideswipe directed at his neighbours in Central Asia. At the same time, however, it is also a swipe against the centralizing tendencies of the Russian federal government itself and an argument in favour of the autonomy of Sakha. In an interview Borisov points out that Genghis Khan, as the founder of the new Eurasian civilization, was an overly tolerant ruler with respect to ethnic and, particularly, religious matters.56 With this claim Borisov takes up the argumentation of Gumilev, who holds the view that ethnic groups should not be dissolved within a superstate. Gumilev (unlike Trubetskoi) founded his theory on the “countervailing assumption of the absolute distinctiveness and existential non-combinability of these ethnic units”57 – a position which is one of the main sources of the enduring enthusiasm for Gumilev’s ideas



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among the Turkic ethnic groups in Russia and in the post-Soviet Central Asian states. Moreover, Borisov aims to counter the attribution of a leadership to Russian Orthodoxy, favoured among (classical and neo-) Eurasianists. Instead, the movie establishes Tengrism as an alternative equal to Christianity and presents it not only as a widespread religious belief among the Mongols, but even as a proto-monotheistic religion. This is underlined by one of the minor characters, a Catholic missionary who had to flee from inquisition when he announced that the Mongolian Tengrists are Christians too. But the main argument in favour of monotheistic Tengrism is developed around the figure of Genghis Khan himself. Early on in the film it becomes clear that Temudzhin is the chosen one by the Sky-God Tengri, and Borisov pushes the argument still further by presenting the story of God the Father and Son similar to the Bible. One of many allusions to the Bible is the wording of Genghis Khan’s prayer before the decisive battle, which is closely based on Psalm 17, when David beseeches the Lord to help him to destroy his wicked enemies. MONGOLIAN CIVILIZATION VERSUS RUSSIAN CULTURE The issue of religion and the relations between the Russian and the Mongolian cultures are also central to the film Orda (The Horde; 2012).58 Although this film is a counterpoint to the widespread positive picture of the peaceful and productive coexistence of Mongols and Russians, it nevertheless refers vividly to Eurasianist positions. The main argument of the film is that the Mongols may have had a highly developed civilization, but they did not have any spirituality or culture whatsoever. Since the empire rested only on physical power and violence against its subjects, it was doomed to collapse as soon as suppression and the martial impetus weakened. Director Andrei Proshkin and scriptwriter Iurii Arabov maintained in their interviews that there was neither a unifying idea nor a unifying bond within that empire, since the minds and souls of the people were totally unaffected. And, moreover, there was no belief in a unifying divine power, and the practised religious tolerance was based on pragmatism only. The film implies that Russia’s eventual succession to that empire was based on the metaphysical power of Russian culture and the Orthodox Church, connecting people not only horizontally with each other but also vertically with God. The film was generously sponsored by Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia, an organization of the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as by government-related Gazprom, the Bank of Moscow and the governmental Russian Film Promotion Fund. The film is set in the mid-fourteenth century, at a time when the Russian territories were still part of the Golden Horde’s empire. In their capital

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New Sarai, Taidula, the imperious mother of Khan Dzhanibek, and to a considerable extent the power behind his throne, is inexplicably struck blind. When the healers and shamans summoned to the capital prove unable to restore her eyesight, Aleksii, the metropolitan of Moscow, is sent for. Should he fail to perform the required miracle, Moscow will burn. When Aleksii indeed fails to perform the expected miracle and Taidula’s blindness remains unchanged, he is humiliated, stripped of his garments and ordered to return naked to Moscow on foot. However, Aleksii chooses to remain in Sarai, where he falls in with a group of enslaved Russians. Wishing to share in their inhuman sufferings, Aleksii works alongside the slaves tending a furnace under gruelling conditions. And as if these tortures were not enough, Aleksii is then forced by the Khan to watch as one in three slaves is killed, while his offer to sacrifice his own life is rejected. Aleksii’s attempt to halt the slaughter of his companions by hurling himself into the flames is thwarted and he is thrown out into the street – naked, covered in burns, more dead than alive. Then suddenly everything changes: Aleksii is taken to the palace, where he is bathed and treated as a guest of honour, before being sent on his way to Moscow, equipped with everything that one might need on such a long journey. This unexpected turn of events is motivated by Taidula’s spectacular recovery – a miracle ascribed by the palace to the ministrations of Aleksii.59 Aleksii, the metropolitan of Moscow (1292?–1378), is known to have journeyed to Sarai in 1357. Likewise, the restoration of Taidula’s eyesight is mentioned in the classical Russian chronicles of this period and, following Aleksii’s canonization in 1428, was written into the hagiographic literature commonly available in pre-revolutionary Russia. However, the film departs from the historical record in its depiction of Aleksii as a martyr who takes it upon himself to share the sufferings of Jesus Christ and, like Jesus, descends into the depths of hell. This is underscored by the film’s naturalistic depiction of Aleksii’s tortures, frequently shot in close-ups, which take up a quarter of the film’s duration (min. 73–101). In accordance with the film’s internal logic, it is through these agonies that Aleksii – like Jesus resurrected – is able to transcend the physical and restore Taidula’s vision through the will of God as an intangible and purely spiritual force. This experience transforms Taidula: she is haunted by moral qualms in the wake of the most recent murder and she realizes the fast-approaching collapse of her empire, because it has been built on pragmatism, oppression and conquest alone. The film Orda is to be understood as a warning directed at contemporary Russia and its political class. The message is that Russia is about to lose its spirituality, to take a road of pure pragmatism and, as a consequence, to disappear from the face of the earth just like the Mongol Empire with its capital Sarai. Unlike Sarai, which in the film is characterized by luxury, trade, suppression and torture, medieval Moscow presents an image of a harmonious coexistence of the metropolitan, the grand duke and the people. Rather than



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commanding, the duke asks the metropolitan to shoulder this heavy task. The metropolitan, in turn, welcomes the grand duke in an amicable fashion and receives him unceremoniously in his modest home, while washing his feet in a wooden tub in the yard. The farewell of the metropolitan is attended by all – high and low – even those who are unable to make any practical contribution due, for example, to mental or physical disability. The film suggests that Russia is currently going through hell just like it did under the Mongols of old, so that it may once again emerge renewed and strong like a phoenix from the ashes. Intertextually this message is linked to the occult mytho-historiosophy Roza Mira (The Rose of the World) by Daniil Andreev,60 which has quite an impact in Russia today.61 Iurii Arabov, one of the most famous contemporary scriptwriters, is a confessing adherent of Andreev’s book.62 With its gnostic worldview, The Rose of the World circulated in underground circles in 1960s Soviet Russia. It has not only attracted a large readership since its publication in 1991 but is even seriously talked about among theologians and philosophers. The Rose of the World encompasses an entire universe of parallel worlds in which the struggle between the forces of light and darkness rage. The earth is located at an interface within this universe so that the victories and defeats of these forces have a direct impact on the development of entire cultures and individuals, a phenomenon which Andreev refers to as “metahistory.” A special role is played by the “metahistory” of Russia, where the battle rages for the collective feminine soul of Russia, which has been kidnapped by the forces of darkness and has been held captive ever since. On the earth this capture was echoed in the form of the Mongol conquest, and it took centuries for terrestrial Russia to recover even halfway and to regenerate the strength of its metahistory and metaculture. It succeeded, however, only by means of the Janus-faced demon of statehood, which at the same time has protected as well as threatened the country since then. There are many similarities between the worldviews of Andreev and Il’in, since both are of the opinion that evil forces conceal their real intentions and pursue the aim of undermining and defeating Russia under false pretences and in a variety of disguises. Both authors predict a hard and difficult time and great dangers for Russia’s fateful post-Soviet era, in which it will face the greatest dangers imaginable. Andreev and scriptwriter Arabov also share Gumilev’s conviction that Russia’s destiny will be decided mainly by transcendent forces and that in its capacity as a superetnos Russia will be given a role that reaches far beyond its geographical borders. What however distinguishes Proshkin and Arabov from the neo-Eurasianist pro-Putin school of thought is the idea that the entire political and economic leadership class is a chimera of the forces of darkness, a tool of the Antichrist. In their opinion this class only pretends to act in the best interest of the country’s well-being, while in reality it is the one which – in cooperation with the West – pursues globalization and capitalism and the sell-out of the country.

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Thus Arabov and Proshkin see themselves as representatives of the “genuine” conservative revolution, which has to be defended against a hostile leadership elite.63 It is, however, striking that the arguments of the two sides are confusingly similar: Russia is being threatened by the West, homosexual tendencies are sneaking into the country in order to corrode it and Russia’s spirituality and national identity are at stake.

CONCLUSION The films analysed in this chapter demonstrate that the ideas of neo-Eurasianism have found their way into popular culture. Moreover, they demonstrate that one way or another the directors pursue political and/or ideological goals with their films: Nikita Mikhalkov supports the official government line, Andrei Borisov is backing the Russian Autonomous Republic of Sakha against the federal government and Sergei Bodrov advocates a general change of perspective from the West to the East. Andrei Proshkin wants his film to be understood as criticism of the present leadership class, which he understands as totally Westernized despite its pretences at being Eurasianist. He leaves no doubt about the superiority of the Orthodox Church and Russian culture on Eurasian territory. Religion is a recurrent issue of negotiation in the movies: unlike Andrei Proshkin’s Orda (2012), the films Taina Chingis Khaana (2009) and Mongol (2007) emphasize the tolerance of Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde with regard to questions of belief as postulated by classical Eurasianists, and introduce Tengrism as a religion of equal value into the debate. Moreover, there is a striking inclination towards esoteric and occult patterns of explanation, either in the sense of Lev Gumilev’s cosmic bioenergy or in the sense of Daniil Andreev’s gnostic struggle between the powers of darkness and light. The re-evaluation of Genghis Khan as an unquestioned hero and his admission to the Russian pantheon of heroes is consistent with the current longing for a strong man who holds the empire together and saves the future. All these films – regardless of their attitude towards government policy – share the basic premises of neoEurasianism: Russian Eurasia is regarded as a counterpart to the West and a fundamental alternative to globalism and capitalism and as such deserves to be appreciated as a global power as well as the new salvation for the world. NOTES 1. For more details see Mark Bassin, “Russia between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geographical Space,” Slavic Review 50 (1991), accessed May 21, 2015, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2500595.



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2. Survey of the Levada-Tsentr, “V kakoi strane vy khoteli by zhit’?” February 22–25, 2008, accessed May 21, 2016, http://www.levada.ru/old/press/2008031304. html. 3. Nikolai Kofyrin, “Novaia natsional’naia ideia,” Filosofskii shturm, December 7, 2013, accessed May 21, 2016, http://philosophystorm.org/node/4697. See also the official site of the Russian government administration: Virtual’naia Rossiia, “Novaia natsional’naia ideia,” accessed May 21, 2016, http://philosophystorm.org/ node/4697http://virru.ru/nacionalnaya-ideya-novoy-rossii. 4. Paul Pryce, “Putin’s Third Term: The Triumph of Eurasianism?” Romanian Journal of European Affairs 13 (2013): 35, accessed May 21, 2016, http://ssrn.com/ abstract=2233842. 5. For more details, see Mark Bassin, “Eurasianism ‘Classical’ and ‘Neo’: The Lines of Continuity,” in Beyond the Empire: Images of Russia in the Eurasian Cultural Context, edited by Tetsuo Mochizuki (Sappuro: Slavic Research Center, 2007), accessed May 20, 2016, https://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/coe21/publish/no17_ ses/14bassin.pdf. 6. In the following sections I will use Bassin’s terms “classical” and “neo.” 7. There are differences of opinion among the various groups of neo-Eurasianists concerning the degree of homogenization and/or the cultivation of ethnic specifics. But, overall, genetic descent, which is central to most other nationalist ideologies, does not play a decisive role in this argumentation: it is not the tribal unit which is central, but rather the living together, the defense against common enemies and the forming of common rituals. The essential linking bond is culture, which offers a manifold ideological arsenal. 8. Lev Gumilev is the son of Anna Akhmatova and her first husband Nikolai Gumilev. 9. For a short synopsis, see Andrei Zavalii, “Passionarity,” accessed May 30, 2016, http://odip.webs.com/Passionarity.pdf. 10. Stefan Wiederkehr, Die eurasische Bewegung: Wissenschaft und Politik in der russischen Emigration der Zwischenkriegszeit und im postsowjetischen Russland (Köln et al.: Böhlau, 2007), 208. 11. Considering all the White emigrants, whose ideas are now being recycled in the sphere of neo-Eurasianism, Sonja Margolina diagnoses in her article that the Whites finally have become victorious over the Reds a hundred years after the October Revolution. Sonia Margolina, “Putinskaia ideologiia ‘Velikoi Rossii’ v Evrazii: belye pobedili,” Inosmi, December 3, 2014, accessed May 21, 2016, http://inosmi. ru/world/20141203/224669217.html. 12. Ivan Il’in, “Chto sulit miru raschlenenie Rossii?” (1950), accessed May 21, 2016. http://www.pravoslavie.ru/2444.html. See also Anton Barbashin and Hannah Thoburn, “Putin’s Philosopher: Ivan Ilyin and the Ideology of Moscow’s Rule,” Foreign Affairs, September 20, 2015, accessed May 20, 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2015-09-20/putins-philosoph. 13. Iurii Kofner, “Ivan Il’in—Evraziiskii filosof Putina,” accessed May 21, 2016, http://cont.ws/post/129049 v.3.10.2015. See also the report of the meeting of the “Eurasian Club Moscow” (November 17, 2014) by Artem Strokin, “Ivan Il’in i

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evraziistvo: Evraziitsy obsudili proroka Russkoi vesny,” Kont, December 2, 2014, accessed May 21, 2016, http://cont.ws/post/67211. 14. According to this counting, the first political theory is Western liberalism, the second is Bolshevism, and the third is fascism. The relevance of this theory in the context of neo-Eurasianism can also be concluded from the fact that A. Dugin dedicated a whole book to this topic: Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia: Rossiia i politicheskie idei XXI veka (Sankt Peterburg: Amfora, 2009). 15. Birgit Beumers, Directory of World Cinema: Russia 2 (Bristol: Intellect Books 2015), 6. For a concise overview on film production in Russia see Birgit Beumers, “Film production in Russia an Industry?” in Directory of World Cinema: Russia, ed. Birgit Beumers (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011), 16–21. 16. According to the statistics of Miroslava Segida, 113 historical films were produced in this decade. Miroslava Segida, “Some Statistics on Film Production and Distribution 2002–2012 (Segida-Info),” KinoKultura 44 (2014), accessed May 21, 2016, http://www.kinokultura.com/2014/44-segida.shtml. 17. Norris, Stephen M., Blockbuster History in the New Russia: Movies, Memory, and Patriotism (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2012), 311. 18. Mikhail Morozov, “Istoriia v stile ‘pop’: Simuliatsiia natsional’noi idei,” Iskusstvo kino 1 (2009), accessed May 26, 2016, http://kinoart.ru/archive/2009/01/ n1-article2. 19. Norris, Blockbuster History, 309. 20. Vlad Strukov, Contemporary Russian Cinema: Symbols of a New Era (Edinburgh: University Press, 2016), 7. 21. Vadim Kozhinov, “I nazovet menia vsiak sushchii v nei iazyk,” Nash sovremennik 11 (1981), accessed May 21, 2016, http://rulibs.com/ru_zar/sci_history/ kojinov/b/j7.html. It is worth mentioning that Kozhinov was quite taken with Lev Gumilev’s doctrines, and, moreover, they both shared a marked anti-Semitism. 22. My translation. Nikita Mikhalkov, “My ne zadvorki Evropy, my—vorota v Aziiu: Beseda s kinorezhisserom Nikitoi Mikhalkovym,” interview with Edmund Iodkovskii, Rossiiskaia gazeta, December 14, 1991. 23. Urga – Territoriia liubvi (Close to Eden; Territory of Love), France, USSR 1991, director Nikita Mikhalkov, script by Nikita Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibragimbekov. 24. Eva Binder, “Urga,” in Heimatfilm international, edited by Jürgen Heizmann (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2016), forthcoming. 25. Nikolai Trubetskoi, “Nasledie Chingiskhana: Vzgliad na russkuiu istoriiu ne s Zapada, a s Vostoka” (Berlin, 1925). English version: “The Legacy of Genghis Khan: A Perspective on Russian History Not from the West but from the East,” in Nikolay Sergeevich Trubetzkoy, The Legacy of Genghis Khan and Other Essays on Russian Identity, edited and with a postscript by Anatoly Liberman, preface by Viacheslav Ivanov (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1991), 161–231. 26. Trubetzkoy, “The Legacy of Genghis Khan,” 171. 27. The film won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival (1991), and the Best European Film at the European Film Awards, and it was nominated for the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category (1993).



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28. In 1993 Mikhalkov became the successor of Dmitrii Likhachev as the chairman of the governmental board of financial aid for Russian cultural affairs (Rossiiskii fond kul’tury). In 1998 he was elected chairman of the Russian Film Association (Soiuz kinomatografistov RF). One year later he became a member of the executive committee of the political party “Nash dom—Rossiia,” which represents the interests of the Russian Putin-Medvedev administration. On February 6, 2012, he was officially registered as a supporter (doverennoe litso) of presidential candidate Vladimir Putin. 29. Il’in was buried at Donskoi Monastery, as he had laid down in his will. Acting on a “suggestion” by Vladimir Putin, oligarch Viktor Veksel’berg financed the expensive transfer. 30. Russkii filosof Ivan Il’in, Russia 2011, dir. Nikita Mikhalkov. 31. Nikita Mikhalkov, “Pochemu nam nuzhen tsar’?” interview with Elena Getmanova, Diapazon, November 29, 2011, accessed May 21, 2016, http://www.diapazon.kz/aktobe/aktobe-face/41141-nikita-mihalkov-pochemu-nam-nuzhen-car.html. 32. Nikita Mikhalkov, “Rossiia—eto otdel’naiia tsivilizatsiia, most mezhdu Vostokom i Zapadom,” interview for Moskovskii mezhdunarodnyi kinofestival’, Regnum July 22, 2011, accessed May 21, 2016, http://www.regnum.ru/news/1427935.html. 33. Mikhalkov, “Pochemu nam nuzhen tsar’?” 34. My translation. Sergei Bodrov, “Idem na Vostok,” interview with Nataliia Vladimirova, Portal Vladivostok [no date], accessed May 20, 2016, http://vladivostok. com/media/10/12/bodrov.asp. 35. Mongol, Germany, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, 2007, director Sergei Bodrov Sr., script by Arif Aliev and Sergei Bodrov Sr. 36. The film was originally planned as a trilogy, but, despite the announcements of Bodrov, the second part has not been carried out so far. 37. My translation. Oleg Petrov, “Mongol,” review of the film Mongol in Uralweb, October 13, 2007, accessed May 21, 2016, http://www.uralweb.ru/poster/ reviews/1896.html. 38. Alexander Prokhorov, “Making a Transnational Film: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of Sergei Bodrov’s ‘Mongol,’” review in Kinokultura 20 (2008), accessed May 21, 2016, http://www.kinokultura.com/2008/20r-mongol.shtml. 39. The fact that Genghis Khan’s military commanders Subutai (Subedei) and Jebe dealt the first serious blow to the Kievan Rus’ in the Battle of the Kalka River is not being stressed in Eurasian (classical and neo) discourses. 40. Trubetzkoy, “The Legacy of Genghis Khan,” 166. 41. Trubetzkoy, “The Legacy of Genghis Khan,” 167. 42. Trubetzkoy, “The Legacy of Genghis Khan,” 162. 43. B[oris] Ja. Vladimirtsov, Chingis-Khan, Berlin, Peterburg, Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Grzhebina 1922. English version: B[oris]. Ya. Vladimirtsov, The Life of ChingisKhan, translated from Russian by Prince D. S. Mirsky (New York, London: Benjamin Blom, 1969 [1930]). 44. Vasilii Bartol’d, “B. Ia. Vladimirtsov: Chingis-khan: Retsenziia,” in Vasilii Bartol’d, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. V (Moskva: Nauka, 1968), 448, accessed May 20, 2016, http://booksshare.net/index.php?id1=4&category=history&author=bart old-vv&book=1968t5&page=213.

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45. Vladimirtsov, The Life of Chingis-Khan, 87. 46. My translation. Sergei Bodrov, “Sergei Bodrov-starshii snial fil’m o Chingiskhane,” interview with Mariia Ganiianc, RIA Novosti, August 23, 2007, accessed May 20, 2016, http://ria.ru/culture/20070823/73997546.html. 47. Sergei Bodrov, “Chingiskhan i segodnia vlastitel’ umov,” interview with Narodnaia gazeta, February 7, 2008, accessed May 20, 2016, http://ng.sb.by/ soyuznoe-veche/article/sergey-bodrov-chingiskhan-i-segodnya-vlastitel-umov. html?AJAX_MONTH=12&AJAX_YEAR=2014. 48. Lev Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera Zemli (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo LGU, 1989 [doctoral thesis 1979]). 49. Lev Gumilev, “Skazhu vam po sekretu, chto esli Rossiia budet spasena, to tol’ko kak evraziiskaia derzhava,” interview with Igor’ Savkin, Sotsium 5 (1992), accessed May 21, 2016, http://www.patriotica.ru/religion/gumilev_int.html. 50. See Lev Gumilev, Drevniaia Rus’ i Velikaia Step’ (Moskva: AST, 2007 [1989]), 431–478; or, in a more popular form, Ot Rusi do Rossii (Moskva: AST, 2008 [1992)], 147–167. 51. Gumilev, Lev, and V[iacheslav] Ermolaev, “Chingiz-khan – neozhidannyi rakurs,” introduction to Chingis-khan, kak polkovodets i ego nasledie, by E[rendzhen] Khara-Davan (new edition, Alma-Ata: KRAMDS, 1992), accessed May 21, 2016, http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/articles/Article51.htm. 52. According to Gumilev, Temudzhin was kept prisoner by the Tanguts for ten years, which is his explanation for the gap in Genghis Khan’s biography. Moreover, Bodrov has taken up Gumilev’s assumption, that Genghis Khan is the biological father of neither his first son nor the second one. See Gumilev, Drevniaia Rus’ i Velikaia Step’, 461. 53. Gumilev and Ermolaev, “Chingiz-khan.” 54. Taina Chingis Khaana (Po veleniiu Chingiskhana; The Secret of Genghis Khan), Russia, Mongolia, USA 2009, director Andrei Borisov, script by Nikolai Luginov and Nikolai Karpov. 55. Vlad Dracula, “Retsenziia na fil’m ‘Taina Chingis Khaana,’” Kinoafisha [no date], accessed May 21, 2016. http://www.kinoafisha.info/reviews/7666885/. 56. Ondur, Saiana, “Po veleniiu Chingiskhana,” review of the film Taina Chingis Khaana in Tsentr Azii, November 10–17, 2006, accessed May 21, 2016. 57. Mark Bassin, “Eurasian Visions of Russian Nationhood in Space,” in Mastering Russian Spaces: Raum und Raumbewältigung als Probleme der russischen Geschichte, edited by Karl Schlögel (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2011), 61. 58. Orda (The Horde; The Golden Empire), Russia 2012, director Andrei Proshkin, script by Iurii Arabov. 59. The synopsis of the film is taken from my review “Andrei Proshkin ‘The Horde,’” Kinokultura 50 (2015), accessed May 20, 2016, http://www.kinokultura. com/2015/50/fifty_orda.shtml. 60. Daniil Andreev (1906–1959) is the son of writer Leonid Andreev. He began writing the book in 1950, during a decade of incarceration in prisons and prison camps (1947–1957), and completed it in 1958, several months before his death. Roza mira (Moskva: Prometei, 1991), accessed May 20, 2016. http://magru.net/



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pubs/5567/Daniil_Leonidovich_Andreev_Roza_Mira. http://magru.net/pubs/5567/ Daniil_Leonidovich_Andreev_Roza_Mira. 61. See Mikhail Epstein, “Daniil Andreev and the Russian Mysticism of Femininity,” in The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, edited by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1997), 325–355. 62. For example, the radio interview of Iurii Arabov with Ksenia Larina, Ekho Moskvy, July 15, 2012, accessed May 20, 2016. http://echo.msk.ru/programs/ dithyramb/908499-echo/. 63. In this context, it is worth mentioning that Andrei Proshkin since 2011 has been chairman of the film assocciation Kinosoius, which was founded in opposition to Nikita Mikhalkov’s presidency of the association Soius kino. Moreover, in 2014, Proshkin signed an open letter making a stand against the military actions of Russia in Ukraine.

Chapter 6

Empires of the Mind Eurasianism and Alternative History in Post-Soviet Russia Konstantin Sheiko and Stephen Brown

After the collapse of communism, Russia became an ideological no man’s land, where advocates of neo-liberalism, Slavophilism, Eurasianism, neoPaganism and neo-Nazism waged a war for supremacy. In recent times, the Putin administration appears to have declared Eurasianism the victor in this contest and has adopted its ideology.1 The rise of Eurasianism has coincided with the flourishing inside Russia of alternative history, which, in the two decades since 1991, has become an important feature of Russia’s cultural landscape.2 Alternative history is deeply hostile to the West and nostalgic for an imaginary Eurasian past, where a mighty Russian empire once held sway. According to alternative history, the “real” history of Russia has been hidden to suit the political agendas of various powerful entities such as the Orthodox Church, the Romanov dynasty, the Soviet state and Western imperial interests. While conventional Eurasianists like Trubetskoi and Gumilev championed multiethnic and internationalist perspectives, alternative history offers a Russified version of Eurasianism, which serves to embolden Russians in their claims to ownership of the lands that once formed the Russian empire and much else besides. In what is proving to be their greatest success to date, alternative historians are on track to achieve what their medieval forebears did not dare to dream of – the expulsion of the Mongols from the pages of Russia’s history. If classical Eurasianism embraced the Mongols and their heritage, alternative historians have transformed the Mongol Empire into a Russian horde. The remarkable popularity within Russia of this seemingly preposterous idea can only be understood in the context of the troubled postcommunist transition of Russia from empire to nation state.

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ALTERNATIVE HISTORY AS POST-SOVIET THERAPY The central figure in alternative history is Anatolii Fomenko, a celebrated Soviet-era mathematician, who began his maverick historical research in the 1970s.3 Fomenko first came to prominence when he claimed that he had pinpointed the moment when history – and indeed time itself – was stolen from Russia. The villain of the piece was Joseph Scaliger (1540–1609), the French chronologer, who made a significant contribution to the conventional dating of the ancient world.4 According to Fomenko, Scaliger and his fellow conspirators added millennia to the historical record, in the process antedating the Greek, Roman and early Christian periods, all with a view to enhancing the prestige of the West. Dazzling his readers with his knowledge of astronomy and ancient astrological tables, Fomenko came to the conclusion that history was considerably briefer than hitherto suspected. The events of ancient Rome took place during the Italian Renaissance, Jesus Christ was a medieval pope who was crucified in Constantinople (the real Jerusalem), while Christopher Columbus was a seafaring Cossack.5 In the process of uncovering this Western plot to misdate ancient and medieval history, Fomenko claimed to have recovered the lost traces of a once mighty Slav-Turk Khanate that ruled Eurasia for centuries and founded the world’s key civilizations.6 According to Fomenko, the Romanovs, a Westernizing, aristocratic European clique, usurped power from the ailing khanate, readily adopted Scaliger’s lies and hid the truth about Russia’s Eurasian past. Pseudohistory is not unique to the former Soviet space, but its purpose there is much more patriotic than the “weird history” of the West. For example, the claim that the Chinese and not Columbus discovered the Americas has generated some interest in the West,7 but this type of “discovery” would not excite a Russian audience. Alternative history is patriotic history with a missionary purpose and a messianic zeal. Alternative history points to the Russian origins of just about every important development in human history. Alternative History understands the term “Russia” not just as a reference to ethnic Russians, but also as a melting pot of peoples, mostly Slavs and Turks, who occupied the “Russian lands,” that is, an area roughly equivalent to the space of the former tsarist and Soviet empires. Alternative history has as its focus precisely the same “ecumene” as classical Eurasianism. While an outsider might assume that this pseudohistory amounts to little more than the demented ravings of a radical fringe, alternative history has mounted a serious challenge to conventional scholarship, at least in terms of the popular understanding of history inside Russia.8 Alternative history is part of the standard range of opinions and interpretations that Russians now expect to find on bookshop shelves dedicated to history and even in the curriculum of schools and universities.9 In the 1990s, Fomenko and his colleagues developed the business model that many other alternative historians



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would follow. They formed research teams, wrote countless books that recycled material from earlier works, entered into disputes with – and cited – one another’s offerings to give the impression of critical scholarly mass and used the growing number of publications as evidence that alternative history was in fact the new and legitimate replacement for Soviet-era propaganda. Conventional historians reeled in horror and embarrassment, but were mostly silent about the claims of their eccentric rivals.10 The result was that Fomenko’s prodigious output – and the tomes of his alternative collaborators and rivals – took pride of place on the history shelves of the bookshops. Alternative history now has its own authorities, heroes, academic superstars, journals, footnotes and extensive bibliographies. In more recent times, it has been subjected to trenchant criticism as a parody of proper scholarship, but the criticism of the conventional historians offers evermore opportunity for scholarly martyrdom and publicity.11 Alternative historians do not play by any conventional rules. If they make a claim that is easily disproved, alternative historians will note that speculation and historical imagination are legitimate tools of the historian’s craft. If flaws are found in a conventional account or primary source, then this is loudly proclaimed to be a definitive proof of a plot to hide the real history. The formula has proved highly successful. While serious scholars researching ancient and medieval Eurasia mostly publish their books in print runs of a few hundred copies, alternative historians are able to use well-known publishers with print runs in the tens of thousands.12 More recently, alternative history has colonized the Internet, which is now full of historical documentaries and learned speculations about the “alternative” history of Russia. According to alternative history, the earliest inhabitants of Eurasia resembled modern Russians in appearance and customs. They overachieved in multiple spheres as warriors, farmers, pastoralists and empire builders. Toughened by the difficult climatic conditions of the north and superbly attuned to their forest and steppe environments, they left their biological and cultural imprints embedded in all of the great world civilizations from Japan to the Americas. Numbered among Fomenko’s fellow travellers was Valerii Demin, a philosopher and neo-pagan who was a tireless promoter of a Russian Hyperborea, the northern land or continent that Plato thought lay “to the north of Thrace.” Hyperborea was, according to Demin, a Russian cradle of world civilization.13 Alexander Asov, a Soviet-era Komsomol leader and journalist, is the driving force behind the popularity of the Book of Veles, a notorious forgery that is widely cited among alternative historians as a Runic record detailing the migrations of the early Slavs from their Arctic home across Siberia and the southern steppe. Book of Veles supposedly demonstrates the close connection between the Russian language and the earliest Sanskrit and Indo-Iranian writings.14 Vladimir Shcherbakov, a Soviet-era science-fiction writer has popularized the idea of a Russian connection to Atlantis, the island

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home of many of the world’s great civilizations.15 Valerii Chudinov, a Sovietera philosopher and academic, is the most prolific and the most notorious alternative expert on the origins of the Russian language. Chudinov insists that Russian is the oldest language in the world and that Russian inscriptions have been found on the Moon and on Mars, and in messages transmitted from the photosphere of the Sun.16 The writers cited above received their education and started their careers during the Soviet period. By and large, alternative historians have academic qualifications, but are trained in disciplines other than history. They are the flotsam and jetsam of the erstwhile Soviet intelligentsia, now cast adrift after the collapse of communism. Those who grew up in the Soviet school system were taught that aircraft, space travel, electricity, television and the victory over the Nazis were Russian achievements.17 As a result, Russians have always set high standards when judging the “greatness” of their homeland. The citizens of the Soviet Union learned that Russia was first among equals as a multiethnic state: at the same time, Russia was under constant threat of attack from a vengeful, jealous and misanthropic West. Alternative history has become a form of therapy for those who are disillusioned with the new market capitalism and nostalgic for a more virtuous Russia that preceded the “false and corrupt present.”18 As the Soviet empire disintegrated during the Gorbachev era, a far more impressive, albeit imaginary, geopolitical entity was coming into being. It is the distant medieval and ancient periods of history that have proved most attractive for alternative historians. Not only is there more room for speculation the further back in history one travels, but it is also the case that neither the Soviet Union nor the Romanov empire offered satisfactory models for the challenges of the twenty-first century. Communism, after all, was an imported Western idea and the Soviet model of a repressive state and a state-run economy failed to compete economically with the West. As for the Romanovs, their empire too looked to the West as its model and, in the process, relegated Russia to a secondary status among the European empires. Alternative history aims to reverse Russia’s imperial decay by revealing to Russians the true dimensions of their past glories. It claims an ability to look past the lies and distortions of the communist and Romanov eras to the true history of an unknown Russia. As one Ukrainian historian has put it, alternative history is the “super-patriotic history of Russia in a Eurasianist spirit.”19 EURASIANISM AND THE SEARCH FOR A USEABLE PAST Eurasianism as a political ideology emerged in the early twentieth century as an attempt to rethink and reassess the past and future of Russia. In the imagination of the émigré Prince Trubetskoi, Russia was the inheritor of



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Genghis Khan’s legacy.20 The poet, Aleksander Blok, reinforced this prosteppe sentiment when he endorsed the legacy of the Scyths, albeit from the communist side of the barricades. Trubetskoi and Blok differed in their politics but were united in their celebration of Russia’s links to Eurasia, a connection that, in their view, made Russia unique and virtuous as a civilization. While, in the aftermath of the First World War, Europe embraced the nation state as the building block of international politics, Eurasianists argued instead that the world was in fact divided into competing geopolitical civilizations.21 Trubetskoi and Blok agreed that Eurasia has to be defined in opposition to the West: the message was that the Russians really are from the East, much as the Western stereotyping of Russia had long suggested, and that the West feared Russia for good reason. Changing the image of the steppe would take time, however. In the Stalin era, the Mongols were still mostly looked upon as evil occupiers: when Bukharin claimed that Stalin was operating in the manner of Genghis Khan, it was not meant as a compliment.22 After Stalin’s death, the Soviet Union produced a richer theoretical framework for Eurasianism. Lev Gumilev was the principal contributor to this development. Gumilev attempted to demonstrate the “symbiosis” that typified the relationship between sedentary Slavs and nomads from the steppe, arguing that the negative perceptions of the steppe dwellers were fabricated centuries later by corrupt and prejudiced Eurocentric historians.23 In the Brezhnev era, the Soviet state was not yet ready to jettison the shibboleths of class war and historical materialism. Gumilev’s name remained known only to a narrow group of specialists. It was the collapse of communism that offered an unprecedented historical opportunity for a revival of interest in Gumilev’s ideas and the Eurasianist project more broadly. The most vexing question of the 1990s was: What sort of state would Russia become? Here, Russia’s imperial history loomed large. The Russian empire and the Soviet Union were the world’s largest states and ruled over the Eurasian heartland. These empires were arguably the most successful imperial projects of the last five hundred years and home to more than one hundred ethnic groups.24 Scholars of nationalism have long noted that Russian nationalism was slow to develop because of the fact that Russians were for centuries the dominant element in a multinational empire. Nationalism in the sense of a people who laid claim to a defined territory was virtually unknown in Russia up until the end of the Soviet period; the term “empire” has retained a positive connotation in Russia long after it passed out of favour in the West.25 As one scholar has noted, “It was hard for Russia to free itself from the legacy of the Empire, just as it was hard for many Russians to free themselves from certain Empire-oriented psychology.”26 Yet, in the wake of the Soviet collapse, it was clear that Russia’s imperial projects had failed or were in the process of failing; the Romanov and Soviet empires passed into history in the course of a single century. It was not just

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the communist utopia that failed; a similar fate awaited the once promising Slavophile project. According to the Slavophiles, Russia was destined to play a great civilizational role in the future of Europe and the world, as a part of a pan-Slav confederation that was to stretch from Poland all the way to the Pacific.27 Post-Soviet geopolitics offered little encouragement to the idea of Slavic unity and friendship. Wars between Slavs broke out in former Yugoslavia, while Poland distanced itself as much as possible from Russia despite the collapse of communism. The allegedly “brotherly” Slavic nations from the Soviet period – Ukraine and Belarus – voted for independence in 1991. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great champion of Slavophilism, was fired from his increasingly unpopular weekly radio and television appearances in the 1990s, and became instead another anti-Western voice closely associated with the Putin regime.28 Russia, Ukraine and Belarus showed few signs of coming together again as a single state. By 2014 there was an open war between Russians and Ukrainians fighting over Crimea and eastern Ukraine. While the new democratic Russia of the early 1990s sought to display its pro-Western and pro-European credentials, eagerly cooperating with the Western powers on foreign-policy issues, it never succeeded in claiming a place in the European family of nations. Putin, when he first came to power in 1999, portrayed himself as a technocrat and his administration as nonideological. It seemed that Russia’s elite might be content with joining the ranks of the second-tier Western powers.29 Leading neo-Eurasianists such as Aleksandr Dugin found themselves on the fringe of Russian political life in the early 1990s. Dugin characterized Putin’s foreign policy in the aftermath of the events of 9/11 as pro-Western to the extreme.30 Yet, in studiously avoiding the official ideologies of the tsarist and Soviet regimes, Putin, like Yeltsin, failed to articulate or embed “a consistent narrative embodying a vision of either Russia’s future or of how it was to be constituted.”31 It was this ideological void at the centre of the Russian state that opened the door to Eurasianism in its many forms. To quote Rustem Vakhitov, an ethnic Bashkir who has become a prolific exponent of Eurasianism, “A state of ideological vacuum is not sustainable, and, according to all rules of science, this vacuum will be filled with some kind of ideology sooner or later.”32 Confronted by an ever-diminishing range of choices, the Putin administration has championed a new Eurasian Union as the most promising of its options. This seems the most likely vector of Russia’s political development for the foreseeable future. By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, Russian public opinion too had undergone what one researcher described as “a deep transformation of Russian identity, in the course of which its Eurasian component is becoming stronger.”33 In its war against Ukraine, Russia garnered support from Cossacks in the North Caucasus as well as an array of non-Slavic ethnic groups such as Chechens, Buriats



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and Yakuts.34 Russia has found its allies in the East just as the Eurasianists had always predicted it would. Eurasianists argue that their historical narratives are enabling Russians to bring their collective consciousness into alignment with these changing geopolitical realities. They are helping Russians to rediscover the positive connotations that the East once evoked in Russia’s historical imagination. When Ivan the Terrible conquered the khanates of Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556), the gateway to Siberia opened. The reputation of this Russian East changed rapidly from one of threat to one of opportunity. The Urals, the Volga and the Don, and the vast, limitless Siberian heartland became the continent of freedom and opportunity where the service nobility, runaway serfs, retired soldiers, Cossacks and fleeing Old Believers forged a new civilizational foundation for Russia’s expansion. It was a land free of serfdom and far from Moscow’s bureaucracy. The East sometimes challenged Moscow’s central authorities (most notably through the rebellions of Razin and Pugachev), but these were mostly remembered as just wars waged by freedom-loving Cossacks against “evil boyars,” an image reflected in countless songs and tales. It helps the Eurasianist cause too that the most important historical commemorations in Russia – the expulsion of the Poles in 1613, the reunification with Ukraine in 1654, the victories over the Swedes in 1709, over Napoleon in 1812 and over the Nazis in 1945 – symbolize important, albeit deadly, encounters with the West. This raises the question of what Eurasianism really means in post-Soviet Russia. Is this to be a partnership of Slavs and non-Slavs cohabiting the vast expanse of Eurasia or is it simply a Trojan horse for the next phase of an empire dominated by ethnic Russians? According to alternative history, the second option is the logical evolutionary path for Russia.35 Alternative historians are in furious agreement that Russia needs to learn the lessons of the past. The pages of alternative history are full of dire warnings that post-communist Russia faced an existential crisis precisely because it lacked a guiding ideology. Alternative historians have saluted the progress made by writers such as Gumilev in challenging the accepted wisdom, but argue that the classical Eurasianists have failed to follow through to the logical conclusions of their research. While there are often heated debates among Russia’s alternative historians, three key themes dominate. First, alternative history looks to find an age of Russian greatness in the past created in the special world of the forest-steppe zone that toughened bodies and sharpened minds. Second, alternative history offers textbook examples of an authentic and just “welfare state” that existed in Russia since time immemorial; it urges its readers to chart a future course based upon an understanding of Russia’s unique history at the heart of the Eurasian landmass. Third, it is the story of a noble Russia laid low by perfidious and evil enemies. Unique in history, Russia was a civilization builder whose

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empire served, rather than exploited, its multinational host. Russia was the “good empire,” the archetypal antithesis of the European colonizers and the American neocolonialists. These three themes neatly overlap with the Eurasian worldview: first, Russia is the inheritor of the great legacy of Genghis Khan, the enemy of the West, the creator of a benevolent and just state, and the protector of the weak. Second, Eurasia is a peculiar geographic space, which almost coincides in its borders with those of the former Russian and Soviet empires. Third, this soft domestic touch must work hand in glove with a strong foreign policy directed at the enemies of Eurasia, especially the United States, Great Britain and Western Europe. Thus, the Eurasian project envisages a multiethnic and multi-confessional empire that avoids the colonialism, neocolonialism and religious persecution associated with Western imperialism. Western political, cultural and economic expansion is the main danger to the distinctive development of the Eurasian ethnoses, whether Slavic, Turkic or Finnic.36 Dugin has claimed that Russia’s task consists in “taking over the Tatar geopolitical mission in the name of Eurasia” while confronting “the Roman-German world whose pathological culture is a dead-end of degradation and decay.”37 Most alternative historians would wholeheartedly endorse these sentiments. THE WAR AGAINST THE MONGOLS Conventional Russian history leaves much to be desired from the standpoint of alternative historians. The standard histories tell us that the Eastern Slavs emerged from the Pripyat’ marshes at the end of the Roman period.38 Their achievements went unremarked by the great civilizations of that era. The first recognizable state, Kiev Rus’ was a creation of the Vikings who brought order to the unruly and uncivilized Slavs. Kiev Rus’’s cultural advances – Christianity, writing, architecture and art – were borrowings from Byzantium. Kiev Rus’ proved no match for the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century. The ever-servile Slavs suffered for two more centuries under this “Tatar Yoke” before the princedom of Muscovy finally outgrew its role as a tax collector for the Mongols. For the writers of alternative history, this conventional story is as illogical as it is insulting. A new and more glorious “creation myth” was required, one that was suitable to an empire that laid claim to the Eurasian heartland. Alternative historians insist that the vast southern steppe that connects modern-day Ukraine, south Russia and central Asia could not have been as thinly populated in ancient times as conventional history suggests. A major historical entity such as the Slavs – more than half of Europe’s population at the beginning of the twenty-first century – could not have simply emerged from the



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swamps of Eastern Europe in the sixth century CE. Is it not far more likely, so alternative history argues, that Slavs, proto-Slavs or Russians occupied the forest-steppe since time immemorial? The hocus-pocus of alternative history has gathered credibility from the fact that the Eurasian steppe really was home to some very remarkable and very old civilizations. The most spectacular discovery of the late Soviet period was the archaeological dig at Arkaim in the southern Urals. Unearthed in 1987 and dated to the second millennium BC, Arkaim and other sites contained evidence that the Sintashta culture had expertise in metallurgy and the manufacture of chariots. Arkaim became a magnet for Russia’s neo-Nazis and neo-pagans when reports emerged that its building plan resembled – at least in the drawings that circulated widely in the 1990s – the shape of a swastika.39 For conventional scholars, there is no connection between modern Slavs and the Indo-Iranian-speaking Sintashta.40 But such details do not offer much of a hindrance for alternative history where we learn from countless self-styled experts that the Indo-Iranian languages are very closely related to Russian.41 It also needs to be noted that the patriotic reimagining of the past has a long history in Russia, stretching back at least to the eighteenth century polymath Mikhail Lomonosov. Lomonosov is a hero of alternative history because he rejected the histories produced by the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, an institution dominated in the eighteenth century by German scholars, whom the Romanovs imported into Russia. It was a trio of German scholars who developed the now standard view that Vikings founded Kiev Rus’ in the ninth century AD.42 Lomonosov kicked off the longest-running dispute in the historiography of Russia when he argued that the Germans had hidden the truth and distorted the evidence of the chronicles; in fact the Vikings were nothing more than the hired military retinues of Slav princes.43 Lomonosov entrenched his reputation among Russian patriots when he described the pre-Kievan ancestors of Russia as the Scyths and Sarmatians of the southern steppe who, according to him, boldly and successfully took on the might of the Greco-Roman world. If the Vikings represented a problematic page in the history of Russia’s state formation, the same was certainly true of their Eastern counterparts, the Mongols. It would be difficult to overestimate how pivotal the Mongols are to Russian history, and the popular understanding of that history. In the words of one historian, Russians “apart from the Mongol interlude, have never been under any alien power.”44 Central to the story of Mongols is the imperial achievement of Genghis Khan. One scholar has described how, in “one of the most amazing story in human annals,” this builder of the world’s largest empire grew up in a remote and non-literate corner of Eurasia, united the warring Mongol tribes, established an empire that stretched across Asia

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into Europe and the Middle East and introduced trade, writing and multiconfessional tolerance everywhere he went.45 There are indeed few moments in world history to match the drama of the sudden irruption of the Mongols onto the world stage. For alternative history, this story is remarkable most of all because it is mistaken about the identity of the Mongols. Alternative historians have sought to capitalize upon the revisions found in more recent conventional historiography to promote their own radical reinterpretation of this Eurasian Horde. The inhabitants of Kiev Rus’ called the Mongols “Tatars” and the two hundred-year occupation of Russia became the Tatar Yoke.46 The impression created by church chroniclers, Romanov historians and Stalin-era propaganda was that of a massive foreign invasion: six hundred thousand Mongols bore down on Kiev Rus’ as part of Batu Khan’s invading horde in 1237. The Mongols dealt ruthlessly with opposition and demanded tribute from the Slavs whose princes travelled to the Mongol capital of Sarai to pay their taxes. It was only in the fifteenth century that Russia’s Christian princes drove out the Mongols and saved Russia from conversion to Islam. Conventional scholarship has over time radically altered our image of the Tatar Yoke. While the invasion force may have numbered more than one hundred thousand fighters, it is possible that there were as few as four thousand Mongols.47 This hybrid host was mostly Turkic speaking and included allies from among the Slavs as well.48 The primary sources are full of references to Russians and Tatars working together as joint administrators of the “Tatar Yoke.” Not only that, Slavic culture thrived, as did the Orthodox Church. Only later did the story emerge of Russia’s Christian princes freeing themselves from foreign tyranny.49 It must be noted that, while a minority view, sympathy for the Mongols was by no means absent among the great imperial historians of Russia. Russia’s first imperial historian Nikolai Karamzin, for example, came to the conclusion that the Mongols did much more good than harm. Apart from a short initial period of violence, the Mongols ultimately brought an end to inter-feudal fighting in Russia and their legacy included religious tolerance, the building of new monasteries and new opportunities for commerce. Wrongly stigmatized as barbarian invaders, the Mongols built upon existing relationships between steppe peoples and their Slav neighbours.50 Karamzin famously judged that “Moscow owed its greatness to the Khans,” a quotation that has made its way into the narratives of just about every alternative historian publishing in Russia. Trubetskoi embraced the figure of Genghis Khan and Gumilev vehemently rejected the “black legend” of a “Tatar Yoke.” He noted that Mongols, Polovtsy-Kipchak, Slavs and Turks coexisted and intermingled for centuries before and after Genghis Khan’s invasion in 1223.51



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Alternative historians use these revisions as their starting point and move the conversation in radically new directions. For Fomenko, what Western Europeans called a Mongol invasion or Eastern despotism was simply Russia in its pure form. Medieval Russia was a vast sponge soaking up peoples, ideas and institutions but somehow clinging to a core identity, which, for Fomenko, combined Slavic and Turkic elements. Nomads cross-fertilized Russia in demographic and cultural terms but emerged far more changed than the Russians themselves. Russian identity is expressed in its greatness and the respect that other nations felt obliged to show Russia. Medieval Russia was a military society, according to Fomenko, where membership depended not upon blood or citizenship but loyalty to the horde, host or state. Its modern remnant is the Cossack model of a warrior society geared permanently to war and accepting warriors from any region or ethnicity so long as they are prepared to serve the ataman, the elected chief of the host. According to Gumilev, the Borjigin clan, whose descendants included Genghis Khan, comprised tall, white-skinned, fair-haired and blue-eyed people.52 Alternative historians would cite this claim as evidence that Genghis Khan and his clan came from Russia and not far-off Mongolia. For Fomenko, the Mongol Khanate was a horde dominated by Slavs and Turks in which the former played the role of an older brother. At the same time, Fomenko Russified the history of the steppe in a way that would make earlier Eurasianists shudder. While Gumilev celebrated the Russian hero Alexander Nevskii as Batu Khan’s godson, Fomenko went further and claimed that Alexander Nevskii was Batu Khan himself. Romanov historians hailed the Battle of Kulikovo Field in south Russia in 1380 when Moscow first mounted a successful military challenge to the Tatars. According to Fomenko, the battle took place in Moscow and was part of a civil war between Russian princes. Meanwhile, the Mongols in central Asia had no idea that they ruled an empire and learned about their conquests from Western sources. While alternative historians do not speak with one voice, they agree that Genghis Khan was not a Mongol from far-off Mongolia. Demin, a neo-pagan, claimed that Kiev Rus’ was the left flank of a European crusade directed towards the East. The northern city state of Yaroslavl opposed the crusade and challenged Kiev’s power. Yaroslavl invited troops from the eastern part of the realm who took on the name “Tatars” to distinguish themselves from Christian Kiev. The “Tatar Yoke” was in fact a war of liberation waged by the eastern part of the Slavic realm. According to Demin, these Slavic Tatars put an end to the massacres and wars that typified Christian Kiev Rus’.53 Similar themes are encountered in the alternative speculation offered by Nikolai Levashov, an academic who argued that the Christians were murderous barbarians and manufactured the concept of the “Tatar Yoke” to explain the massive depopulation that occurred after Vladimir the Great forcibly baptized

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Kiev Rus’ in 988. Alexander Zhabinskii supports Fomenko’s revisions to conventional chronology, but he thinks that the Mongols were refugees from Byzantium and not a part of some Slav-Turk Khanate. Reeling from the Latin Crusade, the Byzantine authorities set up a horde to oppose Western Europe and it was this horde that arrived in Russia.54 Alexander Bushkov initially followed Fomenko’s hypothesis, but later contradicted him, changed his mind and came up with a new theory that is still very different to Fomenko’s. At first Bushkov argued that there were no Mongols; rather than a foreign conquest, the Tatar “invasion” was part of a Russian civil war, a final episode in a feudal squabble among the Russian princes. The “fairy tales” about evil Tatars were introduced into Russian history during later periods of the Romanov rule.55 Later, Bushkov had a change of heart, arguing that there was an invasion from the East, although the invaders were not ethnic Mongols, as we know them from Mongolia, but Turks from the steppe. In other words, the Russians and the Turks were one and the same, and the religion of Russia before the Romanovs was Islam. Bushkov’s new position brought him into line with the speculations of Murad Adzhi, an ethnic Tatar and Soviet-era economist, who identifies himself as a Kipchak or Polovets, a descendant of the ancient state of Desht-i-Kipchak.56 Like Fomenko, Adzhi also enjoyed a degree of academic recognition and fame: his account of Turkic languages, literature and history has become a part of the curriculum at the pedagogical faculty of Baku Slavic University. Adzhi argues that two hundred thousand years ago, an advanced civilization comprising tall and blonde people of Turkic blood lived in the Altai Mountains, which, in fact, are home to a number of important archaeological discoveries. They were the forefathers of the future Turks and Turkic was the language of Europe up until the sixteenth century. Prior to the nineteenth century, Slavs were called Caucasian Tartars and they spoke the same language as the Turks. Adzhi notes that there are millions of Slavs with typically Turkic facial features who mistakenly believe that they are Russian.57 It was the ancient Turks’ monotheistic worship of Tengri that gave birth to Christianity. Adzhi, like Fomenko, thinks that the peoples of Eurasia are ultimately a single ethnos but, unlike Fomenko, considers that Turks were the first among equals. In its quest to eliminate the Mongols from Russian history, alternative history is looking forward to the day – and it may not be far off – when Russian history books refer simply to the Horde, rather than to the Mongols. Today if one uses the search term “Mongols” on Russian YouTube, many slick and well-produced historical “documentaries” relentlessly repeat the claim that, while a horde ruled medieval Russia, there were no Mongols. The titles of these documentaries reveal their purpose: Genghis-khan – dva veka obmana (Genghis Khan – Two Centuries of Deceit); Istoriia Rossii, ili kak skryli nashe proshloe (The History of Russia, or How Our Past Was Concealed);



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Mif o Tataro-Mogol’skom ige (The Myth of the Tatar-Mongol Yoke); Territoriia Zabluzhdenii (Land of Deception); Rus – Orda (Rus Is the Horde) and countless others. From the observations of the authors of this chapter, about nine out of every ten Russian Internet offerings on the subject of the Mongols make the case that there were no Mongols. These historical re-creations offer a mix of alternative historians and more conventional scholars from respectable academic institutions. We are told over and over that the mighty Mongol invasion force left no imprint in Russia, that Mongolia itself contains no evidence that it was once the site of an empire, that Mongols could not have invaded Russia in winter and that Mongolia has no folk songs or legends that recall the conquest of Russia. Chudinov, the alternative linguist par excellence, assures us that the Mongols left no linguistic traces in Russia: such an outcome is inconceivable, we are told, if there really were a Mongol invasion. The far-fetched claims of charlatans like Chudinov are embedded alongside the opinions of more conventional scholars, always with the same end in view. We are told that on the basis of genetics, “modern Russians should look like the Kazakhs if the Mongols stayed here for 250 years.” The fact that they do not is a damning proof that the story of a Mongol invasion is a lie. The audience is left with the impression that alternative history and science are in agreement, while conventional history was nothing more than political propaganda. Alternative historians are not government trolls and their imperial imaginations far outstrip the cautious and venal aims of Russia’s present rulers. Nonetheless, the present geopolitical agenda of the Putin administration and the underlying themes developed by alternative historians over the past two decades have in recent times come closer into alignment. Putin has promoted a Eurasian Union as a political, economic and moral alternative to the neocolonialism and decadence of the West. In 2011, Putin confirmed his Eurasianist credentials in a question-and-answer session on Russian television. Describing Dmitrii Donskoi’s victory over the Mongols in the Battle of Kulikovo Field in 1380, Putin noted that the Russians won because of their superior cavalry tactics. Putin surprised at least part of his audience when he opined that these “Russian” cavalrymen were in fact “baptised Tatars.” In this battle, Russians and Tatars fought on both sides, a phenomenon that, according to Putin, could now be viewed “without any ideological prejudices.” This is music to the ears of alternative historians, another step towards a version of history in which the Mongol invasion becomes a medieval civil war within the realm of a multiethnic horde. Meanwhile, Russian media is happy to play into the hands of the preferred conspiracy theories of alternative history. In 2015, Russian television filmed Putin visiting the Russian Geographic Society, where the president urged a closer reading of history while poring over a medieval map whose title

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Velikaia Tartariia or “Great Tartary” was clearly visible. The television coverage of this event gave the impression that the maps were deliberately hidden from history and that Putin was being apprised of new and important information about the Russian past. This political theatre blurs the borders between conventional scholarship and alternative history in a way that can only benefit the latter. Increasingly, important figures within the Putin administration’s ideological apparatus use language that resembles the discourse of alternative history. Viacheslav Nikonov, a chairman of the Duma’s Education Committee, divined that the Russians were “a branch of the Aryan people” who peacefully populated Eurasia, brought civilization to the coldest part of the planet, defeated Nazism and paved the way into space. Here Nikonov sums up the key elements of the nationalistic discourse which Eurasianism and alternative history share: there is continuity between the Aryans, who brought language and civilization to Eurasia, and Russians; the latter overachieved in terms of civilizational achievements; and they built their empire peacefully.58 These Russian accounts of a great, but unknown, past must be viewed within a broader “competition for ancestors” in the former Soviet space.59 Once the straightjacket of historical materialism was removed, ethnic rivalry has become the preferred motor of history throughout the former Soviet space. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus compete for the inheritance of Kiev Rus’, the first state of the Eastern Slavs. Some Tatar politicians too are reassessing history in a way that destabilizes the older view of a Mongol invasion. Nazif Mirihanov, Tatarstan’s representative in Moscow (1999–2010) is of the view that the term “yoke” appeared only in the eighteenth century. Before then, the Slavs did not suspect that they lived under foreign occupation. The Russian empire, Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation are the inheritors of the Golden Horde, a Turkic empire created by Genghis Khan. As for why Russia rejected its Golden Horde heritage, Mirihanov blames the Romanovs who chose to bandwagon with their fellow Europeans and erase all traces of Russia’s steppe ancestry. Meanwhile, Russians, Tatars, Chuvash, Bashkirs and other Turkic nations lay claim to the glory of the Bulgar Khanate of the tenth century. Patriotic writers in Belarus have engaged in fierce polemics with their Lithuanian neighbours over ownership of the Great Lithuanian Princedom.60 When in 2015, President Poroshenko of Ukraine referred to the medieval state of “Rus-Ukraine,” a term promoted by the Ukrainian nationalist historian Hrushevskii, he was making the point that Ukraine grew out of Kiev Rus’ and that modern-day Russia arose much further to the east. In Ukraine, the view that Russia developed historically as part of the Mongol, Tatar, Finno-Ugric – as distinct from the Slavic – world is becoming more prominent as a consequence of the conflict in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Russians, according



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to this view, were and remain Mongols wearing a Slavic mask.61 All of this popular rewriting of history to suit the needs of the present serves to discredit more cautious academic scholarship and gives the impression that a true, but repressed, history of Eurasia is in the process of being rediscovered. Alternative history is one of the means by which Russians are reimagining their place in the world and simultaneously resolving the dilemma of Russian identity. The collapse of the Soviet Union ended the regulated competition for ancestors and triggered a flood of claims and counterclaims as the newly established nations invented traditions and embarked upon a frantic search for a useable past. It is no coincidence that the spectacular rise in popularity of alternative history in Russia began in the mid-1990s just as disillusionment with the new political and economic realities that followed the collapse of communism became widespread. The grandeur of a glorious past proved alluring to a Russian audience, brought up during the Soviet era on tales of greatness, empire and foreign plots. Russia’s alternative historians have transformed Gumilev’s concept of a settled agricultural Russia living alongside and interacting with a seminomadic and multiethnic steppe into a new historical entity. Alternative history tapped into what might be described as the default or path-dependent logic of Russia’s historical imagination. Amid the political turmoil, Fomenko and his like-minded acolytes and rivals offered a heady mixture of ethnic history and an idealized version of the Russian and Soviet empires relocated to their now mythologized ancient and medieval settings. In terms of popular history at least, the Mongol period is fast becoming unrecognizable to those schooled in the textbooks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Mongols, as a historical entity, are in retreat. Increasingly, in the popular imagination at least, the Mongol Empire is becoming an idealized version of the Russian or Soviet empires projected into the past. Alternative history, with its unbridled imperial and anti-Western imagination, is a key element in a campaign aimed at replacing the Mongols with a Russified horde. It is a conclusion that would surprise the founding fathers of Eurasianism, but one that suits the geopolitical realignment of Russia in the twenty-first century. The popular appeal of this historical fantasy may well stem from the fact that it eliminates from Russian history its only lengthy period of foreign occupation while promoting the notion of a just and true state that Russia lacked in the past and still lacks in the present. CONCLUSION Eurasianism operates at many different levels in present-day Russia. It is an intellectual idea, a political programme and, to some extent, government policy.

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For its supporters, Eurasianism has restored Russia’s sense of mission and, in often disturbing and fanciful ways, connected its past to its future. If the West has rejected Russia, then, historically speaking, it can be shown that Russia was never part of, and was always hostile to, the West. The writers described above fit broadly into this category of thinking. Alternative historians are convinced that the “correct” reading of the past will enable Russia to be reborn along the lines of the mighty Eurasian empires of the past. It is this emphasis upon ethnic Russian ownership of the Eurasian past that distinguishes the alternative historians from classical Eurasianists like Trubetskoi and Gumilev. Gumilev championed the idea of a symbiosis of the peoples of the steppe. While they went by different names, Turks, Mongols and Russians shared their common space, history and culture. For Fomenko, Trubetskoi and Gumilev got it partly right. They were correct when they denounced the lies of the Orthodox Church and the Romanov dynasty whose “black legend” demonized the steppe people and rewrote Russia’s history according to a “Western” script. Gumilev was correct when he looked to ethnic groups – not class and class warfare – as the true motor of history. Eurasianist research showed how connected and how similar in appearance the various inhabitants of the steppe were. What was lacking was the necessary conclusion that the greatest military defeat and foreign occupation in Russia’s history – the Mongol period – never occurred. Selecting his evidence in ways that were deeply frustrating to conventional historians, Fomenko led the way in declaring that a mighty khanate did indeed dominate Eurasia in the premodern period. The rulers of this khanate were not, however, ethnic Mongols in the sense of invaders from present-day Mongolia. Instead, the khans were white-skinned and blue-eyed, resembling the peoples that today are described as Slavs and Turks. Unlike the rapacious British, Spanish and American empires, the Slav-Turk khans brought prosperity, progress and a unique civilization to the steppe. This was a benevolent empire that defended its borders against foreign invaders, mostly from the West, who threatened the wealth and peace of the East. In many ways this was a fairy tale that had much in common with the Soviet-era histories that portrayed the Soviet Union as a land of peace and progress under constant threat from a warlike and jealous West. Alternative history was and remains a child of the post-Soviet era. The Gorbachev period revealed the extent to which conventional history was politicized and falsified in the communist era. From the mid-1980s, the Russian public was able to read about new discoveries that challenged traditional historical narratives; the message was that the authorities had deliberately withheld information to suit their political purposes. Meanwhile, the economic and political crises of the 1990s weakened both the Yeltsin



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administration and public confidence in a Western path to a brighter future. Mirroring the sudden collapse of confidence in Soviet ideology, liberal and democratic ideas rapidly lost support.62 The Putin administration, hesitatingly at first, has embraced Eurasianism in its efforts to offer the Russian public a new sense of Russia’s place and mission in the world. Eurasianists and alternative historians were outsiders at the beginning of the 1990s. Alternative history has profited from, but also can claim some credit for, the growth of Eurasianism as a popular ideology. Like classical Eurasianists, alternative historians agree that the steppe empires are central to the “true” Russian history. They agree too that there was a mixing of peoples on the steppe and that these peoples were shaped by their geopolitical location. Like Karamzin, Trubetskoi and Gumilev, alternative historians embrace the steppe heritage as the key to Russian greatness. The difference is that the mighty khanate imagined in alternative history is disturbingly free of Mongols. The Mongol invasion turns out to have been a civil war among various factions of the Slav-Turk Khanate. If there were ethnic Mongols in Russia, it was because they, like Lomonosov’s Vikings, were hired mercenaries of the white-skinned and blue-eyed khans. Alternative history is pseudohistory in the service of an emerging Russian nationalism. Its aim is to Russify the Eurasianist project in ways that would surprise and horrify Gumilev. Gumilev rejected the civilizational distinctions that supposedly divided Mongols and Russians; alternative history rejects the Mongols altogether. For Fomenko, history is on his side. Conventional historians had already demolished the Romanov and Orthodox Church myths that Russians and Mongols had nothing in common. Gumilev described the intermingling of ethnic groups and the common civilization of the steppe. President Putin himself has noted how complex the history of the medieval period was. The Internet is awash with documentaries that refer simply to the Horde (orda) and make no mention of Mongols except to deny that they were ever in Russia. Karamzin claimed the inheritance of the Horde for Russia; alternative historians have claimed the Horde itself.

NOTES 1. See, for example, Marlene Laruelle, “(Neo-) Eurasianists and Politics,” Russian Politics & Law 47(1): 90–101 (January 2009): 101. Andrei Tsygankov, “Vladimir Putin’s last stand: the sources of Russia’s Ukraine policy,” Post-Soviet Affairs 31:4 (2015): 279–303. 2. Marlene Laruelle, “Conspiracy and Alternate History in Russia: A Nationalist Equation for Success?” The Russian Review 71 (2012): 565–580. Stefanie Ortmann

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and John Heathershaw, “Conspiracy Theories in the Post-Soviet Space,” The Russian Review 71 (October 2012): 551–564. 3. Anatolii Fomenko and Gleb Nosovskii, Novaia khronologiia i konseptsiia drevnei Rusi, Anglii, Rima. Fakty, statistika, gipotezy (Moscow: MGU press, 1995, 1996). Fomenko, Nosovskii, Imperiia: Rus’, Turtsiia, Kitai, Evropa, Egipet. Novaia matematicheskaia khronologiia drevnosti (Moscow: Faktorial Press, 1996–1999). Fomenko, Nosovskii, Bibleiskaia Rus (Moscow: Faktorial Press, 1998, 2000). Fomenko, Nosovskii, Kakoi Seichas Vek? (Moscow: AiF Print, 2002). Fomenko, Nosovskii, Kak bylo na samom dele. Rekonstruktsiia podlinnoi istorii (Moscow: Astrel’, 2012). 4. For an account of Scaliger’s reasoning and Fomenko’s counterarguments, see Florin Diacu, The Lost Millennium: History’s Timetables under Siege (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). 5. Fomenko, Nosovskii, Imperiia: Rus’, Turtsiia, Kitai, Evropa, Egipet. Novaia matematicheskaia khronologiia drevnosti (Moscow: Faktorial Press, 1996–1999). Fomenko, Nosovskii, Bibleiskaia Rus (Moscow: Faktorial Press, 1998, 2000). 6. Konstantin Sheiko and Stephen Brown, History as Therapy, Alternative History and Nationalist Imaginings in Russia, 1991–2014 (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2014). 7. Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered America (Harper Collins, 2008). 8. Victor Shnirel’man, “Russian Response. Archaeology, Russian Nationalism, and the ‘Arctic Homeland’” in Philip L. Kohl et al., Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction, Commemoration, and Consecration of National Pasts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 32. See also Mikhail Khlebnikov, Teoriia zagovora (Moscow: Kuchkovo Pole, 2012), 411. 9. For an example of the “alternative” presence in the universities, see Alexander Guts, Mnogovariantnaia Istoriia Rossii (Moscow, St Petersburg: Poligon, 2001). 10. See Sheiko and Brown, History as Therapy, Alternative History and Nationalistic Imaginings in Russia, 1991–2014; Laruelle, “Conspiracy and Alternate History in Russia,” 575. 11. Igor Nastenko, ed. Antifomenkovskaia mozaika, 5 books (Moscow: Russkaia Panorama, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003). 12. For a fuller account of the popularity of alternative history, see Konstantin Sheiko and Stephen Brown, Nationalist Imaginings of the Russian Past. Anatolii Fomenko and the Rise of Alternative History in Russia (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2009), 17–18. 13. Valerii Demin, Giperboreia – kolybel’ tsivilizatsii (Moscow: Veche, 1997). 14. For more, see Dokumentika.org. “Sanskrit pokhozh na litovskiirusskii yazyk.” Accessed June 14, 2016, http://dokumentika.org/slavyan/ sanskrit-pochozh-na-litovskiy-russkiy-yazik. 15. Vladimir Shcherbakov, Asgard – gorod Bogov (Moscow: Fair-Press, 2000). 16. Valerii Chudinov, Russkaia osnova kitaiskoi pis’mennosti (Moscow: Traditsiia, 2012). For more, see http://chudinov.ru/. 17. Yuri Slezkine, “Who Gets the Past: Competition for Ancestors among NonRussian Intellectuals in Russia,” The Journal of Modern History 70:3 (September 1998): 754.



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18. Sergei Oushakine, “‘Stop the Invasion!’: Money, Patriotism, and Conspiracy in Russia,” Social Research 76.1 (Spring 2009): 71–116. 19. For this quote and more, see Peter Kraliuk’s article, “Bolezn’ evraziistva. Refleksiia russkogo samosoznaniia v ‘alternativnoi istorii,’” accessed June 14, 2016, http://via-midgard.info/news/analitika/bolezn-evrazijstva-refleksiya-russkogo.htm. See also Stefanie Ortmann and John Heathershaw, “Conspiracy Theories in the PostSoviet Space,” The Russian Review 71 (October 2012): 551–564. 20. Nikolai Trubetskoi, Nasledie Chingizkhana (Moscow: Eksmo, 2007). 21. Marlene Laruelle, “The Two Faces of Contemporary Eurasianism: An Imperial Version of Russian Nationalism,” Nationalities Papers 32(1) (March 2004): 115–136. 22. For the context, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, On Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics (Carlton: Victoria Melbourne University Press, 2015). 23. Sergei Beliakov, Gumilev, syn Gumileva: (biografiia L’va Gumileva) (Moscow: AST, 2013). Victor Shnirel’man and Sergey Panarin, “Lev Gumilev: His Pretensions as Founder of Ethnology and his Eurasian Theories,” Inner Asia 1 (2001). 24. William C. Wohlforth, “The Russian-Soviet Empire: A Test of Neorealism,” Review of International Studies Special Issue 5:27 (December 2001): 213–235. 25. For a discussion, see David Rowley, “Imperial versus nationalist Discourse: the case of Russia,” Nations and Nationalism 6:1 (2000): 24. Vera Tolz, Russia (London: Arnold, 2001), 70–73. 26. Anatoly Khazanov, After the USSR: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States (University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 38. 27. Laura Engelstein, Slavophile Empire: Imperial Russia’s Illiberal Path (Ithaca, NY, USA: Cornell University Press, 2009). 28. Robert Horvath, “Apologist of Putinism? Solzhenitsyn, the Oligarchs, and the Specter of Orange Revolution,” The Russian Review 70 (2011): 300–318. 29. For examples, see Vladimir Shlapentokh, “Is the ‘greatness syndrome’ eroding?” The Washington Quarterly 25:1 (2002): 131–146. 30. Dmitrii V. Shlapentokh, “Implementation of an Ideological Paradigm: Early Duginian Eurasianism and Russia’s Post-Crimean Discourse,” Contemporary Security Policy 35:3 (2014): 380–399. 31. Graham Gill, Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 212. 32. For this quote and more, see Vakhitov’s website, Nevmenander.net, “Rustem Vakhitov – Evrasiiskii proekt i ego vragi (kritika kritiki evrasiistva),” accessed June 14, 2016, http://nevmenandr.net/vaxitov/eurasiaenemies.php. 33. Andrei Andreev, “Europe or Asia,” Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences 80:5 (2010): 461–465. 34. Simon Shuster, “Why Chechens Are Fighting Chechens in Ukraine’s Civil War,” Time.com, May 26 (2015). 35. For an excellent summary, see Victor Shnirel’man, Who Gets the Past? Competition for Ancestors among Non-Russian Intellectuals in Russia (Washington: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996). 36. Marlene Laruelle, “The Two Faces of Contemporary Eurasianism: An Imperial Version of Russian Nationalism,” Nationalities Papers 32: 1 (March 2004). 37. Trubetskoi, Nasledie Chingizkhana, 10.

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38. For a discussion of this issue, see Nicolas Riasanovsky, Russian Identities: A Historical Survey (Cary, NC, USA: Oxford University Press, 2005). 39. Shnirel’man, “Russian Response,” 39. 40. David Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel, and Language (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 367. 41. Valerii Chudinov, Zagadki Slavianskoi Pis’mennosti (Moscow: Veche, 2002). 42. See Edward Thaden, “‘V. N. Tatishchev’, German Historians and the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences,” Russian History 13:4 3 (Winter 1986): 67–98. 43. Mikhail Lomonosov, Trudy po russkoi istorii, obshchestvenno-ekonomicheskim voprosam i geografii, 1747–1765 vol. 6 (Moscow, Leningrad, 1952). 44. Shnirel’man, “‘Arctic Remembrances,’” 32. 45. Cynthia Stokes Brown, Big History: From Big Bang to the Present (NY: The New Press, 2007), 171. 46. Charles Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde: the Mongol impact on modern medieval history (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 31. 47. John Fennell, Crisis of Medieval Russia, 1200–1304 (Longman: London, 1983), 84. 48. Peter Jackson, “From Ulus to Khanate: The Making of the Mongol States c. 1220–c. 1290,” in The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, ed. Reuven Amitai-Press and David O. (Morgan, Leiden: Brill, 1999). 49. See Charles Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Modern Medieval History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985) and Donald Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols. Cross-Cultural influences on the steppe frontier, 1304–1598 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 163. 50. Brown, Big History, 171. 51. For Gumilev, see Shnirel’man and Panarin, “Lev Gumilev,” 6–7. 52. Lev Gumilev, Drevniaia Rus’ i velikaia step’ (Moscow: Mysl’, 1992), 395–398. Dmitrii Ilovaiskii, the popular anti-Western nineteenth-century historian also emphasized that Genghis Khan was most probably of European appearance. See Dmitrii Ilovaiskii, Stanovlenie Rusi (Moscow: Charli, 1996), 499. 53. Valerii Demin, Ot ariev k rusicham (Moscow: Russkaia Pravda, 2003). 54. For a comprehensive collection of views of alternative historians writing about the Mongols, see the New Chronology website. 55. Alexander Bushkov, Neizvestnaia Aziia (Moscow: Olma Media Group, 2007). 56. Murad Adzhi, My—iz roda Polovetskogo; iz rodoslovnoi kumykov, karachaevtsev, kazakov, balkartsev, gagauzov, krymskikh tatar, a takzhe chasti russkikh i ukraintsev (Rybinsk, 1992), Adzhi, Polyn’ polovetskogo polia; Evropa, Tiurki, velikaia step’ (Moscow: Mysl’, 1998). 57. For Adzhi’s bibliography, see Adzi, Evropa: Tiurki, step’ (Moscow: Mysl’, 1998), Adzhi, Kipchaki. Drevniaia istoriia tiurkov i Velikoi Stepi (Moscow: OAO “Tipografiia Novosti,” 1998), Adzhi, Aziatskaia Evropa (Moscow: AST, 2006), Adzhi, Polyn’ Polovetskogo Polya (Moscow: AST, 2008), Adzhi, Bez Vechnogo Sinego Neba (Moscow: AST, 2010). 58. For a discussion of the ever-increasing popularity of the term Aryan, see Victor Shnirel’man, “Aryans or Proto-Turks? Contested Ancestors in Contemporary



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Central Asia,” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 37:5 (2009): 557–587. 59. Shnirel’man, Who Gets the Past? Competition for Ancestors among NonRussian Intellectuals in Russia, 1996. 60. See, for example, Timothy Snyder, Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press, 2003). 61. See, for example, Dmitrii Shlapentokh, “From Russian to Ukrainian Eurasianism: the new ‘historical’ friends and enemies,” Asian Ethnicity 14(4) (September 2013): 449–466. 62. Aleksandr Verkhovskii and Emil Pain, “Civilizational Nationalism. The Russian Version of the ‘Special Path,’” Russian Politics and Law 50:5 (September– October 2012): 52–80.

Part III

“PROJECT EURASIA” AND RUSSIA’S FOREIGN POLICY

Chapter 7

When Eurasia Looks East Is Eurasianism Sinophile or Sinophobe? Marlene Laruelle

During a visit to Beijing in July 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared to the Chinese media: “We know that Russia is both a European and an Asian country. We pay tribute both to European pragmatism and to oriental wisdom. This is why Russia’s foreign policy will be balanced.”1 Similar statements, repeated at regular intervals by the Russian president and members of his government, insist on the need for Russia to balance Europe and Asia. In many regards, this statement encapsulates Russia’s choice of a Eurasian policy, and Western pundits often see it as going hand in hand with Moscow’s declared goal of creating a Eurasian Union. However, the situation is more complicated than it may at first seem. Eurasianism promotes a “statist” perception of Russia, which means the state is understood as the supreme embodiment of Russia. Restoring the state and its great power thus constitutes a central element of any Eurasianist profession of faith. However, the term “Eurasia” conveys two quite different meanings. The first one views Russia as the natural and historical pivot of the surrounding region – more or less the entire post-Soviet space, excluding the Baltic states – and expects that the neighbouring countries should remain loyal to Russia because all belong to the same, “Eurasian” civilization or realm. The second meaning asserts that Russia should develop a foreign policy that interacts equally with Europe and with Asia. These two definitions are not synonymous: the second does not imply that Russia must dominate its neighbours, while the first provides no direction for Russian foreign policy, even if, in practice, Russia’s reaffirmation of its supposed leadership role across the post-Soviet space has created tensions with the West and therefore pushed Moscow to develop a strategic alliance with China. Putin advances both pro-Chinese and pro-Eurasian Union stances but this combination is unusual in the ideological currents of Eurasianism, as the 145

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latter has traditionally displayed an anti-Chinese stance. Today, only one proChinese historical trend can be identified, that of Mikhail Titarenko (1934– 2016), former director of the Far East Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In this chapter, I briefly discuss the Eurasianist and neo-Eurasianist perceptions of China and explore at length Titarenko’s unique Sinophile brand of Eurasianism. In conclusion, I claim that differentiating between proAsia/China and pro-Eurasian stances is critical if we are to grasp the ambiguous place of China in Eurasianism and, more broadly, to understand Russia’s ambivalence towards Beijing beyond the current strategic “honeymoon.” CLASSICAL EURASIANISM: ORTHODOXY VERSUS CHINA The Eurasianism that emerged in the interwar period did not regard the Orient (vostok) and Asia (Aziia) as overlapping notions. It emphasized that the Eurasian individual “feels at home in Asia,”2 but in fact identified the Asia it had in mind only with the Turkic-Mongolian world of the steppes and therefore with Eurasia. “Eurasia is defined as a geographical world as being to the North of the Tibeto-Iranian mountains and having as its foundation the region of the desert steppes,” writes one of the founding fathers of the movement Petr Savitsky (1895–1968), “which extend in an uninterrupted strip from the Wall of China to Galicia.”3 The Great Wall of China therefore demarcates the border separating Eurasia and Asia. Eurasianists then subdivide Asia according to its three religious subspaces: Chinese or Confucian-Buddhist, Indian or Buddhist-Brahmanist, and Iranian or Islamo-Mazdean. Both Asia and Eurasia are rivals for control over Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet, which straddle both civilizations. With the exception of some texts by the other founding father, Prince Nikolai Troubetzkoy (1890–1938), dedicated to Hinduism, the Eurasianists were not attracted by the great Asian cultures. Their strong attachment to Orthodox Christianity rendered them impervious to Asian cultures, in particular to Confucianism, whose polytheism troubled them. Troubetzkoy put the point unambiguously: “The religion of China, based on the veneration of deceased ancestors, on a cult of demons and forces of nature, is too alien to our religious psychology.”4 China was largely ignored until members of the Eurasianist school spread to Kharbin, Manchuria. The geographical location was crucial, as was its interaction with the more structured ideological currents that shaped the Russian émigré community there, such as the National-Bolshevism of Nikolai Ustryalov (1890–1937) and the fascist movement of Konstantin Rodzaevsky (1907–1946). Vsevolod N. Ivanov, a journalist and specialist in China, embodied this new Sinophile form of Eurasianism. In 1926, he



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published My. Kul’turno-istoricheskie osnovy rossiiskoi gosudarstvennosti (We: The Cultural-Historical Foundations of Russian Statehood). If he claims to subscribe to Eurasianism, it is to point out that he is the only one who understands Russia from a Far Eastern perspective, an implicit criticism of the European Eurasianists whose presence in the West, he claims, falsifies their judgement regarding the nature of Russia. As he put it: “The Western Eurasianists, meandering around the asphalt sidewalks of Paris, have only had for an instant the magnificent view of the distant past, for a mere instant have they seen an intuitive mirage hiding behind the Parisian churches and palaces.”5 Ivanov upholds a discourse on Russian history and on the naturalness of its empire akin to the Eurasianists, but he lacks their emphasis on the driving role played by Orthodoxy in Russia. By distancing Russia from Orthodoxy, Ivanov refuses to affirm the Christian specificity that would differentiate Russia from Asia. Therefore, he has no other grounds on which he would refuse complete assimilation with Asia. As neither the Reds nor the Whites were capable of forming a real Asian policy in the 1920s, Ivanov touted Eurasianism as a pan-Asian political movement, presenting Russia as basically similar to Japan and China. For Ivanov, there were only two cultural worlds on the Old continent, Europe and Asia: faced with these two antagonistic realms, Russia has to choose, and can only choose the latter. The attachment to Asia nevertheless implied abandoning all discourses aiming to define a median space, a third continent, Eurasia. Ivanov thus calls for the Eurasia terminology to be left behind in favour of the more clear-cut discourse of Asianism. “We feel no tension with the Asian foyers of global culture. We are at home in Asia! Whence my conclusion: not Eurasianism, but Asianism.”6 The reply from Europe-based Eurasianists was ambivalent. The movement affirmed the general closeness of its viewpoint with Ivanov’s. It nevertheless refused to countenance any assimilation with Asia and could not accept the negation of its founding postulate, namely the existence of a third continent. “The world of Asian cultures is not our world, though due to some fundamental traits of our thought and feeling we are akin to the peoples of these cultures.”7 The Eurasianists rejected Asianism as a possible identity option for Russia, and rejected any identification with a Chinese Asia in which Russia would be a subordinate member. In their opinion, Ivanov repeated the same but inverted error as the Russian Westernizing intelligentsia: Russia ought not to subordinate itself to the West or China nor should it copy either one; it ought to be “itself.” The polemic between Ivanov and the Europe-based Eurasianists was pursued, in friendly terms, in the almanacs Evraziiskaia khronika V, VI, VII and VIII throughout 1926 and 1927, and more pugnaciously so in the weekly Evraziia in 1928. If Khronika recognized Ivanov’s belonging to the

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Eurasianist movement despite their disagreements over Asia, Evraziia, which embodied the pro-Soviet branch of the Eurasianist movement, remained far more critical.8 This contradiction in the depiction of China was inherent in classical Eurasianism, which was marked by internal tensions between maintaining the existence of the third continent separate from both Europe and Asia on the one hand, while preferring an alliance with the latter over the former on the other. “We are untied from Asia in the last instance but we are Indo-Europeans, we have a strong dose of Turanism but we are Aryans, we ought to think and feel our Asianism but we ought not to confound ourselves with Asia.”9 Later in the 1950s and the 1960s, Lev N. Gumilev (1912–1992), took a position that was intensely Sinophobic in the same spirit. His books devoted to the history of Huns were explicitly directly against the “imperialism” of ancient China.10 NEO-EURASIANISM: EMBRACE THE PACIFIC EAST AND REJECT CHINA? The neo-Eurasianism that emerged in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union is similarly eclectic. Alexandr Panarin (1940–2003), the political science chair at Moscow State University’s philosophy department who in 2002 received the prestigious Solzhenitsyn Prize for his last book Orthodox Civilization in a Globalized World, was too strongly influenced by Orthodoxy to call for Eurasia to merge with Asia. However, heavily concerned by panTurkism and Islamism, Panarin has been one of the only neo-Eurasianist theoreticians who regularly and positively referred to Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. According to him, Russia must choose “not the exotic East of theocracies and Islamic fundamentalism, but the new, Pacific East, which has proven its ability to assimilate the Enlightenment without lapsing into decadence.”11 He also contends that despite the economic crisis of 1998, the Asian Tigers succeeded in blending technological modernity, unbridled and thriving capitalism and an authoritarian political regime, as well as what Panarin interprets as a rejection of cultural Westernization. He therefore calls on Russia to build a new geopolitical alliance with the Asia-Pacific region: “To the West’s hegemonic ambitions and to Islamic expansionism in the South, Russia can respond with a union with China and the Far Eastern tigers.”12 The prolific geopolitician and promoter of fascist theories in contemporary Russia, Alexandr Dugin (1962–), accords China a totally different place in his neo-Eurasianist theories. In his main geopolitical textbook, The Foundations of Geopolitics (Osnovy geopolitiki), first published in 1997 and reprinted often, Russia’s natural allies are Germany in Europe, Iran in the Islamic world, and Japan in Asia.13 This alliance of four land powers,



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Russia-Germany-Japan-Iran, is said to be the natural reaction against the alliance of four sea powers: the United States, Britain in Europe, China in Asia, and Turkey in the Muslim world. As a fervent supporter of the fascist theories of the interwar period, Dugin celebrates Japan for its pan-Asian ideology, its warlike traditions and the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis during the Second World War. China, on the contrary, is seen as an enemy of Eurasia and rival for geopolitical control over Mongolia, Xinjiang, Central Asia and Tibet. In his book, Dugin issues a direct warning: “China is the most dangerous geopolitical neighbor of Russia to the South,”14 and he even raises the possibility of dismembering it, with the help of Japan, the two Koreas and Vietnam.15 Dugin’s overt Sinophobia has become difficult to display at a time when Putin’s Russia is celebrating its strategic honeymoon and growing economic integration with China. In the early 2000s, Dugin began to stop calling for China to be dismembered and instead developed a narrative about China’s duality: only the strength of the dictatorial regime of the Chinese Communist Party – which Dugin considers as a positive feature, a sign of a “land-based power” identity – allows the country to remain unified, as it is in fact largely divided between a poor, rural, continental Chinese identity, and a maritime, pro-capitalist belt that tends in the direction of thalassocracy. In a lecture delivered to Moscow State University (MGU, in its Russian acronym) students in September 2012, he summed up this theory of China’s duality, stating that Chinese emperors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took the wise decision to stop the development of ports on the maritime facade of the country, in order not to destroy the very continental nature of their power.16 Beyond this ideological “about-face,” which enables him to maintain his negative vision of China within a pro-Chinese mainstream, Dugin perfectly illustrates neo-Eurasianism’s equivocations in its stance on the interaction between Russia and China. MIKHAIL TITARENKO’S SINOPHILE EURASIANISM Classical and neo-Eurasianisms therefore do not automatically produce a pro-Chinese narrative. In fact, the contrary often occurs. There is, however, one Sinophile Eurasianist current associated with Mikhail Titarenko (1934–2016), the former director of the Far East Institute (Institut Dal’nego Vostoka or IDV) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Few in number and principally gathered inside the IDV, these Sinophile Eurasianists have a solid institutional position. The Far East Institute was created in 1966 at the peak of the Sino-Soviet crisis, its mission being to study the Soviet Union’s Asian neighbours: China, Japan and the two Koreas. In contrast to the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences, which specializes in historical, ethnological and linguistic questions, the Far East Institute is focused on

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current politics and economics. The institute was regarded as one of the main think tanks for the Soviet authorities, but today has lost many of its close allies in the Kremlin, although it is still consulted on questions concerning the Far East, particularly in relation to hydrocarbons. In 1961 Titarenko went to work in the USSR Consulates-General, first in Shanghai and then in Beijing. On his return to Moscow in 1965, he began work as an assistant consultant for Asia for the Communist Party’s Central Committee, subsequently becoming one of the leading specialists on the Far East and China. He became director of the institute in 1985, a position he held until his retirement in 2015. His work can be divided into three phases that parallel Russia’s contemporary path. His first book, Russia Turns to Face Asia (Rossiia. Litsom k Azii), published in 1998, gathers together articles from the second half of the 1990s, in which he professes his neo-Eurasianist faith. These texts were written in the Yeltsin era, placing him in opposition to the regime’s pro-Western stance. At this time, Titarenko called on the country to initiate a patriotic revival and build an alternative future to prevent it from being destroyed by a Westernization drive that was destined to fail. His second book, Russia, Security through Cooperation: The East Asian Vector (Rossiia. Bezopasnost’ cherez sotrudnichestvo. Vostochno-aziatskii vektor), dated 2003, reflects Putin’s shift in orientation: Russia, he argues, is on a quest for international recognition, for internal and external stability, and again considers itself to be a fully fledged actor on the world stage, especially in Asia. As for his third book, The Geopolitical Meaning of the Far East: Russia, China, and the Other Asian Countries (Geopoliticheskoe znachenie Dal’nego Vostoka. Rossiia, Kitai i drugie strany Azii), published in 2008, it reflects Russia’s hopes at the end of Vladimir Putin’s second presidency: securing the country’s demographic and economic revival by furthering the role of the Pacific facade and by increasing economic integration with the Asian powers. Mikhail Titarenko openly embraced Eurasianist ideology. He regularly referred to its founding fathers from the 1920s to 1930s, such as Prince Nikolai Trubetzskoy and Petr Savitsky, but, like his contemporaries, mostly based himself on the works of Lev Gumilev, whose primordial terminology on ethnic groups (etnos, passionarity) he borrowed.17 He did not mention the works of Aleksandr Dugin or Aleksandr Panarin. Titarenko was not interested in the Turkic peoples, the focus of classical Eurasianist cultural references, including the world of the steppes and the rehabilitation of the Mongol Yoke in Russian history. He said nothing about these central elements, but insisted on Russia’s proximity to Asia, specifically China. When he discussed Russia’s historical interaction with the “Orient,” he alluded to Byzantium and the Mongols, but when he invoked its contemporary interaction, his Orient tilted towards East Asia and China. Titarenko’s indifference to the Turkic



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world seems to be part of a certain anxiety regarding the long-term identity objectives of Russia’s Turkic-speaking peoples, whom he suspected of seeking political independence.18 Similarly, when he raised the need for foreign labour in Siberia, he pointed to several peoples from East and South Asia, but never to the North Caucasians and Central Asians, who nevertheless constitute the great mass of immigrants in Russia. Titarenko’s Eurasianism is thus remote from the Turkic-centric themes of classic Eurasianism, and he only argued in favour of Russia’s cultural proximity to Asia when the latter is synonymous with China. Like all Eurasianists, Titarenko was a gosudarstvennik, a supporter of Russia’s statism. According to him, only consensual elements, such as the greatness of the Russian state and the specificity of Russian culture, can transcend the right-left, conservative-progressive oppositions. He thus affirmed that Eurasianism was the “paradigm for the rebirth of a great democratic Russia,”19 the only one able to assume on its own terms the heritage of Soviet grandeur. This it would do by placing at its core not a political ideology, but a cult of the Russian people defined as a “superethnos”; in this way, “the Russian state must, without discussion, take decisive measures for the protection of [ethnic] Russians as much inside Russia as outside of its borders.”20 Titarenko defended the Russo-centrist interpretations of Eurasianism proposed in the 1990s by Vadim Kozhinov (1930–2001), editor-in-chief of the magazine Nash sovremennik. To the latter, the Eurasianist idea, as a response to Russia’s destiny as a synthesis between East and West, is fully compatible with all versions of Russian nationalism, whether they long for the Tsarist Empire or Stalinism. Kozhinov condemned the so-called “Turkic” tradition of classical Eurasianism of the 1920s as well as the supporters of what he called “Euro-Asianism” (evropoaziatstvo).21 On his interpretation, the Russians represent the only matrix for Eurasia: their destiny lies not in the Orientalization advocated by the original interwar movement, but in a renewed awareness of the country’s imperial calling. Similar to Kozhinov, Titarenko insisted that Russian civilization (russkaia tsivilizatsiia) has interacted with other cultures since its creation and can only exist if it is turned towards the West as much as the East.22 However, the Russian people are the sole vehicle of this Eurasian identity, and no specific role is played here by the dozens of other ethnic groups living in Russia. According to Titarenko, Russia’s Eurasian future is not premised on its internal national and religious diversity, but on the exultation of a “concentrated Russianness” (kontsentrirovannoe proiavlenie russkosti).23 For Titarenko, Eurasianism aims at presenting a credible alternative to Western globalization. His vision of the “West” was imbued with several reifying clichés: Western culture is said to be materialist, rational, technological, individualist; it no longer recognizes the sense of community and the need for

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harmony in the world; it refuses to accept other peoples’ right to difference; and it engages in cultural and political expansion in the name of democracy.24 The United States is also accused of having legalized violence and terror and organizing preventive wars.25 Vis-à-vis the West, Russia’s historical experience is put forward as “an alternative to the swallowing up, to the assimilation, of cultures, civilizations, and ethnic groups by others.”26 The adoption of Eurasianist ideology is thereby supposed to guarantee the preservation of cultures faced with the threat of complete Westernization, offering “a precedent and a model for inter-civilizational contact at a global level.”27 This inter-civilizational contact is embodied by Russia’s new alliance with Asian countries. In this regard, Titarenko follows in the footsteps of former prime minister and minister of foreign affairs Yevgeni Primakov (1929– 2015), who promoted a geopolitical triangle between Russia, China and India. Titarenko fervently supported this Moscow-Beijing-Delhi trio, which he regarded as the embodiment of a multipolar world that would be opposed to American domination. Nonetheless, he abstained from commenting upon the points of friction between China and India in Kashmir and recognized that the deepening of partnerships will first and foremost be bilateral.28 He also promoted the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which groups Russia, China and four Central Asian states, and rejoices at the good state of SinoRussian relations in Central Asia,29 but does not deign to elaborate further on the subject. By contrast, he was distinctly more measured in his assessment of Japan, noting that the Kuril Islands issue will be difficult to settle,30 and that Tokyo remains a steadfast ally of the United States, even if it has engaged in “Eurasian diplomacy” throughout the post-Soviet space. THE QUEST FOR SINO-RUSSIAN CULTURAL COMPLEMENTARITY Titarenko regarded China as a model for Russia, in economics, politics and identity issues. He exulted at the supposed ability of Asian peoples, in particular the Chinese and Japanese, to be able to embrace the West’s technological modernity without losing their own culture.31 According to him, this capacity is explained by their values system, which emphasizes the collective over the individual. Even if Russia has been unable to preserve them, Russia and Asia share the same values, including spirituality, moral accomplishment, organic cultural development, worship of elders, respect for tradition, and humanity conceived in harmony with the cosmos.32 For him, the concept of harmony located at the core of Taoism and Confucianism, and which the Chinese authorities have again re-popularized by evoking the construction of a “harmonious society,” overlaps with one of the central concepts of Orthodoxy and Slavophile thinking, namely the idea of conciliarity (sobornost’).33



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Buoyed by this analysis, Titarenko stated with sadness that the Russian elites are incapable of arousing any patriotic feelings among the population, unlike the Japanese and Chinese elites. He thus juxtaposes the historical difficulties that the Russian elites have had in asserting themselves in relation to the West alongside China’s recent rise to power, which was able to lure back some of the elites who had emigrated in the 1980s and 1990s.34 However, the historical encounter between the two peoples is argued to have yielded beneficial effects for both of them: China’s Sinocentrism and Russia’s cosmism35 have supposedly worked to temper each other. As he put it: “The Russians taught the Chinese how to behave with other peoples as equals. … Russian culture, and Russia as a nation, has learned from the Chinese the sentiment of self-respect, the ability to defend its own interests, and the striving to perfect one’s being.”36 Titarenko also advanced an agenda for a Russo-Chinese alliance that would reintegrate the communist past of both countries: Soviet army support for the Chinese resistance against Japanese domination in the 1930s; assistance to Mao’s revolutionary troops in the 1940s; intensive bilateral cooperation in the 1950s; good political and economic relations from the 1990s onwards; and strategic partnership since the mid-2000s. The difficult decades of the 1960s and 1970s are discretely passed over in silence, Titarenko noting only that the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations can be explained by Mao’s increasing nationalism and the “errors” committed by Nikita Khrushchev.37 This rehabilitation of the communist past is, however, integrated into a historical longue durée of complementarity between the two countries. Titarenko indeed claimed that civilizational interaction between Russia and China is objectively nourished not only by the tradition of scientific, educational, and cultural exchanges of the 1950s, but more profoundly by the awareness, in both countries, of the nonconcordance of their spiritual values with those of the West, of the will of their political leadership to distance themselves from all non-critical borrowing of methods and recipes for transforming society of foreign origin.38

An identity model for Russia, China is also more prosaically conceived as an economic example to be followed. The Far East Institute distinguished itself by the attention it accorded the Chinese reforms that Deng Xiaoping initiated at the end of the 1970s. Under general secretaries Yuri Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev, the institute delivered several reports to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) analysing Chinese transformations and reflected on the possibility of applying them to the Soviet Union. This consulting and lobbying role continued under Boris Yeltsin and is ongoing today. Titarenko supported the Chinese way of development and could only regret the Kremlin’s inability to follow its example: the failure of the Soviet regime makes the capacity of the Chinese Communist Party to manage its transition

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all the more remarkable. Titarenko therefore seemed to be in agreement with the political regime of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). He maintained that a one-party system is necessary for the country’s development, and that China’s rise to power is peaceful, since Beijing conceives of the world in the Confucian themes of harmony and equilibrium.39 In addition, Titarenko denounced studies that demonstrate China’s shift to capitalism and its rejection of socialist principles.40 For him, Chinese theoreticians have moved beyond the utopian representations of socialism and today advocate a realist path towards a communist society. Specifically, capital accumulation, the birth of a bourgeoisie and the exploitation of workers, he alleged, constitutes an inevitable stage in the organic development of future Chinese socialism.41 Chinese nationalism, discretely mentioned in the discourse on Sinocentrism, is indirectly evoked a second time in Titarenko’s critique of the Chinese nationalities policy: according to him, no ethnic group that has entered the Russian orbit since the Mongol Yoke disappeared, while China has, throughout its history, assimilated tens of peoples.42 In one of his essays, Titarenko also ponders the religious question. He openly regrets that the Chinese authorities refuse to appoint Orthodox priests for the autonomous Orthodox Church of China, even though the country has about 10,000 Orthodox believers and a significant percentage of the Chinese migrants who have settled in the Far East are churchgoers. Apart from his insistence on the complementary nature of Orthodox and Confucian principles, he tried to demonstrate that the Orthodox faith is not opposed to Chinese cultural identity and recalled that, despite the opening of a Chinese mission, the Orthodox Church has never really encouraged proselytism towards the Chinese and has always rejected the “spiritual aggression” of Catholicism and Protestantism.43 For him, Chinese patriotism can only emerge strengthened by the presence of converted members, since Orthodoxy advocates submission to political power and fights the “destructive forces” of groups such as Falun Gong.44 With the exception of the religious question and the critique of Sinocentrism, Titarenko appeared to have only praise for China. FAR EASTERN SIBERIA: RUSSIA’S OUTPOST IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION For the main neo-Eurasianist ideologists, the Russian Far East is not of central importance in Russia’s path of development. Dugin for instance shows very little interest to the question of developing Siberia. Once again distancing himself from the neo-Eurasianist mainstream, Titarenko considered the question of the Russian Far East to lie at the heart of Russo-Chinese interaction. He has devoted many articles to the region and its role in the country’s future.



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He sets out from the principle that Russia cannot assert itself as a great power in the international arena without controlling and developing Siberia, which contains between 65 and 85 per cent of Russia’s reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 45 per cent of its hydroelectric resources.45 On the economic level, he endorsed the development of Siberia’s potential as a transit zone for accelerating the flow of Chinese commodities to the European regions of Russia, and promoted modernizing the Trans-Siberian Railway and, farther to the north, reviving the Baikal-Amur (BAM) Railway, one of the last great utopian construction projects of the Soviet regime. In order to accelerate Russia’s integration into the Asia-Pacific zone, he maintains, the country must also relaunch the military-industrial complex and heavy industries of the Far East (and develop cutting-edge technologies), as well as the fishing and forestry industries.46 He regularly insisted on the lack of supportive banking infrastructure and would have like to see the birth of a North Asian Development Fund, grouping Russia, Japan, China and South Korea. He often made this argument during the Baikal’s Annual Economic Forums, sponsored by oil exporters. Titarenko was indeed a convinced partisan of selling hydrocarbons to China and Japan, and supported oil and gas pipeline projects such as the Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil pipeline (ESPO). Titarenko also urged the Kremlin to pour massive investments into the Far East as a platform for cooperation with the Asian economic powers and as an outpost of Russia’s future in the Pacific zone.47 He nevertheless complained of the meagre awareness that the central authorities had of the potential of the Far East and of the disaffection that hit the region in 1990s, which only survived thanks to the arrival of Chinese and Japanese products. In order to spark Russian interest in the Far East, he called for the creation of a Ministry of Development of Siberia and the Far East that would be in charge of the centralized management of energy projects and migration policies.48 Russia would only benefit from “co-development” (sorazvitie) with China,49 he argued, in part founded on the establishing of a free-trade zone between the two countries,50 and on Moscow’s joining Asian regional organizations such as the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA).51 Although optimistic, Titarenko recognized that the feeling of foreignness between the European and Asian parts of Russia was growing, which could potentially jeopardize the country’s territorial integrity. The possibility he evoked here is that of creating a special status for the Far East founded on the example of Hong Kong or Macau.52 He saw no other option, except for accepting the binary character of the Russian economy, with the European regions turned towards Europe, and the Siberian regions towards the Asia-Pacific.53 For Titarenko, Russia’s demographic decline will not necessarily endanger the country’s sovereignty, since, as he noted, China has also had periods of its history – in the third, tenth and thirteenth centuries – during which its

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population fell drastically.54 Afraid of massive labour migrations from Central Asia, he nonetheless rejected any discourse on the “yellow peril,” a topic that he saw as fomented by the West and disseminated in Russia via the liberal press. On the contrary, he invited the Russian authorities to foster migration, which he considered as creating wealth, both for Russian citizens, to whom convincing incentives should be offered, and for citizens from China, Korea, Vietnam and India. According to him, the new Chinese migrants ought to be used as an instrument for developing the region: Moscow must implement a policy of permanent settlement similar to that previously conducted in Canada, Australia and Argentina.55 In so doing, Titarenko refered to the tsarist past, recalling that St Petersburg did not hesitate, at the turn of the twentieth century, to bring thousands of Chinese and Korean workers into the Far East.56 CONCLUSIONS From this brief sketch on the place of China in various forms of Eurasianism, several conclusions can be drawn. First, the Kremlin’s current position, which both advances an agenda on Eurasian regional integration and celebrates a strategic honeymoon with China, is not typical of most Eurasianist theoreticians. In classical Eurasianism, China is not regarded as an obvious partner for Russia, and only some émigrés in Kharbin actually favoured a proChinese agenda. Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism portrays China as Russia’s enemy in Asia and favours Japan instead. Only in Titarenko’s narrative is China exalted for its supposed geopolitical complementarity with Moscow and seen as the driver of Russia’s Eurasian fate, showing the path to be followed in terms of political regime, identity, philosophy and economic development. Notable in both Titarenko’s and Panarin’s discourses is the deep distrust towards Turkic cultures and the Islamic world in general: on those aspects both of them share the general xenophobic atmosphere of contemporary Russia and did not support the free movement of labour as is provided for in the current EEU. Titarenko was especially explicit in his belief of Russia’s “Russianness” and the ethnic supremacy that should be granted Russians. Hence, a pro-Chinese stance does not automatically result in a claim for Russia’s multinationality, and can be associated with ethnonationalism. The broad label of Eurasianism can therefore encompass very divergent visions of Russia’s role in Eurasia and in Asia. Beyond the rejection of everything Western and all liberal values, Eurasianism is not one approach, but several. Some give preference to dominating Eurasian space and see it as a specific, unique civilization, others to building geopolitical alliances with Asia; some insist on Russia’s historical multinationality, others are more sensitive to the logic that would protect Russia’s “Russianness,” without going



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so far as to adopt the rhetoric of closeness and isolationism of ethnonationalist propaganda. The labels “Eurasia” and “Eurasianism” obscure a diversity of thought that can offer insight into the difficult balancing game that Russia faces geopolitically. Moscow may have accelerated its move towards a strategic partnership with China after the Ukrainian crisis of 2014, and embraced the consequent deterioration of relations with the West, but that does not change what has always been and remains Moscow’s key focus – its relationship to that same West. The Ukrainian crisis confirmed the Kremlin’s notion that challenges to Russia’s leading status always originate from the West, not from the East. This is a pattern that has existed among “Orientalizers” (Vostochniki) in Russia since the nineteenth century: the game of alliance with Asia is always conceived as a mirror of the relations with Europe. When Russia feels humiliated by the West, it turns towards the East in order to blackmail the West or seek more of a balance with it. However, the nucleus of Russian foreign policy remains the state of its relations with the West, considered as the only “enemy-brother” with whom is has to compare itself. Indeed, being a Western critic does not mean being anti-European: the majority of Russian elites continue to believe in the intrinsic superiority of European culture. They call for a conservative, Christianbased Europe over a liberal one, but still see Europe as the yardstick of their own world of values. This is shown, for example, in the ideological trajectory of Alexander Lukin, one of Russia’s main Sinologists, who defends the Kremlin’s notion that there is a clash of civilizations between liberal Europe and conservative Russia.57 Lastly, the rise in xenophobic feelings throughout the whole of Russian society, mainly against Caucasians and Central Asians – which is reflected in the pro-Chinese but anti-Central Asian stance of Mikhail Titarenko – could one day impact the Russo-Chinese partnership, especially if China’s rise to power is understood as a harbinger of Russian decline. NOTES 1. Vladimir Putin, “Interview with the Chinese Newspaper Renmin Ribao, the Chinese News Agency Xinhua and the RTR TV Company,” Kremlin.ru, July 16, 2000, http://en.special.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24168. 2. Evraziistvo. Opyt sistematicheskogo izlozheniia (Paris: Evraziiskoe knigoizdatel’stvo, 1926), republished in Puti Evrazii. Russkaia intelligentsiia i sud’by Rossii (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 1992), 379. 3. P.N. Savitskii, Rossiia – osobyi geograficheskii mir (Paris: Evraziiskoe knigoizdatel’stvo, 1927), 47. 4. Nikolai S. Trubetskoi, “Religii Indii i khristianstvo,” Na putiakh. Utverzhdenie Evraziitsev (Berlin: Izd. Evraziistev, 1922), 178.

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5. Vsevolod N. Ivanov, My. Kul’turno-istoriceskie osnovy rossijskoj gosudarstvennosti (Kharbin, 1926), quoted in Evraziia, no. 17, March 1929, 6. 6. Ibid. 7. V.P. Nikitin, “Cto ja vozrazil by Miliukovu,” Evraziiskaja khronika VII, 1927, 35. 8. Evrazija (Clamart, Paris), no. 17, March 1929, 6. 9. V.P. Nikitin, “Perepiska s Aziatom Ivanovym,” Evraziiskaja khronika VI, 1926, 7. 10. More in Mark Bassin, The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016). 11. Aleksandr Panarin, “Paradoksy evropeizma v sovremennoi Rossii,” Rossiia i musul’manskii mir, no. 3 (1997), 16. 12. Aleksandr Panarin, “Paradoksy evropeizma v sovremennoi Rossii,” Rossiia i musul’manskii mir, no. 3 (1997), 12. 13. Aleksandr Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki. Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii (Moscow: Arktogeia, 1997). 14. Ibid., 359. 15. Ibid., 360. 16. Aleksandr Dugin, “‘Mudrost’ kitaiskikh imperatorov,” September 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_MdL-VWJDc. 17. On Gumilev, see Mark Bassin, The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2016). 18. Mikhail Titarenko, Rossiia litsom k Azii (Moscow: Respublika, 1998), 40. 19. Ibid., 53. 20. Ibid., 18. 21. Vadim Kozhinov, “Evraziistvo i sovremennost’,” Liki Rossii, no. 2/1992, http:// www.patriotica.ru/actual/stol_eurasia.html. 22. Ibid., 7. 23. Ibid., 19. 24. Ibid., 46. 25. Mikhail Titarenko, Geopoliticheskoe znachenie Dal’nego Vostoka. Rossiia, Kitai i drugie strany Azii (Moscow: Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli, 2008), 85. 26. Titarenko, Rossiia litsom k Azii, 24. 27. Ibid., 8. 28. See, for example, the chapter devoted to it in Titarenko, Geopoliticheskoe znachenie Dal’nego Vostoka, 476–534. 29. Central Asia only appears late in Titarenko’s publications, mainly in his third book, Geopoliticheskoe znachenie Dal’nego Vostoka, 444–75. 30. Mikhaul Titarenko, Rossiia. Bezopasnost’ cherez sotrudnichestvo. Vostochnoaziatskii vector (Moscow: Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli, 2003), 32. 31. Ibid., 35–36. 32. Ibid., 43–44. 33. Titarenko, Geopoliticheskoe znachenie Dal’nego Vostoka, 196.



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34. Ibid., 83. 35. Cosmism was one of the main currents in early twentieth-century Russian religious philosophy. It attempted to recover a conception of faith that would be universal and would resonate with an archetype of human thought: that the visible heaven is also where God resides. The work of four thinkers, Nikolai Fëdorov (1828–1903), Vladimir Vernadsky, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) and A.L. Chizhevsky (1897–1964), was dominated by the idea that the development of space travel may help regenerate humanity through the cosmos. In Titarenko’s thinking, cosmism is understood as the “openness” of the Russian soul to the rest of the mankind, and thus as contrary to the “closeness” of Sinocentrism. On cosmism, read George M. Young, The Russian Cosmists. The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and his Followers (Oxford University Press, 2013); Michael Hagemeister, “Russian Cosmism in the 1920s and Today,” in Bernice G. Rosenthal (ed.), The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1997), 185–202; and Michael Hagemeister, Nikolaj Fedorov: Studien zu Leben, Werk und Wirkung (München: Sagner, 1989). 36. Titarenko, Geopoliticheskoe znachenie Dal’nego Vostoka, 71. 37. Ibid., 72. 38. Titarenko, Rossiia. Bezopasnost’ cherez sotrudnichestvo, 40. 39. Titarenko, Geopoliticheskoe znachenie Dal’nego Vostoka, 191. 40. Ibid., 198. 41. Ibid., 87 and 153. 42. Titarenko, Rossiia litsom k Azii, 23. 43. Titarenko, Rossiia. Bezopasnost’ cherez sotrudnichestvo, 52–53. 44. Ibid., 65. 45. Ibid., 374. 46. Titarenko, Rossiia. Bezopasnost’ cherez sotrudnichestvo, 283. 47. Ibid., 397. 48. Ibid., 29. 49. Ibid., 8. 50. Titarenko, Geopoliticheskoe znachenie Dal’nego Vostoka, 383. 51. Ibid., 408–422. 52. Ibid., 383. 53. Titarenko, Rossiia. Bezopasnost’ cherez sotrudnichestvo, 382. 54. Titarenko, Rossiia litsom k Azii, 21. 55. Titarenko, Rossiia. Bezopasnost’ cherez sotrudnichestvo, 116. 56. Titarenko, Geopoliticheskoe znachenie Dal’nego Vostoka, 403. 57. Alexander Lukin, “Eurasian Integration and the Clash of Values,” Survival 56, no. 3 (June–July 2014): 43–60.

Chapter 8

Eurasianism in Russian Foreign Policy The Case of the Eurasian Economic Union Gonzalo Pozo One of the difficulties involved in thinking clearly about the formula “Eurasian integration” (along with all the terms and policy initiatives associated with it) is that, like all things Eurasian, the term is both polemic and polysemic. “Eurasian Union” refers to something simultaneously real and imaginary, practical and at the same time aspirational: broadly, there is no Eurasian Union in the singular, but several overlapping ones. One can speak about Eurasia in a purely formal sense, for instance: a Eurasian landmass, which ranges all the way from Lisbon to Vladivostok.1 Of course, cartographical conventions are never quite what they seem, and the Eurasian landmass immediately conjures up a particular geocentric geopolitical tradition, going from Halford Mackinder’s “Heartland” theory to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Grand Chessboard.”2 In Russia, as well as other parts of the post-Soviet world, Eurasia tends to denote something much deeper and historically meaningful. According to that more substantive conception, Eurasia might be described as an imagined community of imagined communities, a civilizational entity (or maybe identity) of many nations and ethnic groups, made up by all those who inhabit the space between Europe and Asia but see themselves as neither Asian nor European. Writ large, then, this first sense of a Eurasian Union refers not so much to an easily definable geographical entity, but rather, to a possible/aspirational space, essentially political if not territorial. And while recognizing and respecting the national differences and political sovereignties of all groups involved (both inside and outside the Russian Federation), this vision of a unified Eurasia assumes the eventual, equal and full integration of all the peoples which compose it. For this reason, perhaps more than any other, the invocation of the formula “Eurasian Union” as a programmatic and not merely geopolitical aspiration is arguably one of the most interesting developments in Russian foreign policy 161

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over the last years (mostly those of Vladimir Putin’s third term as president).3 In its fullest version, this programmatic Eurasian Union could be described as the institutional intergovernmental expression of a civilizational unit, which is why the distinction between the factual and visionary senses of “Eurasian Union” is so important (and why the Russian leadership has often elided conceptual concretization when explaining key foreign-policy initiatives and objectives). The best instance of this came from the Russian president Vladimir Putin himself, in a now-famous Izvestiia article published in 2011, which argued that the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union (Evraziiskii Ekonomicheskii Soiuz – henceforth EEU) on January 1, 2015, should be seen as a stepping stone in a broader process reaching towards a “superior degree of integration.” With a “stagist” language that resonates strongly with Marxist readers as reminiscent of Lenin’s famous description of imperialism as the “highest stage” of capitalism, the “higher degree of integration” (bolee vysokii uroven’ integratsii) Putin had in mind here was, precisely, the Eurasian Union.4 Nor was this a passing fancy: two years later at the Valdai International Discussion Club, Putin’s address rehearsed the argument, only a fortiori, that the future of the EEU was not to be seen only as a collection of mutually beneficial agreements but as a “project for the defence of the identity of peoples of a historical Eurasian space in a new century and a new world.”5 It was not the first time such ambitions were expressed, nor were they only confined to the Russian political and intellectual elites – most importantly, and from a different junction of post-Soviet space, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev had already made calls for the construction of a Eurasian Union as early as 1994 – but the lack of originality in Putin’s vision did not detract in the slightest from its relevance.6 The foundation of the EEU by Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia undoubtedly amounted to the crowning achievement in a decades-long process aiming towards the restructuring and gradual integration of the region. Critically, Putin’s 2013 invocation of a Eurasian “identity of peoples” (identichnost’ narodov) arising from a “historical Eurasian space” (istoricheskoe evraziiskoe prostransvo) could be taken to suggest that the existing process was to some degree inspired by Eurasianist convictions and doctrine. Had this indeed been the case, the birth of the EEU would have marked the most important political instantiation of the insights and intellectual traditions that are the subject of this book – the politics of Eurasianism. In reality though, the complexities and realities of post-Soviet institutional integration, along with Putin’s notorious ability to make convenient usage of ideological tropes and references originating in different, and often incompatible sources, make it impossible simply to read the creation of the EEU as a Eurasianist initiative, or as confirmation that Eurasianist thinking, in whatever guise, was now the guiding creed at the Kremlin. Further, other states involved in the creation



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of the EEU (most importantly, Kazakhstan) had alternative interests and interpretations of what membership involved, and the Russian angle on the EEU is only one of the several perspectives that are essential in accounting for this institution’s full impact. But in any case, Putin’s points did constitute possibly the highest institutional expressions of the Kremlin’s “Eurasian” turn, which in turn created a new narrative space for tangential invocations of Eurasianist perspectives. From the outset, Moscow had high hopes for the EEU and expected to use it as a platform through which to reinforce its role in the region and vindicate its great-power status in a multipolar global order.7 As Putin also remarked in Valdai, “Eurasian integration is the entire post-Soviet space’s chance to become an independent center of global development, and not just a periphery of Europe or of Asia.”8 Additionally (though less conspicuously), Moscow hoped to benefit economically from the EEU, in particular, by using it to claw back part of the commercial ground already lost to the European Union, China and the United States.9 Initially, the birth of the EEU was a considerable foreign-policy coup for Vladimir Putin, but one which soon looked shortlived, given the fact that its existence came at a very uncertain and volatile time for the Russian economy, besieged by economic sanctions and shaken by capital flight, currency devaluation and low hydrocarbon prices. Moreover, the disadvantages of joining the EEU for its other members became palpable quite quickly, and, in particular, its record on the much celebrated goal of commercial integration remains incomplete, to say the least. Critically, the EEU was launched with the noticeable absence of Ukraine, which Russia had tried hard to cudgel and wheedle into membership – in the process, adding further strain to a volatile situation which eventually exploded in the Maidan protests in the winter of 2013–2014, and led, shortly afterwards, to the annexation of Crimea and the frozen conflict in the Ukrainian East.10 From its inception, the EEU was precarious also in a structural sense: it was, essentially, an elite project taking root in a political context where corruption is rife and legal standards thin. Though some have called for EU (and more broadly Western) engagement with the EEU, no honest dialogue, let alone beneficial partnership, seems likely or possible between the two blocs.11 In this chapter, I trace the evolution of post-Soviet integration into the creation of the EEU, and critically evaluate its internal economic, political dynamics and prospects from the point of view of Russian foreign policy. I argue, inevitably, that the Kremlin’s idea of the EEU is not even Eurasianist in a purely geographical scope, let alone genuinely (or even predominantly) Eurasianist in ideological inspiration. That said, it is still significant that Russian foreign policymakers, and particularly the Russian president, should seek to appropriate some of the tropes of Eurasianist thought, in an attempt to find legitimation for their efforts in consolidating Moscow’s regional and

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broader international position. Through a brief but detailed economic analysis of the EEU’s economic and foreign-policy record, I also seek to show that the appearance of Eurasianist intimations and links, however tenuous (mostly through the ongoing emphasis on Eurasia as a “civilizational” category), were to be expected. The EEU, and the focus of economic integration along Russian lines, requires a narrative that can legitimize a project whose virtues are felt, almost exclusively by the less liberal sections of a Moscow-based ruling elite. Their outlook and interests, characterized by a short-term and rent-seeking agenda linked to the extractive industries, are in many ways impossible to disentangle from the Kremlin’s hegemonic designs on the postSoviet space, and are worth keeping in mind when trying to understand the nature of the EEU and the official discourses which appear behind it. WHAT IS THE EEU, AND HOW DOES IT WORK? The EEU (to date, the institutional embodiment that comes closest to a really existing Eurasian Union) is an international organization established through a thousand-page treaty signed by Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia on May 29, 2014. The document marked 2015’s New Year’s Day as the EEU’s effective inauguration date. Armenia soon volunteered (or perhaps better, was soon volunteered) to become cosignatory to the agreement in October 2014, obtaining full membership on January 2, 2015, while Kyrgyzstan officially joined on August 12, 2015. The EEU has further extended invitations to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan (the latter’s frictions with Kyrgyzstan make its membership unlikely for now) and suggested that Uzbekistan follow suit (a suggestion quickly rebuffed by Tashkent).12 In the run-up to the EEU’s foundation, there was highly ambitious speculation as to who ultimately might join it. In the context of the Eurozone crisis, for instance, Sergei Glaz’ev (a key adviser to Putin on Eurasian affairs) argued for the benefits of opening future membership to Cyprus, Greece and also Turkey.13 The EEU’s current and future potential membership further overlaps with the so-called Union State between Russia and Belarus, and is nearly identical to that of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which also includes Tajikistan.14 The EEU’s fundamental function was to institute a common economic area based on the (eventual) free circulation of goods, capital and labour. In spirit and institutional design, it was loosely modelled on the European Union and made provisions for the full creation of a single market along with the development of common production and transport infrastructure. On that front, progress would prove uneven – so much so, in fact, that the development of a single market in key sectors like energy has been postponed until 2025. Critically, the EEU opened the way for a closer coordination of monetary



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policy and left open the possibility of a currency union.15 According to EEU official figures at the time of its inauguration, the organization included approximately 179 million people, covered over 15% of the world’s surface (20 million sq km) and generated a combined GDP of $2,411.2 billion – an estimate on 2013 prices.16 To give an indication of its relative size, and following the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) data (GDP/PPP), the EEU’s economy was to be, roughly, seven times smaller than that of the United States and the European Union, six times smaller than China, and about half the size of India, slightly surpassing Brazil.17 Further, the EEU was expected to turn over $932.9 million in foreign trade and was capable of industrial output worth $1.5 trillion. Even according to these projections, the Russian Federation unsurprisingly accounted for over four-fifths of its entire GDP, population size and geographical surface. Russia was always overwhelmingly the organization’s centre of economic and demographic gravity. Politically and diplomatically too, the EEU represented the highest and institutionally most comprehensive stage of economic integration between the countries of the former Soviet Union. It came as the culmination of a sustained, if often uneven and faulty, effort at gradually coordinating trade, investment, monetary policy and economic cooperation in the post-Soviet space – a process which goes back to the treaty founding the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Though at different times other ex-Soviet republics have played an active role in that progression, its most consistent drivers have been Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. It is therefore hardly surprising that the characteristics of their political systems (including the most negative ones, such as corruption, authoritarianism and a high degree of concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small corporatist elite) should appear stamped on the EEU’s origins and evolution, beyond its official institutional design. Plainly, the vertical nature of Eurasian integration makes it especially vulnerable to economic fluctuations, leadership changes or international instability – precisely the same conditions which have dominated post-Soviet affairs in recent years. The Russian elite’s outlook on Eurasian integration is multifaceted and often vague. It oscillates between far-reaching aspirations and bare compromises leaving open visible gaps between overall interests, actual capabilities and concrete realities.18 As a consequence, the EEU can only be, from its very inception, the object of great expectations and considerable disappointments for the Kremlin. Particularly in the context of friction with the West and given the high Russian ambitions it feeds, the EEU’s existence and profile will continue to be defended by Russia, regardless of its shortfalls and limitations and of the level of disaffection of its other members. The Russian elite sees the EEU as a strategic and symbolic priority and so it is committed to doing whatever it takes to maintain and defend it. This, however, has proved costly.

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Given the elite-driven nature of the project, it is likely that pressure and armtwisting will increasingly displace incentives and cooperation as the EEU’s chief unifying logic.19 The EEU’s roots lie in a series of negotiations and agreements conducted under the auspices of the CIS during the mid-1990s, with two of those meriting special mention. The first was a treaty signed in January 1995 promising the creation of a Customs Union (CU) (Tamozhennyi Soiuz) originally between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and later coming to include Kyrgyzstan (1996) and Tajikistan (1997). The second important step, designed to promote and strengthen the original CU proposals, was the March 1996 Agreement for Increased Cooperation in the Economic and Humanitarian Spheres. It was signed by Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia and established a Eurasian Economic Community (Evraziiskoe Ekonomicheskoe Soobshchestvo). EurAsEC came into official existence on October 10, 2000, and from that point also included Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (as well as Uzbekistan between 2005 and 2008).20 While the CIS’ ability to articulate a process of economic or institutional integration proved insufficient throughout the 1990s – mostly given the low commitment of its members and its focus on security issues – Putin successfully used EurAsEC as a platform for a more selective and substantial integration effort in the 2000s.21 Putin, and then Dmitrii Medvedev (president between May 2008 and May 2012), prioritized Eurasian integration, in great part as a challenge to what they saw as the West’s intensifying and illegitimate encroachment on its near-abroad (blizhnee zarubezhie): in particular, the colour revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan and the European Union’s launching of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) after 2003.22 The effort culminated in 2007 with the establishment of CU from January 1, 2010, as well as the creation, from January 1, 2012, of a Single Economic Space (SES) (Edinoe Ekonomicheskoe Prostranstvo) to oversee the creation of a single market. The last stage in the Putin/Medvedev integration roadmap would be the launch of EEU as a legal entity in 2015. Internally, the EEU was, at least in aspiration, designed in the image of the European Union, with a permanent executive body (the Eurasian Economic Commission) formed by a college and a supervisory body called the Council (deputy prime-ministerial level).23 The Commission, however, must abide by the resolutions of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council (Prime-Ministerial level), and, in turn, it must abide by the decisions of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council (Heads of State).24 Additionally, a court of the EEU was also established (headquartered in Minsk) with the aim of resolving disputes and guaranteeing that members observe the rules and regulations of the foundational treaties. Beyond the surface-level institutional structure of the EEU, however, any parallels with the European Union begin to evaporate.



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At the insistence of Belarus and especially Kazakhstan, the EEU, unlike the European Union, has no legislative branch.25 Importantly, the EEU’s staff is appointed by the national governments of each member state.26 Within the CU, most decisions required approval by a two-thirds majority of votes, but simultaneously, the weighting system implied that no decision could be taken without Russia. Within the EEU, however, policy initiatives would have to be agreed by unanimity, a clear attempt by Moscow to allay any fears that the new organization might end up institutionalizing Russian domination. In practice, however, most general decisions were to be taken by the Supreme Council, and handed down to lower-level organs to supply the technical substance and concentrate on the details of implementation.27 Ironically, the unanimity rule does not always act as a check on Russian power. Operationally, it forces members to call frequent meetings of the Supreme Council, where Russian diplomatic and political influence is most visibly exerted. In practice, therefore, decision-making power in the EEU is highly concentrated, harnessing the broader process of Eurasian integration to the interests and whims of its elites, and institutionalizing mutual elite dependence and Russian control.28 From an economic standpoint, the foundation of the EEU was based on the CU and SES, thus naturally predicated on the elimination of internal customs barriers and the adoption of a common tariff level for trade with third countries. This all had to be achieved in some form of balance with the provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO), of which Russia, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan were already members. Up to 2014, the average tariff levels of most EEU states were considerably lower than Russia’s. As a result, Kazakhstan was forced to adopt a much higher tariff level for third countries, which precluded it from the benefits of trade with the European Union and China, with an enormous cost for its economy. This adjustment additionally complicated Kazakhstan’s ongoing accession to the WTO as well as the status of other EEU members within it. EURASIAN BUT NOT EURASIANIST? As noted above, President Putin has explained the significance of the EEU not simply in terms of enabling the highest degree of post-Soviet integration so far, but crucially, as a conduit for a more substantive process: a deeper Eurasian integration which reflects in part the civilizational identity of the nations and ethnic groups in a historical Eurasian space. At the same time, Putin has never clarified the specific theoretical underpinnings of such a vision or endorsed any particular strand of Eurasianism explicitly in the context of the EEU’s creation. This task, as is often the case, has trickled down

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to other Russian top officials and intellectuals who, particularly after his famous Izvestiia article of October 2011, have initiated a collective exegetical undertaking to flesh out the leader’s true meaning (with varying success).29 The ensuing writings and polemics on the subject, whether technical, scholarly or simply in the sphere of popular discussions, have often given in to the temptation of conflating a grand (and internally loose) intellectual tradition (Eurasianism) with specific policy agendas. As Marlene Laruelle (a leading expert on the subject and contributor to this book) has put it: Eurasianism connects mostly to the spheres of metapolitics and operates independently of the regime’s political project, the rationale of which is far more pragmatic and based on other kind of references. Hence the strange destiny of a movement, Eurasianism, that has contributed to shaping Russian intellectual life in the twentieth century, but which is today both central and forgotten. The more “Eurasia” invades Russia’s public space, popular culture and state-produced narratives in Russia, the more forgetful of its Eurasianist founding ideologists it seems to be.30

According to Laruelle, the creation of the EEU is not reflective of Putin’s sincere rediscovery of (neo-)Eurasian ideological tropes. To the contrary, it “takes nothing from (neo-)Eurasianism in defining a political and economic strategy for the region. … No official text produced in Russia about the Eurasian Union mentions Eurasianism as an ideology.”31 Rather, the frequent invocations of Eurasia, as Laruelle points out, work mostly to offer an image of Russia which stands as an opposite/alternative of the West and Europe, allowing Russian society to integrate imperial and Soviet nostalgia within a grand, national narrative preserving its sense of a special geopolitical calling within post-Soviet space. In this way, Laruelle offers an essential corrective to loose talk about a supposedly Eurasianist turn in Russian politics, or to the temptation of assuming that the original ideas of Prince Nikolai Trubetskoi, Georgii Vernadskii, Lev Gumilev or, more recently, Aleksandr Dugin (different as these are) have somehow ended up standing as the intellectual sources behind the EEU’s foundation. Further, as already mentioned, the EEU is an institution promoting economic integration between members, differing greatly from the “Eurasian Union,” a deeper form of integration along civilizational lines which had been invoked in different ways by Putin or Nazarbayev, that remains an aspiration not shared with equal glee among EEU members. But all that said, the question of the Russian elite’s genuine Eurasianist credentials is not the entire story. Given the plasticity of Eurasianist thought, the issue is less about the theoretical accuracy with which the Russian regime relates to the work of the Eurasianists or the degree of intellectual rigour and consistency with which they do so. Putin’s 2013 Valdai talk of an identity of peoples in a historical Eurasian space at least implicitly



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connects the foundation of the EEU to a future, deeper Eurasian integration writ large. This move, even if in passing, requires attention, since it situates the development of the EEU at the ideological juncture where Eurasianist concepts can be mobilized and disseminated politically. In other words, Putin and his associates clearly feel no need to develop the thought or indicate the appropriate references to Gumilev or Dugin: others will take care of this, and however vague, tangential or illegitimate, allusions to Eurasianist ideas can prove politically expedient. Moreover, Eurasianist thought can be expected to evolve and proliferate against the background of any successful integration process in the post-Soviet space.32 One example of the way in which this might happen is the Eurasian Economic Commission, usually a source of empirical information about the work of the EEU, which recently released the monograph Evraziia: ot idei k integratsii discussing the legacy of Eurasianism.33 More significantly, the terms “Eurasia” and “civilisation” appear with increased frequency in the Foreign-Policy Concepts (FPCs) of the Russian Federation from 2000 to 2013; interestingly, though the 2013 FPC deploys the term “Eurasian” expansively, referring variously to one of three security regions, the EEU, the Eurasian Economic Commission and the eventual Eurasian Union.34 For Putin, the wider process of Eurasian integration around a civilization of peoples seems partly to hinge around the success of the EEU. First, it is worth keeping in mind that the Eurasian integration is not about restoration; for those who still harboured any hopes, Eurasian integration is not/cannot be seen as an effort to restore the Soviet Union.35 That said, a deeper integration is an “exigency of the times” (velenie vremeni), for, if Eurasian space is going to act as a link between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, it is mandatory to create a full economic union (sozdat’ polnotsennyi ekonomicheskii soiuz). Second, Eurasian integration reflects the fact that the international system is increasingly multipolar: in order to preserve its independence, Russia must spearhead the process of Eurasian integration as a special power in the region.36 Third, the EEU must additionally be seen, not as a replacement of the CIS (or an improved version of it) but as complementary institution. Clearly, it would be clumsy simply to conflate these principles with any sort of Eurasianist doctrinal guidelines. But while ostensibly absent from Putin’s Izvestiia text, it seems clear that the agenda formulated here is compatible with later references to broad Eurasianist ideas, particularly, as two elements are concerned: first, a historically affirmative argument for Eurasian integration (under some degree of Russian leadership) and second, the idea that Russia is an alternative to the West, whose hegemonic (unipolar) designs must be opposed.37 As Lilia Shevtsova has argued, this “geopolitical” opposition is couched, particularly since 2012–2013, in civilizational terms, or more precisely (reflecting traditions of strong statehood), “state-civilisation.”38

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And critically, whatever civilizational alternatives it might pose, the EEU must aim for the greatest liberalization of trade in the region. Putin recognized that the world economy is moving towards global integration, and on this point, whatever the specific Russian variations on the free market theme, the Kremlin’s commitment to capitalism and “trade liberalization” is made clear beyond any possible doubt. Eurasian integration, we are assured, is about connecting Russia’s own best national interests to its growing role within global capitalism.39 GROWING PAINS The difficulties derived from Russia’s overwhelming economic and political weight in the organization became even more visible after the EU- and USsponsored sanctions began to hit the Russian economy following the annexation of Crimea in March 2014. By the end of that year, capital flight from Russia had reached a record $153 billion and the Russian Ministry of Finance (MinFin) had begun to brace itself for estimated levels of net capital outflow between $100 and $130 billion.40 The final balance for 2015 was much less negative, with the Russian Central Bank putting the figure for that year at $58.9 billion. Nevertheless, the prospects for the Russian economy and the EEU remained dark: the rouble continued its long devaluation throughout 2015 and the Russian state estimated a net capital outflow of $90 billion dollars for 2016 (all in all since 2010, a loss of approximately $400 billion, almost equivalent to all foreign reserves accumulated during Putin’s first two presidential terms).41 Compounded by the very adverse effect of persistently low international oil prices since October 2014, the rouble began to bleed value. During the worst moments of the depreciation (December 2014 and January 2015), the Russian Central Bank raised interest rates to 17% (a 100% hike) and spent over $80 billion in foreign reserves (about a fifth of the total) in trying to keep its currency from sinking even deeper.42 Despite these desperate measures, the rouble continued to fall up until February 2015, shedding about a quarter of its strength to the dollar and the euro in the process. Since January 2016, the Russian economy has seen some positive news: GDP contraction decelerated slightly by the middle of the year, the rouble stopped falling and even began marginally to appreciate against the dollar from February. At any rate, and despite a small increase in the international prices for oil at the time of writing, the Russian economy is still barely able to drag itself out of recession, with elevated unemployment figures, an eroding income dynamic, and continuing shaky prospects for its financial sector.43 This brief economic overview is necessary for understanding the economic consequences of a Russian crisis for the prospects of the EEU and the broader Eurasian integration plans. The damage inflicted by the Russian crisis on



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the economies of the EEU has been extensive, and this has (unsurprisingly) reduced its economic appeal substantially, giving rise to the sense that membership has to this point been disadvantageous, to say the least. Simply in terms of its own foundational economic rationale – promoting free trade and commercial integration inside its space – the best evidence available suggests that, up until the first months of 2016, the EEU has failed dismally at delivering this goal. Of course, it is hard to gauge the EEU’s exact economic impact on the region during a period of such economic and international instability. However, while intraregional trade experienced a boost of almost 100% in the first two years after the creation of the CU, it has sharply began to decline since, with a 25.8% fall in 2015 and an 18.4% drop in 2016, year on year.44 Further economic problems at the heart of the Eurasian economic integration became evident during the worst period of the crisis, between the fall of 2014 and the fall of 2015. First, in the context of the rouble’s devaluation within a CU, non-Russian goods suddenly became uncompetitive relative to depreciated Russian merchandise.45 Belarus paired its currency to the rouble, so it was able to survive the worst blows. Kazakhstan, on the other hand, was hit very hard, and though it managed to hold back devaluation in 2014, it was eventually forced, first, to depreciate the tenge by 20% in 2014, and then to spend up to an estimated $2 billion every month to prevent the national currency from sliding further.46 Second, and critically, the dramatic contraction of the Russian economy in this period almost dried up remittances from Central Asian migrant workers, at a faster rate in fact than anywhere else on the planet. This is particularly serious given that Tajikistan (invited to join the EEU) and Kyrgyzstan (member since August 2015) were, at this point, the world’s two most remittance-dependent economies. The value of remittances continued falling deep into 2015, by 12% in Belarus, by 18% in Armenia and Kazakhstan and by 23% in Kyrgyzstan, where this source of value accounts for a third of its GDP.47 Taking into account that commercial integration within the region actually narrowed by 13% in the first quarter of 2014, and that members continued to denounce Russian non-compliance on basic provisions concerning the circulation of goods, the EEU’s economic record already seems deficient.48 Thus, not only is the EEU not delivering more intraregional trade, it is also not providing a chance for local Belarusian or Kazakh industries to compete in the world market, it is not helping the Armenian and Kyrgyz remittance economies and, finally, it does not seem to be helping diversify and develop the region. In fairness, the EEU can still claim one success (and it is not an unimportant one): the very fact that it has survived where analogous integration experiences in the 1990s would have folded.49 The key points are that the EEU requires additional incentives to carry on, and that, critically, such incentives are not derived from a deepening of Eurasian economic integration per se but from an assortment of Russian

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carrots and sticks to compensate other members for some of their travails. It is this single fact that shows the EEU’s worth beyond its economic role from Russia’s point of view. For instance, Moscow has offered to front the bill of any potential WTO fine arising from the implementation of the EEU tariff regime. Additionally, it has thrown in subsidies, loans and cash transfers in bilateral deals with members like Kyrgyzstan, Belarus or Armenia, whose loyalty to the project has needed propping. Also, Moscow continues to promise faster and better access to the Russian labour market – one of the areas in which the EEU has moved most quickly – even though Russian public opinion is widely against an increased presence of migrant workers from different corners of the former Soviet Union. While economic realities belie such pledges, seeking to promote the social and legal security of non-Russian migrant workers remains an important incentive for all other members. For a balanced understanding, all these additional costs and efforts necessary for keeping the EEU alive, diplomatically and economically are worth it for Moscow. The EEU is Russia’s best bet against continuing Western economic and political penetration. In the post-Soviet space, only Belarus keeps Russia as its main trading partner; in all other cases Russia comes second or even third to the European Union and, particularly in Central Asia, to China.50 Critically, the EEU goes some distance in alleviating the Kremlin’s “day-after-tomorrow” anxieties, and ensures its influence in the region after the dreaded disappearance of Lukashenko, Nazarbayev or, indeed, Putin himself. The EEU is, as far as Moscow is concerned, an antidote against potential new cases where Russian influence dissipates and friendly elites evaporate, as with Yanukovich’s flight after the Maidan protests. FOREIGN POLICY In the context of the deep and protracted breakdown in Russia’s relations with the West, and particularly the long-stalled EU-Russia partnership, voices in both academic and policy circles have begun calling attention to the EEU’s potential as a platform from which to end the current stalemate. In November 2014, for instance, Germany’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier advised that contacts between both organizations might go a long way in defusing mutual tensions and suspicions, adding that such an initiative would be heartily welcomed by EEU members like Kazakhstan.51 The Russian leadership, in its turn, continued to state its wish for closer cooperation; Sergey Lavrov, Steinmeier’s counterpart in Moscow, repeated the EEU’s offer of a free-trade agreement with the European Union.52 As some analysts have argued, a European acknowledgement of the EEU as an equal partner could be a way of reassuring Moscow that the European



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Union’s eastern enlargement is not a relentless, never-ending expansion, but rather one built on the recognition that there can be different, legitimate and not necessarily exclusive frameworks for post-Soviet integration. Accordingly, in engaging the EEU, the European Union would be able to deal with Russia in a space in which its decision-making power is curtailed by its other members’ veto rights (as shown above, the EEU’s resolutions must be agreed on unanimously). So, ironically, it is claimed, the very thing which triggered the Ukrainian crisis might still offer a way of overcoming it.53 For still others, the EEU is bound to end up cooperating with the EU. In fact, they argue, the scope of mutual benefits and concerns implied by this partnership would be so vast, that any substantial links would have to be born from an interregional “megadeal” between the two blocs – one that might start from trade liberalization but would necessarily have to reach for a much deeper and more comprehensive level in the longer term.54 Clearly, the obvious stumbling block when thinking about possible EU-EEU links concerns the future of states which find themselves in-between, such as Ukraine, and to a lesser extent, Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Of course, the possibility of avoiding “either/or” decisions, and seeking closer relations with all neighbours (West and East) is always there: closer trade integration and even free-trade agreements with both the European and Eurasian spaces are possible, at least in principle. Indeed, European policymakers are right to stress the fact that a closer association within a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with Ukraine would not prevent it from seeking closer commercial ties to Russia if it so chooses.55 It should be noted that the European Union’s stance on this, while commendable now, was not so constructive at the crucial moment in 2013 when Yanukovich was unceremoniously rebuffed for proposing precisely this type of EU-Russia-Ukraine triadic relation. But leaving that aside for the moment, the more important point is that complementary associations with both the EEU and European Union are impossible at the point of substantial membership. The EEU, for instance, is based on a CU that would render incompatible any simultaneous EU-sponsored DCFTA deal. At the point of a CU, then, the EEU does draw a line in the sand, handing non-member states a clear “in-or-out” choice.56 In any case, this is not solely a technical issue but also a political one: both the European Union and Russia overplayed their hand in the run-up to the Vilnius summit of November 2014 – when Yanukovich fatefully decided to turn down the Association Agreement with the European Union. In other words, it was both the European Union’s and Russia’s political actions (rather than a technical or legal impossibility) which helped precipitate chaos in Ukraine. Both sides, in their very different degrees of responsibility for the ensuing conflict, would do well to change this mindset in the future, especially if an EU-EEU dialogue is going to be credibly advocated.

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More generally, however, for the European Union to acknowledge the EEU as a partner would also imply crediting Russia’s international leadership in an important regional organization, and by extension, implicitly accepting its legitimacy as a hegemon, even when, as we have argued, this legitimacy frequently comes from coercive and elite-driven measures.57 To put it bluntly, Belarus and Kazakhstan’s membership of the EEU stem from a range of interests and possibilities which bear no semblance to those which underpinned Armenia’s or Kyrgyzstan’s “Eurasian choice” (in their case, they chose what they could, based on different economic needs and varying influence). Contrary to what some have argued, then, even if Brussels showed Moscow that it accepts Eurasian integration for those who “choose” it, it is at best unlikely that, reciprocally, Moscow might therefore feel compelled to recognize Ukraine’s or Georgia’s hypothetical “European choices.” At any rate, such speculations can only make sense if we conveniently agree to disremember the Russian Federation’s recent annexation of Crimea and its continuing effort in rendering other parts of the Ukrainian territory ungovernable by Kiev. It is far more likely that the fate of Crimea has been sealed, at least in the short- and midterm, by the need to find some workable compromise with Russia on the Donbass. CONCLUSIONS The successful creation of the EEU marks a key change in Post-Soviet politics; the Russian elite are heavily invested in its endurance and are ready to make sacrifices in order to sustain it. At the same time, the EEU is seriously challenged by its own political and economic contradictions. In the context of sanctions, counter-sanctions and open conflict in the Donbass, the economic basis on which to broker cooperation between the European Union and EEU is, to say the least, thin. For as long as the Kremlin is haunted by the spectre of Ukraine’s potential EU membership, a substantive EU-EEU dialogue is likely to remain perfunctory and superficial, pragmatically confined by the pulse of the hostilities. To what extent is the Eurasian Union a geopolitical counter to Western influence and penetration of the post-Soviet space? To what extent, then, is Eurasian integration motivated by a hegemonic or Russian agenda? This is an important point, particularly since much of the literature considering Russia’s emerging power status in the 2000s generally mapped the relative strength of the Russian economy directly onto its international assertiveness. Such an analytical strategy might make considerable sense at first sight, but it can also prove misleading. Writing in 2006, S. Neil Macfarlane argued



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that Russia’s problems led it to pursue a mixed approach of partnership or acquiescence on matters of vital interest to the hegemonic power, and more competitive behaviour on issues deemed central to Russia but peripheral to US interests. Plainly, the conflict over Ukraine offers a comprehensive refutation of this point: here is an obvious “issue” (an area of economic and strategic overlapping interests), which, because it is deemed central by both Russia and Western interests, can easily become a major security conundrum and a geopolitical fault line, quite regardless of the relative balance of strength between any of the contenders. A similar argument would apply for those who, based on Russia’s troubles after 2009, identified a wholesale downscaling in Moscow’s foreign policy and observed attempts to build a low-cost sphere of influence (or a “lily-pad empire,” as they might call it, after Donald Rumsfeld’s “lily-pad army” concept) and transcended hard imperialism: In its version of a “lily-pad” empire, Russia seeks to get the benefits while minimising the costs. As one Russian expert says: “We would like to choose the best bits of the CIS” – that is, energy infrastructure, key sectors of the economy and the right to station our military bases abroad – “and leave the rest to go to hell.”58

The confluence of state and business interests in pursuing precisely this kind of expansionism (avoiding longer-term investment and development in the Russian economy and seeking energy and other economic assets abroad) is a Russian characteristic. Russia maintains a strong military presence in its “near-abroad” and has also obtained majority stakes in the gas transit systems particularly in Armenia and Moldova, while pushing hard to make gains in Ukraine, Belarus and even into Eastern Europe. It is debatable whether Russia is determined to do this on the cheap, and it seems unclear that there is an obvious monetary benefit for Russia in single-handedly sustaining South Ossetia, Abkhazia or Crimea. The costs of Russia’s hegemonic aspirations grow even more widely if we consider the launch of a Eurasian Union (EEU), which might, in its most modest form, provide solid institutional trappings for a closer economic and political integration of the post-Soviet region, led by Russia. Implementing this plan and consolidating it as the preferred alternative to the European Union in post-Soviet space has become a priority – whatever the cost – and the costs will be high. The discursive juggling that will continue to accompany the institutional fortunes of the EEU makes it likely that the Russian leadership will continue alluding to Eurasianism. Given the plasticity of Eurasianist metapolitics, there would seem to be every possibility for the continuing and indeed even enhanced appropriation of Eurasianist tropes by Russian official discourses surrounding Eurasian integration.

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NOTES 1. Putin made this same characterization of the space in 2010, though importantly, at that point the preferred geographical references were European, while the vision strictly economic. See “From Lisbon to Vladivostok. Putin Envisions a RussiaEU Free Trade Zone,” Der Spiegel Online, November 25, 2010, http://www.spiegel. de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-vladivostok-putin-envisions-a-russia-eu-freetrade-zone-a-731109.html. 2. For an overview of Mackinder’s reception in Russia, see Mark Bassin and Konstantin E. Aksenov, “Mackinder and the Heartland Theory in Post-Soviet Geopolitical Discourse,” Geopolitics, Vol. 11, 2006, pp. 99–118. 3. David Lane and Vsevolod Samokhvalov (eds.), The Eurasian Project and Europe. Regional Discontinuities and Geopolitics, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015; see also Piotr Dutkiewicz and Richard Sakwa, Eurasian Integration – The View from Within, London: Routledge, 2015. 4. Vladimir Putin, “Novyi integratsionnyi proekt dlia Evrazii – budushchee, kotoroe rozhdaetsia segodnia” [The New Integration Project for Eurasia – A Future which is being born Today], Izvestiia, October 3, 2011. 5. Vladimir Putin, “Zasedanie mezhdunarodnogo diskussionnogo Kluba ‘Valdai,’” September 19, 2013, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/19243. See footage of this fragment at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsXyfoVcHxM (especially from 0’30’’). 6. The specific significance of that appeal and the general role of Eurasianist ideas as official ideological pillars of the Kazakh state are the focus of a chapter by Luca Anceschi in this collection. Putin’s Izvestiia article met with responses by Aleksandr Lukashenko and Nursultan Nazarbayev in the pages of the same journal, which are interesting in that they provide a good sense of the different and often incompatible meanings and implications present in the formula “Eurasian Union,” depending on where they originate in the post-Soviet geography. See, respectively, Aleksandr Lukashenko, “O sud’bakh nashei integratsii,” Izvestiia, October 17, 2011; and Nursultan Nazarbayev, “Evraziiskii Soiuz – ot idei k istorii budushchego,” October 25, 2011. 7. For an interpretation of this widely accepted point that focuses on the specifically neo-imperial and neo-liberal character in contemporary Russian foreign policy, see Gonzalo Pozo, “Russia’s Neoliberal Imperialism and the Eurasian Challenge,” in Patrick Bond and Ann Saggioro Garcia (eds.), BRICS. An Anti-Capitalist Critique, London: Pluto, 2015, pp. 206–230. 8. Putin, “Zasedanie mezhdunarodnogo diskussionnogo Kluba ‘Valdai.’” 9. Nicu Popescu, “The Real, the Imaginary and the Likely,” Institute for Security Studies, Chaillot Paper No. 132, September 2014, pp. 11–12, http://www.iss.europa. eu/uploads/media/CP_132.pdf. 10. David Cadier, “Eurasian Economic Union and Eastern Partnership: The end of the EU-Russia Entredeux,” in The Geopolitics of Eurasian Economic Integration, LSE Ideas Special Report, June 2014, pp. 60–65, especially, pp. 63–64. http://www. lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/publications/reports/pdf/SR019/SR019-Cadier.pdf. 11. See, for instance, Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard, “The New European Disorder,” European Council on Foreign Relations Essay, November 2014.



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12. “President Karimov: Uzbekistan would never enter a Union like the former USSR,” Ferghana.news, January 14, 2015, http://enews.fergananews.com/news. php?id=2909. 13. With the exception of Turkey, such an initiative would have further undermined any Eurasianist credentials of the EEU. Sergey Glaziev, “Who Stands to Win?” in Russia in Global Affairs, December 2013, http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/ Who-Stands-to-Win-16288. 14. The Union State was created by Russia and Belarus in 1996 (established since 1999) as an attempt at forging a confederation; former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan or Moldova have at different times expressed an interest in joining while Abkhazia and South Ossetia currently have observer status. The Collective Security Treaty Organization is a security and military alliance formed originally in May 1992. 15. In practice, the problems derived from the rouble devaluation have, for the time being, dried any appetite for a currency union. “Lukashenko: edinaia baliuta EAES budet ne pri moei presidentskoi zhizni” [Lukashenko: there will be no Single EEU Currency during my Presidency], RiaNovosti, January 29, 2015. 16. Eurasian Economic Commission 2015, “Evraziiskaia ekonomicheskaia integratsiia. Tsifry i Fakty” [Eurasian Economic Integration. Figures and Facts], February 2015. http://www.eurasiancommission.org/ru/Documents/EEC_dig_facts1.pdf. 17. GDP/PPP comparative figures based on IMF Data and Statistics (January 2013–April 2015). 18. Ruslan Dzarasov, “Economic Development and Institutional Obstacles to the Eurasian Project,” The Eurasian Project and Europe. Regional Discontinuities and Geopolitics, pp. 153–168, especially pp. 162–164. See also Pozo, “Russia’s Neoliberal Imperialism and the Eurasian Challenge,” pp. 200–202. 19. Popescu, “The Real, the Imaginary and the Likely,” p. 20; see also Cadier, “Eurasian Economic Union and Eastern Partnership,” p. 63, and Ruslan Dzarasov, “Economic Development and Institutional Obstacles to the Eurasian Project,” p. 165. 20. All these treaties and agreements are available from the website of the Eurasian Economic Union: https://docs.eaeunion.org/ru-ru/. 21. Rilka Dragneva and Katarzyna Wolczuk, “European Union Emulation in the Design of Integration,” in The Eurasian Project and Europe, pp. 135–152, p. 139. 22. Peter J. S. Duncan, “Ideology and Interests in Putin’s Construction of Eurasia,” in Lane and Samokhvalov (eds.), The Eurasian Project and Europe, pp. 102–116, p. 106. 23. Eurasian Economic Commission 2015, “Evraziiskaia ekonomicheskaia integratsiia. Tsifry i Fakty” [Eurasian Economic Integration. Figures and Facts], p. 37. 24. Popescu, “The Real, the Imaginary and the Likely,” p. 11. 25. Sean P. Roberts and Arkady Moshes, “The Eurasian Economic Union: A case of Reproductive Integration?” Post-Soviet Affairs, published online November 25, 2015, p. 7, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1060586X.2015.1115198. 26. Ibid., p. 4. 27. Popescu, “The Real, the Imaginary and the Likely,” p. 11. 28. A notorious example concerns Armenian EEU membership, which followed after Russian pressure prevented it from pursuing an association agreement with the EU.

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29. Alexei Podberezkin and Olga Podberezkina, “Eurasianism as an idea, civilizational concept and integration challenge,” in Eurasian Integration – The View from Within, pp. 46–60, pp. 47–48. 30. Marlene Laruelle, “Eurasia, Eurasianism, Eurasian Union: Terminological Gaps and Overlaps,” PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 366, July 2015, p. 5. http://www.ponarseurasia.org/memo/eurasia-eurasianism-eurasian-union-terminological-gaps-and-overlaps. 31. Ibid., p. 4. 32. See Paul Benjamin Richardson, “Putin’s Eurasian Dialectic,” in Lane and Samokhvalov (eds.), The Eurasian Project and Europe, pp. 89–101. 33. In Roberts and Moshes, “The Eurasian Economic Union: Power, Politics and Trade,” ft. 10. 34. “Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation,” September 12, 2013, http://archive.mid.ru//brp_4.nsf/0/76389fec168189ed44257b2e0039b16d. 35. Presenting the EEU as an attempt to restore the Soviet Union by stealth makes for attention-grabbing headlines. To give but two examples (from reputable Polish media outlets), see “Niewielu Chętnych do nowego ZZZR” [Few keen on New USSR], Gazeta Wyborcza, October 13, 2014; and “Unia Eurazjatycka konkurencyjna dla Europy?” [Is the Eurasian Union a competitor for Europe?], Polskieradio.pl, January 3, 2015. In his Izvestiya piece, Putin calls such speculations “naïve.” 36. A particularly strong statement of this can be found in Sergei Glaziev, “Russia and the Eurasian Union,” in Eurasian Integration – The View from Within, pp. 85–96, especially, pp. 93–94. 37. See Ray Silvius, “Eurasianism and Putin’s embedded Civilizationism,” in Lane and Samokhvalov (eds.), The Eurasian Project and Europe, pp. 75–84. 38. Lilia Shevtsova, “The Russian Matrix: The Art of Metamorphosis,” Carnegie Moscow Centre, November 2013, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Article_ Shevtsova_2013_Eng.pdf. 39. Putin, 2011. 40. “MinFin ozhidaet ottok kapitala iz Rossii v 2015 godu v $90–100 mlrd” [Ministry of Finance Is expecting Capital Flight from Russia at $90–100 billion in 2015], RiaNovosti, March 2, 2015. 41. “Chistyi ottok kapatala iz Rossii sokratilsia v pervom kvartale v 4.7 raza,” Forbes, April 11, 2016, http://www.forbes.ru/news/317665-chistyi-ottok-kapitala-izrossii-sokratilsya-v-pervom-kvartale-v-47-raza. 42. World Bank, Russia’s Monthly Economic Developments, April 10, 2015. 43. World Bank, Russia’s Monthly Economic Developments, June 10, 2016. 44. Robert and Moshes, “The Eurasian Economic Union: Power, Politics and Trade,” p. 10. 45. The trend had appeared before; see, Iana Dreyer and Nicu Popescu, “The Eurasian Customs Union: the Economics and the Politics,” European Union Institute for Security Studies, Brief Issue No. 11, March 2014, http://www.iss.europa.eu/ uploads/media/Brief_11_Eurasian_Union.pdf. 46. This dynamic has presented the Russian economy with some perverse advantages; for instance, the higher demand for cheaper Russian cars in Kazakhstan has allowed the industry to survive the worst consequences of Western sanctions.



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“Rossiiskie avtozavody namereny udvoit’ eksport” [Russian carmakers intend to double exports], TASS, May 15, 2015. 47. World Bank, “Migration and Development Brief 2015,” April 13, 2015, p. 19. 48. “Tamozhennyi Soyuz ne srastaetsya torgovlei,” Kommersant, May 19, 2014. 49. For a wildly upbeat prediction of the benefits which the EEU was meant to bring to the region, see Sergei Glaziev and Sergei Tkachuk, “Eurasian Economic Union. Achievements and Prospects,” pp. 61–83, especially, pp. 68–74. 50. “The Eurasian Economic Union: Power, Politics and Trade,” p. 1; see also Popescu, “The Real, the Imaginary and the Likely,” p. 12. 51. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, “Europäische Friedensordnung steht auf dem Spiel” [European Peace Framework is at Stake], Die Welt, November 16, 2014. 52. “Russia Hopes Free Trade Zone EU, Eurasian Economic Union Still Possible,” Sputnik, April 8, 2015. 53. This, at any rate, is the gist of a recent intervention by Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard: “The New European Disorder,” European Council on Foreign Relations Essay, November 2014. 54. Evgenyi Vinokurov, “Megasdelka dvukh soiuzov” [A Megadeal of Two Unions], Izvestiia, October 2, 2014. 55. But note that what is meant here is the commercial relations with Russia and the EEU within the framework of CIS free-trade agreements. Naturally, even the thought of Ukraine joining the EEU is unlikely. 56. Cadier, “Eurasian Economic Union and Eastern Partnership. The end of the EU-Russia Entredeux,” p. 65. 57. The balance between imposition and cooperation is explored in Richard Sakwa, “Challenges of Eurasian integration,” Eurasian Integration – The View from Within, pp. 12–30, especially, p. 24. 58. Ben Judah, Jana Kobzova and Nicu Popescu, “Dealing with a post-BRIC Russia,” European Council on Foreign Relations, November 2011, p. 27, http://www. ecfr.eu/page/-/ECFR44_POST-BRIC_RUSSIA.pdf.

Chapter 9

Aleksandr Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism and the Russian-Ukrainian War Anton Shekhovtsov

The Russian-Ukrainian war1 began in late February 2014, when Russian troops and special-operation units started the military occupation of Ukraine’s Autonomous Republic of Crimea. The occupation was a covert operation: Moscow denied any involvement, arguing that these were native, that is, Crimean, insurgents who seized regional governmental buildings and blocked the work of official Ukrainian offices, police and military bases. The whole process of foreign occupation was described by Moscow as an indigenous political development.2 The occupation forces installed their own “authorities” of Crimea and held an illegitimate referendum on the separation of Crimea from Ukraine on 16 March 2014 in a move that was interpreted by the Council of the European Union as “clear breach of the UN Charter and the OSCE Helsinki Final Act, as well as of Russia’s specific commitments to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity under the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and the bilateral Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership of 1997.”3 A month later, on 17 April, Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted the deployment of Russian troops in this Ukrainian republic.4 The initial denial of Russia’s military involvement in Crimea was important: not only did it confuse the international community – although few Western, let alone Ukrainian, leaders actually doubted this involvement – but it also bought Russia time to swiftly replace the Ukrainian authorities with Russian or Russia-controlled ones. The Crimean operation can be described as an act of Russia’s hybrid warfare – that is, blending conventional and irregular approaches – against Ukraine. András Rácz, of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, analysed the Russian hybrid war in Crimea and, later, in east Ukrainian oblasts, highlighting the war’s three phases: preparation, attack and stabilization.5 The aim of this chapter is to show that, far from being a spontaneous local 181

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uprising, the first stages of the Russian-Ukrainian war were characterized by significant involvement of various representatives of Russian far-right movements. This chapter focuses on the involvement of one such movement underpinned by Aleksandr Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism that, on the basis of existing research,6 can be defined as an ideology centred on the idea of building a totalitarian, Russia-dominated Eurasian empire that would challenge and eventually defeat its eternal adversary represented by the United States and its Atlanticist allies. More specifically, this chapter shows that Russian neo-Eurasianists had sought to be – and indeed became – involved, both directly and indirectly, in the first two phases of Russia’s hybrid war identified by Rácz. In particular, the neo-Eurasianists encouraged dissatisfaction with the Ukrainian authorities, strengthened the pro-Russian separatist movement in Eastern Ukraine, fuelled ethnic and social tensions, launched disinformation actions and declared alternative political centres. To that end, I first briefly discuss the approach of Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism towards Ukraine, and then trace the connections between Russian neoEurasianists and their Ukrainian allies during the preparatory (2005–2013) and attack (2014) phases of the Russian-Ukrainian war. UKRAINE IN THE NEO-EURASIANIST PERSPECTIVE The first references to Ukraine based on Dugin’s geopolitical theories appeared in the first half of the 1990s when Dugin was a co-leader of the extreme right Natsional-Bol’shevistskaia Partiia (National-Bolshevik Party, NBP) that he co-founded with Russian ultranationalist avant-garde writer Eduard Limonov in 1993.7 The 1994 political programme of the NBP clearly enunciated that it did not consider the current borders of either Russia or the post-Soviet states as fixed or uncontested. The NBP’s programme declared that the party would denounce the Belavezha Accords, which dissolved the Soviet Union and founded the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in 1991, and revise the borders of Russia. Furthermore, NBP’s Russia would annex the territories of post-Soviet states “where the Russian ethnic population constituted more than 50% of the overall population through local referenda and their support from the Russian side.” Particular territories to be annexed by National Bolshevik Russia were also named: Crimea (Ukraine), Northern Kazakhstan and the Narva region (Estonia).8 Dugin’s neo-Eurasianist works – most important, Osnovy geopolitiki (The Foundations of Geopolitics), which had been published shortly before he left the BNP9 – proposed a more detailed and elaborate view on Ukraine. For Dugin, Ukraine as a state, “makes no geopolitical sense”: Ukraine “does not possess any peculiar cultural message of universal significance, or geographical uniqueness, or ethnic exceptionalism.”10 Moreover, for Dugin,



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the territory of Ukraine is torn between the Eurasian heartland (Russia) and the West; it can only exist as a cordon sanitaire between these two alleged geopolitical centres of power. As such, it undermines the security of Eurasia: The sovereignty of Ukraine represents such a negative phenomenon for Russian geopolitics that it can, in principle, easily provoke a military conflict. ... Ukraine as an independent state with some territorial ambitions constitutes an enormous threat to the whole Eurasia, and without the solution of the Ukrainian problem, it is meaningless to talk about the continental geopolitics. ... The existence of Ukraine in its current borders and with a current status of “a sovereign state” is identical to an enormous blow to the geopolitical security of Eurasia and to the military incursion on its territory. Continued existence of unitary Ukraine is inadmissible. This territory must be divided into several zones corresponding to the range of geopolitical and ethnocultural realities.11

Dugin distinguished four ethnocultural regions, or “geopolitical constituents,” of Ukraine: “Western Ukraine,” “Little Russia”12 (Ukrainian territories to the east of the Dnieper river), “Right bank of the Dnieper river” (Ukrainian territories to the west of the Dnieper river but not including Western Ukraine) and, finally, Crimea.13 “Western Ukraine,” according to Dugin, consists of Volhynia, Galicia and Transcarpathia, and is alien to the Russian culture and, hence, to the Eurasian heartland. Rather, “Western Ukraine” belongs to Mitteleuropa (Middle Europe) dominated by Berlin and consisting of Germany, Italy and most of the territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Thus, the entirety of “Western Ukraine” needs to be severed from the rest of Ukraine. In a later article Dugin argued that “Western Ukraine” belonged to Mitteleuropa even if, in ethnic terms, “West Ukrainians” were of Slavic origin.14 Neo-Eurasianism holds that the “Great Russian ethnic group” and Orthodox “little Russian population” dominate “Little Russia,” which is linked to Russia in terms of culture, history, ethnos and religion. This zone may constitute “an independent geopolitical region with a broad autonomy, but in an unconditional and solid union with Moscow.”15 In its turn, the “Right bank of the Dnieper river,” or “Central Ukraine,” “is ethnically dominated by little Russian ethnos and language, but the prevalent denomination there is Russian Orthodoxy.”16 In the neo-Eurasianist doctrine, this implies that “Central Ukraine,” like “Little Russia,” fully belongs to the Eurasian heartland. Finally, Crimea should be granted “a special status and provided with a maximum autonomy under Moscow’s direct strategic control, but with due consideration of socio-economic interests of Ukraine and ethno-cultural demands of the Crimean Tatars.”17

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The Russian-Georgian War in August 2008 radicalized, to a certain degree, Dugin’s views. He seemed to welcome the decision of Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown to refuse offering the NATO Membership Action Plan to Georgia and Ukraine at the 20th NATO Summit held in Bucharest in April 2008. According to Dugin, that refusal was a grace period granted to Russia by “Old Europe,” which was, according to him, resisting the forces of Atlanticism so that Russia could strengthen itself. The war in August 2008, however, marked the end of this “grace period.” For Dugin it was a watershed: Russia had to act decisively if it wanted to position itself as a global power. Thus, Dugin actively supported Russia’s invasion of Georgia and craved for the complete occupation of that country. For him, the RussianGeorgian war was an existential battle against Atlanticism beyond Russia and Georgia: “If Russia decides not to enter the conflict ... that will be a fatal choice. It will mean that Russia gives up her sovereignty. ... We will have to forget about Sevastopol [i.e. the Ukrainian city located in Crimea].”18 Dugin’s book Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia (The Fourth Political Theory),19 published after the Russian-Georgian War, reflects his radicalized neo-Eurasianist views on Ukraine. On the one hand, he repeated the thesis of a Ukraine comprised of antagonistic zones: “Little Russia is narrower and wider than Ukraine. In Ukraine, there are several large geopolitical enclaves: Galicia, Volhynia, Crimea, Novorossiia [New Russia],20 part of which is within Russia’s borders.”21 On the other hand, given his perception of the Russian-Georgian war as the intensification of the alleged Atlanticist attack on Russia (and Eurasian heartland), Dugin argued that time was running out “to disrupt the annexation of Ukraine by the Atlanticist empire.”22 By the “annexation,” Dugin meant, first and foremost, Ukraine’s presumed bid for NATO membership. It was high time that Russia started “to break the ground of the CIS space for the construction of a new imperial building.”23 Dugin believed that Russia could no longer rely on the French-German negative attitudes towards Ukraine’s membership in NATO, and had to act on its own. He argued that “extending Russian influence in post-Soviet space” would not necessarily imply “direct colonisation in the old tradition.” As he claimed: “In our world, more sophisticated and efficient network technologies are developed that allow to achieve the same results with the different means – with the use of information resources, social organisations, faith-based groups, and social movements.”24 However, Russia’s direct action was also possible: It cannot be excluded that a battle for Crimea and Eastern Ukraine awaits us. Only a short time ago, the most hot-headed among the Russian hawks presumed only an internal conflict in Ukraine, as well as political, economic and



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energy pressure [on Ukraine] from the Russian side, but now a possibility of a direct military clash no longer appears unrealistic. Building an empire always incurs costs: [there are costs] for those who help Washington to build its global empire, and for those who want to assert an alternative structure of the world order based on multipolarity (in other words, for us).25

This brief discussion of Ukraine in the neo-Eurasianist perspective allows us to highlight several points. First, neo-Eurasianism considers Ukraine “an unnatural state” consisting of four major regions with allegedly different geopolitical loyalties. Second, a sovereign and united Ukraine constitutes a major threat to the geopolitical security of Russia and the envisioned Eurasian empire. Third, in order to neutralize this threat a Russia guided by neo-Eurasianist principles needs to dismantle Ukraine as a sovereign state through non-military measures (or a combination of non-military and military resources, which can be defined as hybrid warfare) and put most of the Ukrainian territories, especially Crimea and “Eastern Ukraine” under Moscow’s direct control. GEARING UP FOR THE WAR Dugin conceptualized the need for the destruction of Ukraine already in the 1990s, but specified the means for doing so in 2009 in his Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia. However, Dugin and neo-Eurasianist organizations became involved in the non-military measures aimed at undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity already in 2005. The timing was determined by the Orange Revolution in Ukraine – a series of mass protests against the fraudulent “victory” of Ukraine’s corrupt, proRussian Prime Minister Viktor Ianukovych in the 2004 presidential election.26 The success of the Orange Revolution, which had led to the second run-off of the presidential election in which Ianukovych’s contender, pro-Western Viktor Iushchenko, won, seemed to have scared Putin and the Russian ruling elites. They feared that a similar protest could take place in Russia and put an end to Putin’s regime. The significant contribution of young, active Ukrainians to the success of the Orange Revolution prompted the Russian establishment to launch a pre-emptive defence force by reviving, mobilizing and consolidating a pro-regime youth movement. In order to counter the largely imaginary threat of a “colour revolution” in Russia, the authorities sanctioned the creation of several “patriotic” youth movements: Nashi (Ours), Rossiia molodaia (Young Russia), Molodaia gvardiia (Young Guard), and some others. One of those movements was Evraziiskii soiuz molodezhi (ESM, Eurasian Youth Union) – under the leadership of Pavel Zarifullin and Valerii

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Korovin – a National Bolshevik youth wing of Dugin’s Mezhdunarodnoe evraziiskoe dvizhenie (MED, International Eurasianist Movement). It is unclear who funded the ESM from 2005, but an analysis of the Russia-based Centre of Economic and Political Reforms shows that the ESM received several presidential grants amounting to more than 18.5 million Russian roubles between 2013 and 2014.27 The ESM was active not only in Russia, but also in other countries, including Ukraine. Between 2005 and 2007, branches of the ESM were established in the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Sevastopol and some others. These branches cooperated with the Ukrainian cells of the NBP, as well as with Ukrainian far-right parties such as the Rus’kyi blok (Russian bloc), the misleadingly named Prohresyvna sotsialistychna partiia Ukrainy (Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, PSPU) led by Natalya Vitrenko, and Bratstvo (Brotherhood) headed by Dmytro Korchyns’kyi. Both Vitrenko and Korchyns’kyi were members of the Highest Council of Dugin’s MED.28 The Ukrainian branches of the ESM remained on the margins of Ukrainian political life, while most of its activities were limited to anti-NATO protests and other similar anti-Western actions, and did not produce any significant result in terms of undermining the Ukrainian state. Moreover, some of the Ukrainian members of the ESM did not share the radical anti-Ukrainian ideas of neo-Eurasianism. For example, after two Russian members of the movement and one Ukrainian activist of the ESM vandalized Ukrainian state symbols on the Hoverla mountain in 2007,29 this led to a split in the Ukrainian ESM, as many did not support this act of vandalism. This also led to the termination of any cooperation between the ESM and the Bratstvo party, and Korchyns’kyi left the Highest Council of the MED. The radicals, however, welcomed the act and were outspoken in their resentment of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Kostiantyn Knyrik, an ESM activist from the Crimean town of Bakhchisaray, made no secret of the anti-Ukrainian agenda of neo-Eurasianism: “Our foremost priority is to focus on the creation of the empire; the first goal is to break Crimea away from Ukraine. To join it to the empire first.”30 Because of the anti-Ukrainian thrust of neo-Eurasianism and the Hoverla mountain incident, Pavel Zarifullin, the leader of the ESM, and Dugin himself were banned from entering Ukraine in 2006 and 2007, respectively. The neo-Eurasianist movement largely disappeared from Ukraine by 2008, due to the 2007 split and the measures against the ESM on the part of the Sluzhba bezpeky Ukrainy (SBU, Security Service of Ukraine).31 Some activists left the movement for ideological reasons, some moved to Russia to continue their anti-Ukrainian work outside the country itself, some joined other pro-Russian organizations and some abandoned political involvement completely. The minority stayed in the movement, but was hardly visible until the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014.



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However, Russian neo-Eurasianists were more successful in cooperating directly with a number of pro-Russian organizations in Ukraine. One of these organizations was the above-mentioned PSPU led by Vitrenko who, at that time, could be described as “the premier representative of radical antiWesternism in Ukraine.”32 Vitrenko often took part in various conferences featuring either Dugin or other members of his neo-Eurasianist movement. Dugin called her “a charismatic politician ... advocating Eurasianist Slavic views”33 and “a leader of the pan-Ukrainian resistance [to the US].”34 Vitrenko’s political narrative consisted of three main points. First, she promoted the idea of creating a political union of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. Second, she rejected any form of Ukraine’s rapprochement with the EU and the United States – the West in general. Third, she labelled all advocates of Ukraine’s independence as Ukrainian ultranationalists or even Nazis. She freely substituted “NATO” with “Nazism” (and vice versa) in her political speeches, attempting to create a strong association between Nazism and the West in general, and – appealing to the Soviet mythology of the “Great Patriotic War” – portrayed a struggle between the “fascist” West and “antifascist” Russia. Yet another pro-Russian organization that Dugin’s neo-Eurasianists cooperated with in Ukraine was the “Donetskaia Respublika” (Donetsk Republic, DR). This organization was created in summer 2005 by Andrii Purhin, Oleksandr Tsurkan and Oleh Frolov, as a response to the “Orange Revolution” and presidency of Viktor Iushchenko who advocated a pro-Western foreign policy of Ukraine. The DR was officially registered in December that year, but by autumn leaders of the organization had already taken part in the protest demonstration in Kyiv together with the activists of the ESM.35 For the DR, the cooperation with the ESM was apparently the most important organizational link with Russia. In August 2006, the DR’s leaders, namely Purhin and Frolov, as well as Knyrik and several other Ukrainian ESM activists, went to a summer camp in Russia organized by the ESM. Vitrenko and Oleksandr Svistunov, the leader of the Rus’kyi blok, also took part in the camp where they delivered lectures to the participants. Apart from lectures, seminars and social activities, the participants of the camp were engaged in training for violent street protests. One of the trainers was Oleh Bakhtiiarov who had been Dugin’s associate since the 1990s and lived in Kyiv where he was close to the local branch of the ESM. In November 2006, DR and ESM activists collected signatures to hold a referendum on the independence of the “Donetsk republic.” The referendum never took place, but the SBU and police took notice of the group, and cases were brought against the leaders of the DR under three articles of the Ukrainian Criminal Code: “Actions aimed at the forcible change or overthrow of the constitutional order or the seizure of state power,” “Infringement on the

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territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine,” and “Violation of citizens’ equality based on their race, nationality or attitude to religion.”36 The criminal cases hindered the process of building the DR as a functional structure; in 2007, a Ukrainian court outlawed the DR, and it went underground. Neither the persecution nor banning of the DR, however, stymied its activities. In 2008, the DR, together with several other pro-Russian organizations, held a convention featuring Pavel Kanishchev, one of the leaders of the Moscow branch of the ESM, and Knyrik as the leader of the ESM’s Crimean cell. The convention declared the creation of the Donetsk Federal Republic. Its declaration also referred to a resolution of the “convention of popular representatives of South-Eastern Ukraine” that, in particular, renounced the existence of the Ukrainian nation, arguing that [the congress] considers the totally forced Ukrainisation of South-East [of Ukraine] as a form of humanitarian genocide aimed at the destruction of the indigenous Russian population (russkie), replacement of Russian concepts by the “Ukrainian” ones. Considers as a humanitarian crime against the SuperEthnos of the Russians (Russy) the artificially created community “Ukrainian nation” that does not exist as such and divides the single people into “Ukrainians” and “Russians” (rossiiane). The primordial people of the Rus is the Russian (russkii) people as an indivisible foundation of the Great Russian Race.37

The resolution also demanded from the Ukrainian parliament to adopt a “law on the federal structure of Ukraine” through the change of the Constitution of Ukraine. In 2009, the DR declared the “state sovereignty of the Donetsk Federal Republic,” uniting the territories of six Ukrainian southeastern oblasts: Donets’ka, Dnipropetrovs’ka, Zaporiz’ka, Luhans’ka, Kharkivs’ka and Khersons’ka.38 The same year, the DR held a camp where – as it appears from the photos taken there39 – activists were trained in firearms and making Molotov cocktails. The DR largely curtailed their activities in 2010. One possible explanation is that the deaths of three activists of the DR including Tsurkan – the DR believed that the SBU poisoned them with mercury vapour40 – might have delivered a blow to the organization. A more feasible explanation, however, is that the DR’s activities aimed at destabilizing the Ukrainian state were no longer necessary after pro-Russian politician Viktor Ianukovych was elected president of Ukraine in February 2010, and another pro-Russian politician, Mykola Azarov, became prime minister. The DR apparently felt that it did not need to attack Ukraine’s sovereignty as long as the country was ruled by the pro-Russian forces. The relation between the reduced activities of the DR and the outcome of the 2010 presidential elections may also explain why the DR resumed its



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activities and extensive cooperation with the ESM in 2012. This was the year of parliamentary elections in Ukraine, and the pro-Russian forces struggled to retain their power in the parliament, and, thus, undermined the nationaldemocratic pro-Western forces. At that time, Ianukovych’s allies adopted “anti-fascist” rhetoric attacking the Ukrainian far-right Svoboda (Freedom) party. Since Svoboda also cooperated with the Ukrainian national-democrats, two “anti-fascist” organizations, Russia-based World without Nazism and the International Antifascist Front founded by Ianukovych’s major ally Vadym Kolesnychenko, mobilized against the entire national-democratic opposition to Ianukovych trying to discredit it as “fascist.”41 The DR, with its insistence on the dangers of Ukrainian pro-Western “fascism,” fit well into the campaign against the opposition to Ianukovych. There was another important factor that contributed to the reinvigorated activities of the DR in 2012. It was also the time of heated debates on the direction of Ukraine’s foreign policy. Russia developed its Eurasian Customs Union (ECU) and wanted Ukraine to be part of it. The second option for Ukraine was the Association Agreement with the EU. Politicians close to Ianukovych seemed to be divided on the foreign policy issue: some supported the idea of Ukraine joining the ECU; others clearly favoured the rapprochement with the EU and the West in general. It seems viable to suggest both Moscow and Ukrainian pro-Russian politicians and officials promoting the integration into the ECU contributed to the mobilization of the radically antiWestern DR in 2012 as leverage on Ianukovych. Hence, the idea of the integration into the ECU dominated the contacts between the DR and ESM, as well as between other Ukrainian pro-Russian and Russian organizations, in 2012. On 18 February 2012, activists of the DR and ESM took part in a small round table “The Future of Donbass” in Luhansk. Around twenty Russian and pro-Russian participants adopted a resolution which, in particular, argued that “the ultimate aim of the relations between [Russia and Ukraine] had to be a transition from the regional integration to the building of a new form of the interstate integration”42 – that is, the Eurasian Union as the next step in the development of the ECU. On 11 March 2012, representatives of various Russian and Ukrainian organizations held a round table “Ukraine and Donbass for the Eurasian Union” in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don to discuss the creation of the Eurasian Union. This conference featured DR’s Purhin, Andrey Kovalenko, the leader of Moscow’s ESM, and Serhii Baryshnikov, associate professor at the Donetsk National University who was known for promoting Dugin’s books and neo-Eurasianist ideas at his lectures.43 Kovalenko, in particular, stated that the Russian authorities were going to mobilize movements of Russian compatriots abroad, so pressure groups of this kind could become “a basis for the broad integration movement.” The conference itself concluded with

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an initiative to create an international non-governmental organization (NGO) Ukraine for the Eurasian Union, as well as establishing a special NGO for Donbass named Donbass for the Eurasian Union led by Baryshnikov.44 On 24 May 2012, the ESM announced on its website that the DR opened the embassy of the Donetsk Republic in the Russian Federation: the “administration of the Embassy was temporarily housed in the headquarters of the Moscow branch of the ESM.” The announcement also argued, intrinsically rejecting the territorial integrity of Ukraine, that the opening of the embassy would “contribute to strengthening of the relations between the residents of the Donetsk Republic and the rest of Russia, and to the matter of reunification of the lands of historical Russia artificially disunited in 1991.” Furthermore, the DR was going to issue passports of the Donetsk Republic, and the residents of the above-mentioned six southeastern oblasts of Ukraine had priority in applying for these passports.45 Conferences focused on the Eurasian integration of Ukraine continued. On 28 July 2012, Donetsk hosted a round table “Regional reintegration as a steppingstone of the Eurasian unification” that featured Russian and Ukrainian pro-Russian activists, including ESM’s Kovalenko and other members of the neo-Eurasianist movement, DR’s Purhin, and Baryshnikov. A similar but larger conference, titled “Donbass in the Eurasian Project,” took place between 24 and 25 November 2012 in Donetsk and brought together activists from twenty Russian and Ukrainian pro-Russian organizations. The conference opened with a panel chaired by Baryshnikov as the head of the “Donbass for the Eurasian Union” and featured papers of the leaders of the ESM Kovalenko and Valerii Korovin (who conveyed greetings from Dugin), as well as Purhin and two other pro-Russian activists from Donetsk. The conference adopted a resolution that, in particular, stated: The participants of the conference declare its principal aim – the creation of the Eurasian Union. ... Donbass can and must become a steppingstone and a support region for the launch of the genuine Eurasian project. Being a geopolitical and historical product and heritage of the Russian line of development, our land represents an optimal trans-regional model of the future integration. Our region is an organic part of the Russian world (Russkii mir), an epicentre of Novorossiia – the last bulwark and guarantee of the unity of Ukraine and Russia. The current conditions actualise the issue of turning Donbass from the purely socio-economic reality into the political factor.46

The DR’s activities went beyond conferences and round tables. On 4 April 2013, it organized an attack on a cultural centre in Donetsk that hosted a workshop on Internet technologies. John F. Tefft, US Ambassador to Ukraine



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until May 2016, opened the workshop, but left before the attack. Several reports stressed the inactivity of the police during the incident; furthermore, the police later stated that there had been no violations of the public order.47 This reinforced suspicions that the DR had high-ranking patrons in the region who condoned their anti-Ukrainian and separatist activities during Ianukovych’s rule.48 However, the DR became less active afterwards and mobilized again only after the Ukrainian revolution, Ianukovych’s flight to Russia and the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war that started with the Russian occupation of Crimea at the end of February 2014.

NEO-EURASIANISTS AT WAR The victory of the Ukrainian revolution implied that Ukraine would not join any Russia-led integration projects – the outcome which neo-Eurasianists considered as a blow to their agenda regarding Ukraine. Their allies in Ukraine, pro-Russian movements and organizations such as the DR, interpreted the pro-Western revolution as a direct threat to their ambitions too. Encouraged by the annexation of Crimea by Russia, they continued mobilizing against the revolution and engaging in active resistance to the former opposition to Ianukovych that formed the interim government after Ianukovych and several ministers of Azarov’s government fled to Russia. Ukrainian oligarchs such as Rinat Akhmetov, who supported Ianukovych in the past, had significant assets in east Ukrainian oblasts (especially the Donets’ka oblast) and who thus held formal and informal power in the region, seemed to be attempting to put pressure on the interim government by facilitating or, at least, not impeding the pro-Russian separatist activities.49 For example, the local SBU office arrested Purhin on 19 March 2014 for his involvement in the violent protests,50 but he was reported to be already free on 22 March.51 The oligarchs who exerted influence on the local law enforcement structures unlikely wanted east Ukrainian oblasts to cede to Russia, but they thought that they could control the pro-Russian separatists and use them as leverage on the interim government to protect their assets which they thought were threatened by the new authorities. However, the allegiance of pro-Russian separatists and ultranationalists lay not with the Ukrainian oligarchs but with Russia. They became important actors in the initial phase of the war in southeastern Ukrainian oblasts.52 Pavlo Gubarev, a former member of the Russian fascist organization Russkoe natsional’noe edinstvo (RNE, Russian National Unity) and Vitrenko’s PSPU, declared himself the “People’s Governor” of the Donets’ka oblast on

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3 March 2014 at an assembly of the regional parliament which was occupied by pro-Russian separatists including DR activists. During the separatist rallies and seizures of the regional government and SBU buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk, some of the participants waived flags of the ESM, although it is unclear who did this: the DR activists, local activists of the ESM or Russian members of this neo-Eurasianist movement. By the end of February 2014, Dugin was actively engaged in promoting neo-Eurasianist and anti-Ukrainian messages using the neo-Eurasianist and Russian mainstream media, as well as posting comments on the developments in Ukraine on his social networking sites on Facebook and its Russian equivalent VK (or Vkontakte).53 In general, Dugin’s message consisted of four major ideas: first, that Atlanticists brought Nazis to power in Ukraine thus declaring a war on Russia; second, that the interim government was a Nazi junta and had no legitimacy; third, that Ukraine did not exist anymore; and finally, that Russia must act decisively to prevent the Atlanticists from establishing control over the entire territory of former Ukraine. Dugin also directly instructed particular members of the pro-Russian separatist movement in Donetsk. At the end of March 2014, Iekateryna Gubareva, the spouse of Pavlo Gubarev who was arrested at that time by the Ukrainian authorities (he was released in May that year), uploaded a video of her Skype conversation with Dugin which provided an important insight into Dugin’s relations to the pro-Russian separatists and his instructions to them.54 During this conversation, Dugin made several major points. The first point concerned political legitimacy: the only legitimate power in Ukraine belonged, despite his flight to Russia, to Ianukovych; no existing administrative or bureaucratic structure in Ukraine was legal anymore; pro-Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine had to reject all elections scheduled by the interim government and the Ukrainian parliament because that would legitimize the “Nazi junta” in Kyiv. Second, Dugin insisted on the existential threat of the “Nazi junta” arguing that it was preparing a genocide of the Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine. The third point referred to the need of the launch of large-scale subversive activities: Dugin called for organizing a general strike in southeastern oblasts; forming armed self-defence units and taking hostage representatives of the “junta”; mobilizing for the war with the government forces; dismantling the border between the southeastern Ukrainian oblasts and Russia; and eliminating Ukrainian border guards and customs officers. The fourth point concerned the role of Russia: according to Dugin, Moscow was not content with the annexation of Crimea and would “liberate” the southeastern oblasts of Ukraine too by deploying peacekeeping forces in the region. Taking into account Russia’s tactics in its war on Georgia in August 2008 and his belief that “extending Russian influence on the post-Soviet space”



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could be realized through hybrid warfare, Dugin seemed to envision the following situation: first, pro-Russian separatists would start a “civil war” in the southeastern parts of the country and be helped by Russian volunteers if the Ukrainian-Russian border came under the control of Russian border guards and pro-Russian separatists; then a “civil war” would escalate and Russia would have a reason to send peacekeeping forces thus occupying at least the southeastern oblasts. Following Dugin’s involvement, the ESM started to give instructions to the separatist movement too. On 8 April 2014, the ESM issued an official statement appealing to the “people of the South-East.”55 In this statement, the ESM, to some extent echoing Dugin’s instructions, called for the extensive violent mobilization of pro-Russian separatists who needed to take power in their hands, block railways and highways, take control of the communication nodes and airports, build barricades between the oblasts, dismantle the Ukrainian-Russian border, take as many hostages as possible, put pressure on the members of Ukrainian power structures who remained loyal to the interim government, engage in information warfare, etc. The ESM also advertised the means of providing financial support for the separatists and became actively engaged in coordinating recruitment of volunteers who were willing to go to the war with the Ukrainian government forces. However, it seems impossible to establish how successful or efficient the ESM was in recruiting the volunteers. Not only the ESM but also other Russian fascist organizations were involved in the recruitment process during the Russian-Ukrainian War, including the RNE, NBP, Russkoe Imperskoe Dvizhenie (Russian Imperial Movement), E.N.O.T. Corp, various Russian Cossack movements, and many others. There is no conclusive evidence that the Russian authorities or power ministries directly sanctioned the recruitment of Russian volunteers with the aim of sending them to Ukraine to help the separatists. However, two important observations suggest that Russian officials either were involved in this process or, at least, did not hinder it. First, not a single criminal case was opened in Russia against Russian citizens for their fighting on the side of the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. Russia’s Criminal Code includes two articles that can potentially be applied in this context.56 Article 208, “Organisation of an Illegal Armed Formation or Participation in It,” punishes those who participate in armed formations that are not provided for by a federal law, or in armed formations in a foreign country that are not provided for by the law of that country, for purposes contradicting the interests of the Russian Federation. Article 359, “Mercenarism,” punishes those who, in particular, are engaged in recruitment, training, financing, or any other material provision of a mercenary, and also the use of him in an armed conflict or hostilities, as well as those who

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participate as a mercenary in an armed conflict or hostilities. Despite the fact that several Russian ultranationalist organizations not only articulated their support for pro-Russian separatists, but also publicly advertised their recruitment and training activities, none of them was prosecuted. On the other hand, the Russian authorities prosecuted those Russian citizens who fought in east Ukrainian oblasts against the separatists and Russian troops or were allegedly involved in recruiting volunteers for the pro-Ukrainian forces.57 Second, two prominent Russian ultranationalists, Aleksandr Belov and Dmitrii Demushkin, declared that Russian officials tried to persuade them to send members of their organizations as volunteers to Ukraine to fight on the separatists’ side.58 According to Belov, he was approached by the Russian security service (Federal’naia sluzhba bezopasnosti – FSB, Federal Security Service), while Demushkin argues that he was first contacted by Russia’s Vice Prime Minister Dmitrii Rogozin, a former leader of the far right Rodina (Motherland) party, and then by the FSB. Belov and Demushkin declined to take part in the war, and the Russian authorities started to persecute them for various, apparently unsubstantiated, reasons. Nothing of the kind happened to the Russian neo-Eurasianists. Several of their allies took up posts in the self-proclaimed separatist Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and other separatist regions. Purhin became the “first vice prime minister” of the DNR, while another leader of the DR, Oleh Frolov, became a member of its “parliament.” Kostiantyn Knyrik, the leader of the Crimean branch of the ESM, became the head of the Information Centre called South-Eastern Front. Aleksandr Proselkov, the leader of the ESM cell in Russia’s Southern Federal District, was appointed “deputy minister of foreign affairs” of the DNR; Proselkov was killed in July 2014 under strange circumstances. Aleksandr Borodai and Igor Girkin (“Strelkov”) – two associates of Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian businessman and owner of Marshall Capital Partners,59 who also cooperated with Dugin60 – became “prime minister” and “minister of defence” of the DNR correspondingly. Since then, however, the positions of most have changed – some lost the positions they once had, some moved back to Russia. For their involvement in Russia’s war on Ukraine, the United States imposed sanctions on the ESM and Marshall Capital Partners, as well as on individual leaders of the Russian neo-Eurasianist movement such as Aleksandr Dugin, Andrei Kovalenko, Pavel Kanishchev, and on their close allies Andrii Purhin, Pavlo and Iekateryna Gubarevs, Igor Girkin, Aleksandr Borodai and Konstantin Malofeev. The importance of the neo-Eurasianists and their Russian and Ukrainian allies declined after August 2014 when regular Russian troops made their first large-scale incursions into Ukraine through the Ukrainian-Russian border, uncontrolled by the Ukrainian authorities.61 However, together with



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other Russian organizations, the neo-Eurasianists contributed to the planned “civil war” in east Ukrainian oblasts as the initial phase of the larger RussianUkrainian war. CONCLUSION Dugin’s neo-Eurasianist movement had become involved in the attempts at undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity since 2005 as a response to the pro-Western turn of Ukraine’s foreign policy that took place after the Orange Revolution. Armed with Dugin’s ideological assumptions that Ukraine was an artificial state threatening the security of Russia and the envisioned Eurasian empire, the ESM, the youth wing of the neo-Eurasianist movement, started to actively disseminate Dugin’s ideas in Ukraine, form cells in various Ukrainian cities and build contacts with pro-RussianUkrainian organizations. Guided by Dugin’s idea that incorporating Ukraine into Russia’s sphere of influence might be implemented through a combination of non-military and military resources, that is hybrid warfare, the ESM’s activities in Ukraine were focused on creating a fertile ground for the preparatory phase of the war. In particular, using András Rácz’s terms, the ESM encouraged dissatisfaction with the central Ukrainian authorities and strengthened local separatist movements, especially the DR, and fuelled ethnic and social tensions in east Ukrainian oblasts. During the attack phase, the ESM encouraged, and took part in, creating alternative centres of power opposing the official Ukrainian authorities. Dugin and his Russian followers directly instructed their allies in the Donets’ka oblast to seize administrative buildings and telecommunications infrastructures, establish communication and information monopoly, break the morale of the police and armed forces, take hostage representatives of the central power and disable border guards. The idea behind the neo-Eurasianists’ activities at this stage of the RussianUkrainian War was to launch a “civil war” in Ukraine that would offer Russia a chance to send in the occupation forces under the guise of peacekeeping forces. Russia’s actions in Georgia in 2008 suggested this development: Russia used peacekeeping and regular forces to occupy the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008. However, Russia did not deploy the peacekeeping forces in the Ukrainian case; instead, it sent regular troops to back the pro-Russian separatists who started losing the fight to the Ukrainian government forces in August 2014. The Russian military incursion signalled the start of a new stage of the war in which the previous activities of the Russian neo-Eurasianists were no longer required.

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Evidence suggests that the influence of Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism exists outside Ukraine too. The 2014 report of the Czech Security Information Service assesses that Russia is creating in Europe a structure “ideologically based on Dugin’s expansionist Neo-Eurasianism (which is in a way acceptable to all European political parties, from left-wing extremists and populists to right-wing extremists).”62 Dugin himself argues that neo-Eurasianists “need to collaborate with all forces [in Europe], Right or Left, who share our principles.”63 One example of this collaboration is Dugin’s contacts with the representative of the Greek left-wing populist Coalition of the Radical Left (widely known as Syriza) and the extreme right Chrysí Avgí (Golden Dawn).64 Moreover, neo-Eurasianism has influenced a number of French, Serbian and Brazilian volunteers who went to Eastern Ukraine to fight the Ukrainian government forces: they were inspired by Dugin’s works and openly referred to their group of foreign fighters as “Eurasianists.”65 NOTES 1. James Miller et al., An Invasion by Any Other Name: The Kremlin’s Dirty War in Ukraine (New York: The Institute of Modern Russia, 2015), accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.interpretermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IMR_Invasion_By_Any_Other_Name.pdf; Maksymilian Czuperski et al., Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin’s War in Ukraine (Washington: Atlantic Council, 2015), accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/Hiding_in_Plain_Sight/ HPS_English.pdf. 2. “Putin Denies Sending Russian Troops to Crimea,” Sputnik, March 4, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, http://sputniknews.com/russia/20140304/188087074/ Putin-Denies-Sending-Russian-Troops-to-Crimea.html; “Russia Says Cannot Order Crimean ‘Self-defense’ Units back to Base,” Reuters, March 5, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-lavrovspain-idUSBREA240NF20140305. 3. “Council Conclusions on Ukraine,” Council of the European Union, March 3, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/ docs/pressdata/EN/foraff/141291.pdf. 4. “Putin Admits Russian Forces Were Deployed to Crimea,” Reuters, April 17, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/17/ russia-putin-crimea-idUKL6N0N921H20140417. 5. András Rácz, Russia’s Hybrid War in Ukraine: Breaking the Enemy’s Ability to Resist (Helsinki: The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2015), 57–67. 6. Marlene Laruelle, Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right? (Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2006); Anton Shekhovtsov, “The Palingenetic Thrust of Russian Neo-Eurasianism: Ideas of Rebirth in Aleksandr Dugin’s Worldview,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 9 (2008): 491–506; Andreas Umland, “Aleksandr Dugin’s Transformation from



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a Lunatic Fringe Figure into a Mainstream Political Publicist, 1980–1998: A Case Study in the Rise of Late and Post-Soviet Russian Fascism,” Journal of Eurasian Studies 1 (2010): 144–152. 7. Markus Mathyl, “The National-Bolshevik Party and Arctogaia: Two NeoFascist Groupuscules in the Post-Soviet Political Space,” Patterns of Prejudice 36 (2002): 62–76. 8. “Programma Natsional-Bol’shevistskoi Partii (1994),” NBP-Info, accessed June 17, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20071208041130/http://www.nbp-info. com/1573.html. 9. Aleksandr Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki (Moscow: Arktogeia, 1997). Henceforth, however, I will refer to a later edition of the book: Aleksandr Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki. Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii. Myslit’ prostranstvom (Moscow: Arktogeia-tsentr, 2000). 10. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, 377. 11. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, 348, 379. 12. “Little Russia” (Malorossiia) is a name for Ukraine in the Russian Empire. Today, it is largely used as a derogatory term to enforce the idea of the absurdity of Ukrainian sovereignty or Ukraine’s colonial dependence on Russia. 13. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, 378. 14. Aleksandr Dugin, “Slavianskii mir i osnovnye tendentsii geopolitiki (doklad na ‘Slavianskoi Konferentsii’, mai 2001 g., Moskva),” in Osnovy evraziistva, ed. Aleksandr Dugin (Moscow: “Arktogeia tsentr,” 2002), 748. 15. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, 380. 16. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, 380. 17. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, 380. 18. Aleksandr Dugin, “Konets kompromisov – tanki na Tbilisi!” Kremlin.org, August 8, 2008, accessed June 17, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20080811000920/ http://kreml.org/opinions/188687894. 19. Aleksandr Dugin, Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia: Rossiia i politicheskie idei XXI veka (St Petersburg: Amfora, 2009). Note that this book differs from Aleksandr Dugin, The Fourth Political Theory (London: Arktos, 2012), which can erroneously be considered as the English translation of the Russian book. 20. Novorossiia is a term that was originally used by the Russian empire to describe southeastern regions of contemporary Ukraine. 21. Dugin, Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia, 254–255. 22. Dugin, Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia, 234. 23. Dugin, Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia, 234. 24. Dugin, Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia, 233–234. 25. Dugin, Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia, 236–237. 26. Andrew Wilson, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). 27. “Issledovanie TsEPR: kto poluchaet prezidentskie granty NKO,” Tsentr ekonomicheskikh i politicheskikh reform, December 21, 2015, accessed June 17, 2016, http://cepr.su/2015/12/21/issledovanie-cepr-kto-poluchaet-prezidentskie-granty-nko/. 28. “Vysshy Sovet i ‘Evraziiskii Komitet’,” Evrazia, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.evrazia.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1908.

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29. “SBU raskryla vandalizm na Goverle, upravliaemy iz Moskvy,” Ukrainskaia pravda, October 20, 2007, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/ news/2007/10/20/4426118/. 30. Rustem Khan, “Krymskii iugend,” Glavred, May 5, 2007, accessed June 17, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20070708213225/http://www.glavred.info/ archive/2007/06/05/140530-0.html. 31. The ESM branch in Kharkiv was banned in 2008, see “V Khar’kove zapretili ‘Evraziiskii soiuz molodezhi,’” Podrobnosti, November 7, 2008, accessed June 17, 2016, http://podrobnosti.ua/565016-v-harkove-zapretili-evrazijskij-sojuz-molodezhi.html. 32. Andreas Umland, “The Strange Alliance between Ukrainian ‘Progressive Socialism’ and Russian ‘Neo-Eurasianism,’” History News Network, April 17, 2006, accessed June 17, 2016, http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/23821. 33. Aleksandr Dugin, “V Ukraine Oranzhevaia revoliutsiia vse zametnee daet obratnyi khod,” Altaiskaia pravda 285 (2006), accessed June 17, 2016, http://dlib. eastview.com/browse/doc/10032917. 34. Sergey Trusevich, “Zvezdno-polosatye ushi,” Literaturnaia gazeta, August 6, 2008, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.lgz.ru/article/N32–6184–2008-08-06-/ Zv%D1%91zdno-polosat%D1%8B%D0%B5-ushi5379/. 35. “Andrei Purhin. 10 let ‘Donetskoi Respublike,’” AR-TV, December 6, 2015, accessed June 17, 2016, http://ар-тв.рф/novosti/item/403-andrej-purgin-10-letdonetskoj-respublike.html. 36. Sergei Mironov and Yaroslav Dzizenko, “Novosti s Vostoka na zapad,” Arsen’evskie vesti, May 12, 2010, 2. 37. “Donetskie ne priznaiut ukrainskuiu natsiiu! – soobshchenie,” KID, February 15, 2008, accessed June 17, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20080321105341/ http://zadonbass.org/allnews/message.html?id=72827. 38. “Desiat’ chelovek v Donetske provozglasili gosudarstvennyi suverenitet (Foto),” Ostrov, February 9, 2009, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.ostro.org/ news/article-56147/. 39. Paul Goble, “Pre-history of the ‘Donetsk Republic’ Goes back almost a Decade,” Euromaidan Press, July 30, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, http://euromaidanpress. com/2014/07/30/pre-history-of-the-donetsk-republic-goes-back-almost-a-decade/. 40. Ruslan Liapin, “Skaz pro streliaiushchie knigi,” Odnako, December 24, 2012, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.odnako.org/blogs/skaz-pro-strelyayushchieknigi/. 41. This tactic was adopted from the Russian Nashi movement that attacked, from the “anti-fascist” positions, all the opponents of Putin. See Anton Schechowzow, “Die unbehagliche Realität des Antifaschismus in der Ukraine,” Beton International: Zeitung für Literatur und Gesellschaft, March 10, 2015, 8. 42. Anton Bredikhin, “Grazhdanskaia initsiativnaia gruppa ‘Donbass za EAS’ vyrazila zhelanie vstupit’ v ‘Internatsional’nuiu Rossiiu’,” Russkii mir Zaporozh’ia, February 21, 2012, accessed June 17, 2016, https://rusmirzp.wordpress. com/2012/02/21/гражданская-инициативная-группа-до/. 43. “Gubarev smotrel na odnokursnikov napoleonom i vyrashchival konopliu,” Obozrevatel, August 12, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, http://obozrevatel.com/



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interview/32568-gubarev-smotrel-na-odnokursnikov-napoleonom-i-vyiraschivalkonoplyu.htm. 44. Vladimir Prokopenko, “Ukraina za Evraziiskii soiuz: novy format rossiiskoukrainskogo sotrudnichestva,” Evraziiskii soiuz molodezhi, March 13, 2012, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.rossia3.ru/ideolog/nashi/ukr_eas. 45. “V Rossii otkrylos’ posol’stvo Donetskoi Respubliki,” Evraziiskii soiuz molodezhi, May 24, 2012, accessed June 17, 2016, https://web.archive.org/ web/20120705120214/http://www.rossia3.ru/news/2012/05/24/23:56:44. 46. “V Donetske proshla mezhdunarodnaia nauchno-prakticheskaia konferentsiia ‘Donbass v evraziiskom proekte,’” Russkii mir. Ukraina, November 28, 2012, accessed June 17, 2016, http://russmir.info/pol/3362-v-donecke-proshla-mezhdunarodnaya-nauchno.html. 47. Denis Kazanskii, “Kto pokryvaet ekstremistov v Donetske?” Den’, April 9, 2013, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.day.kiev.ua/ru/article/podrobnosti/ktopokryvaet-ekstremistov-v-donecke; Stanislav Kmet’, “Militsiia i russkii fashizm v Donetske. Kto komu sluzhit?” Ostrov, April 10, 2013, accessed June 17, 2016, http:// www.ostro.org/general/politics/articles/417825/. 48. Andrew Wilson, “The Donbas in 2014: Explaining Civil Conflict Perhaps, but not Civil War,” Europe-Asia Studies 68 (2016): 631–652. 49. Wilson, “The Donbas in 2014,” 645–646. 50. “SBU zatrymala lidera ‘Donets’koї respubliky’ za separatizm – ZMI,” TSN, March 19, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, http://tsn.ua/politika/sbu-zatrimala-lideradoneckoyi-respubliki-za-separatizm-zmi-340745.html. 51. “Zhiteli Donetska piketiruiut Voroshilovskii otdel militsii,” LifeNews, March 22, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, http://lifenews.ru/news/129708. 52. Nikolay Mitrokhin, “Infiltration, Instruction, Invasion: Russia’s War in the Donbass,” Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society 1 (2015): 219–249. 53. Most of Dugin’s comments, posts, articles and interviews of that period was published in Aleksandr Dugin, Ukraina: moia voina: geopoliticheskii dnevnik (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2015). 54. “A.Dugin i E.Gubareva obsudili budushchee Donbassa i Ukrainy,” YouTube, March 29, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=-jP0yebodlM. 55. “Podderzhat’ narodnoe vosstanie! Zaiavlenie Federal’noi Setevoi Stavki ESM,” Evraziiskii soiuz molodezhi, April 8, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, http:// www.rossia3.ru/politics/russia/instr_vosst. 56. “Ugolovnyi kodeks Rossiiskoi Federatsii,” accessed June 17, 2016, http:// www.pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?docbody=&link_id=1&nd=102041891. 57. Margarita Alekhina, “Nepochetnyi legion,” Novye izvestiia, October 6, 2015, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.newizv.ru/society/2015-10-06/228432-nepochetnyj-legion.html. 58. “‘Rech’ shla ob organizatsii likvidatsii, ubiistva, ili lobbirovaniia aresta na territorii Frantsii Igoria Kolomoiskogo’. Bol’shoe interv’iu Aleksandra Belova-Potkina,” Kashin, March 30, 2015, accessed June 17, 2016, http://kashin.guru/2015/03/30/ potkin/; Dmitrii Volchek, “Generaly poiaviatsia na ulitsakh,” Radio Svoboda,

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January 23, 2016, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/27504150.html. 59. Oleg Kashin, “Iz Kryma v Donbass: prikliucheniia Igoria Strelkova i Aleksandra Borodaia,” Slon, May 19, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, https://slon.ru/ russia/iz_kryma_v_donbass_priklyucheniya_igorya_strelkova_i_aleksandra_borodaya-1099696.xhtml; Iggy Ostanin, “Russia against the World: Igor Strelkov’s Self-Fulfilling Prophecy,” The Interpreter, August 4, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-against-the-world-igor-strelkovs-self-fulfilling-prophecy/. 60. Meike Dülffer, Carsten Luther and Zacharias Zacharakis, “Caught in the Web of the Russian Ideologues,” Zeit Online, February 7, 2015, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2015-02/russiagreece-connection-alexander-dugin-konstantin-malofeev-panos-kammeno/ komplettansicht. 61. Shaun Walker, Oksana Grytsenko and Leonid Ragozin, “Russian Soldier: ‘You’re Better Clueless because the Truth Is Horrible,’” The Guardian, September 3, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/03/ukraine-soldier-youre-better-clueless-because-truth-horrible-moscow-ilovaysk; “PM Statement on Russia’s Actions in Ukraine,” GOV.UK, August 28, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-statement-on-russias-actions-in-ukraine. 62. “Annual Report of the Security Information Service for 2014,” Security Information Service, accessed June 17, 2016, https://www.bis.cz/vyrocni-zpravaEN6c8d. html?ArticleID=1096. 63. “Alexander Dugin on ‘White Nationalism’ & Other Potential Allies in the Global Revolution,” Counter-Currents Publishing, June 3, 2013, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/06/alexander-dugin-on-white-nationalism/. 64. Sam Jones, Kerin Hope and Courtney Weaver, “Alarm Bells Ring over Syriza’s Russian Links,” Financial Times, January 28, 2015, accessed June 17, 2016, http:// www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a87747de-a713-11e4-b6bd-00144feab7de.html; “Golden Dawn and Russian Neo-Nazism,” GRReporter, April 15, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www.grreporter.info/en/golden_dawn_and_russian_neonazism/11007. 65. “Terroristy iz Brazilii: pochemu poklonniki Stalina voiuiut za DNR,” Podrobnosti, September 27, 2014, accessed June 17, 2016, http://podrobnosti. ua/995272-terroristy-iz-brazilii-pochemu-poklonniki-stalina-vojujut-za-dnr.html; Aleksandr Kots and Dmitrii Steshin, “Frantsuzskii sharm opolcheniia Donbassa,” Komsomol’skaia pravda, February 4, 2015, accessed June 17, 2016, http://www. kp.ru/daily/26273/3151643/.

Chapter 10

The Age of Eurasia? Richard Sakwa

Eurasia is increasingly trapped between the major centres of world power. On the one side, the Atlantic community brings together Western Europe and the United States. Here are two of the most powerful institutions of our era, the European Union and NATO, as well as the home of the ideological foundations of the post–Cold War liberal order. On the other side, there is the nascent greater Asia, focused on China but also including a number of emerging economies and encompassing the Asia-Pacific region, which has now overtaken the Atlantic basin in economic power. Although institutionalization here lags behind that of its Western counterpart, numerous bodies, ranging from the Asia-Pacific Economic Corporation (APEC) to ASEAN, are giving voice to the concerns of the putative new political community. In between is Russia and the Eurasian region, which in the recent period is also beginning to create more ambitious institutions to reflect its political and economic interests. There are also numerous overlapping bodies, with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in the West and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the East. The fundamental question examined in this chapter is whether Eurasia, however defined, really does represent a separate and distinct political community, or whether it is fated to be dominated by structures whose centre of gravity is to be found elsewhere. This chapter is in two parts. The first looks at the structures and dilemmas of Eurasian integration, while the second looks at the various interpretations of the idea of Eurasianism to assess which, if any, could provide the putative ideational foundations for Eurasian integration.

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DILEMMAS OF EURASIAN INTEGRATION Putin’s keynote article on the subject of Eurasian integration was published in October 2011, just a few months before the presidential election of 4 March 2012. Putin emphasized the success of the Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, which was completed on 1 July 2011, and the imminent creation on 1 January 2012 of the Single Economic Area with the three countries, which included standardized legislation and the free movement of capital, services and labour. Putin outlined plans for the enlargement of this project to encompass Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (and Armenia) and its evolution into a Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and eventually a Eurasian Union (EaU). Putin argued that the new impetus for integration was prompted in part by the challenge of the global economic crisis but above all reflected the needs and traditions of the region. The envisaged Eurasian Union (EaU) for the first time would have supranational structures, including the creation of a muchenhanced Eurasian Customs Union Commission. Putin described how it had taken 40 years to travel from the European Coal and Steel Community to the fully fledged European Union, a path that he argued would be traversed far more quickly in Eurasia because it could draw on the experience of the earlier integration project. He denied that these plans represented the re-creation of the Soviet Union. It would be open to new members and would be based on maximally liberalized trade regulations. The planned EEU was intended to be a complement to the European Union rather than an alternative. The intention was not to “fence ourselves off from anyone,” but that it would be founded on “universal integrative principles as an inalienable part of Greater Europe, united by mutual values of freedom, democracy and market rules.”1 In its technocratic aspects the EEU was to be homologous with the European Union and based on similar principles of trade liberalization and regulatory convergence. However, the EEU lacks the legislative counterpart and there is no joint parliament. Equally, Putin’s article defended the civilizational distinctiveness of Eurasia, and the EEU was intended to protect the identity and historical specificity of the peoples of Eurasia. This “conservative” theme was to be greatly amplified during Putin’s third term as president. Already in this article the outlines of the contrast between the liberal cosmopolitanism of the European Union and the traditionalist affiliations of Russia began to emerge. This did not mean the repudiation of Russia’s European identity, but it did reflect the breakdown in relations with the Atlantic community. The greater European idea of a diverse yet unified continent stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific is reminiscent of traditional Gaullist ideas, which sought to embed the development of what became the European Union in some broader continental vision. Instead, all discussion about a “union of unions” between Russia and its allies and the European Union was



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condemned as a traditional Cold War attempt to drive a wedge between the two arms of the Atlantic community. Eurasia in this third-term conception reflected the fundamental ambition to re-establish some sort of defined and autonomous political community between ambitious Atlanticism to the West and the rising Asia to the East. The aim of the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in December 1991 had been to maintain the traditional economic and social links between the core Soviet republics, but in the end it served to facilitate their “civilized divorce.” Now finally there was a serious attempt to forge some sort of deep economic union between some of the states. However, the broader strategic environment had radically changed in the two decades since the Soviet collapse. Eurasian integration was now caught between the hammer of a resurgent Atlanticism and the anvil of new Asian powers, pre-eminent among which was China. The new model Eurasia was to maintain some autonomy for Euro-Asian continentalism. Plans for Eurasian integration are part of the continuing Russian discussion about a pan-continental model of integration.2 Eurasian integration was not so much an attempt to challenge the European Union but a way of enhancing the status of the Eurasian powers in achieving some sort of complementary status with wider Europe. In other words, the development of what became the EEU on 1 January 2015 was an attempt to establish Eurasia as a distinct pillar of a multipolar international system, but at the same time it sought to use the Union to bolster the political subjectivity of the actors who could potentially contribute to the creation of the greater European model of continentalism while at the same time enhancing the region’s bargaining power vis-à-vis China and greater Asia as a whole. In short, the EEU was both an end in itself, but it was also a way of mediating engagement with the other great blocs, the American-led Atlantic system and the Sinocentric Asia. This endows the project with a certain instrumentalism, accompanied by attempts to amplify Russia’s own weight through integration with its neighbours in the endless struggle for pre-eminence on the Eurasian landmass. The Euro-Asian continental vision is thus torn in both directions. To the West, despite all of its problems and internal contradictions, the “new Atlanticism” is reinforcing the Euro-Atlantic security and normative community.3 To the East, traditional narrow conceptions of Eurasia, confined to the core post-Soviet states, are contested by the idea of a “new Eurasia,” the term used by the Chinese leader Xi Jinping to describe the deepening relationship between Russia and China. The new Eurasia is based on the idea that the two countries have complementary interests in Central Asia, with investment and trade on the one side, and security, labour mobility and regulatory governance on the other. Where these two circles overlap there is a mode of reconciliation, derived from a relatively high degree of trust founded on

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commensurate representations of global order and a common apprehension about the dangers posed by Atlanticist militarism. By contrast, the equivalent mode of reconciliation between Russia and the Euro-Atlantic community is in steep decline. The trend is for intensifying mistrust, the breakdown even of the tenuous achievements of the cold peace years, and growing conflict.4 Eurasian integration is itself posited as a mode of reconciliation, not just for its member states but acting to give greater gravity and weight to the “missing middle” between the Atlantic community and greater Asia. Rather than the core Eurasian states joining the EU-centred wider Europe and the Atlantic community individually, Eurasian integration allows its member states to bargain as a bloc. In practice, not all the core former Soviet states see this as a necessity, and some, particularly Ukraine, have been notably allergic to the very idea. At the time of joining the EEU in May 2015, Kyrgyzstan was worried about losing its unique entrepôt status between China and Central Asia. Uzbekistan is the Ukraine of the East, only reluctantly participating in Russian-driven integration projects. Although there are some similar challenges to both ends of core Eurasia, they are far from symmetrical. Above all, while the European Union and the EEU are effectively competing in the same market, China offers a rather different package of goods. The focus is on bilateral trade and investment, and eschews institution building and, above all, regulatory and normative transformation. The early period of the EEU was particularly traumatic. Sanctions against Russia and its declining economic performance intensified existing mistrust about the value of Eurasian integration. Labour mobility remained, but remittances declined and the hoped for initial economic bonus from integration never materialized. Regional integration is one of the defining features of the era of globalization, and in its liberal forms is usually considered a progressive phenomenon because it reduces barriers to interstate trade, labour mobility and the like. However, in its Eurasian guise the project has lacked the anticipated dynamism, and it has been subject to radical critique. Hillary Clinton, the former American secretary of state, at an OSCE foreign ministers’ meeting in Dublin, on 6 December 2012, condemned Russia’s alleged attempt to “resovietise” countries that had emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. “We know what the goal is and we are trying to figure out ways to slow down or prevent it,” she said, making an extraordinary statement by any measure.5 For Clinton, Eurasian integration was little more than an instrument to create a Russian-centred power bloc, to create a privileged “sphere of interests” that is anathema to liberal internationalists. In certain respects Clinton had a valid point, since Russia’s overwhelming preponderance in any conceivable EaU would inevitably become a vehicle for Russian hegemony. The EEU Commission did try to balance this through equal voting rights and other mechanisms, but this did not take away the physical and economic reality of imbalance. It is a problem that the European Union is also grappling with



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as Germany assumes an increased leadership role. American objections to Eurasian integration only exacerbated Russia’s sense of a strategic impasse, in which any move it makes in energy, pipeline or integration is countered and opposed by some or all of the Atlantic powers. Liberal economists in Russia feared that Eurasian integration would lead to the loss of economic sovereignty to the new Commission. The shift of economic governance could reduce the scope for macroeconomic management and raise the spectre of Russia’s isolation from Europe and the West, as advocated by the ideologists of New Eurasianism, notably Aleksandr Dugin (see below). These concerns were exacerbated by the prominent role taken by Sergei Glazyev in advancing Eurasian integration. From 2012 he was the chief economic adviser to Putin on the issue. Glazyev made no secret of his sympathy for the radical anti-Western positions adopted by the Izborsky Club, a gathering of an eclectic group of Russian neo-traditionalists, neoSoviet restorationists, Stalinists, Russian nationalists and empire builders. These, in turn, were sceptical about the liberal economic internationalism embedded in the founding documents and developmental practices of the EEU, which sought to act in compliance with WTO rules and broader patterns of globalization. In-between were the Russian patriots in the Solzhenitsyn tradition, who had always wanted Russia to focus on its own national development, casting aside the burden of empire and responsibility for neighbours. The fundamental paradox is that just at the moment when the peaceful unification of the continent was in prospect for the first time in history, with the end of irreconcilable ideological differences, no substantive border conflicts, and ultimately even a potential convergence of interests, Europe now faced a new period of division and conflict. The Atlantic community rejected the greater European framework or even substantive engagement with Eurasian institutions, let alone any putative greater Asian complex – of the sort that is now sometime envisaged to be created between St Petersburg and Beijing. On the other side, divergence from the proclaimed normative agenda of Atlanticist and wider European narratives provoked fears about an externally sponsored regime change and fostered a culture of resistance that in the end also contributed to the failure of pan-continental projects. The ramified Atlantic project became increasingly self-sufficient, possibly even hermetic – in the sense that its normative and institutional foundations are so strong and expansive that relations with non-Western others will always be based on some sort of hierarchy, with the European Union at the top. Anything else would be considered regressive and retrograde in regulatory and governance terms. Ralf Dahrendorf gave voice to a facet of this when he argued that Europe was a community in which “small and medium-sized countries are trying to determine their destiny together. There is no place among them for a superpower, even if it is no longer an economic or indeed a political giant.”6

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Ultimately, pan-Europeanism on a continental scale lacked a sufficiently robust ideational or institutional framework. In September 2010 the Valdai Club warned in its analytical paper Towards an Alliance of Europe that the influence of Russia and the European Union in world affairs and the global economy would diminish unless they worked together to maintain Europe as one of the world’s great poles of influence.7 In practice, this was countered by plans for the creation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which seeks to create a massive new free-trade area spanning the Atlantic. The geopolitical implications of the deepening of the Atlantic community were clear, with the potential to create a “transatlantic fortress.”8 For Russian critics, this was considered to represent no less than an “economic NATO,” once again fencing off the Atlantic system from its Eurasian hinterland. Its critics accuse the EEU of doing the same, effectively disallowing its members from developing a deep partnership with the European Union, since clearly no country can be a member of two customs unions at the same time. This is what makes the Chinese-sponsored Silk Road and other initiatives so attractive, since they are based on network rather than institutional structures, and thus allows their participants maximum sovereignty and autonomy in international affairs. Nevertheless, as the greater Asia idea gradually assumed a more delineated form, the gulf between an Atlantic and a Eurasian Europe deepened. In the 1990s the implicit condition of Russia’s engagement with the Atlantic community was that it would not try to create a substantive alternative pole of integration around itself in Eurasia. In the twenty-first century the attempt to create just such a Eurasian pole was both cause and consequence of the growing gulf between them, notably with the European Union and NATO. At the same time, Eurasian integration was contested on a number of grounds. None of its three founding members – Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia – felt comfortable with the loss of sovereignty that regional integration involves. The self-exclusion of Ukraine from the EEU reinforced the latter’s Asian complexion. The rouble’s devaluation as a result of the economic crisis after 2013 meant than non-Russian goods lost their competitiveness, forcing the other EEU members to devalue their currencies. They were also forced to raise their import tariffs to the higher Russian level, damaging in particular Kyrgyzstan, which had profited from the resale of cheap Chinese merchandise. Russia’s counter-sanctions strategy led to the impositions of sanctions on some agricultural goods, damaging the idea of a single market. Even Putin’s enthusiasm began to wane when confronted by the reality of the loss of sovereignty, the difficulties of ensuring foreign-policy coordination with Belarus and Kazakhstan and their lukewarm support for Russia’s positions during the Ukraine crisis. The EEU proved to be a poor instrument to advance the greater European agenda, and instead was in danger



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of consolidating the long-term rift with the Atlantic community. Although regional integration remained an important part of his agenda, Putin sought to keep his policy options open. Thus Eurasian integration was complemented by the deepening strategic partnership with China and by the strengthening of macro-regional forms of alliance building, notably in the format of the SCO and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) organization. Nevertheless, Putin refused to accept that Russia would become an outcast from Europe, and thus his turn to Asia and the world was accompanied by attempts to rebuild the relationship with significant European powers, notably Germany, France and Italy. However, it was clear that relations with the Atlantic community, and its specific manifestations in the form of NATO and the European Union, would be strained for the long term. The team at the head of the European Union from November 2014, notably JeanClaude Juncker as the president of the European Commission, and Federica Mogherini at the head of the European External Action Service (EEAS), did explore new strategies to overcome the rift, but these were constrained by the reality of the new division of Europe. MODELS OF EURASIANISM We have described several competing and overlapping models of Europe, and how Eurasia has emerged as a distinct pole in the continental system. We will now turn to examine the ideational foundations of a putative Eurasian challenge to the Atlantic system. The notion of “Eurasianism” is one of the most contested in the lexicon. The word is ambiguous, and this indeterminacy imbues discussion of Eurasian integration with layers of meaning that are not always intended.9 Four different conceptualizations can be identified, presented here as little more than signposts across a highly contested territory. The debate over Eurasianism is part of the larger Russian discussion about its place in Europe – indeed, Eurasianist discourses often appear as a foil to the enduring Russian threnody about its European identity, the accompaniment to Russia’s modernization and “reform” projects since at least the time of Peter the Great. Classic Eurasianism The first is the classic Eurasianism of the 1920s, with roots stretching back well into the nineteenth century to encompass, inter alia, Nikolai Danilevskii and Konstantin Leontyev. Danilevskii outlined the proto-Eurasianist idea about a fundamental incompatibility between Russia and “Romano-Germanic” Europe.10 The conservative monarchist Leontyev is often described as the

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“Russian Nietzsche,” condemning the egalitarian consumerist utilitarianism of the West, but he differed from Nietzsche in advocating Russia’s turn to the East.11 Leontyev enjoyed strikingly accurate predictive power, warning that Germany would be able to fight one or at most two great wars, and that China would one day threaten Russia’s power. Above all, he warned of the coming revolution, arguing that “socialism is the feudalism of the future.” Danilevskii and Leontyev enjoyed a remarkable intellectual renaissance in post-communist Russia, and their thinking pervades the discourse of neotraditionalists of various stripes. This is the Eurasianism developed by Russian émigré writers in the 1920s and 1930s. They stressed Russia’s combined European and Asian identity, which constituted a new social formation distinct from Europe. Already in 1919, the linguist Nikolai Trubetskoi in his Eurasianism and the White Movement laid the foundations of what was to become classical Eurasianism. The foundational ideas of the movement were developed in a collective volume published in 1921 by Trubetskoi, Iskhod k vostoku (Exodus to the East), in which a number of talented writers elaborated on the theme of the dying West and the rising East, and Eurasia’s unique contribution to world civilization. The original authors included Petr Savitsky, a geographer and economist, Petr Suvchinsky, a musicologist, and George Florovsky, a theologian. Ideas about Russia’s unique path and peculiar ethnic composition (the combination of Slavic and Turkic peoples) were later developed into a distinctive synthesis by Lev Gumilev.12 The region’s distinct developmental trajectory, above all the Mongol conquest from the 1230s, shaped Eurasia as a separate and distinct civilizational entity. It was not part of the Western European integument, especially since it derived its Christianity not from Rome but from Byzantium. A notable aspect of classic Eurasianism is its critique of colonialism. Already in his book Europe and Mankind, published in 1920, Trubetskoi had condemned Western colonialism, and sought to dispel the myth (in a manner reminiscent of Danilevskii) that “Romano-Germanic” colonizers brought civilization and enlightenment to the subjugated peoples. Classical Eurasianists have little time for Russian nationalism, which is seen to be just another way of aping Western patterns of development, just as communism (another Western import) proved a false path of development.13 In recent years, however, a neo-traditionalist bloc has formed, uniting disparate and incompatible traditions in a common front against Western modernity. The work of Lev Gumilev has become part of the classical tradition, even though he was writing in a later period and responding to different challenges. Gumilev argued that the mixture of peoples, the influence of the Mongol invasions, and the distinctive pattern of cultural development means that “ethnogenesis” has taken place to create a new people.14 For Gumilev, Eurasia was the home of a separate and distinct civilization, sharply delineated from



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its neighbours to the West. This effectively represented the recasting of the communist idea of the creation a new Soviet people into a more traditionalist mould. This strain of thinking was not only anti-Western but also antinational. In both the Soviet and Gumilevian Eurasianist conceptions, the Russian nation was dissolved into a more amorphous and syncretic social formation. Gumilev’s genius was to recast Eurasianist ideas into a more comprehensive philosophical and cultural form, as a type of supranational idea that transcended narrow ideas of nationalism. Thus Russian nationalism was considered a Western import, and a pan-Eurasian civilizational identity was advanced as an alternative.15 Neo-Eurasianism Neo-Eurasiansm is the term used to describe the efflorescence of Eurasianist thinking in the wake of the dissolution of the communist system and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. The particularistic but transnational features of classical Eurasianism were taken up by a range of post-communist thinkers and politicians. The president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, spoke favourably of Gumilev’s ideas concerning the geographical and cultural-historical ties that bring together the peoples in the Grossraum (greater space, using the term popularized by Carl Schmitt) of northern and central Eurasia.16 For his part, Putin’s mention of Gumilev at the 26 August 2005 celebration of the city of Kazan’s 1,000th anniversary did not make him a neo-Eurasianist. In numerous speeches and writings Putin pronounced Russia a Eurasian power, but this usually meant little more than Russia seeking to diversify its foreign-policy orientations by balancing its European orientation with a necessary focus on Asia and the Pacific region. Putin’s Eurasianism is of a severely pragmatic sort, and there is no evidence that he shares the transnational inflection that is characteristic of classical Eurasianism.17 Putin sees Russia as comprising many different and separate nations, which together represent the larger Russian nation as a cultural formation. As for the role of ethnic Russians in that system, who now make up 80 per cent of the total population of the country, Putin, like Boris Yeltsin before him, is torn between, on the one hand, monist formulations that would render them the “system-forming” nation, and, on the other hand, pluralist representations of Russia as a pluricultural community made of some 150 autochthonous peoples.18 From the very first days of an independent Russia neo-Eurasian ideas challenged the liberal ascendancy.19 James Billington vividly describes the intellectual currents of the early post-independence period and, in particular, the resurgence of Eurasianist ideas.20 A notable contribution to the recrudescence of Eurasianist themes was made by Vadim Tsymbursky, a contributor to the

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Vestnik Evrazii, founded in Moscow in 1995 as a platform for the discussion of neo-Eurasian ideas. Tsymbursky placed Eurasianism into the broader intellectual context of Russian imperial and Soviet traditions that sought not so much the isolation of Russia but the generalization of its universal message in Orthodox and later communist ideology. Tsymbursky identified two strains in the original Eurasianism, encompassing the idea of “neither Europe nor Asia” and at the same time “both Europe and Asia.”21 Aleksandr Panarin, the former head of the political science department at Moscow State University, was a notable exponent of neo-Eurasian ideas in this period, but with the peculiar inflection that Russia was now identified as the core of a distinct civilizational pole based on its Orthodox identity and popular resistance to Western-style capitalism and consumerism. Like so many others, he distinguished between American and European civilization, and warned about the deleterious effects of NATO enlargement, stressing the importance of the reintegration of the post-Soviet space. In his conception, Russia would act as one of the elements of a multipolar world, challenging the universalizing and homogenizing tropes of globalization theory, which in his view was little more than the new ideology of Western dominance.22 Neo-Eurasianism takes two main forms. The radical or Slavophile tradition is balanced by a “democratic” trend. The latter does not oppose cooperation with the West, and stresses the economic and civilizational rather than geopolitical aspects of Eurasian integration, emphasizing that Russia must follow its own path. In an interesting analysis, Kubyshkin and Sergunin analyse the origins and diverse manifestation of neo-Eurasianism as a distinct manifestation of “special path” ideas on Russian development.23 They argue that the new version emerged in reaction to the exaggerated Atlanticism of the Yeltsin years, “a unique mixture of geopolitics with the so-called civilizational approach.”24 The neo-Eurasianists stressed the importance of the CIS as the key vector of Russian foreign policy. Sergei Stankevich, one of the earliest exponents of this trend, brought romantic notions of the Russian “national idea” into the mix, prefiguring the way that neo-Eurasianism would later evolve into the New Eurasianism.25 The “democratic Eurasianists,” of whom Stankevich was a good exemplar, sought to combine democracy, patriotism and federalism, and above all, did not oppose cooperation with the West but as part of what they considered a more balanced foreign policy. This is the strain identified by Tsymbursky of “both Europe and Asia.” The influence of these neo-Eurasianists was clear in the Russian Federation’s first Foreign Policy Conception of 1993, where the CIS and the Asia-Pacific region were considered Russia’s geopolitical priority.26 The Slavophile variant focused less on Russia’s geographical pluralism than its civilizational specificity. The film director Nikita Mikhalkov argued against Russia’s attempt to follow the European political model, and warned, “We are not Europe’s backyard; we are Asia’s front door.”



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His film Close to Eden, shot in 1992, depicts the friendship of a wandering Russian lorry driver and a Mongolian nomad who meet on the inner Asian steppe.27 For Pozdnyakov, the key thinker of this trend, Russia was situated between civilizations and acted to balance other civilizational constellations.28 The Slavophile trend asserted that Russia could join neither the Western nor Eastern civilization but should follow its own path. This was a line adopted by Yevgeny Primakov, Russia’s foreign minister from January 1996 to September 1998, when he became prime minister until May 1999. Kubyshkin and Sergunin note that both types of neo-Eurasianism entered a crisis by the late 1990s and effectively disappeared from Russia’s intellectual debates.29 The democrats moved into the camp of political realism, while the Slavophiles merged into the geopolitical school. The many works of Natalya Narochnitskaya reflect the way that the Slavophile trend shifted away from Eurasianist ideas towards a civilizational perspective based on Orthodoxy and patriotism.30 Equally, the widespread discussion of Gumilev’s ideas across the region does not necessarily equate to support for his notion that a “Eurasian” people had been created. Even Nazarbayev, the sponsor of the Eurasian National University named after Gumilev in the new capital of Astana, was never slow to stress Kazakhstani sovereignty, which could only be sustained if a separate Kazakh people had been established. It was Nazarbayev who in March 1994 first mooted the idea of some sort of EaU. He tried to find a political formula to give expression for what he considered to be the political community inherited from the Soviet Union, and possibly from the Russian empire before that.31 Central Asia had only been brought into the Russian empire from the 1860s, yet the Russianization (distinct from a conscious policy of Russification) of culture and modes of economy remains profound. Non-Russian neo-Eurasianists revere Gumilev for subsuming Russia into a genuinely pan-Eurasian peoplehood. As Laruelle notes, Eurasianism within Kazakhstan has tended to assume anti-Russian forms.32 This strain of non-Russian neo-Eurasianism demands genuine political equality and a nuanced appreciation of cultural and religious diversity. This more pluralistic Eurasianism is the ideology of contemporary Eurasian integration, although it is not so much anti-Russian as what could be called “post-Russian” – the attempt to move beyond neo-imperial categories to create a community of genuinely equal and sovereign post-Soviet states. This impulse for the equality of the nations of Eurasia in a dynamic economic community tends to be forgotten in critical accounts of the prospects for Eurasian integration. New Eurasianism In contrast to the putative pluralistic neo-Eurasianism indicated in the previous section, New Eurasianism is more traditional in its irreconcilable

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anti-Westernism. Since the 2000s this has almost entirely overshadowed the glimmers of reconciliation between liberalism and Eurasianism observed in the early post-Soviet period. With the fall of communism, Eurasianist ideas once again gained significant currency, but a profound ideological evolution has taken place. Neo-Eurasianism remains the residual ideology of a pluralistic and equilateral Eurasian integration, but within Russia it is overshadowed by more Russo-centric neo-traditionalist and anti-Western thinking. New Eurasianism had long been developing within the Soviet carapace, acting effectively as an original ideology justifying a single political authority across Eurasian space. This authority is some sort of neo-imperial reconstitution of Russia as a great power. The rather fine distinction between the neo and the new versions of Eurasianism (linguistically always ambivalent) within Russia has collapsed, undermining the autonomy and ideational foundations of a more pluralistic and liberal Eurasian integration process. It should be stressed that the more pluralistic neo-Eurasianism finds supporters not only in Kazakhstan and some other post-Soviet states, but also in Russia, notably in Tatarstan and Yakutia. The evolution of Aleksandr Dugin’s thinking is symptomatic in this respect, beginning and ending as more of a Russian nationalist than a genuine partisan of pan-Eurasianism. His complex mix of metaphysics, geopolitical analysis and Fourth Political Theory should be distinguished from the more pluralistic neo-Eurasianism, and thus deserves the designation of New Eurasianism.33 Dugin’s best known work is Foundations of Geopolitics (Osnovy geopolitika), written in 1996–1997 and thereafter published in numerous editions. In that work he argues that geopolitics is a transcendent episteme, and that Russia is the natural hegemon in the Eurasian space. Hence New Eurasianism repudiates the rather more pluralistic and Westphalian approach of most neo-Eurasianists and instead advances nationalist themes within the body of Eurasianist ideas. Dugin is one of the most distinctive voices of New Eurasianism in the post-communist era, devising a distinctive geopolitical viewpoint to accompany his reworking of Eurasian ideas combined with the radical anti-liberalism of the French New Right. At the heart of Dugin’s work is the contrast between land and maritime civilizations, with the former based on the harmonious synthesis of history and tradition, while the innately liberal “Atlanticist” “empires of the sea” are driven by a restless capitalism that abhors tradition. Dugin ties this very specifically to contemporary American-dominated Atlanticism, which remains hegemonic over the institutions of international governance and hierarchies of power. By contrast, the Eurasian pole remains weak and disorganized. This is a function of disparities in power, but above all because the Atlanticist individualist ideology erodes the social bonds and collective obligations at the heart of the cultural legacy of Eurasia. Thus the Atlantic power system is also



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a cultural project of the first order that considers resistance to its political and economic interests an attack on freedom itself. This is the “transdemocratic” synthesis at the heart of contemporary Atlanticism.34 To counter Atlanticism, Dugin proposes making Eurasia an alternative Grossraum, which envisages some sort of “strategic centre” accompanied by a number of “autonomies,” suggesting a degree of political pluralism, although he no doubt anticipated that most would assume a conservative traditionalist hue. Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory connects him to some of the radical currents in twentieth-century European political philosophy. He draws on Martin Heidegger’s argument that “modernity is a kind of scientific objectification of the world which only accepts cultural or traditional knowledge as long as it remains secondary to any objective enquiry,” a paradigm which, in Heidegger’s view, is central to the three great insurgent creeds of modernity: communism, fascism and liberalism.35 He rejected all three in favour of his Eurasianist philosophy, but since they each contribute something, he talks of his Fourth Political Theory. Rejecting the foundational categories of class, race and the individual, Dugin’s thinking posits Heidegger’s notion of Dasein, his term for humanity, as the keystone, based on the ideal of tradition (the equivalent to Heidegger’s notion of the authentic). Thus history is not the story of politics but the generation of tradition. Dugin saw Putin’s Russia as the natural leader of the re-created Eurasian Grossraum, challenging the hegemony of Atlanticism. Dugin outlined a whole series of cultural and political strategies to implement this strategy of resistance. This rapprochement between the partisans of a rethought Eurasianism and exponents of the “Russian idea” gave rise to a new synthesis. New Eurasianists, such as Dugin, seek to harness the power of the Russian state to advance neo-Eurasian ambitions. It is based above all on a geopolitical representation of international politics, drawing on (paradoxically) classic Western geopolitical thinkers such as Alfred Thayer Mahan, Halford Mackinder, Karl Haushofer and Nicholas J. Spykman. There had always been a geopolitical strain in classic and neo-Eurasian thinking, in particular adopting Mackinder’s heartland theory as the means of stabilizing the international system, but New Eurasianism combines this with Russo-centrism (although not, as noted, in some Russian republics and former Soviet states). This entails a resolute challenge to the West’s geopolitical dominance. In other words, New Eurasianism provides the ideological impetus for a genuinely revisionist approach to world politics. The mix of Russian nationalism (however defined) and Eurasianist ideas is one of the most distinctive ideological developments of the last decade. New Eurasianism gains an added impulse when the neo-Soviet imperial trend is added. This is the line long advocated by Alexander Prokhanov, the editor of the Soviet-style patriotic weekly Zavtra (to which Dugin is a frequent contributor) hankering back to the

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supranational principles enunciated by the Soviet Union, based on a strongly culturalist interpretation of politics allied with great-power ideologies. Thus, while neo-Eurasian ideas can be rendered compatible with Euro-Atlanticism, New Eurasianism is resistant to this sort of reconciliation. The Russian regime, notably when Vladislav Surkov was responsible for domestic politics and ideological formulations (2000–2011), was consistent in its critique of Russian nationalist ideas, but now these nationalist ideas returned in numerous guises, one of the most influential of which is the New Eurasianism, although cloaked in the expansive rhetoric of Eurasianism. The current political regime in Russia cannot ignore this emerging trend, bringing together four of the most influential trends in Russian political life: New Eurasianism, Russian nationalism, neo-Soviet nostalgia and a strain of democratic exceptionalism. In combination, New Eurasianism has the potential to act as a hegemonic idea in Russia and across the region. Putin and the partisans of Eurasian integration eschew ideological justifications of this sort, but the cultural and civilizational matrix in which Eurasian integration is proceeding will inevitably attract this type of ideological justification. Although Dugin’s thinking has influenced some of the new right parties in mainland Europe, notably Hungary’s Jobbik, France’s National Front and Greece’s Golden Dawn, Dugin’s influence on Russian regime politics has been minimal.36 His Eurasia Party sank without trace, while Dugin is prone to exaggerate his influence on the Russian elite. His militant and uncontrollable support for the insurgency in the Donbass, through his Eurasia Youth Union, provoked dismissal in June 2014 from his post as a professor in the sociology department of Moscow State University. This marked a turning point in the fate of the militant Russian nationalism and neo-traditionalism that had accompanied the repatriation of Crimea and the unfocused intervention in Eastern Ukraine.37 The regime clearly understood that the New Eurasianist movement could use the myth of Novorossiia in Ukraine to their advantage in leveraging greater power to influence policy in Russia, and Putin now fought back to control the monster of Russian nationalism that he had briefly let off the leash.38 New Eurasianist thinking is important because it catalyses a genuine division at the heart of contemporary European international politics. The Atlanticist project represents a distinct combination of security and normative imperatives, and in the post-Cold War era has lacked an inclusive and nontransformative mode of engagement with the non-Atlantic world. As far as the New Eurasianists are concerned, such an equal mode of engagement is a priori excluded by the very nature of the Atlantic community, the heir of the “Romano-Germanic” Europe lambasted by Danilevskii and his Eurasianist successors. As far as they are concerned, the European Union is increasingly subsumed into the Atlanticist project (although not without some points of



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resistance, both at the level of the European Union and by member states, and there is no guarantee that TTIP will be achieved), while the military wing of Atlanticism, the NATO alliance, has enlarged all the way to Russia’s borders and, as a result of the Ukraine crisis, is increasingly militarizing the frontier. Above all, from the New Eurasianist perspective, Atlanticism has become a revisionist project, seeking to transform the countries along its borders and, beyond (notably in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya). Many of these countries welcome this transformation for the obvious benefits in terms of public goods (notably the rule of law, secure property rights and accountable government), but there are some who wish to retain autonomous control over their own transformations. Russia is in the van of this category. Revisionist Atlanticism reinforced the radicalization of Eurasianism, a movement that from the very earliest days repudiated the possibility of a substantive rapprochement between Europe and Russia. New Eurasianism offers the most radical resistance in both theory and occasionally in practice. Nevertheless, criticism of Atlanticism does not necessarily entail the full-scale adoption of New Eurasianist thinking, which brings us to the fourth category. Pragmatic Eurasianism The fourth model of Eurasianism is the one that was adopted by the Putinite elite in his third presidential term from 2012, namely a pragmatic Eurasianism at home and projects for Eurasian integration in the former Soviet space. This was often accompanied by the rhetoric of neo-Eurasianism, and even absorbed some of the themes of New Eurasianism – notably in the speeches and writings of Glazyev, Putin’s adviser on the issue – but this only obscured the rational and pragmatic core of the project. At the heart of the third-term integration drive was the belief that at some profound level the post-Soviet countries (with the exception of the Baltic states) formed a natural economic, and potentially political, community separate and distinct from the European Union and other comparable integration projects. At the same time, Eurasian integration was intended not simply as a counter to the advance of the European Union but sought to act as a mode of advancing the greater Europe project that would ultimately encompass the European Union while allowing the various parts of Europe to retain their own identity. The claim that there is some sort of pre-political unity to much of the Eurasian landmass is an important one, and it is typically rooted in some combination of the first three variants of Eurasianism outlined above with the crucial addition of a strictly economic rationale. Classical Eurasianism had always advocated the need to create supra-state institutions, but this had been combined with a strongly dirigiste inflection that strove to regulate all of social life. It is this mix of motives and intellectual tributaries that alarms those who argue that Eurasian

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integration is an anti-liberal geopolitical project that would restore Russian hegemony over the region. In practice, defenders of the project argue that the putative EaU is the functional equivalent of the European Union and is not incompatible with liberal economies while responding to the needs and traditions of the region.39 Putin himself is not recognizably Eurasianist in any of the three ideological guises discussed above, even in its democratic neo-Eurasian guise, but is instead a pragmatist in international affairs and a statist liberal in economic matters (a contradictory formulation that has inhibited the adoption of clearcut liberal or mobilizational strategies). New Eurasianists criticize Putin for his realpolitik pragmatic approach to international affairs, his excessive liberalism in economic matters and for his continued commitment to the liberal transformation of the Russian economy and society (to be achieved through the dirigiste monopoly over the polity). Putin’s new-found enthusiasm for Eurasian integration was in part a response to the failure of pan-European unification (the greater European idea) and the stalemate in Russo-EU relations, although despite the setbacks the regime does not repudiate its European and pan-continental aspirations. Putin’s pragmatic Eurasianism stresses economic functionality of integration, and while he refers to the common cultural legacy, only rarely does he mention politicized civilizational factors. As Eurasian integration developed, Putin’s rhetoric did reflect some Eurasianist themes, notably the need for spiritual renewal and the alleged exhaustion of the civilizational values on which the West had once been built. In other words, the ideology of Russia’s “special path” began to be smuggled back in, although now framed in terms of the West having repudiated its own values. From this perspective, the “true West” has now moved to the East, and its values are being defended by Russia’s conservative elite.40 In his state of the nation speech in 2003, Putin called European integration the “historical choice” for Russia. He conceded that “broad rapprochement with and real integration into Europe [would be] a complex process which will take a long time. But this is our historical choice and a choice that has been made.”41 Ten years later the language had changed, with Putin condemning the liberal values of Europe as “sexless and barren,” with Russia opposed to Europe’s “dark chaos.”42 CONCLUSION Eurasian integration signalled a turn away from but not a repudiation of the West. Putin’s third-term plan for Eurasian integration sought to maintain the fine line between a pragmatic and progressive model of Eurasian integration against models that sought to exploit the crisis in relations with the West to reshape continental politics in their entirety. The latter sought to make Russia



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the centre of an alternative civilizational complex sharply opposed to Europe and the West. Having lost its superpower status and rebuffed from Europe, neo-traditionalists looked to Eurasia to restore Russia’s status. By contrast, Putin’s pragmatic Eurasianism tried to shape an alternative alliance system that would enhance Russia’s position in the European and West-centred global order. From this perspective, Eurasian integration would be nothing if it was no more than compensation for failures elsewhere. Critics argue that if Russia defines itself as a Eurasian power, this would represent a shift backwards. Eurasian integration could potentially distract Russia from focusing on the fundamental challenges of economic and political modernization.43 Pragmatic Eurasianism was acceptable to the traditionally pro-European Russian ruling elite, but New Eurasianist inflections to Russia’s European identity were not. Russia’s self-exclusion from political Europe remains a minority stance. Putin’s strategy of using Eurasian integration as a platform for the development of a greater Europe is ambitious and fraught with problems and contradictions. Not the least of these is the fear of Russia’s neighbours that what would be created is not a greater Europe that would overcome the division of Europe but the creation of a greater Russia that would restore the Yalta-Potsdam practices of the subordination of smaller nations. It is hard to envisage a union of equals where the power disparities are so large. Eurasian integration to date has been a largely consensual process, but a coercive tone is also present. Plans for Eurasian integration are a manifestation of the fundamental divide after the end of the Cold War, and thus the disciplinary techniques of the Cold War period have returned. Eurasian integration and ideas represent neither a power shift towards a new age of Eurasia nor a damp squib where grandiose plans run into the sands, but as always with Putin, something in-between. NOTES 1. Vladimir Putin, “Novyi integratsionnyi proekt dlya Evrazii: budushchee, kotoroe rozhdaetsya segodnya,” Izvestiya, 3 October 2011, p. 1; available at http://premier. gov.ru/events/news/16622. 2. See Sergei Karaganov and Timofei Bordachev, Towards an Alliance of Europe (Moscow, Valdai Club, September 2010); http://vid-1.rian.ru/ig/valdai/Alliance%20 eng.pdf. See also their Towards a New Euro-Atlantic Security Architecture (Moscow, Valdai Club, November 2009); http://vid-1.rian.ru/ig/valdai/European_security_eng. pdf. 3. Richard Sakwa, The New Atlanticism, Valdai Paper No. 17 (Moscow, Valdai Club, May 2015); http://www.scribd.com/doc/266515275/The-New-Atlanticism. 4. Hiski Haukkala, “From Cooperative to Contested Europe? The Conflict in Ukraine as a Culmination of a Long-Term Crisis in EU-Russia Relations,” Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2015, pp. 25–40.

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5. “Clinton Calls Eurasian Integration an Effort to Re-Sovietize,” RFE/RL, Russia Report, 9 December 2012. 6. Ralf Dahrendorf, Morality, Revolution and Civil Society: Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (Moscow, Ad Marginem, 1998), quoted by Irina Busygina, in Ivanov, Igor S. (ed.), Perspectives and Challenges for Building Greater Europe, RIAC Working Paper No. 17 (Moscow, Russian International Affairs Council, 2014), p. 33. 7. Valdai Club, Towards an Alliance of Europe: Analytical Report by the Russian Group of the Valdai International Discussion Club (Moscow, September 2010), http:// valdaiclub.com/publication/22128.html. 8. Ambassador Miriam Sapiro, “The Geopolitical Impact of TTIP: A Transatlantic Fortress or an Open Platform?” Istituto Affari Internazionali, IAI Working Papers No. 15/10, May 2015, http://www.iai.it/en/pubblicazioni/geopolitical-impact-ttip. See also Rem Kortweg, “It’s the Geopolitics, Stupid: Why TTIP Matters,” Centre for European Reform, 2 April 2015, http://www.cer.org.uk/insights/ it%E2%80%99s-geopolitics-stupid-why-ttip-matters. 9. Marlene Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire, translated by Mischa Gabowitsch (Washington, DC, Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). 10. Nikolai Danilevskii, Rossiya i Evropa: Vzglyad” na kul”turnyya i politicheskiya otnosheniya Slavyanskago mira k” Germano-Romanskomu (Moscow, Kniga, 1991), with the title page a facsimile of the St Petersburg: Obshchestvennaya pol”za, 1871 edition. 11. This is developed in his collection of essays, Vostok, Rossiya, i slavyanstvo (The East, Russia and Slavdom) (1885–1886). 12. Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism, pp. 50–55. 13. E. A. Pozdnyakov, Natsiya, natsionalizm, natsional”nye interesy (Moscow, Progress-kultura, 1994). 14. Lev Gumilev, Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1990). 15. Mark Bassin, Sergey Glebov and Marlene Laruelle (eds.), Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories, and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). 16. The work that was of particular relevance for Nazarbayev was Lev Gumilev, Drevnyaya Rus i velikaya step” (Moscow, Michel & Co., 1993). 17. For a discussion issue arguing that Putin is rather more classically Eurasianist, see Mark Bassin, The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2016). 18. For an alternative view, see Charles Clover, Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism (London, Yale University Press, 2016). 19. For an interesting early round table on the subject, see “Evraziistvo: za i protiv, vchera i segodnya,” Voprosy filosofii, No. 6, 1995, pp. 3–48. 20. James H. Billington, Russia in Search of Itself (Washington and Baltimore, Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), with Chapter 4 titled “The Authoritarian Alternative: Eurasianism.”



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21. The Vestnik Evrazii article is reproduced as Vadim Tsymburskii, “Dve Evrazii: Omonimaya kak klyuch k ideologii rannego evraziistvo,” in Sergei Panarin (ed.), Evraziya: Lyudi i mify (Moscow, Natalis, 2003), pp. 22–49. 22. Aleksander Panarin, Revansh istorii: Rossiiskaya strategicheskaya initsiava v XXI veke (Moscow, 2005). An English version was published as The Revenge of History: Russian Strategic Initiative in the Twenty-First Century (Moscow, Logos, 1998). For a perceptive analysis, see V. A. Bazhanov, “a Note on A. S. Panarin’s Revansh istorii,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 51, No. 4, 1999, pp. 705–708. 23. Aleksandr Kubyshkin and Aleksandr Sergunin, “The Problem of the ‘Special Path’ in Russian Foreign Policy,” Russian Politics and Law, Vol. 50, No. 6, November–December 2012, pp. 7–18. 24. Kubyshkin and Sergunin, “The Problem of the ‘Special Path’ in Russian Foreign Policy,” p. 8. 25. Sergei Stankevich, “Derzhava v poiskakh sebya,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, 28 March 1992, p. 4; Sergei Stankevich, “Russia in Search of Itself,” The National Interest, Summer 1992, pp. 47–51. 26. “Kontseptsiya vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii,” Diplomaticheskii vestnik, January 1993, pp. 3–23. 27. David Schimmelpenninck Van Der Oye, “The East,” in William Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord (eds.), A History of Russian Thought (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 217–240, at p. 233. 28. Kubyshkin and Sergunin, “The Problem of the ‘Special Path’ in Russian Foreign Policy,” p. 12. 29. A. A. Sergunin, Rossiiskaya vneshnepoliticheskaya mysl”: Problemy natsional”noi i mezhdunarodnoi bezopasnosti (Nizhnii Novgorod, Izdatel”stvo Nizhegorodskogo goudarstvennogo lingvisticheskogo universiteta, 2003), pp. 28–31. 30. For example, N. A. Narochnitskaya, Rossiya i russkie v sovremennom mire (Moscow, Algoritm, 2009). 31. N. A. Nazarbayev, “Speech at Moscow State University, named after M.V. Lomonosov,” 29 March 1994, President N.A. Nazarbaev and Contemporary Kazakhstan: A Collection of Documents and Materials, Vol. 3 (Almaty, Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies, 2010), pp. 214–215. 32. Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism, pp. 171–188. 33. Dugin’s thinking is usually described as New Eurasianism, as opposed to the generic neo-Eurasianism described earlier in this chapter. The thinking of Dugin and his acolytes is accorded a special section since it is representative of a far more consistent rejection of Western liberalism and civilization than most neo-Eurasianists. To avoid confusion, I will term Dugin a New Eurasianist. 34. Richard Sakwa, “The Death of Europe? Continental Fates after Ukraine,” International Affairs, Vol. 91, No. 3, May 2015, pp. 553–579. 35. This point is made by Andrey Tolstoy and Edmund McCaffrey, “Mind Games: Alexander Dugin and Russia’s War of Ideas,” World Affairs Journal, March 2015; http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/93030. 36. Anton Barbashin and Hannah Thoburn, “Putin’s Brain: Alexander Dugin and the Philosophy behind Putin’s Invasion of Crimea,” Foreign Affairs, 31 March 2014, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-03-31/putins-brain.

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37. For a discussion, see Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud (eds.), The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000–2015 (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2016). 38. For confirmation of this view of Putin as a pragmatic rather than an ideological politician, see Gleb Pavlovsky, “Russian Politics Under Putin: The System Will Outlast the Master,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2016 issue, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2016-04-18/russian-politics-under-putin. 39. Michael O. Slobodchikoff, Building Hegemonic Order Russia’s Way: Order, Stability, and Predictability in the Post-Soviet Space (Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2014). 40. Cf. Iver B. Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe (London, Routledge, 1996). 41. “Transcript of Putin’s State of Nation Address,” 16 May 2003, Johnson’s Russia List, No. 7186, 2003, www.russialist.org/archives/7186-1.php. 42. Vladimir Putin, “Poslanie Prezidenta Federal”nomu Sobraniyu,” 12 December 2013; http://kremlin.ru/news/19825. 43. Anders Aslund, “Putin’s Eurasian Illusion Will Lead to Isolation,” Moscow Times, 21 June 2012.

Part IV

EURASIANISM BEYOND RUSSIA

Chapter 11

Useful Eurasianism, or How the Eurasian Idea Is Viewed from Tatarstan Victor Shnirel’man

Because the term “Eurasia” is obscure, the Eurasian region lacks any strict definition, and Eurasianist perspectives are not particularly consistent, the theory of Eurasianism allows for flexibilities in interpretation that can be used in different ways by various nationalisms. This was evident already in the 1920s and 1930s among non-Russian nationalists, some of whom viewed it as a manifestation of “Russian imperialism” and chauvinism while others did their best to utilize Eurasianist arguments for their own ends.1 Strikingly, the same trend was apparent in the 1990s.2 Neo-Eurasianist discourse focuses heavily on the Slavic-Turkic alliance, and this chapter considers how these ideas attracted special attention in Tatarstan – an important intellectual centre playing a special role in the Turkic world – between the 1990s and early 2000s. TATARSTAN AS A MULTICULTURAL REGION This chapter considers, first, the attitude of the Tatar Public Center (TPC), the ideological headquarter of the Tatar national movement established in 1988, which was influential especially in the early 1990s. Second, it analyses several major discussions that took part in Kazan’ between the 1990s and early 2000s, which clearly illuminated the views and intentions of the Tatar intellectual elite. This includes a round table titled “The Eurasian Project: Realities, Problems, Concepts,” held in 1995 by the Russian conservative club Realists, as well as two scholarly conferences – “Eurasianism at the Eve of the 21st Century” and “Civilizational, Ethno-cultural and Political Aspects of the Tatar National Unity” – held in 2000 and 2002, respectively. The focus 223

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is on the specific variety of Eurasianism in Tatarstan, its dynamics through time and, finally, its political implications. Across the centuries, the Middle Volga region was characterized by close interactions between the Russian and the Tatar (Turkic) cultures, and Russian Orthodoxy and Islam. This pattern was still present in post-Soviet Tatarstan and had to be regarded carefully by the republican authorities. Indeed, the Tatars and ethnic Russians proved to be the major ethnic groups in the republic: respectively, 48 and 43 per cent of the population in 1989, and 53 and 40 per cent in 2010. It is for this reason that the first president of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev had promoted a project of “Tatarstanism” (Tatarstanizm), already in the early 1990s in an attempt to combine the idea of a civic nation with an equality of cultures and religions at the junction of the Eastern and Western worlds. At the same time, however, he did not fail to point out that Tatarstan was the “spiritual center of the Tatars.”3 Ten years later Shaimiev still shared these ideas and stressed that in terms of its geography, history and culture, Tatarstan was an important bridge between East and West. He presented Kazan as a “model of mutual respect between [religious] denominations and cultures” and recalled the “Eurasian roots” of Russia. Yet, whereas initially he neglected religion, now – after making a hadj in 1997 – he began to point out that Russia had enjoyed a “Muslim component” for centuries.4 Along with this, he emphasized the peaceful nature of Islam and its innate ethos of tolerance.5 SECULAR EURASIANISM OF TATARSTAN IN THE 1990s With regards to the TPC, its leaders followed a moderate line in the early 1990s, characterizing Tatars as the “Eurasian” mediators between East and West. At this time, they presented Tatars as part of “Turkic” and “Muslim” civilizations while acknowledging the importance of their Western values. This attitude was initially shared by the radical Ittifak party which supported the full independence of Tatarstan. The leadership in the TPC eventually came to be dominated by Tatar radicals, who at first constructed a “TurkicFinnish-Ugric-Slavic” Eurasia with an “Orthodox-Islamic” consciousness in opposition to the “Latin-Catholic” West. They quickly changed this position, however, emphasizing instead “Turkic-Muslim values” and identifying “Russia” with the Western “social pragmatic way of life.” As the Tatar ethnologist Damir Iskhakov pointed out, this argument failed to build up a solid basis for the Tatar national unity because it divided the Tatars into two parts – secular and religious.6 In 1997 certain TPC leaders came to the conclusion that an alliance between the Turkic-Muslim and Orthodox-Christian people was impossible, because



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“anti-colonialism, ingrained with Islam” made up the core of Tatar ideology.7 At the same time, secular Tatar nationalists did not want to sacrifice the importance of ethnicity for the sake of the unity of “Muslim civilization.” The then TPC leader Rafael’ Safin claimed that the “nation was primary and religion was secondary.” Thus, the secular Tatar nationalists did all they could to “nationalize” Islam, imagining it in the shape of Jadidism, or Euro-Islam.8 This trend goes back to the pre-revolutionary period when Muslim intellectuals in Russia began to demonstrate high interest towards Western culture, which fascinated them much more than any Asian culture. As a result, they made an attempt to reform Islam making it more open to the norms and values of Western civilization.9 It is noteworthy that, in his interview in a television programme Vesti-podrobnosti on August 30, 2005, devoted to a celebration of 1,000 years of Kazan’, President Shaimiev expressed sympathy towards Euro-Islam and depicted it as a specifically Russian model of Islam, having been developed by Jadidism. In the mid-1990s, well-known Tatar scholars subscribed to a secular project and neglected religion. In their view, Tatarstan was a unique case of cultural symbiosis. They accused Russia of the historic persecution of the Tatars and also of Russo-centrism, Russian messianism and statism, all of which, they claimed, had pushed Tatars to adopt radical positions.10 According to them, while the traditional Eurasianist project contained some healthy truths, it also included unacceptable ideas such as messianism, a privileged status of Christianity (Russian Orthodoxy) and an obsession with a unitary state model. They regarded the classical Eurasian idea of a “symphonic personality” (that is, a view of any collectivity be it an ethnic group, state or population as a well-integrated body) as an obsolete notion, which disregarded individualism.11 They also pointed out the obscure nature of the Eurasianist concept in general, which lacked consistency and clarity on key issues such as the precise territorial borders of Eurasia, political relationships between local states, political structure, relationships between various ethnic groups and religious denominations, projects for further development and so on. They also discovered traces of the former Soviet outlook in the Eurasian project.12 These Tatars were themselves attracted above all by the ideas of true democracy and civil society.13 At the same time, some of them wanted Tatars to be granted a special status in the Eurasian region, and they were fascinated by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s suggestion that Kazan’ should become the capital of the future Eurasian Union.14 This reserved attitude on the part of Tatar nationalist intellectuals to neo-Eurasianism was manifested by Mansur Kh. Khasanov, the president of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan, at the conference “Eurasianism at the Eve of the 21st Century.” Since the end of the

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nineteenth century, he contended, Tatars had been dreaming of a close relationship with the peoples of Russia, based on equality, freedom, science and education; one that was maintained in such a way as to secure their original languages and cultures. They wanted to be loyal Russian citizens without losing their own identity. Khasanov did not accept any assimilation or any model of a closed organic society (autarky). Thus, he was careful about the borders of the “Eurasian super-ethnos,” because he did not want relationships with the rest of the Turkic-Muslim world, mostly Turkey and Central Asian states, to be weakened at the expense of the connection to Russia. In addition, he discovered a spiritual weakness of Eurasianism, namely a readiness to throw away Russia’s ethnocultural originality. He was also alarmed by the anti-Western attitude of Eurasianism. He could accept this project providing that a true equality between peoples of Russia would be established, and he viewed the “Russian-Tatar union” as a basis of its prosperity.15 At the same time, radical Tatar political activists were working to appropriate the Eurasian idea for themselves. Rafael’ Mukhametdinov, vice president of the Assembly of the Turkic Peoples of the Commonwealth of Independent States (and ideologist of the Ittifak political party), argued that it was the Turkic world by itself that fit the Eurasian project better in terms of culture, language and spirit, in clear contrast to the Russian world, which was less prepared to accept this idea. He viewed a symbiosis of the European and Muslim cultures, the best examples of which were Turkey and Tatarstan, as a special characteristic of the middle Turkic world. For him, Tatars were “intellectually the most evolved Turkic people,” whose close familiarity with Russian society helped make them the “major branch of the Turkic world.” In addition, he believed that Turkey might be a legitimate member of the Eurasian Union. As far as the Russians were concerned – and in particular the Russian diaspora in the Asian states – he assumed that they were fated to enter the Eurasian world with the help of the Turkic society.16 Fauziya Bairamova, the leader of the Ittifak political party, one of the leaders of the World Tatar Congress and a chair of the Milli Mejlis of the Tatar people (an informal political board of the Tatar national movement), was well known for her radical views and shared the idea that Eurasia was primarily a Tatar legacy. She claimed that “Eurasia was old Tataria,” the space that had been once united by the empire of Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde. It was this very historical experience, she argued, that today pushed the Tatars to a struggle for independence.17 The survival of the Muslim Tatars as a distinct nation, she claimed, is supported by their possession of their own laws and also by maintaining their own distinctive “gene pool.”18 Russia itself had been shaped within Tatar territory, according to Bairamova, and the Tatars were the “true hosts” of Eurasia.19 All these views were summarized by Mirza I. Makhmutov, a member of the Russian Academy of Education and the Academy of Sciences of the



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Republic of Tatarstan. In his view, the core of the Eurasian Union was made up by the Christian-Muslim entity embracing mainly the Slavs and the Turks. He noted the great integrative power of the Russian culture, which had long lost its ethnic features to become All-Russian (“Rossiiskaya”), that is, a synthetic culture developed by the combined efforts of all peoples of Russia. All the peoples of Russia were “Rossiiane,” and Makhmutov called for the development of a civic society rather than any national-ethnic one.20 At the same time, he argued that distinct ethnic cultures were well adapted to a life within Russia, which was sufficient for a direct transition from culture to politics. As a result, every ethnic community was able to enjoy its own statehood (gosudarstvennost’) in Russia. Thus, he advocated an ethnic territorial federalism rather than just a territorial one, and he emphatically objected to the replacement of the “national republics” by the de-ethnicized administrative bodies (gubernii). For him, it was the Tatars alone who were the genuine Eurasian people living at the juncture of Europe and Asia. Makhmutov was dissatisfied that Russia lacked any experience of “equal relationships with its former colonies.” While negatively recalling the Russian conservatives’ (Slavophiles, late Slavophiles, Eurasianists, and the like) views about traditional Russian collectivism and a special mentality, he claimed that they hampered Russia’s transition to Western-type democracy. He was scarred by the development of an aggressive Russian nationalism and a clericalization of the state, which, in his view, could block a voluntary integration of the peoples. For Makhmutov, integration had to be learned in Europe rather than in the East, because he disliked Islam that shaped quite a different (and, thus, unacceptable) civilization where “clan, tribe and nation” were much more respected than any human rights. He also argued that Russian Orthodoxy lacked liberal values. In this way, he made a selective use of Eurasianism, borrowing only those ideas from it that worked for democracy and modernization and, at the same time, helped to protect ethnic cultures.21 RAFAEL KHAKIMOV AND AN AMBIVALENCE OF TATAR EURASIANISM While they prioritized ethnic values such as language, culture and identity in the 1990s, Tatar intellectuals gradually changed their initially negative attitude towards Islam and made an attempt to integrate it into their political project. In this respect, the evolution of Rafael’ Khakimov’s22 views is revealing. In the 1990s he was a key figure in the Tatar intellectual circles as the most influential TPC ideologist.23 His approach was shared by a secular wing of the TPC. His attitude to Eurasianism was ambivalent and inconsistent. On the one hand, he initially accepted the idea of a Russian (Eurasian) civilization but argued that the Turks – and not just the Slavs alone – also

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played a major role in its development. He agreed with the Eurasianists that Russia was shaped not on the basis of Kievan Rus’ but rather as a natural continuation of the Golden Horde. On this basis, special symbolic relationships between Moscow and Kazan’ were developed, as well as a long historical competition between the Russians and the Tatars. In this view, peoples who are ethnically non-Russian have made a great contribution to the emergence and development of Russia. At the same time, Khakimov derided the suggestion of a Slavo-Turkic and Orthodox-Muslim symbiosis as “shamanism and illusions.”24 He criticized the concept of the “Russian (Eurasian) civilization” because it resulted in a distancing from both Europe and Asia rather than an integration with them. Following Samuel Huntington, he defined civilization as an entity based on shared religious values. Therefore, he could imagine a project of a RussianOrthodox civilization, but a Russian civilization based on both Orthodoxy and Islam seemed nonsensical. Instead of a “Eurasian civilization,” Khakimov put forward the projects of the “Turkic” and “Muslim” civilizations, arguing that the Turks had made a great contribution to the proliferation of both through the development of the pan-Turkic culture and ideology, on the one hand, and the principles of Jadidism, on the other. It was moreover suicidal for the Tatars to isolate themselves within the borders of Russian civilization in a way which might arrest their development. In particular, he emphasized the importance for the Tatars of such European values as human and ethnic rights, which in his view contradicted Eurasian principles. He stood against an identification of social (ethnic) interests with state interests. In Khakimov’s view, Moscow and Kazan’ were the capitals of two different civilizations, which were permanently in struggle with each other.25 For all these reasons, Khakimov was prepared to discuss a joint state of Russians and Tatars only in territorial, and not in cultural or religious, terms. In addition, he pointed out that rapid democratization, urbanization and the development of public education made both the Tatars and the Russians to shift from collectivism to individualism. In his discussions of contemporary Russia, Khakimov complained that the authorities had demonstrated an asymmetrical attitude to the religious denominations, with the result that the Russian Orthodox Church was permanently privileged. For Khakimov, Russia’s future depended on the nature of relationships between the Russian-Orthodox and Muslim civilizations. That is why he was very much alarmed with the growth of chauvinist and nationalpatriotic attitudes among the general public since the mid-1990s. He pointed out that in the past Turks and the Muslims in general had found themselves alienated from real power and had suffered from discrimination. For this reason, they had become obsessed with the maintenance of their own ethnicity rather than with the security of Russia in general. To this extent, the notion



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of “Slavic-Turkic unity” was no more than an empty slogan, distant from real life. And Eurasianism was a messianic ideology, which sacrificed human rights and the rights of distinct ethnic groups. While putting the emphasis on the territorial issue, Eurasianism did not help solve vital ethnic problems, and, instead, proved to be a conflict-generating ideology. Khakimov’s conclusion was that Eurasianism aimed at a restoration of the historical territorial integrity and the imperial might of the Soviet Union and Russian empire, rather than reconciliation between the peoples. Referring to the European practice of national-cultural autonomy for immigrants, Khakimov argued that the peoples of Russia had an even greater right to the free development of their cultures and languages because they were indigenous inhabitants rather than immigrants. He also opposed any cultural fundamentalism and, following the Jadids, endorsed a programme of modernization. Indeed, the Jadids have opened Islam for the European values, thereby carving a path to Europe for Tatarstan. Khakimov believed that Russian Orthodoxy was unprepared for a market environment and thus also in need of a reform of this sort. In the late 1990s, Khakimov paid more and more attention to Euro-Islam, for he believed this would direct Tatars to progressive development and bring them closer to Europe.26 In general he still embraces this agenda, but it seems that over time he became less satisfied with Islam as a basis for some united “Turkic-Tatar civilization.” Following Hegel, he made the “spirit” the very basis of this civilization. Nevertheless, he still had reservations with respect to any cultural unity of Slavs and Turks within the same civilization. He pointed out that it was the “state that kept them together rather than any civilization,” and he declined to believe in any “Russian civilization” that included both.27 As before, he treated neo-Eurasianism as a “conflict-bearing ideology,” focused on restoring the traditional Russian state within its former borders rather than with any cultural integrity.28 Another ideologist of the former TPC, the Tatar ethnologist Damir Iskhakov manifested a similar attitude towards Eurasianism, but his views were even tougher. While responding to the arguments of the conservative Moscow Club Realists’ members, who visited Kazan’ in the mid-1990s, he identified Eurasianism as a trivial “imperialism,” concerned exclusively with the threats to Russia’s integrity.29 He could accept the Eurasianist project provided that two problems could be resolved: first, the equality of peoples had to be implemented and guaranteed; second, the project had to successfully integrate the Islamic world rather than limit itself exclusively to Orthodox. In addition, he shared Khakimov’s belief that the Tatars were open to modernization and European values, in particular, human rights. He also believed that Russian culture was less adapted to modernization. Iskhakov treated the notion of a “synthesis of the Slavic and Turkic culture” as a “Eurasian trap”

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because the advocates of Eurasianism persistently placed their emphasis on the Slavic-Orthodox civilization. Like Khakimov, he was alarmed by the deliberate conservatism of the Russian Orthodoxy, and maintained that the further progress of the Tatars depended on an orientation towards Western Christian-European civilization. “The time is ripe for us, the Muslims of Tatarstan, to understand that we are a part of Europe.” He did not want to be included into the Russian-Orthodox civilization with its desire to isolate itself from the Western world.30 At the same time he believed in a “Tatar civilization” and exemplified the aspiration of the Turkic-Muslim community to use the Eurasianist idea in order to protect its own identity. He related the failure of the “RussianOrthodox version” of neo-Eurasianism to excessive statism evident in its anti-Western outlook, an inability to modernize, a desire to integrate Russian Orthodoxy into a state-administrative structure, an inclination towards selfisolation and a domination of collective values over individual ones. He argued that the Turkic-Muslim world shared opposite values: an emphasis on cultural unity, a European orientation, a drive for modernization and openness, and the priority of the individual. While acknowledging that the Tatars had an imperial mentality, he was concerned with inequality between the Russian Orthodoxy and Islam. And yet he doubted that “Russian Eurasianism” might come to terms with the Turkic-Muslims in this respect.31 ALEKSANDR DUGIN’S INTERVENTION AND THE TATAR RESPONSE A new wave of interest in Eurasianism in Tatarstan was sparked off by Aleksandr Dugin, who gave his first talk for the Kazan’ intellectual elite in the Konstantin Vasiliev Museum in the spring of 2000 and then took part in an international scholarly conference titled “Eurasianism at the Eve of the 21st Century.” In his speech, he protested against the unipolar world – a central idea of neo-Eurasianism.32 To overcome the deep gulf between Orthodoxy and Islam, which had been persistently underlined by Tatar intellectuals, Dugin argued that the Hanafiyah Islam33 and Orthodoxy belonged to the “same geopolitical (Eurasian) family,” and thus greatly differed from both Wahhabism and Protestantism. In this way, he suggested that the Tatar authorities should actively promote the idea of Eurasian integration.34 Further, he proposed to relocate the Russian capital to Kazan’ in order to consolidate the Slavic-Turkic union.35 Impressed by these flattering arguments, the Tatarstan authorities manifested their high interest in the Eurasian ideas. Tatar intellectuals however remained unconvinced, and they confronted Dugin’s ideas with sharp criticism. At the conference “Eurasianism at the



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Eve of the 21st Century” they maintained their sympathy towards Western values and globalization and declined to accept Dugin’s call for a geopolitical confrontation between “Tallasocracy and Tellurocracy.”36 Perhaps unsurprisingly, the correspondent of Kazan’ newspaper Zvezda Povolzhia cast Dugin’s talk as a “failed one.”37 The newspaper subsequently held a round table to discuss how Dugin’s neo-Eurasian ideas could fit Tatarstan. Three different approaches were articulated. According to one of them, ethnic minorities would support any imperial setting that respected collective ethnic rights. The predominance of Russian Orthodoxy presented a clear problem, however, since that faith aspired to be a state religion, while Islam remained destined to be pushed to the fringe. Further, the minorities needed social equality, but this position emphasized the impossibility of reforming the Russian Orthodoxy and, therefore, the inability to adapt to modernization. A second approach connected the relationships between Orthodoxy and Islam with a mutual trust that could be reached only by providing an emphasis built on tradition and archetype focusing mostly on responsibilities rather than rights. Still a third approach suggested that deep historical discussions were irrelevant and that the focus had to be on the recent Soviet heritage as a basis of Eurasianism.38 Two months after the aforementioned conference the situation became even more complicated. A round table titled the “Great Volga Route”39 was held in Kazan’ on August 28 and 29, 2000. At the event the origins of Eurasianism were identified with this important trade route rather than with an emergence of the early Turkic states.40 Additionally, the emphasis shifted from the Turks to the Finno-Ugric peoples, allowing for a new modulation of Eurasianism to come to the fore, which acknowledged a contribution of these peoples to the emergence of Eurasia.41 Today, even Rafael’ Khakimov imagines Eurasia as a Slavic-Turkic-Finnish symbiosis.42 THE TATAR EURASIANISM: A TRANSFORMATION UNDER PUTIN’S POWER President Putin’s new course, with its aim of consolidating a vertical of power and building up a strong, well-integrated state – as well as the ostentatious support for the Russian Orthodox Church – was perceived in the national republics as a preparation of a new campaign for the assimilation of nonRussian peoples.43 Thus, when members of the Tatar elite agree to view Russia as a “civilization,” they always demand ethnic equality. For example, at the conference “Civilizational, Ethno-cultural and Political Aspects of Tatar National Unity,” held in Kazan’ on June 7 and 8, 2002, the State Duma deputy from Tatarstan, Fandas Sh. Safiullin, presented Russia as “not only a

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state but an independent self-supporting civilization.” He wanted it to be a “Eurasian Union of the [socially] equal peoples.”44 Another speaker underlined that “Russia was, for the Tatars, the [Golden] Horde of today,” and therefore it should take the name of Eurasian Federation rather than Russia.45 An adviser of the president of the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, the historian Iskander Izmailov, declined, like Khakimov, to consider the Tatars a part of the Russian civilization and pointed to their long-lasting membership of the Muslim and Turkic civilization.46 In the meantime, the recent consolidation of the Russian state and the political changes in the contemporary world have forced Tatar ideologists to revise their former views. Having joined Russia’s ruling United Russia political party, Khakimov began to tack between European values and the Eurasian civilization, which made him revise his former views on Eurasianism. Pointing to the industrial backwardness of many Muslim countries, he claimed that the desire for progressive development had pushed the Tatars to introduce European standards. At the same time he argued, “For Muslims, the Russian environment was neither alien, nor brought about [from elsewhere], nor forced; they have been born in this country and viewed it as their own.”47 Appropriating the Eurasian idea for Tatarstan, he presented “Tatar civilization” as follows: “The Tatars appreciate equally secular and religious [values], European and Asian cultures, there are no barriers for them between West and East, because Tatar civilization organically unites them while being an open system.”48 He also used the term “Tatar sub-civilization” in the same article, but did not elaborate on its meaning. Perhaps he assumed that it was part of “Russian civilization.”49 It does not seem that he had some notion of “Muslim civilization” in mind, because he did not want to identify the Tatars with certain Muslim countries, which he viewed as “wild” and “backward.”50 Yet, when referring to the medieval period, he used the term “Turkic-Tatar civilization.”51 In the summer of 2013, Khakimov claimed that Kazan’ historians were the “emphatic supporters of the Eurasian approach to Russian history.”52 With a reference to the disintegration of Yugoslavia and contemporary events in Ukraine, he proposed a “Great Russia” distant from the obsolete imperial model.53 Yet, he did not fail to mention “Great Tatarstan” as encompassing the entire Tatar diaspora.54 He maintained his negative attitude towards chauvinism and statism, and protested against granting certain people a “state-bearing” status as well as against privileges for particular religious denominations.55 While sharing Khakimov’s views, Minitimer Shaimiev emphasizes the “Eurasian roots” of Russia which emerged as a “symbiosis of East and West,” the great contribution of both Byzantium and the Golden Horde into its development, and the fact that Russia, while a “European country,” still includes a



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“Muslim component.” For him, Russians and Tatars enjoy a common history and destiny. He strives to reconcile “Eurasian values” (the Islamic-Orthodox dialogue, the identification of the nation with an ethnic community, a high role for the collective) with democratic ones (based on the sovereignty of individual) and puts the emphasis on the high value of tolerance as a Eurasian principle. As he argues, the Tatars are loyal to Russia but view it as an ethnic federation rather than a unitary state. He acknowledges that there is no simple definition of the Eurasian idea.56 Having become the chair of the Republican Fund for the Restoration of Historical and Cultural Monuments in 2010, Shaimiev sponsored two projects, which introduced a Eurasian balance into the republic’s past. He wanted to turn the early medieval city of Bulgar into a cradle of Islam in the Volga region and the late medieval town of Sviiazhsk into an old centre of Russian Orthodoxy – and both into major attractions for mass tourism. This is a symbolic politics aimed at an amelioration of ethnic tensions manifested in the activities of Tatar and ethnic Russian nationalists.57 At the same time there are proponents of a more traditional view of Eurasianism in Tatarstan. In 2011 the Kazan’ state Institute of Culture and Art held an international conference called “Eurasianism of Lev Gumilev and the World of Peoples of Eurasia: History, Modernity, Perspectives,” supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan. The conference signed up for Russian integrity on a Eurasian basis with a reference to Lev Gumilev’s ideas.58 Over the last decades Gumilev’s contribution to the Turkic historiography was highly appreciated in Tatarstan because he did his best to rid the Turks of historical stigma. Additionally, some young Tatars are members of the All-Russian movement Young Eurasia, funded by Iurii Kofner in Moscow in 2011, and supported by the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The group develops its activity through local Eurasian discussion clubs, where the idea of the “Eurasian civilization” as a “symphonic personality” is promoted. The movement is aimed at an integration of the states and peoples of all the Eurasian territories within the Eurasian Union.59 In the meantime, in 2008–2009 Kazan’ had been chosen by the federal authorities as the major centre for the promotion of the idea of Eurasian integration. Since then, various all-Russian and international conferences have been held there annually, initially hosted by the Kazan’ State University and then, from 2012 on (i.e. after Vladimir Putin began his third term as Russia’s president), by the Eurasian Club affiliated with the Russian parliament. Wellknown politicians, deputies of the Russian Parliament, scholars, religious figures and journalists take part in these conferences. The discussions seek to intensify Eurasian integration.

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The political elite of Tatarstan, including its president, regularly participate in these conferences. In his talk at the Second Kazan’ public forum in November 2014, for instance, the Tatar President Rustam Minnikhanov pointed out that “Tatarstan – one of the leading regions of Russia – takes active part in the Eurasian integration. The Republic has a rich experience of peaceful co-existence of various nations and religions, which can be helpful in these processes.”60 Interestingly, these events never discuss the specific Tatar view of Eurasianism outlined above. It is worth noting that many people in Tatarstan have emphatically supported the annexation of Crimea, which was manifested by a mass demonstration in Kazan’ in March 2014.61 And it was no accident that President Minnikhanov played an important role as a mediator in the negotiations between the Russian authorities and the Crimean Tatars. He has visited the Crimea four times in spring 2014, and in April he hosted the Crimean Tatars’ delegation in Kazan’. In particular, he persuaded them to take part in the referendum on Crimea’s unification with Russia, emphasizing the common religious, language and cultural roots.62 At the same time, in April 2014 he lobbied on behalf of the Crimean Tatars at the meeting with President Putin, after which the Crimean Mejlis decided to collaborate with Moscow.63 In addition, Tatarstan was the first Russian region to offer economic help to Crimea, and it has signed an agreement with Crimea on economic, social and cultural cooperation.64 Mutual contacts between the Tatarstan and Crimean authorities and businessmen continued in 2015.65 All of this is a “Eurasian politics” aimed both at a restoration of the empire and a consolidation of the Tatars. It is interesting, however, to note that some Tatar nationalists declined to support the annexation of Crimea. For example, Fauziya Bairamova declared her disagreement with this act, and found herself facing a court trial as a result.66 Her fate was shared by the TPC’s chair Rafis Kashalov who also declined to accept the annexation of Crimea.67 Since late December 2014, a variety of pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian graffiti have been left by the Tatar radicals in Kazan’, including one close to the Kazan’ Kremlin.68 This means that the separatist agenda is more important for some Tatar radicals than Eurasian unity. CONCLUSIONS Thus, the attitude towards Eurasianism among the Tatars in Tatarstan is multidimensional. Its advocates present Tatarstan as a bridge between East and West, and, in addition, always emphasize the demand for equality of languages, cultures and religions, while calling for open inter-religious dialogue



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and tolerance. They support the idea of a uniform Russian citizenship, provided that ethnic identity is secured. To put it differently, politically they subscribe to an ethnic federalism. This approach is shared by the republican authorities and certain intellectuals. There is also a more radical interpretation of Eurasianism, represented by the ideologists of the Ittifak political party, who claim that it is the Turks rather than the Russians who make up the core of the Eurasian civilization and, hence, the Eurasian lands have to belong to the Tatars. After the Tatar elite had shifted to embrace religion, a number of wellknown intellectuals discarded the idea of a uniform “Eurasian civilization.” Instead, they began to oppose “Muslim (Turkic-Tatar)” to “OrthodoxChristian” civilization. There are two different approaches within this trend: a religious and a liberal-secular one. The former puts an emphasis on Muslim unity shaped as “civilization” and the latter stands for an ethnic nation. Yet, sometimes the nation is also presented as the “Tatar civilization.”69 However, most of the Tatar elite embrace European values, including modernization, liberalism and individualism combined with an emphasis on Euro-Islam. The contrast of the “Orthodox-Islamic” consciousness to the “Latin-Catholic” one, as well as the opposition of “Russian-Western” values to the local “Turkic-Muslim” ones, finds no significant support in Tatarstan. Importantly, Tatar Eurasianism aims at developing good relationships with the Turkic world beyond Russia, mostly with Turkey and the Central Asian states. Whatever their difference, all these models share a negative attitude towards colonialism, Russian messianism, the unitary state, autarky, clericalism and authoritarianism. To put it differently, the Tatar elite use Eurasianism in their own way and for their own ends. They call for respecting various cultures and religions, which fits the Eurasian agenda, but they also put an emphasis on individualism and other Western values, which break away from Eurasianism. Yet, during the recent consolidation of Russian authoritarianism and under pressure from Moscow, the Tatar political elite have evidently shifted to more traditional model of Eurasianism. And it is no accident since, recently, a small percentage of Tatar youth was enrolled in the Kremlin-sponsored Young Eurasia movement, which promotes imperial values that fit the traditional Eurasian agenda. In view of this great variety of ideas and dynamics, Tatarstan can be hardly viewed a “locomotive of non-Russian Eurasianism,”70 even though a monument of Lev Gumilev has been erected in the centre of Kazan’. Tatar civilizational discourse is a telling case of an instrumental construction of an image of civilization, which nowadays is observed worldwide. Since the definition of civilization suffers from the lack of a consistent basis,

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civilizational concepts can be formulated in various ways. Hence, any given construction can serve particular political interests. Tatar intellectuals use religion, language, geography and medieval history as the cornerstones. It is telling that, while referring to religion as the basis of the “Muslim civilization,” they do not provide any room for Arabs or Iranians. They are consciously constructing a specifically “Turkic-Tatar civilization,” and language proves to be much more important for them than religion. That is why they want to include Turkey and Central Asia into this civilization, but ignore the Middle East. A territory serves another important tool of imagination, and the constructors of the “Turkic-Tatar” or simply the “Tatar civilization” want to embrace all the regions where the Tatars live nowadays. They use an inclusive identity for the Tatars, which encompasses all the Tatars of the former Soviet Union rather than the Kazan’ Tatars alone. It is for this reason that the Kazan’ Tatars supported the incorporation of Crimea into Russia. These claims have to be well based. A view of medieval history is very important. Tatar civilization builders need an image of the early Turkic Kaganates and, especially the Golden Horde, which, they believe, can legitimate, first, a unification of all the Tatars within one and the same state; second, a multicultural composition of its population; and third, a dominant role of the Tatars. Thus, the Tatars appear to be the competitors of the Russians in a new round of empire-building. Today this competition is expressed in the tense relationships between the Tatars and the Russians in the Republic of Tatarstan. It is also visible in history textbooks. Indeed, the history of Tatars and Tatarstan is represented quite differently in the federal and republican textbooks.71 For this reason, the republican authorities have to carefully maintain a fragile balance between the Tatars and the Russians, in particular with the help of symbolic politics, which have already been mentioned. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The present text is the result of the Alexander Herzen Senior Visiting Fellowship, sponsored by the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna) and the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation. NOTES 1. Shnirel’man V. A., “Russkie, nerusskie i yevraziiskii federalizm: yevraziitsy i ikh opponenty v 1920e gody,” Slavianovedenie, 4 (2002): 3–20; Victor Shnirel’man,



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“The Fate of the Empires and the Eurasian Federalism,” Inner Asia, 3, 2 (2001): 153–73. 2. Victor Shnirel’man, “To Make a Bridge: Eurasian Discourse in the Post-Soviet World,” The Anthropology of East Europe Review, 27, 2 (2009): 68–85. 3. Vsemirny congress tatar: Stenografichesky otchet. June 19, 1992 (Kazan’, 1992), 162; Shaimiev M., “Tatarstan: dialog religii, dialog kul’tur,” in Islamokhristianskoe pogranichie: itogi i perspektivy izucheniia (Kazan’, 1994), 3–4. 4. Vorontsova L., Filatov S., “Tatarstanskoe evraziistvo: evro-islam plius evropravoslavie,” Druzhba narodov, 8 (1998): 132–33, 138. 5. Shaimiev M., “Privetstvie uchastnikam mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii gorodov Vsemirnogo naslediia Evrazii,” Respublika Tatarstan, June 18, 2004; Matylitsky V., “Vsemirnoe nasledie ishchet naslednikov,” Rossiiskaia gazeta Volgo-Ural, June 18, 2004; Vorobieva E., “Sabantui na vsiu Evraziiu,” Kommersant, June 18, 2004; Shaimiev M., “Sud’by demokratii v Rossii. Natsional’naia politicheskaia model’: printsipy i prioritety,” in PRO suverennuiu demokratiiu, ed. L. V. Poliakov (Moscow: Evropa, 2007), 295–99. 6. Iskhakov D., Problemy stanovleniia i transformatsii tatarskoi natsii (Kazan’: Master Lein, 1997), 178–83, 186. 7. Ibid., p. 185; Safin R. “Tatar problemasy,” Tatarskaia natsiia: proshloe, nastoiashchee, budushchee (Kazan’: Institut istorii AT Tatarstana, 1997), 85–86. 8. Safin, “Tatar problemasy,” 83; Iskhakov, Problemy, 186; Mukhametshin R. M. “Konfessional’nyi factor i problema sokhraneniia edinstva tatar,” in Edinstvo tatarskoi natsii, ed. R. T. Khasanov (Kazan’: Fen, 2002), 134–40; Ibragim T. K., Sultanov F. M., Uzeev A. N., Tatarskaia religiozno-filosofskaia mysl’, v obshchemusul’manskom kontekste (Kazan’: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 2002), 203; Khakim R. S. “Rossiia i Tatarstan: u istoricheskogo perekrestka,” Panorama-forum, 1 (1997): 34–63, and 11 (1997): 31–35; idem, Gde nasha Mekka? (Kazan’: Magarif, 2003). 9. Batunsky M. A., “Vliianie Zapada na kul’turnoe samosoznanie musul’manskikh myslitelei Rossii kontsa 19 – nachala 20 veka,” in Tsivilizatsii i kul’tury, ed. B. S. Erasov (Moscow: Institut vostokovedeniia, 1994), 1, 222–38. For an interest of the Tatar intellectuals and certain Muslim activists to Euro-Islam see: Vorontsova, Filatov, “Tatarstanskoe evraziistvo,” 135–36. 10. Tagirov I. R., “Evraziiskoe prostranstvo. Ego sostavliaiushchie,” in Evraziiskii project: real’nosti, problemy, kontseptsii, eds. N. N. Beliakov and V. A. Petrov (Moscow: Klub “Realisty,” 1996), 15–17; Tagirov E. R. “Ideia messianstva utopichna,” in Evraziiskii project: real’nosti, problemy, kontseptsii, eds. N. N. Beliakov and V. A. Petrov (Moscow: Klub “Realisty,” 1996), 29–31; Usmanov M. A. “Istoriia voprosa i sovremennost’,” in Evraziiskii project: real’nosti, problemy, kontseptsii, eds. N. N. Beliakov and V. A. Petrov (Moscow: Klub “Realisty,” 1996), 27–29. 11. Tagirov E. R., “Ideia messianstva”; Makhmutov M. I. “Evraziiskii soiuz: puti razvitiia,” in Evraziiskii project: real’nosti, problemy, kontseptsii, eds. N. N. Beliakov and V. A. Petrov (Moscow: Klub “Realisty,” 1996), 57–58. 12. Zakiev M. Z., “Ramki evraziistva: kakimi im byt’?” in Evraziiskii project: real’nosti, problemy, kontseptsii, eds. N. N. Beliakov and V. A. Petrov (Moscow: Klub “Realisty,” 1996), 39; Tagirov I. R. “Evraziiskoe prostranstvo.”

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13. All this did not arrest an ethnocratic and authoritarian track of the political regime in Tatarstan. See: Mikhailov V. V. “Authoritarian Regimes of Russia and Tatarstan: Co-existence and Subjection,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 26, 4 (2010): 471–93; Musin D. A. “Etnokul’turnaia politika v Respublike Tatarstan: skrytyi etnotsentrism v usloviiakh deklariruemogo mul’tikul’turalizma,” Ars Administrandi, 4 (2011): 71–88. 14. Zakiev, “Ramki evraziistva”; Likhachev V. N. “Evraziiskii project: balans interesov gosudarstv i regionov,” in Evraziiskii project: real’nosti, problemy, kontseptsii, eds. N. N. Beliakov and V. A. Petrov (Moscow: Klub “Realisty,” 1996), 8; Makhmutov M. I. “Evraziiskii proekt – vzgliad iz Tatarstana,” Tatarstan, 7–8 (1995): 13. 15. Khasanov M. Kh. “Proshloe i nastoiashchee evraziistva,” Zvezda Povolzhia, June 29–July 5, 2000: 1–2. 16. Mukhametdinov R. F. “Tiurkskii mir – evraziiskii mir,” in Evraziiskii project: real’nosti, problemy, kontseptsii, eds. N. N. Beliakov and V. A. Petrov (Moscow: Klub “Realisty,” 1996), 17–8; Idem. “Evraziiskii soiuz. S Turtsiei ili bez nee?” in Evraziiskii project: real’nosti, problemy, kontseptsii, eds. N. N. Beliakov and V. A. Petrov (Moscow: Klub “Realisty,” 1996), 43–45. 17. Bairamova F., “Tatarskie uchenye i natsiia,” Zvezda Povolzhia, 48, 2007, 2. 18. An imagination of an “ethnic nation” as a biological body is popular among the Tatar nationalists, which is, partly, rooted in their fascination with the Lev Gumilev’s ethnogenetic concept. 19. Bairamova F., “My – tatary, a ne russkie!” Zapreshcheno v Rossii, March 7, 2011, accessed February 15, 2015, zapretno.info/?p=21. There are reasons to assume that this group was under the control of the Tatarstan authorities. See: Mikhailov, “Authoritarian Regimes,” 477. 20. In the meantime, the recent discussions demonstrated that this approach has a strong opposition in Tatarstan. See: “V Tatarstane raskritikovali natsiiiu ‘rossiiane,’” Regnum, February 9, 2011, accessed on February 15, 2015, http://regnum.ru/news/ polit/1373145.html; Bairamova, “My – tatary.” 21. Makhmutov, “Evraziiskii proekt,” 3–13; idem, “Evraziia – Novyi Soiuz,” Respublika Tatarstan, August 26 and September 2, 1995. 22. A professional physicist, in 1989–1991 he was a deputy director of the Department of Ideology of the Tatar Regional Committee of the CPSU. In 1991–2008 he was adviser to president of Tatarstan on political issues. And in 1996 he was appointed the director of the newly established Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan. Since 2013 he has been a vice president of this academy. 23. For his views, albeit in a simplified form, see also: Marlene Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism: an Ideology of Empire (Washington D.C. and Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 164–67. 24. Khakim R. S., Sumerki imperii (Kazan’: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1993), 63–64. 25. Khakim R., Ternistyi put’ k svobode (Sochineniia. 1989–2006) (Kazan’: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 2007), 237. 26. Khakimov R. “‘Evroislam’ v mezhtsivilizatsionnykh otnosheniiakh,” NGreligiia, October 23, 1997, 4; idem, Gde nasha Mekka? (Kazan’: Magarif, 2003).



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27. Khakim R., Metamorfozy dukha (k voprosu o niurko-tatarskoi tzivilizatsii) (Kazan’: Idel-Press, 2005), 269–70. 28. Ibid., 272–73. 29. Iskhakov D. “Evraziiskii soblazn: vzgliad iz Tatarstana,” Molodezh Tatarstana, 8 (1995): 5. 30. Ibid., “Novyi vector islama v Tatarstane i Rossii,” Molodezh Tatarstana, 21 (1995): 4. Nowadays Iskhakov worries mostly about the destiny of the “Tatar nation” rather than Eurasianism no matter how it is represented. See, for example, Iskhakov D. M. “O kontseptual’nykh podkhodakh k issledovaniiu razvitia tatarskoi natsii v 21 veke,” in Tatarskaia natsiia v 21 veke: problemy razvitiia, ed. D. M. Iskhakov (Kazan’: Institut istorii imeni Sh. Mardzhani AS RT, 2006), 12–23. 31. Iskhakov D., “Evraziistvo: vzgliad iz Tatarstana,” Zvezda Povolzhia, June 29– July 5, 2000, 2. 32. Pavlenko S., “Lovushka imperii ili obshchnost’ sud’by?” Zvezda Povolzhia, June 29–July 5, 2000, 2. 33. Sunni Islam is divided into four branches including Hanafiyah and Wahhabi among others. 34. Dugin A. G., “Tretia stolitsa,” Zvezda Povolzhia, May 25–31, June 1–6, 2000. 35. Dugin A. G. “Tretia stolitsa Evrazii,” in Evraziiskaia ideia i sovremennost’, eds. N. Kirabaev, A. Semushkin, S. Nizhnikov (Moscow, 2002), 228–44. 36. Geopolitical terms for a control over water in the first case and land in the second. 37. Pavlenko, “Lovushka.” 38. Akhmetov R., “Neoevraziistvo,” Zvezda Povolzhia, May 25–31, and June 1–6, 2000. 39. An important early medieval trade route between Northern Europe and Persia along the Volga River. 40. Sakharov A. N., “Narody Povolzhia i Rossii: sovremennye podkhody,” in Velikii Volzhskiii put’ (materially kruglogo stola, Kazan’, August 28–29, 2000), ed. F. Sh. Khuzin (Kazan’: Master Lein, 2001), 37–38. See also Kirpichnikov A. N. “Velikii Volzhskiii put: gosudarstva, glavnye partnery, torgovye marshruty,” in Skandinavskie chteniia 2000 goda: etnograficheskie i kul’turno-istoricheskie aspekty, eds. A. S. Myl’nikov and T. A. Shrader (St Petersburg: RAS, 2002), 7–19. 41. Galeeva L. I., “Idei evraziistva v izuchenii istorii Tatarstana,” in Istoriia Tatarstana. Problemy prepodavaniia v vuze, eds. D. K. Sabirova et al. (Kazan’: Kazanskii gosudarstvennyi tekhnicheskii universitet, 2002), 17–20. 42. Rafael’ Khakimov: “Pora vspomnit’ prizyv Ismaila Gasprinskogo k solidarnosti tiurkov,” business on line, April 26, 2014, accessed on February 15, 2015, http:// www.business-gazeta.ru/article/102788/. 43. See, for example, Akhmetov, “Neoevraziistvo.” 44. Safiullin F. Sh. “Rossiia v 21 veke: edinstvo mnogoobraziia ili avtoritarnyi unitarism?” in Edinstvo tatarskoi natsii, ed. R. T. Khasanov (Kazan’: Fen, 2002), 42. 45. Mirikhanov N. M. “Tatary i tiurkskii mir: vospominaniia o budushchem,” in Edinstvo tatarskoi natsii, ed. R. T. Khasanov (Kazan’: Fen, 2002), 43–49. 46. Izmailov I. L. “Istoricheskoe proshloe kak factor natsional’noi mobilizatsii,” in Edinstvo tatarskoi natsii, ed. R. T. Khasanov (Kazan’: Fen, 2002), 71.

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47. Khakimov R. S. “Dvesti let islamskoi reformatsii,” Vestnik Instituta Kennana v Rossii, 6 (2004): 43. 48. Ibid., 44. 49. See also: Khakim, Gde nasha Mekka? 57. 50. Ibid., 22, 25–27, 42, 58. 51. Khakim, Metamorfozy dukha; idem. “Sud’ba etnonima,” in Tatarskaia natsiia v 21 veke: problemy razvitiia, ed. D. M. Iskhakov (Kazan’: Institut istorii imeni Sh. Mardzhani AS RT, 2006), 89. 52. “Uchebnikovye manevry,” Kommersant, July17, 2013, 1. 53. Rafael’ Khakimov: “Krymskii vopros razberedil starye rany i probudil novye ambitsii,” business on line, March 29, 2014, accessed on February 15, 2015, http:// www.business-gazeta.ru/article/100558/. 54. Rafael’ Khakimov: “Segodnia ot istorikov trebuiut obosnovaniia blizosti tiurkov. K etomu podtolknul Krym,” business on line, April 5, 2014, accessed on February 15, 2015, http://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/101087/. 55. Rafael’ Khakimov: “Te uchenye, kotorye predlagaiut metody assimiliatsii narodov, prodaiut product s dushkom,” business on line, May 10, 2014, accessed on February 15, 2015, http://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/103763/. 56. Shaimiev, “Sud’by demokratii,” 295–99. Also see: idem. “Tolerantnost’ – osnova evraziiskoi mysli i praktiki,” Evraziiskii iuridicheskii zhurnal, 10 (2010), 5–11, accessed on February 15, 2015, http://www.eurasialaw.ru/index.php?option=com_con tent&view=article&id=1342:persona-grata-&catid=41:persona-grata&Itemid=124. 57. Musin, “Etnokul’turnaia politika,” 85. 58. Bikeeva I., “Tiurki i slaviane, obyediniaites’!” Nash dom – Tatarstan, 2011, 4, accessed on February 15, 2015, http://www.an-tat.ru/zhurnal-nashdom-tatarstan/13/2327. 59. Experts of the Moscow Center of Lev Gumilev took part in the establishment of this movement. See: Dvizhenie “Molodaia Evraziia,” accessed on February 15, 2015, http://www.mesoeurasia.org/archives/4640. 60. Adenov R., “Zavershil svoiu rabotu Vtoroi Kazansky obshchestvennyi forum ‘Evraziiskaia integratsiia: dostizheniia i problemy’,” Russkg.ru, November 29, 2014, accessed April 14, 2015, http://russkg.ru/index.php?Itemid=1&catid=82:2012-10-2316-45-33&id=5217:-l-r&option=com_content&view=article. 61. “Miting v chest’ prisoedineniia Kryma k Rossii v Kazani,” Kazanfirst, March 18, 2014, accessed on February 20, 2015, http://kazanfirst.ru/foto/17241. 62. “Chto delal Rustam Minnikhanov v Krymu.” Kommersant.ru, March 12, 2014, accessed on February 15, 2015, http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2427325; “Rustam Minnikhanov taino posetil Krym,” Prokazan, May 8, 2014, accessed on February 20, 2015, http://prokazan.ru/news/view/90216; “Stenogramma vystuplenia prezidenta Tatarstana Rustama Minnikhanova na Kurultae krymskikh tatar v Bakhchisarae,” Zvezda Povolzhia, April 12, 2014, accessed on March 28, 2015, http://zvezdapovolzhya.ru/obshestvo/stenogramma-vystupleniya-prezidenta-tatarstana-rustama-minnihanova-na-kurultae-krymskih-tatar-v-bahchisarae-12-04-2014.html; “Godovshchina vossoedineniia Kryma s Rossiei: kakuiu rol’ sygral Tatarstan i Prezident Respubliki



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Rustam Minnikhanov v ‘krymskoi vesne,’” KazanFirst, March 17, 2015, accessed on July 31, 2015, http://kazanfirst.ru/feed/42066. 63. Moshkin M., Shavlokhova M. “Tatarsky kul’bit,” Vzgliad, April 1, 2014, accessed on March 28, 2015, http://vz.ru/politics/2014/4/1/679976.html. 64. Izotov I., “Tatarstan i Krym podpisali soglashenie o sotrudnichestve,” Rossiiskaia gazeta, November 16, 2014. 65. “Sergei Aksenov provel vstrechu s postpredom Respubliki Tatarstan v Krymu Ruslanom Shaiakhmetovym,” Pravitel’stvo Respubliki Krym, April 1, 2015, accessed on July 31, 2015, http://rk.gov.ru/rus/index.html/news/299070.htm; “Rustam Minnikhanov vstretilsia s zamestitelem predsedatelia Gosudarstvennogo Soveta Kryma Remzi Iliasovym,” Pravitel’stvo Respubliki Tatarstan, June 3, 2015, accessed on July 31, 2015, http://prav.tatarstan.ru/rus/index.htm/news/438817.htm; “Krym i Tatarstan nalazhivaiut delovye sviazi,” Kazan-inform, June 6, 2015, accessed on July 31, 2015, http://kazan2013.ru/business/296-krym-i-tatarstan-nalazhivayut-delovye-svyazi.html. 66. Iudkevich M. “‘Babushka tatarskogo suverenitet’ snova poluchila god uslovno,” Vecherniaia Kazan’, October 2, 2014, accessed on March 27, 2015, http:// www.evening-kazan.ru/articles/babushka-tatarskogo-suvereniteta-snova-poluchilagod-uslovno.html; Antonov K. “Tatarskaia natsionalistka postradala za Krym,” Kommersant, October 3, 2014, accessed March 27, 2015, http://www.kommersant.ru/ doc/2581002. 67. “Predsedatel’ Tatarskogo obshchestvennogo tsentra arestovan po obvineniiu v vozbuzhdenii nenavisti,” Tsentr Sova, January 12, 2015, accessed on May 20, 2016, http://www.sova-center.ru/misuse/news/persecution/2015/01/d30995/. 68. “Antirossiiskie graffiti – uzhe u sten Kazanskogo Kremlia,” Regnum, July 13, 2015, accessed July 14, 2015, http://regnum.ru/news/polit/1942214.html; “Lozung ukrainskikh natsionalistov ostaetsia pod stenami Kazanskogo Kremlia,” Regnum, July 14, 2015, accessed on July 14, 2015, http://regnum.ru/news/1942689.html. 69. Nowadays an emphasis on civilization proves to be more popular than a national idea. See Shnirel’man V. A. “Tsivilizatsionnyi podkhod kak natsional’naia ideia,” in Natsionalizm v mirovoi istorii, eds. V. A. Tishkov and V. A. Shnirel’man (Moscow: Nauka, 2007), 82–105. 70. Marlene Laruelle’s definition. See Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism, 162. 71. Victor Shnirel’man, “Stigmatized by History or by Historians? Peoples of Russia in the School Textbooks in History,” History and Memory, 21, 2 (2009): 110–49; idem, “Obshchee proshloe: federal’nye i tatarstanskie shkol’nye uchebniki istorii,” Istoricheskaia ekspertiza, 4 (2016) (in press).

Chapter 12

Strange Bedfellows Turanism, Eurasianism, and the Hungarian Radical Right Balázs Trencsényi

This chapter focuses on the sudden rise of Eurasianist tropes in the political discourse of the Hungarian radical nationalists after 2010, when the neoconservative/populist Viktor Orbán returned to power and set about building an “anti-liberal democracy.” At first sight, this ideological resonance with Eurasianism seems utterly unexpected, given the deep entrenchment of a traditional anti-Russian bias in Hungarian nationalism as well as the apparently powerful pro-Western orientation of the Hungarian society during the early years of the post-communist transition. However, as we will see, there were important resources for such a reorientation, including the very genealogy of modern Hungarian nationalism, which has developed a strong interest in the Eurasian “steppe zone,” considered as the Urheimat (ancestral homeland) of Hungarians.1 Historically Hungarian national ideology, centred on the ethnogenetic narratives cultivated by the nobility, was by no means the only one in Europe to claim a special relationship with the Eurasian steppe zone (a case in point is early-modern Polish Sarmatism, based on the symbolic appropriation of steppe peoples as a basis of the corporate identity of the nobility). The nineteenthcentury transformation of the national discourse under the aegis of romanticism sought to extend the grasp of the symbolic community to the non-noble layers of the society, but reproduced some of these tropes, and thus also the profound ambiguity of the relationship to the West, in the context of an “identity politics” aimed against the imperial centre in Vienna. The traumatic experiences that ensued after the disintegration of “historical Hungary” after the First World War, perceived to be the result of the “betrayal” of the Hungarians by the Western liberal democratic powers, gave a new impetus to this antiWestern civilizational discourse, reinforcing the ambiguity of the country’s stance towards “Europeanness.” In certain political streams – particularly 243

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strong in the interwar period and re-emerging in the 1990s – this amounted to the straightforward rejection of the West in favour of a semi-mythical kinship with various nations of Asia from Turkey to Japan. In many ways, this ideological evolution can be compared to the formation of the Russian Eurasianist ideology. Importantly, however, while their interest and partly also their (Western) intellectual sources in national psychology, geopolitics or cultural morphology were overlapping, the Hungarian self-Orientalizing ideological tradition, linking the geographic specificities of Eurasia to ethnic and sociocultural markers to forge a civilizational alternative of the West, ran parallel to the classical Russian Eurasianist thought of Trubetskoi and Savitskii, having no direct inspiration from it in the interwar period.2 While the political and cultural context was markedly different, however, the Hungarian and Russian visions had a number of common points, especially with regard to their tendency of envisioning a civilizational autarky which transgresses the logic of the nation state, their common interest in ethnopsychology and their search for linguistic proofs to sustain this vision of civilizational unity. What the Hungarians were missing was a comparably sophisticated ontological and gnoseological framework, which was provided to the adherents of Russian Eurasianism by structural linguistics. At the same time, interestingly, some of the Eurasianists reflected on the possible connections between Hungarian ethnogenesis and historical trajectory and the broader Eurasian framework. For instance, George V. Vernadskii pointed to linguistic similarities as an evidence of the interaction of ancient Hungarians and Slavs and also suggested a connection between Hungarians and the Kievan elite in the ninth century, considering Hungarians as the westernmost of the Eurasian peoples.3 As we shall see, ironically, a more direct interaction was eventually made possible by the Sovietization of Hungary after the Second World War. Hungarian scholars dealing with the questions of ethnogenesis could now do research in the Soviet Union, and they also became familiar with the “alternative” intellectual references shared by some of their Russian peers, particularly Lev Gumilev. In this sense, the Hungarian case also proves that the figure of Gumilev was central to the “internationalization” of the Eurasianist paradigm. While mediating many of the Eurasianist cultural and political ideas, he shifted the focus and the meta-language from structural linguistics to archaeology and ethnography, which was much more familiar for the Hungarian scholars and broader public fascinated with the questions of ethnogenesis.4 Importantly, the difference of the geographical conception of Eurasia also facilitated this transfer: while for Savitskii and his colleagues Eurasia grosso modo overlapped with the Soviet space, Gumilev extended it to also include other regions, such as Tibet.5 From the perspective of the representatives of the Hungarian tradition of Orientalism and ethnohistory obviously such an extensive understanding was much more plausible.



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This interaction, mediated by the multilayered scholarly and para-scholarly subcultures dealing with Hungarian ethnicity during communism and postcommunism, provided suitable intellectual references for the integration of neo-Eurasianist themes after 2010 and contributed to the unexpected outburst of sympathy for the Russian geopolitical agenda among the Hungarian nationalists. Nevertheless, I argue that the genealogical divergence also set certain limits to the Hungarian “indigenization” of the Eurasianist ideology. Most importantly, the anti-European resentment cultivated by the Hungarian radical right (and also instrumentalized by the Orbán government) remains linked to a rhetoric of “national self-determination.” Thus it implicitly contradicts the inherent logic of Eurasianism, both in its classical version (with its emphasis on civilizational macro-regionalism) as well as its post-communist formulation, which seeks to underpin a project of Russian imperial reintegration. Along these lines, in the following I am going to map the transfer of Eurasianist references and the ideological context which received them, paying special attention to the structural similarities and interferences between the Hungarian “self-Orientalizing” identity discourse and the Russian Eurasianist tradition. While the Hungarian response can hardly be compared to the Turkish one where a plethora of academic institutions and think thanks opted for the Eurasianist paradigm after 2000, it is highly interesting from another perspective. Namely, it sheds a light on how the crisis of the European Union and of the European socio-economic and political model triggered the reconfiguration of European geographical imaginary, creating symbolic escape routes from the conventional hierarchies based on a West-East slope,6 and conversely, how this reconfiguration of identities became an important causal factor in the apparent breakdown of the European liberal democratic project during the last decade. FROM SCYTHIA TO TURANISM Hungarian political culture has been obsessed with Oriental roots from very early on. Medieval ethnogenetic speculations linked the Hungarians to the Huns, thus conferring on them the ambivalent prestige of Attila’s furious campaigns against the Roman Empire. The theory of Oriental-Turkic kinship, which was related to the “Scythian” self-image of the nobility, was dominant until the late eighteenth century, when it was first challenged by German scholars, and then, most importantly by the Jesuit János Sajnovics, who documented the similarities between the Sami language and his native tongue.7 As the Finno-Ugrian theory was championed mainly by foreign scholars and Jesuits, it came to be perceived as a conscious attempt on the part of the Habsburgs to undermine the collective privileges of the Hungarian nobility.

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Faced with the dominance of the Indo-European paradigm in the first half of the nineteenth century, Hungarian scholars developed an alternative project, resulting in a hypertrophic interpretation of the role of the Scythians/ Hungarians in all major events of world history, including Mesopotamian and Greek antiquity. Simultaneously, the Altaic theory of the Finnish linguist and traveller Matthias A. Castrén, developed in the 1840s, which became a key ideological component of the Finnish national revival, offered the possibility of creating a pan-ideology against the background of the rise of other powerful pan-nationalisms, such as pan-Germanism or pan-Slavism. The Turkish-Tatar and the Finno-Ugrian linguistic theories coexisted well into the mid-nineteenth century in the academic world. Their most spectacular clash took place between the 1860s and 1870s, when supporters of the Hungarians’ Turkish linguistic roots were eventually defeated by the Finno-Ugrian camp. A key figure of the defeated camp was the traveller and Orientalist Ármin Vámbéry, who – following Max Müller’s conceptualization – can be considered the precursor of the Turanist idea. In his travel writings and scholarly publications, Vámbéry depicted the population of this vast geographical space as belonging essentially to one Turkic nation. He also speculated about the possibility of organizing all these peoples into one powerful political entity that could have defied Russian expansion. Turanism gradually took shape during the first decade of the twentieth century, catalysed by a number of international developments, such as the Japanese victory over Russia, the rise of pan-Turkism, the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the formation of a diplomatic alliance with Bulgaria.8 In its most radical formulations, the underlying agenda involved a change in the centre of gravitation of the monarchy, turning Hungary into the chief hub mediating European civilization to the East and using the vast resources of these nations to turn Hungary into a Eurasian great power. Importantly, Turanism had considerable impact outside of Hungary as well, most importantly on Turkish culture and politics, where it offered an ethnonationalist alternative to the Ottoman imperial imaginary and was integrated into a new pan-Turkist ideology promoted especially by some of the Young Turks. Furthermore, it also offered an alternative ideological framework for the Bulgarian nationalists who in the context of the Balkan Wars abandoned the traditional pan-Slavic references and reverted to the tradition that was present in the mid-nineteenth century, which linked Bulgarians to the Huns and the Turks. The First World War was a turning point in the history of Hungarian Turanism. Influenced by the fashionable geopolitical theories, it shifted from the academic and expert milieu and became part of the public discourse. It obviously had an anti-Russian edge in the sense that it also implied the liberation of the Central Asian Turkic peoples from tsarist rule and fantasized about a



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common economic and political space linking Japan and China with their “Western kin.” After the lost war, Hungarian Turanism underwent a radical right-wing turn and de-professionalization. Importantly, this implied the diffusion of Turanist motifs in visual and popular culture, and was linked to the radical anti-modernist ideological projects of the period, among others, aiming at reviving the “national” shamanistic religion. THE ORIENTALIST UNDERCURRENTS OF ETHNICISM UNDER COMMUNISM AND POST-COMMUNISM With the end of the Second World War and the ensuing Sovietization of the country one might expect that the radical nationalist self-Orientalizing discourse was doomed to disappear. However, the situation was more complex, not the least because of the geopolitical reorientation towards the Soviet Union implied an “Eastern turn” in historiographical terms, stressing the common socio-economic trajectory of Eastern European societies, with reference to Engels’s discussion of “second serfdom.” The integration into the Soviet hemisphere also made it easier for Hungarian researchers to access territories which were important from the perspective of Hungarian ethnogenesis and prehistory. An interesting case of this entanglement is the career of the archaeologist István Erdélyi, who earned his doctoral degree in Leningrad between 1955 and 1959 and thus had the opportunity to conduct research in the Soviet Union. He made friends with Lev Gumilev, who was allowed to re-enter academic life in 1956, and whose works can be considered the bridge between classic Eurasianism of the interwar period and the neo-Eurasianist trends after the collapse of the Soviet Union. What brought them together was the interest in the enigmatic history of Khazars, crucial both from the perspective of the Eurasian space in the second half of the first millennium and also with regard to the political and cultural context of the Hungarian migration westward in the ninth century. This interaction facilitated the reception of the ideas of Gumilev in the Hungarian academic community, confirmed by the publication of his research results in Hungarian already in the late 1960s.9 The trick here was obviously the use of the label “Soviet science” for the legitimization of an inquiry that fit well into the revival of interest in the steppe peoples within the Hungarian academic circles and also the broader public. This interest is manifest from the boom of academic and popularizing publications on Hungarian ethnogenesis and prehistory, such as the works of the archaeologist Gyula László, who developed the theory of “double conquest,” arguing that the Hungarians entering the Carpathian Basin in the ninth century did not enter an unknown territory but met their kinsfolk who came centuries earlier, together with the Huns.10

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Also, Hungarian ethnography, deeply rooted in the post-romantic conceptualization of ethnicity and national characterology, was receptive to Gumilev’s idiosyncratic biosocial theories. It was the above-mentioned István Erdélyi, together with the prominent ethnographer Péter Veres, who published in 1975 Gumilev’s articles pertaining to the topic of ethnogenesis in an academic periodical of restricted circulation.11 Tellingly, the introduction described Gumilev as a representative of the “Marxist theory of ethnicity” and thus intended to make his ideas acceptable for local professional perusal, even though in the mid-1970s Gumilev was again becoming marginalized in the Soviet academic context. Simultaneously, in the 1960s–1970s Soviet Central Asia also became an important point of reference for certain Hungarian cultural milieus, especially in view of the projection of identity of the representatives of the Hungarian populist tradition rooted in the interwar period, who read the writings of the Kyrgyz novel-writer Chingiz Aitmatov (translated into Hungarian from 1958 onwards) as akin to their discourse of ethnic decomposition. While Aitmatov focused on the ambiguity of the Soviet modernization, mobilizing the Central Asian nomads but also often destroying their archaic form of life, the Hungarian neo-populist discourse re-emerging in the 1960s was focusing on the destruction of authentic peasant culture and also the forced denationalization of the Hungarian minorities living in neighbouring countries, especially Romania. Another important undercurrent that prepared the ground for the emergence of Eurasianist tropes after 1989 was that of the cultivation of “alternative history” of Hungarian antiquity. Here the exile community played an important role – a paradigmatic case is that of Tibor Baráth, a professional historian trained in the 1930s, who in the early 1940s turned to the extreme right and after the war escaped to the West.12 His underlying historiosophical agenda was to prove that Hungarians were the most direct inheritors of the ancient Oriental civilizations and that their relationship to Europe was not that of late-coming, cultural import and inferiority but exactly the other way round: temporal primacy, autochthonous civilization and superiority. These speculations were especially popular in the extreme right-wing segment of the exile community, but gradually also found their way back to Hungary proper where they merged with some of the esoteric countercurrents that survived in the “grey zone.” Perhaps the most important such esoteric trend formed around the cultural philosopher Béla Hamvas. Hamvas came from the interwar anti-modernist and anti-rationalist milieu and was a key figure in some of the debates and intellectual circles discussing the “decline of Western civilization.” In his post-1945 works he was turning towards a neo-traditionalist direction, and his most important intellectual source was the traditionalism of the French



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radical conservative philosopher René Guénon, although, in contrast to the French thinker, who was an adherent of fascism, Hamvas did not draw direct political conclusions from his cult of the archaic. Hamvas’s aim was to create a new synthesis of universal spirituality – between archaic cultures and the great religions emerging in the “axial age” (Buddhism, Christianity, Islam). It is hard to assess the impact of Hamvas’s discourse during the decades of “really existing socialism” as his works circulated informally; it is, however, evident that by the 1980s there existed a relatively broad subculture inspired by his writings, focusing mainly on Oriental esoteric traditions. An interesting development from our perspective, resonating with the esotericism of Hamvas and also to a certain extent cultivated by the same audience, was the rise of a more nationally tuned Orientalist archaism, seeking to bring together Siberian shamanistic motives with a virtual Hungarian antiquity, called Arvisura, which was allegedly transmitted by a Soviet partisan of Mansi origins to a Hungarian iron worker during the Second World War. The rejection of Western and Soviet-type modernity could thus be articulated in a vision of archaism linking the ethnonationalist ideological tradition with Asian spiritual traditions. It is also in this very diffuse context that certain motives of the interwar radical nationalist ideology re-entered the public sphere in the 1980s, propelled by the general loss of relevance of the official communist ideology and the rise of various alternative and often highly syncretic offers ranging from environmentalism to ethnocultural revivalism.13 The “change of the regime” of 1989 all over Eastern Europe is usually interpreted as a “return to the West” and the reassertion of the European orientation of these cultures. All this was linked with the boom of antiRussian geopolitical and also cultural discourses, asserting the civilizational incompatibility of the “inherently Western” East-Central Europeans and the “Oriental” Homo Sovieticus. The turn away was symbolically reinforced by such measures as the elimination of Russian language classes from schools and also the emphatic reorientation of economic links towards the West. There was also a certain resentment against this reorientation, usually raised more from the left side of the political spectrum, culminating in the popular narrative about the first freely elected (conservative) Prime Minister József Antall and his government intentionally “giving up” the (post-)Soviet market for ideological reasons and thus inadvertently destroying those sectors of the economy, such as agricultural industry, which were until then thriving on their privileged access to a vast market with low quality standards. The situation did not change much in the late 1990s when FIDESZ came to power for the first time, abandoning its erstwhile liberal political creed and moving towards a neo-conservative direction. Its charismatic leader Viktor Orbán gradually opened the gates for a nationalistic symbolic politics (especially in the context of the festivities in 2000, commemorating the

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millennium of Hungarian statehood), but the geopolitical orientation of the country remained firmly pro-Western, preparing for the country’s accession to the European Union and NATO. Losing the 2002 elections was an enormous blow for Orbán and led to the nationalist radicalization of FIDESZ, culminating in a discourse which questioned the national belonging of their post-communist and liberal opponents and describing their return to power as a historical “anomaly.” As the political conflict escalated particularly after 2006, involving spectacular clashes on the streets of Budapest between radical right-wing demonstrators and the police, the relationship of Orbán and FIDESZ to Europe became much more ambiguous. Orbán emerged as a vocal critic of the supranationalism of the European Union and started to plead for a “Europe of nations,” but he still seemed to adhere to the “Atlanticist” geopolitical orientation. Significantly, one of his most important moves, helping him regain the support of the US diplomacy after two years of distancing following his 2006 tactical alliance with the extreme right, was to accuse the post-communist/technocratic Gyurcsány government of returning the country to the Russian sphere of interest after Gyurcsány started to negotiate with Putin about Hungary’s participation in the planned “Southern Stream” pipeline. Characteristically, during these years it was the diffuse radical rightist camp which repeatedly stormed the only Soviet Second Word War monument left in Budapest after 1989, obviously associating the attack on the monument with the attack on the post-communist government. EX ORIENTE LUX From this perspective the early 2010s brought a radical and rather unexpected transformation. The “System of National Cooperation,” established by Orbán after his sweeping victory in spring 2010, brought along the complete overhaul of the political and institutional system (and included the writing of a new constitution which explicitly frames the national community in ethnolinguistic terms). Born during the structural and economic crisis of the European Union, it was consciously fashioned as an alternative to the Western European model and turned to various non-Western authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries for inspiration. This coincided with the attempt on the government’s part to emancipate Hungary of its financial dependence on the IMF and the European Union. The search for alternative powers and economic centres willing to invest in Hungary was meant to extend Orbán’s space of manoeuvre in the face of the European Commission, which was becoming highly critical of his moves limiting freedom of speech and destroying the checks and balances of the country. In the early months after spring 2010 it was mostly China (seemingly unaffected by the 2008 crisis) that provided inspiration, but as Hungary proved economically rather unattractive for the Chinese



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leadership, the regime increasingly turned towards Russia and Turkey as a geopolitical alternative to the previous Euro-Atlantic orientation. Especially after 2013 this reorientation, promptly branded as the “Eastern Opening,” became an important ideological element of the internal and external propaganda of the regime, and also extended to new and rather unexpected friends, such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and even Iran. The new geopolitical discourse fuses three elements. Referring to the early 1990s’ loss of the post-Soviet market it promised to regain the Eastern markets and thus provide a new venue for the new Hungarian business elite around FIDESZ, who were typically investing most of their (and European taxpayers’) money into the agrarian sector. Furthermore, it stressed the structural similarity between the self-image of these autocratic governments (stability, charismatic leader figure, national pride and a flamboyant “politics of history,” as well as the refusal of the intervention of international organizations defending human rights). Last but not least, it increasingly started to stress the cultural and ethnic links between these nations and the Hungarians, asserting that Hungarians had a special mission – as the westernmost brother of this Eurasian conglomerate of peoples – to mediate culturally and economically between the West and the East and articulate the special sensitivities of these nations towards the European public. A good example of this discourse is the speech given by Orbán on occasion of his visit to Kazakhstan: We are always glad to come to Kazakhstan. We are equal in political terms in the European Union, but genealogically we are different. When we go to Brussels we do not have any relatives there. But when we come to Kazakhstan we have close people here. It is a strange feeling for us but it is true. Therefore, Hungarian delegations always come to Kazakhstan with pleasure.14

As Hungary has become increasingly isolated by its European and US partners (the European parliament held a series of sessions where mainly socialist, green and liberal MPs attacked Orbán for his autocratic power concentration), the Russian connection became increasingly important. The Hungarian leadership found the combination of an impressively expanding economy and increasingly confident regional power politics characterizing Putin’s regime around 2010 very attractive as it seemed to offer both the much-coveted alternative financial resources not dependent on European conditionality and the ideological references reinforcing the illiberal majoritarian/plebiscitarian interpretation of democracy. The similarities and evident transfer of know-how were pointed out by friends and foes alike, earning Orbán the derogatory label of “Puszta-Putin” in the German press.15 This convergence became politically more significant in the course of 2014–2015 when the Ukrainian crisis further escalated the conflict building up between Russia and the West. It was in this context that Orbán came up

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with a rather open attack on Ukraine stressing that his main concern was the situation of the Hungarian minority in Carpatho-Ukraine, which could be read as a support of the Russian geopolitical game playing the card of the minorities against the new Ukrainian leadership. Perhaps the most mediatized instance of symbolic alliance was Putin’s visit to Hungary in February 2015, just after Angela Merkel visited Budapest. This occurred at a rather uncomfortable moment for Orbán, as, just after the general European uproar following the occupation of Crimea and the shooting down of the Malaysian airplane, it was Putin who needed this meeting to demonstrate that he still had allies in the European Union, rather than Orbán who thus exposed himself to the manifest disapproval of the US foreign policymakers. The growing international pressure explains also that the Hungarian authorities banned the extreme right-wing Identitarian Congress, planned for Budapest in October 2014, where the leading figure of Russian neo-Eurasianism, Aleksandr Dugin was supposed to be the most important speaker.16 THE EURASIAN TURN OF THE RADICAL RIGHT While the Hungarian government was forced to a complex navigation between Putin’s Russia and its Western partners (relying on part of the conservative camp of the European political framework, who saw in Orbán a somewhat unruly but still respectable champion of “conservative values” such as the heterosexual family, the political relevance of religion, and national homogeneity, but who usually were far from being sympathetic to the rekindled Russian imperial ambitions), the radical right could afford a much more spectacular reorientation.17 Perhaps the most eloquent articulation of this shift came from the journalist Zsolt Bayer, a vocal supporter of the Orbán government, whose articles however target the extreme right-wing audience and whose discourse is thus significantly more outspoken than that of the government officials. While the Orbán government was evidently somewhat uncomfortable by the demonstrative visit of Putin (which included, among others, the programme of visiting the Soviet military cemetery and laying a wreath on the monument of soldiers fallen in Budapest, including the ones who died in 1956), Bayer expressed his admiration for Putin as the only viable political and civilizational alternative to the “ungodly” materialist Euro-Atlantic world order: You are right in almost everything. Most of all, in that you did not let Russia to be destroyed. … You know, Mr. President, I am still somewhat afraid of you. I have reasons for it, thousands of them … Pashkevich, Zhukov, Brezhnev. These are the reasons. And my grandmother who hid in the child bed of my



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youngest aunt when you arrived to Budapest to liberate us. She was hiding there to avoid being raped. … I am afraid of you, Mr. President. And I am very happy that we do not have common borders. But you are now right, Mr. President, in almost everything. Those who now shout hysterically about you and Russia in Hungary were coping nicely with the Soviet Union and agreed to the Soviet Union crushing us in 1956. They lived like this for 40 years. And they hated me for hating the Soviet Union as much as they hate me now for loving Russia and agreeing with you. … They appeal to Europe, they cry Europe, when there is no Europe left. … Europe now wants to become America, Mr. President. And this was meant for you as well, if your predecessor remained in power, the hopeless and immobile, alcoholic Yeltsin – then the foreign agents like Khodorkovskii would have stayed on as well, and this would have destroyed Russia. There would be only an enormous colony crushed by consumption, which contains merely some traces of Russia. And there would be perhaps airplanes coming and going between Alaska and Kamchatka every half an hour.18

Importantly, Bayer’s analysis is manifestly in line with the neo-Eurasianist discourse of Dugin who looks at the United States as the principal enemy aiming at hegemony under the veil of globalization, while Europe is featured more like a victim of this global hegemony – decadent, ailing and possible to save only due to the counter-hegemonic “freedom fight” of Russia. That the president of Russia could be hailed by the Hungarian radical nationalists as a representative of a civilizational alternative can only be explained by revisiting the profound ideological transformation of this subculture after the 1990s. Importantly, with regard to the 2000s one can speak about the shift of this ideological camp from being a subculture into a veritable counterculture, which after 2010 also became partially incorporated into the official culture of the “System of National Cooperation.”19 Key elements of this cultural configuration were linked to non-Western and antiEuropean symbolic resources of the Hungarian radical nationalist ideological tradition that could be harmonized with the Russian neo-Eurasian ideology. An important and increasingly expanding symbolic code was provided by the runa (rovásírás), a script based on an ancient Hungarian/Turkic alphabet cultivated by nationalist subcultures already during communism but which became much more central to the nationalist mobilization in the late 1990s, being turned into a marker stressing not only ethnonational uniqueness (leading to the proliferation of road signs displaying the name of the given settlement in runa script), but also the cultural affinity with other “nomadic steppe peoples.” This was also linked to the re-politicization of ethnogenetic and linguistic theories attacking the Finno-Ugrian theory as a product of foreign (Habsburg) “conspiracy” to undermine the national identity of the Hungarians and cut them off from their numerous and potentially powerful Eurasian kinsfolk.20 Along these lines, relinking Hungarians to Eurasia

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became part of the political discourse as attested by the 2010 electoral programme of Jobbik, which explicitly pleaded for the establishment of a new research institute which would establish definitively the truth concerning the ancient roots of the nation. Here the core of the discourse is that Hungarians are not linked ethnically to Western Europe but to the Eurasian steppe peoples (a particularly close connection is suggested with the former Soviet Central Asian countries). This special connection is doubly advantageous for Hungary – which will be rescued from isolation through reintegration into a broad network of kinship – and also for Central Asians, who in this way will gain a “mediator” able to represent their interests towards the West.21 Below the surface of radical ethnonationalism an even more radical neotraditionalist doctrine was also elaborated, although the relationship of the authors of this doctrine to the leadership of Jobbik was rather complicated.22 The key element of this neo-traditionalism is an apocalyptic historiosophy, depicting modernity as a tragedy of rootlessness, to be overcome by a “conservative revolution” which would somehow restore the lost sacred tradition and reorganize the life of the society around it. Not surprisingly, the key intellectual references of this discourse are Julius Evola and René Guénon. Its Hungarian representatives have links to the Western European and also American networks of neo-traditionalist/identitarian/neo-fascist intellectual circles. The main Hungarian proponents of this ideology also came up with a rather idiosyncratic narrative of national history, focusing on the notion of “sacred rulership.” The most paradoxical aspect of this narrative is that this sacred tradition is localized in the last “legitimate” Hungarian royal dynasty, which happens to be that of the Habsburgs. Furthermore, this implies the rejection of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution as an illegitimate revolt, and the rejection of the key figures of the Hungarian pantheon participating in this revolution in favour of the slightly imbecile emperor Ferdinand I (as Hungarian king: Ferdinand V). As we will see, they also avidly followed the evolution of neo-Eurasianist thought, particularly that of Dugin, and tried to critically appropriate some of its elements into their ideology. In the early 2010s the representatives of this neo-traditionalist doctrine formed a common agenda with Jobbik, and the leader of the extreme rightwing party, Gábor Vona (himself a history graduate from Eötvös Loránd University Budapest) personally devised the ideological platform of the party to incorporate elements from the neo-traditionalist doctrine. Aware of the idiosyncratic elements which would have hardly been popular among mainstream supporters used to the dominant nationalist grand narrative (with the liberal politician Lajos Kossuth and the romantic poet Sándor Petőfi as central figures), Vona was arguing for the separation of an esoteric and an exoteric doctrine, the first targeting the select few “initiated” while the second aimed at the “yet immature” masses.



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In the context of this search for an ideological framework, Dugin’s neoEurasianism generated a considerable intellectual response among the intellectual supporters of Jobbik. This was obviously triggered by the similarity of Dugin’s ideas with the broader ideological tradition of Konservative Revolution, but it was also due to the apparent Russian links of the party going back to its very inception in the first decade of the new millennium. The exact level of involvement of the Russian secret services in the launching and political orientation of Jobbik remains a matter of contention. What is for sure is that the European MP Béla Kovács, a graduate of the Moscow diplomatic academy (MGIMO) and married to a Russian citizen with links to the FSB, was the main fundraiser of the party in its early years, and after Jobbik offered him a seat in the European parliament in 2010, worked on creating a common platform of European radical rightist parties, but was caught in fragranti, while handing over documents to Russian agents. The performance of the Hungarian authorities in the investigation is also rather dubious (they seemed to be torn between playing out the “foreign agent” card against Jobbik while trying to avoid the thorny question of the presence of the Russian secret services in Hungary). It is in this context that Putin’s Budapest visit was linked to a spectacular media campaign orchestrated by the radical right to familiarize the Hungarian audience with Dugin’s ideas. Interestingly, this was not the first time the Hungarian radical rightist press discovered the Russian ideologist, but the shift of accents was remarkable. In its 2000 review of Magyar Fórum, the main organ of the first extreme right-wing party that made it into the parliament, the Party of Hungarian Truth and Life (MIÉP) published a rather critical overview of Dugin’s ideas. The review linked him to Evola and Guénon, but chastized him for not being traditionalist enough and for adhering to “national Bolshevism,” that is, identifying himself with some elements of the communist heritage in terms of both its anti-liberal and anti-Western civilizational alternative and its geopolitical role. The reviewer, coming from the “neotraditionalist” subculture analysed above, rejected this perspective for both its leftist residual content and its imperialist pretensions.23 Fifteen years later the tone was rather different. In an interview with Dugin bearing the telling title “An Empire Being Built against the West,” for example, the Eurasianist ideologue’s analysis is taken for the most part at face value, the only point of contention being the historical role of nation states, which Dugin evidently considered inferior compared to empires but which the Hungarian nationalists understandably sought to defend.24 In the early 2010s there was also a visible interaction between the leadership of Jobbik and Dugin. The latter met Jobbik’s leader Gábor Vona in Moscow in 2013 and there was evidently some degree of mutual appreciation: Dugin could demonstrate his international influence whereas Vona

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could substantiate his claim that his party offers a radically different geopolitical orientation than the rest of the Hungarian political spectrum. A lecture given by Vona in Moscow illustrates this well: Hungary will have to choose within a couple of years whether it stays with the European Union, joins the emerging Eurasian Union, or tries to balance between them and stay independent. … What is sure for me is that the first option is excluded. … Either Hungary chooses an independent road or Eurasian cooperation, that is for sure that we have to rethink and reinforce our economic, energetic, political and cultural links to Russia. … I believe in Eurasian cooperation, I believe that we have to base this on the universal traditional values which link traditional Europe to traditional Asia.”25

Vona went so far as to declare in an interview given in 2014 to the Russian Internet journal Vzgliad: “I consider myself an Eurasianist.”26 In the interview Vona linked explicitly the Turanist and Eurasianist traditions and considered Hungary’s geopolitical interest to establish a “very close” strategic relationship to the emerging Eurasian Union. The ideological alignment was also clear from the fact that in April 2015 the European Cabinet of Jobbik awarded a study which sought to create a common ideological framework between Dugin’s ideas and the radical neo-traditionalist doctrine (what they call “ultradextro-conservativismus”) flourishing in the entourage of Jobbik.27 In late 2015, however, FIDESZ attacked Jobbik for its FSB connections, and there was a more general reconfiguration of the political spectrum of Hungary linked to the refugee crisis. At this time, Orbán positioned himself into a radical nationalist position, which left little place for Jobbik to the right of FIDESZ, and triggered a careful move to a less extreme right-wing position, thereby emulating in certain respects Marine Le Pen’s Front National. With all of this, the Russian connection became somewhat toned down. At the same time, however, a broad segment of the Hungarian extreme right scene became directly involved in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Importantly, there was an apparent attempt on the part of the ideological supporters of the Novorossiia project to recruit ethnic Hungarians, who have traditionally been at loggerheads with the local Ukrainian nationalists, from Carpatho-Ukraine. There was also an expectation that many of them, especially if mobilized by the Ukrainian authorities to fight on the Ukrainian side, would prefer to move over to the other camp. The pro-Russian propaganda targeting this potential audience was also transmitted by the different Hungarian extreme right-wing websites, many of them close to Jobbik. The symbolic geographical framework of this envisioned cooperation is “Eurasian solidarity” – linking the Hungarian anti-European narrative inherent to the Turanist tradition to Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism. The idea is sustained by a civilizational narrative accusing the West of individualism and decadence and extolling Eurasian civilization as based on collectivism, ethnic solidarity



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and a sense of tradition. It also considers the Eurasian Union launched by Russia as an alternative to the European Union. There is also a proliferation in the radical rightist popular culture of these tropes. A document of the merger of Turanism and Eurasianism is the work of a former émigré and author of gastronomic publications, who shifted to nationalist belles-lettres after 1990 and among others published the book Attila: The Hun Message, which features the Hun ruler as a Eurasian statesman par excellence. This work describes how Attila was influenced by Chinese and Japanese spirituality, and how – contrary to the Western “black legend” depicting him as a barbarian – he sought to unify European and Asian civilizations in his empire. He is depicted as representing an extremely sophisticated cultural level and capability of rulership, creating a multiethnic Eurasian empire far superior to the decadent Western and Eastern Romans.28 It is clear that most of the tropes in this depiction come from the Hungarian Turanist tradition, but it is “internationalized” and “globalized” by the use of the Eurasianist discursive patterns, evoking their reinterpretation of Genghis Khan as a Eurasian empire-builder. An even funnier instance of the permeation of the Eurasianist references into the off-mainstream radical nationalist discourse is provided by the government-supported but ideologically far more idiosyncratic World Association of Hungarians, which in July 2016 published a press statement hailing the Welsh football team who knocked out Belgium (who beat Hungary 4-0 in the previous round) from the European Championship. The author of the text, who also happens to be a representative of the Ruthenian ethnic minority in Budapest, pleaded for Hungarian-Celtic solidarity from the perspective of Eurasianism (claiming that King Arthur was a vassal of the “Eurasian King of Kings,” Attila) against the racially “contaminated” Belgians (whom he described as the “national team of Belgian Congo”).29 On a more elevated, para-scholarly discursive level, there was also an exchange between the supporters of the Hungarian radical right and the Western European promoters of a Eurasianist vision. A case in point is the appearance of Claudio Mutti in the Hungarian radical right-wing press and blogosphere.30 The Italian Mutti made an interesting shift from a radical right-wing historian of Romanian fascist intellectuals (seeking to reconsider the heritage of key figures of the Romanian interwar “young generation,” such as Mircea Eliade and Emil Cioran, as an intellectual inspiration for the European neo-fascist movement)31 into a propagandist of pro-Russian Eurasianism, editing a theoretical journal of geopolitics which seeks to create a common intellectual platform for Western neo-fascists, Russian Eurasianists and Middle Eastern (Syrian and Iranian) networks. Addressing the Hungarian audience in one interview, he talked about “Turanophile Eurasia,” evidently seeking to find a mutually acceptable conceptual fusion. It is not accidental

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that in addition to his popularization of neo-Eurasianism and Romanian fascism he is an avid reader and Italian translator of Béla Hamvas as well. This connection is alive and kicking and also reaches official levels, as can be seen with the recent publication of a thematic issue of the Italian journal Quaderni di Geopolitica – supported and promoted by the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs – which aims at popularizing Hungary for an Italian audience. The journal is edited by rightist geopoliticians, such as Tiberio Graziani, who are also close to the Eurasianist ideological network and thus this cooperation once again shows the existence of complex networks linking the Kremlin, the Western European radical right and some of the East-Central European neoconservative political elites.32 CONCLUSION While anti-Russian sentiment was deeply embedded in the Hungarian extreme right-wing ideological tradition, I have argued in this chapter that the anti-Western orientation encoded in the Turanist narrative, which was reconstituted as the most comprehensive symbolic geographical narrative of Hungarian radical nationalism after 1989, created an opportunity for integrating Eurasianist references and thus legitimizing a pro-Russian volte face in the second half of the 2000s. It is also evident, however, that this ideological convergence and practical cooperation has some intrinsic limitations. To be sure, the different scales and self-representations of Turanism and neo-Eurasianism make it hard to create a common matrix, insofar as neo-Eurasianism is eventually centred on Russian imperial imaginary and geopolitical interests whereas in Hungary Russia usually plays the role of the “enemy of the enemy.” There are however limited symbolic resources with which to realign the radical nationalist discourse in a thoroughly Russophile direction. Zsolt Bayer’s “I am still afraid of you, Mr. President” is a prevalent feeling among the Hungarian nationalists, of whatever colouring and subculture. They might well support Russia in its struggle to undermine a “Euro-Atlantic hegemony” allegedly built on the heritage of the Enlightenment, but they would hesitate to become part of another geopolitical macrostructure dominated by Russia. This is clear also from the polite way Gábor Vona left the question open concerning Hungary’s future orientation towards the Eurasian Union or seeking to preserve its independence after its expected secession from the European Union. On the whole, this also indicates that while neo-Eurasianism in its pure version might well be impossible to integrate into the Hungarian extreme right discourse, the very resonance it creates points nonetheless to an ideological radicalization and the opening of new horizons of expectation. At the same



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time, it is also important to bear in mind that, in contrast to the civilizational theory of classical Eurasianism, which was in many ways supra-ethnic, neoEurasianism is more essentialist in its understanding of ethnicity and thus is more prone to be used by Hungarian ethnonationalists. This is also obvious if one looks at the patterns of reception. While the names of Trubetskoi or Vernadskii never appear in the radical right, Gumilev’s contribution to the study of ethnogenesis is a recurrent reference of the radical rightist subcultures interested in Hungarian prehistory. Dugin, for his part, has emerged as a key ideological interlocutor for the radical neo-traditionalists in the last couple of years.33 As usual, the fantasizing of the extreme right-wing ideologists seems very far from the tangible realities of “normal” institutional politics. At the same time, their function is not so much to set a realizable programme, but rather to discursively “normalize” certain aspirations and practices which were previously considered unimaginable. In this respect the turn of the Hungarian radical right (and also what in the logic of EU politics has been considered more mainstream conservatism) towards Eurasianism signals the intention to suspend the norms of European politics, reject the political and cultural traditions of ethnic and religious tolerance and pluralism usually linked to the Enlightenment heritage, and reframe politics in terms of a biopolitical understanding of ethnic kinship and othering. Ultimately, the fantasy of the Turanian horseman gloriously galloping westwards on the Eurasian steppe thousands of years ago serves to legitimize the verbal, and prospectively also the physical, crushing of the pro-Western segments of the society in the present day in a crisis-ridden peripheral state at the Eastern confines of the crumbling Schengen zone. NOTES 1. On the Oriental components of Hungarian national identity see Tamás Hofer, Katalin Sinkó, Eszter Kisbán, Hungarians between “East” and “West.” Three Essays on National Myths and Symbols (Budapest: Néprajzi Múzeum, 1994). 2. On “classical” Eurasianism see Marlène Laruelle, L’Idéologie eurasiste russe ou comment penser l’empire (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999); and Mark Bassin, Sergei Glebov, Marlene Laruelle, eds., Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories, and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). 3. George V. Vernadskii, Opyt istorii Evrazii (Berlin: Izdanie evraziitsev, 1934). 4. On the tensions between Gumilev’s ideas and classical Eurasianism see Marlène Laruelle, “Histoire d’une usurpation intellectuelle: L. N. Gumilev, « le dernier des eurasistes » ? Analyse des oppositions entre L. N. Gumilev et P. N. Savickij,” Revue des études slaves 73. 2 (2001): 449–459.

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5. Laruelle, 457. 6. Attila Melegh, On the East-West Slope: Globalization, Nationalism, Racism and Discourses on Central and Eastern Europe (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006). 7. On the complex political and cultural context of the expedition see László Kontler, “Politicians, Patriots and Plotters: Unlikely Debates Occasioned by Maximilian Hell’s Venus Transit Expedition of 1769,” The Journal of Astronomical Data, 19 (2013): 83–96. 8. One of the best overviews is in Turkish; see Tarık Demirkan, Macar Turancıları (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yay, 2000). 9. See L. N. Gumilev, “New Data on the History of the Khazars,” Acta Archaelogica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 19 (Budapest, 1967). “A kazárok utódai,” Történelmi Szemle 11 (1968): 11–18. Erdélyi published together with Gumilev, “Edinstvo i raznoobrazie stepnoi kultury Evrazii v srednie veka,” Narody Azii i Afriki, 1969, N 3, C, 78–87. http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/articles/Article80.htm. 10. Gyula László, Hunor és Magyar nyomában (Budapest: Magvető, 1967); A “kettős honfoglalás” (Budapest: Magvető, 1978). 11. Lev Nyikolajevics Gumiljov, Péter Veres, V. I. Kozlov, Documentatio Ethnographica 5 (Budapest-Szolnok: MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport-Damjanich János Múzeum, 1975). 12. Tibor Baráth, A magyar népek őstörténete, I–III (Montreal, 1968–1974). 13. On these para-historical discourses see László Attila Hubbes, “New Hungarian Mythology Animated. Self-Portraits of the Nation,” Acta Universitatis Sapientiae. Philologica 5. 2 (2013): 223−240. On the identity constructions of Hungarian neopaganism, see Réka Szilárdi, “Neopaganism in Hungary: Under the Spell of Roots,” in Native Faith and Neo-Pagan Movements in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. by Kaarina Aitamurto, Scott Simpson (Durham: Acumen Publishing, 2013), 230–248. 14. “Hungarian PM: We feel at home in Kazakhstan,” April 1, 2015, http://www. inform.kz/eng/article/2761573. 15. http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article11869003/Puszta-Putin-VictorOrban-fuehrt-2011-Europa-an.html. 16. http://4pt.su/hu/content/alexander-dugin-eloadasa-ami-2014. 17. For the broader European context see Mitchell A. Orenstein, “Putin’s Western Allies. Why Europe’s Far Right Is on the Kremlin’s Side,” Foreign Affairs, March 25, 2014. 18. Zsolt Bayer, “Levél Vlagyimir Putyinnak” (January 2015), http://magyarhirlap.hu/cikk/17493/Level_Vlagyimir_Putyinnak#sthash.jJ4QRker.dpuf. 19. For the transformation of the identity politics of the Hungarian right see my “Beyond Liminality? The Kulturkampf of the early 2000s in East Central Europe,” in Boundary2 (2014/1): 135–152. 20. On the re-emergence of Turanism as the geopolitical framework of the radical right in Hungary see Emeli Akçali and Umut Korkut, “Geographical Metanarratives in East-Central Europe: Neo-Turanism in Hungary,” Eurasian Geography and Economics 53 (2012): 596–614. The best overview of the link between the Hungarian extreme right and the Russian geopolitical agenda is the analysis prepared by the Hungarian think tank, Political Capital, “Eurázsiai vagyok” – tanulmány a magyar



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szélsőjobboldal és a Kreml kapcsolatáról, April 9, 2015, available at http://www. politicalcapital.hu/wp-content/uploads/PC_SDI_Boll_tanulmany_EurazsiaiVagyok. pdf. 21. https://jobbik.hu/rovatok/valasztasi_hirek/letoltheto_a_jobbik_valasztasi_programja. 22. On the multilayered nature of the ideological framework of Jobbik, see Zsolt Enyedi, “Paternalist populism and illiberal elitism in Central Europe,” Journal of Political Ideologies 21. 1 (2016): 9–25. 23. Róbert Horváth, “Érdemek és végzetes tévedések: Alekszandr Dugin,” Havi Magyar Fórum 9. 1 (2001): 56–60. 24. Adrienn Szaniszló, Adrián Magvasi, “Birodalom épül a nyugattal szemben,” Alfahír 2015. 01. 27. http://alfahir.hu/birodalom_epul_a_nyugattal_szemben. 25. http://mandiner.hu/cikk/20130530_vona_gabor_a_lomonoszov_egyetemen_ tartott_eloadasom_szovege. 26. http://vz.ru/world/2014/6/27/692799.html. 27. P. T., “A 4PT Eurázsia víziója, mint vaskori eszközünk,” http://europakabinet. jobbik.hu/jobbik_eur_pa_kabinet_essz_p_ly_zat_2_helyezett 21. 28. http://www.cey-bert.hu/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1. 29. http://www.egipatrona.hu/mvsz/index.php/2752-foci-eb-wales-for-ever-magyar-wales-i-szovetseg-dr-tranger-karoly-jegyzete. 30. http://szentkoronaradio.com/kulfold/2012_05_02_eurazsia-es-magyarorszaginterju-claudi-muttival. 31. Claudio Mutti, Penele Arhanghelului. Intelectualii români şi Garda de Fier (Bucharest: Editura Anastasia, 1997). 32. On Graziani, the former editor of the Duginist journal Eurasia, see Marlene Laruelle, ed., Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 110. 33. For the assessment of the appropriation of the classical Eurasianist tropes by Dugin as well as the obvious divergences, see Mark Bassin, “Eurasianism ‘Classical’ and ‘Neo’: The Lines of Continuity,” Slavic Eurasian Studies 17 (2008): 279–294.

Chapter 13

Geopolitical Traditions in Turkey Turkish Eurasianism Emre Erşen

One of the most interesting developments about Turkish foreign policy in the post-Cold War period has been the growing popularity of the concept of “Eurasia” among the Turkish political, military and intellectual circles for defining new horizons for their country in global politics.1 The collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of five newly independent states inhabited by Turkic-speaking peoples in Central Asia and the Caucasus in particular have stimulated various groups in the Turkish political scene to seek a new regional role for Turkey – mostly in response to its unstable relationship with the United States and the European Union since 1991. An important point which needs to be underlined here is that, whereas the ideas about the physical borders of Eurasia and the potential roles to be played by Turkey in this region have greatly varied, geopolitics received a significant emphasis in all these intellectual endeavours. Although there has been a recent increase in the number of academic studies attempting to analyse the geopolitical discourses in Turkey by utilizing critical theories, the field is still dominated by traditional approaches which generally tend to associate geopolitics with realist concepts such as military strategy, national interest and the balance of power.2 The prevalence of such realist approaches in geopolitical studies in Turkey is striking, especially when one considers that critical theories have become nearly as influential as traditional ones in other major fields of the international relations discipline in the Turkish academia. In order to initiate a similar trend in the sphere of Turkish geopolitics, there is a need to deconstruct – or at least reinterpret – some of the geopolitical themes and concepts that have been frequently resorted to by Turkish scholars. The goal of this chapter, therefore, is to elaborate on the various representations of Eurasia (Avrasya in Turkish), which has become one of the 263

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most commonly used geopolitical concepts in Turkey in the post-Cold War period. In order to do this, the chapter will employ critical geopolitics and particularly its assumptions regarding the three types of geopolitical reasoning (formal, practical and popular geopolitics), which have not been reflected broadly enough in the academic discussions regarding Turkish geopolitics. Considering that the idea known as “Turkish Eurasianism” is largely based on the geopolitical narratives developed by Turkish scholars, writers and intellectuals, formal geopolitics appears to be the most significant subcategory of critical geopolitics in terms of making comprehensive analyses about the evolving geopolitical meaning(s) of Eurasia in the Turkish context. CRITICAL GEOPOLITICS AND TURKISH EURASIANISM Although the discipline of geopolitics is usually associated with the writers of the imperial period such as Ratzel, Mackinder and Mahan, in recent years contemporary geopolitical thinking has been moving towards a critical understanding of the relationship between geography and politics. Also known as critical geopolitics, this new approach views geography as a construction of the human mind and argues that traditional geopolitical fixations and perceptions of boundaries can change if people alter their current imaginations about geography. It also refuses to view geopolitics exclusively in the light of military power and tries to embrace the cultural, economic and social dynamics behind the globalization of world politics.3 Gearóid Ó Tuathail, one of the leading theorists of critical geopolitics, proposes a threefold categorization, which he thinks would be useful in problematizing the discourses about the geographical features of world politics. In this scheme, formal geopolitics symbolizes the geopolitical reasoning that is employed by academics, analysts and scholars in universities, strategic institutes and think tanks. Practical geopolitics is to be found in the discourses of government representatives and foreign-policy bureaucrats. Popular geopolitics, on the other hand, represents the geopolitical narratives reflected in the mass media, cinema, novels and cartoons.4 Critical geopolitics argues that these three forms of geopolitical reasoning contribute to the “spatialising of boundaries and dangers (the geopolitical map of the world) and the geopolitical representations of self and the other (the geopolitical imagination).”5 Since formal, practical and popular geopolitics are closely linked with each other, it is almost impossible to draw a clear line between them.6 Academics, journalists and intellectuals have regular contacts with each other as well as government officials and other state authorities. These contacts reinforce an intensive exchange of ideas on many political and social issues. Geopolitical frameworks that are shaped during the course of this exchange are processed



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by the mass media and penetrate into the popular culture. Metaphors such as the “iron curtain,” “rogue states” or the “axis of evil” aim to simplify international politics for the public and help people make the “us and them” or “friend and enemy” distinctions in a more simplified manner. Such abstractions are also used quite frequently by politicians in order to defend a particular policy. At the same time, they generate popular public debates of a geopolitical nature. Although there is a growing body of literature on popular geopolitics, most geopolitical reasoning in world politics takes place in the realm of practical geopolitics.7 The latter includes everyday forms of geopolitical reasoning employed by foreign-policy decision-makers in defending or explaining their policies to the public. These so-called “geopolitical codes” are different from the institutional or strategic knowledge produced within the framework of formal geopolitics in that they are based on common sense geopolitical narratives.8 At the same time, however, there is close interaction between formal and practical geopolitics, since the most important objective of the theories and strategies developed in the universities and think tanks is to provide guidance to policymakers and legitimacy for their decisions. In fact, most scholars who contribute to the production of formal geopolitical knowledge usually also serve as advisers – or sometimes even as ministers – in national governments. Formal geopolitics is also associated with “geopolitical traditions” that are based on the narratives developed by academics, intellectuals and scholars in accordance with the historical, geographical and cultural features of their own state.9 Since each geopolitical tradition represents a distinct value system, in general there is more than one geopolitical tradition in every country. Graham Smith, for example, analysed the three geopolitical traditions in Russia: one viewing the country as part of Europe, one believing that it is neither European nor Asian, and one suggesting that it is a bridge between the two continents.10 A similar study was conducted by Walter Russell Mead who found four distinct geopolitical traditions in the United States – Jeffersonian, Wilsonian, Jacksonian and Hamiltonian.11 Timothy Garton Ash, on the other hand, defined the four prominent geopolitical traditions in the United Kingdom as small Britain, cosmopolitan Britain, European Britain and American Britain.12 Ó Tuathail argues that one geopolitical tradition in a country can only be distinguished from the others by revealing its social support base as well as the way it defines national interest and cultural identity.13 If the post-Cold War Turkish geopolitical debates with regard to Eurasia are to be analysed in this context, one may recognize three geopolitical traditions that attribute a special meaning to this concept. Some scholars prefer to associate these traditions respectively with three political ideologies: Turkism/nationalism, socialism/Kemalism and conservatism/Islamism.14 A few others, on the other

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hand, indicate the emergence of a new school of thought called Turkish Eurasianism – a broader definition that includes various formal geopolitical meanings attributed to the concept of Eurasia in the Turkish context.15 Aktürk, for instance, notes that Eurasianism can be regarded as a primary intellectual movement in Turkey alongside Islamism, Turkism and Westernism and that “pro-Russian orientation abroad and socialist-nationalist government at home are the international and domestic faces of Turkish Eurasianism, which distinguish this movement from others.”16 Yet, it should be indicated that Turkish Eurasianism is also subject to a heated academic debate in Turkey and abroad due to its vagueness and lack of clear philosophical roots.17 This is also because it is usually compared with Russian Eurasianism, which has been met with increasing interest by national-patriotic circles in Turkey in the post-Cold War period. Nationalpatriotism (ulusalcılık in Turkish) increased its influence in the Turkish political scene throughout the 2000s as a new ideology based on an anti-Westernist coalition between the Turkish ultra-left and ultra-right around the protection of the principles of Turkey’s founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – particularly nationalism, statism and secularism.18 In this regard, its advocates defend the need to establish a strategic axis with Russia and other Eurasian states against US and EU policies which they believe aim to weaken – and even disintegrate – Turkey’s national unity. Especially following the translation of Aleksandr Dugin’s seminal book Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia to Turkish in 2003, Eurasianism has become even more attractive for the Turkish national-patriots. In the following five years, the number of publications that introduced the Turkish readers to the major theses of Eurasianism had significantly increased.19 Around the same period, Dugin continuously boosted his popularity in Turkey due to his close links with the national-patriotic Workers’ Party. He was even invited to Turkey on numerous occasions to deliver speeches in conferences that were attended by high-level Turkish political and military figures. Yet, it is important to emphasize that there is a serious confusion about the meaning of Eurasianism in the Turkish context, since it is closely associated with other political ideologies like Turkism, Kemalism and neo-Ottomanism, which are not only critical about each other, but also towards the imperialistic designs of Dugin’s Eurasianism. The picture gets even more complicated when one considers that each of these three ideologies advocate a different geopolitical recipe for Turkish foreign policymakers in the post-Cold War period. Turkism, for instance, concentrates on the emotional and cultural unity of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus, while its more extreme version pan-Turkism has a clearly revisionist character that aims to unite these territories under Turkey’s leadership.20 The advocates of modern



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day Kemalism, which is based on the political ideas of Atatürk, on the other hand, believe that Turkey should do its best to preserve its national character by drifting away from the United States and the European Union and following a much more independent path in international relations through forging closer links with the countries of Asia as well as the Middle East. Finally, neo-Ottomanism is based on a kind of nostalgia for Turkey’s Ottoman past and focuses on the Ottoman heritage in the Middle East, Balkans and the Caucasus.21 Within the framework of neo-Ottomanist discourse, “from Bosnia to the Crimea, and from Karabakh to Iraq, Turks are constantly reminded about a distinctly Ottoman geopolitical space.”22 Therefore, instead of treating Turkish Eurasianism as a distinct ideology, it is actually more appropriate to talk about the various “reflections” or “interpretations” of the concept of Eurasia in Turkey.23 This approach also seems suitable for making comprehensive analyses in the light of Ó Tuathail’s definition of geopolitical traditions. In this sense, it is possible to talk about three main geopolitical traditions in Turkey, each attributing a distinct meaning to the concept of Eurasia in the post-Cold War period based on their geographical focus rather than their ideological roots. One of these traditions focus on Eurasia within the framework of Turkey’s integration with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus, while the second one is closer to the ideas of Dugin as it elaborates on a strategic rapprochement between Turkey and other Asian/Eurasian countries including Russia, China and Iran. The third tradition, on the other hand, perceives Eurasia exclusively in relation with the Ottoman cultural and geopolitical heritage and focuses on Turkey’s relations with the Muslim-majority countries of the Middle East and other former Ottoman territories. EURASIA AS A QUEST TO UNIFY THE TURKIC WORLD The first geopolitical tradition is usually associated with Turkism in the Turkish context and enjoys widespread support among the groups associated with the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which is currently the fourth largest political party in the Turkish parliament. This party’s political discourse identifies Turkey’s national interest as the integration with the Turkic republics of the former Soviet Union and heavily draws upon the Turkic ethnic identity in cultural terms.24 Although the geopolitical tradition represented by the MHP was quite powerful in the last period of the Ottoman Empire, it lost significant influence after the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 mainly due to the Turkish leaders’ reluctance to alienate Moscow by trying to establish strong political and cultural links with the Turkic communities of the Soviet Union.

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The collapse of the Soviet Union and emergence of five independent Turkic states in the Caucasus and Central Asia, in this regard, provided new impetus to this tradition, the supporters of which have embraced the concept of Eurasia very enthusiastically for redefining their geopolitical outlook towards this region. Especially in the first few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the practical geopolitical meanings attributed to the concept of Eurasia in Turkey were shaped under the heavy influence of this tradition.25 For example, the official television channel that was founded in 1992 to strengthen the relations between Turkey and the Turkic republics was launched under the name of TRT-Int Avrasya. More significantly, MHP leader Alparslan Türkeş accompanied Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel in the latter’s first official visit to the five Turkic republics in April 1992. Together with President Turgut Özal, Demirel was at the same time a strong supporter of the slogan of a “Turkic world stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the Great Wall of China,” which he sometimes alternatively described as Eurasia.26 Despite its strong pan-Turkist connotations, this slogan was rather planned as a pragmatic instrument and “the expression of a regional economic, political and cultural assertion.”27 Demirel, who later succeeded Özal as president, for instance, clearly stated that the goal of this policy was to foster cooperation between the countries of the region: “The word panTurkism exists only in the dictionary. ... When we say the Turkish world, this does not mean that the peoples of Turkish origin are seeking a single state. They are seeking cooperation.”28 It should also be noted that Turkish policymakers initially associated the concept of Eurasia not only with the Turkic republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, but also with the Turkic minorities living in the Balkans. Today, it is estimated that one million out of the nine million Muslim people living in the Balkan countries are either Turkish-speaking or ethnically Turkish.29 At the same time, five million to seven million of the citizens of Turkey are reported to have migrated from the Balkans following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Here, one should also mention the activities of the Turkish Agency for Technical and Economic Cooperation (TİKA), which was founded by the Turkish state in 1992 to provide aid for the economic development of the Turkic republics and which helped the popularization of the concept of Eurasia in the Turkish academic circles by publishing the Avrasya Dosyası (Eurasian File) bulletin and Avrasya Etüdleri (Eurasian Studies) journal. It also undertook significant projects not only in Central Asia and the Caucasus, but also in the Balkans.30 The establishment of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) in June 1992 may also be regarded as a sign of the Turkish policymakers’ desire to view the Balkans within their emerging conceptualization about Eurasia. Foreign Minister Hikmet Çetin, for instance, stated



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that the Black Sea basin was located at the “heart of Eurasia.”31 However, as the Balkan countries started to develop closer links with the European Union, Eurasia became more exclusively identified with the Turkic republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus in terms of its geographical meaning in the Turkish political and intellectual circles. The specific depiction of Eurasia typical of the geopolitical tradition centred around the Turkic world is perhaps best represented by nationalist journals such as Türk Yurdu (Turkish Homeland), Yeni Avrasya (New Eurasia), Ayhaber (moon news) and Asya-Avrupa (Asia-Europe).32 The Avrasya Bir Foundation founded in 1993 may also be included within this tradition, since promoting Turkism around the world and fostering relations between Turkey and the Turkic world were cited among its main goals.33 More importantly, the Eurasia Strategic Research Centre (ASAM) established by the Avrasya Bir Foundation in 1999 produced many books not only on the Turkic republics, but also on other highly regarded issues of Turkish nationalism including the Armenian and Kurdish issues. However, it should be noted that ASAM’s quarterly journal (also titled Avrasya Dosyası like the TİKA bulletin), which became a leading publication of international affairs in Turkey, has not been dominated by a nationalist discourse but has instead published scholarly articles on the political, economic and cultural processes taking place in the former Soviet republics.34 The concept of Eurasia is geographically defined in two different ways within the geopolitical tradition centred on the Turkic world. The first definition depicts the region quite broadly as the joint Euro-Asian supercontinent or the vast territories located in the meeting point of these two continents.35 For example, Professor Ümit Özdağ, who has been a leading figure in the Turkish nationalist movement and has also worked as the chair of ASAM between 1999 and 2004, described Eurasia as a region starting from Hungary, covering the entire Balkans, Turkey, Caucasus, Central Asia, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan and extending into Mongolia.36 The second definition treats Eurasia as the region where Turkic/Turkish communities are found in great numbers, and thus is a more ideologically oriented one. In fact, Eurasia in this second definition seems more like a modernized version of the “Turan” – the ancient homeland of the Turkic peoples in the steppes of Central Asia – which still has a very important place in the Turkish nationalist ideology.37 Although the idea of a unified Turkic geographical space was first developed by Hungarian intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century, the concept was immediately appropriated by the leading Turkish nationalist intellectual Ziya Gökalp, whose ideas became a major influence for the Ottoman government led by the Young Turks in the last decade before the collapse of the empire. In Gökalp’s definition, Turan was associated with the idea of a “greater Turkistan that included all the

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Turkic peoples.”38 Proposals for the establishment of ambitious regional integration schemes in the post-Cold War period such as the “Unified Turkistan” or “Turkistan Confederation” may also be evaluated in the light of this second definition of Eurasia.39 Although it can be argued that Eurasia has been favoured by some Turkish nationalist intellectuals as a more inclusive concept, which is also open to non-Turkic peoples, it remains the case that Turkishness is at the heart of almost all variations of this concept in this geopolitical tradition.40 The late Muzaffer Özdağ, who was regarded as a leading activist of Turkish nationalism, for instance, claimed that the Eurasian axis which has been defined as the “Heartland” or “geopolitical pivot of history” by writers like Mackinder was at the same time the axis of Turkic history as well as the “living space of the Turkic race.”41 His son Ümit Özdağ similarly asserted that the Turkic peoples have been the most important actors in the intellectual, sociological, cultural and economic development of Eurasia.42 This is also the main reason why this tradition’s understanding of Eurasia is anti-Russian. For instance, Devlet Bahçeli, who is the present leader of MHP, defined Dugin’s version of Eurasianism as “Eur-Russianism,” that is, a new kind of Russian imperialism.43 EURASIA AS AN ANTI-WESTERNIST GEOPOLITICAL PROJECT Although the geopolitical tradition centred around the Turkic world is quite critical of the West and favours Turkey’s distancing – and even turning away – from the United States and the European Union in foreign policy, the anti-Westernist implications of the concept of Eurasia in the Turkish context are rather framed by the second geopolitical tradition that defines Turkey’s national interest in terms of its inclusion in an Asian/Eurasian coalition against its Western allies. This view is supported by various socialist and national-patriotic groups which became increasingly sceptical about Turkey’s relations with the United States and the European Union in the 2000s. Apart from promoting ideas of anti-imperialism in the cultural sphere, they also highlight the rapprochement between the governments of Turkey and the Soviet Union during the period between 1919 and 1939 and draw attention to what they regard as an “anti-imperialist dialogue” between Atatürk and Vladimir Lenin.44 It should also be noted that the influence this tradition enjoyed with Turkish foreign policymakers has been quite limited – especially compared to tradition that is centred on the Turkic world. One of the rare instances where a toplevel political-military figure publicly expressed the views of this tradition was in 2002, when General Tuncer Kılınç, secretary-general of the National



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Security Council, proposed the formation of a Russian-Turkish-Iranian axis in order to stand against “the EU’s unacceptable requests” regarding the Cyprus and Kurdish issues.45 Although both the Turkish government and general staff immediately rejected his views, the rapid improvement of Turkish-Russian relations after 2003 at a time when Turkey’s relations with the United States and the European Union became increasingly complicated provided fresh impetus to the debates about the Eurasian dimension of Turkish foreign policy. For instance, some journalists argued that the Turkish-Russian relations have been turning into an “emerging alliance” against the West, while some others claimed that the Kremlin’s motivation was to include Turkey in a “Eurasian axis” formed between Russia, China, India and Iran.46 The anti-Westernist ideas, which started to rise among the Turkish public following the US occupation of Iraq in 2003 and Cyprus’s accession to the European Union in 2004, drew this tradition’s geopolitical interpretation of Eurasia closer to the ideas of Dugin, who similarly advocates an antiWesternist discourse in world politics. Indeed, the consensus between Dugin and some national-patriotic circles in Turkey started to emerge as early as the mid-1990s, partly because they both geopolitically defined Eurasianism as the major adversary of Atlanticism – a concept which denotes the US domination of world politics. In this regard, one could argue that this tradition’s view of Eurasia actually represents a new conceptualization of the “third world,” in which Eurasia is identified with the oppressed peoples of the post-Cold War world. Hakan Reyhan, the founder and editor-in-chief of the journal Ulusal (National), for instance, describes Eurasia as “the universal solidarity between the oppressed peoples against neo-imperialism” and claims that even the socialist Cuba, which is located in Latin America, can be included in this concept due to its resistance against US imperialism.47 Such a definition draws the borders of Eurasia according to ideology rather than geography. A similar approach is also found in the ideas of Doğu Perinçek, leader of the Workers’ Party, which very recently changed its name to the Patriotic Party in conformity with its predominantly national-patriotic discourse.48 In Perinçek’s view, Eurasia represents a revolutionary centre against the US imperialism, whereas Latin America and Africa are regarded as its two flanks.49 Identifying these three continents as the “Oppressed World,” he believes that Eurasia in particular is the geopolitical adversary of the United States, Europe and Japan.50 His son Mehmet Perinçek similarly defines Eurasia as the enemy of Atlanticism; however, he believes that the latter is represented by the alliance between the United States, United Kingdom and Israel. In his depiction, Eurasia emerges as an “anti-imperialist geopolitical reservoir” that includes Russia, China, India, the Arab countries, Iran and the Turkic world.51

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Another leading figure who highlighted the intellectual dimensions of the concept of Eurasia was the late-socialist writer and poet Attila İlhan, sometimes dubbed as “the father of Turkish Eurasianism.”52 Although İlhan described Eurasia as the geographical region that included the Central Asian Turkic republics, Iran, Afghanistan, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Turkey, the Caucasus, Syria, Iraq and the Balkans, he also stated that this concept should be understood in the light of the ideas of Bolshevik Tatar politician Mirsaid Sultan Galiev (1892–1940), who advocated the ideology of “national communism” for the Muslim communities of the Soviet Union.53 His depiction of Eurasia in this regard has been quite similar with Galiev’s socialist “Turan Republic,” a project which aimed to bring all the Muslims of the Caucasus and Central Asia together under one socialist state.54 Apart from his admiration for the ideas of Galiev, İlhan also made significant reference to Atatürk in his views about Eurasia, calling these two leaders the “heroes of Eurasia.”55 He also attached great importance to the political dialogue between Atatürk and Lenin during and after the Turkish War of Independence, as he believed this anti-imperialist dialogue formed the core of the Eurasian idea.56 A similar emphasis on the policies of Atatürk can also be found in the works of the national-patriotic writer Anıl Çeçen.57 Defining Eurasia as the region formed by Anatolia, the Black Sea, Ukraine, Moldova, Southern Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Xinxiang region of China and the Middle East, Çeçen indicates that Atatürk strengthened the Eurasian dimension of Turkish foreign policy by prioritizing Turkey’s relations with Russia as well as the Middle Eastern and Balkan countries.58 Çeçen also has a more favourable view of Russia’s role in Eurasia as he defines Istanbul and Moscow as the two centres of this region.59 Thus, in contrast to the anti-Russian ideas of some other writers, he is closer to the ideological line advocated by İlhan, which is sometimes also called “Kemalist Eurasianism,” and recommends Turkey’s inclusion in an alternative model of globalization together with Eurasian countries like Russia.60 In this regard, he believes that Turkish and Russian versions of Eurasianism should not be running against each other. This is also why he advises Turkish leaders to follow the example of Atatürk’s Saadabad Pact of 1937, which brought together Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrated on the “southern tier” of Eurasia in a less threatening manner to Russian interests in Central Asia. Çeçen also proposes the establishment of a “Central States Union” which is to be founded as an anti-imperialist bloc including Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran and Syria.61 Similar views are also reflected in the official programme of the Patriotic Party, which proposes the establishment of a “regional alliance” between Turkey, Syria, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq and the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).62 The importance of TRNC in this geopolitical tradition’s definition of Eurasia should be particularly underlined here. Especially after the announcement



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of UN secretary-general Kofi Annan’s plan to facilitate the accession of the unified Cyprus into the European Union in the early 2000s, a pragmatic rapprochement has taken place between Perinçek’s party and Dugin’s Eurasian Movement in Russia. Dugin’s support for the Turkish national-patriots’ condemnation of the Western policies in Cyprus as well as Iraq has been particularly important in this regard. He even paid a visit to TRNC in late 2004 and held official meetings with the Turkish Cypriot leaders as if he were an official representative of the Russian state.63 A closer look at the discourses of Eurasianism as presented in Turkey and Russia, however, reveals some very clear differences between the Russian and Turkish versions. For example, whereas Dugin continuously advocates a Eurasian empire to be led by Russia, the Turkish national-patriots have formulated their anti-Westernist approach with a focus on the protection of the Turkish nation state in line with the ideas of Atatürk. More importantly, one should recall that the initial version of Dugin’s project in the 1990s described Turkey as a pro-Atlanticist “scapegoat” that should be punished in order to realize the Eurasianist ideals.64 Although he significantly revised his ideas on Turkey following his flirtation with Perinçek’s party, such intellectual inconsistencies reveal the limits of a possible Turkish-Russian alliance on the basis of Dugin’s ideas.65 EURASIA AS AN ALTERNATIVE DEFINITION FOR THE OTTOMAN GEOPOLITICAL SPACE The third prominent geopolitical tradition attributing a special meaning to the concept of Eurasia associates Turkey’s national interests with the establishment of a sphere of influence in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire, highlights Muslim identity and solidarity in the cultural sphere and enjoys support from the religious and conservative circles close to the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been the ruling party in Turkey since 2002. This tradition is particularly associated with the geopolitical ideas of Ahmet Davutoğlu, a professor of international relations who became the AKP leaders’ chief foreign-policy adviser. His influence in Turkish foreign policy has greatly increased ever since, especially after he was appointed as Turkey’s foreign minister in 2009 and prime minister in 2014. Davutoğlu’s seminal book Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position, which was published in 2001, is regarded by many scholars as the “bible” of the third geopolitical tradition. The book became a bestseller in Turkey in the 2000s mainly due to its bold call to the Turkish policy establishment to make peace with the country’s Muslim roots and Ottoman past.66 Such a strong emphasis on the Ottoman heritage is also the main reason why this geopolitical tradition is frequently described as neo-Ottomanism

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by scholars in Turkey and abroad. The same emphasis also prevails in Davutoğlu’s conceptualization of Eurasia. He prefers to use the concept of “Afro-Eurasia,” and believes that its most important subregions were once unified by the Ottoman Empire: The formation of such a power that unites the most important regions of the Afro-Eurasian continent involves meanings that are beyond its mere political and military meanings. The power and capacity of the Ottoman Empire to blend all of the primeval civilizational regions have provided the basis for the emergence of this multi-directional geostrategic field of domination. As such, the Ottoman Empire has a historical significance not only as a military power, but also due to its capacity to form the last primeval map of culture which carries along with itself all the colours of the reservoir of humanity.67

Davutoğlu believes that being the heir to such a powerful political and cultural legacy at the heart of the Afro-Eurasian continent gives Turkey a remarkable opportunity to turn itself into a “central country” in world politics.68 This definition has interesting similarities with the ideas of Mackinder, who claimed that a country could achieve world hegemony by acquiring geopolitical control over the central part of Eurasia, which he defined as the “Heartland.”69 Since the concept of Afro-Eurasia closely resembles Mackinder’s concept of the “World Island” – “the joint continent of Europe, Asia, and Africa” – it can be argued that Turkey comes close to becoming a new “Heartland” in Davutoğlu’s geopolitical thinking.70 Although he does not openly admit the impact of Mackinder’s theory on his own geopolitical conceptualization of Eurasia, it is clear that he is influenced by classical geopolitical writers including not only Mackinder, but also Mahan, Haushofer and Spykman, since he makes many direct references to their geopolitical concepts in his writings. This is also why a number of scholars such as Özkan criticize Davutoğlu’s ideas – most significantly the positive meaning he attributes to German political geographers’ highly controversial concept of Lebensraum (living space) – and claim that his discourse on Turkish foreign policy is “borrowed wholesale from imperial geopolitical theorists.”71 Nevertheless, as argued by another Turkish scholar, the main strength of Davutoğlu’s strategic depth theory lies in its effort to “organize Turkey into a centre that will attract the attention in diplomatic, political, cultural, and, especially, economic terms of the peoples and states situated in the Afro-Eurasian confluence.”72 A link between Eurasia and the Ottoman Empire has also been established by the neo-conservative journal Yarın (Tomorrow), which was published between 2002 and 2006. In an interview with Attila İlhan, for instance, Eurasia was defined as the “Ottoman-Russian joint cultural basin.”73 Another article in the journal claimed that the Ottoman Empire should be revived in order to unify Eurasia, which was depicted as the geographical region where



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a religious/cultural interaction took place between the Turks, Slavs and Arabs.74 More significantly, the journal’s editor Ahmet Özcan wrote that Eurasia in the Turkish context should be understood as the widest boundaries of the Ottoman Empire and that Turkey should follow “an open and consistent policy of Pax Ottomanica” towards these same boundaries.75 Muslim solidarity and Ottoman heritage have also been highlighted by the activities of Diyalog Avrasya (Dialogue Eurasia), a cultural/intellectual platform founded in 1998 by Fethullah Gülen’s religious community, which at the same time possesses an extensive network of educational institutions in many Turkic republics.76 Although this platform aims to facilitate intercultural dialogue, rather than cooperation in political or religious matters, and brings together intellectuals with quite diverse political and ideological backgrounds from Turkey, Russia and other former Soviet republics, some of the articles published in the platform’s eponymous journal interpret the concept of Eurasia within the Ottoman realm.77 On the other hand, it should be emphasized that in many ways, it is the Middle East, rather than the Caucasus or Central Asia, that plays a more central role in this tradition’s interpretation of Eurasia. Davutoğlu, for instance, claims that the Middle East is “the intersection point of the world’s main continent” and argues that “the geopolitical structure of the Middle East is directly linked with its central position in the Afro-Eurasian continent.”78 Other conservative writers, such as Ali Bulaç and İbrahim Karagül, similarly claim that the Middle East should play the most central role in Turkey’s policies in Eurasia.79 A more recent example of this approach is provided by Professor Ramazan Özey’s “Central Turkish Domination” theory, which reinterprets Mackinder’s ideas to define Anatolia as the new heartland of the world, while defining the Middle East, the Balkans and the Caucasus as the “inner crescent” that should be controlled in order to reach world domination.80 CONCLUSION A major objective of critical geopolitics is “to examine how it is that international politics are imagined spatially or geographically and in so doing to uncover the politics involved in writing the geography of global space.”81 In this regard, it can be argued that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been not one but several different geopolitical representations of the concept of Eurasia in the Turkish political scene. In terms of formal geopolitics, these representations can be grouped under three geopolitical traditions as well as three time periods. During the first period, which lasted until around 1995, Eurasia was almost exclusively defined under the influence of the first geopolitical tradition,

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which associated the concept with the newly independent Turkic republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia. During the second period, which continued until the early 2000s, the second geopolitical tradition’s interpretation of Eurasia as an alternative or balance to the West started to attract the interest of certain opposition groups. This was also the same period when Russian Eurasianism – and especially the version represented by Dugin – became increasingly popular in Turkey. Finally, the third period, which spans more than a decade of the AKP rule in Turkey, has been dominated by the civilizational approach of the third geopolitical tradition, which treats Afro-Eurasia as a broader region that could be stretched to the widest boundaries of the Ottoman geocultural realm.82 Today, each of these three geopolitical traditions continues to influence the depiction of Eurasia in the Turkish political and intellectual circles – highlighting once again the extremely close relationship between the spheres of formal and practical geopolitics. For example, although the foreign-policy discourse of the ruling AKP, which currently represents around 50 per cent of the Turkish voters, is associated with the third tradition, its views about Eurasia have not been completely free from the influences of the other two traditions.83 In a similar fashion, the MHP, which is still a major opposition party in the Turkish parliament, represents a foreign-policy discourse that is based not only on Turkic, but also on Muslim solidarity. Anti-Westernism is another important element of the MHP’s discourse on Eurasia, although it should be noted that there is also a significant national-patriotic faction within the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP). Yet, in the final analysis, it should be recalled that despite their fundamental differences, all three Turkish geopolitical traditions employ the concept of Eurasia in order to highlight the “exceptional geopolitical importance” of Turkey as a country that bridges and influences different regions, continents, religions and civilizations.84 In other words, whether it is used to describe the Turkic world, an anti-Westernist bloc of Asian/Eurasian states or the Muslim/ Ottoman geocultural realm, Eurasia only acquires geopolitical significance when Turkey is imagined as its focus or leader. Such an imagination offers the other countries the role of a supporting actor in a neo-imperial strategy which defines Turkey as the real centre of Eurasia. This also demonstrates the limitations of a genuine strategic partnership between Turkey and Russia through the idea of Eurasianism.

NOTES 1. This research was supported by Marmara University’s Scientific Research Unit (Project No: SOS-D-080415-0144). An earlier version of the paper was presented



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at the 20th Annual ASN World Convention (organized by Columbia University, Harriman Institute), New York, April 23–25, 2015. 2. For two examples of the critical approach towards Turkish geopolitics, see Pınar Bilgin, “‘Only Strong States Can Survive in Turkey’s Geography’: The Uses of ‘Geopolitical Truths’ in Turkey,” Political Geography 26, no. 7 (2007): 740–56, and Lerna K. Yanık, “The Metamorphosis of Metaphors of Vision: ‘Bridging’ Turkey’s Location, Role and Identity after the End of the Cold War,” Geopolitics 14, no. 3 (2009): 531–49. For a recent collection of articles analysing Turkish foreign policy with a critical geopolitical perspective, see Murat Yeşiltaş, Sezgi Durgun and Pınar Bilgin, ed., Türkiye Dünyanın Neresinde? Hayali Coğrafyalar, Çarpışan Anlatılar (İstanbul: Koç University Press, 2015). 3. See, for example, Simon Dalby, “Imperialism, Domination, Culture: The Continued Relevance of Critical Geopolitics,” Geopolitics 13, no. 3 (2008): 413–36. 4. Gearóid Ó Tuathail, “Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society,” Journal of Strategic Studies 22, no. 2–3 (1999): 107–24. 5. V. D. Mamadouh, “Geopolitics in the Nineties: One Flag, Many Meanings,” GeoJournal 46, no. 4 (1998): 244. 6. See, for instance, James Derrick Sidaway, “What is in a Gulf?: From the ‘Arc of Crisis’ to the Gulf War,” in Rethinking Geopolitics, ed. Gearóid Ó Tuathail and Simon Dalby (London, New York: Routledge, 1998), 224–39. 7. Gearóid Ó Tuathail and John Agnew, “Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in American Foreign Policy,” in The Geopolitics Reader, ed. Gearóid Ó Tuathail, Simon Dalby, and Paul Routledge (London, New York: Routledge, 1998), 81. 8. Ó Tuathail, “Understanding Critical Geopolitics,” 114. 9. Gearóid Ó Tuathail, “Towards Conceptual Clarity in the Critical Geopolitical Structures and Geopolitical Cultures: Study of Geopolitics in Geopolitical Perspectives on World Politics,” in Geopolitics: Global Problems and Regional Concerns, ed. Lasha Tchantouridze (Winnipeg: Centre for Defense and Security Studies, 2003), 89. 10. Graham Smith, “The Masks of Proteus: Russia, Geopolitical Shift and the New Eurasianism,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24, no. 4 (1999): 481–500. 11. Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (New York: Routledge, 2002), 1–30. Also see Ó Tuathail, “Towards Conceptual Clarity,” 89. 12. Cited in Klaus Dodds, Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 47. 13. Ó Tuathail, “Towards Conceptual Clarity,” 88–90. 14. See Elif Hatun Kılıçbeyli, “21. Yüzyılda Avrasya ve Avrasyacılık: Rusya, Çin, İran ve Türkiye’nin Jeopolitik Yaklaşımları,” Jeopolitik 2, no. 6 (2003): 90; Ebru Eren-Webb, “To Which Eurasia Does Turkey Belong? A Comparative Analysis of Turkish Eurasianist Geopolitical Discourses,” Boğaziçi Journal 25, no. 2 (2011): 59; and Fatih Akgül, Rusya ve Türkiye’de Avrasyacılık (İstanbul: IQ Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık, 2009), 164–65. 15. Meşdi İsmayılov, Avrasyacılık: Mukayeseli Bir Okuma: Türkiye ve Rusya Örneği (Ankara: Doğu Batı Yayınları, 2011), 275.

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16. Şener Aktürk, “The Fourth Style of Politics: Eurasianism as a Pro-Russian Rethinking of Turkey’s Geopolitical Identity,” Turkish Studies 16, no. 1 (2015): 55. 17. See, for instance, A.V. İvanov and M.Y. Şişin, “‘Türkiye Avrasyacılığı’nın Tarihi Oluşumu Şüphelidir,” Diyalog Avrasya, no. 6 (2002): 80–84; Hasan Ali Karasar, “Türk Dış Politikasında Batı’ya Alternatif Arayışları: Avrasyacılık Örneği,” Demokrasi Platformu 4, no. 13 (2008): 119; and Bülent Aras, “Avrasya’yı Yeniden Düşünmek,” Zaman, January 4, 2003. 18. For a study on the rise of this ideology in Turkey in the 2000s, see Emrullah Uslu, “Ulusalcılık: the Neo-nationalist Resurgence in Turkey,” Turkish Studies 9, no. 1 (2008): 73–97. 19. See, for example, Suat İlhan, Türklerin Jeopolitiği ve Avrasyacılık (Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 2005); Anıl Çeçen, Türkiye ve Avrasya (Ankara: Fark Yayınları, 2006), and Büşra Ersanlı, ed., Journal of Academic Studies – Euro/Asia Special Issue 6, no. 23 (2004–2005). 20. Günay Göksu Özdoğan, ‘Turan’dan ‘Bozkurt’a: Tek Parti Döneminde Türkçülük (1931–1946) (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002), 26. 21. See İbrahim Kalın, “Turkey and the Middle East: Ideology or Geo-Politics?” Private View, no. 13 (2008): 26. 22. Suat Kınıklıoğlu, “The Return of Ottomanism,” Today’s Zaman, March 20, 2007. 23. Vügar İmanbeyli, “‘Failed Exodus’: Dugin’s Networks in Turkey,” in Eurasianism and European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship, ed. Marlene Laruelle (New York, London: Lexington Books, 2015), 146. Also see Emre Erşen, “The Evolution of ‘Eurasia’ as a Geopolitical Concept in Post-Cold War Turkey,” Geopolitics 18, no. 1 (2013): 24–44. 24. Retired general Suat İlhan claims that the Turkic world consists of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. See Suat İlhan, Türkiye’nin Jeopolitik Konumu ve Türk Dünyası (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, 1999), 204. 25. Erşen, “The Evolution of ‘Eurasia,’” 26–31. 26. “Adriyatik’ten Çin’e Türkiye,” Cumhuriyet, February 24, 1992, and “Avrasya Şekilleniyor,” Milliyet, November 1, 1992. 27. Büşra Ersanlı, “Türkiye’nin Dış İlişkilerinde Türkçülük ve Avrasya,” in Bağımsızlıklarının 10. Yılında Türk Cumhuriyetleri, ed. Emine Gürsoy-Naskali and Erdal Şahin (Haarlem: SOTA, 2002), 149 and 154. 28. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, August 31, 1994. For a similar account, see Jacob M. Landau, Pan-Turkism: From Irredentism to Cooperation (London: Hurst & Company, 1995), 194. 29. Kerem Öktem, New Islamic Actors after the Wahhabi Intermezzo: Turkey’s Return to the Muslim Balkans (Oxford: European Studies Centre, University of Oxford, 2010), 8. 30. Also see Marlene Laruelle, “Russo-Turkish Rapprochement through the Idea of Eurasia: Alexander Dugin’s Networks in Turkey,” The Jamestown Foundation Occasional Paper (April 2008): 6. 31. TBMM Tutanak Dergisi 11, no. 78 (May 20, 1992), 204.



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32. İmanbeyli, “‘Failed Exodus,’” 149. 33. Bülent Aras, “Turkey’s Policy in the Former Soviet South: Assets and Options,” Turkish Studies 1, no. 1 (2000): 50. 34. Mehmet Aça, “Avrasyacı Yaklaşımın Türkiye Çeşitlenmeleri ve Türk Dünyasının Geleceği,” in Bağımsızlıklarının 10. Yılında Türk Cumhuriyetleri, ed. Emine Gürsoy-Naskali and Erdal Şahin (Haarlem: SOTA, 2002), 162. 35. Ahat Andican, “Türkiye, Türk Dünyası ve Rusya Üzerine Düşünceler,” Ulusal, no. 1 (1996): 28, and İlhan, Türklerin Jeopolitiği, 119. 36. Ümit Özdağ, “Türkiye’nin Türk Dünyası Politikasının Teorik Çerçevesi,” Asya-Avrupa, no. 4 (2004): 23. 37. Oleg A. Kolobov, Aleksandr A. Kornilov, and Fatih Özbay, Çağdaş Türk-Rus İlişkileri: Sorunlar ve İşbirliği Alanları 1992–2005 (İstanbul: TASAM, 2006), 296. 38. Özdoğan, ‘Turan’dan ‘Bozkurt’a, 28. 39. Ahat Andican, “Orta Asya Türk Cumhuriyetlerinden ‘Birleşik Türkistan’a’: Tarihi Bir Zorunluluğun Sosyopolitik Analizi,” Türk Yurdu, no. 64 (1992): 12–18, and Ahat Andican, “Avrasya Stratejileri Üzerine (Interview),” Ulusal, no. 4 (1997): 13. 40. See, for example, Özcan Yeniçeri, “Çatışan ve Örtüşen Stratejiler,” AsyaAvrupa, no. 1 (2004): 3–21. 41. Muzaffer Özdağ, Türkiye ve Türk Dünyası Jeopolitiği (Ankara: Avrasya Bir, 2003), 12. 42. Ümit Özdağ, Türk Tarihinin ve Geleceğinin Jeopolitik Çerçevesi (Ankara: ASAM, 2003), 14. 43. “Demirel Neden Doğu Perinçek’in Avrasya Sempozyumunu Himaye Etti, Anlamadım.” Zaman, December 10, 2004. 44. See, for example, Ercan Dolapçı, “Atatürk ve Lenin’in Kurduğu Tarihi Dostluk,” Aydınlık, January 21, 2015, accessed June 14, 2016, http://www.aydinlikgazete. com/tarih/ataturk-ve-lenininkurdugu-tarihi-dostluk-h61366.html. 45. “Türkiye, Rusya ve İran’la İttifak Arayışında Olmalı,” Sabah, March 8, 2002. 46. Zeyno Baran, a well-known Turkish political analyst, was among the people who made such claims. For excerpts from an interview with her on the issue, see United Press International, December 22, 2005. Also see Ömer Taşpınar, “Batı’ya Kızgınlık Büyüyor,” Radikal, July 27, 2005. 47. Hakan Reyhan, “Avrasya Gündemi,” Ulusal, no. 4 (1997): 3–4. 48. Perinçek was imprisoned between 2008 and 2014 due to the criminal case launched against the “Ergenekon” grouping which has been found guilty of plotting a coup against the government. The Ergenekon case included many other nationalpatriotic politicians as well as prominent military figures, intellectuals and journalists. 49. Doğu Perinçek, “Devrimci Atılımın Eşiğinde,” Teori, no. 83 (1996): 16. 50. Doğu Perinçek, “Devrimci Cumhuriyetin Dış Politikası: Avrasya Seçeneği,” Ulusal, no. 1 (1997): 28, and Doğu Perinçek, Avrasya Seçeneği: Türkiye İçin Bağımsız Dış Politika (Ankara: Kaynak Yayınları, 2000), 9. 51. Mehmet Perinçek, Avrasyacılık: Türkiye’deki Teori ve Pratiği (Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 2006), 26. 52. See Şener Aktürk, “Counter Hegemonic Visions and Reconciliation through the Past: The Case of Turkish Eurasianism,” Ab Imperio, no. 4 (2004): 215–36.

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53. Attila İlhan, “Avrasya Kutbu ve Siyaset Tarihi Üzerine (Interview),” Ulusal, no. 4 (1997): 35–36, and Attila İlhan, Sultan Galiyef: Avrasya’da Dolaşan Hayalet (İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2000), 185. 54. Alexandre A. Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979), 66–68. 55. İlhan, Sultan Galiyef, 185. 56. Attila İlhan, “Ortaklaşa Umut: Avrasya,” Cumhuriyet, July 5, 2004. 57. Anıl Çeçen, Atatürk ve Avrasya (İstanbul: Cumhuriyet Kitap, 1999), 335–50. 58. Çeçen, Türkiye ve Avrasya, 390 and 406. 59. Ibid., 379 and 403. 60. Mehmet Perinçek and Emel Akçalı, “Kemalist Eurasianism: An Emerging Geopolitical Discourse in Turkey,” Geopolitics 14, no. 3 (2009): 565–66. 61. Çeçen, Türkiye ve Avrasya, 408–9. 62. See “The National Government Programme of the Patriotic Party (Turkey),” accessed June 14, 2016, http://vatanpartisi.org.tr/english/dosyalar/programme-10981. 63. For a detailed analysis of Dugin’s links in Turkey, see İmanbeyli, “‘Failed Exodus,’” 150–66. 64. Aleksandr Dugin, Rus Jeopolitiği: Avrasyacı Yaklaşım (İstanbul: Küre Yayınları, 2003), 78–79. 65. For Dugin’s revised ideas on Turkey’s position in the Eurasian Bloc, see Aleksandr Dugin, Moskova-Ankara Ekseni (İstanbul: Kaynak Yayınları, 2007), 107–37. 66. Ahmet Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiye’nin Uluslararası Konumu (İstanbul: Küre Yayınları, 2001), 52–58. 67. Ibid., 195. 68. Also see Ahmet Davutoğlu, “Türkiye Köprü Değil, Merkez Ülkedir (Interview),” Yarın, no. 7 (2002): 12–14. 69. Halford J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1942), 106. 70. Ibid., 45. 71. Behlül Özkan, “Turkey, Davutoglu and the Idea of Pan-Islamism,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy 56, no. 4 (2014): 123. 72. Göktürk Tüysüzoğlu, “Strategic Depth: A Neo-Ottomanist Interpretation of Turkish Eurasianism,” Mediterranean Quarterly 25, no. 2 (2014): 103. 73. Attila İlhan, “Maarif, Ekonomi ve Savunma Millileştirilmeli (Interview),” Yarın 3, no. 31 (2004). 74. İsrael Şamir, “Ey Osmanlı Geri Gel,” Yarın 4, no. 41 (2005): 6–8. 75. Ahmet Özcan, “Açık Mektup: Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset,” Haber10, December 14, 2005, accessed June 14, 2016, http://www.haber10.com/makale/1367/#.UmarHXAtz9M. 76. See Bayram Balcı, “Fethullah Gülen’s Missionary Schools in Central Asia and their Role in the Spreading of Turkism and Islam,” Religion, State and Society 31, no. 2 (2003): 151–77. 77. Kemal Karpat, “Türkiye Açısından Avrasya,” Diyalog Avrasya, no. 1 (2000): 41. Also see the platform’s official website at http://www.daplatform.org. 78. Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik, 132 and 324–25. Also see Emre Erşen, “Geopolitical Codes in Davutoğlu’s Views toward the Middle East,” Insight Turkey 16, no. 1 (2014): 85–101.



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79. Ali Bulaç, “Avrasya’nın Sınırları,” Zaman, March 3, 2007, and İbrahim Karagül, “Davutoğlu, Avrasya Birliği, ‘Kaos Kuşağı,’” Yeni Şafak, February 5, 2010. 80. For more on the theory, see Ramazan Özey, Merkezi Türk Hakimiyet Teorisi (İstanbul: 21. Asır Yayınevi, 2010). 81. Joanne Sharp, “Refiguring Geopolitics: The Reader’s Digest and Popular Geographies of Danger at the End of the Cold War,” in Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought, ed. Klaus Dodds and David Atkinson (London, New York: Routledge, 2003), 333. 82. Also see Murat Yeşiltaş, “Turkey’s Quest for a ‘New International Order’: The Discourse of Civilization and the Politics of Restoration,” Perceptions 19, no. 4 (2014): 43–75. 83. Also see Özgür Tüfekçi, “Ahmet Davutoǧlu’s Foreign Policy Understanding: A Blend of Westernist and Multiculturalist Eurasianism,” The Arab World Geographer 17, no. 3 (2014): 275–89. 84. Yanık, “The Metamorphosis of Metaphors of Vision,” 537.

Chapter 14

Kazakhstani Neo-Eurasianism and Nazarbayev’s Anti-Imperial Foreign Policy Luca Anceschi

Charismatic leadership – both as a concrete achievement and as an aspirational end – represents a recurrent feature in many of the discourses of legitimacy articulated by the state propaganda of post-Soviet Kazakhstan.1 The country’s political leadership, it ought to be noted, is not up for grabs; Kazakhstani politics, since independence, underwent a process of progressive personalization whereby the presidential figure came to be placed at the core of every decision-making mechanism taking place both within and beyond the state’s institutional settings.2 Such persistently authoritarian governance cemented the unchallenged and, as confirmed by the 2015 elections,3 virtually unchallengeable leadership of Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. Charismatic leadership occupies an equally important position within Kazakhstan’s external policies, and particularly the neo-Eurasianist course pursued internationally by the Nazarbayev regime since the mid-1990s. This chapter will make extensive use of the expression “regime neo-Eurasianism” to define the ensemble of policy perspectives, agendas and ends incorporated in the Eurasianist rubric inaugurated by the speech delivered by Nazarbayev at Moscow State University (MSU) on 29 March 1994. Kazakhstani Eurasianism, in the views of the official propaganda, is an inherent part of the third “Eurasianist wave,” which had reportedly come to the surface after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.4 Its actual contribution to the innovation of consolidated interpretations of the evraziistvo idea remains questionable; it is hence only a chronological rationale that supports the decision to use the label “neo-” to define Nazarbayev’s Eurasianism throughout this chapter. Association with traditional Eurasianism, on the other hand, served the Kazakhstani propaganda to bestow some theoretical legitimacy upon Nazarbayev’s pragmatic form of Eurasianism.5 It is the adherence of the latter to the policy priorities, pragmatic agendas and power considerations of 283

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Kazakhstan’s authoritarian élite that defines more profoundly Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism: the use of the term “regime” hence intends to appropriately place Nazarbayev’s neo-evraziistvo within Kazakhstan’s authoritarian politics. Regime neo-Eurasianism has to be seen as a policy umbrella that regards charismatic leadership as the ultimate function of legitimacy-seeking strategies implemented across distinct, yet not unrelated, policymaking environments. At the domestic level, the policy’s rhetorical component has focused on the issue of anteriority in neo-Eurasianist thinking, to ultimately establish an Eurasianist pedigree for Nazarbayev. The regional facet of regime neo-Eurasianism endeavoured in turn to promote Kazakhstan as Central Asia’s key integrator, addressing the numerous discourses of leadership and hegemony articulated by the state propaganda in neighbouring Uzbekistan.6 Kazakhstan’s ambitions of international leadership sat at the very core of a further segment of the regime’s image-making strategy. The acquisition of the rotating chairmanships of international organizations (the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe – OSCE; and the Organization of the Islamic Conference – OIC), the establishment of empty forms of multilateralism in wider Asia (Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia – CICA), and the incessant pursuit of membership in exclusive international bodies (UN Security Council) are integral to the specific policy strand that, ultimately, sought to portray the Kazakhstani state – and the Nazarbayev regime indirectly – as a recognized international leader.7 A fourth dimension underpinning Kazakhstan’s legitimacy-obsessed neoEurasianism relates to the recalibration of the leadership of the numerous multilateral organizations that, since 1992, have continuously (re)defined the political configuration of post-Soviet Eurasia. In this context, the efforts made by the Kazakhstani regime encompassed the establishment and the promotion of new forms of political and economic association involving the former Soviet states and, furthermore, the clear enunciation of associative principles to support this alternative model of integration.8 To these ends, Kazakhstan’s neo-Eurasianist rhetoric came to incarnate a series of anti-imperial narratives that targeted different audiences across the post-Soviet political space. Assessing the anti-imperial inclination of regime neo-Eurasianism does have to be regarded as the central analytical end pursued by the present chapter. The anti-imperial contours of Kazakhstani neo-evraziistvo addressed more in particular those specific forms of politico-economic hegemony that the Russian Federation framed across post-Soviet Eurasia in multilateral terms, via the CIS, the EvrAziiskoe Ekonomicheskoe Soobshchestvo (Eurasian Economy Community – EvrAzEs), and, more recently, the Evraziiskii Ekonomicheskii Soyuz (Eurasian Economic Union – EEU). Regime neoEurasianism, in this sense, featured an anti-imperial disposition insofar as



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it pursued a counter-hegemonic agenda deeply imbued within the logic of authoritarian governance that dominates Kazakhstani politics. Linkages with the Russian Federation are therefore central to the argument articulated here, inasmuch as Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism endeavoured to rethink Eurasian multilateralism by reassessing centre-periphery relations in the former Soviet Union. At the rhetorical level, Astana’s shifting perceptions of the Kremlin had been informed by specific leadership-focused narratives, which official propaganda framed in support of Kazakhstan’s neo-Eurasianist foreign policy. In policy terms, Nazarbayev’s anti-imperial outlook attempted to steer – not always successfully, it might be added – the course of Kazakhstan’s bilateral relations with the Russian Federation. The Kazakhstani perception of Russia’s ambitions of multilateral hegemony will be contextualized here within the theoretical and operational policy shifts that have characterized regime neo-Eurasianism since its original formulation. In presenting Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism as a pragmatically anti-imperial project, this chapter does therefore intend to unveil the trajectory through which interrelated questions of power and leadership had come to underpin the numerous oscillations that emerged within the RussoKazakhstani partnership from 1992 onwards. To this end, this contribution will place its analytical focus on key foreign-policy pronouncements made by Nazarbayev in the post-1994 years, dissecting their anti-imperial inclinations, tones and outlook. The pragmatically anti-imperial facet of Nazarbayev’s neo-Eurasianist discourse has been built upon two distinct but by no means disconnected narratives, which are respectively focused on integratisya (integration) and suvernitet (sovereignty). By examining how the legitimacy/ foreign-policy nexus permeated these intersecting discourses, this chapter will put forward an alternative reading of the anti-imperial and counterhegemonic connotation that continues to permeate regime neo-Eurasianism. The analytical issue of continuity and change is thus central to the argument articulated here. The contrast between Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism and Russia’s hegemonic multilateralism will be analysed in time, to ultimately reveal that, with the return of Vladimir V. Putin to the Kremlin in 2012, this conflicting relationship evolved into the juxtaposition of two essentially pragmatic forms of neo-Eurasianism. This contribution is ultimately based on the presentation of three snapshots in which twin narratives of integratsiya and suvernitet accompanied the establishment or, at other junctures, the disintegration of a number of Eurasian multilateral organizations that included, in different capacities, both Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation. Here, textual analysis will be intimately connected to the study of actual policy, in order to contextualize the Eurasian prong of Kazakhstani-sponsored multilateralism within the emergence, consolidation and evolution of anti-imperial narratives that have

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characterized Kazakhstan’s regime rhetoric since the mid-1990s. Empirical focus will be directed throughout the three organizations that more ostensibly attempted to reintegrate the economies of post-Soviet Eurasia: the Evraziiskii Soyuz (Eurasian Union), the EvrAzEs, and the EEU. It is precisely through the institutionalization of this latter organization – arguably the most significant development in post-Soviet regionalism to have emerged in the last twenty years – that the originally anti-imperial disposition of regime neoEurasianism failed more visibly, as the analysis of post-Crimea evolutions of the Russo-Kazakhstani relationship will ultimately demonstrate. SNAPSHOT ONE: THE 1994 MOSCOW SPEECH AND THE EVRAZIISKII SOYUZ A cursory look at the geopolitical context that surrounded Nazarbayev’s first Moscow speech9 captures most appropriately the anti-imperial undertone that permeated what is generally regarded as the foundational document of Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism. The speech, which followed by a few months the disintegration of the rublevaya zona (November 1993), embodied Kazakhstan’s tangible disillusion with the integrationist model promoted through the CIS.10 The apparent objective pursued by Nazarbayev in the speech related to the launch of the Evraziiskii Soyuz (EAS), an overly vague and generally unstructured multilateral organization that sought the politicoeconomic reintegration of post-Soviet Eurasia. At the time, Kazakhstani policymakers adopted a very restrictive definition of the geographical constituents of the Eurasian political space, narrowly focusing their understanding of the EAS organizational remit on the CIS area.11 Operationally, the EAS is best described as a total failure. Nazarbayev’s Soyuz was received with scarce enthusiasm by Uzbekistan and Russia – the two partners that the speech explicitly singled out as the key constituents of the EAS.12 No policy preparation preceded the launch of the EAS; no substantive policy drive supported post-speech institutionalization: the EAS remained in this sense a largely irrelevant forum vis-à-vis post-Soviet reintegratsiya. It is this organization’s rhetorical dimension that needs to be analysed more closely to locate the speech’s counter-hegemonic agenda within the Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianist continuum. In outlining the principles upon which to build the EAS, Nazarbayev referred to dobrovol’nosti (free will) and ravnopraviya (equality of rights). Rather than focusing on the specific integrationist disposition carried out through the EAS, Nazarbayev deliberately concentrated on the fundamental principles to be followed while accessing the EAS. Membership in this organization was meant to be voluntary and thus genuinely unconstrained.



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In Nazarbayev’s views, upholding the principle of non-interference was ultimately meant to guarantee the sovereignty (suvernitet) of the member states. In post-Crimea Eurasia, this specific emphasis has come to acquire an even greater relevance.13 The Kazakhstani president tailored the first Moscow speech around the political imperative of recalibrating the leadership of Eurasian integration away from the Russian Federation. Not surprisingly, quasi-exclusive focus on accession principles prevented Nazarbayev from elaborating upon the specific policy areas that the EAS was meant to integrate: a brief passage on the creation of a unified economic space (formirovanie edinogo eknomicheskogo prostranstva) and the establishment of a common defence strategy (obespechenie sovmestnoi oboronnoi politiki) represented the speech’s only specific mentions of the policy areas that the EAS purported to integrate. Interestingly, the speech clarified how the EAS would relate to the CIS: Nazarbayev’s Soyuz was not to be seen as a mere replacement for the Commonwealth insofar as its (allegedly) revolutionary associative outlook meant to improve the patterns of interstate cooperation that were already in place across the post-Soviet region.14 This specific argument facilitated Nazarbayev in advancing another important point: as Russia remained15 at the time Kazakhstan’s most crucial partner (at least in economic terms),16 the prospected amendment of Eurasia’s multilateral configuration inscribed in EAS institutionalization was not ultimately intended as a driver for change within the Almaty-Moscow bilateral relationship. This cursory analysis of the 1994 Moscow speech stimulates three key observations on the anti-imperial outlook that regime neo-Eurasianism had come to display at its very onset. To begin with, the speech envisaged an alternative configuration for Eurasian multilateralism. By outlining a union of equal partners, Nazarbayev suggested that Russia would recede back into the fold of post-Soviet states, while Kazakhstan would progressively emerge as the leading integrator in the post-Soviet region. Systematic failure to outline a structured integrationist plan has to be seen as a deliberate component of the speech: in Nazarbayev’s narrative – which was to become a focal point for Kazakhstan’s post-1994 foreign-policy propaganda – the perception of leadership is intrinsically more important than leadership itself. This proposition contextualizes with greater precision the very limited policy drive that supported EAS institutionalization from mid1994 onwards. More than a genuine integrationist forum, the EAS came in this sense to represent a vehicle for Nazarbayev’s leadership ambitions. These two preliminary conclusions support a clearer delineation of the rejuvenating neo-Eurasianist impetus allegedly inscribed in the Moscow speech. The Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianist push of the mid-1990s remained a purely rhetorical construct in both policy and ideological terms. In relation to

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policy, the Nazarbayev regime failed to follow up in any significant way on the launch of the EAS. At the ideological level, while neo-Eurasianist themes began to surface with some regularity in the Kazakhstani regime narratives of the mid-1990s,17 the ultimate failure to operationalize the EAS led to this organization’s exclusion from Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianist propaganda, which continued in this sense to be narrowly focused on the glorification of the presidential persona. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the profoundly rhetorical outlook of the first Moscow speech conferred Nazarbayev’s counter-hegemonic rhetoric with a surprisingly pro-Russian disposition, inscribing a paradoxical undertone at the core of the policy ensemble operating under Kazakhstan’s neo-Eurasianist rubric. Regime neo-Eurasianism, since its very onset, was never meant to alienate the Kremlin: the president’s pragmatism, in this sense, aspired to centre the Eurasian multilateral system – at the time narrowly confined to the territory of the former Soviet Union – on a solid Russo-Kazakhstani axis. How to reconcile solid bilateral linkages with the apparently counter-hegemonic agenda pursued by Nazarbayev’s calls for a more equal form of post-Soviet re-integratsiya? The next segment begins to delineate the contours of the answer to this question, addressing one of the key concerns of the present contribution. SNAPSHOT TWO: THE EVRAZES AS A NEO-EURASIANIST TANDEM A peculiar – although not entirely unpredictable – evolution in the antiimperial outlook of Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism crystallized in the mid2000s. On 7 October 2005, at a summit held in St Petersburg, the leaders of the Tsentral’naya Aziya Sotrudinchestvo (TsAS) sanctioned the dissolution of the organization by endorsing the confluence of all member states in the EvrAzEs.18 President Nazarbayev presented the dissolution of TsAS as his personal foreign-policy triumph: EvrAzEs enlargement, in Nazarbayev’s views, had come to incarnate the success encountered internationally by his neo-Eurasianist vision.19 Before the 2005 enlargement, the integrationist agenda promoted through the EvrAzEs framework featured a predominantly functionalist outlook, as this organization aimed at first to develop the Customs Union and, between 2003 and the eruption of the Orange Revolution (November 2004), sought to incorporate Ukraine in a Common Economic Space with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.20 The enlargement of EvrAzEs hence represents the political juncture at which two usually alternative forms of neo-Eurasianism – namely those elaborated by the Nazarbayev regime, on the one hand, and by the first



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Putin Administration, on the other – came to display a relatively converging outlook. Ultimately, this might be seen as a rather surprising development given the counter-hegemonic tones that had frequently characterized regime neo-Eurasianism throughout 1994 until 2005 and the mildly reassertive foreign policy stand that the Kremlin had come to adopt in the early 2000s. The timidly Eurasianist inclination that Putin displayed in his first term in office (2000–2004) led to the implementation of an agenda of reassertion, which the Kremlin framed across the post-Soviet space through a series of “more active and arguably more successful”21 multilateral organizations, including the EvrAzEs.22 Putin’s embryonic evraziistvo was in this sense very pragmatic, and narrowly centred its attention on post-Soviet re-integratsiya – a policy area on which Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism had been obsessively focusing since the mid-1990s. Putin’s earlier Eurasianist forays were at the same time relatively conservative; Russia limited to reinstate its leadership in the post-Soviet space without attempting to revolutionize the multilateral, geopolitical and geoeconomic configuration that the region had acquired before Putin’s accession to power.23 Russia’s new assertiveness was not seen in Astana as a direct challenge to the ends pursued by Nazarbayev’s neo-Eurasianism. It was Kazakhstan’s leadership-obsessed foreign policy that stimulated most decisively the temporary marriage of neo-Eurasianist convenience celebrated in 2005 through EvrAzEs institutionalization. There is perhaps no better way to capture the ultimate sense of the prior proposition than by analysing the speech24 that N. A. Nazarbayev delivered at the first summit of the revamped EvrAzEs, held in St Petersburg on 25 January 2006. In this context, the Kazakhstani president focused at length on the specific implications held by Uzbekistan’s accession to the organization. In Nazarbayev’s words, the Uzbek membership in EvrAzEs had the potential to “open new opportunities to put into practice the idea of Eurasian integration … and enhance the global credibility of the Eurasian Economic Community.” Was Nazarbayev’s speech a show of Central Asian solidarity, as it welcomed Uzbekistan back into the Eurasian fold? It might be more reasonable to suggest that, in this context, the narrative advanced by the Kazakhstani president targeted the same end pursued in his 1994 Moscow speech, namely the recalibration of multilateral leadership across post-Soviet Eurasia. To be properly understood, rhetorical emphasis on the Uzbek accession has to be placed within Nazarbayev’s composite characterization of the EvrAzEs. On the one hand, EvrAzEs was regarded as the legitimate incarnation of Nazarbayev’s neo-Eurasianist initsiativa (enterprise), insofar as it represented the direct descendant of the defunct EAS – a multilateral framework to which, as we have seen earlier, Uzbekistan had never subscribed. At the same time, EvrAzEs – after the dismantlement of TsAS – had come to represent the only

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institutional umbrella to which all Central Asian republics (with the notable exception of Turkmenistan) had subscribed. Nazarbayev’s 2006 speech, in this sense, subtly remarked that Uzbekistan was entering a Eurasian integrationist framework led in tandem by Kazakhstan and, most interestingly, the Russian Federation. To this end, Nazarbayev clearly identified two policy areas – namely nuclear cooperation (ispol’zovaniya atomnoi energii) and monetary integration (ob organizatsii integrirovannogo valyutovo rynka) – in which a Russo-Kazakhstani axis could stimulate the future progress of the EvrAzEs. This particular lens might help explain the conspicuous absence, from Nazarbayev’s 2006 speech, of any substantive reference to the suvernitet of EvrAzEs member states and to the imperative importance that noninterference held vis-à-vis association practices in the EvrAzEs framework. Values and principles that in 1994 appeared to be indispensable to the full execution of Nazarbayev’s neo-Eurasianist agenda had in this sense disappeared from the version of Kazakhstani neo-evraziistvo that crystallized in the mid-2000s. The 2006 speech deliberately centred Eurasian integration on a solid partnership connecting Astana with Moscow: Kazakhstani foreignpolicy rhetoric, in this sense, can be said to have completed a parabolic evolution in which the Kremlin – which in the early post-Soviet era was seen as Central Asia’s “authoritative uncle”25 – had come to be regarded as an indispensable partner for the translation of Nazarbayev’s neo-Eurasianist idea into a definitely more structured – as well as Kazakhstani-led – multilateral initsiativa. The political facet of this evolutionary process manifested itself as early as August 2000,26 when, at a TsAES summit held in Bishkek, Nazarbayev enthusiastically endorsed a declaration that assigned to Russia a central role in the management of Central Asia’s security structures. In economic terms, the (re-)emergence of Russo-Kazakhstani bilateralism came to be portrayed as a decisive factor in Eurasian economic cooperation: Nazarbayev’s St Petersburg speech singled out the establishment of the Eurasian Development Bank, finalized in January 2006, as a practical manifestation of the partnership’s beneficial contribution to EvrAzEs integration. The 2006 speech, to a very significant extent, captures rhetorically the policy alignment between the mid-2000s’ version of regime neo-Eurasianism and the set of Eurasian strategies put into practice by the first Putin Administration. With Putin’s accession to power, Russo-Kazakhstani bilateral ties received a new impulse.27 At a multilateral level, this new stage in the partnership was mirrored by the sustained economic action through which Putin attempted to reinvigorate Russia’s presence in the former Soviet space.28 Nazarbayev’s rhetorical (re)appropriation of the EvrAzEs was profoundly congruent with this policy context, insofar as it allowed Kazakhstani propaganda to articulate a discourse of neo-Eurasianist leadership that matched the pragmatic expectations held by the Kremlin in the Eurasian



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geopolitical landscape. This specific context, ultimately, offers a more precise characterization of the temporary dilution that the anti-imperial undertones of regime neo-Eurasianism had come to experience in the early- and mid-2000s. The analysis of the policy snapshot related to EvrAzEs enlargement, and most importantly to the latter’s impact on the anti-imperial agenda pursued by Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism, hence suggested three critically important conclusions. To begin with, Nazarbayev seems to have abandoned, temporarily at least, his characteristic emphasis on sovereignty, while framing a revised version of the official Kazakhstani discourse on integratsiya. Change in the rhetorical component of regime neo-Eurasianism reflected wider shifts in Kazakhstan’s perception of the role that Moscow was playing in postSoviet Eurasia. The mid-2000s version of Kazakhstan’s neo-Eurasianist rhetoric came to feature a less markedly counter-hegemonic outlook, perhaps in response to the marginally imperial agenda pursued in post-Soviet Eurasia by the first Putin Administration. In another major departure from the content of the Moscow speech, the mid-2000s’ version of regime neo-Eurasianism also ceased to focus obsessively on the specific associative principles upon which to build a discourse of integratsiya in Eurasia. This is not to say, however, that Kazakhstani policymakers had turned their attention to the formulation of specific integrationist measures: the eventual failure of the EvrAzEs is directly related to the perpetuation of the chaotic modus operandi that regulated the institutional settings of the CIS (or those that emerged, at Central Asian level, within the TsAS framework). Finally, the establishment of a neo-Eurasianist axis between Astana and Moscow exerted a durable impact upon the associative praxis crystallizing across post-Soviet Eurasia. From 2000 onwards, the segment of Nazarbayev’s initsiativa that focused on the former Soviet Union was to be exclusively centred on an institutional continuum – namely the EvrAzEs/Customs Union/ EEU – that had at its very core the Russo-Kazakhstani partnership. The specific posture that Russia adopted in post-Soviet Eurasia during the first Putin presidency and in the Medvedev interim (2008–2012) led Kazakhstani policymakers to frame a targeted discourse of (re-)integratsiya in which sovereignty lost the centrality it occupied during the Yeltsin years. This dynamics was to change dramatically as Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012. SNAPSHOT THREE: POST-CRIMEA NEO-EURASIANISM AND THE SUVERNITET CONUNDRUM The policy manifesto that opened Putin’s second presidential term unequivocally identified Eurasia as the key geopolitical focus for Russia’s post-2011

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foreign policy. In promoting the institutionalization of the EEU via a specific article published in the Izvestiya newspaper during the final stages of his prime ministership,29 V. V. Putin set into motion a process through which Russia endeavoured to reappropriate a set of key foreign-policy concepts that had traditionally been integral to the discourses of integratsiya formulated by post-Soviet Kazakhstan. The article was an inherent part of Putin’s electoral campaign, and served as a blueprint for the foreign-policy strategy to be implemented by the Russian Federation after the election. Did the article ultimately open a new phase in Putin neo-Eurasianism?30 The structure of the piece, to start with, was congruent with the tradition of pragmatic integrationism that had often characterized Kazakhstan’s evraziiskaya strategiya. Emphasis on functionalism underpinned the Izvestiya piece just as it did with many of Nazarbayev’s neo-Eurasianist speeches, replicating the operational vagueness that had often permeated official declarations on Kazakhstani multilateralism. Through this article, the Russian leader solemnly – and, with the privilege of hindsight, surprisingly – reinstated the importance that state sovereignty held vis-à-vis EEU association, by remarking that a prospective member “must only join on its sovereign decision based on its long-term national interests.” The article aspired on the other hand to introduce Putin as the leader of post-Soviet multilateralism, insofar as it purportedly established an institutional continuum between the EEU and the CIS – an ultimately moribund integrationist project that, since 1991, had been indisputably led by the Russian Federation. The Izvestiya piece, finally, ambitiously attempted to place the EEU in a more global context, briefly addressing the engagement options available to this organization to relate to analogous multilateral institutions located in both West (EU) and East (APEC and ASEAN). Putin’s neo-Eurasianism, at least in the version outlined in the Izvestiya editorial, had hence come to pose specific challenges to the leadership agenda pursued by Kazakhstani foreign policymakers in post-Soviet Eurasia. In 2010, the OSCE Chairmanship contributed to elevate Nazarbayev’s profile as an internationally recognized leader.31 In 2011–2012, the second rise of Putin endeavoured to significantly constrain the ambitions of Eurasian leadership held by the Kazakhstani president. It is therefore not unsurprising that Nazarbayev, less than a month after the publication of Putin’s article, authored a parallel Izvestiya commentary, in which he proceeded to illustrate his own understanding of the future multilateral configuration of post-Soviet Eurasia.32 Nazarbayev’s Izvestiya article was in turn very optimistic about the functionalist development of the EEU, which was presented by the Kazakhstani leader as an economic “megaproject” adequately placed to respond to present and future challenges. This optimism was destined to wane with the eruption of the Crimean crisis, an event that would only amplify the



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significance of the multifaceted challenges that the neo-Eurasianist impetus of the second Putin Administration had come to pose to the full execution of Kazakhstan’s neo-Eurasianist agenda. Since the mid-1990s, a significant segment of Kazakhstan’s official propaganda had focused, with quasi-obsessive regularity, on the crucial importance of the first Moscow speech vis-à-vis the establishment of a neo-Eurasianist strand in Kazakhstan’s foreign-policy strategy. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this allegedly seminal speech, N. A. Nazarbayev planned a trip to Moscow to deliver a lecture on Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism, with the deliberate view to reinvigorate his credentials as Eurasia’s key integrator. The speech was to be originally delivered in late March 2014. In the tumultuous settings that emerged from Crimea’s annexation, Kazakhstani officials were not only forced to postpone the presidential trip but, most importantly, had to rethink the speech’s contents and its fundamental tone. There is no political statement than captures with greater precision the mood in post-Crimea Eurasia than Nazarbayev’s second Moscow speech, delivered at MSU on 28 April 2014 – only four weeks prior to the signature of the trilateral treaty establishing the EEU, ratified in Astana on 29 May 2014.33 The speech was framed as a further response to Putin’s Izvestiya article and, simultaneously, intended to situate a Kazakhstani-led integratsiya discourse within the geopolitics of post-Crimea Eurasia. In his 2014 speech, Nazarbayev advanced two main points to address Putin’s apparent attempts to hijack the paternity of post-Soviet integratsiya. To begin with, the speech elaborated at length on Kazakhstan’s official views on the origins of the protracted and – in Nazarbayev’s own words – deeply flawed process that led to the (then) imminent institutionalization of the EEU. Since its very onset, the speech had made abundantly clear that the EEU had to be regarded as a direct descendant of the EAS – the organization that Nazarbayev launched at MSU in 1994. Nazarbayev’s neo-Eurasianist initsiativa “changed the nature (kharakter) [of] and gave dynamism (dinamizm)” to the CIS, building on the Commonwealth to create a revised – and in the long-term more successful – integrative forum. Yet again, the logic of leadership recalibration came to permeate a major presidential pronouncement on neo-Eurasianist integratsiya. At the same time, markedly anti-imperial tones resurfaced to characterize the presidential rhetoric, as Nazarbayev reprised one of the key themes of his 1992 speech, namely the importance of unconstrained access to EEU integration. Here, the Kazakhstani president made a deliberate point to reinstate that the principles of dobrovol’nosti and ravnopraviya underpinned his integratsiya vision in 2014, just as they did it in 1994. Renewed emphasis on accession procedures – which as we have seen constituted very marginal rhetorical concerns in the statements of the mid2000s – is not accidental: post-Crimea Eurasia had become an inhospitable

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milieu for the leaderships governing the former Soviet periphery. It is through the interrelated concepts of suvernitet and gosudarstvenost’ (statehood) that the speech aimed to bring together the dual rhetoric of integratsiya and leadership: Nazarbayev, in addressing his Moscow audience, deliberately remarked that Kazakhstan’s neo-Eurasianist initsiativa had always taken into account the sovereignty and independence (nezavisimost’) of prospective partners. This was the point that, in the president’s rhetorical framework, was instrumental to deliberately open a gulf between regime neo-Eurasianism, the imperial integration fostered in the Soviet era and, most importantly, the postCrimea, and hence neo-imperial, version of Putin’s evraziistvo. The second Moscow speech failed to include, perhaps not accidentally, explicit anti-Russian tones: the Astana-Moscow axis, in Nazarbayev’s words, remained a model for bilateral relations around the globe. Kazakhstan’s decision-makers, throughout the post-Crimea years, may be said to have followed this approach at the policy level with some consistency. While the intensity of the Russo-Kazakhstani bilateral relationship managed to remain high, the post-Crimea configuration of Eurasian multilateralism lost much of its momentum. Although Kazakhstan joined the EEU as a full partner in May 2014, effective integration into the EEU was fraught with many problems, including Kazakhstan’s reluctance to deepen cooperation in specific policy areas34 and, most importantly, the eruption of trade wars35 between the partners. The political reality of the post-2014 years, in this sense, obliterated the economic optimism that characterized the vision of EEU integration outlined by Nazarbayev in this Izvestiya commentary. For all intents and purposes, the second Moscow speech did not rest upon a rhetorical infrastructure much dissimilar from that which permeated Nazarbayev’s first MSU statement. Does this proposition somehow imply that Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism had remained a static policy framework for more than two decades? Kazakhstan’s neo-Eurasianism has consistently adhered to those sets of power technologies designed by the regime to operate externally to the Kazakhstani state. This might explain the policy’s obsession with leadership, and its incessant pursue of rhetorical ends designed in glorification of Nazarbayev, his achievements and his historic role as Kazakhstan’s first leader. This policy line remained firmly at the core of regime neoEurasianism for twenty years. What did ultimately change, on the other hand, is the geopolitical environment in which the policy had to operate: Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism was designed in a nominally hostile milieu, in which Russia’s imperial legacies led decision-makers in Almaty to draw a new institutional map for post-Soviet Eurasia. While it developed in a somehow friendlier environment – and this might explain the temporary dilution of counter-hegemonic tones that emerged in the mid-2000s – regime



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neo-Eurasianism has, since the eruption of the Crimea crisis, returned to operate at a juncture at which Russia adopted a newly assertive posture in Eurasia. It is the cyclical evolution of post-Soviet geopolitics that hence explains the fundamental similarities between the two Moscow speeches and, on a wider perspective, the differences between the forms of neo-Eurasianism sponsored by the Nazarbayev regime and the second Putin Administration. This lens, at the same time, does very appropriately allow us to reconsider the recent sovereignty-focused diatribe between Nazarbayev and Putin – a dispute that had some apparent neo-Eurasianist implications. In a speech36 delivered to the 2014 National Youth Forum in Seliger (Tver oblast’), V. V. Putin made a series of oddly double-edged remarks about his Kazakhstani counterpart. On the one hand, he proceeded to recognize Nazarbayev as a sophisticated (gramotnyi) political operator and the original mind behind the creating of the EEU, echoing in this sense the key themes addressed by the Kazakhstani president in his Izvestiya piece as well as in the second MSU speech. On the other hand, Putin went as far as questioning the ultimate raison d’être of the Kazakhstani state, remarking that the Kazakhs never enjoyed statehood (u kazakhov ne bylo nikogda gosudarvennosti) before Nazarbayev’s accession to power. Nate Schenkkan37 and Marlene Laruelle38 have written extensively about the Kazakhstani reaction to the comments made by Putin on Kazakhstan’s sovereignty, and have successfully placed them in their contextualization of the EEU’s declining institutional efficacy. Interestingly, the Seliger comments had major impacts on the three rhetorical narratives – suvernitet, integratsiya, leadership – that, as we have seen throughout this chapter, sit at the very heart of regime neo-Eurasianism. Schenkkan and Laruelle, indirectly yet not unconvincingly, related the Seliger comments to the suvernitet and integratsiya narratives, explaining in this sense the domestic39 and EEU-specific implications of Kazakhstan’s highly rhetorical response to Putin’s remarks. Insofar as those narratives focusing on Nazarbayev’s leadership, the Seliger comments, by questioning Kazakhstani statehood, did indirectly probe the legitimacy of the Kazakhstani president: If Kazakhstani statehood is somehow questionable, can we regard its president as a legitimate leader? Framing an adequate answer to this question does represent one of the most pressing foreign-policy challenges that Kazakhstan will face in the post-Crimea years. CONCLUDING REMARKS Since the mid-1990s, the projection of Kazakhstan as a leader in Eurasia crystallized as a central concern for the strand of neo-Eurasianism promoted by N. A. Nazarbayev and his associates. Kazakhstani neo-evraziistvo came

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to feature a constantly inclusionary disposition, playing a key role in the periodic reconfigurations of the Eurasian political space that came to the fore after the establishment, or alternatively the dismissal, of multilateral organizations attempting to reintegrate the former Soviet Union. The nature of Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism hence led policymakers in Almaty/Astana to reconceptualize centre-periphery relations in the former Soviet Union, placing Kazakhstan’s linkages with the Russian Federation at the core of the reintegrationist efforts made by the Nazarbayev regime. No integrationist initiative that excluded Russia, in this sense, was seen as viable by the leadership in Astana, given the peculiar domestic agenda attached to Kazakhstan’s neo-Eurasianist foreign policy. As it had to respond to the logic of authoritarian stability that traditionally dominated Kazakhstani politics and policymaking, Nazarbayev’s neoEurasianism acquired a distinctive regime-centred orientation, serving in this sense many of the pragmatic purposes connected with the power technologies devised by the élite in Astana. This chapter identified the discursive legitimation of the Eurasian leadership of Nursultan Nazarbayev as one of the key objectives that Kazakhstan’s neo-Eurasianist foreign policy has pursued since the 1990s. In this context, the neo-Eurasianist reinterpretation of Kazakhstan’s relationship with the former Soviet hegemon – the Russian Federation – emerged as a concern wielding particularly significant influence over the legitimacy agenda of the Nazarbayev regime. Revisiting centre-periphery linkages across the Eurasian political space with a view to enhance Nazarbayev’s legitimacy as Eurasia’s key integrator led regime neo-Eurasianism – the brand of neo-eraziistvo promoted by post-Soviet Kazakhstan – to develop a relatively marked counter-hegemonic outlook. Anti-imperial tones, as this chapter has argued, came to characterize some of the most important neo-Eurasianist pronouncements that Nazarbayev made since the launch of Kazakhstan’s evraziiskaya strategiya. Emphasis on the equality of rights held by the states integrating their economies across Eurasia and, most importantly, on the significance that sovereignty continues to hold in post-Soviet forms of integratsiya underpinned the anti-imperial discourses through which Nazarbayev came to describe Kazakhstani neoEurasianism. Exclusive focus on suvernitet and equality of rights, at the same time, is not sufficient to justify the anti-imperial characterization that this chapter made of regime neo-Eurasianism. More precisely, it is the latter’s unrelenting focus on leadership that delineates with greater precision the counter-hegemonic contours of Kazakhstan’s neo-Eurasianist policy. While predicating the stipulation of new associative principles to regulate post-Soviet (re-)integratsiya, Kazakhstan’s neo-Eurasianist discourse did actually intend to highlight the imprint of Nazarbayev’s leadership over these allegedly innovative principles. In the views of the official propaganda,



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Kazakhstani-sponsored integrationism – which unfolded in a multilateral continuum stretching from the EAS to the EEU – intended to promote an alternative concept of Eurasia, in which Russia was to act as a partner and not as a leader. The latter proposition might explain why Nazarbayev’s neoEurasianist speeches came to regularly focus on leadership recalibration vis-à-vis Eurasia’s multilateral configuration, by minimizing the regional relevance of Russia-centric organizations (CIS), promoting the rebalancing of their leadership (EvrAzEs), or highlighting the Kazakhstani input in their initial establishment (EEU). This composite strategy of recalibration appears to be thoroughly consistent with, and profoundly inspired by, the imagemaking ends that have often permeated the Kazakhstani process of foreign policymaking. Constant focus on leadership recalibration forced Kazakhstani neoEurasianism to continuously renegotiate its multilateral outlook with the Russian Federation. This chapter outlined Russia’s evolving perception of post-Soviet integratsiya, suggesting that the Kremlin’s neo-Eurasianism, due to its essentially pragmatic agenda, has often clashed with the leadershipobsessed agenda promoted by Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism. The temporary realignment of the mid-2000s lost much relevance as the EvrAzEs evolved into the EEU, a Putin-dominated integrative framework that, especially in the post-Crimea years, simply ignored the associative principles reportedly inspired by Nazarbayev. The alternation of hegemonic and anti-hegemonic multilateralism across post-Soviet Eurasia led in this sense to the crystallization of the EEU as the region’s key integrationist forum. Notwithstanding its apparent interest in reaching out to Turkey and Vietnam, the EEU remains an essentially postSoviet club. The obsessive focus that policymakers in Astana placed on the president’s discursive leadership led Kazakhstani neo-evraziistvo to narrowly focus its perception of Eurasia to the post-Soviet space: the anti-imperial narratives illustrated in this chapter suggested that Nazarbayev’s leadership ambitions were exclusively formulated vis-à-vis the Russian Federation. Regime neo-Eurasianism may be expected to pursue legitimacy-focused agendas for much of Nazarbayev’s residual time in charge: however alternative and innovative Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism might actually be, its operationalization is hence likely to be confined to a relatively small segment of the wider Eurasian region.

NOTES 1. Rico Isaacs, “‘Papa’ Nazarbayev: The Discourse of Charismatic Leadership and Nation-Building in post-Soviet Kazakhstan,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism

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10 (2010): 435–52. On this note, see also Diana T. Kudaibergenova, “The ideology of development and legitimation: Beyond ‘Kazakhstan 2030,’” Central Asian Survey 34 (2015): 440–55. 2. Sally N. Cummings, “Kazakhstan: An uneasy relationship,” in Power and Change in Central Asia, ed. S.N. Cummings (London-New York: Routledge, 2001), 65. 3. OSCE-ODIHR, Kazakhstan. Early Presidential Election, 26 April 2015: Final Report. Warsaw: OSCE-ODIHR, June 29, 2015. 4. S. Bulekbaev & E. Inkarbaev, “Evraziistvo kak Ideologiia Gosudarstvennosti,” Evraziiskoe Soobshchestvo 1 (2002): 7. 5. Luca Anceschi, “Regime-building, identity-making and foreign policy: neoEurasianist rhetoric in post-Soviet Kazakhstan,” Nationalities Papers 42 (2014): 741–44. 6. Murat Laumulin & Farkhod Tolipov, “Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan: A race for leadership?” Security Index: A Russian Journal on International Security 16 (2010): 47. 7. See, on this note, Edward Schatz, “Access by accident: Legitimacy claims and democracy promotion in authoritarian Central Asia,” International Political Science Review 27 (2006): 270–71. 8. Régis Genté, “Le Kazakhstan ou la géopolitique de l’eurasisme,” Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2010. 9. For the full text of the Moscow speech, see: Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, “Vystuplenie Prezidenta RK N.A. Nazarbaeva v Moskovkom Gosudasrtvennom Universitete M.V. Lomonosova, 29 marta 1994 g.,” in Prezident N.A. Nazarbaev i sovremennyi Kazakhstan – N.A. Nazarbaev i vneshnyaya politika Kazakhstana (Tom III), ed. B.K. Sultanov (Almaty: KISI, 2010), 210–15. All (direct and indirect) quotes of the speech made in this section are extracted from the above source. 10. On Kazakhstan’s official perceptions on the collapse of the rouble zone, the event that brought to the fore Nazarbayev’s disillusion with the CIS, see Rawi Abdelal, “Contested currency: Russia’s rouble in domestic and international politics,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 19 (2003), particularly pp. 66–69. 11. Paul Kubicek, “Regionalism, nationalism and Realpolitik in Central Asia,” Europe-Asia Studies 49 (1997): 642–43; Golam Mostafa, “The concept of ‘Eurasia’: Kazakhstan’s Eurasian policy and its implications,” Journal of Eurasian Studies 4 (2013): 160–70. 12. A. Tarakov, “Evraziistvo – eto put’ v vysokium tselyam,” Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, April 18, 2001. 13. On the associative patterns that have come to define Eurasian multilateralism in the post-Crimea years, see Vsevolod Samokhvalov, “Ukraine between Russia and the European Union: Triangle revisited,” Europe-Asia Studies 67 (2015): 1371–93; Rilka Dragneva & Kataryna Wolczuk, Ukraine between the EU and Russia: The Integration Challenge, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, particularly pp. 63–82. 14. Richard Sakwa & Mark Webber, “The Commonwealth of Independent States, 1991–1998: Stagnation and Survival,” Europe-Asia Studies 51 (1999): 379–415. 15. This theme was also frequently addressed in many presidential poslaniya (presidential addresses) of the mid-1990s, when Nazarbayev continuously underlined



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the importance that linkages with Russia held vis-à-vis Kazakhstan’s international dealings. See, on this note, Thomas Ambrosio & William A. Lange, “Mapping Kazakhstan’s geopolitical code: An analysis of Nazarbayev’s presidential addresses, 1997–2014,” Eurasian Geography & Economics 55 (2014): 537–59. 16. Yelena N. Zabortseva, Russia’s Relations with Kazakhstan – Rethinking ExSoviet Transitions in the Emerging World System (London: Routledge, 2016), 58–101. 17. Anceschi, “Regime-building,” 735–41. 18. On the EvrAzEs, see Zhenis Kembayev, Legal Aspects of the Regional Integration Processes in the Post-Soviet Area (Berlin-London: Springer, 2009), 129–67; Adel Galiakberov & Adel Abdullin, “Theory and practice of regional integration based on the EurAsEC model (Russian point of view),” Journal of Eurasian Studies 5 (2014): 116–21. 19. Zakon.kz, “Vystuplenie Prezidenta Respubliki Kazakhstan N. Nazarbaeva na mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii «Strategiya Kazakhstan – 2030 v deistvii» (Astana 11 oktyabr 2005 g.),” http://www.zakon.kz/site_main_news/65196-vystuplenie-prezidenta-respubliki.html. 20. Julian Cooper, “The development of Eurasian economic integration,” in Eurasian Economic Integration: Law, Policy and Politics, ed. R. Dragneva & K. Wolczuk (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2013), 16. 21. Angela E. Stent, “Restoration and revolution in Putin’s foreign policy,” Europe-Asia Studies, 60 (2008): 1089–106. 22. On the foreign policy of the first Putin Administration, and its Eurasianist outlook more precisely, see Roy Allison, “Strategic reassertion in Russia’s Central Asia policy,” International Affairs 80 (2004): 277–93; Matthew Schmidt, “Is Putin pursuing a policy of Eurasianism?” Demokratizatsiya 13 (2005): 87–99; Natalia Morozova, “Geopolitics, Eurasianism and Russian foreign policy under Putin,” Geopolitics 14 (2009): 667–86. 23. Nowhere was this proposition more relevant than in the energy sector, as argued in Bertil Nygren, “Putin’s Use of Natural Gas to Reintegrate the CIS Region,” Problems of Post-Communism 55 (2008): 3–15. 24. N. A. Nazarbayev, “Vystuplenie Prezidenta RK N. A. Nazarbaev na vneocherednom zasedanii Mezhgosudarstvennogo Soveta EvrAzEs,” in Sultanov, op. cit., pp. 264–67. All (direct and indirect) quotes of the speech made in this section are extracted from the above source. 25. This is how Nursultan Nazarbayev described Russia at the Alma-Ata summit of late 1991. See “Vystuplenie N. A. Nazarbaeva,” Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, 24 December 1991, p. 1. 26. Roy Allison, “Regionalism, regional structures and security management in Central Asia,” International Affairs 80 (2004): 463–83. 27. Vitaly I. Naumkin, “Russian policy toward Kazakhstan,” in Thinking Strategically: The Major Powers, Kazakhstan, and the Central Asian Nexus, ed. R. Legvold (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 59. 28. Lena Jonson, Vladimir Putin and Central Asia (London: IB Tauris, 2006), 99–103. 29. Vladimir V. Putin, “Novyi integratsionnyi proekt dlya Evrazii – budushchee, kotoroe rozhdaetsya segodniya,” Izvestiya, October 3, 2011.

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30. Paul Pryce, “Putin’s third term: The triumph of Eurasianism?” Romanian Journal of European Affairs 13 (2013): 25–43; Alexander Lukin, “Eurasian integration and the clash of values,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, 56 (2014): 43–60; Ray Silvius, “Eurasianism and Putin’s embedded civilizationalism,” in: The Eurasian Project and Europe – Regional Discontinuities and Geopolitics, ed. D. Lane & V. Samokhvalov (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 75–88. 31. Edward Schatz & Elena Maltseva, “Kazakhstan’s authoritarian ‘persuasion,’” Post-Soviet Affairs 28 (2012), particularly pp. 49–52. 32. N. A. Nazarbayev, “Evraziiskii Soyuz: ot idea k istorii budushchego,” Izvestiya, October 25, 2011. 33. For the full draft, see: “Vystuplenie Prezidenta RK N.A. Nazarbaeva v Moskovkom Gosudasrtvennom Universitete imeni M.V. Lomonosova,” http://www. akorda.kz/ru/page/page_216601_vystuplenie-prezidenta-respubliki-kazakhstan-n-anazarbaeva-v-moskovskom-gosudarstvennom-universit. All (direct and indirect) quotes of the speech made in this section are extracted from the above source. 34. Dosym Satpaev, “Kazakhstan and the Eurasian Economic Union: The view from Astana,” http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_kazakhstan_and_the_eurasian_economic_union_view_from_astana395. On the domestic impact of the EEU accession, see: Luca Anceschi & Paolo Sorbello, “Kazakhstan and the EEU: The rise of Eurasian scepticism,” OpenDemocracy Russia, May 15, 2014. 35. Joanna Lillis, “Kazakhstan and Russia trading punches in Import-Export row,” EurasiaNet, 16 April 2015. On the general correlation between external economic forces and EEU development see: Ruslan Dzarasov, “The global crisis and its impact on the Eurasian Economic Union,” East European Politics & Society [doi: 10.1080/23745118.2016.1171272]. 36. The official English language translation of the controversial comments made by Putin at the Seliger National Youth Forum in August 2014 is retrievable at: http:// en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/46507. All (direct and indirect) quotes of the speech made in this section are extracted from the above source. 37. Nate Schenkkan, “A shot across the bow: The biggest thing in Kazakh-Russian relations in years,” Registan, August 30, 2014. 38. Marlene Laruelle, “Kazakhstan’s posture in the Eurasian Union: In search of serene sovereignty,” Russian Analytical Digest 165 (2015). 39. For an appropriately placed contextualization of Kazakhstan’s response to the Seliger comments, and its correlation to the 550th jubilee of the Kazakh Khanate, see: Joanna Lillis, “Kazakhstan: Statehood celebrations remind citizens who’s boss,” EurasiaNet, October 13, 2015.

Chapter 15

“The German in the Kremlin” The Rise and Fall of German Eurasianism Ian Klinke

A GERMAN IN THE KREMLIN In December 2014, the German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier decided on a counterintuitive move.1 In the midst of the deteriorating crisis in Ukraine, he travelled to Russia to speak about his vision for Eurasia. In front of a student audience at the Urals Federal University in Yekaterinburg he explained that their city was almost equidistant from Vladivostok and Lisbon and therefore the perfect place to think about the future of this space.2 It is perhaps no coincidence that Steinmeier picked Yekaterinburg to deliver his speech for it was here that he had in 2008 offered Russia a “modernisation partnership.”3 Just three weeks before the outbreak of the Russo-Georgian War, the German foreign minister had optimistically described Germany and the European Union as Russia’s “natural modernisation partners”4 and reminded his audience that the boundary between Europe and Asia had once been rather arbitrarily drawn by the German geographer Alexander von Humboldt. Steinmeier’s two speeches are striking, both because of their profoundly geographical language and their counterintuitive timing in the midst of a major European crisis. As a foreign policymaker and a Social Democrat, Steinmeier stands of course in a longer tradition of Russophile foreign policy that stretches back at least to Chancellor Brandt’s Ostpolitik (Eastern policy) of the 1970s, if not to the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo. While Rapallo established diplomatic ties and the basis for collaboration with the Soviet state, which, much like Germany, was a pariah within the post-First World War European order, Ostpolitik sought to challenge the confrontational logic of the Cold War by bringing “change through rapprochement” (Wandel durch Annäherung) between Germany and the Soviet bloc.5 And yet, Steinmeier’s Eurasian 301

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vision is unusual even within this particular historical context. Perhaps most strikingly, it shares common ground with a proposal made by the Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2010. Putin used a guest editorial in a leading German broadsheet to propose an economic space “from Lisbon to Vladivostok” that would cover industry, energy and eventually even a free trade area.6 But whereas the Russian president avoided referring to this space in the language of geopolitics, Steinmeier spoke self-evidentially of a “Eurasian space”; his vision was about “security” and “stability” as much as it was about the economy.7 Where can we find the intellectual inspiration for the German foreign minister’s geopolitical vision? Any investigations into this question will sooner or later lead to a man who has been particularly vocal in propagating a fusion of Europe and Russia – the Russo-German political adviser turned energy lobbyist Alexander Rahr. Described as Berlin’s “leading Russophile”8 and “Germany’s most influential and networked Russia expert,”9 Rahr and his books have been repeatedly cited and praised by the German foreign ministry.10 His latest book Cold Friend: Why We Need Russia was even launched by Frank-Walter Steinmeier himself.11 His proximity to the German foreign-policy establishment has allowed Rahr to promote his geopolitical vision of Eurasia as a transcontinental alternative to Germany’s prevailing transatlanticism. He has also entertained close links to the Russian president. Indeed, Rahr’s biography Vladimir Putin: The “German” in the Kremlin offered a portrayal so favourable of the Russian president that Putin invited him for dinner to the Kremlin.12 In what follows, I examine Alexander Rahr’s ideas and their influence on German foreign policy in the early twenty-first century. I argue that Rahr should best be understood as a soft Eurasianist, by which I wish to denote a set of ideas, which, though deprived of contemporary Eurasianism’s most militarist and nationalist overtones, nevertheless endorses the latter’s geopolitical vision. Russian Eurasianism first emerged during the 1920s among Russian émigré communities in cities like Berlin, Paris and Prague as a geopolitically infused critique of Western-centric thought.13 In its most basic form, Eurasianism fetishizes the idea of Eurasian space and emphasizes Russia’s cultural and political distinctiveness, particularly from the Anglo-American West. Given the diversity of Eurasianist writing, it is difficult to reduce Eurasianism to a clear set of propositions, and yet, “Eurasianism everywhere claims to represent some unique synthesis of European and Asian principles.”14 Contemporary forms of Eurasianism, sometimes referred to as neo-Eurasianism, oppose what they understand as the prevailing liberal Atlantic world order and urge Russia to reclaim its rightful place in global politics through counter-hegemonic continental alliances. In that, Eurasianism is ultimately a



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nationalist project, though one that privileges space over race and geopolitics over biopolitics. Anglo-American scholarship has long been intrigued by Eurasianism. Debates initially focused on whether Eurasianism was a status quo ideology that simply aimed to retain Russia’s territorial integrity and great-power status or whether it was a blueprint for imperial conquest.15 The scholarship explored Eurasianism’s influence on the Russian foreign-policy elite and tried to classify different Eurasianist strands,16 including, perhaps most prominently, a neo-fascist version of Eurasianism associated with the prolific geopolitician Aleksandr Dugin.17 Scholars have examined levels of popular support for Eurasianist policies,18 the relationship between Eurasianism and other forms of Russian exceptionalism,19 as well as the export of Eurasianism beyond Russia’s borders, particularly to Turkey and Kazakhstan.20 A recent edited collection has moreover addressed the political and intellectual alliances that the Eurasianist Dugin has managed to forge among the European far right in countries like France, Hungary and Greece.21 Yet, while it is often acknowledged that Eurasianism has its roots in Western European political thought, Eurasianism is still predominantly approached as an ideology of the East. Granted, it may have had an influence on contemporary Western European politics through “doctrinal borrowing and personal interaction,”22 but it is still deemed to be targeted primarily at a non-Western, predominantly of course Russian, audience. As the focus is thus still overwhelmingly on the links that key Eurasianists such as Dugin have managed to develop with Western European politicians and intellectuals, the degree to which Eurasianist visions have emerged from within Western Europe in the first decade of the twenty-first century has gone relatively unnoticed. Through a close reading of Alexander Rahr’s oeuvre, I argue that his Weltanschauung overlaps significantly with Eurasianist thinking, particularly in his inclination towards the timeless wisdoms of classical geopolitics, his anti-liberalism and his vision of Eurasia as more than just an object of geopolitics. Despite Rahr’s Russophilia, it is important to understand that his work was always targeted not at a Russian but at a German audience and relies on some of the tropes of German geopolitics. In tracing Rahr’s rise to fame in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War and his fall from grace in the mid-2010s, I draw on a critical reading of his writing and from a face-to-face interview conducted with him at the height of his career in August 2009 at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin. I conclude that while a Eurasianist like Aleksandr Dugin may indeed, as Marlene Laruelle notes,23 have comparatively few friends in Germany, a softer strand of Eurasianism experienced over a decade of success and was only discredited relatively recently.

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THE RISE OF A GEOPOLITICIAN Born in Taiwan to a Russian émigré family, Alexander Rahr first made a name for himself as a think tanker and a political biographer of Russian leaders. His career initially took him to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the RAND Corporation before taking up a position at the DGAP, where he worked as the director of the Russia-Eurasia Programme until 2012. Rahr has also served as the research director of the German-Russian Forum, a board member of the Petersburg Dialogue and a member of the Russian president’s Valdai International Discussion Club, which offers an opportunity for selected Russia experts to meet with the Russian president. During the 2000s he became a political adviser to the German government. Operating on the interface of think tanks, lobby groups and bureaucracy, Rahr has circulated his ideas in a wide range of formats, from bestselling books via policy papers to newspaper columns and appearances on political talk shows. In 2012, Rahr quit his job as a think tanker and moved to the Wintershall Holding GmbH, a German oil and gas producer that works closely with the Russian state-owned company Gazprom. Rahr’s career was given a significant boost in 2002 after Chancellor Gerhard Schröder chose to deny Washington Berlin’s support for the looming US-led war against Iraq, much to the dismay of the Bush administration. Schröder further exacerbated the transatlantic rift by seeking to find allies against US foreign policy in the French and, more controversially, the Russian president, an initiative that would be dubbed by critics as the “axis Paris-Berlin-Moscow.”24 While his decision not to send German troops to the Middle East helped Schröder to get re-elected in the same year, it did lead to considerable resistance from conservative segments of the German foreign-policy community. It was at this time that the German Chancellery started to seek the advice of Alexander Rahr, a man who had long promoted counter-hegemonic alliances, particularly with Moscow.25 While Rahr claims to have only met Schröder in person after 2005, Schröder told him that his administration had been inspired by Rahr’s ideas in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq War.26 On the back of his links to the Schröder administration, in particular his chief of staff Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Rahr became one of Berlin’s key Russia experts during successive Merkel administrations, and the most vocal advocate of a Russo-German energy alliance. While Rahr’s earlier work27 is in the bio- rather than geographical genre, his more policy-oriented writing has moved unmistakably towards the timeless truths, great-power politics and environmental determinism of classical geopolitics. Like many geopoliticians and political realists before him, Rahr has frequently lamented that Europeans have no understanding of strategy anymore and that “geopolitical approaches are simply thwarted by debates



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on values.”28 He is convinced that “there will always be geopolitics” and that Europeans were “a bit too self-confident when they hailed the end of history after the Cold War.”29 “Spheres of influence and geopolitics,” Rahr has argued, “exist just like they did in the 19th century.”30 More controversially, Rahr has held that Russia was “only fighting for its legitimate place amongst the European powers” and thereby legitimated Moscow’s lack of regard for the sovereignty of the post-Soviet republics.31 Finally, he has claimed that “geography” can force smaller states into the proximity of a state or military alliance32 and that even in the twenty-first century territorial and population size remain the prime indicators of state power.33 Readers of Rahr’s books and articles may note that his geopolitical slogans and timeless truths lack a certain level of originality. Rather than developing new concepts, he often recycles popular tropes he has picked up elsewhere, such as “the scramble for resources,” “the clash of civilisations,” “the end of the unipolar order” or “the rise of the BRICSs.” Yet, while Rahr is clearly not afraid of geopolitical clichés, his references to a geopolitician like Halford Mackinder remain unintentional. During an interview with the author he stated, “Mackinder does not fit into today’s world.” Indeed, he accidentally referred to the godfather of modern geopolitics as “McKinsey” rather than “Mackinder,” but subsequently corrected himself. Instead, Rahr said he drew inspiration from Zbiginiew Brzezinski, who he found “much more timely.” Rahr’s emphasis on geopolitics makes him a potentially controversial figure in a country in which geopolitics has only re-emerged comparatively recently.34 Yet, he is not the only German writer to have promoted a geopolitics that is favourable to the Kremlin. The late Franco-German journalist Peter Scholl-Latour, for instance, tried to raise awareness in the mid-2010s of Russia’s legitimate fears of encirclement.35 Yet, Scholl-Latour’s many books cover the entire globe and do not display a consistent Eurasian fetish. Moreover, unlike Rahr, Scholl-Latour did not have direct channels to foreign policymakers and his influence was limited to that of a media personality. Jürgen Elsässer, a former Maoist turned right-wing demagogue and conspiracy theorist, has endorsed the Russian Eurasianist Dugin and propagated a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis as the basis for “a Eurasian network of peace.”36 Yet, Elsässer’s association with conspiracy theories and the new right has so far made him a marginal figure in German politics. I will return to Elsässer in the conclusion of this chapter. Ultimately, Alexander Rahr would meet the same fate as Gerhard Schröder, the politician whose policies he had always spoken so highly of.37 Only weeks after losing the 2005 parliamentary election to Angela Merkel, Schröder would take a highly paid job as supervisory chairman of Nord Stream, a controversial Baltic Sea pipeline that was designed to bypass a number of Eastern European transit states. While the former chancellor was

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publicly discredited in the German political landscape as a mouthpiece of the Kremlin, Rahr who too had sold the pipeline as the birth of a new energy alliance,38 curiously managed to survive his patron’s fall from grace. Ultimately, however, his association with Schröder would return to haunt him in the early 2010s, as we shall see below. SOFT EURASIANISM Before delving into Alexander Rahr’s intellectual universe, it is important to stress that Rahr has not openly declared himself a Eurasianist, but has also in the past declared that he is unsure as to whether Eurasianism would leave its print on the twenty-first century and has stressed that the impetus for a Eurasian fusion would have to come from Europe.39 Rahr has remarked that he thinks of neo-Eurasianists like Aleksandr Dugin as unnecessarily “emotional and ideological”40 and has warned Western liberals that the alternative to the current Russian president “might be a nationalist like Dugin.”41 And yet, Rahr’s relationship to Eurasianism is more ambivalent. Interestingly, Rahr has frequently written and given interviews for Eurasisches Magazin, a German language Eurasianist online magazine that has made it “its mission” to promote “the inexhaustible cultural riches of Eurasia” while alerting its readers to Eurasia’s “one-sided cultural disposition towards the United States.”42 Indeed, the magazine praises Rahr as a “Eurasian enthusiast who has chronicled Eurasia’s making, even though he has departed from the Eurasian visions of the 1920s.”43 Most importantly, however, Rahr’s geopolitics overlaps with Eurasianism in two ways. First, Rahr is an anti-liberal who has personal links to Russian Orthodox Christianity and whose writing is highly critical of American power. Rahr is notorious as an apologist of Putin’s authoritarianism and a staunch critic of any attempts to democratize Russia. “Most Russians do not understand democracy,” he has claimed repeatedly, and he has deemed it “only understandable that Russians demand a strong tsar.”44 “We have become sissies,” he stated in 2009, adding that “the West always tries to export its liberal democratic model, but this is just a harmful ideology of moral benevolence.”45 In 2008, Rahr observed with a fair amount of satisfaction that “the romantic era of triumphant economic liberalism [was] over.”46 In the cause of the affair surrounding the Russian punk band Pussy Riot, he wrote that Russia was “the heir of Byzantium.” Implying an incompatibility with Western “civilisation,” he argued that Putin’s undemocratic style represented a return to the “lost origins of Christian Europe.”47 The German press has speculated that his scepticism of Anglo-American liberalism could have its roots in his religious upbringing and his family’s close links to the Russian Orthodox Church.



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While Rahr’s brother is a Russian Orthodox clergyman, his father was an émigré activist for the Russian Orthodox Church. As Tageszeitung was keen to report, his father’s obituary stated that his children had been raised in loyalty both to the Orthodox Church and to Russia.48 Rahr’s critique of liberalism flows into a wider opposition to US power that unites him with the likes of Putin. The Russian president, Rahr has claimed, “simply wants the West to respect Russia’s position.”49 In typically geopolitical manner, he argues for a transcontinental partnership that would constitute an alternative to prevailing transatlanticism. This binary opposition between land and sea power is reinforced with a critique of unipolarity. He has observed that Georgia in particular has become “a strategic bridgehead” for the United States and has cited this as evidence of Washington’s desire to project power into Eurasia.50 Similarly, he has held that US involvement in the so-called “colour revolutions” of 2003 and 2004 should be read as attempts to contain Russia’s resurrection as a great power. Shortly before the events unleashed in September 2001, he urged Europe to assert its geopolitical interests, even if those were in conflict with the United States.51 In 2009, he warned that the European Union would become “the Eastern province of the United States” if it did not develop an autonomous foreign and security policy.52 Second, Rahr fetishizes Eurasia itself and imbues it with a positive civilizational quality. In 2011, for instance, he bemoaned that “the term Eurasia” was not taken seriously enough. Nobody in the West understands or knows what Eurasia means. There is Europe, there is Wider Europe, there is Asia, but Eurasia is a term that is only used by countries like Kazakhstan and Russia. However, I am sure that this term will become more politically important in the next years, because Eurasia is developing and is emerging. Eurasia will be the term which we will use while talking about energy security, this term will be connected with the fight against international terrorism in Afghanistan and in Central Asia.53

Critics might respond that this fascination with Eurasia sounds suspiciously like Zbiginiew Brzezinski’s famous reading of Eurasia as a “chessboard” – an emerging arena for world politics.54 Yet, unlike Brzezinski’s rendering of Eurasia as an object of geopolitics, Rahr’s Eurasia is a geopolitical subject that is imbued with a positive identity – a civilizational project that is yet to be realized. The keystone in this vision of a continent in the making is the synthesis of Russia and Europe. In typically geopolitical fashion, he argues that “anyone who has flown over all time zones of Russia will have to think about a fusion between Europe and this huge country.”55 Rahr is convinced that Russia is

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“on its way to becoming an energy great power [Energiegrossmacht]” and that the European Union “would stand to benefit from uniting with Russia.”56 Indeed, “Russia is an energy power without an economy and the EU is an industrial great power without natural resources.”57 Brussels should exploit its geographical proximity to Russia by helping Moscow modernize and extend its pipeline network to Europe,58 a trope that has re-emerged in Germany in a number of guises since the early 1990s.59 Indeed, the jacket of his 2011 book Cold Friend: Why We Need Russia promises that “the largest territorial state on earth, [Russia] is blessed with natural resources that can secure our wealth for tomorrow.”60 In this, Rahr’s writing promotes Eurasia as a single and cohesive civilizational space that is politically distinct from the AngloAmerican West but not from Europe. “Because of its history and culture, Russia is inseparably linked to Europe,” Rahr is convinced.61 European security, he has argued, would also benefit from Russia’s military power, particularly its nuclear shield. Germany is “Russia’s anchor in the EU,”62 its “star lawyer” that will pave the way for Rahr’s Gross-Europa (Greater Europe).63 The Kremlin has proclaimed the economic development of Siberia as a common European task of the 21st century and proposed the fusion of Siberia’s natural resources with the technologically more developed Western Europe. Putin demands, as Charles de Gaulle did 50 years ago and Mikhail Gorbachev 10 years ago, nothing less than a Greater Europe [Gross-Europa] from the Atlantic to the Urals.64

Yet, Rahr’s vision of a political space from “Lisbon to Vladivosktok”65 is not an entirely inclusive project for he delimits it against three others, all of which participate in what he has termed a “clash of civilisations”: the West, Asia and Islam.66 Rahr is convinced that Russia ultimately faces a civilizational choice67 and therefore frequently warns of its ability of turning to “the foreign cultural space of Asia,” particularly China, if the European Union does not offer economic integration.68 Such a Russian departure from Europe, Rahr has argued, would be “a geopolitical catastrophe.”69 If Ivan the Terrible had not conquered Siberia, he has stated, “one of the world’s biggest treasure chambers would today be controlled by an Islamic great power.”70 “Even though today’s Siberia belongs clearly within the European civilization, people with Islamic and Chinese background will soon dominate,” Rahr has warned.71 Again, the tone is civilizational. In his 2008 book, he argued that while “the Slavic and Christian nations in the East are part of the European civilisation,” the Arab world could “never become a part of the EU.”72 Russia, he is convinced, is “the only bulwark against an aggressive Islam.”73



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THE KREMLIN’S GERMAN Like Rahr’s rise to fame in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, his fall from grace needs to be contextualized within the trajectory of international politics. In 2006/2007, the Ukrainian-Russian gas conflict had shaken the German media landscape and lead to the emergence of a “new Cold War” narrative that questioned the German government’s “modernisation partnership” and its policy of “rapprochement through interlinkage” [Annäherung durch Verflechtung].74 In 2008, the war in South Ossetia further increased the pressure on Berlin to rethink its gentle approach vis-à-vis the Kremlin. In the mid-2010s, Germany’s business-friendly Russia policy again came under attack. It was, in particular, Moscow’s clampdown of the liberal opposition, the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s involvement in the Ukrainian civil war that made it increasingly difficult for Russophiles. As the German public started questioning as to whether Putin really was Rahr’s “German in the Kremlin,” it also increasingly turned against Putin’s biographer himself. More and more, the man who had once dined with Putin in the Kremlin was seen as the Kremlin’s German, a Trojan horse at the heart of Berlin. In 2011, at the time when Frank-Walter Steinmeier helped to launch Rahr’s book Cold Friend: Why We Need Russia, Rahr was still “a key figure in German-Russian economic relations with close ties to Moscow.”75 His connections to the post-Soviet elites had created the myth of an insider, a man who understood Russia. Indeed, the Internet was full of images of him alongside the major players of post-Soviet and Eastern European politics: Rahr shaking the hand of then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Rahr next to the former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski and, of course, Rahr with Russian President Vladimir Putin. When the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenka once gave a rare interview to the German conservative daily Die Welt, he asked to be interviewed by no other than Rahr.76 Increasingly, however, Rahr’s network in the former Soviet Union was becoming a problem for him. Already in 2009, Rahr’s allegiance was a hot topic of discussion in Berlin. One of his colleagues at the German Council on Foreign Relations had noted that their think tank was increasingly known elsewhere as “the Rapallo fraction.”77 A political adviser to the Conservative Party referred to Rahr as a “Putin sympathiser” and mocked his slight Russian accent, clearly implying his untrustworthiness.78 Two years later, critics had started referring to him as a “mouthpiece of the Kremlin.”79 Yet, as long as the relations between Russia and the West were just strained rather than broken, Rahr’s expertise was still on demand. It was only after he had moved to the Wintershall Holding GmbH in 2012 that his fortune changed.

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A year after Rahr’s move to the energy sector, he was involved in a scandal surrounding an interview he had given the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2012.80 In this interview, Rahr had not only criticized Germany’s one-sided alliances with the United States and Israel, but also described the West’s export of liberal values as “aggressive” and compared it to Soviet messianism. Moreover, Rahr had to defend himself against accusations of having used the forbidden term Lebensraum (living space) to describe the geopolitical potential of Russo-German cooperation in Eurasia.81 Somewhat embarrassingly, the foreign ministry was forced to issue a statement in which it distanced itself from its adviser.82 The second event in 2013 that changed Rahr’s standing in Germany was the pardoning of the Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s by the Russian president. Rahr had played a crucial role in brokering the deal to free the Russian oligarch.83 The newspapers printed photos, which showed Rahr alongside Khodorkovsky and the former German foreign minister Hans-Dieter Genscher. While early stories praised the German effort in freeing Khodorkovsky, elsewhere Rahr was seen as having participated in one of the Kremlin’s PR coups. The tide was turning against him. In 2014, international media outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the Economist started reporting on Germany’s pro-Kremlin lobby and criticized the way in which industrialists and Russophile social democrats were dictating Berlin’s policy towards Moscow.84 The German language press, too, started paying closer attention to what was increasingly seen as a powerful network of Kremlin apologists in Berlin, which included not just a whole range former statesmen, such as Gerhard Schröder, Helmut Schmitt and Helmut Kohl, but also members of the former East German nomenklatura. In the cause of this, the press singled out Rahr as the most important element in the Kremlin’s German network.85 Suddenly, it was a problem that Rahr had moved to a company that was closely linked to Gazprom86 and the state media started describing him pejoratively as a “Russland-Versteher (Russia sympathiser),” informing their audience that the Russian President Putin had once referred to him as “Russia’s representative abroad.”87 By 2013/14, the German media were united in their dismissal of the expert turned lobbyist. Rahr was forced to deny his links to the Kremlin88 and tried to defend himself by claiming two cultural identities, one German and one Russian.89 Although Rahr confessed that he had once been charmed by the Russian president, he was keen to add that he had never had a personal relationship with him.90 Rahr’s fallback position against the accusations of Putin apologetics was that he had merely been presenting the Kremlin’s position without any judgement of his own. And yet, little of this seemed to work in his favour. In the autumn of 2014, both the conservative daily Die Welt and the left-wing Tageszeitung noted that Rahr had “disappeared from the screens.”91



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GERMAN EURASIANISM IN PERSPECTIVE Much has happened to the study of Eurasianism since Charles Clover speculated in 1999 that a “Eurasian fever” among the Russian elite might spark a Third World War.92 Eurasianism has come to be seen as a multifaceted discourse on world politics that comes in hard-line and moderate variants. It has also become recognized that Eurasianism has travelled beyond Russia’s borders. And yet, the focus in academic debates is still predominantly on nonWestern articulations of Eurasianists and on the political and intellectual alliances that Russian Eurasianists have been able to forge in Western Europe. The consequence is an unnecessarily “mummified”93 conception of Eurasianist geopolitics that risks losing sight of the many mutations that Eurasian enthusiasm has produced in the early twenty-first century. In this chapter I have sought to shed light on the story of a specifically German version of Eurasianism as it emerged in the early 2000s and became discredited in the 2010s. As I have argued, Alexander Rahr, the key proponent of this school of thought, used particular developments in German foreign policy to lobby for a union of Russia and Europe through a common exploitation of Eurasia’s natural resources. Alexander Rahr’s work raises important questions for the “process of borrowing” through which Eurasianism has historically emerged and re-emerged.94 His Eurasianism allows us to make the case for a more relational and interconnected understanding of East and West,95 one that is interested in the traces that the East leaves in the West, rather than just the overly familiar story of how anti-Western ideologies always already feed off Western ideas. Such a relational conception of space might also displace the search for an intellectual origin of contemporary Eurasianism. Rahr’s Eurasian vision, for instance, emerges at the messy intersection of a myriad of geopolitical discourses that have Eurasia at their target, including but not limited to Brzezinski’s geopolitics, Brandt’s Ostpolitik and Gazprom’s PR strategy. While Rahr’s work is clearly shot through with Eurasianist logic, the question as to where he can be located within the different strands of Eurasianism is more difficult to answer. Much like hard-line Eurasianists, Rahr has promoted the construction of counter-hegemonic alliances against the Anglo-American West, which is seen to undermine the unity of the Eurasian space. Indeed, the idea that “Western Europe is not at all opposed to Eurasia but rather represents an objective part of it” has long been present in Dugin’s work.96 While Rahr’s vision of a Eurasia from Vladivostok to Lisbon shares common ground with hardliners like Aleksandr Dugin,97 Rahr’s intellectual overlap with neo-Eurasianism should not be overstated. He is neither in favour of Russian expansionism, nor does he privilege space over race. Unlike the universalism that Bassin detects in Dugin,98 Rahr’s Eurasia is geographically limited and displays traces of Islamophobia.

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As pointed out above, Rahr’s Eurasian vision also shares common ground with that articulated by the Russian President Vladimir Putin. Much of Rahr’s rhetoric against Western liberalism and his insistence on Russia’s geopolitical interests and great-power status could equally have come from the Kremlin. Moreover, Moscow has long tried to forge an alliance with Germany by promising the mutual exploitation of Russian gas. Yet, while Rahr’s vision of Eurasia suggests an economic fusion, the language in which it is sold is unambiguously geopolitical. Unlike President Putin who until recently preferred to speak of Russia as a “Euro-Asian” power,99 Rahr has always fetishized the term “Eurasia” itself. Perhaps most importantly, Rahr has frequently criticized Soviet imperialism and likened Western attempts at democratizing Russia to Soviet messianism. This dislike of the Soviet Union is likely to be rooted in Rahr’s émigré family background and would contradict the current Russian leadership’s more favourable reading of Soviet history. Whether or not soft Eurasianism, a Eurasianism deprived of its most militarist and nationalist overtones, remains a credible force in the formulation of German foreign policy is yet to be seen. In 2014, Russo-German relations were marked by Angela Merkel’s decision to override Germany’s pro-Kremlin business lobby and support the sanctions against Russia. However, given the persistence of German business interests in Russia, Rahr’s ideas might experience a renaissance if the Ukrainian crisis was to cool down. Moreover, as noted above, Rahr is not the only German public intellectual who might promote Eurasianist ideas in the future. It is in particular the conspiracy theorist and right-wing demagogue Jürgen Elsässer who has established links to the Russian far right and whose Eurasianism would be of interest for further studies. While Elsässer currently remains a marginalized figure and dependent primarily on his online presence, this may well change. Not only was he a frequent speaker at the 2014/15 nationalist and xenophobic demonstrations under the banner Patriotic Europeans against the Islamification of the Occident (Pegida) but he has also established links to Germany’s new right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).100 In a 2013 foreign political position paper, AfD called for a return to Bismarckian realpolitik, claiming that Germany and Europe had “no interest in further weakening Russia and thereby the entire Euro-Asian space.”101 Having adopted a Kremlin friendly policy, the AfD may well serve as a platform for a revival of German Eurasianism. Somewhat interestingly, the fall of Rahr’s Eurasianism came at a time when the questions of German hegemony and German geopolitics were reemerging in debates on Europe’s post-crisis future.102 In many ways, Rahr’s geopolitics was no different from earlier attempts at reviving German geopolitics: it worked by avoiding the language of Weimar and Nazi Geopolitik as much as possible. It was incidentally only when Rahr did use the forbidden term Lebensraum that he was forced to retract one of his statements.



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And yet, Rahr’s very suggestion of a counter-hegemonic continental alliance implicitly invoked the fallen hero of German geopolitics, Karl Haushofer. But what distinguished Rahr’s writing from other attempts at a Haushoferian geopolitics, was perhaps its temporary success. Unlike in 2003, when German geopoliticians tended to remain at the margins of the mainstream political debate and had only very little influence on national politics,103 Rahr’s rise to fame in the 2000s would suggest a shift in the acceptability of geopolitics.

NOTES 1. All translations are the author’s. 2. “Rede von Außenminister Frank-Walter Steinmeier an der Ural Federal University, Jekaterinburg: ‘Deutsche und Russen – Vergangenheit, Gegenwart, Zukunft,’” Auswärtiges Amt, December 9, 2014, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/DE/Infoservice/Presse/Reden/2014/141209-BM_Jekaterinburg.html. 3. “Rede des Außenministers Frank-Walter Steinmeier am Institut für internationale Beziehungen der Ural-Universität in Jekaterinburg,” Auswärtiges Amt, May 13, 2008, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/DE/Infoservice/ Presse/Reden/2008/080513-BM-Russland.html. 4. Ibid. 5. Angela Stent, Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, the Soviet collapse and the new Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). 6. Wladimir Putin, “Von Lissabon bis Wladiwostok: ein Gastbeitrag von Wladimir Putin,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 25, 2010, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/putin-plaedoyer-fuer-wirtschaftsgemeinschaft-von-lissabon-bis-wladiwostok-1.1027908. 7. “Rede des Außenministers.” 8. n.a., “Lovers, not fighters; German firms in Russia,” The Economist, March 14, 2014, accessed March 20, 2015 http://www.economist.com/news/business/21599034german-exporters-are-pushing-back-against-economic-sanctions-russia-lovers-notfighters. 9. Jörg Lau, “‘Siedlungsraum’ im Osten,” Die Zeit, March 13, 2013, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.zeit.de/2013/12/Alexander-Rahr. 10. “‘Russland gibt Gas’ – Vorstellung des gleichnamigen Buches von Alexander Rahr durch Andreas Schockenhoff,” Auswärtiges Amt, June 3, 2008b, accessed March 20, 2015 http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/DE/Infoservice/Presse/ Reden/2008/080603-SchockenhoffBuchpraesentation.html. “‘Der gefangene Präsident – welche Chancen hat Russlands Modernisierung unter dem Tandem Medwedew-Putin?’ Rede von Andreas Schockenhoff,” Auswärtiges Amt, January 23, 2009, accessed March 20, 2015 http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/DE/Infoservice/ Presse/Reden/2009/090121-SchockenhoffKAS.html. 11. “Buchvorstellung ‘Der kalte Feind. Warum wir Russland brauchen: Die Insider-Analyse’ von Alexander Rahr,” Petersburger Dialog, 2011, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.petersburger-dialog.de/

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buchvorstellung-der-kalte-feind-warum-wir-russland-brauchen-die-insider-analysevon-alexander-rahr. 12. Alexander Rahr, Vladimir Putin: Der “Deutsche” im Kreml (München: Universitas, 2000). 13. Marlene Laurelle, “The two faces of contemporary Eurasianism: An imperial version of Russian nationalism,” Nationalities Papers 32 (2004): 116. 14. Mark Bassin, “Eurasianism ‘Classical’ and ‘neo’: The lines of continuity,” in Beyond the Empire: Images of Russia in the Eurasian Cultural Context, ed. M. Tetsuo (Sapporo: Slavic Research Centre, 2008): 279–294, accessed 20 March 2015, https:// src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/coe21/publish/no17_ses/14bassin.pdf: 281. 15. Charles Clover, “Dreams of the Eurasian Heartland: The Reemergence of Geopolitics,” Foreign Affairs 78 (1999): 9–13; David Kerr, “The new Eurasianism: the rise of geopolitics in Russia’s foreign policy,” Europe-Asia Studies 47 (1995): 977–988. 16. John O’Loughlin, “Geopolitical fantasies, national strategies and ordinary Russians in the post-Communist era,” Geopolitics 6 (2001): 17–48; Graham Smith, “The masks of Proteus: Russia, geopolitical shift and the new Eurasianism,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24 (1999): 481–494; Andrej Tsygankov, “Mastering Space in Eurasia: Russia’s Geopolitical Thinking after the Soviet Breakup,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 36 (2003): 101–127. 17. Alan Ingram, “Alexander Dugin: geopolitics and neo-fascism in post-Soviet Russia,” Political Geography, 20 (2001): 1029–1051. 18. O’Loughlin, “Geopolitical fantasies,” 2001; John O’Loughlin et al., “Russian Geopolitical Culture and Public Opinion: The Masks of Proteus Revisited,” Transactions 30 (2005): 322–335. 19. Marlene Laruelle “Larger, higher, farther North … Geographical metanarratives of the nation in Russia,” Eurasian Geography and Economics 53 (2012): 557–574. 20. Emre Erşen, “The evolution of ‘Eurasia’ as a geopolitical concept in post– Cold War Turkey,” Geopolitics 18 (2013): 24–44; Marlene Laurelle, Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, 2008). 21. Marlene Laruelle, Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship (Lanham: Lexington, 2015). 22. Ibid., 8. 23. Ibid., 14. 24. n.a., “Paris-Berlin-Moskau: Union plant Achsenbruch,” Der Spiegel, July 18, 2005, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/paris-berlinmoskau-union-plant-achsenbruch-a-365722.html. 25. Interview with Rahr, Berlin, 2009. 26. Ibid. 27. Nikolai Poljanski and Alexander Rahr, Gorbatschow: Der neue Mann (München: Universitas, 1986); Alexander Rahr, Vladimir Putin: Der “Deutsche” im Kreml (München: Universitas, 2000). 28. Alexander Rahr, Russland gibt Gas: Die Rückkehr einer Weltmcht (Muenchen: Hanser, 2008a); see also Alexander Rahr, “Europa im neuen Zentralasien,” in Der Kaspische Raum vor den Herausforderungen der Globalisierung: Die Verantwortung



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der Trilateralen Staaten für die Stabilität der Region, eds. Sherman W. Garnett, Alexander Rahr & Koji Watanabe (Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 2011b): 88. 29. Interview with Rahr. 30. Alexander Kohnen, “Berliner Kreml-Experte Rahr – ‘Putin will es dem Westen zeigen,’” Berliner Morgenpost, March 4, 2014, accessed March 20, 2015, www.morgenpost.de/politik/article125435888/Berliner-Kreml-Experte-Rahr-Putinwill-es-dem-Westen-zeigen.html. 31. Alexander Rahr, Putin nach Putin: Das kapitalistische Russland nach Beginn einer neuen Weltordnung (München: Universitas, 2009): 193. 32. Rahr, “Europa im neuen Zentralasien,” 91. 33. Alexander Rahr, Der kalte Freund: Warum wie Russland brauchen (München: Hanser, 2011): 22. 34. Mark Bassin, “Between realism and the ‘New Right’: geopolitics in Germany in the 1990s,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 28 (2003): 361; Alex B. Murphy and Corey M. Johnson, “German geopolitics in transition,” Eurasian Geography and Economics 45 (2004): 3. 35. Peter Scholl-Latour, Russland im Zangengriff: Putins Imperium zwischen NATO, China und Islam (Berlin: Ullstein, 2006). 36. Jürgen Elsässer, Der deutsche Sonderweg (München: Diederichs Verlag, 2003); Andreas Umland and Thomas Korn, “Jürgen Elsässer und das antiamerikanische Ressentiment,” Heinrich Böll Stiftung, July 24, 2014, accessed March 20, 2015, http:// www.boell.de/de/2014/07/24/juergen-elsaesser-und-das-antiamerikanischeressentiment. 37. Alexander Rahr, “Schröder handelt in Europas Interesse,” Internationale Politik 1/05 (2005b): 94. 38. n.a., “Nord Stream will make Europe more secure,” Russia Today, November 8, 2011, accessed March 20, 2015, http://rt.com/business/nord-stream-russiaeurope-825/. 39. “Eurasien in der Diskussion,” Eurasisches Magazin, 2003, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.eurasischesmagazin.de/artikel/Eurasien-in-der-Diskussion/50503. 40. Interview with author. 41. Alexander Rahr, “Was wir in den 90er Jahren erlebt haben war ein künstliches Russland,” Eurasisches Magazin, 2008b, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.eurasischesmagazin.de/artikel/Was-wir-in-den-90er-Jahren-erlebt-hattenwar-ein-kuenstliches-Russland/20081106. 42. “Editorial,” Eurasisches Magazin, 2015, accessed March 20, 2015, http:// www.eurasischesmagazin.de/editorial/. 43. “‘Die Eurasische Bewegung’ von Stefan Wiederkehr,” Eurasisches Magazin, 2008, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.eurasischesmagazin.de/artikel/ Die-Eurasische-Bewegung-von-Stefan-Wiederkehr/20080116. 44. Alexander Rahr, Russland gibt Gas: Die Rückkehr einer Weltmcht (Muenchen: Hanser, 2008a): 49. 45. Interview with author. 46. Rahr, Russland gibt Gas, 21. 47. Alexander Rahr, “Pussy Riot ushers in a new clash of civilizations,” 2012, accessed March 20, 2015, http://valdaiclub.com/politics/47760.html; see Rahr, Der kalte Freund: 34.

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48. Barbara Kerneck, “Unterhändler mit zwei Seelen,” Tageszeitung, October 16, 2014, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.taz.de/!147762/. 49. Rahr, Putin nach Putin, 282. 50. Rahr, Putin nach Putin, 245. 51. Rahr, “Europa im neuen Zentralasien,” 89. 52. Alexander Rahr, “Die russischen Eliten sind vom Westen tief enttäuscht,” Eurasisches Magazin, 2009b, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.eurasischesmagazin.de/artikel/Die-russischen-Eliten-sind-vom-Westen-tief-enttaeuscht/20090107. 53. Alexander Rahr, “Alexander Rahr: Eurasia Is Emerging,” Russia beyond the headlines, August 3, 2011b, accessed February 6, 2011, http://rbth.co.uk/articles/2011/08/03/alexander_rahr_eurasia_is_emerging_13217.html. 54. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Imperatives and its Geostrategic imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997). 55. Rahr, Russland gibt Gas, 208. 56. Rahr, Russland gibt Gas, 42. 57. Rahr, Der kalte Freund, 109. 58. Rahr, Putin nach Putin, 214–215. 59. Bassin, “Between realism and the ‘New Right,’” 355. 60. Rahr, Der kalte Freund. 61. Rahr, Der kalte Freund, 92. 62. Alexander Rahr, “Energieressourcen im Kaspischen Meer,” Internationale Politik 1/2001 (2001): 37–42. 63. Rahr, Russland gibt Gas, 194. 64. Rahr, Russland gibt Gas, 24. 65. Rahr, Der kalte Freund, 22. 66. Rahr, “Pussy Riot ushers in a new clash of civilizations.” 67. “Putin ist kein Diktator,” Alexander Rahr, 2005a, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.eurasischesmagazin.de/artikel/Putin-ist-kein-Diktator/20050504. 68. Alexander Rahr, “Geopolitischer Infantilismus: Europas Unisicherheit im Umgang mit Russland nimmt zu,” Internationale Politik 7 (2007): 14–20. 69. Rahr, Russland gibt Gas, 39. 70. Rahr, Der kalte Freund, 93. 71. Rahr, Putin nach Putin, 212. 72. Rahr, Russland gibt Gas, 39. 73. Rahr, Putin nach Putin, 265. 74. Felix Ciută and Ian Klinke, “Lost in conceptualization: Reading the ‘new Cold War’ with critical geopolitics,” Political Geography 29 (2010): 323–332; Ian Klinke, “Geopolitics in Germany: Return of the living dead?” Geopolitics 16 (2011): 707–726. 75. “Too Special A Friendship: Is Germany Questioning Russia’s Embrace?” Radio Free Europe, July 12, 2011, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.rferl.org/ content/germany_and_russia_too_special_a_relationship/24262486.html. 76. Alexander Rahr, “Die Opposition ist in Weißrussland keineswegs verboten,” Die Welt, January 25, 2007, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.welt.de/print-welt/ article711195/Die-Opposition-ist-in-Weissrussland-keineswegs-verboten.html.



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77. Interview with anonymous, Berlin, 2009a. 78. Interview with anonymous, 2009b. 79. Klaus-Helge Donath, “Zar Putin ganz im alten Stil,” Tageszeitung, December 15, 2011, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.taz.de/!83805/. 80. n.a., “Russland-Experte Rahr: ‘Deutschlands Ostpolitik hat die Balance verloren,’” Der Spiegel, March 18, 2013, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www. spiegel.de/politik/ausland/alexander-rahr-deutschlands-ostpolitik-hat-die-balanceverloren-a-889270.html. 81. Lau, “Siedlungsraum im Osten.” 82. Jörg Lau, “Energie zum Frühstück,” Die Zeit, March 27, 2013b, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.zeit.de/2013/14/auswaertiges-amt-rahr. 83. Michelle Martin and Lidia Kelly, “Inside Germany’s campaign to free Khodorkovsky,” Reuters, December 26, 2013, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.reuters. com/article/2013/12/26/us-germany-khodorkovsky-idUSBRE9BP0C420131226. 84. n.a. “Lovers, not fighters; German firms in Russia”; John Vincour, “The Russia lobby in Germany,” Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2014, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142405270230397830457947308245321 7614. 85. Dirk Banse, Florian Flade and Uwe Müller, “Der Putin-Erklärer,” Die Welt, April 20, 2014a, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.welt.de/print/wams/politik/ article127124688/Der-Putin-Erklaerer.html; Jörg Himmelreich, “Putins Netzwerker,” Neue Züricher Zeitung, May 6, 2014, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.nzz. ch/aktuell/startseite/putins-netzwerker-1.18296734; Claudia von Salzen, “Vernetzt mit dem Kreml,” Tagesspiegel, May 20, 2014, accessed March 20, 2015, http:// www.tagesspiegel.de/themen/agenda/deutschland-und-russland-vernetzt-mit-demkreml/9916272.html. 86. Kerneck, “Unterhändler mit zwei Seelen.” 87. Ibid. 88. Dirk Banse, Florian Flade and Uwe Müller, “Der Putin-Erklärer.” 89. n.a., “Russland-Experte Rahr.” 90. Kerneck, “Unterhändler mit zwei Seelen.” 91. Florian Flade and Dirk Banse, “Rückzug der ‘Putin-Versteher,’” Die Welt, September 15, 2014b, accessed March 20, 2015, http://investigativ.welt. de/2014/09/15/rueckzug-der-putin-versteher/; Kerneck, “Unterhändler mit zwei Seelen.” 92. Clover, “Dreams of the Eurasian Heartland,” 9–10. 93. Gearóid Ó Tuathail, and Simon Dalby, “Introduction: rethinking geopolitics: Towards a critical geopolitics,” in Rethinking geopolitics eds Gearóid Ó Tuathail, and Simon Dalby (London: Routledge, 1998): 2. 94. Mark Bassin, “‘Classical’ Eurasianism and the geopolitics of Russian identity,” Ab Imperio 2/03 (2003b): 257. 95. Alison Stenning, “Out there and in here: Studying Eastern Europe in the West,” Area 37 (2005): 378–383. 96. Mark Bassin, “National meta-narratives after Communism: An introduction,” Eurasian Geography and Economics 53 (2012): 553–556.

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97. Robert Zubrin, “Putin Adviser Publishes Plan for Domination of Europe,” National Review, March 10, 2014, accessed March 20, 2015,http://www.nationalreview. com/corner/373064/putin-adviser-publishes-plan-domination-europe-robert-zubrin. 98. Mark Bassin, “Eurasianism ‘Classical’ and ‘neo’: The lines of continuity,” in Beyond the Empire: Images of Russia in the Eurasian Cultural Context, ed. M. Tetsuo (Sapporo: Slavic Research Centre, 2008): 279–294, accessed 20 March 2015, https:// src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/coe21/publish/no17_ses/14bassin.pdf. 99. Marlene Laurelle (2008) Eurasianism: An ideology of empire (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Centre Press): 8. 100. Günther Lachmann, “Plattform für Verschwörer und Wirrköpfe,” Die Welt, October 28, 2014c, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article133747210/Plattform-fuer-Verschwoerer-und-Wirrkoepfe.html. 101. “Thesenpapier Aussenpolitik,” Alternative für Deutschland, September 10, 2013, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.alternativefuer.de/ thesenpapier-aussenpolitik/. 102. Hans Kundnani, The paradox of German power (London: Hurst and Company, 2014). 103. Bassin, “Between realism and the ‘New Right,’” 351.

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Editors’ Note: This general bibliography refers to books, articles, documents or policy papers: when available also online, the link is provided. Some exceptions have been made for internet items which are the focus of certain sections in the book. For instance, official speeches by Vladimir Putin or Nursultan Nazarbaev appear here, even when taken from news outlets or webpages. The same applies to online texts by, for instance, Aleksander Rahr, Sergei Sergeev or Rafael’ Khakimov, among others. A separate bibliographical section follows for general news, blog materials, interviews and visual items on the internet. A brief section is added for Filmography. Transliteration has been kept in line with the rest of the volume except when the original source title used it differently. When translations are cited, transliterations vary accordingly: for istance, two texts by Lev Gumilev published in Hungary appear here as “Gumilev [Gumiljov], Lev.” For the purpose of simplicity, some names appear without their original accentuation: eg. Marlene Laruelle, except when cited in translated publications; eg. Marlen Lariuel, in her Russian publications. All internet links were accessed on September 17–18, 2016. *

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FILMOGRAPHY Mongol. Germany, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia 2007. Color. 120 min. Director Sergei Bodrov Sr. Script by Arif Aliev and Sergei Bodrov Sr. Camera Roger Stoffers and Sergei Trofimov. Cast: Tadanobu Asano, Khulan Chuluun, Amadu Mamadakov, Basan, Aliia. Award Nika (2007) in six nominations. Orda (The Horde; The Golden Empire). Russia 2012. Director Andrei Proshkin. Script by Iurii Arabov. Camera Iurii Raiskii. Cast: Maksim Sukhanov, Roza Khairullina, Innokentii Dakaiarov, Andrei Panin, More Oorzhak, Aleksandr Iatsenko, Vitalii Khaev et al. Russkii filosof Ivan Il’in. Russia 2011. 47 min. Director Nikita Mikhalkov. Taina Chingis Khaana (Po veleniiu Chingiskhana; The Secret of Genghis Khan). Russia, Mongolia, USA 2009. Color. 120 min. Director Andrei Borisov. Script by Nikolai Luginov and Nikolai Karpov. Camera Iurii Brezhnev. Cast: Stepanida Borisova, Sergei Egorov, Gernot Grimm, Ogril Makkhaan, Eduard Ondar et al. Urga – Territoriia liubvi (Close to Eden; Territory of Love). France, USSR 1991. Color. 115 min. Director Nikita Mikhalkov. Script by Nikita Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibragimbekov. Camera Vilen Kaliuta. Cast: Baiiartu, Vladimir Gostiukhin, Badema, Larisa Kuznecova et al.

Index

Adzhi, Murad, 132 AFTA. See ASEAN Free Trade Area Agreement for Increased Cooperation in the Economic and Humanitarian Spheres, 166 Aitmatov, Chingiz, 248 Akhmatova, Anna, 6 Akhmetov, Rinat, 191 AKP. See Justice and Development Party Alimov, Igor’, 10, 81 Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), 14, 312 Amazons, 85 “Anaconda” strategy, 71, 72 Anceschi, Luca, 13 Andreev, Daniil, 113 Andropov, Yuri, 153 Annan, Kofi, 273 Anti-Dühring (Engels), 44 anti-Westernism, alternative history and, 83–87 APEC. See Asia-Pacific Economic Corporation Arabov, Iurii, 111, 113–14 Armenia, 172 ASEAN. See Association of South East Asian Nations ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), 155

Ash, Timothy Garton, 265 Asia-Pacific Economic Corporation (APEC), 201 Aslakhanov, Aslambek, 68 Asov, Alexander, 123 Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), 155, 201 Astana Film Festival, 106 Asya-Avrupa (Asia-Europe), 269 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 266, 267, 270, 272 Atilla: The Hun Message, 257 Atlanticism, 212–13, 215 Auf Zwei Planeten (Lasswitz), 85 Austro-Hungarian Empire, 183 Avdeev, Vladimir Borisovich, 39–40, 46, 51 Avrasya Bir Foundation, 269 Avrasya Dosyası (Eurasian File), 268 Avrasya Etüdleri (Eurasian Studies), 268 Ayhaber, 269 Azarov, Mykola, 188 Azerbaijan, 173 aziatchina, 31 Baikal-Amur (BAM) Railway, 155 Bairamova, Fauziyia, 226 Bank of Moscow, 111

361

362 Index

Baráth, Tibor, 248 barkhany, 50 Baryshnikov, Serhii, 189, 190 Bassin, Mark, 10 Battle of Kulikovo Field, 133 Bayer, Zsolt, 252, 258 Belarus, 172 Belavezha Accords, 182 Beliakov, Aleksandr, 33 Belov, Aleksandr, 194 Bible, 111 Biblioteka rasovoi mysli (The Library of Racial Thought) (Avdeev and Savel’ev), 40 Billington, James, 209 biology, rasologiia and, 40–42 Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), 268 Blok, Aleksandr, 89, 125 Bodrov, Sergei, 11, 106–10 Bogdanov, Aleksandr, 85 Bolshevik Revolution, 4, 59, 88 Book of Veles, 123 Borisov, Andrei, 11, 110–11 Borodai, Aleksandr, 194 BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), 207, 305 Brown, Gordon, 184 Brzezinski, Zbiginiew, 161, 305, 307 Budapest Memorandum of 1994, 181 Buddhism, 91, 92, 94, 148, 249 Bushkov, Alexander, 132 Butakov, Yaroslav, 31 Bykov, Dmitrii, 89 The Case of a Greedy Barbarian, 95 Castrén, Matthias A., 246 Catherine the Great, 20, 49, 73, 94 Çeçen, Anil, 272 Centre of Economic and Political Reforms, Russia, 186 Çetin, Hikmet, 268–69 Chaplin, Vsevolod, 95 Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia (The Fourth Political Theory) (Dugin), 184–85

China: embracing the Pacific East and rejecting, 148–49; Orthodoxy versus, 146–48 Chinese Communist Party, 149, 153 Chinese nationalism, 154 Chinese patriotism, 154 Chingis-Khan, 108 Christianity, 81, 111, 128, 132, 208, 225, 249 Chudinov, Valerii, 124, 133 Cioran, Emil, 257 CIS. See Commonwealth of Independent States civilization, Mongolian, 111–14 classical Eurasianism, 92, 146–48, 207–9 Clauss, Ludwig, 40 Clinton, Hillary, 204 Close to Eden (Urga), 93, 211 Clover, Charles, 311 Code of Genghis Khan, 95 Cold Friend: Why We Need Russia (Rahr), 302, 308, 309 Cold War, 13, 203, 217, 301, 305 Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), 26, 164 Columbus, Christopher, 122 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), 26, 165, 169, 182, 203, 210, 284, 286 communism, 63, 124; collapse of, 121, 124, 125–26, 135, 212; development and, 208; Hungarian ethnicity during, 245; modernity and, 213; national, 272; Orientalist undercurrents of ethnicism under, 247–50 Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), 284 Confucianism, 91, 95, 146, 148, 152 “Conservative Revolution,” 88 Cosgrove, Simon, 31

Index

Council of the European Union, 181 Crimea, 181 CSTO. See Collective Security Treaty Organization culture: Asian, 146–47, 225; ethnic Russian (russkii) national, 50; European, 157; Muslim, 226; pan-Turkic, 228; polyphony of, 73; Russian, 111–14; Sintashta, 129; Slavic, 130; Turkic, 156, 224; Western, 83, 151–52, 225 Customs Union (CU), 26, 166 Cyrillic alphabet, 64 Czech Security Information Service, 196 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 205 Danilevskii, Nikolai, 4, 207, 208 Davutoglu, Ahmet, 273–74 Day of the Oprichnik (Sorokin), 82 DCFTA. See Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement Decembrists, 27 Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA), 173 Deleuze, Gilles, 1 Delo lis-oborotnei, 91, 92 Delo nepogashennoi luny (Rybakov and Alimov), 84, 88 Demirel, Süleyman, 268 Demushkin, Dmitrii, 24, 194 Deng Xiaoping, 153 Den’ TV, 40 Die Welt, 309, 310 Diyalog Avrasya (Dialogue Eurasia), 275 Donbass for the Eurasian Union, 190 “Donetskaia Respublika” (Donetsk Republic, DR), 187–91 Dostoevskii, Fedor, 4 druzhba narodov, 44

363

Dugin, Aleksandr, 7, 40, 61, 148, 252, 253, 255–56, 259; Eurasianism in Tatarstan and, 230–31; gearing up for the war, 185–91; neo-Eurasianism and the RussianUkrainian War, 181–96 Dühring, Eugen, 44 Dzermant, Alexander, 61, 69 East and Eurasia, 91–95 “Eastern Opening,” 251 Eastern Siberia: Russia’s outpost in the Asia-Pacific Region, 154–56 Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil pipeline (ESPO), 155 Economist, 310 ECU. See Eurasian Customs Union EEAS. See European External Action Service Efremov, Mikhail, 89 Elementy, 102 Eliade, Mircea, 257 Elsässer, Jürgen, 14 El’tsin, Boris, 101 Engels, Friedrich, 44 Enlightenment, 94, 102, 148 Entmischung, 52 environment: rasologiia and, 40–42; steppe, 123 Erdélyi, István, 247, 248 ESPO. See Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil pipeline ethnicism: Orientalist undercurrents under communism and postcommunism, 247–50 ethnonationalists, 23–26 etnos, 6 Eurasia: age of, 201–17; as anti-Westernist geopolitical project, 270–73; dilemmas of integration, 202–7;

364 Index

East and, 91–95; as quest to unify the Turkic world, 267–70 Eurasian Customs Union (ECU), 189 Eurasian Customs Union Commission, 202 Eurasian Development Bank, 290 Eurasian Economic Commission, 166, 169 Eurasian Economic Community (Evraziiskoe Ekonomicheskoe Soobshchestvo), 166 Eurasian Economic Union (Evraziiskii Ekonomicheskii Soiuz, EEU), 2, 8, 11, 12, 25, 59–60, 62–63, 67–70, 161–75, 202–6, 291–294; Eurasian but not Eurasianist, 167–70; growing pains, 170–72; and the Russkii Mir after Novorossiia (Ukrainian Crisis), 70–74; working of, 164–67 Eurasian Intergovernmental Council, 166 Eurasianism/Eurasianists: and alternative history in post-Soviet Russia, 121–37; classical, 92, 146–48, 207–9; German, 301–13; and integrity of the imperial geo-body, 23–26 Kazakh, 8; models of, 207–16; neo-, 209–11; new, 211–15; politics of, 9–14; pragmatic, 215–16; Russian, 26–31; in Russian foreign policy, 161–75; and search for useable past, 124–28; secular, 224–27; Sinophile, 149–52; soft, 306–8; in Tatarstan, 223–36; Turkish, 264–67;

useful, 223–36 Eurasianism and the White Movement (Trubetskoi), 208 “Eurasianism Is a Basis for the Russian National Idea,” 69 Eurasianist metanarrative, 3–9 Eurasian Symphony (van Zaichik), 10, 81–96; alternative history and antiWesternism, 83–87; East and Eurasia, 91–95; irony in, 89–91; post-Soviet nostalgia, 87–89 Eurasian Union, 26; geopolitical imagination and popular geopolitics between Russkii Mir and, 59–74; Russo-centrism as a unifying feature, 66–70 Eurasian Youth Economic Forum, 61, 69 Eurasia Strategic Research Centre (ASAM), 269 Eurasia Youth Union, 214 Eurasisches Magazin, 306 Euro-Islam, 225 European Championship, 257 European Coal and Steel Community, 202 European Commission, 250 Europe and Mankind (Trubetskoi), 208 European Enlightenment, 96 European External Action Service (EEAS), 207 European New Right, 3 European Union (EU), 8, 62, 166–67, 201 European West, 4 Evola, Julius, 254 Evraziia, 147, 148 Evraziiskaia khronika, 147 Evraziiskii soiuz molodezhi (Eurasian Youth Union, ESM), 185–86; Bratstvo party and, 186; Crimean cell, 188, 194;

Index

DR and, 187–89; Dugin’s involvement in, 193; Moscow branch of, 188; Ukrainian members of, 186; United States sanctions on, 194 Evraziiskii Soyuz, 286–88 EvrAziiskoe Ekonomicheskoe Soobshchestvo (Eurasian Economy Community, EvrAzEs), 284 as a neo-Eurasianist tandem, 288–91 Fedorov, Mikhail, 69 FIDESZ, 14, 249–50, 251, 256 Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 181 First World War, 4, 125, 243, 246 Florovsky, George, 208 Fomenko, Anatolii, 10, 81, 122, 131, 132, 135 Foreign Policy Conception, 210 Foreign Policy Concepts (FPCs), 169 Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia (Dugin), 148, 212, 266 French New Right, 212 Frolov, Oleh, 187 Fuehrerprinzip, 83 Galeotti, Mark, 65 Galiev, Mirsaid Sultan, 272 Gazprom, 111, 304 Gefter, Mikhail, 63 gendarmes, 89–90 “genetic bloodsuckers” (geneticheskii krovosos), 41 Genghis-khan – dva veka obmana (Genghis Khan – Two Centuries of Deceit), 132 Genscher, Hans-Dieter, 310 “The Geographical Pivot of History,” 87 geopolitical imagination: between Eurasian Union and Russkii Mir, 59–74 Geopolitical Meaning of the Far East: Russia, China, and the Other

365

Asian Countries (Geopoliticheskoe znachenie Dal’nego Vostoka. Rossiia, Kitai i drugie strany Azii) (Titarenko), 150 geopolitics: popular, between Eurasian Union and Russkii Mir, 59–74; in post-Soviet alternative history, 81–96; Turkish Eurasianism and, 264–67 Georgia, 173 German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), 303 German Eurasianism, 301–13; in perspective, 311–13 German-Russian Forum, 304 Girkin, Igor, 194 Glazyev, Sergei, 61, 72, 205 Gökalp, Ziya, 269 Golden Horde (Zolotaia Orda), 73; Russian feature films and, 101–14 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 124, 153 gosudarstvennik, 151 Gradirovskii, Sergei, 63 Great Lithuanian Princedom, 134 Great Patriotic War, 86, 88, 187 Great Russians, 4, 5, 6, 8, 47 “Great-Turkish chauvinism,” 44 “Great Volga Route,” 231 Great Wall of China, 146 Great War of Continents, 71 Group of Eight (G8), 65 Guattari, Félix, 1 Gubarev, Pavlo, 192 Gubareva, Iekateryna, 192 Guénon, René, 249, 254 Gumilev, Lev Nikolaevich, 6, 11, 21, 26, 41, 52, 102, 108, 121, 148, 168, 208–9, 233, 247 Gumilev, Nikolai, 6 Günther, Hans, 40 Hamvas, Béla, 248–49, 258 Hanafiyah Islam, 230 Haushofer, Karl, 213

366 Index

Hinduism, 146 Holocaust, 84, 85 “Holy Russia,” 66 Hosking, Geoffrey, 33 Howell, Yvonne, 85 Hrushevskii, 134 Hungarian Revolution, 254 Hungarian Turanism: Orientalist undercurrents of ethnicism under communism and post-communism, 247–50; from Scythia to, 245–47 Hungary, 214; as Eurasian great power, 246; Eurasian turn of the radical right, 252–58; Ex Oriente lux, 250–52; FIDESZ and, 14, 256; mediating European civilization to the East, 246; Orientalist undercurrents of ethnicism under communism and post-communism, 247–50; Putin’s visit to, 252; “Southern Stream” pipeline and, 250; Sovietization of, 244 Ianukovych, Viktor, 185, 188 Ilhan, Attila, 272 Il’in, Ivan, 103 IMF. See International Monetary Fund impertsy, 21 Indo-European cultural community, 49 Indo-Iranian languages, 129 International Antifascist Front, 189 International Council of Russian Compatriots, 63, 64 International Eurasian Movement, 68 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 165, 250 Iraq War, 304, 309 Iskhakov, Damir, 224, 229 Iskhod k vostoku (Trubetskoi), 208 Islam, 91, 94, 224–25, 227–31, 249

Islamic fundamentalism, 148 Ismailov, Iskander, 83 Istoriia Rossii, ili kak skryli nashe proshloe (The History of Russia, or How Our Past Was Concealed), 132 Italian Renaissance, 122 Iuryev, Mikhail, 33 Iushchenko, Viktor, 187 Ivanov, Vsevolod N., 91–92, 146–47 Ivanovich, Dmitrii, 86 Ivashov, Leonid, 61, 72 Izborskii Club, 62 Izmailov, Iskander, 232 Izvestiia, 62, 162, 168 Jadidism, 225 Jakobson, Roman, 4 Jensen, Arthur, 39 Jews, 84, 85 “The Joke That Has Gone Too Far,” 26–27 Judaism, 94 Juncker, Jean-Claude, 207 Justice and Development Party (AKP), 13, 273, 276 Kachanov, Igor, 73 Kagansky, Vladimir, 33 Kanishchev, Pavel, 188 Karamzin, Nikolai, 130, 137 Kartsev, Roman, 88 Kashalov, Rafis, 234 Katkov, Mikhail Nikiforovich, 28 Kazakh Eurasianism, 8 Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism, 283–97; EvrAzEs as a neo-Eurasianist tandem, 288–91 Khakimov, Rafael, 232; and an ambivalence of Tatar Eurasianism, 227–30 Khan, Genghis, 81; Russian feature films and, 101–14; on the Russian screen, 106–11 Khan Mamai, 86

Index

Khan Sartak, 81, 93 Khasanov, Mansur Kh., 225–26 Kholmogorov, Yegor, 26–27, 30 Khotinenko, Vladimir, 103 Khramov, Aleksandr, 22, 24–25 Khronika, 147 Khrushchev, Nikita, 153 Kil’diushov, Oleg, 22 Kireevskii, Ivan, 85 Kirill, Patriarch, 66, 67 Knyrik, Kostiantyn, 186, 194 Kofner, Iurii, 61, 73, 103, 233 Kohl, Helmut, 310 Komsomolskaya Pravda, 310 Konservative Revolution, 255 Konstantin Vasiliev Museum, 230 Korchyns’kyi, Dmytro, 186 Korovin, Valerii, 40, 47, 185–86, 190 Koshino, Go, 86 Kossuth, Lajos, 254 Kovács, Béla, 255 Kovalenko, Andrey, 189 Kozhinov, Vadim, 104, 151 Krivosheev, S., 68 Krylov, Konstantin, 10, 22, 29 Kuz’min, Apollon, 21 Kyrgyzstan, 171 Laruelle, Marlene, 168 Lasswitz, Kurt, 85 László, Gyula, 247 Lavrov, Sergei, 65 Lebensraum, 312 Lenin, Vladimir, 20, 270, 272 Leningrad (punk-rock band), 82 Leontyev, Konstantin, 4, 27–28, 41, 45, 207–8 Lomonosov, Mikhail, 129 Luginov, Nikolai, 110 Macfarlane, S. Neil, 174 Mackinder, Halford, 87, 161, 213, 264, 305 Magyar Fórum, 255 Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 213, 264

367

Maidan Crisis, 65 Makhmutov, Mirza I., 226–27 Malofeev, Konstantin, 194 Marshall Capital Partners, 194 Mead, Walter Russell, 265 Medinskii, Vladimir, 62–63 Medvedev, Dmitrii, 64, 166, 291 Merkel, Angela, 184, 252, 305 Mezhdunarodnoe evraziiskoe dvizhenie (MED, International Eurasianist Movement), 186 Mezhuev, Boris, 63 MHP. See Nationalist Action Party Mialo, Kseniia, 21 Middle Ages, 27, 101 Mif o Tataro-Mogol’skom ige (The Myth of the Tatar-Mongol Yoke), 133 Mikhalkov, Nikita, 11, 93, 210; and the steppe, 104–6 Miliukov, Pavel, 20 Minnikhanov, Rustam, 234 Mirihanov, Nazif, 134 Mirskii, Dmitrii, 4 mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission), 85 models of Eurasianism, 207–16; classic Eurasianism, 207–9; neo-Eurasiansm, 209–11; new eurasianism, 211–15; pragmatic Eurasianism, 215–16 Mogherini, Federica, 207 Moldova, 173 Mongol, 11, 106–7, 110, 114 Mongol Empire, 6, 112, 121 Mongolian civilization, 111–14 Mongols, 6, 86, 91, 102; war against, 128–35 Mongol yoke, 5, 102 More, Thomas, 87 Moscow Club Realists, 229 Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations, 233 Mukhametdinov, Rafael’, 226 Müller, Max, 246

368 Index

My. Kul’turno-istoricheskie osnovy rossiiskoi gosudarstvennosti (We: The Cultural-Historical Foundations of Russian Statehood) (Ivanov), 147 Narochnitskaya, Natalya, 211 narod, 20 Nash sovremennik, 104, 151 “Nasledie Chingiskhana,” 105 nationalism: Great Russian, 5; Russian, 19–21, 31–32 Nationalist Action Party (MHP), 267, 276 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO Membership Action Plan, 184 Natsional-Bol’shevistskaia Partiia (National-Bolshevik Party, NBP), 182, 193 Nazarbayev, Nursultan, 8, 13, 48, 162, 168, 172, 209, 211, 225; 1994 Moscow speech and the Evraziiskii Soyuz, 286–88; anti-imperial foreign policy, 283–97 Nazism, 134 Nemensky, Oleg, 22 neo-Eurasianism, 62, 209–11; Dugin and, 181–96; embracing the Pacific East and rejecting China, 148–49; Kazakhstani, 283–97; post-Crimea, 291–95; in Russian feature films, 101–14; and the Suvernitet conundrum, 291–95 See also Putinist Eurasianism neo-Eurasianists at war, 191–95 neo-liberalism, 121 neo-Nazism, 121 neo-Paganism, 121 Nevskii, Aleksander, 81, 131 Nevskii, Aleksandr, 93 new Eurasianism, 211–15 new-generation nationalists:

coming of age, 21–23 Nikonov, Viacheslav, 64, 65, 134 North Asian Development Fund, 155 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 71, 184, 187, 201, 206, 207, 210, 215, 250 nostalgia, post-Soviet, 87–89 Novorossiia (Ukrainian Crisis), 59, 65, 214; EEU and the Russkii Mir after, 70–74 OIC. See Organization of the Islamic Conference “On the State Policy of the Russian Federation in Relation to the Compatriots Abroad” (“O Gosudarsvennoi Politike Rossiiskoi Federatsii v Otnoshenii Sootechestvennikov za Rubezhom”), 63 Orange Revolution, 185, 187, 195, 288 Orbán, Viktor, 14, 243, 249–50, 251–52, 256 Orda, 111–13, 114 ordynstvo, 30, 31 Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), 201, 284 Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), 284 Orientalist archaism, 249 Orthodox Christianity, 146 Orthodox Church of China, 154 Orthodox Civilization in a Globalized World (Panarin), 148 Orthodoxy, 91–92, 94, 147; versus China, 146–48 OSCE. See Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe OSCE Helsinki Final Act, 181 Osnovy geopolitiki (The Foundations of Geopolitics) (Dugin), 182 Ostpolitik (Brandt), 301, 311 Ottoman Empire, 93, 274

Index

Özal, Turgut, 268 Özcan, Ahmet, 275 Özdağ, Muzaffer, 270 Özdağ, Ümit, 269, 270 Pain, Emil’, 32 Palestinian Muslims, 84 Panarin, Aleksandr, 148, 156, 210 “pan-Eurasianism,” 5 Party of Hungarian Truth and Life (MIÉP), 255 Pastukhov, Vladimir, 32 Pegida, 14 perestroika, 105 Perinçek, Doǧu, 271 Perinçek, Mehmet, 271 Petersburg Dialogue, 304 Peter the Great, 20 Petrov, Oleg, 107 Poedinok, 40 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 86 politics, of Eurasianism, 9–14 popular geopolitics: between Eurasian Union and Russkii Mir, 59–74 post-communism: Orientalist undercurrents of ethnicism under, 247–50 post-Soviet nostalgia, 87–89 post-Soviet Russia: Eurasianism and alternative history in, 121–37; war against the Mongols, 128–35 post-Soviet therapy: alternative history as, 122–24 Po veleniiu Chingiskhana (Luginov), 110 pragmatic Eurasianism, 215–16 Pravda, 104 Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia, 111 Primakov, Yevgeni, 152, 211 The Prison House of Peoples (Shiropaev), 44 Problems of Nationalism, 25 Prohresyvna sotsialistychna partiia Ukrainy (Progressive Socialist

369

Party of Ukraine, PSPU), 186, 187 Prokhanov, Alexander, 7, 40, 213 Prokhorov, Alexander, 107 Proselkov, Aleksandr, 194 Proshkin, Andrei, 111, 113–14 Protestantism, 230 Purhin, Andrii, 187 Pushkin, Alexander, 64, 88 Pussy Riot affair, 95, 306 Putin, Vladimir, 8; EurAsEc and, 166; on Eurasian Union, 77n34, 126; foreign reserves accumulated during, 170; Izvestiia article of, 176n6, 292; as leader of post-Soviet multilateralism, 292; Novorossiia and, 65; and pragmatic Eurasianism, 12, 215, 216; pro-China and pro-Eurasian efforts of, 12, 145–46; Russian Eurasianism and, 8, 70; and the Russian ruling elites, 185; second presidential term, 291–92; Seliger National Youth Forum and, 300n36; Tatar Eurasianism and, 231–34; third term of, 8–9, 11, 12, 202; two big ideas in first presidency of, 61–66; Valdai speech of, 27, 168; visit to Hungary, 252, 255 Putinist Eurasianism, 62, 70. See also neo-Eurasianism Quaderni di Geopolitica, 258 race, rasologiia and, 40–42 Rácz, András, 181, 182, 195 Rahr, Alexander, 14, 302–10, 311–13; Kremlin’s German, 309–10; rise of a geopolitician, 304–6 RAND Corporation, 304

370 Index

rasologiia, 39–53; biology, environment and race, 40–42; Russia’s problematic imperial legacy, 42–47; visions of the Russian future, 47–52 Rassenkunde, 52 Ratzel, Friedrich, 264 Red Army, 86 Red Star (Bogdanov), 85 Remizov, Mikhail, 10, 21 Republican Fund for the Restoration of Historical and Cultural Monuments, 233 Republican People’s Party (CHP), 276 ROC. See Russian Orthodox Church Rodionov, Kirill, 30 Rodzaevsky, Konstantin, 146 Rogozin, Dmitrii, 194 Roman Empire, 245 Rossia irredenta, 24 Rossiiskaia gazeta, 104 Roza Mira (The Rose of the World) (Andreev), 113 Rus – Orda (Rus Is the Horde), 133 Russia: Eastern Siberia, as outpost in the Asia-Pacific Region, 154–56; Eurasianism and alternative history in post-Soviet, 121–37; foreign policy, 172–74; problematic imperial legacy, 42–47; visions of future of, 47–52 Russia, Security through Cooperation: The East Asian Vector (Rossiia. Bezopasnost’ cherez sotrudnichestvo. Vostochnoaziatskii vektor) (Titarenko), 150 Russian Academy of Sciences, 94 Russian Central Bank, 170 Russian culture, 111–14 Russian Empire, 26, 59, 66, 73, 121, 211 Russian ethnic nationalism, 20 Russian Eurasianism: debating, 26–31 Russian Europeanism, 29

Russian feature films: Golden Horde and, 101–14; Mongolian civilization versus Russian culture, 111–14; neo-Eurasianism in, 101–14 Russian Federation, 3 Russian Film Promotion Fund, 111 Russian foreign policy: Eurasianism in, 161–75 Russian Geographic Society, 133 Russian-Georgian War, 184 Russian Ministry of Finance (MinFin), 170 Russian nationalism: ethnonationalists, Eurasianists and the integrity of the imperial geobody, 23–26; new-generation nationalists coming of age, 21–23; perennial dilemmas, 19–21; “true,” 31–32 Russian Orthodox Christianity, 306 Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), 59, 67, 95, 111, 231, 306–7 Russian School of Orientalist Studies, 94 Russian Spring, 10, 74 Russian-Ukrainian war, 181–96 Russian Westernization, 92 Russian Wikipedia, 66 Russia Turns to Face Asia (Rossiia. Litsom k Azii) (Titarenko), 150 russkii, 20 Russkii Mir, 63; and the EEU after Novorossiia (Ukrainian Crisis), 70–74; geopolitical imagination and popular geopolitics between Eurasian Union and, 59–74; Russo-centrism as a unifying feature, 66–70 “Russkii Mir and Eurasianism – Why There Are No Contradictions between These Two Projects,” 69 Russkii Mir Foundation, 61, 64 Russkii Mir magazine, 64

Index

“The Russkii Mir of Eurasia,” 68 Russkoe Imperskoe Dvizhenie (Russian Imperial Movement), 193 Russkoe natsional’noe edinstvo (RNE, Russian National Unity), 191, 193 Russo-centrism, 66–70 Rybakov, Viacheslav, 10, 81, 82, 84, 87 Safin, Rafael’, 225 Safiullin, Fandas Sh., 231–32 Sajnovics, János, 245 Samovarov, Aleksandr, 22 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 184 Savel’ev, Andrei Nikolaevich, 39–40, 47, 48 Savitsky, Petr, 3, 94, 101, 146, 150, 208 Scaliger, Joseph, 122 Scheidt, Walter, 40 Schmitt, Carl, 209 Schmitt, Helmut, 310 Schröder, Gerhard, 304, 305, 310 SCO. See Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Second World War, 74, 149, 244, 247, 249 The Secret History of the Mongols (Sokrovennoe skazanie o mongol’skom narode), 108 secular Eurasianism, 224–27 Sergeev, Sergei, 10, 22, 25, 27 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), 152, 201, 207 Shchedrovitskii, Petr, 63, 64 Shcherbakov, Vladimir, 123 Shevstsova, Lilia, 169 Shiropaev, A. A., 43 Shockley, William, 39 Silaev, Ivan, 104 Silk Road, 206 Single Economic Space (SES), 166, 167 Sinophile Eurasianism, 12, 149–52 Sino-Russian cultural complementarity, 152–54 1612, 103 Slavophilism, 27, 121, 126

371

sliianie, 6 Sluzhba bezpeky Ukrainy (SBU, Security Service of Ukraine), 186 Smith, Graham, 265 The Snail on the Slope (Arkadii and Strugatskii), 84–85 soft Eurasianism, 306–8 Solovei, Valery, 10, 22, 24 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 126 Song dynasty, 94 Sorokin, Vladimir, 82, 89 Soros, George, 95 Soviet Union, 1; after Stalin’s death, 125; Belavezha Accords and, 182; collapse of, 2, 10, 20, 74, 74n1, 135, 148, 247, 263, 268; EEU and, 8; émigré Eurasianists in, 5–6; Eurasianism and, 13; Eurasian Symphony and, 88; internationalism promoted by, 48; Muslim communities of, 272; Putinist neo-Eurasianism and, 66 Spykman, Nicholas J., 213 Stalinism, 151 Steinmeyer, Frank-Walter, 14, 172, 301, 302 steppe, Mikhalkov and, 104–6 St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, 129 St Petersburg University, 94 Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position (Davutoglu), 273 Strugatskii, Boris, 84 The Sugar Kremlin (Sorokin), 82 Suny, Ronald G., 20, 33 superethnos, 151 Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, 166, 167 Surkov, Vladislav, 214 Suvchinsky, Petr, 3, 208 Sviatenkov, Pavel, 22, 30 Svistunov, Oleksandr, 187 Tageszeitung, 310 Taina Chingis Khaana, 11, 110, 114

372 Index

Tajikistan, 171 Taoism, 148, 152 Tatar nationalism, 13 Tataro-Mongol Yoke, 5, 102 Tatar Public Center (TPC), 223–24 Tatarstan: Dugin and, 230–31; Eurasianism in, 223–36; Khakimov and, 227–30; as multicultural region, 223–24; secular Eurasianism of, in the 1990s, 224–27; transformation under Putin’s power, 231–34 Tefft, John F., 190–91 Tengrism, 111 Territoriia Zabluzhdenii (Land of Deception), 133 Third World War, 311 Titarenko, Mikhail, 12, 146, 149–56, 157; Sinophile Eurasianism, 149–52 Torbakov, Igor, 60 Torshev, Alexander, 68 Towards an Alliance of Europe, 206 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 206, 215 Trans-Siberian Railway, 155 Treaty of Rapallo, 301 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, 181 Trenczényi, Balázs, 14 Troubetzkoy, Nikolai, 146 TRT-Int Avrasya, 268 Trubetskoi, Nikolai, 3, 4, 11, 29, 60, 101, 105, 121, 124–25, 137, 168, 208 Trubetzskoy, Nikolai, 150 “true” Russian nationalism: crafting, 31–32 Tsentral’naya Aziya Sotrudinchestvo (TsAS), 288 Tsurkan, Oleksandr, 187 Tsymbursky, Vadim, 21, 209–10 TTIP. See Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Tuathail, Gearóid Ó, 264 Turanism: from Scythia to, 245–47 Türkes, Alparslan, 268 Turkey: EEU and, 164, 177n13; Eurasia and, 267–70; Eurasia (Avrasya) and, 13; geopolitical traditions in, 263–76; and Tatarstan, 226 Turkish Agency for Technical and Economic Cooperation (TIKA), 268 Turkish Eurasianism, 13, 266; critical geopolitics and, 264–67 Turkish War of Independence, 272 Türk Yurdu (Turkish Homeland), 269 “The Twist of Mind,” 27 Ugly Swans (Strugatskiis), 85 Ukraine, 173; in the neo-Eurasianist perspective, 182–85; neo-Eurasianists at war, 191–95 Ukraine: Moia Voina. Geopoliticheskii Dnevnik (Ukraine: My War. Geopolitical Diary) (Dugin), 70 Ukraine for the Eurasian Union, 190 Ukrainian Criminal Code, 187 Ulusal (National), 271 Ural State Economic University, 69 Urga, 11, 104–6 Ustryalov, Nikolai, 146 utopia, in post-Soviet alternative history, 81–96 Utopia (More), 87 Vakhitov, Rustem, 126 Valdai Discussion Club, 62 Valdai International Discussion Club, 162, 304 Vámbéry, Ármin, 246 van Gulik, Robert Hans, 93 van Zaichik, Khol’m, 10, 81 Velikaia Rossiia, 43, 50

Index

Veres, Péter, 248 Vernadskii, Georgii (George), 3, 60, 101, 168, 244 Vestnik Evrazii, 210 Vitrenko, Natalya, 186, 187 Vladimir Putin: The “German” in the Kremlin (Rahr), 302 Vladimirtsov, Boris, 107 Vona, Gábor, 254, 255–56 von Humboldt, Alexander, 301 Vzgliad, 256 Wahhabism, 230 Wall Street Journal, 310 war against the Mongols, 128–35 The War of the Worlds (Wells), 85 Wehrmacht, 86 Wells, H. G., 85 Westernizers, 27 Western-style Messianism, 96 Wintershall Holding GmbH, 304, 309

373

Witte, Sergei, 20 Woltmann, Ludwig, 40 World Association of Hungarians, 257 World Tatar Congress, 226 World Trade Organization (WTO), 167, 172, 205 World without Nazism, 189 WTO. See World Trade Organization Xi Jinping, 203 Yarin (Tomorrow), 274 Yeltsin, Boris, 82, 153, 209 Yeni Avrasya (New Eurasia), 269 “Young Eurasia” movement, 61, 233 Yurchak, Aleksei, 89 Zarifullin, Pavel, 185–86 Zavtra, 40, 102, 213 Zhabinskii, Alexander, 132 Zvezda Povolzhia, 231

About the Contributors

Luca Anceschi is lecturer in Central Asian studies at the University of Glasgow, where he also co-edits the journal Europe-Asia Studies. His research has focused on the international relations of post-Soviet Central Asia, with particular reference to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, the region’s key hydrocarbon exporters. He is the author of Turkmenistan’s Foreign Policy – Positive Neutrality and the Consolidation of the Turkmen Regime (2008). Mark Bassin is Baltic Sea professor of the history of ideas, in the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm. He is the author of The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia (2016) and Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East 1840–1865 (1999). He is co-editor of the collections Between Europe and Asia (2015), Soviet and Post-Soviet Identities (2012), Space, Place and Power in Modern Russia (2010) and География и Идентичность в Постсоветской России (2003). Christine Engel is professor emeritus of Russian literature and culture at the University of Innsbruck (Austria). Her scholarly interests are in contemporary Russian film and in contemporary prose with a focus on semiotics. Apart from books and papers in these fields she is concerned with literary translation and, in a broader sense, with cultural translation, questions of interculturality and of changing cultural patterns. For more information and a list of publications, see http://www.uibk.ac.at/slawistik/institut/engel.

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About the Contributors

Emre Erşen is associate professor at Marmara University’s Faculty of Political Science in Istanbul, Turkey. He has also conducted research at the University of Kent (United Kingdom), Higher School of Economics (Russia) and Jagiellonian University (Poland) as a visiting scholar. His research interests include Turkish-Russian relations, Eurasianism and geopolitics. He has published articles in journals including Geopolitics, Turkish Studies and Journal of Eurasian Studies. Ian Klinke is associate professor in human geography at the University of Oxford and a tutorial fellow at St John’s College. Situated within political geography, his current work focuses on the tradition of German geopolitics and the material landscapes of the Cold War. Irina Kotkina holds a PhD in history from the European University Institute (Florence). Between 2013 and 2016 She collaborated in a project called “The Vision of Eurasia: Eurasianist Influences on Politics, Culture, and Ideology in Russia Today,” Södertörn University, Sweden. Her most recent publications include “Utopian Literature and Utopian Political Thinking in Present-Day Russia” in Russian Review 7 (October 2016); “Eurasianism and Contemporary Russian Cultural Politics – Case of the Ministry of Culture,” in Art, Society and Politics in (Post)Socialism (ed. Anreea Lazea), Editura Universitatii de Vest Timisoara, 2015, pp. 15–34; and (co-authored with Mark Bassin) “The Etnogenez Project: Ideology and Science Fiction in Putin’s Russia,” in Utopian Studies 27:1 (2016). Marlene Laruelle is research professor of international affairs and associate director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She explores contemporary political, social and cultural changes in Russia and Central Asia through the prism of ideologies and nationalism. She has authored Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (2008), In the Name of the Nation: Nationalism and Politics in Contemporary Russia (2009), and Russia’s Strategies in the Arctic and the Future of the Far North (2013). She has recently edited Eurasianism and the European Far Right. Reshaping the Russia-Europe Relationship (2015), and Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism (2015), co-edited with Mark Bassin and Sergey Glebov. Gonzalo Pozo teaches international relations/international political economy at the University of Stockholm. His research interests are often focused on Russian political economy and its relation to Russian foreign policy. He has



About the Contributors

377

published widely on imperialism and geopolitics and is currently working on a biography of Isaac Deutscher. Richard Sakwa is professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent and an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House. He has published widely on Soviet, Russian and postcommunist affairs. Recent books include The Crisis of Russian Democracy: The Dual State, Factionalism, and the Medvedev Succession (2011), Putin and the Oligarch: The Khodorkovsky – Yukos Affair (2014), Putin Redux: Power and Contradiction in Contemporary Russia (2014) and Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (2016). Konstantin Sheiko and Stephen Brown teach Russian history at the University of Wollongong in Australia. Their research has focused upon Russia’s post-communist “alternative” historians who write from an anti-Western and Eurasianist perspective. Together they have published two books: Nationalist Imaginings of the Russian Past (2009) and History as Therapy: Alternative History and Nationalist Imaginings in Russia, 1991–2014 (2014). Anton Shekhovtsov is visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (Austria) and an editor of the Explorations of the Far Right book series at ibidem-Verlag (Germany). He is the author of New Radical Right-Wing Parties in European Democracies (Novye pravoradikal’nye partii v evropeyskikh demokratiyakh, 2011) and Russia and the Western Far Right (forthcoming, 2017). Victor Shnirel’man, Doctor in history, is the chief scientific researcher in the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, in Moscow. He is also an author of more than 450 publications, including more than 30 books, among them, The Value of the Past: Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia (2001), and The Myth of the Khazars and Intellectual Antisemitism in Russia, 1970s–1990s (2002). Mikhail Suslov, PhD in history, is a Marie Curie researcher at the Uppsala Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University. His academic interests include Russian intellectual history, geopolitical ideologies and utopias, and religious (Orthodox) political theorization. His most recent publications are Digital Orthodoxy in the Post-Soviet World: The Russian Orthodox Church and Web 2.0 (2016) and Eurasia 2.0: Post-Soviet Geopolitics in the Age of New Media (co-edited with Mark Bassin, 2016).

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About the Contributors

Balázs Trencsényi is professor at the History Department of Central European University, Budapest. He is the author of The Politics of “National Character”: A Study in Interwar East European Thought (2012), co-author of A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe, vol. I: Negotiating Modernity in the “Long Nineteenth Century” (2016); and coeditor of Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe (1775–1945) vols. I–IV (2006–2014). Igor Torbakov is senior fellow at the Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University and Associate Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm. A trained historian, he specializes in Russian and Eurasian history and politics. His recent publications discuss the history of Russian nationalism, the links between Russia’s domestic politics and foreign policy, Russia’s and Turkey’s geopolitical discourses, RussianUkrainian relations, and the politics of history and memory wars in Eastern Europe.